Finishing with unfinished business

I'm into Christmas. I may have mentioned this before. But this year, I'm not feeling the love. I'm feeling like it's all a chore. I've been trying to get stuff organised in advance to avoid the overload, but I don't even know who's going to be here for Christmas Day. I'm still dealing with birthdays too, which isn't helping. Charlie, however, is full of the Christmas Spirit and has been campaigning for the tree to be put up. He even cleaned his room, on his own, without Ben, in order to be allowed to help put the thing up. As we sorted the branches for tree construction, he was singing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas". He was all helpfulness and smiles.

Tree construction and light application happen simultaneously, since the tree is too bloody big to try to wrap lights around after the fact. As a result, this is the bare minimum level of construction I could reach before calling a halt. The decorations are all sitting next to it, waiting for Charlie to badger me into completing the job. It hasn't lifted my mood though. Still decidedly Grinchy. So I'm completing a decidedly unremarkable NaBloPoMo with an incomplete project. Seems appropriate.

I fail at sentimentality

Tonight was Ben's presentation night, which is also staged as a graduation for the Year 2 kids. It's your standard Infants School affair, musical items and every kid gets an award. It looks like every other group of kids performing.


As the graduation ceremony, Yr2 kids each make a short speech (there are only 19 of them). They all have the same format - 3 sentences - but it's nice for them all to get a chance to say something. As they finish they are presented with a graduation book and Yeo Park badge. After that the Yr2 parents all assemble at the front to be given a flower from their child (nice, if slightly chaotic) and then we all get to watch a slide show of the kids throughout the year. The kids, and then their parents are clapped out of the room. Apparently the latter half of this procedure is supposed to be a Kleenex moment. Hmmm. I'm proud of Ben. He spoke loudly and clearly, he joined in and sang enthusiastically and played his instruments as required. He looked like he was having a blast (other than the group singing at the start, when he looked like it was all a great strain), and he was all joy and bubbles when it was over. I'm really happy for him to be moving on to a new school, with more opportunities and a more grown up view of the world. I didn't even consider shedding a tear.

Mind you, I didn't shed a tear when he started school either. I feel no wistfulness with them growing up, only enthusiasm and excitement. I felt his buzz tonight, it was all about him and his class, and I'm glad he got to enjoy it. I'm looking forward to all the other cool milestones, not mourning the passing of these ones.

I made it rain

Today begins a predicted week of rain in Sydney. This is my doing. We finally found the adapter that will allow me to get my washing machine water out to the garden without leaking all over the laundry floor. Today will be the first load of washing done with the hose to reuse the washing machine water. This is indisputably why it will now rain for a week.

We also planned to have family photos taken in the park this afternoon - photos that have taken over a year to get organised. So the real rain started just after we arrived.

Anyone in WA like me to come and do some washing and get some photos taken in their vicinity?

Saturday Stressies

Today started at 6:30am with Elissa stumbling into our room, very bleary eyed. Actually, today started last night, when we went to the PBC for dinner and didn't manage to get the kids into bed until after 10pm. It started out pretty stressful, but ended up delightful - hence the rather long wind up and a 9:30pm bus home.

So when Elissa wandered in this morning, it was pretty clear that she needed more sleep, but, like Olivia, she was not at all sleepy, and didn't have any interest in going back to bed or even getting into our bed. As a result, she fell asleep on the floor next to my bed for two hours.

This was a day of fractiousness and obnoxiousness. Three tired kids. At one stage I sat Charlie down and explained exactly what his behaviour was achieving, and that mostly sorted him out. Until dinner time at least. Elissa maintained the rage for the majority of the day.

There was rage, every single person in this family shouted at some point today. And then the dinner caught fire. That wasn't the worst part of the day.

