Parent/Grandparenthood
These just seem to sum up the experience. Or at least, the bits that can be photographed. Only CJ’s parents are featured here because I began this post before uploading photos became an issue (I can only load one at a time these days – I do have some notions of how to make it better, but it’ll take a while to figure out).
The Downfall of Feminism
I’m mostly sane these days, but there are still certain things that make me much more anxious than they should. Exercise is one of those things. I make swimming a priority, but the emotional cost is high (and coordinating care for Louisette at the same time is remarkably complex too).
So the other day I went for a swim – just half a kilometre (usually I swim a whole k) because of the spine thing. It was a weekend, which is good because CJ minds Louisette no problem, but bad because weekend = more people = more anxiety. But I was being brave.
My normal pool was closed so I went to another one, and it was super crowded. Only three lanes were available for lap swimming, and they had signs indicating slow, medium and fast lanes. Each lane had about four people in it, but the fast lane had three so I made the rational choice (hesitating, because of my neurotic fear that someone will approach me and say, “What are you doing in this lane?!? You’re TOO SLOW” but acknowledging silently that everyone was better off if I chose based on crowd levels – and I wasn’t even the slowest person in the lane).
I lurched awkwardly into the pool, gritted my teeth against the awkwardness that is sharing a swim lane, and began my swim. It wasn’t fun, but I was determined.
Then someone stopped, facing me. I paused politely.
“You’re REALLY slow,” she said. “You should go in the slow lane.”
It’s not often one’s paranoid scenario comes true, but there it was.
“Thank you,” I said – which apparently is what I say when nightmares come true – but I did manage to sound sarcastic (which almost counts as a win). There was a microsecond pause as I grabbed at my foggy notion that human rights apply to me as well as everyone else. “But I won’t.”
I swam on, shaking with the trauma of it all but pleased with myself for responding quickly enough and rationally enough to satisfy my non-paranoid (and non-pathetic) side. It wasn’t going to be easy to finish the last three hundred metres, but I swam a bit faster and worked hard on keeping myself together.
The I was stopped at the end of the pool – by a staff member. A real live authority figure. She informed me that I was swimming in the fast lane and should move over for other swimmers. Clearly she’d been primed by my little friend – but now I was really freaking out. But I’d been primed too. I’d made the decision to go in that lane, had questioned it myself AND after being challenged, and was still sure I was right.
“I can’t move over!” I blubbered (which doesn’t SOUND impressive – but I could have silently shifted elsewhere). “I have contact lenses and I can’t go under the rope – and I can’t pull myself out because I recently had a baby!” (All true – I haul myself over the ropes when I have to, and it’s not pretty.)
“I’ll go get another staff member and we’ll move the rope for you.”
So I waited for my humiliating experience, determined to at least not capitulate without a fight. After a while, I waved to the staff member and said, “I’ll just swim another lap while I wait?” and swam off – with two laps to go.
During this lap the original woman caught up to me again. She stopped to share some more life advice with me – loudly: “Passive-aggressive behaviour is the downfall of feminism!”
“Wow!” was my oh so articulate response (I write novels, you know). But of course she’d crossed the line from Concerned Citizen to Nutbag and, by a process of elimination, that meant I really WAS being the rational one. I felt a lot better after that. The opinions of nutbags don’t bother me nearly as much as the rest of the population.
And so I finished another lap. . . and there was a new staff member waiting for me. I took a breath and steeled myself for further telling-off and the inevitable move to a different (equally crowded) lane.
“We are so sorry,” she began. “I don’t know what that woman has said to you just now, but she will be banned from this pool today. You are hardly slower than her, and the other lanes are just as crowded as this one, so it’s better that you stay where you are. You go ahead and swim in this lane as long as you like. That woman is about to leave and never come back.”
Of course I cried a bit (crying with strangers in public is normal, right?), but I finished my swim and went home shaken but proud. I realised the lane had gotten suspiciously empty in the second half of my swim – this woman had been haranguing everyone around her one by one in order to clear the lane for herself. Only I, Louise Curtis The Barely Holding It Together Lady, had the courage to stand up to her bullying and make it stop.
Downfall of feminism? Me? Not today.
Aw! Her first rude word!
