Ariane's little world

An invitation to National Parliament

2011-09-03T10:23:00.000+10:00

I'm training to be a high school teacher, and my prac timetable at the moment includes that most infamous of beasts, year 9 last period Friday. In any given lesson I'll need to tell people to sit down a dozen times, break up two or three play fights that have crossed the line, remind people to do something resembling work several dozen times and repeat myself ad nauseam to elicit any kind of common courtesy and respect.

I would like to invite our national representatives to visit my year 9 class last period Friday, as I believe they could learn a lot from them. For all their notoriety, year 9 last period Friday are more civilised, more on task, more respectful and more productive than our politicians are right now.

So please, honourable representatives, drop by. I believe that one day you could aspire to the lofty heights of year 9 last period Friday.

--

PS Don't get me wrong, I actually really like my year 9s. They have personality, they can produce great work and be engaged and inspired. The last period Friday thing is an anomaly, and I don't think only students are implicated in its causes.

Open letter to the convenors of my course

2011-08-14T17:44:00.000+10:00

Last week I was in a lecture in which the students were embarrassingly rude to the guest speakers, which prompted our tutor to give us (a subset of the rude audience) a lecture about common courtesy. I've been thinking a lot about this - about what I can take from it as a potential teacher, and about what the convenors of the BTeach course can learn from it.

I was neither the worst offender nor completely innocent in the lecture. I certainly shared my colleague's boredom. This was the second or third time we'd seen this content, and it wasn't too riveting the first time around - especially given we can't actually access most of the website we were (re-)learning about. I exchanged a few comments with the person sitting next to me, and mostly played Angry Birds (badly) until the last 5 minutes of the lecture when we got to hear something new and relevant.

Nevertheless, these people were guest speakers, and this was a room full of adults behaving like 12 year olds. No wonder we got told off. But our tutor didn't ask why. When I see such incongruous behaviour, my first question is "why?". I'm also reasonably confident I know some of the answer. In this BTeach course, we are routinely treated like children. Rolls are marked in lectures, a great deal of busy work is set and lecturers feel the need to mention such startling revelations as "When you are a teacher, you need to turn up to work on time." No? Really? The truly unfortunate thing about this lecture was that the convenor of this course is one of the few who don't treat us like children, and I felt that as a group we'd let her down.

So what does this tell me as a teacher? That if I want students to behave in a mature manner, I need to treat them as mature people. Further, that I can't do this on my own. If there is a critical mass of other people treating teenagers like primary school kids, I will really struggle to turn the tide alone. It also tells me that if I'm teaching something that's likely to have overlap with other subjects, I need to get myself over to those other subjects and find out what they're teaching, because dear lord doing the same material over and over will try the patience of the most dedicated learner. It tells me that I need to advocate for a school wide view of the curriculum and how it's taught. It tells me that I probably won't ever achieve any of this, because I'll probably never be involved in a school to that extent.

As for the convenors of this course - I know there are a lot of dedicated people putting courses together within this BTeach. I've been privileged to learn from some inspiring people. However, the overall tone of the course feels more like it is aimed at high school students than at people planning to teach them. Lectures are not recorded. Worse, attendance is compulsory. We are not free to engage with the material in a way that suits us. The assessment load is enormous, and only about 50% feels valuable from a learning perspective. And the repetition. Seriously, we have now covered classroom management in no less than four separate subjects (have I mentioned this is a 1 year course?). We've covered learning technologies in 4 or 5. We've covered issues of inclusivity and diversity in 3. It's really hard to maintain a mature, engaged approach to learning when it all feels so infantilising and pointless.

This program consists of 12 subjects as well as 2 blocks of prac teaching. The whole 12 are focussed on teaching. Small wonder that there's massive overlap. This semester I think a whole lot of people have hit their threshold of too much work and not enough learning. Some of the content is fascinating, but there's just not enough time to engage with it, because we're busy jumping through hoops and reading about Choice theory for the third time. Resentment is an inevitable consequence.

But to end on a positive note, I also want to acknowledge the people who have set sensible workloads, who engage with us as adults, who model good teaching and have truly provided me with inspiration and concrete ideas to take to the classroom. These are people I will genuinely miss next year, and I hope their influence eventually makes this course what it can be.

Labels: post- official labelling of middle kid

2011-06-29T15:08:00.000+10:00

I've mentioned before that I'm label averse, so what gives with me getting my son an Official Label? It's prompted some reflection, I can tell you.

As well as being label averse, I'm a champion justifier, and I think I've justified this quite well. I don't think I accept that Aspergers is a real label. I certainly don't accept that it's a "disorder". It's a different way of being, one that the world we live in doesn't make much room for. This is, obviously, a description that applies to a great deal of things that are referred to as disabilities. I've been slowly shifting my perception of a lot these issues for a while now, but there's nothing like living with one of them to push you that bit harder.

Charlie needs this label, because the world he lives in is so bloody intolerant and inflexible that spending a morning of kindergarten (prep) class filling a page with musical notes will generally get him a much less attractive label of "uncooperative" or "doesn't follow directions" or some such. It didn't, as it happens, because he has a most wonderful kindergarten teacher, but he's not likely to carry that luck all the way through school. He needs a piece of paper to say "Please let me be me, because I have a label you have to respect". That's a pretty sad indictment of our school system.

I need him to have this label to access some help for parenting a kid like him. His behaviour doesn't fit the standard parenting manuals, and why would anyone want to broaden the ideas presented to cover children with a "disorder"? A parent will clearly need specialist help with that. Of course, kids like him are very common, and always have been, but their parents have largely muddled through, finding things that work by trial and error. I wonder how many kids' parents couldn't find the right path, and how badly some of those kids suffered as a result. I wonder if Charlie's uncle might be one of them, but we'll never know. I wonder how many of them might have been helped if conventional wisdom had included some diversity in the patterns of kids' behaviour.

So I'm seeing this label as a way of demanding respect and caring from a world that finds him inconvenient, but I'm also not really accepting it as a label. It's a diagnosis, or something. It's a means of being understood, until such time as the world moves on and accepts that we don't all think alike, or socialise alike, or even perceive the world alike. Hopefully one day he'll just be Charlie again, not because he's changed, but because the world has.

In which a diagnosis of Aspergers was the highlight of my day

2011-06-27T20:41:00.000+10:00

*Cough* Blog? Yes, I haz one. A semester of a Bachelor of Teaching in Secondary Education has buried my poor blog at the bottom of an enormous to-do list.

But today was just so monumentally shit that I shifted some cobwebs just to whinge at you. Feel free to pretend I never came back.

The day started so well, as shit days often do. Ben was organised, did his sax practice and left for school on time. He even took his lunch with him. We'd managed to score a cancellation appointment with a paediatrician before Charlie turned 6, for the purposes an assessment for autism spectrum. We found the place, got there on time and the doctor was truly lovely. She spent a long, long time with us (double the scheduled time) and concluded that Charlie fits squarely into the Aspergers box. She then embarked on the mountain of paperwork that follows such a diagnosis and explained what we needed to do.

I'm not too distressed by all of this, it doesn't change who Charlie is, and it should make his school years a bit easier. Still, it was pretty intense, and Crash and I were both feeling pretty wrung out after it.

Crash was running late for his appointment in the city, so I dropped him off & took Charlie home. We managed lunch before Crash called to say that Bad Things had happened and he needed me to bring him his laptop, which precipitated a meltdown from Charlie and interrupted the paperwork. We'd made it approximately one suburb before smoke started pouring out of the bonnet of the car, at an intersection where there was absolutely nowhere to pull over. In a second high point for the day, the car didn't explode before I found somewhere safe to stop. I called Crash, in the vain hope that everything had fixed itself miraculously and he didn't need the laptop any more. Plan A, not surprisingly, failed.

I called the NRMA, who told me they'd fast track me through the one hour queue because I had a child with me, and so the guy only took an hour to get there. He found the problem - a pinhole in the carefully sculpted, uniquely shaped and in no way interchangeable with any standard part, radiator hose. He also decided that it would never make it home. He helpfully called a tow truck.

Charlie completely lost it around an hour and half after we'd originally stopped, so I called NRMA back to get an ETA on the tow truck. Apparently it was an hour wait, but they could try to fast track it for me. I'm not quite that stupid, so I told them to cancel the tow truck and left the car where it was. It took another 10 minutes or so to get a cab home. Which should have been the end of the drama, but I still had 2 kids to retrieve before 6pm, and it was now well after 5pm. Fortunately we have another car. Unfortunately, it was completely filled with cardboard that would have been taken to the recycling depot if it hadn't been for the day's disasters.

By this time, sheer fury allowed me to ram all the cardboard into the back section of the car and restore the back seats. It wasn't enough to allow me to put in the proper car seat for the 3 year old. However, aforementioned fury decided that a booster seat had been sufficiently safe for Ben when he was 3, so bugger the law, I was picking her up anyway, with just the booster seat. All children were safely retrieved and fed eggs for dinner. They are all in bed, but Crash is still dealing with Bad Things in the city, and won't be home for another hour or so.

And the whole experience was enhanced by the constant sinus pain I've been living with for nearly 2 weeks.

SHIT. DAY.

The great 2011 clean out continues

2011-01-29T18:54:00.000+11:00

We started to clean out the attic in earnest today. For the last 8 years or so, half of it has been used as an office, and the other half has had a sofa bed and all our equipment (spare and test gear) in it. The other half now has to become a bedroom, so the transformation required is fairly substantial, and it is definitely not completed yet.

I started with the paper. All the manuals, training documents, catalogues, magazines and empty boxes got sorted and tossed. I have often claimed that my house breeds paper and cardboard. I dunno, what do you reckon?

Nearly all of that came out of the attic, and it all came out of our house.

Obligatory BDO post 2011

2011-01-29T18:20:00.001+11:00

I came home greasy, sweaty, smelly and dirty, so I must have been to the Big Day Out. Musically, it wasn't the most amazing of BDOs, but it was well worth it just for Grinderman.

Mostly, it was hot. Really hot. BOM promised us storms, but they never made it to Olympic Park. I spent a good proportion of the day hiding from the sun, but I still managed to enjoy The Naked and Famous, Children Collide, The Jim Jones Revue, Birds of Tokyo, John Butler Trio and Grinderman. The only serious disappointment for me was Bliss n Esso, who were crap, really. Washington didn't excite me as much as I expected, but she was battling the elements so I'd give her another shot.

Grinderman though - wow. Nick Cave back to screaming insanity. I loved it. So did the crowd.

I chose not to take the new iPhone, so the photos are crap, but if you get a chance to see them, do it.

What makes housework menial?

2011-01-23T22:20:00.000+11:00

I hate housework. I spend a lot of time saying that I'd love not to have to do paid work, but then I interrupt myself and point out that this would necessitate more housework and day to day child care, and I'd go slightly peculiar if that was my main occupation.

But why? Why is housework less rewarding than the stuff I do for money? In truth, the routine work of both bore me to tears. In my paid work, it's the planning, problem solving, interacting with clients and suppliers and the basking in the glory of a successful job that I enjoy. But housework has none of that does it?

Well, yeah, it does. There are questions of organisation to minimise the requirement for mundane work. Problems of physical design to make spaces work sensibly - a constantly moving target as people's needs and possessions change. Questions of energy efficiency and evolving into a household with a smaller environmental impact. Management issues - encouraging children to do their jobs to the best of their ability along with training them to do so.

When I talk about paid work, I talk about the rewarding bits, but when I talk about household stuff, I mostly complain about the mundane stuff. While I might have good friends with whom I can boast about a particularly inventive solution to the Toy Storage Problem, I never feel self conscious discussing how I designed a portion of the infrastructure for commercial digital radio in this country. Or how I help bankers talk to one another reliably and cheaply. Why do the latter two give me kudos, while the former results the social equivalent of a pat on the head?

I don't know, I haven't done the studies, but I can't help having this niggling feeling that it just might have something to do with the fact that housework is women's work, and therefore mundane and uninteresting by definition. In my own little anecdata gathering exercise, I'll be looking more at housework as a job with, admittedly, a fairly high ratio of mundane work, but also with all the high order, glory-worthy responsibilities of a paid job. That counts for other people doing housework too, including my husband's.

Blog for Choice - even outside the USA.

2011-01-22T09:50:00.000+11:00

It's Blog for Choice day, and given that I have never done it before, and that it has a totally USA-focussed theme: Given the anti-choice gains in the states and Congress, are you concerned about choice in 2011? - it's a little odd that I'm giving it a shot. But the universe throws up odd coincidences and this is one of them.

We watch a fair bit of Boston Legal around here, and we watched one last night which was about abortion. The whole episode was pretty ordinary, actually, but the story about abortion was particularly ridiculous.

Short synopsis: 15 year old girl asks Alan Shore to represent her to be permitted to terminate her pregnancy because her mother won't let her. There is much agonising by Alan and Shirley Schmidt about how much an abortion stays with you forever. The mother claims the 15 year old is too young to know herself and will grow up to be pro-life. [Necessary interjection - the girl is Asian, and up until this point I'm thinking "makes a change, characters who are Asian with no particular plot reason for them to be Asian". Sadly, no.] Then it's revealed that she's only terminating the pregnancy because she's carrying a girl and Chinese people don't want girl children. Shirley tells the judge all this, and judge points out that interrogating teenagers for their reasons for termination rather defeats the purpose of giving them access to it and grants it anyway.

So, in the interests of the theme, I'll leave the race issues to the reader, along with the scientific ones (girl who is showing no signs of pregnancy at all, looking for routine abortion, and knows the gender of the baby?), and stick with the various issues of choice that came up.

One of the major themes was that pro-choice ideology hangs on Roe v Wade. Apparently this legal precedent is necessary for us to be able to believe that abortion is ok. Really? What about the vast majority of pro-choice people who don't live in the USA? I grew up pro-choice, all the while having some vague notion that Roe v Wade was about divorce settlements (I may have had it confused with Kramer vs Kramer). I also have no doubt that many, many pro-choice people within the USA feel that the moral position makes Roe v Wade necessary, not that Roe v Wade is necessary for the moral position.

Then we come to "But this decision will stay with her for the rest of her life!". Yes, that old chestnut. She's 15. She's pregnant. Whatever happens next, it will stay with her for the rest of her life. It was asserted over and again that women who have abortions "never get over it". I have no idea of actual numbers (has anyone ever done a real study?), but there definitely exist women who do get over it - who barely ever think of it again after the initial recovery period - as well as women who don't, indeed ever get over it. She has two other options - raising the child, or giving it up for adoption. Particularly in Australia we hear a great deal about how traumatic adoption is for both birth mother and child (not that I buy into that as a general truth, but the stories are there, and clearly it can be), and it's hard to consider a decision that's more likely to "stay with her for the rest of her life" than choosing to raise the child. Of course, raising the child doesn't have to be a bad thing, but for 15 year olds in countries with minimal welfare and little or no public health (like the USA), the odds are against her having an even tolerable parenting experience.