As an interlude, I had to take the boys to a dual birthday party for their respective sibling friends, and wasn't sure where I was going. As a result, I had to cross a busy road, along with another woman and 3 kids she was taking to the same party. 5 kids, 2 adults and an illegally stopped cab made this an interesting exercise. The woman who got out of said illegally stopped cab added to the fun by yelling at us for allowing our children to stand behind the cab while waiting to cross the road. The alternative was standing in the middle of another road, or being unable to use the refuge island. Since berating us wasn't sufficient, she walked with us and continued. After attempting some rational argument, I finally countered with "Yes love" and she gave up. I love drive by parenting.

Finally, as I took Elissa to put her pyjamas on, I noticed the massive raised red rash over all of her torso, her legs and the tops of her arms. Thanks to Google doctor, I'm pretty convinced that it's hives. Excellent. Google doctor also told me that 80% of all hives are idiopathic, which is a lovely way of saying that doctors have absolutely no clue what causes hives most of the time. Personally, I'm choosing to believe it was an allergic reaction to my Lindt chocolate that Crash fed to her while I was being abused by the woman in the cab. No, I'm not fazed by the fact that the time frames are all wrong.

How was your Saturday? I sincerely hope it was better than mine.

I lie, for all that, it was actually a pretty good day. Which goes to show how weird life really is.

An undeniable truth

I suck at needle tatting.

Today I'm grateful for warm spring evenings when I can drive across town with the music just below earsplitting and the windows down. Hot days might be annoying, but I just love a warm night with a breeze. Rather fond of unreasonably loud music too.

Accessible schools - echoing Lauredhel

Lauredhel wrote this piece on accessibility in public schools. Read it, because she's right.

At our school today I watched the awkward maneuvers of a child and carer trying to get the kid and his chair up steps and through a too narrow gate. It's an old school, there's no doubt it would take a bit of creative thinking to make it accessible without making a mess of it, but I think that kid alone is worth that creative thinking and some well spent dollars. Of course, he isn't the first and he won't be the last. We either fix the problem, or we're saying that kids, their carers, volunteers and teachers with disabilities don't deserve equal access. We're saying that there's no problem with them being excluded, or having their independence reduced because we can't be bothered thinking laterally and spending the time and money on making the places accessible.

We need to make some noise about this, and I'm reproducing Lauredhel's list of people and places to direct your shouting at.

Find a link to your state or territory parliament here:

http://australia.gov.au/topics/government-and-parliament/state-parliaments-and-legislative-assemblies

Find your local Greens member/senator/candidate here:

http://greens.org.au/meet-us

If you'd like to make some Federal noise too:

Find your federal electorate here:


http://apps.aec.gov.au/esearch/

Find your federal member here:

http://www.aph.gov.au/house/members/mi-state.asp

Find your federal senator here:


http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/senators/

Today I'm grateful for old friends. A woman I've known and loved for years (and at times hated) is visiting from afar. The familiarity, the comfort, the distance and the closeness all at once are worth celebrating. When she arrived it felt like we were just picking up from the other day's conversation, but I haven't seen her since before Elissa was born. The fact that she's well and happy and loving life just adds to the joy. And now I need to stop before the sentimentality causes someone to lose their lunch.

Vale Frank Fenner

Frank Fenner has died aged 95. Who, you may ask, was Frank Fenner? Among other things, he worked on, and announced the eradication of small pox. Immunisation has changed our world, and the eradication of small pox is one of its great achievements. In honour of a great scientist, I want to take my place on the soapbox for a moment to bang on about immunisation.

It's a process that comes with some price - there is a small risk of side effects for healthy kids (and adults), but it's offsetting some much, much greater risks. Most of the time, we just don't see evidence of those risks because the viruses are held at bay by mass vaccination. Every now and then we get a glimpse, though. I got one when I got chicken pox because I didn't know I could be vaccinated. It's not one of science's great vaccines, lots of people who've been vaccinated still get it, but they get it in a much milder form. I'd have taken that option if I'd known about it.

Also, last time Ben had a throat infection they couldn't quite place, they asked if he'd been vaccinated, and were relieved to be able to rule out epiglottitis (which is most commonly caused by HiB) because it's life threatening.

