The new age(d) me?

Those of you who are following my Twitter feed will know that I've been helping out in 13yo's high school play. Those that aren't following me know now!

On the second night we had a bit of an incident involving a middle aged woman, unhappy about the sound quality of the production, stalking up to the bio-box at interval and venting her anger on a fourteen year old boy. Classy eh? Said 14yo (lets call him little Johnny) and I were the only people in the room at the time.

It was a fairly odd thing to have happen but that wasn't the odd bit, the odd bit was my reaction. I think as little as two years ago I would have cowered over my script until it was over, offered the kid sugar and sympathy and wallowed in anger about it for weeks. What I did, however, was walk right up, stand between her and little Johnny and tell her that I was sorry, I knew she was upset, but I couldn't let her take out her anger on a child. I'm quite sure my heart was pounding much harder than either of theirs, I could feel my hands sweating and was worried that my knees were going to begin to shake because Ms Yell-a-lot was not looking like she wanted to stop her tirade. However, after a little bit of too-ing and fro-ing she finally believed me when I said her message would get to the right person and that she really wasn't allowed to be in this room, and she consented to leave. (Or maybe I really did start to shake and she took pity on me. Who knows?)

I've been wondering what on earth happened there? What galvanised me into action? am I just more grown up? are other grown ups simply not as scary any more? (though I was plenty scared!). Did I see my mother taking out her frustrations on her own teenage daughter? Or maybe what I was seeing was simply SO unjust I couldn't sit still - little Johnny wasn't entirely responsible for the sound quality after all.

Whatever it was, I like the new me. She kicks butt. :)

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What was she doing in there?

Yesterday we took the family to the pool for a rare swim together (while Mummy got some quick laps in). As anyone unfortunate enough to spend any time in public change rooms will know, the showers are all on timers now. You press a button and get three to four minutes worth of drinking water to wash your hair in. Everyone forgives the odd restart - we're all human and no one wants to be left in the lurch with their hair full of lather. But yesterday I heard a woman restart TEN times.

What was she doing in there? Was she in labour? Was she having earth-shattering sex? Does she only shower once a week? Because those are the only reasons I'd accept for a shower of that magnitude.

Oh, and how do I know this? What was I doing in the change rooms for that long? I'm cursed with curly hair. It's a thing...

Pink Schmink - I don't get why some feminist mothers don't like pink. The real front line is somewhere else.

So it turns out that you can want to dress head to toe in pink, dress all your teddies in pink, and still find trucks interesting. Who knew?



I don't know why she's obsessed with pink, all I know is that it must be a gender thing as the people who market toys to children colour their products for a reason. My guess is that the pink girl toys outsold the blue girl toys resulting in the pink isle you see in the toy shop today. I think it's funny that the fact that the isle is almost entirely blindingly bright pink negates any advantage there may have been in making your product pink in the first place. These days a pink toy is lost in the searing haze of pinkness...

One of the more common arguments against dressing girls in pink is that there are assumptions inherent in pink. Assumptions about gender, purpose and societal roles. Apparently by dressing girls in a certain colour we're dooming them to an unfulfilling life in the kitchen (and that a life in the kitchen is deemed to be unfulfilling is a whole other bugbear of mine that I won't go into here).

The social constructs that are dooming girls to roles they find unfulfilling are far bigger than pink clothing. They are companies that discriminate against women on the basis of gender or family commitments, unaffordable childcare, and crusty old blokes like an ancient chemistry lecturer of mine who made it quite clear to me that in his opinion anyone with a vagina didn't belong in a laboratory and ought to be doing social work. He has retired now thank goodness. More and more of those crusties are retiring (a good thing) but unless we're careful they'll be replaced with blokes who are quite happy to continue a company tradition of rewarding people who are willing to work themselves to the bone at the expense of time with their families. In this kind of culture the children need a parent at home if they are to get any one-on-one parenting at all. And of course, in this kind of culture the at home parent is bound to be the birth mother as she needs all that time off to have the baby anyway... Changing the colour of your precious girl's clothing is not going to make one whit of difference to this kind of work culture.

So, as we don't want to return to those dark ages, I'll tell you where I think the real front line is. The people on the front line are the mothers returning to work who are organising job-sharing, or working out how their job can be performed part-time, or working out how they can do some of their work from home. Also on the front line are the fathers who are doing the same, braving up to bosses, swimming against a current of a century's worth of dogma and stating that they need parenting leave or part-time/flexible hours too, as they'd like to do some, duh, parenting. The real changes aren't caused by banning a clothing colour, they're caused by brave parents who are willing to break molds to create a work culture that is equitable in that it allows both men and women into the workforce without leaving our children in the lurch. So dress your girlies in whatever colour you like, you're not going to make a difference to your daughter's prospects until it is taken for granted that both sexes will participate in the workforce and do their share around the house. And for that to happen.... well... let's say it's going to be a little harder for parents than choosing a colour for clothing.

The Trials and Tribulations of Researching Vaccines if you're just a Mummy

I've put some up some posts on Emervents triggered by a conversation I had about vaccines on facebook. Yey for social networking!

Thinking about Vaccines? Thinking of Googling? Found AVN or VISA? Think again.

and

Critique of AVN's 10 Reason's Parents Question Vaccination

As with all blog posts about issues I feel strongly about, they are WAY long.

Is it because I'm a Mum that I can't stand to watch?

People I know find videos like this one FUNNY.

