It's true what they say...

I think I might be turning into my mother.

This isn't necessarily the worst thing in the world. My mum is pretty cool and I would count her as one of my best friends (I realise how lucky I am with this and how unusual it is). We always have something to talk about and we are completely easy in each other's company.

But still, it has come as something of a surprise. After all, she's 50something and I'm 24.

It was the other day, at about 12.30am that it struck me. I was sitting in the lounge, blogging furiously about nothing in particular. HF had gone to bed about an hour previously. I always found it sad that my parents didn't tend to go up to bed at the same time. There was one fairly good reason for this - my dad would reliably fall asleep in front of the television at about 9pm, wake briefly, have a cup of tea, then retire to bed properly at 11ish ready to get up at 7am sharp and do hard manual labour all day. My mum, however, rarely goes to bed before 1am and has been known to continue wandering round doing various bits and pieces until 3ish. As she didn't work for most of my childhood, or worked in jobs which started in the late morning or afternoon, there was never any real rush to get up bright and early. Certainly not once we were all old enough to get our lunches and get on the school bus without assistance.

So basically, my parents operate in slightly different time zones. And it seems it might be the same with me and HF. I mean, I have to be at work at 8.30am to 9am weekdays and due to various gym-related commitments am usually up reasonably early at weekends too. But HF, who is an archaeologist, pretty much always gets up before me, gives me a sleepy kiss goodbye and then I get up a bit later.

I also tend, if I get into a good book, just to keep reading it until either I finish it or I can't see properly anymore. Much like my mum. We've both taken to blogging in a pretty big way, and also, more recently, Flickr. Stupid spelling. When I read my mum's blog, I hear my voice echoed in hers, and I suspect it works both ways. And without disrespecting either HF or my Dad, we both run our respective households. Don't get me wrong, I'm not particularly houseproud - but it's me who knows how much money we've got in our joint account, me who pays the bills, me who takes the food out of the freezer for dinner and makes sure (well, most of the time) that we don't run out of milk or bread. If I let HF put all the food away, half of it goes in the wrong place. I know my Dad does this too. Out of curiosity, I asked HF if he knew where our joint cheque book was. He thought he did. He was wrong. In fact, having just conferred with him, I don't think he's ever written a cheque from it.

Tnis makes perfect sense in my mum's case, as she is at home far more than he is. But considering both me and Andy work full-time, plus I'm out at the gym up to five times a week, does it make so much sense for us? Have I just gravitated towards that role?

I keep the peace when HF goes mad (these days, mostly when he sees anything connected with Nikki off Big Brother) - my mum was the house peacekeeper too. We're both fairly amiable types who don't lose out tempers easily - but can get waspish if we're tired or grumpy, and if we do lose our tempers, you don't really want to be around.

I suppose the one main aspect of our characters that differs is ambition. Quite simply, my mum is, as far as I can tell, satisfied with her place in the world. She doesn't have any huge drive to succeed at anything (apart from maybe with music but that's slightly different) whereas I am very ambitious - not in a cut-throat couldn't care less about anyone else way, but I am determined to be the very best that I can, and I'm just about arrogant enough to believe that could be pretty damn good. In CV speak, I am always looking for the next challenge, but it's true, I hate being stuck in a rut.

If I'm going to turn into anyone, my mum's not such a bad person to become. But I'm certainly not going to give up on all that naked ambition, oh no. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy. But maybe not quite satisfied. Yet.

More on that story later.