These are examples of the "what's in it for me" rationale of vaccination, but I think the social arguments are at least as compelling. The risks to my healthy kids were small, but some kids can't be vaccinated for various reasons, and of course there is a time when they're too small yet. Vaccinating my kids (and myself) protects those people. The more people who choose not to vaccinate for other than medical reasons, the more carriers for these viruses and the greater the risk to those who have no choice about vaccination. Small pox is gone, but it's the only one so far.

So I'm asking you to pause and remember what life was like before people like Frank Fenner brought so many viruses under control - when many children died of whooping cough, polio, diphtheria, measles and a whole host of others. I'm also asking you to add an immunisation check to your major health checks as an adult - you know those 100,000km checkups you're supposed to go for every 5 or 10 years? Top up your whooping cough, rubella and so on, if not for yourself, for the more vulnerable around you.

Happy Belated Birthday

Elissa's birthday party finally got a start today, after pox-related delays. There were 10 kids here, doing what preschool kids do. We played pass the parcel, there were cries of "she's not letting me play with her" and we all chugged towards the inevitable cake.

As you can see, this year's request was the ladybird cake.

The candles were duly lit.

And Elissa met her cake.

There was the usual singing (goddammit I wish I could sing Happy Birthday, I sing badly at the best of times, but I sing Happy Birthday horrifically), and then comes the blowing out of the candles.

Elissa huffed

And she puffed

And she blew those candles out (with a great deal of assistance from most of the gathered guests).

And then, of course, we ritually sacrificed the ladybird.

Today - today I'm struggling for gratitude. It's not that nobody's done anything lovely - my sister has taken the boys for a sleep over, to their absolute delight. A friend came over with able bodied boys who helped Crash clean up the yard for Elissa's party (for cash monies, which is only reasonable). My mother has offered assistance for tomorrow. It's just that I'm feeling a bit beaten down by everything that must be done, now and always. I really am grateful for everything that everyone does, life would really suck without them.

This week in meltdowns

You're never quite as aware of the swirling vortex of confusion that is parenting as when faced with the sudden, unexpected meltdown.

This week Charlie had a massive meltdown which turned out to be about going to school next year. In between massive sobs and hysterical crying, it became apparent that he thinks he's going to hate school because Ben hates it. Fair reasoning on Charlie's part, but for the fact that Ben really rather likes school. This is a child who has NEVER chosen to stay home when given a choice. When confronted with this damning evidence, both Ben and Charlie had to reluctantly concede that it was quite likely that Ben does in fact like school. Conversations with Ben about how talking only about the bad stuff might be cool amongst his friends, but is not cool at home ensued. Poor Charlie, it must look pretty daunting when all he's heard from his older brother is negative messages for years.

A perfect reminder that all the things you carefully consider, the talks you rehearse and consider from all angles, slip right past your kids, and it's the casual, throwaway stuff that no-one gives a second thought about that are life changing and earth shattering.

Ben had a massive meltdown this afternoon when I asked him to do invitations for his birthday party. He's only inviting 3 kids, I really didn't think this represented a major task, and he was claiming boredom. I think it all stemmed from angst about not being able to make precisely the right invitation for each child. I suspect I may understand that kind of perfectionist paralysis all too well, so we'll be working on the merits of half arsed efforts tomorrow.

Finally, as befitting a 3 year old, Elissa had the most over-acted, most ridiculous meltdown of the week this evening. She completely dropped her bundle and sobbed and sobbed because 2 kids from her day care (who will be coming to her birthday party on Sunday) are "going to big school without me". They're going to the same school as Charlie, so they're hardly disappearing out of her life. More importantly, while she clearly likes these kids, it's also clear that they are not her best friends. Possibly because they're two years older than her. And to close the meltdown loop, she then proceeded to sob even more ferociously because she's unjustly excluded from going to school next year.