Maybe it's the mother in me but all I can think about are the horrific injuries, the hospitalisations, and the general emotional trauma. How can people laugh at other people hurting themselves? I will never get it.

How to wreck your Sunday - shower in rat droppings.

Today was looking to be gloriously productive. Toddler napping, 11yo about to go to his friend's for a swim, me about to sit down and fill out my PhD application in the peace and quiet.

Only, when I reached up to the tippety-top of our one cupboard to retrieve the swimming gear that had been lying dormant since last season I was treated to an avalanche of something I thought were little black beads. In my face, in my hair, down my shirt. I vaguely wondered why I'd stored craft stuff up there instead of with the crafty stuff and took a closer look. Rat droppings. There must have been thousands. There are no words for how ill I felt. I'd literally been dumped on. 11yo thought it was hilarious of course. As usual Mummy is glad to be of comic service - not. *grump*

I've known that we've had vermin for a while. They sneak into the kitchen and eat left over dog food, provide snuffly chasey entertainment for the dog at night and we hear them chasing each other in the roof and walls. But since they were not actually interfering with anything of ours, e.g. food. I have left them alone. (My husband sees this as 100% my problem just in case any of you were wondering...) But now that they are nesting in the linen cupboard and have chosen the crib cover I made for 2yo for a nest, chewing up the cot sheet that both 11yo and 2yo used as babies to line said nest, they have got to go. Nice Mummy has just been replaced by a rattucidal killing machine. Only...

I have a problem with killing rats. Not mice, or cockroaches, or venomous spiders, just rats. When we had our mouse invasion during the drought and they were eating anything not sealed in metal or glass I was happy to kill the little fuckers. It was a them or us thing. They contaminated our food supply, catching and relocating was not an option, therefore they had to die. It was during my mouse killing spree I found that poison was not a viable solution for us as they crawl away to die where you can't find them, produce unsavoury smells, and breed flies. So, I used traps, and when the traps didn't kill them I drowned them.

The trouble with using this method for rats, is that traps don't always kill them first go and then you are responsible for hours of suffering until you come along and finish the job. And rats, in the degrees of sentience scale, are way more sentient than mice. Rats can count to five, they are social creatures who pass on knowledge inter-generationally. They have been known to demonstrate emotional attachment. Leaving a creature like that in a trap for hours might just be beyond me :-(

But then again, maybe I should just remember how it felt to be dumped on by several generations of ratties before I get too sentimental. That and the fact that I now have to wash the entire contents of my linen cupboard and line the thing with steel wool wherever they are getting in.

So much for PhD application! Grrrr! Ah! Now I've found the anger. Off to Traps-R-Us for a little retail therapy....

Too much to ask of teachers?

My son's primary school has just redefined "Caring" and "Responsibility" and found a new way to piss off a mum with a logic major.

Dear Principal,

With regard to the converstion we had about the treatment of my son’s injured eye at school on Tuesday.

While I understand teachers’ reluctance to administer all but the most basic first aid on the premises, (in my opinion, even this extra responsibility is not covered by your salaries). I must confess to being more than a little irritated at the reason you gave me for your refusal. Just so we’re clear, I’m not irritated by the refusal itself (though it means my son will have to stay home while I work from home for the rest of the week), I just can’t let shoddy reasoning go by unremarked.

You claim that there are no staff that are medically trained on the premises, so nobody could put ointment on my son's lower eyelid. According to the doctors at the Eye and Ear Hospital, the only qualification required for this simple procedure was gardianship of a child. Of the thousands of medical practitioners in Australia, you would be hard pressed to find one who required that a parent obtained a medical degree before applying eye ointment. In the words of my own doctor, “A trained monkey could apply eye ointment.” So, that you have no medically trained staff is not a good reason for refusing, in fact, it’s rather bad. You could probably get your grade five kiddies to prove this with ven diagrams.

Here are three really good reasons for refusing that I thought were probably lurking in the background:

a) in the rather sad social environment where suing after an accident seems to be the knee jerk reaction of selfish people looking for someone to blame and vent their anger on, and as a result no one wants to take on any responsibility for anything, we’d rather not take responsibility for treating something as important as an eye, besides…

b) haven’t you been reading the news? We’re worked off our feet and underpaid as it is! we simply don’t have time to administer medication as well, sorry… and...

c) if he needs treatment every four hours, should he really be at school at all?

But of course, in this politically correct environment you couldn’t say those things without accusing me of being: a) the suing type, b) one of those thoughtless people who imagine teachers have all this free time on their hands to devote to their child, or c) a bad mother. However, personally, I would have preferred a bit of honesty over a reason that was logically ridiculous.

It amazed me that the doctor at the Eye and Ear Hospital thought it would be best that he go straight back to school, I wouldn’t be surprised if it amazed you too. Maybe she assumed the school would have a nurse, though it is more likely that she didn’t think about the logistics of four hourly ointment application at all.

For me, coming in to the school from university takes one hour out of a precious four and a half hour time slot, so in order to save a few precious minutes I have decided keep my son with me and work from home (while trying to avoid the temptation of the pool in the heat!). His absense will be sad for his buddy of course, but since I have a rather large dealine looming and extremely limited time slots in which to complete my task I see no other alternative. My son will resume school on Monday by which time he will not need the ointment or I willl have taught him to apply it himself. He said that he might be asked to speak about his experience at assembly and I wouldn’t want him to miss out on that.

Kind regards,

me

It will be interesting to see if they make it to the end of the letter and get the vital information :-) i.e. son will not be at school!