They also trotted out the "life begins at conception" thing. Yes, it does. Life begins at conception. But "life" is a pretty broad category. There is far more non-human life within my skin that there is human life. There is non-human life inside every one of my cells. We wipe out life on a monumental scale every time we take antibiotics (for example) - and not just the "evil" life that's making us sick, we're also wiping out a whole heap of our allies, the other life that keeps us humming along. So this isn't about "life", it's about "human life". At what point does a bundle of cells become a human life? The fact that these cells are reproducing themselves and growing doesn't make them a whole human being, my liver can do that, and it can do it in someone else's body. They may be capable of growing into a whole human being, unlike my liver, but they can't do it without my help - not until some point around 22 - 25 weeks, depending on available technology. I don't think biology can give us the answer to when the bundle of cells becomes "human life". I think it's a complex question, and I don't believe it's a "line in the sand" thing - it's a gradual progression from cells, to foetus, to baby and so on, and each stage brings more personhood. I don't think birth is where it ends either - I think personhood is still developing for a long time after birth, although in ever diminishing amounts.

The really sticky issue was the one of gender selection. I think this is an interesting question. We have 3 kids: boy, boy, girl. We did rather want a girl when we had the third. We did some of the things suggested to increase the odds of conceiving a girl. When we were told, by (faulty) genetic testing, that we were having a boy, we didn't consider termination. But if I believe that an individual has the right to choose whether or not they continue a pregnancy, I have to believe they have that right when they're doing it for gender. What's the difference, in terms of gender selection, between me nudging the odds, and them terminating? On the other hand, when you have a society-wide situation in which one gender is preferred over the other (and it isn't always a preference for boys, I've been told that the cost of educating boys in Japan makes people select for girls), you have a problem. I'd argue that the right solution is to address the reasons why there is a wholesale gender preference in the first place, rather than place restrictions on having the babies themselves, but sometimes that just isn't practical. In Japan, at least at one point in time, you couldn't be told the gender of the baby until 8 months, even though it was still discovered at 18 weeks. That's one way of dealing with it, I suppose.

In the end though, it all comes down to that progression from cells to a separate individual with a personality. At what point on that journey does the life become equivalent to the mother that created it? This has to be a philosophical question, and therefore will never have a definitive answer. For that reason alone, we need choice, because none of us has the right to impose our answer on someone else.

Tatted Necklace

2011-01-21T14:20:00.000+11:00

Yesterday I decided to get this tatting thing right, and did and redid it until I worked out exactly what I was supposed to be doing between each chain or ring. I stuck a few beads on it (since they were already threaded onto the cotton I was using anyway), and stuck it on a leather strap.

I'm pretty happy with it. Now I'm working on the same design, but with lots and lots more beads. (I learned how to do it from here.)

Small measures

2011-01-20T08:57:00.003+11:00

Growing up in a world of consumerism, it's a major shift of consciousness to try to think in terms of using and wasting less. It's a slow and steady re-wiring, but each little step changes the way I look at things in my house. I have a dryer, but I hate having to use it. On the other hand, when it's raining, or in winter when the clothes line is next to useless, I have 5 people's washing to get through, and I can't spend 6 months with wet clothes all over the house constantly and maintain my sanity.

A year ago I bought a Victorian style clothes airer which attaches to the ceiling and is raised and lowered on pulleys. We finally put it up last weekend (resulting in the injury to Crash I mentioned in this post), and I've used it this week. Behold the fully laden airer!

It takes a small load of washing, and it dried in a day. I'm hoping to be able to dry most of my washing on it in winter, and all of the rain affected washing in summer. It's a little thing, but it makes me smile.

An even littler thing shows more a shift in attitude than any actual positive impact on the planet. Crash got a deep fryer for his birthday, and we just had a batch of oil reach the end of its useful life. Throwing it out seemed such a waste, but it was unlikely anyone would want to come pick up 4 litres of biodiesel. A moment with Google and 10mins in the garage produced this.

The wick needs some work, as do the aesthetics, but I like the idea of used oil tealights - especially when it's vaguely frangranced with Chinese five spice. I know the practical implications of an air dryer and recycling vegetable oil are terribly small, but it's indicative of a change in thought patterns that is slowly reducing our consumption all round.

Tetsuya!

2011-01-19T11:53:00.000+11:00

My sister and I went to a masterclass with Tetsuya yesterday. He demonstrated 4 dishes for a room full of people:

Bonito Salad
Lobster & Olive Oil Mousse
Seared Tuna with Apple and Olive
Warm salad of Kingfish

I learned lots of great stuff, some of which applies to the fancy pants food that Tetsuya cooks, like how to kill and prepare lobsters, and some of which is pretty mundane - like the best way to store fish. While I completely accept that brain death with a sharp knife is almost certainly the most humane to kill a lobster, I'm probably too much of a wuss to do it myself - way too worried that I'd do it wrong and fail utterly in the "humane" department.

On the other hand, wrapping fish in paper towel and then glad wrap to store in the fridge I can manage! White sesame oil to cook it in I can probably pull off too. Lots of handy ideas to remember.

The last dish, the warm salad of kingfish was a real standout.

It was built on the plate, and then smoking grapeseed oil was poured over the top. The smell was utterly amazing.

Sadly we didn't get to try the lobster mousse, but Tetsuya continued to cook after the presentation to provide a few nibbles for us all.

This is Tetsuya cooking the Tartare of Tuna with Goat's Cheese, which I've actually made before!

He's such a likable person too - I'd love to have him at my dinner party, as well as cooking it.

I'm only sorry that the food he chose to demonstrate was so very Japanese - his restaurant is more of a fusion style which would have suited my sister far better - it was a gift to her and I fear it was a bit of a dud.

Also, this thing wasn't cheap - over $100 per ticket and it felt like a school production. Tetsuya's masterclass was the last of six, and still the audio-visual set up failed in almost every possible way. The TVs to provide a view for everyone were too low to begin with and needed to be boosted up with the camera gear boxes and the second TV didn't work for the first 15 minutes. Tetsuya's microphone didn't work at all, so the host kept sticking a microphone in front of him. He's well known for being softly spoken, and English isn't his first language, so it was regularly hard to hear and understand him.

This is the second year that Tony Bilson has run Cuisine Now in the Radisson Hotel, and I think there needs to be more polish if they want to charge a lot of money. If it was as polished as it could be, it would be absolutely worth the money, and a fabulous experience. As it was, I loved it, but was just a bit put off by the lack of professionalism.

When child care goes right (so far)

2011-01-18T11:41:00.000+11:00

We've sampled a wide range of child care over the years. When Ben was born, child care around here was virtually impossible to get. By the time I had to go back to work, I had no child care, so my lovely sister stepped into the breach and became our daytime paid nanny. This was unquestionably fabulous, and we were really lucky to have such an amazing circumstance. She soldiered on for five years before looking after my children threatened to make her childless for life, and was possibly starting to induce cackling.

We then moved to family day care, both because Elissa was only 6 months old, and because I really couldn't afford the larger day care centres. That worked out really well too. Our first carer stopped when she got married and her sister took over. It was flexible and worked well for our family. Then the second carer had her second child, and she stopped too. We couldn't find another carer that met our criteria (could take both kids and wasn't a 30min drive away), so we switched to a group day care.

That's mostly been pretty good too. Charlie didn't like it, but he was also going to preschool 3 days a week, which he much preferred and was where he had made his friends. (Preschool is another form of child care we are very happy with. I love our preschool.) He only went one day a week, so it wasn't so bad. Elissa loves it. She's made lots of friends and clearly has heaps of fun.

However, by the end of last year, distinct behaviour issues were starting arise with Elissa. Not a huge surprise - she had just turned 3, after all. Still, she was becoming more and more impossible whenever she didn't get her way, and "her way" was becoming more and more ridiculous. By the time we started the three week break from day care over Christmas, she was infuriating to be around. We've spent those three weeks re-establishing boundaries, being as consistent as is humanly possible and slowly working towards the point that I don't want to strangle her the moment she gets out of bed.

Day care started back yesterday, so today I had a meeting with the director. I'm always nervous when I have to criticise someone on the way they do their job, and I was not looking forward to this. However, we had a very sensible conversation about Elissa's behaviour and how I felt their current approach to her was Not Helping. The director was .... I think relieved is the best description. I gather many parents at the centre get a little stroppy if the carers are firm with their kids. She seemed very happy indeed that I was asking for boundaries and was more than prepared to back them up at home.

So now we see what happens next. I suspect if my requests are acted upon, Elissa will suddenly really NOT want to go to day care. That's ok, we can work through that - should only take a couple of weeks based on the last three weeks' experience. I'm a little cautious in my optimism though - we're running against the nature of one of the carers, who, in the words of the director "likes to baby her babies".

But still, how nice to be supported and met with appreciation rather than defensiveness! I know child care is a business, but it still needs to be carried out in partnership with parents. It certainly appears they are trying hard to do just that.

Not quite an OOTD post

2011-01-15T09:45:00.001+11:00

I was going to post an OOTD post, showing the top I bought from ASOS. Unfortunately none of the photos showed anything but an amorphous black blob, so here is Elissa's OOTD she wore to the drinks & nibbles at our neighbour's place (whose eldest son is Ben's best mate).

Dress: Grandma's op shopping
Shoes: Rivers
Hairstyle: Elissa's request

Obligation and health

2011-01-14T12:28:00.000+11:00

Lots of people have written good stuff in response to fat acceptance (or fat advocacy, or "for gods' sakes stop vilifying fat people" - whatever you want to call it) concern trolls - those people who respond with "But OMG you're GOING TO DIE". Fat Heffalump is the one that springs to mind right now, but you'll find it popping up all over FA stuff. I'm not going to repeat it, just pull out one aspect that runs through most of it - that you have no obligation to be healthy.

Concern trolls pull out "Your lifestyle isn't healthy" as though it's a lay down misere. Aside from the fact that it may not be true, even if it is, who says I have to be healthy? I may not even have a choice. For whatever reasons, living the troll's sanctioned "healthy lifestyle" may be entirely beyond my reach. Or living it might not, in fact, make me healthy. Or, I may have all the choice in the world, and decide that I value my current lifestyle more than health. Trolly McTrollpants has no right to decide that I should.

I've read this argument again and again, and I agree with it. But. You knew there was a "but" coming didn't you? There has always been something niggling in the back of my brain, a little "but" bouncing up and down behind the logic. When I finally paid it some attention, I realised it's not really so much a "but", rather it's more of an "also", or an "even so".

Before I even address the niggle, I need to point out I'm thinking in terms of "as healthy as one can be" not healthy by some arbitrary standard. I'm also including emotional and psychological health in this picture. Blood pressure is neither more important than, nor independent of, emotional and psychological well-being. Using a complete picture of health pretty much rules out fat shaming all by itself (nobody is healthy when they are made to hate their own body).

There are two aspects to this niggle, a personal and a public. The personal is straightforward - I think we do owe optimised health to those we care about. I don't think this negates the "no obligation to be healthy" as such, because I certainly owe nothing to Trolly, and because this is about balancing what you have, not meeting an arbitrary standard. My "optimised health" looks nothing like yours, and so making sweeping statements about how people should live isn't helpful. But I do think I owe my kids, my partner, and everyone I love the best health I can offer them, within the power that I have. That doesn't make ill-health a Bad Thing. It just means I should control what I can, and deal with what I can't.

The public is much messier. I proceed here with caution, but I don't think I can ignore it as an issue. In a country like Australia where health care is largely publicly funded, my decision not to be healthy has impacts beyond my immediate circle. Of course, if I choose to be fatally unhealthy in a swift fashion, it doesn't cost the country much (see personal obligations), but it is possible that lower grade unhealthy living costs the country money (although I'm not sure it's entirely clear whether health costs are going up because of healthy or unhealthy lifestyles - living longer can also cost more in the long run, and I've never really seen convincing arguments on either side). Assuming it does cost, what exactly does that mean for personal obligation to health?

I'll consider first the individual obligation (under the assumption that it does cost money). I'm struggling a bit with this, so I'm more than open to feed back and outright disagreement - I think it counts as one aspect of my membership in society. One thing I can do to contribute to society is to optimise my health. This does not include health issues over which I have no control, that is contribution neutral. On the other hand, there are many other ways in which I can contribute to society, and I think choosing to be something of a burden on society healthwise can be compensated for by my many other contributions. I have been a burden on society in myriad ways all my life, starting with my childhood and education and carrying on through my use of roads and other public facilities. I give back to compensate for that. This is true for everyone, and no-one gets to look from afar and judge a person's overall contributions.

That's the theoretical. From a practical perspective, we have no problems at all accepting and even celebrating other people damaging their health - elite athletes, mountaineers and other extreme adventurers, for example. It is outright hypocrisy to condemn people for, for example, sedentary related ill-health while celebrating sport related ill-health. I think all people have the same, vague and flexible obligation to be as healthy as they can, and all people have the same right to prioritise that obligation as they wish against other obligations and contributions.

When talking about costs to the public, the government's role obviously also needs to be considered. Still under the assumption that less-than-optimised health costs money, the government has an obligation to encourage people to optimise their health, as responsible custodians of the public purse. Note that their obligation is limited to encouragement, not requirement. People within a society make a million decisions every day that affect the people around them. On the whole we need to minimise the number of things which are enforced by law, and encourage voluntary, cooperative behaviour. So I support government initiatives that encourage health. Things which inform, things which make healthy options (food, activity, medication etc) more accessible, things which discourage behaviour that impacts negatively on other people's health (for example unhealthy work places, polluting industries and so on).

I do not support things which shame anyone for their health, whether they have control over that health or not. For starters, it's self-defeating. Shaming people damages their emotional and psychological health, and makes them less likely to participate - either in healthy activities or in alternative ways to contribute. Shaming makes them less healthy and less likely to contribute. It's also putting a moral rub on something that in fact only has a financial motive. The government has an obligation to be a good steward of our cash, it does not have the right to add moral overtones to that stewardship.

In the end, I have no strict obligation to be healthy, but I count optimising my health among the worthy goals that I can consider and that the government can encourage. There may be other worthy goals that I may choose to pursue instead, and that doesn't make me a bad person.

Avoiding "too hard"

2011-01-12T22:14:00.000+11:00

Today was one of those days that just never got started. I slept in, and the hour or two of work I was planning to do ended up stretching out to 2:30pm. I'd told the kids I would take them to DFO to buy shoes (not one of them had sneakers that both fit and were still in one piece) and then we'd go up to the Blue Mountains, with no particular intent. They were Unimpressed when I revised the plan down to shopping plus a visit to Bicentennial Park. Really Unimpressed.

So I figured, what the hell, we'd go anyway, and have dinner in the mountains. Crash was ~~out drinking~~ at work, so it was just me and the kids, reducing the inertia somewhat.

Shoe shopping was relatively painless and successful - 3 pairs of shoes: Skechers for Charlie @ $33, Rivers for Ben & Elissa @ $7 & $10 respectively. Given that Ben's had to be black (for school uniform reasons) I was chuffed.

We got to Wentworth Falls just after 5pm, just as it started raining. But such a ridiculous expedition wasn't going to be affected by some rain, and we wandered the grueling 300m up the footpath to the lookout. Wentworth Falls looks like this, at the moment.