At least her meltdown was easier to sooth. I spoke in a silly voice, she used my face as plasticine and farted on me. After which she was laughing so hard, she'd utterly forgotten the injustices of the world.

Tonight I'm grateful for crickets. I love the sound of crickets through the open windows. I also loved the look on Charlie's face as he realised I may not have been entirely truthful when I answered his question by explaining the crickets were making that sound just to tell him it's time to go to bed. He has a pretty good appreciation for smart arsery.

Somebody thinks I'm acceptable

I got accepted! Somebody thinks I'm acceptable! Granted, they don't know me from a bar of soap, and I'm only acceptable in an academic sense, but it's nice to feel wanted all the same.

Two weeks after applying for a Dip Ed Bachelor of Teaching (in high school science), I got a letter of offer. I can't actually accept the offer, because UTS's website isn't ready yet, but you can't have everything. The strangest thing about this is that people keep asking me if I'm going to be a teacher. It kind of seems like an existential question, will my being be changed by learning about pedagogy? I doubt it.

Even on a practical level, I don't know what I'm going to do with this qualification. It won't be a career, that's certain. I'm done with careers, I only want jobs now. Given that, I don't know whether I want to teach full time or just be a casual teacher. I think both have merits, both from a teaching and financial view point. What this will give me more than anything is a flexibility I've never had before. Every job I've ever had has been firmly anchored to capital cities, mostly no smaller than Sydney. I've resisted moving overseas because I'm a sedentary creature - I put down roots and I don't much like pulling them up. This has limited both our careers, but it's allowed us to start to feel like part of a community, and we have friends that mean so much more than a directorship.

I'm also a little nervous about learning about teaching. I've always taught - tutoring, training staff, teaching my own kids. I'm worried that I'm either going to discover that I'm doing it wrong, or (more likely given my disposition) discover that I don't believe a word of what they're telling me. I hoping that I'm going to discover some perspectives I hadn't previously considered and also some names for things I already knew.

And then of course, there is the minor matter that I still have a business that I'm part owner of that needs running, growing and supporting. I don't want to be doing this forever, but we have every intention of continuing to build this business, so I seem to trying to split myself in two.



One day I might know what I want to be when I grow up.

Band camp looms

I took Ben to the band information meeting tonight. He was not entirely convinced about committing to the band, and then they mentioned band camp and it was a lay down misere. He had no idea what instrument he wanted to play, but dammit he was going to pick one and go to that band camp.

He still hasn't decided on his instrument, and he won't necessarily get his first choice anyway, but it seems we're about to embark on noisy instrument learning. And he'll be going to band camp next year. I don't think he'll be nervous about staying overnight.

Equality means equality, not almost the same.

Our elected officials are debating marriage equality. I'm not watching it. There is nothing to debate. We either continue discrimination or we grow up. Who someone else marries cannot begin to have an impact on my life or anyone else's and there in no justification for a government having opinions on it.

I simply cannot get my head around a person who thinks their own marriage will be diminished by someone else getting married. Is their union that fragile?

Some gratitude and a brief review

We failed restaurant booking 101 on our trip to Melbourne, so we picked a random Japanese place - Shoya.

Overall, I was pretty impressed. The food was tasty and reasonable value. We had sashimi, teriyaki chicken, a salmon dish with roe, and a pork dish. That wasn't quite enough, so we ordered another round of the sashimi and some edamame. The sashimi was really good, and each of the dishes was interesting, the salmon was cooked to perfection and the pork was very tasty. We were all well satisfied by the end, and had also had our fill of house sake (which was ok, not fabulous, but serviceable) and Asahi. At $80 a head, I was happy enough.

I have two quibbles. The dishes all came in large pieces, not at all convenient to share. The sashimi dish came with 3 pieces of each type, which was very annoying for 4 people. Secondly, the wine prices were absurd. The sake prices started around $30 for a 300ml bottle and went well over $150. Sake just isn't that expensive - or more accurately, there is plenty of quite good sake that isn't that expensive. A quick look at the local wine prices showed some equally over-priced wines, although oddly there were a few that were more reasonable.