At a certain age, children start to swear. Not on purpose (that comes later), but through simple sound mangling. This week, Louisette started to say, “Sock”. Except of course she didn’t quite get it right. I tried to correct her, and help her get it right before she starts yelling naughty things at the post office.
“Ssssssssock,” I said.
“Ssssssscock,” she said.
Good try, sweetheart. Good try.
Cheat Codes for Children
Got a musical toy with no off switch? Try dropping it on a tiled floor.
I’d scream obscenities, but my throat hurts too much (PG obscenities)
Alternate Title 1: Yes, the coming zombie apocalypse is partially my fault.
Alternate Title 2: Wikipedia is better than doctors.
So this morning I tried to drink some water and the touch of the water on the back of my throat was so painful I choked and gagged and spat it out (I was lucky not to actually vomit – from pain rather than nausea). It finally dawned on me that I was right and the doctor I saw on Wednesday was wrong. The bastard dazzled me with his Wikipedia page (WHICH HE MANUALLY ALTERED TO MAKE HIMSELF MORE LIKELY TO BE RIGHT!!*) and “pharyngitis” technobabble.
Today I went to my regular doctor, who said my throat was so awful-looking she wished she had a medical student around to show it to. THANK YOU. Of course she immediately gave me antibiotics (ie real medicine for a real problem), and then we spent our usual ten minutes gossiping about the rest of my family.
The reason doctors hesitate to give antibiotics (ie magic pills that actually fix stuff) is that the Western world takes far too many of them, and the overuse of antibiotics leads to the development of superbugs. So I assume that’s what’ll bring on the zombies (but if Brad Pitt and an awesome novel are involved, can you really stay mad at me?)
This is not the first time an unfamiliar doctor has refused to listen to me saying, “This is a serious problem”. I’ll be taking away the lesson – confirmed more than a dozen times for me personally – that I know my body better than any doctor, and my internet-assisted self-diagnoses are correct 9 times out of 10 (and on the 10th time, I’ve underestimated the seriousness of my condition – eg when I thought I had fibroids and found out a year later that it was endometriosis). So that’s a useful life lesson.
*He crossed out the bit that said viral pharyngitis is the case in 40-80% of patients and wrote “80%” instead. Viral pharyngitis is fancy talk for, “You have a cold, you big whiner.” Mine is, of course – as I told him immediately upon walking in – bacterial. It is much more painful, and needs antibiotics. Thanks for two days of unnecessary pain, asshole.
Hmm
I’m now horribly ill with pharyngitis (Wikipedia describes it as “quite painful”* – and it’s worth noting that the first third or so of labour is usually described as “uncomfortable”). CJ covered about five hours of my at-home babysitting yesterday (he said, “I see why you’re so tired on Wednesdays”, which was gratifying), and I’m not doing any of the twenty hours of work I had scheduled for today (Thursday) and tomorrow. For a while yesterday I thought maybe I should quit everything and just relax forever, but that was quite evidently sickness talking, and if it wasn’t – what could I do? I have a toddler, so even if “do nothing” was my avowed life goal, I’d be minding her for the usual 12 hours a day anyway. Today, although still very sick (barely conscious, really) I miss work. My normal Thursday is six and a half hours at the child care centre, followed immediately by 3 hours of work at home. I’d so much rather be doing that than what I’m actually doing today – which is mostly sleeping.
Work is my drug – which I think is actually true for most people (they just forget it, because it’s so easy for them to DO work, despite the boredom and soul-crushing-ness) – just ask someone who’s long-term unemployed. I can embrace it, a bit (especially in my current phase of life, when I may as well really), but I’ll try not to forget how easy it is to overdose.
*My doctor literally printed out and gave me the Wikipedia article. This, apparently, is what the future looks like.
My Foolish Addiction
(We totally sorted the garden, by the way. It was epic – over twenty bags of mulch.)
I have an addiction – and for once I’m not even talking about chocolate. I love stress. I love pushing my capabilities right to the edge and staying there. I can’t stop thinking of original ways to make life better – for my family, for my workplace, for other people – and it’s nearly impossible to resist an idea, no matter how much extra work it is for me.
I tell myself I want to work full-time for a few months – mostly just to see if I can – but I’ll be studying full-time at the same time. And of course looking after Louisette, with all the busy-ness, organisational complexity, and lack of sleep that entails. Am I on the road to giving myself a nervous breakdown?