And proof that I didn't pull this out of "Standard Library of Blue Mountains Photos", the kids were really there with me.

Ben really wanted to go proper bushwalking. If you look closely at the photo, you can see he was wearing thongs (flip flops for non-Australians), Elissa & Charlie were both wearing sandals, and you can see Elissa was clearly dressed for the bush. So we took a short detour along a track, and then walked along a more dodgy track for 5 minutes or so, and then turned around. By the time we got back Elissa had been bitten by nasty little black bugs and Ben had discovered exactly why one doesn't go bushwalking in thongs, but they're all keen to come back another time, in more appropriate attire, and no-one fell off a cliff.

Ben was still dictating terms, and was calling for fish & chips for dinner. I was happy enough with the suggestion, but spotted a Chinese restaurant before I saw the Take-away, and conned them into spring rolls instead. While we watched the rain bucket out of the sky, I reminded them of my superiority - Ben's fish & chips in the park may not have been a rollicking success. Food was good, kids were so nicely behaved that an elderly man came over to congratulate them on their efforts on his way out and I barely had an anxious moment. We came out of the restaurant into cloud, literally. The kids were predictably impressed by the idea that they were in the middle of a cloud and we came home a happy bunch.

It's a fairly big shift for me to decide that this kind of thing isn't just "too hard". Part of it is Elissa growing up - a year ago this afternoon really would have been implausible. But part of it, probably a bigger part, is that I never really came out of pregnancy malaise after Elissa. Everything has felt like a chore for a long time. I'm not pregnant anymore, I have no reason to put so much into the too hard basket and I need to remember that life's more fun when I don't.

Things I've been doing instead of blogging

2011-01-11T21:20:00.000+11:00

It's been awfully quiet around here. I wonder if this "energy" thing might be the death of the blog?

Things I've been doing instead of blogging:

Crash & I went to Singapore for a wedding. It was a lovely ad-hoc hybrid of Western & Chinese tradition. They read this poem:

‘I’ll be there’ – Louise Cuddon
I’ll be there, my darling,
Through thick and through thin
When your mind is a mess
When your head’s in a spin
When your plane’s been delayed
When you’ve missed the last train
When life is just threatening
To drive you insane
When your thrilling whodunit
Has lost its last page
When somebody tells you
You’re looking your age
When your coffee’s too cool
And your wine too warm
When the forecast said ‘Fine’
But you’re out in a storm
When you ordered the Korma
But got the Madras
When you wake in the night
And are sure you smell gas
When your quick-break hotel
Is more like a slum
And your holiday photos
Show only your thumb
When you park for five minutes
In a resident’s bay
And return to discover
You’ve been towed away
When the jeans that you bought
In hope or in haste
Stick on your hips
And won’t reach around your waist
When the dentist looks into
Your mouth and just sighs
When your heroes turn out
To be wimps in disguise
When the food that you most like
Brings you out in red rashes
When as soon as you boot up
The bloody thing crashes
When you’re in extra time
And the other team scores
When someone informs you
There’s no Santa Claus
When you gaze at the stars
And step on a nail
When you know you’ll succeed
But, somehow, you fail
When your horoscope tells you
You’ll have a good day
So you ask for a rise
And your boss says ‘No way’
So my darling, my sweetheart, my dear….
When you spill your beer
When you shed a tear
When you burn the toast
When you miss the post
When you lose the plot
When I’m all you’ve got
When you break a rule
When you act the fool
When you’ve got the flu
When you’re in a stew
When you’re last in the queue
Don’t feel blue
‘Cause I’m telling you
I’ll be there
I’ll be there
I’ll be there for you.

It made me giggle, but not as much as the woman sitting next to me when the 80yr old celebrant started lecturing us on the Singaporean "Women's Charter". She moved to Singapore as a de-facto mother and was regarded as a scourge on society who needed to be expelled until she relented and married her partner, at which point she became an upstanding, valuable member of society. Marriage changes people, I guess.

But the night was excellent, 9 courses (although I declined the shark fin soup), great wine and a fab band. We bailed somewhere between 2 and 3am. We were pikers.

BTW, the dress I wore looked like this:

--

We bought an upright freezer, because one upside down fridge for a family of five is just inadequate (#firstworldproblems, in Twitter parlance). I really want to be able to cook more efficiently - less waste, more bulk cooking, more bulk buying. And I'd really just like to be able to keep a few loaves of bread in the freezer and still have room for frozen peas. Unfortunately, the house was never designed for a second refrigeration device, so the only possible option was the laundry. Further, there was nowhere in the laundry to put it, so the laundry cupboard had to go, and the laundry tub needed to be moved, the shelves needed to be shortened. A fun job all round. But today it arrived! I played filled the freezer this afternoon and it looks so empty! I'm irrationally pleased with this acquisition. (We bought a one of these, in case you are incurably curious)

--

Elissa reminded me how irregular English is, when she explained that she "wiped [her] hands on my clo" - "clo" clearly being the singular of "clothes".

--

The air conditioner broke, and when we called the maintenance company (after they got back from 2 weeks' holiday) they were terribly indignant that we wanted a service appointment - it's their busiest time of year, doncha know? We found an independent guy who came the same day. He hasn't fixed it because he needs to order a part, but at least we're getting somewhere.

--

The boiler and chiller in the kitchen ceased chilling. I mention this only to explain the feeling I have of the house falling down around me.

--

The house fell down on Crash today. Well, at the least the little bit of it he had put up about 15mins earlier. He was sure he'd managed to hit at least one stud. The cut isn't too big, and his pupils are the same size, so I'm pretty sure he'll be ok.

The year so far

2011-01-04T19:29:00.000+11:00

Four days in is an appropriate time for a review, yes? This energy thing may actually succeed, if it doesn't kill me first. The New Year got off to a less than energetic start, with a sleep in until 10:30am (made possible by my superhero friend, Cate, who kid wrangled while we slept). However, once I was up, I looked at the Christmas tree, and figured now was the time. It took the entire afternoon to pull the tree down and pack up the decorations, but it's done.

On the 2nd, I made myself an underskirt to turn my cocktail frock into a formal frock for a wedding we're going to on Thursday (in Singapore!). This is particularly energetic given that a) I can't sew, b) I had no pattern and c) I completely ignored all the advice my mother had given me (she can sew, very well in fact). It came out exactly as I wanted, which is a massive surprise to me. I'm pretty sure it's exactly what my mother wasn't envisioning, which is why I ignored her advice. If someone could invent an imagination projector, I'd be most grateful.

On the 3rd, I got up at 6:30am and went for a walk. I've agreed with Crash that we'll take it in turns to get up in the mornings and walk, so neither of us feels obliged every day. I thoroughly enjoyed the early morning air and the music in my headphones. Later, I shopped for swimwear, with only marginal success, but even trying is a triumph for my "energy" theme.

Today I got up at 7:30am without a specific requirement to do so, and we took the kids to the swimming pool. Instead of floating in the water, I climbed all over the play equipment and went down the waterslides with Elissa about 20 gazillion times. I had so much fun it was disgusting. I also discovered exactly why the boardies I'd bought weren't quite worth the $5 I'd paid for them - the slightest pressure makes the button pop undone - and if the things were any looser at standing, they'd fall down. Very dodgy design. I'll keep looking for some elasticised ones to replace them.

I kept up the pace and went shoe shopping (which I hate almost as much as swimwear shopping) and bought myself a new pair of work suitable Skechers for $55. Very tidy.

I've had fun, I've surprised myself, I've achieved a lot - so far so good. Well, except for the fact that I've pulled muscles in my shoulders from pulling the tree apart, my back's dodgy from most of a day sat at a sewing machine and my eyes hurt from the chlorine. If it doesn't kill me, this could be a fabulously improved way to live my life.

Hello 2011

2011-01-01T13:19:00.000+11:00

I had some trouble coming up with a word for 2011. It's going to be a big year - I'm doing a ~~Dip Ed~~ Bachelor of Teaching this year, on campus at UTS Kuring-gai. Charlie starts school, and Ben starts at a new school with a whole host of extra-curricular activities.

One of my focuses recently has been food - eating a better variety and only eating food I actually want to eat, rather than whatever's in front of me. I had considered "mindfulness" or some such, but it feels a little proscriptive - something I can fail at, rather than something to improve my life.

Then I was writing a comment on Samantha's post about New Year's resolutions, and "energy" popped into my head. That feels right. "Energy" will be my word for 2011. Mostly it's about an attitude shift - trying hard to work on the assumption that I do have the energy to get through the day, rather than assuming I'm too tired, and I need to get some more sleep, or eat better or whatever else before I can really tackle the housework/get myself moving more/study full time. It's also about doing the things I know help with my energy levels. Good breakfasts, belly dancing, listening to music, varied diet with lots of fresh stuff. "Energy" will sit comfortably with my efforts to approach food in a more sensible way, and will also hopefully improve my overall mood and if I'm really lucky, might even increase my patience! (Or perhaps that should be if my family is really lucky...)

So what's 2011 going to be for you? Do you have resolutions? General or specific goals? Are you just glad to see the back of 2010, or are you hoping for more of the same?

Christmas, brought to you by women

2010-12-21T14:06:00.000+11:00

If you do Christmas in any form, odds are the women in your life (and yourself, if you is one) are (and have been for a while) considering present lists (and the budgets they represent), planning menus, ordering meat and/or planning other food, checking guest lists and shopping - endlessly shopping. I'm sure there exist boy-girl couples in which Christmas is co-ordinated by the boy, but I've never met them. Oh sure, guys "help out". Some of them might even buy a present or two. My father, in fact, was the food organiser. However, I've never met a bloke who was pulling all the strings, making sure everyone gets a gift (which they might even like), ensuring that all the decorations are done, working out who needs to be where and when. In short, they aren't responsible.

An illustrative example (paraphrased)

Crash: I feel guilty that you're doing so much. If there's anything I can do to help, let me know.
Me: Yeah, actually, I'd like you to be responsible for the booze.
Crash: Ok, I can do that.
[pause]
Crash: Could you just decide what booze we want and check on the web for the prices at Dan's and 1st Choice?

The idea that men "help out" is a constant meme, but it seems to be on steroids at Christmas. I've even heard men complain that the magic is taken out of Christmas for them if they have to actually make it happen themselves. Well no, there really is no Christmas magic - it's the women doing a bloody lot of work - or at least a lot of thinking, planning and juggling that makes it look like magic. It's all illusion, and frankly, the show could probably use a few more magicians and a few less audience members.

Of course, I still love Christmas, so this post is to thank the women in my life, and all the women before them, and those all over, who are making Christmas happen. Continuing, creating and bending traditions, putting their heart into gifts, food and atmosphere that creates the magical illusion.

On Saturday, I'll be drinking white wine in the sun, ignoring the dodgy lyrics and enjoying the show, even though I can see the strings and all the "from Santa"s are in my handwriting.

Christmas tree O Christmas tree

2010-12-04T16:50:00.000+11:00

It took 4 days to finish the bloody tree. I figured I may as well share the pain.

And finally, it looks like this.

I did it in so many little spurts, I have no idea how long it took, but even after this photo was taken, I found another four ornaments that have been added somewhere in there.

To the right of the photo is the kitchen, so you can see the tree clearly from two sides as you move through the house. This is effectively only half of the decorated tree.

The star is a new one. I've wanted an LED one for ages. It looks like this.

The lights on the tree are also coloured LEDs, so it looks like this.

In lieu of a post

2010-12-04T00:39:00.000+11:00

I'm less than chipper this week. Rather than inflict you with my angst, here's a photo of my eldest, looking chuffed because he'd effortlessly climbed into a new tree. (The red face is from running from the rain, not climbing into the tree.)

I can't even take credit for the photo, a wonderful woman from school donated the photo shoot as part of an auction, and I bid for it and won it.

One day, this photo will be the one we look back on and say "You know, it was always obvious he was gay."*

* I'm joking really, I just thought it was funny that this was the shirt he chose to have his family photos taken in.**
** I think perhaps the time where he decided he would need to move to the ACT to marry his best mate might have been more of a giveaway.***
*** No, I don't actually have any opinions on his sexuality, that is clearly his business, and his to discover. OTOH, I see no particular reason to assume he's straight, or any other orientation.

Finishing with unfinished business

2010-11-30T20:37:00.000+11:00

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

2010-11-29T21:57:00.000+11:00

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

2010-11-28T16:19:00.000+11:00

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

2010-11-27T23:05:00.000+11:00

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

2010-11-26T22:32:00.000+11:00

I suck at needle tatting.

2010-11-25T23:32:00.002+11:00

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

2010-11-24T15:41:00.000+11:00

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/

2010-11-23T21:56:00.000+11:00

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

2010-11-22T21:47:00.000+11:00

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

2010-11-21T22:11:00.000+11:00

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.

2010-11-20T22:15:00.000+11:00

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

2010-11-19T22:31:00.000+11:00

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.

2010-11-18T21:42:00.000+11:00

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

2010-11-17T16:59:00.000+11:00

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

2010-11-16T21:57:00.000+11:00

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.

2010-11-15T20:56:00.000+11:00

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

2010-11-14T21:50:00.000+11:00

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!

2010-11-13T16:39:00.001+11:00

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.

2010-11-12T20:38:00.000+11:00

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

2010-11-11T22:03:00.000+11:00

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

2010-11-10T16:42:00.000+11:00

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?

2010-11-09T23:52:00.000+11:00

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.

2010-11-08T22:57:00.000+11:00

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

2010-11-08T15:30:00.000+11:00

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

2010-11-07T21:27:00.000+11:00

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.

2010-11-06T23:20:00.001+11:00

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

2010-11-05T22:08:00.000+11:00

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.

2010-11-04T22:37:00.000+11:00

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?

2010-11-04T22:29:00.000+11:00

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.

2010-11-03T21:51:00.000+11:00

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!

2010-11-02T21:34:00.000+11:00

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?

2010-11-02T14:48:00.000+11:00

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.

2010-11-01T17:34:00.000+11:00

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

2010-11-01T07:00:00.001+11:00

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."

Remembering the lost

2010-10-30T11:00:00.002+11:00

Cross-posted at HaT

Apparently October is the month for remembering those bubs that we lose before they get to grow up, or before they draw breath, or even before they're big enough for us to hold that one time. I don't do Facebook chain statuses, they annoy me, even if it's a sentiment I can relate to.

Instead, I'm just going to say again what I've said lots of times before - we need to construct the rituals and the social rules for talking about and publicly recognising miscarriage, still birth and infant death. I had two miscarriages, both quite early. The second was very early indeed. It's fair to say I grieved more for myself than the "baby", in my mind that embryo had not moved very far along the journey to personhood. However, I did still grieve, there was loss, and it was hard to talk to people about it at the time, because no-one has a framework, or a set of stock responses. They just look awkward and uncomfortable and it doesn't help.