I'm not entirely sure I'd be prepared to spend the much bigger dollars on their degustation menu. I'd definitely want to hear some reviews that said the food was substantially better than the standard dinner menu to justify the >$100 pp (excluding drinks) price tag.

Also, it's gratitude deja vu today, because we managed to get back to Sydney on a Qantas plane without an engine shutting down - despite another flight turning back because of engine troubles today. So I remain grateful that we managed to dodge failing engines.

I can't finish a post without saying a huge thank you to my mother, David, Sophie and Nerida for making this weekend possible. My family are amazing beings, and I'm always grateful for them. 

Raindrops keep falling on my ... hat!

This weekend Crash and I are in Melbourne. I've finally cashed in my Christmas present from last year for a weekend away with the babysitting organised for me!

Sydney-siders give Melbourne a lot of stick for the weather here, and this weekend it's lived up to it's dodgy reputation. Freezing cold and raining after a hot, humid day yesterday. It's rather limited our options, but it also inspired me to buy this hat, rather than an umbrella.

I managed some other shopping too. Mostly at Target, as ridiculous as that seems. The store here has twice as much stuff as any of my local ones, and I've bought 3 dresses (one of which is suitable for work, which is a constant problem for me), 3 tops and a little cardigan.

This afternoon, Samantha from The Discourse mentioned that Matchbox had a special on a device to turn apples into slinkies. Once I determined what the proverbial a "Matchbox" was, I found one at Spencer St and jumped on a tram. We now have said device, as well as some cheater chopsticks for the kids.

Sketchers are in the same complex, and they had pink sparkly shoes for $39. No human being can resist cheap, immensely comfortable pink sparkly shoes, so here they are on my feet.

Crash hasn't completely missed out, he got some jeans and a shirt, which is about as much shopping as he can manage in one go. 

We utterly failed to book any of the restaurants people recommended - we needed a month's notice for most of them. So tonight we're going to a restaurant which we found using the highly selective method of Googling it. You can expect a review of Shoya soon.

Today I'm grateful for aeroplane engines that don't explode. We flew Qantas to Melbourne, and it was hard not to be thinking about the mess that A380 was in when it landed after it's engine exploded. I'm also very grateful indeed that such a huge problem was found without 400-odd people dying.

And now I'm grateful to be going out for a late dinner in a great city. Catch you tomorrow.

The problem with evidence based medicine

I don't have a lot of patience for woo at the best of times, and I have almost none for woo when it comes to treating people with real illnesses. The only patience I have for it is that placebo can be a Good Thing, and if woo doesn't cost too much, does no harm and induces a nice, effective placebo, I'm down with that. However, it often costs lots, is potentially harmful, and placebo may not be enough to cure any given ill. It's at it's absolute worst when it stops people also seeking evidence based medicine.

However, one of the reasons woo gets a look-in is that people have a gut feeling that evidence based medicine isn't always right. Most people know that we have very individual responses to various medicines, they know that very often their own symptoms don't match the text book, or are not even close. So the woo that offers individually tailored "treatments" look attractive.

There's been more than one occasion lately where I've found myself arguing with prevailing medical wisdom, based entirely on anecdotal evidence. Anecdata does not a theory make. However, basic trial and error about what triggers which, and then which relieves what is also empirical evidence. It can't be entirely ignored because it isn't conducted by a person in a white coat. It certainly says nothing about the way the same things might operate in the next person, but if it's in direct conflict with what conventional, evidenced based medicine is telling us, something's got to give.

For example, both gout and diabetes have come up a few times in my meanderings recently. I have neither, so I'm merely collecting anecdata here, and comparing it with the received wisdom of evidence based medicine. In both examples, people who have monitored their own health for a length of time have found wildly different things exacerbate or improve their condition from each other, and from what the doctors have told them.

