Chicken pox
picture by nursing pins
We’ve been in quarantine for a couple of weeks now, since Miss Eight broke out in her rash. Initially, I kept the whole family home to ensure everyone caught it (thus giving them valuable immunity for the future) and to prevent us passing it on to everyone else at school. Short-sightedly, I sent the boys back to school after a week when they didn’t develop secondary symptoms (ie, the itchy rash associated with chicken pox). They were missing so much school and more than half the kids there have now contracted the virus, so what’s the point, right? Well, I sincerely hope we haven’t infected anyone else (who didn’t want to be infected) but that’s all spilt milk now.
Now the other three kids have developed their rash and, aside from general crankiness, they seem to be tolerating the discomfort very well. We chose not to vaccinate for what is normally a fairly harmless childhood illness. Dear husband remembers having chicken pox as a child, and so do I, so we figured we were safe being exposed to the kids. Most interesting to me: many of the children immunised against chicken pox at the kids’ school are still contracting it - albeit, usually in a milder form (but not always).
And even though my mother claims that I have had chicken pox twice in my life, I still assumed that having them, even once, equates with some sort of immunity. Apparently not. Darling hubby has now contracted a second case of chicken pox in this lifetime, and he is not a happy camper. His rash is mild but the migraine headache that seems to be the major symptom of adult chicken pox has knocked him flat. I feel terrible for him, but guess who ends up playing nurse … again!
While I anticipate at least one friend is going to want to bring her kids over and expose them to the virus, I can acknowledge that vaccinating against childhood illness is a choice we all get to make at some point in our parenting journey. I take responsibility for the decisions I’ve made with regard to my children’s health and I don’t like to be scare-mongered by doctors and friends who think that just because a vaccination is offered it should be accepted. Are we messing with the health of our children (and future grandchildren and beyond) by opting to vaccinate against otherwise ordinary childhood illnesses? I’m not so willing to choose convenience in this generation, without understanding how it might impact on the next.
September 5th, 2010 - Posted in gratitude, childhood, partnership, parenthood, duty of care, beliefs, health | | 2 Comments
Hibernation
picture by Riebart
I’m pre-menstrual as hell. It probably isn’t obvious to anyone but my dear husband. Every month, just before my menstrual bleed, I have a couple of ‘hermit’ days, where I hide away and read a book, or shut myself away to write, or get obsessive-compulsive about de-cluttering the cupboards and weeding the garden. My darling man is good to me then. He takes the kids on adventures to the shops or out visiting and leaves me to be at home alone. Which is all I ever want. Thank goodness he understands.
I’m not usually prone to mood swings, but now that we’re approaching the winter solstice and the cold has settled in–yes, I know it’s just a few weeks–yes, I know how lucky we are in S-E Queensland but–I still feel blue in the middle of winter. Is it possible that PMS is more severe in the cooler months? Does anyone else find this to be the case?
I have never coped well with the cold, my extremities readily go blue and I need lots of layers to fend off the chill. I had one winter pregnancy, my third, which was delightful because my own ‘central heating’ protected me from feeling the dreaded cold. But when my July bub was born, we had quite a few overnight frosts in a row and I recall fretting over keeping our littlest person warm at night. Luckily, I didn’t have to lose much sleep over it because I didn’t have to reach far to check his covers. He was the first bub in our family to officially sleep in our bed from day one. It was an arrangement that worked for over two years. Bub number four, who got the benefit of our experience with the previous three, still visits us in the night sometimes. Sometimes we love it. Sometime we definitely don’t. But I digress.
Some say that SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) is a left-over from evolution, and since many animals still hibernate in the winter, who do we think we are to not have to do likewise? It seems a reasonable enough explanation to me. Here in the sub-tropics, it’s not a condition we regularly hear about but when we lived in the US it was commonly discussed, and there’s a whole pharmacy of drugs and supplements to help the less-evolved deal with winter blues.
Maybe it isn’t there to be fixed. Maybe it’s there to be worked with, obeyed. Just like my tendency to withdraw before my moontime. Maybe we’re meant to hibernate some of the winter away; sleep more, eat more, conserve our emotional and physical energy for when the weather warms up and we have more to share.
June 14th, 2010 - Posted in gratitude, partnership, ritual, wisdom, health, self-care | | 3 Comments
Self-reliance
picture by DoubleM2
Hubby is away. Has been away for over a week and we have another few days to go. We’ve been doing this merry-go-round for ten years now and even though it is getting easier as the kids grow up, and as the communication technology gets better, the period of separation still has its inevitable pitfalls.
Actually, this would be one of the first times we haven’t had some minor disaster or technological breakdown of one sort or another. We’re just coming out the other side of a tummy bug that I have so far managed to evade. In one 24 hour period, three kids went down with it. I was expecting it because Master Almost-Seven had it last Friday. I had thought we’d got off lightly.
But I’m not here to talk about the negatives - much as I’d like to indulge myself a good long whinge about life and it’s spewy wash piles.