Now I can talk about it with less emotion, and I try to take every opportunity to do so. I've come across a lot of people (especially men, for some reason) who are very relieved to find someone who will talk about it. Someone who they can share the pain, or sometimes the guilt over feeling not so much pain, or whatever was their experience. There's no rules about how you have to feel, but we need some rules about how to discuss it. Number one would be to listen to what the person is telling you, and don't guess how they are feeling. You'll never know whether this is deeply devastating or sad, but ok. Let them tell you. Other than, I don't know - feel free to offer suggestions in the comments.

My experience is only with miscarriage. Still birth and infant death are, in general, much harder. Those little ones have travelled much further down the road to personhood (and in the case of infant death, have legally achieved it) and it hurts more to lose them.

So I'm taking the time to remember the people that nobody got to really meet. To honour the tears that were shed for them, and to encourage everyone to help end the silence. It's getting better, but it could be better still.

Elissa categorises

2010-10-25T17:00:00.000+11:00

Elissa explained to me today one of nature's binaries.

Things without sharp teeth:

Trees

Things with sharp teeth:

Us
Dinosaurs
Basilisks

--

She also decided to tell me tales of hilarity:

"The other day, Daddy forgot to put our seat belts on. That was so silly. We said 'What the hell are you doing?'"

--

I love when my children remind me what terrible parents we are.

Handy pointers for GPs

2010-10-19T06:30:00.001+11:00

It's unreasonable to assume that GPs are being obnoxious on purpose, so in the interest of fairness, here are some handy hints for GPs not to be arseholes.

If you ask a question, listen to the answer. Asking the same question four times doesn't inspire confidence.
If you send the patient for tests, book the tests you've been told you need to book.
Don't refer to a patient's "private parts", it makes you sound like a nervous school kid.
Not all diseases have read the text book, if the patient reports symptoms that don't match your memory of said text book, don't correct the patient, they probably didn't have the virus (or whatever) conspire to confound you.
If you're going to write down the results of observations, it's a good idea to actually make them (see next point).
If you are going to bother to make some observations, try doing it long enough to actually observe something.
NEVER tell a patient who has come to you because they're in pain, that they are not, in fact, in pain.
If you tell a patient they need a script, write out the script, without needing to be prompted by the patient.
Don't pretend you're a super hero, lines like "Never fear, Dr XXXXX is here" aren't even endearing when you are a good doctor.
Finally, if the patient has been crying the entire time they've been in your office, don't send them on their way with a cheery "Have a wonderful day!" - it makes you look like an arsehole.

This handy list brought to you by a single visit to a single doctor. He was that good.

Things I'd like to see - Traditional Nation Signs

2010-10-18T14:55:00.000+11:00

I've got a pretty reasonable handle on the towns and rivers and other geographic features of the bits of the east coast of Australia that I've travelled around. If someone mentions a town, I've probably got at least a vague idea of where it is. This is almost exclusively because as I've driven around, I've seen signs that tell me which town I'm driving through, or could turn left to reach, which river I'm crossing, and which mountains are around abouts. It's knowledge by osmosis.

On the other hand, I can tell you two fifths of bugger all about the lands of the peoples who were here before the Poms decided to send their criminals over here. I decided that this was a distinct gap in my knowledge, and went looking for instructive materials. One of the first things I found was this map. I haven't shown it here, because I think that might be breaching copyright, but you can look at it at that site (or download the pdf here for detail). The first thing that will hit you is that it's a mug's game to try to memorise who lived where, or even all the names of the nations - just like no-one thinks anyone is going to memorise all the towns and rivers in the country.

So want I want to see is signs on major highways and arterial roads, the same places that have signs for towns and other landmarks, letting me know which traditional territory I'm in now. So that same osmosis can work for me. So that we can all become familiar with the local peoples.

You may be wondering why I care about what may seem to be just historical lines on a map. It's because it isn't about where people lived, it's about who people are. When we refer to those people who were here before, we use white man's words to describe them - Indigenous, Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islanders. We do it because we don't actually know who they are. Most people (myself included) don't even really understand the structure of their identities, much less know the names of them. I know that they identify loosely with large groups, such as Koori and Murri, but I can't even rattle off these broad identities (beyond these two) without looking it up, never mind more specific national identities. Fixing this is on my to-do list, but me learning about it isn't going to change much. I want to see this information floating out there, everywhere, so that if a person takes the time to tell me (or anyone else) who they are, the names they use won't fly away the way unfamiliar terms tend to do. They'll mean something, they'll ring a bell.

I'm also not looking for some grand gesture of massive funding to go out and put a bazillion signs all over the place. Just a commitment to make it happen over time. To start somewhere and keep going until the sign telling me that this is Tharawal land is as familiar as the one telling my I'm driving down Mt Ousley. This isn't history, this is who people are, here and now, and it's shameful that none of know the first thing about them.

Hard or soft wired?

2010-10-15T13:26:00.000+11:00

Gender is a messy bloody business. People are really, really invested in the notion that gender differences are hard wired in the brain. I suppose it has a lot to do with identity. Most people consider their gender as a pretty significant portion of their identity. I don't think too many people feel terribly comfortable with the notion that something so central to their being is largely conditional on what the current social dogma says about gender roles.

I know I tend to buy into selective reinforcement type thinking. I'm pretty good at multi-tasking, because I'm female. I'm pretty good at science & maths because I happen to be. I'm tend to analyse relationships and engage in a lot of self reflection because I'm a woman. I tend to drink and swear too much when I go out because.... some other reason. My traits that are generally associated with "female" I attribute to my gender, whilst my traits that are traditionally "male" are for some other reason.

People get very worked up if you suggest that it might not be true that the having or not having of a Y chromosome in and of itself actually affects much about our personalities, our patterns of thought and our entertainment preferences. On the other hand, some other people get equally worked up if you suggest that some of these things might, in fact, have some hard wired component. Very few people seem to take the position that I feel is closest to the truth: that we have absolutely no idea how much, if any, of our gender identity is hard wired.

I think we should proceed on the basis that we have no idea. What would such a strategy involve? It would be pretty straightforward - you'd offer kids toys of all kinds, but not insist that they play with toys of all kinds. If the girl likes "girl" toys, so be it. If the boy likes girl toys, equally cool. If the kid likes a little from column A and a little from column B, also fine. We don't need to bring our kids up gender neutral, we need to bring them up gender accepting.

This is not much of a shift. My kids play with maybe 25% of the toys they have. I have a hard time guessing which things they'll like. So just ignoring gender roles in toy choice is unlikely to make much difference in the hit rate.

We need to proceed on the assumption that we have no idea how strong or weak any given child's capacity for empathy is, and to encourage and assist all of them equally to develop it. We should assume that any given child's language will develop somewhere between 1 and 4 years of age, and not set expectations based on presence or absence of a penis.

However, as they develop empathy, language, a focussed or more multi-tasking approach, a love of sequins or a passion for denim, we should stop comparing this to some arbitrary model of What Boys Do and What Girls Do. We know it's arbitrary, because these models are vastly different across cultures and across time. Pink was a boy's colour in the Western world only a couple of centuries ago. The idea of it being a girl's colour is either non-existent or very recent in most Asian cultures.

What would happen? I don't know. We might find that there are "girl brains" and "boy brains" but that they may not map terribly clearly with Y chromosomes. I think what we would actually find is a spectrum, with most people having attributes traditionally ascribed to both genders. But I really don't know what shape the distribution would be. It might be pretty flat, or it might turn out to have peaks in certain clusters of traits. So what would people call themselves? What would this mean for people who identify as trans gender? I also don't really know. I'd like to think that the idea of gender might become more subtle - not a great big stamp on your forehead that designates you B or G. It might recognise that some people are genuinely neither, or both, and see that as no big deal.

What do we have to lose? My collection of traits still belong to me, regardless of how they came about. I'm still free to identify as female. I might start thinking that perhaps I'm good at multi-tasking because I get bored easily, and so doing more than one thing at a time works for me, rather than because I fail to possess a Y chromosome. I might also expect my sons to be as self-reflective as my daughter, but equally accept that one may be more so than another.

Most shockingly of all, people might manage to find the things they love and excel at, regardless of whether it is a thing expected of their penis-possession status. How is this bad? How does this threaten us?

Letters to Santa

2010-10-14T13:04:00.000+11:00

It's the middle of October, the Aussie dollar is near as damnit to parity with the greenback, and it's seriously time to start thinking about Christmas.

This post was designed for my family, primarily - to write your letters to Santa in the comments section! But then I figured I may have some friends who could use some assistance in getting their letters to Santa delivered effectively, and what the hell, I'd love to know what everyone wants for Christmas! I'm opting for a huge list, that can't possibly be met, so that I'm not just providing a "buy me this" list. But if you have just one special thing you'd love to receive, put that in the comments too.

In the interests of eradicating boring gifts, write your Santa letters!

Things I'd like for Christmas, in no particular order

Outdoor speakers for the bathroom
One or two of my more beloved items of clothing copied by a dressmaker
Some jewelery that will go with pink-ish clothes
Babysitting
Funky & cool knitting patterns
Ceiling fans
Tablecloths that cover the whole dining room table, and preferably don't need ironing
Japanese dinner ware
Music - I may need to do some research on exactly what music I'd like.

That seems suitably ludicrously excessive. Now, what do you guys want? Family, I'm looking at you! But everyone, what's on your list this year, what would you like to receive? Or even, what do you seriously never want to unwrap again?

Blogging from the bubble

2010-10-13T17:46:00.001+11:00

I was looking forward to the school holidays. I had Plans. I knew it was going to be a bit hectic, and the boys would probably watch more movies than I'd like, but there were a few key things we were going to do that was going to make sure it was a worthwhile holiday.

But the universe would have none of it. First, Ben got chicken pox. That was ok, it was the last week of school, and he wasn't very sick. Then, just as he was getting over the pox, he got a throat infection that landed him in Emergency on the Monday of the first week. He was ok - nothing that a massive dose of steroids wouldn't fix, but it screwed up his social life no end. Then he kindly passed that throat infection on to me, which didn't quite knock me out, but definitely knocked me down.

I managed one reasonable day in which we saw friends. The kids had fun and we had a sensational sushi night. At least our holiday highlight was a thumpingly good one.

Then I started to get a little ill again, and I thought it was the tail end of the throat infection. Not so. Eventually the little red spots started to appear, then I crashed completely. Chicken pox. I was very tempted to inflict you with the full litany of symptoms, but suffice it to say that there are systemic as well as rash-related symptoms, and one should remember that the rash gets everywhere. Think on that while you see how it looked on my face.

Now think about that everywhere. Ice packs were involved, people.

And it got worse. This was two days later.

Yes, that's as painful as it looks. That stuff about pox rash being itchy? Rubbish. The spots on my back were itchy, and I barely noticed it. It was all about the pain. And it went on and on. It's still going on, 9 days since the first symptom and 7 days since I hit the bed. I'm still in bed, but definitely on the improve. Why am I telling you this? Because there is a vaccine available for adults. If you didn't have the pox as a kid, get your immunity tested, and get vaccinated if need be, because this is a special kind of hell you don't want to go through.

On a lighter note, it was Crazy Hair Day at school today, and Ben was sent off, suitably crazied.

He was pretty chuffed, despite being told he looked like a girl. He's promised me next time he won't defend this with "I've never seen a girl with 6 pony tails straight over her head", but rather "Saying I look like a girl is the same as saying 'I look like a person'". (His wording on both counts, not mine.)

And no doubt Blogger is still going to left align these photos rather than centering them as they appear here in my editor, and I'm sorry, but I don't have the energy to wrestle with it. I'll just watch the rain instead.

And another thing....

2010-09-30T14:55:00.000+10:00

I'm not a fan of capitalism, at least not in its current form. I have a long list of gripes, but the one that's bugging me right at the moment is the idea of "buying power".

The idea that the more money you have, and the more money you spend, the cheaper things get for you sucks in every possible way.

In the business arena, it's highly anti-competitive. Small companies trying to start up and compete with bigger companies have to pay more for exactly the same products and services. They also usually receive much poorer customer service. (If you've ever dealt with both the corporate and small business arms of a telco, you'll know exactly what I mean.)

This then flows directly on to consumers. It's ok if you live in an area where the really big companies want to be, but if you don't, you get to pay more for everything too. And surprise, surprise, the places where the big companies aren't are very highly correlated with the places people earn less.

I understand that there's a reduced cost of sale to a big company, but this doesn't even come close to accounting for the differences in pricing. For starters, it's not at all uncommon for companies to "buy business". They'll go into a large organisation and offer their product at less than cost in order to get the business, and since they still have to make enough money to stay afloat, the costs of this practice are passed on to their smaller customers.

Also, when companies get big enough not just to control the demand for their product, but also to control the upstream providers, you see these huge companies dictating their own costs at the expense of providers. I know I'm heading into dangerous territory here, but Bob Katter is right about the impact that the massive dominance of Coles and Woolworths has had on farmers. And you may have noticed that the price of fresh food hasn't dropped to us small value customers. The wholesale price of milk dropped substantially, but the retail price rose.

There are all sorts of other ways that big companies are advantaged over small ones, and the net effect is always to increase costs to consumers. I do believe in competition, but all competitions need rules and regulations, or you just get bullies. Where competition works as it should, we see prices fall and service improve (fibre telco services in cities in would be an example of this). Where competition is strangled by oligopolies or insufficiently regulated monopolies (think supermarkets for the former, and copper telco services for the latter) we see prices rise, and service levels drop.

The heavily skewed pricing structures we see in many industries are a major barrier to the type of competition that results in good outcomes for the population at large.

Unfortunately, the thing that annoys me the most about capitalism is that I don't know enough about economics to be able to present solutions or alternatives. I know that putting prices on things that are currently not valued by our system (such as environmental costs, human life costs and so on) are a start, but I simply don't know enough to envisage what the next economic step is. I know it clearly isn't anything that's gone before. What I want to see is people discussing where we go next, instead of accepting capitalism as an inevitability, and countering any criticism with "What, do you want us all to be communists?".

Prawn, mango and cashew salad

2010-09-28T20:25:00.001+10:00

I'm blogging tonight's dinner in the hope that I might remember what I put in it, and remember what I wanted to change after eating it.

Ingredients:

Green prawns, shelled & deveined
Blood orange, peeled and segmented
Nam doc mai mangoes, peeled, seeded and sliced
Lebanese cucumbers, peeled and sliced
Iceberg lettuce, shredded
Snow peas
Carrot sticks
Tomatoes, chopped into wedges
Half a bunch of coriander, chopped
Cashews

I marinated the prawns in garlic and lime & chilli infused macadamia oil. Everything else is tossed together well (to make sure the yummy bits are evenly distributed, and to coat everything in mango juice). Fry the prawns and serve on top of the salad.

I served the salad with kipfler potato oven chips, in the hope that I didn't get too many wails of horror from the children when they saw the salad.

I underdid the prawns a little, and I might ditch the tomatoes next time. If you don't have chilli sensitive kids to deal with, it would be lovely with some chilli infused oil added to it as a dressing. The cashews are gorgeous in it, and leaving out the prawns wouldn't be much of a loss - tasty veg alternative. (Which is what the kids ate, they boycotted the prawns tonight.)