There is nothing surprising in this. Evidence based medicine is based on statistical inferences from samples. The results are averaged across participants. Evidence based medicine is an excellent approximation of what happens to the Average Person, and Average Person doesn't exist. The trouble is, nowhere near enough doctors and other health professionals really understand this. They have a list of foods that cause gout in Average Person, but the people I know that have it have entirely different triggers from each other and from that list. The list isn't wrong, it's just that it's the most common triggers, averaged across all the people the studies have been conducted on. That's fine, as long as the doctor understands that, and presents it as such - as a starting point for your own trial and error to find out what your problem foods are. Same story with diabetes and blood sugar levels.

I'd like to see medicine start to engage more fully in the study of difference. To follow up the studies describing the average symptoms/responses/profiles with careful analysis of the differences between subgroups and even individuals. I'd also like to see it engage patients more fully in the understanding of their own bodies. It's not that no-one does it now (or I wouldn't have my anecdata), it's just that it's not mainstream for patients, and it's barely even tolerated by the medical profession, nevermind encouraged.  

I will back existing evidence based medicine over woo any day, but it's important to remember how it's done, what it's really telling us, and that at the end of the day, as Brian said, "You're all individuals!".

(As a footnote, this is a description of evidence based medicine as it should be. I'm not even beginning to address deliberate misrepresentations of data for the purposes of profit and/or power - that's a rant in and of itself.)

It's gardenia season

My first gardenia opened its petals today. I adore the smell of gardenias. Like jacarandas tell me it's exam time, gardenias tell me it's Christmas. Granted it's not exactly the silly season yet, but I've started my shopping in earnest, as well as my planning. There's nothing like an adorable perfume to make planning pleasant.

What are the early markers for Christmas for you?

Today I'm grateful for the amazing friendships I've gained from work. Tonight I had dinner with one of the guys I employed many moons ago. Now he's a good friend, and he's also a regular provider of his own expertise to my professional life. It's been pretty cool watching both our lives get better and better, both professionally and personally. This is what life's all about.

Today I'm grateful for access to fabulous food and wine to celebrate our 7th anniversary. Pomegranates, dates and sparkling shiraz.

Decadence on a $10 coffee table.

30th Down Under Feminists Carnival

This months Down Under Feminists Carnival is up at Bri's Fat Lot of Good. It's a mammoth edition, should keep you busy reading for a while.

It's always a good read, so go check it out.

Also, don't forget the fab little bookmarklet that Mary made that makes it easier to submit posts as you're reading them.

Productive Sunday

I seem to have had anything but a day of rest today. It was mostly boring, uninspiring housework - four loads of washing, cleaning the front room and cooking an awesome lamb shank dinner. Then there were the domino incidents. I went to vacuum the kids' rooms and discovered a distinct lack of suction. At about the same time I realised I couldn't recall the last time I cleaned the "clean at least every six months" filter. (My memory's not that bad, this probably implies a period of much greater than a year.) Cleaning the filter then requires drying the filter, which took more than the rest of the day. The vacuum cleaner is still in the middle of the hallway.

Then I wandered past a calendar (on one of my many trips to the laundry) and realised it needed to be turned over to November. Then I realised that the dog needs heartworm and flea control. Then I realised that he really needed a bath before either of those things. Then I was up to my armpits in wet dog. Wet, growly dog. Bailey has no truck with baths.

It wasn't all misery though. I managed to pot up a dwarf Tahitian lime and some pretty colour to go around it. This is the first of five pots I'm planning to fill with condemned beautiful plants. You can see the incredibly attractive wall behind it, which I am attempting to conceal with these pots.

Now I need the ground to be slightly less sodden to plant my two passionfruits and my mandarin tree in a garden.

And of course, I also managed several cups of tea and a fair bit of tweeting, so it was definitely not a wasted day.