I have plenty of options for where to take my life. Most of my income is extra for us (although we’ll need a lot saved if the next pregnancy is as bad as the first). But am I even capable of rest?
Today I worked a full day at the daycare centre, and I was genuinely enjoying myself for about 90% of the day, with a couple of stressful moments (the after-lunch rush is always a challenge), but I was pretty pissy about not getting an afternoon break. Which is sort of fair, because it’s hard work and – for someone with a spinal injury – increasingly painful over the course of the day. But I probably shouldn’t have been as pissy as I was – after all, who made me even go to work today (knowing I’d end up in pain)? But I can’t seem to help myself….
So, something to think about for me. And a lot of women (and a smaller number of men, I think). The biggest problem, of course, is if one teeny tiny thing goes wrong – I can’t take it. Because I’m already using 100% of my coping/organising/working/being nice-ability.
In Louisette news, we were playing inside when she went into the house and then tried to lock me out. Adorable and evil. Is she the perfect child or what?
A Squamous Day
When CJ and I bought our house about two months ago, it was clear the owners hadn’t weeded the (mercifully small) front garden in a while. Yesterday – an unseasonally warm day after two days of weed-loosening rain – we finally cleansed the entire garden bed (excluding the bits I’d done already, and the forlorn strip along the driveway). It’s planted entirely with Australian natives, which means I’ll probably water it about once a year – in keeping with the “easycare” theme of the rest of the house (oh, how I love this house). The ground is solid clay from a few centimetres down, so one of our annual jobs is to treat the dirt with gypsum and mulch (over several years, this will magically turn clay into more actual dirt) – and, in order to cut down on the proliferation of weeds, a layer of newspaper too. Today is the absolute perfect day to do so. . . .but it’s cold and sunless outside, and I’m still sore from the weeding.
Will we begin our epic trek towards an (even) lower maintenance and less weed-prone garden? Or will we live for a year with several bags of gardening supplies lurching guiltily on our front step? ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN PEOPLE!!!!
In other news, I DON’T have a chronic hip problem! Yaay! I’ve been in constant pain for about two months now (not uncoincidentally, ever since we moved house) and finally had my free physio appointment last Thursday, expecting to be told that it was the same thing I had last year – a displaced hip due to leftover relaxin hormone from pregnancy (the hormone that makes your muscles turn to jelly months in advance, in order to help with labour). But it wasn’t! It was a brand new non-pregnancy-related problem. . . which means that not only is it fixable, but the nice young man doing the massaging doesn’t have to spend a large amount of time massaging my bum (which is, inconveniently, where one’s hip is located). So that’s good news (I compressed a disk while we were moving house – it should be fine in a month or two).
Meanwhile, I’m adjusting to the new state of hormones brought on by my new contraceptive. It’s not easy to handle a chemical change, but I think the worst is over, and I’m also seeing some positive effects already. If you’re the praying type, pray that it doesn’t cause weight gain. . .
Aaand, in other news, it turns out that if I do a Certificate 3 in Child Care (a qualification that will be essential from next year, and which I was already planning to get as a courtesy for my Early Learning Centre employer) as a traineeship, it saves me $3000. I need to be doing a regular 15 hours per week at the centre – and my ELC is willing to give me that. So I’ll very shortly be working more than thirty hours a week. Which is extremely exciting both in terms of money gained and in terms of self-respect (yes, I have something to prove to myself), and somewhat scary. Can I really handle THAT much poo and screaming? Can my back?
…….we’ll see.
Eep!
It’s Wednesday afternoon and no blog post. Quick! Find a picture of Louisette with a cat! That will make it all better!
(Incidentally, the colonoscopy went fine and the doctor reckons my problems can be solved by avoiding foods high in FODMAPS – basically I lack enough enzymes to break down fructose, lactose etc. We’ll see. Also, valium is cool. And a little scary. It’s literally a moment of, “Well, Louise, you’ll be falling asleep real soon” followed by, “Hi Louise, how are you feeling now that your colonoscopy is done?” Good thing I didn’t swallow those fluorescent purple corn kernels, because I would have missed that delightful moment of discovery, and that would have been SUCH a shame.)
Felicity Banks 