The kids ate enough of it to not die of starvation, in fact, it was reasonably well received given that it was a pile of mixed up salad. (Oh, the horrors of salad mixed together making a child work to get at the bits they deign to eat!)

A person is not their job

2010-09-27T21:37:00.000+10:00

I'm not going to comment specifically on #groggate, because I think Grog's Gamut did it perfectly well himself.

What's pissing me off is the whole notion that once you are employed, everything you say and do, 24/7 is owned by your employer. This results in a lot of brokenness. It means that companies tell their employees that they can't tell anyone (at the pub, or online) that their employer sucks. It means that people who dream up some invention can have the patent taken from them, even if they used no job specific knowledge to come up with it. It means that expressing opinions anywhere that their employer might hear/read it, on their own time, as a private citizen, can get people sacked. I think this is fundamentally wrong. Employment isn't an ownership relationship.

I understand that this is partially a consequence of our society trying to get to its collective head around new media, and whether or not saying something on Twitter is the same or different to saying it at the pub. What I don't understand is why corporations are answering the questions without consultation with the rest of us.

The other thing I don't understand is why companies all assume that the public can't differentiate between an employee and their employing organisation. Honestly, my opinion of a company is unlikely to change much based on the comments of any individual employee. There are disgruntled employees, there are employees of all political persuasions working for most organisations (except possibly The Australian), there are alcoholics, drug addicts, misogynists, volunteers, feminists, and people with all sorts of barrows to push. I'm not going to judge any company based on one employee being any of those things.

Which is not to say I'll never judge an organisation based on some of the predominant traits of a large proportion of their staff. AFL, NRL, I'm looking at you. Patterns of behaviour may indicate real issues. But that is really, really different from Joe Blogger and his opinions on the election, or someone's ill-conceived tweet. Why can't the company simply issue a "We do not endorse this opinion" statement? If it was a really bad gaffe, they could go so far as to say "We strongly disagree with/are disgusted by this opinion, but support the right of employees to have their own lives outside of work hours". Can the public really not understand that any given person is not identical with their employer?

The line between person and employee may need to be renegotiated, but I'm tired of having the new world order dictated by the likes of Telstra, The Age and The Australian.

Elissa's first pigtails

2010-09-26T15:19:00.008+10:00

Elissa's hair is getting longer, and becoming annoying. Because I'm a terrible parent, I haven't managed to get it cut, so I bought some hair elastics instead. Today we wrangled her hair into its first pigtails. It's worth being a slack parent to get this level of cute.

And since there was a camera about, Charlie thought he'd show off the side burns he's been working on.

Farewell Powderfinger

2010-09-26T10:00:00.000+10:00

Powderfinger are among the latest to announce their disbanding and do a farewell tour. I will be utterly unsurprised when, in a few years, they announce their reunion tour, however, I was happy to go along to the farewell tour, because their last few albums have been a little dull, and I was keen to see a greatest hits show.

Jet were the support act. They sounded like Jet. It was really quite odd seeing them at the Entertainment Centre, it was all wrong.

Powderfinger are a technically brilliant band, but as @The_Ausmerican said on Twitter:

@shonias Powderfinger are so ... dry on stage! They sound like a recording!

I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, I rather like a band that sounds so tight live. The visuals kind of reflect the focus on the music.

But they did have some pretty coloured lights.

We were not in the best of seats, but we did have a great view of the packed house.

They played a few songs from recent albums, which resulted in me singing "I like your old stuff better than your new stuff", but then they made me very happy:

This is one of my favourite Powderfinger songs ever. It was awesome.

Then there was the singalong bit. The compulsory Audience Participation. And Powderfinger did it right. (Unlike Jet, who chose a song nobody knew to get the audience to sing along to...)

There's no video for that, because it was very messy.

It was heaps of fun. They played stuff from all over their back catalogue, but I've always has a soft spot for Double Allergic, and so I was pretty chuffed when they played a second song from it.

I had a great night, and I'm looking forward to the reunion tour.

A single rose

2010-09-25T15:53:00.006+10:00

Last year I planted two climbing roses. A few weeks back, I noticed one rosebud on one of them.

As you can see, we have a bit of an aphid problem. Sadly for the rose, my gardening philosophy is that if you can't fight the aphids off on your own, don't talk to me about them. Nevertheless, the bud survived.

Eventually it made it to a fully fledged rose.

And then the sun came out.

I wish I could tell you whether it has any scent, but it's about 7 feet above the ground, and I can't get anywhere near it. Hopefully, this won't be the last, and I'll be able to report what kind of scent it has.

In which I resort to text book parenting

2010-09-20T16:33:00.007+10:00

I have mentioned a number of times that I suck at toilet training. The story of my efforts with Elissa sort of trailed off, which is probably because the toilet training itself sort of trailed off. Sadly, the accidents haven't stopped, using my preferred method of ignoring it and hoping it would fix itself.

A week or so ago, I had some brownies, so I went with some outright bribery and told Elissa she could have a brownie if she came home from day care without having wet herself. Three days in a row we had a completely dry Elissa. Then the brownies ran out.

So, I have finally dragged out the good old sticker chart.

I have 33 days worth of chart. I wonder what the odds are of anything changing by the end of that time?

Fat and health

2010-09-15T13:20:00.003+10:00

I'm still thinking about fat. The intense responses to the idea of fat acceptance are often justified in terms of health. The more I think about this, the more, intertwined reasons there are for calling bullshit on it.

Firstly, there's the science. All the research on obesity. Lots and lots of it is sponsored by the diet industry. Oddly, this doesn't seem to bother the medicos citing it. Also, more transparently, the premise of obesity research is to treat obese people as a uniform group of people. To look at obese people and compare them with not obese people. In many respects, health outcomes are worse for obese people. However, as well all know, correlation is not causation. Just as the strong correlation between the population of storks and number of babies born in Hamburg fails as evidence against babies being born via their mamas' vaginas, this correlation on its own doesn't mean obesity is the root cause of all evils.

I'm completely down with diet and lifestyle being correlated with good health - in fact I also believe that it is partially causative. (Many people know perfectly well that their ill-health has nothing whatever to do with diet and lifestyle, so it can't be more than a partial causation.) Also, because weight loss is sold as the goal for everything, and the marker of health, there is a correlation between obesity and poor diet and lifestyle. The direction of causation is not so clear though. Once you are fat, if eating healthy and exercising sensibly don't produce weight loss, why would you bother? It's clearly not working anyway, since weight is health. I can't help wondering if body fat was ignored completely by everyone, how much healthier many fat people would be. Still, here I am focussing on fat people. Just like the research. No-one seems to round up all the people with similar diet and lifestyle, irrespective of weight, and look at health outcomes. Plenty of not fat people have crappy lifestyles and crappy health outcomes, but no-one glares at them when they eat in public. So I call bullshit on fat = unhealthy.

Also, the only lifestyle that's really been looked at independent of the starting weight of the people is the Dieting lifestyle. (I use big D "Diet" to refer to weight loss regimes, rather than the stuff you eat.) That's been shown to be really bad for you - with increased risk of stroke and heart disease. It's really bad for you, because it produces yo-yo weight gain and loss, and that's definitely worse than constantly being fat or thin. So I call bullshit on being told to go on a Diet for health reasons.

Moving on to practical matters. The public shaming of fat people causes bad health. It stops fat people going to the doctor, because they know they're just going to be told that whatever is wrong with them is because they are fat. They are far less likely to have preventative health checks, because they know the doctor is going to tell them they're fat (in case they'd managed to forget this fact for a millisecond). It means that doctors treat people with less respect, and with less actual medicine, as it happens. 95% of people can't lose weight and keep it off, so doctors prescribing that as a cure-all is simply bad practice. So I call bullshit on the idea that making people feel bad about being fat will lead them to be healthier.

From the practical to the moral. Who said healthy was the be all and end all to all arguments anyway? Everyone has the right to decide what priority they want to assign to what degree of health. Apparently one is a hard working moral citizen if one gets a stress induced illness (even if the source of stress is a result of choosing high income over low stress occupations) but totally devoid of morals if one chooses to focus on other aspects of lifestyle at the expense of one's health. Sports people are allowed to destroy their joints requiring surgery and more, and are hailed as heroes. I call bullshit on lack of health being viewed as a moral failing.

Finally, I've heard more than one person point out that the upside of cancer (or other life threatening illnesses) is weight loss. I can't think of better evidence that the claim that fat hatred is all about health is utter, utter bullshit.

And when I say "fat people" as though they are other, it's because I'm an in-betweeny. I'm well and truly obese by medical definitions, but I can still sometimes buy clothes in mainstream shops. So some of the fat hatred (and all the body shame) come my way, but I realise I don't cop it as bad as lots of other people.

Also, if you want to change your diet (with a little "d") to improve your health or make other lifestyle changes because they make you feel better, that's cool. If you lose weight as a result, that's also cool. If you don't lose weight as a result, that's exactly as good as if you do. For a fabulous piece on how talking about Diets affects other people, have a read of this Spilt Milk article.

The "wrong" shape

2010-09-14T13:29:00.004+10:00

Last Friday night, the lovely Dr Samantha Thomas invited me (and many others, including Mim) to the Bodies Abound event in Newtown. There was some visual art, and 8 spoken presentations which varied from folks reading aloud to performance. (Or something like that, not that reading aloud isn't some kind of performance...)

It was a really fabulous night that really celebrated every body shape and shared the pain of being the "wrong" shape. There were fat people, skinny people and trans people. Sadly I can't share the things that were presented that night as I don't think there are any online versions of any of it.

Instead, I've got a small selection of links to people talking about various aspects have the "wrong" shape. I hope you can find some time to read them and they make you feel better about your body, no matter what shape it is.

Lots of the people at Bodies Abound were from the Fat Studies Conference that (the also very lovely) Dr Sam Murray organised at Macquarie Uni.

Fat Heffalump presented this amazing piece. It made me cry.

Nicholosophy speaks on how it's different when you're a bloke. It's different, but that doesn't make it fun.

Definatalie has a different story again. Another perspective, which surprised and interested me.

Fat is obviously not the only way to be "wrong" shaped, you can also have the "wrong" physical gender. This is a wonderful piece from the conservative father of a transgender child.

There are some summaries of the Fat Studies Conference out there too.

Obesity Timebomb

Definatalie

I'll add any others I come across. Please, go, read, feel better. :)

Update 21/9/10 And here is another one:
Sam Murray's piece from Bodies Abound. I laughed, and it was supportive.

Elissa, aged two and three quarters

2010-09-11T08:08:00.002+10:00

In the car yesterday:

Elissa: At day care, C always says "poo poo". That's not funny, it's just rude.

Me: I'm glad you have such a sophisticated sense of humour

Elissa: Yeah, cause when I fart, it makes a sort of noise, and that's funny.

--

Also in the car yesterday:

Elissa: When I grow up, I'm going to be a daddy.

Me: Well, you can't actually be a daddy. The only difference between a mummy and a daddy is whether you're a girl or a boy. They're both parents. But you don't have to be a mummy, you can grow up to be a woman. [Explanation of difference between woman and mummy.]

Elissa: Oh yeah, womans are funny. I'm going to grow up to be a woman.

--

One morning this week:

Elissa: [from the bedroom] MUMMYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!

[Crash is out of bed, and so opens her bedroom door for her]

Elissa: [Slams door] I SAID MUMMY! [Much howling and gnashing of teeth]

[Repeat - THREE TIMES!]

Finally, Ben opens her door and she gives up and goes down stairs with him.

--

A week or two ago:

Elissa: Ben, can you make my breakfast?

Ben: Mummy can make your breakfast.

Elissa: [Sadly, with resignation] Asleep.

Ben: OK, I'll make your breakfast.

(I almost felt guilty. Mostly I was laughing.)

The first mango of the season

2010-08-31T20:19:00.003+10:00

Tonight we had the first mangoes of the season. Not even spring (quite), and we have had mangoes! Ok, not exactly Kensington Prides, these were little cooking mangoes that I spotted in the supermarket for a ludicrously small price.

Easy to peel and slice up, they look very pretty in the bowl.

I'd already decided on rice paper rolls for dinner, so I figured I'd see how these went into the mix. I use a random selection of ingredients for these, but tonight's were:

rump steak (cooked and then sliced and marinated in soy sauce and sesame oil)
carrot
cucumber
shallots
red capsicum
mango
celery
mint leaves
Vietnamese mint leaves
rice vermicelli
sliced ham (for small kids who won't eat the steak)
hoisin sauce
sweet chilli sauce
hot chilli sauce

We constructed them at the table, to general approval. I even got kisses and multiple thank yous after dinner.

And the mangoes? They're a keeper. They're tart and aromatic and very, very tasty. Perfect for salads. The kids are very keen to have more, and at the price they are now ($1/kg) they can have as many as they want. They even have a tiny stone in them, for maximum bang for your buck. They won't be booting big, fat, yellow, sweet mangoes off their Favourite Fruit pedestal, but they'll be making more appearances in our kitchen.

Election round 2?

2010-08-23T15:42:00.003+10:00

If no-one can break the stalemate, we could go to another election. I know that prospect is horrific to everyone. I just have a few small requests for the next campaign, should there be one.

There should be no TV ads at all from any of the parties. They may send pamphlets and maintain websites.
The AEC should use all previously allocated TV time to educate the public about how our electoral system works. They should explain how parliament functions and how a PM is appointed. They should explain that our two party system is a side effect, not a built in characteristic of our system. They should explain how preferences work. Please, god, make them explain how our preferences work.
All sources of political donations should be made very public. They should be as prominent as other sources of information about the candidates.
Journalists should be banned from any mention of anything not policy related. Ok, that may be a little extreme. They should be required to spend at least as much time/space on policies as on soap opera.
And Q&A should seriously do a Bob Brown, Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott episode.

Yes, yes, I know it will never happen, not even a teensy bit of it. But I've been stunned at the level of ignorance out there. Crash heard someone on a radio station asking how a Green could possibly be elected when we have a two party system. The radio host responded that they'd been wondering that too. *headdesk*

And I can't help wondering what the people who whinged that Gillard replacing Rudd was undemocratic think about Bob Katter holding all the power.

Admin fuck up

2010-08-23T15:02:00.003+10:00

I turned on comment moderation because the spam had become impossible, but the notifications of comments didn't come through. I see a heap of comments taking me to task on stuff - I didn't ignore them on purpose! I'll go look through them and respond, even if it is a touch late.

Respecting beliefs and the right to opinions

2010-08-17T21:02:00.003+10:00

About a month ago there was an ethicist on Hack talking about people's right to opinions (about asylum seekers, as it happens, but the argument is general). She agreed with the general principle that everyone has the right to their opinion, and the right to express it if, and only if, those opinions are not based on fallacies - especially fallacies designed to inspire hatred. In other words, no-one actually has the right to spread hate-filled lies. I tend to agree with her.

Yesterday I was accused of being a bigot, on the basis that I show a "stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from [my] own". I'm pretty confident that I tolerate, and indeed respect, a lot of beliefs that I don't agree with, but it's also fair to say that there are some beliefs that I have absolutely no respect for. Those are beliefs that internally inconsistent.