What I really want to do today is whinge - the weather is farcical, who stole November and replaced it with August? But I'm aiming for some positivity here, so I'm going with gratitude anyway. I'm grateful for the generations of parenting that went before me. The people who've battled with the wisdom of the day, and tried to change it. I'm grateful for the parents of the 70s who were told that physical punishment was unacceptable, but had not yet been handed an alternative. I'm grateful for all the honest parents out there who have Bad Days and tell us all about it. Because I was channeling every single one of those magnificent people tonight when I was trying to cajole my three into finding their bedroom floors. They went to bed, only slightly after bed time, with clean floors and a promise of a visit from the vacuum cleaner tomorrow. Many thousands of years' of evolution have led to the dusty, but debris free floors of my children's bedrooms, and for that, I am eternally grateful.

Happy Birthday Elissa

3 years and one night ago I decided I'd been pregnant quite long enough and Initiated Proceedings by way of clary sage oil and expressing milk. About 5am-ish Elissa started the whole new experience of breathing and I ended the whole horrible experience of pregnancy.

So here we are, with a stubborn, witty, articulate, did I mention stubborn? 3 year old. She's something special, no doubt about it*. She took it in her stride that her party had to be moved back 2 weeks due to the pox invasion. And then, from the moment Crash picked her up from day care she asked "Where's my presents" approximately every 15 seconds until the presents were delivered. She told me she loved me and thanked me for her presents, and then screeched at her brother for touching her car.

She's sweet and vicious and funny and malicious and stubborn and stubborn and stubborn. She's a 3 year old, and I'm very grateful to have her.

Happy Birthday Elissa!

*And yes, I fully acknowledge that every parent says that, and they're all correct.

Today I'm grateful for my gorgeous belly dance teacher, who makes me feel fabulous no matter how badly I suck. I'm also surprisingly grateful to have the chance to dance without mirrors for a couple of weeks. Having to feel the dance instead of see it is fabulous.

What does the path to equality look like?

I went back to belly dancing tonight after all my tedious illness, and among the shimmying and chasseing and belly popping, we watched some YouTube clips of Turkish belly dancers and compared them with Egyptian dancers. There is a huge difference. If you're not familiar with belly dancing, you may not be aware that it is a family of dance rather than a single style, and the variations can be quite dramatic. I've always leaned towards the very traditional Egyptian or the more modern folkloric style - both very earthy and strong. There are also much more flamboyant styles, sexier styles, cabaret styles, balletic styles and so on. My bias has meant that I've watched a lot of Egyptian dancers and not so many others.

Here's Didem, a favourite dancer in Turkey now.

And here's Dina, Egypt's darling at the moment.

Something struck me, watching them. These two are reasonably representative of their countries' styles. Didem is young, very thin, and is contracted exclusively to the TV show she's on in this clip. Her predecessor on the show was apparently shot in the leg when she tried to leave her contract (this has all the researched authority of my belly dance teacher, but even the fact that such a rumour is believed by people says something). Dina is older, and looks very thoroughly in control at all times. She makes no grand entrances, just wanders on to stage and starts dancing when she feels like it. Dina commands respect while Didem commands attention.

And my point was? Egypt is a country where social roles remain quite rigid, both in terms of gender and class. However, the dancers from Egypt are respected for their talent, are regarded as improving with age and are not noticeably objectified. These women, at least the successful ones, are self confident, and seem to own the stage.

Turkey is, by comparison, much more Westernised, and with that, it seems the dancers are much more objectified. There is more freedom for woman to step outside gender and class roles, but at least through the lens of belly dance, they have more obligation to meet beauty standards and play passive sex kitten.

There is more than one path to equality. Rigid gender roles don't necessarily mean an imbalance in respect, although they might. In cultures where women are respected, (like Egyptian dancers) I can understand why they may not want to give that up to come to the place I, as a Westerner am at, where youth, slenderness and big boobs are the main measure of a woman, even if I can choose more ways to live my life. I don't know what the path from such a culture to equality looks like, because I don't live it, but I know they have no obligation to follow a Western lead.