No, I’d rather point out that there’s an up side to every down. This work-related travel, disruptive though it is, augments my personal growth. When hubby is home I can be lazy because he’s always been good at helping out around the house. But when he’s away, everything falls to me. Well, not everything. I let the mail collect at the front door, and I don’t bother to mow the yard. But I keep up with the essentials and all the commitments, and I like it. To be honest, I feel a great sense of self-reliance during hubby’s away-time.
I shop and stockpile so we can be as self-sufficient as possible. We drop a few extra-curricular activities so the schedule isn’t too full and plan as little as possible for the weekends. When I cook, it’s a double batch, so we have a meal for the freezer, we eat simply but still allow ourselves the odd take away meal.
And despite the spew-a-thon, I’m caught up on the laundry, I got the bins out last night (this week I snuck out two recycle bins, which I’ve never done before but since we missed last time, it seemed justifiable) and I haven’t let the disorder get too out of hand.
I realise that I don’t need a full social life or a lot of outside input to keep things ticking smoothly. I can do this, all by myself. So this alone time (with the kids) is something to be grateful for, too. Doesn’t mean I won’t be happy to see dear husband walk through the door on Friday.
June 9th, 2010 - Posted in personal growth, gratitude, happiness, partnership, parenthood, self-care | | 2 Comments
Conspicuous consumption
picture by permanently scatterbrained
Cars slow down on our street to check out the progress on our front yard landscaping. It’s a big job, including a swimming pool and a kabana-type shelter. I know what they’re thinking. They’re wondering how much it is costing to build this monster and where we got the money from in this economic climate. They’re probably figuring out whether we’ve met before, at the neighbourhood Christmas party maybe, or perhaps our kids go to the same school. Even worse, we probably have, they probably do, and I don’t remember their names. And they don’t like us anymore.
These things are so simple for my husband. He works hard, we both agree, so he should be able to spend the money however he sees fit, knowing it will enhance our family time, provide a place to engage with our community, be an asset for our lifestyle. “Imagine us years into the future,” he assures me, “having our family around us.”
Of course, I come at it from a different angle, worried that we’re wasting our season ticket to the local community pool, that we won’t have the pleasure of bumping into (or making) friends there anymore, that the kids will get ’soft’ and be unable to swim in the local creeks with their friends where the rocks are slimy and scary-but-harmless creatures lurk below the surface. I worry that people will make assumptions about our family and our lifestyle and I’m worried that those assumptions might turn out to be correct. What happened to our goal to live simply, frugally, and maintain a small footprint? Shouldn’t we be chopping wood for our combustion stove so we can bake the bread before tending the composting toilet?
But it hasn’t turned out that way. It seems like, in order to live frugally, we need to spend money upgrading this or that appliance to a higher energy rating, getting more solar panels, even a back-up battery system for power outages (because the power does go out regularly here). I get terribly confused about what is reasonable consumption for a human being in a single life-time and whether we are setting our family up to feel entitled to consume. Or is the infrastructure we’re creating (swimming pool and all) a way for the next generation to not consume as we once did, because everything we need to live well is already here? I dunno. It just doesn’t come in black and white.
Eilleen from Consumption Rebellion doesn’t seem to have these dilemmas. She lives a beautiful life with so much less. When she was deliberating about needing/wanting a new digital camera and a new mobile phone, I was like, “Honey, you can do both.” But that’s not the point. The point is to consume conscientiously - and a big part of that word ‘conscientiously’ is ‘conscience’; that part of me from which my crisis originates.
If ‘frugal’ is a lifestyle I’ll admit, this isn’t it.
May 22nd, 2010 - Posted in partnership, consumerism, play, beliefs, wisdom, money, self-care | | 8 Comments
Creative U-turns
picture by elventear
I’m coming to realise that I’ve bitten off more than I can chew this year by taking on the president role in the P&C. I knew it was self-sabotage when I volunteered and I knew I’d possibly regret it later, but I went ahead and did it anyway. Not that I don’t care about my kids’ school, because I passionately do, but school-related stuff officially gets to take priority over my own creative stuff now. Before that I had set myself goals and deadlines that I now know I’ll never meet because I keep bloody u-turning every time I find myself with regular time to write!
Uni is going great and I’m having a ball and if I didn’t have it for myself I think I’d have gone to pieces by now. I got a high-distinction and a distinction+ for my two creative pieces so far this year, which I’m really pleased with, but I’m not writing anything that isn’t for uni or school or social networking. Haven’t blogged in ages. I’m so sorry I lost momentum.
My creative energy is low, I realise, because it has been heavy-going the past month, physically, mentally and emotionally. It wasn’t just a month of personal travel and birthday parties (they were the highlights). It was also having a husband in bed for two weeks for a ligament in his back, my BIL away with family, so no extra help with the yard, uni assessment, taxi-ing the kids to sports, dance and other commitments, and somewhere in amongst all that, showing them some love because they aren’t seeing as much of their dad and me as they’re used to. The whole of the labour day long weekend we had our band friends recording in our garage. Fun, but demanding, and definitely not something I can contribute to in a satisfying way.
So I suppose I’ve let myself fall back to being a shadow artist, enabling others but holding myself back. I don’t know how to stop doing it.
May 8th, 2010 - Posted in personal growth, partnership, parenthood, duty of care, friendship, self-care | | 2 Comments