I've argued and debated all sorts of positions. I know that the belief that underpins my world is that there exists an observable universe, and that we are able to observe it. There are inherent assumptions there that people have challenged, but at this stage I'm running with it. I try to keep the rest of my world view consistent beyond that assumption. When I get caught out in an inconsistency, I have to change my views.

I've known a number of people holding various flavours of religious beliefs who have argued with me over the years, and while they start with some differing assumptions, their beliefs have also been internally consistent. I utterly disagree with them, but I respect their integrity.

None of this is the point here, the point is that I really don't respect, or even tolerate, internally inconsistent beliefs. People who claim, for example, that they believe that personhood starts at conception (thereby making abortion murder) but also support the death penalty. People who claim that any religious text is infallible, and then ignore inconvenient bits of it. People who understand how science works, and yet still claim its results are free from subjectivity. And, well, people who believe we were populated by space aliens and that Good People get a planet when they die.

There has to be some measure by which any person's beliefs can be assessed, or we will all have to respect the beliefs of the Sacred Sect of Brownie Worshippers who honour the Almighty Kodak Box Brownie through the sacrifice of chocolate brownies every Wednesday (who have registered as a religion for tax purposes). I doubt that anyone, actually, respects ALL beliefs. There may be other measures besides internal consistency, and if you have some other rule of thumb, let me know. If you think you respect all beliefs, I suspect I either don't believe you, or don't respect your beliefs.

Incidentally, this was sparked by my utter disrespect for Tony Abbott. I have no idea what his beliefs are, since he changes them so often it makes my head spin. A man that can't even own his religious convictions doesn't meet the criteria for respect.

Tony Abbott - bigot extraordinaire

2010-08-16T22:44:00.002+10:00

Somehow I managed to sit through a full hour of Tony Abbott on Q&A tonight. The picture we got of this would-be PM was amazing. I really didn't expect him to wear his bigotry so clearly on his sleeve.

He made it clear that he considers welfare a scourge. He wants to get people off it as quickly as possible, without any particular regard for why they are on it, and absolutely no recognition that welfare may be productive and enabling people to contribute to the community in myriad ways. As if this wasn't enough, during this conversation he discussed the NT Intervention as a trial to broaden the concept to the whole community. In my opinion, the Intervention should be scrapped altogether, not extended, but that wasn't what disturbed me the most. It was the way he presented his approach - "Let's experiment on these black fellas until we know how to roll it out to white folks" (yes, OK, it's a paraphrase.). Indigenous people didn't rate a mention other than as guinea pigs for the rest of Australia. Unbelievable.

He refused to genuinely engage the concerns of a Liberal voting, Vietnam vet with a gay son. He pulled out the old "Some of my best friends are gay" defence. He apparently recognises that gay people can have relationships, but that Tony himself gets to decide who's allowed to have a "marriage relationship".

He equally refused to engage a disabled woman, running with a pretty similar line. Some of his best friends are disabled. They are also battlers. He's certainly not going to do anything about it.

Boat people also don't rate any agency. When asked about the people in the boats, he spoke about people smugglers. Those fleeing horrific conditions were not addressed at all. Apparently they don't even deserve to be some of his best friends.

And to top it all off, he claimed that he has never made a political decision based on his religious beliefs. There was an avalanche of tweets screaming "What about RU486?". Not to mention his definition of marriage, which is entirely shaped by his religious beliefs. If he won't even admit to the way his religion informs his politics, there is absolutely no way we can believe a single word that comes out of his mouth.

Over and over and over I say, please don't let this man run our country.

Journeys in the wilds of Medicalia

2010-08-10T15:20:00.002+10:00

Last week I took Elissa for another visit to the ophthalmologist, which resulted in much angst, frustration and anger.

The back story to explain how I got to condemning the whole of the medical profession in a single tweet is worthy of sepia tones and darkened edges. When I was a kid (about 18 months old), I had a squint - otherwise known as a turn in the eye. It was corrected with surgery, but I was also found to have a lazy eye. Thus began many, many years of glasses, eye patches and visits to doctors which ended, finally, one afternoon when I was about eight. I sat on the front step of our house and looked at the telegraph pole across the street. I looked at it with and without my glasses, about 30 or 40 times before deciding that I could definitely see better without them, and burying them in the garden. This didn't get me in the shit you may imagine, because my mother had also given up on the palaver at about the same time and quite possibly didn't even notice.

Then when I was twelve, in a fit of Responsible Parenting, my mother took me off to a specialist one more time before I went to high school. He looked at my eyes and listened to my history and got very excited and called in other colleagues. Apparently I had some condition which was genetic (classically dominant, I was told). It resulted in my optic nerve failing to develop correctly and no amount of patching or wearing of glasses could possibly have done anything to change it. He declared that my father had the same problem, and my father suggested he had inherited it from his mother.

We all went away satisfied that we knew what the problem was and that was that.

But like all good soap operas, it doesn't end there. When I was pregnant with Elissa, the mutation was discovered. The geneticist I was seeing felt there was unlikely to be any connection between my genetic eye problem and the mutation on my 15th chromosome, but sent me off to an ophthalmologist who specialises in this sort of thing just to be sure. She declared there was no such thing as the condition I described, and announced that my poor eyesight was due purely to a failure to comply with the patching regimen. (To quote her: "If you're only patching for a couple of hours a day, there's no point even bothering". I was patched all day, every day, for months at a time.) I was Unimpressed. (Anyone who knows my mother, knows that if she agreed to patch, patch she did! There was no question of non-compliance.)

By that time, Charlie had been under the care of a wonderful ophthalmologist at Randwick for nearly a year for his squint, and was being scheduled for surgery. That all went well, and I ignored the unhelpful woman I had seen and time passed. *insert wavy lines, cut to recent past*

This year, we realised Elissa also has a squint - a much smaller one than Charlie. Unlike Charlie, though, she has bad sight in one eye to go with it. And because this is a soap opera, there was a clerical error when the booking was made to see Charlie's doctor, and Elissa was sent to see another doctor. This doctor appears to be an excellent teacher. I say this, because he barely speaks to me, only to whichever registrar is looking after us on the day. I value teaching, but it would be nice if noticed we were in the room. Each time he's seen us, he's asked if he's ever seen us before, and there was no recognition when I said yes.

So far I've doubted a number of the measurements they've taken, and now they've recommended patching. For an hour a day, because, to quote this doctor, "You don't want to patch more than a couple of hours a day, because it affects the development of stereo vision." They suggested 8 weeks of patching, but I can't actually get an appointment for 12 weeks, so the poor kid has to go through this for 12 weeks, with no guarantees of success. And yes, I argued, and asked to see another doctor, and was fobbed off.

The orthoptist was the only person listening at all, and she's scheduled an appointment to see her only at about the half way mark just to make sure there is more than one review in 12 weeks.

I'm furious with this situation. The only reason I haven't been transferred to the doctor I was referred to is territorialism. There is clearly no consensus on patching or how it should be done, but there is no discussion as to the pros and cons. I have no choice but to go ahead with at least one round of patching, because for a small percentage of kids it works, and if I haven't given it a shot, I'm a Bad Parent. Added to that, if I don't give it a shot, I'm a Non-compliant Parent, which makes it hard to get any doctor to provide real treatment.

All the time, my gut tells me she has the same problem as I do, and all this will be for nothing. Unfortunately, I know perfectly well that my gut lacks real evidence, and has been known to be wrong before. So I have to play along until I have enough evidence to make a truly informed decision. I just know that I'm going to have to fight for that evidence, and I don't think it's reasonable that I have to find the energy for the fight as well as the treatment.

Spend spend spend

2010-08-04T14:21:00.003+10:00

Today must have been Catalogue Day. I have an inch high stack of paper advertising to throw in the recycling. I flicked through it all to make sure there was nothing at a good price that I was already intending to buy - there wasn't.

The DJs catalogues though - wow! Two of them, one of which was the size and quality of a mid to high range magazine! The big one was the fashion one - the little one was merely homewares. I looked through the fashion one - not one single item that I looked at and thought "Ooooh, I'd like that." A couple of things I thought "Maybe it'd look ok, depends on the cut". That's it. And then I got to the afterthought that is the men's section. What are they doing to those male models? They are all photographed as they are about to fall over. Not a single one looks like he's in a stable position. Oh, unless he has a woman draped on him.

I was also slightly amused at the excessively manly man stance of the dude in the cream coloured cable knit cardigan.

I'm not sure what the subliminal message is here - men are unstable until they have a woman to hold up and look after? Or just that no matter how expensive it is, a cream cardy is never going to make you look like a macho man?

I've got the better part of half a tree in my lounge room trying to sell me stuff I don't need, and in most cases, don't even want. Makes that big lump of land somewhere out of Sydney look even more attractive, just to hide from the constant demands for me to spend.

What obligation does the media have?

2010-08-01T21:00:00.005+10:00

I'm just wondering, if the people of Australia vote in Tony Abbott's lot because the media has completely failed to even report, let alone analyse, any policies, can we mount a class action against the media for neglecting duty of care?

I can't help feeling that the media needs to be held accountable for presenting an election campaign as a battle over who throws the best slurs and what's going on in intra-party politics this week. I mean, yes, the Labor party is still settling after the leadership change, but they are no worse than the Libs were last November after the Turnbull ousting. Both parties are equally capable of shooting themselves in the foot internally, and the media should be acknowledging that.

In the end, I don't care who leaked what or how many times someone can say "fair dinkum"*, I care what they are going to do if someone gives them the keys. I have deep and terrifying suspicions about what Abbott will do, but I can't actually verify them, because I've seen no policy from him. A few (no doubt non-core) promises from him whose funding has not been explained, but no actual policies. He might have them, of course. I know Julia has some, because I've seen a few on Twitter. You'd never guess it by watching TV or reading the newspaper. And so far Bob Brown only has opinions on which part of the voting form you should use, if MSM is to be believed.

So, I say that media should be regarded as an essential service in a democracy, and should be obliged to provide the basic services a democracy needs. Holding out for policy analysis might be too much, but demanding that at least equal space and prominence be allocated to reporting of policy as to party political bullshit during an election campaign seems to be necessary. And a bloody sad state of affairs it is too, that media owners have pushed journalism to this. Well, them and media consumers who buy more tacky headlines than indepth analysis.

Remember, friends don't let friends vote for Tony Abbott (or above the line).

*Ok, yes, I do care how many times someone can say "fair dinkum" - if it's more than once it's fucking infuriating. Even once is tedious, most of the time.

Got something to sell?

2010-07-31T15:21:00.003+10:00

On election day I'll be having a bit of a stall (sharing with some others) at the gala day at our school. I'm gonna be selling a few knitted things, but I don't have a lot. I was wondering if anyone had any handmade items they'd like to give me on consignment. If I sell enough of your stuff to make it worthwhile, I might hit you up for $5 or so to go towards paying for the stall, but not if you only sell $10 worth of stuff... Let me know if you're interested, even if it's just one thing you've made and then decided that you don't know what to do with it. You might pick enough cash to buy some more materials!

Anger

2010-07-31T10:16:00.003+10:00

I've been thinking a lot about anger lately. It haunts our family with somewhat greater frequency than I would like, and I'm trying to teach a small boy how to handle his anger. I've always struggled to explain how to deal with anger, because I don't often have a problem with it, and I have trouble identifying why. So I've really expended some time and energy on working out what I do to avoid anger, what I don't do when I fail to avoid it, and how it all relates to what's actually happening in the world around me.

One huge confounding factor in any discussion of anger is that we mean a number of things when we say "I'm angry". We mean we're pissed off - an intellectual conclusion that a situation is unacceptable and intolerable, and we may also mean we are feeling the emotion of anger. The problem here is that while being pissed off is often entirely valid, productive and an important agent of positive change, feeling anger just disengages our higher order brain functions and generally makes us unpleasant to be around. It's the latter I'm talking about here, I've no gripe with being pissed off. The other confusion, is that anger is a sliding scale from the emotional equivalent of "Fuck that's annoying" to absolute blind rage.

The road from "Fuck that's annoying" to blind rage is the critical aspect of what's called "anger management". A lot of the conventional wisdom talks about not burying anger, about the dangers of suppressing it. I've often wondered if I'm just suppressing all this rage and one day it's all going to erupt in some Hollywood movie climax. But as I've been looking at my behaviour more carefully I've realised that I don't bury anger at all. I've not been taught (as I know some people have) that I must not ever show any anger at all. I feel, and show, "Fuck that's annoying" a lot. The thing is, I rarely move beyond that level, and it's not because I bury it, it's because I ignore it and let it wither on the vine, rather than nurturing it and making it grow. That sounds very noble and deliberate, but it's neither. It's just a habit. When I get angry, I distract myself by either going straight into problem solving mode or by constructing reasons why the thing that made me angry might be reasonable or understandable or whatever. The anger just sort of fades away as a side effect. I might still be pissed off, but the angry chemicals have gone from my brain.

Of course, this all sounds very nice, but it obviously doesn't always work. There are things that piss me off, have no resolution, and I really, really struggle to conceive of a way to frame them that's other than infuriating. Then I focus on the anger, and it grows. It goes past "Fuck this is annoying" to "How dare they!". At which point righteous indignation kicks in. At about this time, I become especially unpleasant to be around. My ability to think clearly and rationally is definitely impaired, and I need a completely external distraction to let it go - sleep or a total change of environment with genuine (and reasonable) demands on my brain.

Once, I've been so angry I've gone way past "How dare they!" into "Immobilised with rage". It's a totally useless state of mind, unless fight or flight actually represent useful strategies. In this case, they didn't, and I was as useless as I've ever been. I couldn't think. It was like living in the middle of a whirlwind, except only my brain was spinning.

What's worse, the further down the road to blind rage you've gone, or the longer you've stayed where you are, the longer it takes to get back to zero and the more sensitive you are to further aggravations. Anger is a feedback loop, and once you get more than about half way to blind rage, it takes an hour or more of no feedback at all to get back to zero. That can be all but impossible in some situations, and people can end up almost permanently angry. Even thinking about an irritating thing can bring back the full anger response. I've had days like that, in a general sense, but also, that one time I hit "Immobilised with rage" it was months, maybe even years, before I could think about it without getting angry again.

Anger is not a helpful emotion unless you need to be geared up for fight or flight. Anger can save your life in a physical struggle, but if you need to think your way out, anger fogs your brain. So I find myself getting very frustrated when I hear "You have a right to be angry". Of course you have a "right" to be angry, in the same way you have a "right" to be scared, but that doesn't mean it's helpful. What people mean by that, I think, is that you have a right to be pissed off, which I completely agree with (in appropriate scenarios), but by conflating the two, anger is glorified and justified. Instead of anger triggering thought, problem solving and positive action, it only triggers more anger.

This is an excessively long ramble, but I need to clarify this to come up with better strategies for teaching my kids how to stop anger running their lives. And "When I'm Feeling Angry" really doesn't cut it. (I really can't imagine how you can feel angry without letting it hurt others in any meaningful way.)