If I was a dancer, I know I'd rather be an Egyptian one than a Turkish one. However, I'm not a dancer and I've worked all my life in male dominated areas, so Turkey may be a better choice for me. And that, finally, is my point. Any interim point along the way will be better for some and worse for others. There's nothing to be gained by judging the other path while standing in the middle of one's own.

Today I'm grateful for a burst of energy that came from nowhere and let me get through paid work and housework and even some Christmas preparation. Now to try to keep the roll going!

Today I'm grateful for the gatherings in the park after school. It's great to chat about nothing much at all for a while, or to solve the problems of the world. It's also pretty cool that I can pretty much ignore the kids for the whole time, knowing that they behave themselves pretty well, and look after/police each other. It's not uncommon for the kids to be the ones who decide it's time to go home.

Should we stay or should we go?

I've been a staunch fence-sitter when it comes to the war in Afghanistan. I can sympathise with the argument that we shouldn't have gone in there in the first place, but now we're there, we can't just leave the place a first class disaster. However, if we're looking at how we got to where we are, we have to consider that the US shouldn't have armed the Taliban in the first place. And then we'd need to consider that the USSR shouldn't have invaded it in the first place, and then we'd need to consider the fallout from WWII, so I'm not terribly sure that arguments that have any portion based in history are very helpful.

I also sympathise with the argument that the Taliban are never going to stop fighting while foreign troops are in their country. Can't say I entirely blame them - and more importantly, once they've used that argument to justify the fighting to themselves, they've painted themselves into a corner. Only a withdrawal can offer a way out.

So I've been listening to and mulling over the various arguments put by the various people and come to an Opinion. This is an opinion on what Australia's position should be, since that's what our Parliament recently debated. I think we should state loudly and clearly that we will only continue to support this war as long as genuine negotiations are undertaken (continued?) with the Taliban.

I have a few reasons for this. We will be fighting forever (and therefore killing civilians forever) if some negotiated agreement can't be reached. The Karzai Government is hardly a shining beacon of democratic light, it's hard to see how they are the Good Guys and the Taliban are the Bad Guys. The Taliban, as far I as I can make out from the reports I've seen and read, are primarily war lords, and use religion as a method of wielding power. I (and other commentators) strongly suspect that they would be open to liberalising their stance on Sharia law and other aspects of conservative Islam in exchange for other forms of international political power. They want a seat at the table with the Big Boys much more than they want to oppress the people of Afghanistan. In the end, we turned Afghanistan into a war zone, and our primary responsibility is to bring it back out of war, and I simply don't believe that the Taliban can be wiped out to the point that the war stops by that means and it seems incredibly unlikely that the Taliban will surrender. As a result, the only possible outcome is a negotiated power sharing arrangement. We should be pushing for that as soon as possible. Any further delay just means more people die.

Under those conditions, I'd say it's our duty to stay there until stability is achieved. If the foreign alliance is not moving towards stability, then I think we should withdraw our support and at least not contribute to making the situation any worse.

I should say that it seems that some movement has been made in the direction of negotiation, and I support that. I simply think that Australia should make its position clear that this is what we support, and not open ended warfare in someone else's country.

Today I'm grateful for my husband. He's a wonderful man, and great dad. The latter doesn't come too easily to him - he was rather short on role models growing up, but he's committed to not repeating the mistakes of the past, and doing a great job. He's also marking another year of breathing today, and I'm grateful that he chose ribs for his birthday dinner. Mmmmm... ribs......

NaBloPoMo

I'm gonna do it - I'm gonna do NaBloPoMo again this year. I wish it wasn't in November, but I'm up for a month of gratitude posting since it reminds about the Good Stuff that goes on rather than focussing on the crap.

Hopefully there'll be some other content too - particularly after I get to put up the post that says "Today I'm grateful that everyone in the house is disease free."