For the record

2010-07-29T20:39:00.002+10:00

I feel the need to record for posterity the fact that Ben and his two besties call each other "Bo Bo", "Mo Mo" and "Jo Jo". This is so that when he denies it in the future, I have proof.

Family secrets

2010-07-23T23:59:00.002+10:00

On the way to school Friday morning, Ben asked about which schools are where in our general vicinity, and then which high school he would go to. I have no idea which high school he would go to anyway, but there is the added confusion that we have a family fantasy that we will build the uber-house somewhere on a large lump of land and live with our extended family.

Since walking to school is all about chatting, I told him about our vague plans and what they might mean to him. To his great credit, after I explained that moving away still allows for train trips to mates' houses and Internetz connections, he was totally down with it. He was enthusiastic about having more time and space to play with his siblings.

Ok, I admit, this child is the offspring of space aliens, because there is no way I made a kid who takes the suggestion that he move 2 hours away from his best friend in his stride, and then sees spending more time with his siblings as a bonus.

For some reason, I'm taking this as a positive sign that we should take this option seriously. Of course, this may be because blaming Ben is a really easy way out.

No, I'm sorry, there is no point to this post. But if you feel like donating a lazy mil to our cause, I'll take it. Failing that, I guess we'll continue to agonise over pros and cons forever. That, and design floor plans. I'm very good at designing floor plans.

Overheard

2010-07-23T22:26:00.001+10:00

The conversation in my lounge room this evening:

Ben: What will you do if I win?

Charlie: If you win, I'll hate you and if you lose I'll love you. So if you win, you lose and if you lose, you win.

I kid you not. This is exactly what transpired. I honestly don't know if Charlie (aged 5) actually understood this statement.

Quickie scarf

2010-07-13T21:03:00.003+10:00

I bought some purple ~~rope~~ ~~wool~~ acrylic yarn to make myself a quick scarf. I was going to make this scarf I found on Ravelry, but it looked awful with this stuff. Instead, I decided to use a modification of the shrug I made. I started Sunday evening, and finished it today. I didn't even knit all that much. Very, very quick and only one 50g ball of Moda Vera Hope which I paid a huge $5 for.

It's not elegant, just all loopy and snuggly and warm.

This is the world's easiest pattern:

Cast on 11 stitches.

Knit 2 rows.

K1, *YO, K2 together*, repeat *..* until the last stitch, K1

Repeat that row until you have only enough wool for 3 rows.

Knit 2 rows.

Cast off.

Weave in yadda yadda.

A doddle, in other words.

And I've got some other wool which I'll use for the "Oh No" scarf.

Can't blog. Knitting.

2010-07-12T22:13:00.005+10:00

I've got my knitting mojo on, and have been knitting at night instead of blogging. I finally finished the bolero cardigan I was knitting for Elissa. It's a bit big, and the sleeves are folded up in the photo, so you can't see the cuffs. It should still fit next year. It was an easy knit (a pattern I found on Red Heart), all stocking stitch and simple knit stitch decorative edging. It doesn't matter if you like it, she adores it. I'm having trouble making her take it off.

As you can see, dirty clothes that clash violently are no object.

I also finished off a very simple headband for Elissa, which she also loves. It's knitted sort of sideways - 40-odd stitches and about 5 rows. It's stocking stitch, but I like the reverse side better. You can't see it, because she refused to stand still.

Clearly I was being tiresome....

But she's still wearing the cardi....

Enrol enrol enrol!

2010-07-09T18:39:00.002+10:00

And just to round out the political posts for the day - are you correctly enrolled to vote?

Have you turned 18 since the last election? Have you moved house since the last election?

The election looks like it's about to be called, and once it is, you have only THAT DAY to enrol, or 3 days to change addresses. So get on over to the electoral commission and make sure your details are correct. You really can't join in the whinging if you didn't even vote.

My "concerns" about asylum seekers

2010-07-09T11:11:00.003+10:00

Julia Gillard has made her speech about asylum seekers, and the media and the opposition have pulled it apart in all the usual ways. I have to admit that I've only seen the media reports of Abbott's responses, because I can't bear listening to him in person. None of it, speech or response, was very edifying.

However, Hack looked with some more care at the queue jumping argument, and that, combined with such information as GetUp have provided previously, has clarified my "concerns" about asylum seekers.

Gillard has publicly recognised a little more complexity in the issue than previous leaders have, but still not nearly enough. The constant portrayal of people smugglers as evil money grubbers who risk people's lives to help rich people jump the refugee queue (populated with virtuous and worthy asylum seekers) is a ridiculous over-simplification. The queues certainly exist, and Hack had a story about a girl who came to Australia from the Sudan via just such a queue (that link is an mp3 of the interview). It's also true that for every person who arrives by boat and is granted refugee status, one person is not taken from those queues. But before we go condemning those who arrive by boat and those who bring them, a few things need to be considered.

The fact that boat arrivals displace those in other queues is a government policy, not some law of nature. We take a comparatively small number of refugees on a global scale, and the government could choose to take boat arrivals over and above that number if they so wished. Whether this is good policy or not, at the least Gillard should be acknowledging it as policy.

There is an assumption that the people in the queues have got there by..... I don't know? Magic? People smugglers don't just steer boats, they get people to refugee camps as well. People smugglers got the Dalai Lama out of Tibet. One person's people smuggler is another person's resistance worker.

While the queues certainly exist, not everyone has access to them. It's not reasonable to assume that those arriving by boat had any alternative at all. It may not be possible for them to access the queues, or they may simply have no idea that they exist.

So what of this regional processing centre idea? Well, at some level, it kinda makes sense. It's something of an attempt to create a queue for those who don't have access to it. I think that there is some merit in contributing to a UN run facility which provides reasonable accommodation for people while they are processed in the same way that those in the other queues are processed. It makes sense to consider it in a regional way.

It makes no sense to put it in the poorest country in the region. It makes no sense to announce it before you've got any kind of consensus. It makes no sense to continue to vilify people as "unauthorised arrivals".

I'd like to see a policy that says that processing will be sped up, and that people arriving by boat will be processed the same way as those arriving by plane (without prior refugee status having been granted). I have no problem with those few arrivals determined not to be genuine refugees (by UN standards, not by Howard standards) being promptly returned to their (real) country of origin.

I'd like to see a policy that recognises that people coming from violent places need help to settle here, including mental health assistance. I'd like to see a policy that recognises that where, within our borders, these people are settled matters. They need to be settled in places with appropriate facilities, other people from the same background, social support services targeted at their particular circumstances and sufficient infrastructure to not be putting further stresses on already overcrowded places. All of these things need to be created when they don't exist. Investment in the start of their new life here works for everyone. People who have already been persecuted beyond my understanding get the help they need and deserve, and they are able, in turn, to contribute to our society as they regain their strengths and their lives.

I'd like to see a policy that understands that the only way to actually reduce the number of people arriving here in need of our help, is to address the root causes of the persecution in the first place. This is obviously not always possible, but that doesn't mean we can't have a policy of putting political pressure on places like Sri Lanka to lift their game and stop the abuse of Tamil people.

I'd welcome an approach that comes closer to considering all those looking for asylum on equal terms, regardless of what method they've used to seek that asylum. An approach that ensures that those most in need are considered first. However, such an approach needs global vision, considering the all the variables, including the total number of refugees we accept each year.

Julia, you've done better than "Turn the boats around", but still not enough.

Credit where it's due

2010-07-09T11:00:00.002+10:00

K.Rudd is busy feeling the sand between his toes now, but I think it's worth remembering what he did for Australia in his short time. Think about 2007 - we had a government that had traded almost exclusively on hatred and fear for three terms. The country was committing human rights abuses all over, and was proud of it! Any organisation that received federal government funding was not allowed to speak out against Howard and his party. We were being urged to have more children (remember "Two to replace you and one for the country"?), while using population control arguments to treat asylum seekers like the worst of criminals. The mood was one of fear and gloom.

In two years, K.Rudd didn't change the world, but he started a mood shift that was genuinely impressive. Some of that fear and gloom changed into hope. Within weeks of being elected, the gag on federally funded NGOs was lifted (by Julia Gillard, but still under Rudd's leadership). That's a really big deal, it would have been easy to quietly leave that in place and enjoy the protection it gave the government. It certainly received minimal coverage when it happened.

Work choices went. That mattered, a lot. It was even replaced with something fairly reasonable (as judged by the fact that all sides complained about it, but not very loudly).

He ratified Kyoto! Ok, not much has come of it, but it would never have happened under Howard, and we'd be even further behind in the battle to make government take climate change seriously if Kevin 07 had failed.

He finally said "Sorry". Again, not enough has been done. I know it's only lip service, but without even that, there would be no hope of moving forward and really redressing the damage.

Then the GFC (Global Fuckupus Corporatus) happened, and surprisingly, Labor steered us through that really well. We were in a better starting position than most, but the reality is that the rest of the world hailed Rudd's stimulus package as clever and effective. The criticisms of the way the money was spent are a little beside the point. Yes there was waste, but anything that moved that fast (and let's face it, government projects operating in timetables of less than many years are very rare indeed) was going to be open to rorts and waste. By all means, name and shame the companies that rorted the system - taking the piss with money being offered to bail you out is, dare I say it, unAustralian - but for once, I don't think much of the blame lies with the government.

Even as his popularity and grip on his party slid, he was still doing stuff. Rethinking how things are done. Suggesting change. Moving somewhere. He's left this country in a very different place to where he found it, and much of it is better. It isn't fixed - the human rights abuses are still happening, but at least it's not longer a point of honour. It's probably fair to say that in many arenas, all that's changed is the rhetoric, and I find that deeply disappointing. However, it's still true that there's more hope for action when a government is talking about it than when it isn't.

I never had very high hopes for K.Rudd. He always looked way too conservative for my liking, and we saw that again and again in his leadership, but he surprised me with his actions, doing more than I thought he would. At least when he spoke in international forums, he didn't make me cringe and wish I was pretty much any nationality but Australian.

So thanks, Kev, for what you did. Thanks for being a step in the right direction, even if the step was smaller than many of us would have liked.

K.Rudd for foreign minister!

Completion!

2010-07-07T20:20:00.002+10:00

It took a whole term, but the two scarves for Toni's girls are finished!

You gotta love school uniform green. My mother kindly put their initials on them to avoid the inevitable arguments. So now, to finish the cardi for Elissa before she grows out of it.

Iron Chef Chen Kenichi

2010-07-06T20:39:00.010+10:00

Recently Crash and I performed a miracle, aided by the self-sacrifice of a large proportion of my family. We did a job in Tokyo together. Aside from actually spending some time together, and remembering how much better it is to work with someone else, we also snuck in a visit to Iron Chef Chen Kenichi's restaurant.

My Japanese hasn't improved much, which means that our communications with our waiter, whose English was pretty limited (and yet infinitely better than my Japanese), were amusing to say the least. The whole situation was helped no end by the fact that the set menus had no pictures* - only long pages of Japanese script(s). So we waved our fingers at the pages and said "That one". With no idea what we were about to be served, we ordered a beer (fortunately "beer" is understood almost everywhere) and settled in for our magical mystery tour.

I failed to take my camera charger with me, so these photos are from my iPhone, and therefore very dodgy.

First course came out, and we were told that these were, clockwise from top right, fish, mushroom, chicken, something whose name I can't remember but I recognised it when I ate it, and in the middle, meat.

The thing I can't remember was pretty tasty, but the chicken and meat were the highlights. The chicken had a sauce vaguely reminiscent of sweet and sour, but beautifully balanced and the meat was deep fried to a crisp (I couldn't tell you what kind of meat it was from the taste, although it was probably beef) and coated in a rich, sweet sauce.

The next course arrived with great haste.

This was the first thing to arrive. A separate bowl had the dish itself, which we were told contained shrimp. We were somewhat baffled - does anyone actually decorate a prawn dish with a lobster shell? And if not, had we actually signed up to pay enough for lobster? It was divided up and served to us as this.

That is an excessively bad photo, but the orange flower is carrot - all one piece! The bowl did, in fact, contain lobster and cucumber and a very gentle sauce. It was divine.

The pace didn't slow, and this one - "beef with a bit spicy" - was promptly served.

This had a classic Schezwan flavour, perfectly executed. There were fried red chillies that I was going to move aside, but they tasted amazing. Hot, but more tingly than painful. At the risk of sounding like an Iron Chef judge, it stimulated the palate rather than burning the mouth. The basket was a deep fried wonton wrapper and that flower was daikon. The daikon was a perfect palate cleanser at the end of the dish. Another massive winner.

Still no pause, the next dish was announced as shark fin.

Um. Ok, so here is the flaw in pointing at a language you don't understand. I considered the appropriate response and two things occurred to me. One, the Dalai Lama teaches that if you are offered food that you don't eat on principle, you should eat it, both out of good manners and respect, and because the food is already prepared, and wasting it would be a greater ill than eating it. And two, it's pretty hard to make a moral stand when you don't speak the language of the people to whom you are directing your protest. So I figured now was my chance to at least try to understand why people kill so many sharks for this dish. In short, I still don't. I've had it once before, in a dodgy place in Bangkok and I suspect it was merely "shark fin flavour" and it was essentially tasteless. This one had more flavour, but the flavour was mostly the soy sauce and it really didn't rock my world. I will have no problem avoiding shark fin in the future.

The next was deep fried fish and mushroom. The night was overtaking me by then, and I completely failed to take a photo, but it looked pretty much like two fish cocktails and a deep fried mushroom - one of those ones with the frilly edges. I can't tell you what that tasted like, because I gave mine to Crash. The fish pretty much tasted like fried fish. Not a stand out.

They were still going. Another dish quickly replaced the fish. The poor waiter got half way through describing this dish - "Crab egg sauce with...." - and had to dash back to the kitchen to be reminded of the English word for.... "abalone". Once again we wondered if we had missed a zero on the cost - lobster, shark fin and abalone in one night! Apparently the whole concept overwhelmed me so much that I forgot to photograph it until I was half way through.

That sauce was pretty fab - quite rich but I am completely failing to come up with any way to describe the flavour. The abalone was quite tasty - not quite like anything else, but closest to a cross between scallop and squid - but it was just about as rubbery as you have always heard it is. Considering the texture and the price, I'd rather eat scallops.

(As an aside, the next night we had abalone sushi, and it was far better, although I still reckon I'd rather a cheaper alternative - please don't tell my host! He was most gracious and it's probably just my uneducated palate.)

We were, at this point, marveling that we had come to the end (as no dish appeared the moment we had finished the last) without a single rice dish. We were also commenting that we were incredibly full, and no rice had been necessary. We sipped our beers and wondered at the strange phenomenon that every single woman in the restaurant (except me) was sitting with her back towards the windows, while all the men faced the windows. Even those sitting three rows away from the windows. Even across a couple of sittings. I offer no explanation for this.

We were content, we were relaxed, we were very full. And then we were fed more food. With rice.

This one was fiery hot, but still with that weird tingly sensation. It was probably awesome if I could have eaten it properly. If I had spooned it onto the rice and eaten it all mixed up, I'm sure it would have all balanced out, but I was so full I could only put tiny morsels in my mouth at a time. The dark red parts of the sauce were really hot, but unbelievably tasty. In the end, my stomach defeated me. The waiter looked a little shocked at how little we'd eaten and asked if it was too spicy. "No", making the universal sign for full stomach.

As we sat and and stared over our tummies, dessert arrived.

Fortunately, neither Schezwan nor Japanese cooking is much into your chocolate mud cake for dessert. The martini glass had a coconut pudding, which was mousse-like. The berries and mint and lemon on the top mixed in with it magnificently, and I patiently slid tiny amounts of it into the gaps between the previous 7 (!) courses. It took a while, but I ate it all. The little snow ball at the bottom was a rice ball with bean paste (I think). I've never been a big fan of that style of dessert, and full as I was, I only managed a nibble. Lastly, on the plate on the top right, was a lychee sorbet. Wow. Just wow. The perfect way to end this meal.

Even though I didn't love everything, the meal showed me all sorts of dishes and flavours I haven't had before, which pretty much nails the brief for a visit to an Iron Chef restaurant. I would go back, I think, and order from the a la carte menu (with pictures!) to select the things I discovered I loved, and avoid the shark fin.

A word of warning though - it's easy to find on a map, but nothing we found in English mentioned that it's on the 6th floor. Also, beware small roads that look like short cuts - they may be closed for reconstruction and it's a long way back to the main route.

* This is pretty unusual for restaurants in Japan.

Master 5

2010-07-05T20:17:00.004+10:00

My bub born on the 4th of July turned 5 ~~today~~ yesterday, and we celebrated in the traditional way, with his friends, too much food and a cake. Well, I call it a cake, you can judge for yourself below.

I have a formula for kids' birthday parties, and I rarely deviate. Kids, backyard, food with as little nutritional value as possible, Sunday, 2-5pm. And a cake that I make, with way more confidence than actual skill.

~~Today~~ Yesterday started out pretty wobbly. It was too wet on the back deck for the kids to go out at the beginning of the party, so I tried to get some party games underway inside. I had no luck at all, and was not assisted by the birthday boy who had an attack of the shys and was hiding under a chair. So I sent them to the table to eat and we reassessed the outside situation. We finally got enough sugar into Charlie to loosen him up and we released the mob to the backyard.

There they stayed until I called them in an hour and half later for pass the parcel.

That finished, they bolted back outside and I had to round them up again for the cake. *Cough* Erm, the cake. It was supposed to be a cake with a chocolate dome that gets smashed to reveal the cake with goodies underneath. Sadly, the chocolate didn't come out of the bowl at all well. It ended up more of a mudslide than a dome. Still, I turned it to its slightly better side, and seriously covered it with lollies, to produce this frankenstein.

Yes, in case you're wondering, those things holding up the candles are bits of pineapple, I failed to make the cupcakes that I had intended to use for this purpose. First class disaster all round. And then I remembered we needed a hammer. A trip to the garage and some foil, and voila:

And so I took it all to the table and after the blowing and the singing, there was the smashing.

It was hard work, and they were all willing him on.

In the end, I had to help him, and then finish it off with a knife. It was worth it.

I had approximately 7.2 seconds to take this shot before this happened:

Once they'd all eaten, they disappeared outside again and I had to round them up again to come in and open the presents. I don't have a photo of that, but it looked pretty much like the one above, but with a present in the middle of the fists instead of a cake.

Another party executed. Smiles all round at the end of the day. And it wiped me out so badly I couldn't even manage to blog it last night.

Four months until the next one.

Democracy - we haz it

2010-06-26T21:21:00.002+10:00

Ok, so Australian politics has had a wee bump this week. A fairly historic one, all things considered. Poor old Kev is the first Labor PM not to make a full term, and Julia is our first female PM. [Warning: what follows is probably utterly uninteresting to non-Australians.]

So what are we hearing in the pubs, at the water cooler (does anyone actually have conversations at water coolers?), and at the school gate? Great angst about how this isn't democratic. About how we didn't vote for Julia. Well, no, I didn't. I voted Green. And then I gave my preference to Anthony Albanese, on account of he's my local member. If you don't live in K.Rudd's electorate, you didn't vote for him either.

Does no-one in this country know how our electoral system works? (Ok, almost everyone I know on Twitter does, but the media doesn't seem to be listening to them.) A brief reminder, in case you were wondering:

We vote in local representatives. We have an awesome electoral system involving preferences which really allows you to express your opinion. I'll get to that later. So my local rep is Anthony Albanese. That's who I voted for (after preferences). That's who my electorate elected. Your electorate chose someone else. (And kudos to you if you live in Maxine McKew's electorate, you rock!) When all those MPs, elected by their local constituents get together, they form a government based on how many from any given party got elected. Once that government is formed, that party elects a PM. They are free to change that election at any time. Really. No-one votes for a PM in this country. If you wanted to vote for a figurehead, you should have voted "Yes" in the referendum for a republic.

So this has been entirely democratic. And if you re saying, "But factional leaders shouldn't be determining who is our PM", well, who else should be? In this case, Labor Right have pushed for a Left candidate, and the unions have supported her. I can't imagine a better example of party-wide support. And I ask you, was there something that made the ousting of Turnbull in favour of Abbott more democratic than this?

So back to how to vote given that we understand how our PM is chosen (NOT elected). We have one of the world's best electoral systems. When you come to vote, you choose who you really want to represent you. But we live in the real world. If you want a minor party candidate to represent you, you probably aren't going to get that. Therefore, you can make a second choice, and a third an so on, until you vote for someone who gets down to the last 2 in the race for your seat. In the senate, it works much the same way, but there are a number of seats available per state, rather than one per electorate. So how does this work? You make your first choice, the person you really want to represent you. If that person doesn't make it to the final 2, your vote gets re-allocated to your second choice. However, your primary vote is registered, and the electoral commission allocates funding to parties based on their primary votes. So it is worth voting for the party you want to see stronger, even if you know they have no chance of being elected this time.

If, however, you don't exercise your right to allocate all your own preferences (by not numbering all the boxes in the lower house, or voting above the line in the upper house), you give your preferences over to the party you voted for. In other words, if you voted for a Labor candidate who couldn't win, your vote will be cast based on that Labor candidates preferences. If you are thinking this is no big deal, I have two words for you: Steve Fielding. He got elected as a result of a preference deal. If no-one had voted above the line in the Senate, he would never have been a senator.

So I say to you: Who did you vote for? If it was Labor (before or after preferences), who is your representative? If you really think they've chosen the wrong leader, take it up with them. But in the end, you cast your vote to entrust them to choose our PM. You did NOT vote for the PM.

For mine, Julia Gillard is the best leader Labor has to offer. Kevin Rudd was an order of magnitude better than Howard, and Australia will forever be in his debt for ousting Little Johnny. (A tribute post to him is in the making.) But please, when judging the options available to us, consider who will make the better leader - the red-head with the bogan accent or the mad monk? How she came to power is so much less important than how well she will lead her party and our country. I think she'll be shit hot.

And in the end, you are voting for a local rep, not a PM.

That's why I love belly dancing

2010-06-20T18:11:00.002+10:00

I took the family to a belly dance hafla today. I was something of an impostor - it was the hafla of a different school from mine, but run by my teacher. I didn't know any of the other students, nor did I know how these things run and caused complete chaos because I didn't know I needed to be there early to get seats for all of us together.

However, when the dancing began, I had three entranced kids, an entranced husband and a wonderful reminder that not every activity requires a society sanctioned body shape. The dancers were fat and skinny, curvy and straight up and down, short and tall, and every physically possible combination. Fat wasn't covered (although flat chests generally get stuffed, due to the shape of the costumes), and straight up and down gals shook their thang with as much style and grace as their curvy counterparts. There was no condescension, there was no "isn't it nice to see a big girl dancing" there was just cheering and shouting and clapping. There were just dancers.

I was too busy kid wrangling and feeling awkward to take photos, unfortunately. Trust me, they were all gorgeous. I'll ask Georgie if I can link to some of her photos once they go up on Facebook.

Oh, yeah, I also danced myself. I was one of eight doing a Shaabi number. Shaabi is the style of dancing done in nightclubs in Egypt, so we were wearing jeans and high heels. (Not so high in my case, but I did dance in heels!) It wasn't the best of performances, but it was fun. I would love to have the time to really get good enough to perform, but lack of natural talent means the time required would be much greater than the time I have available. At least I have a lovely teacher who indulges me despite my inferior skills.

Not a post

2010-06-20T10:25:00.003+10:00

Wow, it's been a while since I wrote anything here. Contributing factors include:

laptop death, followed by resurrection with new memory, and a suspected new case requiring 2 trips to Bondi, the second on a Saturday and with 3 kids in tow. *shudder*
2 work projects right on top of one another
friends visiting from Melbourne
exam
belly dance performance today (with associated rehearsals and costume organisation)
desperate desire to finish the 2 scarves I'm knitting
planning for trip to Melbourne on Tuesday and Tokyo on Thursday

So in lieu of a real post, here are a couple of quotes from my kids.

Elissa: [waving soft toys at the beagle] You can't have these because you don't have hands.

Charlie: Are we mammals?

Me: Yes

Charlie: Are we animals?

Me: Yes

Charlie: Are we the world?

Me: [laughing] No, we're not the world.

Charlie: Are we big piles of poo?

Me: .......

(He's nearly 5, and it's still all about the poo)

Conversations with Charlie

2010-06-10T09:35:00.002+10:00

This morning, Charlie gave me a brief feminism 101 lesson.

Charlie: Why do we have an attic?

Me: Because we work from home.

Charlie: But what about other people?

Me: Most people go out to work at other places.

Charlie: But what about T's mum?

Me: She doesn't work.

Charlie: Yes, she does, she does lots of work in the kitchen.

Absolutely. I'd like a new name for "paid work" please, to distinguish between all the free labour and the stuff we get some cash monies for.

Charlie: [Pointing at my breasts] Why do you have those?

Me: To make milk to feed babies.

Charlie: Well what are you going to do with them now?

Over and over....

2010-06-09T16:27:00.004+10:00

I was going to blog about that ridiculous article berating women for daring to take a sip of alcohol while pregnant and/or breastfeeding, but why? I did it already - 2 years ago, and the refrain from the mummy-blamers hasn't changed.

From this recent one:

...a third of all women surveyed admitted to consuming at least one drink while pregnant or breastfeeding.

And from the one two years ago:

A study has found one third of Australian women have admitted to drinking alcohol when pregnant - and most would do it again.

So nothing much has changed, I notice the world hasn't come to an end, nor do we have a sudden rash of children with... well no-one has proposed any actual outcomes for low level drinking, so I'm not sure what we're looking for here. Certainly there hasn't even been a suggestion of a rise in the rate of foetal alcohol syndrome (which is no surprise, because it requires a significant level of alcohol consumption - a lot more than the one or two drinks 1-3 times a week most women seem to be talking about). So we should all start listening to the "rules" because......?

Token Resistance

2010-06-07T18:38:00.002+10:00

blue milk has written a great post about how women are not responsible for rape. Ever.

The comments thread has been both heated and interesting. One comment struck me as both understandable and rather horrific. Darsh said "It is true that guys regularily need to press on through token resistance by girls".

This is a pretty commonly expressed opinion, and it both is a problem and reflects a problem. It's a problem because it's impossible for a person to know if what their partner is doing is "token resistance" or reluctance mixed with fear. If it's the latter, consent is clearly in question. If you can't be sure that you have consent, you shouldn't keep going.

However, it's also true that women do put up faux resistance from time to time. It really, seriously shouldn't happen*. It does happen because women are told they can't be sluts, that they need to be coy, that they need to play hard to get. They are taught from a young age not to own their sexuality. So they do, from time to time, play these games.

So what to do? I think there are two parts to the answer - the short term and the long term. In the short term, men (most often, but women too) need to just stop when their partner puts up "token resistance". It's not a fair thing to do, to pretend you don't want sex when you do, but it's understandable given how women are socialised. It's up to us all to change this habit. I'd suggest that sex ending as soon as someone starts playing coy is a great way to do this. If she's doing it because she really doesn't want to be there and is afraid of the consequences of saying no, that's the only ethical option anyway. If she's doing it because of what amounts to fucked up social training, if you can encourage her to express enthusiasm for sex actively - well everyone has a lot more fun.

The longer term solution is to actually put some sex education into sex education. Teach kids that the first step in having sex with someone is talking about sex with them. That everyone should be clearly and happily expressing their desire before anyone pokes anyone with anything. And most importantly, make it really clear that this isn't a policy of prohibition, it's a recipe for good, safe, respectful and FUN sex. If you're gonna do it, do it right.

*Unless it's in the context of well defined and discussed play.

Can a girl be a daddy?

2010-06-04T20:34:00.004+10:00

Tonight's bedtime conversation started out a little challenging, and ended up beautifully.

Charlie asked if a girl can be a daddy. I explained that mummy and daddy were essentially just the names for girl parent and boy parent, and so no, a girl can't actually be a daddy. Charlie impressed me with his next question: "Can a girl call herself a daddy?".

Easy peasy, lemon squeezy - Yes, a girl can call herself a daddy, I was please to be able to say. Thinking of Lesbian Dad for one, I explained that if a family has two mummies, one might call herself daddy so there aren't two people called "Mummy" in the one house, or for whatever other reason - a girl can call herself whatever she wants.

Because these kinds of conversations never end here, Ben asked if there had ever been a daddy involved in the parenting of the kids with two mummies. Well, yes, because biologically, technically, a baby needs egg and sperm from a woman and a man, but they don't have to actually live as a family. So Ben says "So they don't have to get married, they can just go together for a while to make the baby?". Well, yeah, but since you can freeze sperm, you don't even actually have to meet the man if you don't want to, but there are a number of options. Some people also adopt children into their family.

BUT, I carefully explained, you need a man and a woman to make a baby, but you don't need them to make a family. A family can have a mummy and a daddy, or two mummies or two daddies, one parent or even three people. I know a family, I told rapt faces, with two daddies and a mummy (taking some poetic license with the story - I doubt they would ever have used that description of themselves). Ben, ever the pedant, asked if you could also have two mummies and a daddy. Indeed, I told him.

Then Charlie announces, in earnest:

I want to have two mummies and a daddy and no babies and no toddlers.

So this is his plan for adulthood - he's not asking me to find another partner. He's made it clear recently that he's not planning on having kids when he grows up.

Ben follows this logically and says: That means you have to marry two people.

Charlie: Do I have to marry people?

Me: No, you don't have to get married, lots of people don't.

Charlie: How do I get married?

Me: You have a ceremony and a party.

Charlie: Naaah, I'm not going to anyway.

Ben: I'm not getting married either.

Me: You don't want to get married?

Ben: No, well, I don't want to do the stuff before it.

Me: What stuff?

Ben: You know, the dancing.

I loved it all. So far my boys have aspired to be homosexual, poly and asexual - one of them wants kids and the other doesn't. Sadly for him, the same one wants to be asexual and have children, but I'm sure he'll change his mind again before the reality bites. I hope we can keep this openness and total lack of judgement alive for a while longer.