I lost part of a molar a week ago. Got a temporary filling today and I’m going round with a droopy mouth. I look kinda funny but that’s the price you pay. Be glad I’m not posting a photo!
It’s hard to drink from a cup, bottle or straw, I’ve discovered. I also have to go and teach singing very soon so I’d better make sure my mouth can at least help form singing vowels!
Article on how to clean a feather doona.
Simple, doesn’t cost much, and similar to what I do for my doonas. (Duvets).
After you get out of bed, air your doona and mattress. I usually leave bed-making until about the time that I leave the house so the bed gets at least an hour of being aired. (Hey, it’s also a kitty playground while the kitten jumps around the pillows and doona! 
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Article on keeping stainless steel taps etc. shiny in the bathroom. Instead of baby oil, I use a wax-based polish like Mr Sheen, sprayed on a soft cloth and then rubbed on the taps.
The suicide prevention group R U OK? conducted a survey of 800 people (if you want to know more about that group, go to their website at http://www.ruokday.com.au/content/home.aspx) .The highest risk group for extreme stress at work was middle-age single parents. Oh great, sighs the middle-aged widow here. Just what I didn’t want to know.
But I can see why it is so. No denying it. It is the stress of getting not only oneself up and going in the morning, but also a child (who may or may not be co-operative ), the desire to do a great job at the workplace and to contribute to society through one’s work, and the desire to be a really good mum and family member. The stress of being the only person who is keeping track of a child/children’s progress, time commitments, needs and wants. The lack of downtime as an adult to do rewarding leisure activities that do not directly involve a child.
Can I add that it is not helpful for judgmental people to say “Well, you shouldn’t work until your child is old enough to look after herself/himself”? If I didn’t work, I wouldn’t be able to pay my mortgage. I would have to go on the waiting list for public housing, which is currently a 2 year wait. I would have to find a place to rent, which would take up a large amount of any welfare benefits I may receive. And DD’s life would be put in turmoil with a change of domicile, school, leisure activities and closeness to family and friends. I’m not going to do that.
That’s why I haven’t posted recently. Some rotten person has passed on a mild respiratory tract infection that would probably mean a day of unpleasantness for a healthy person. For an asthmatic under stress, it means an asthma attack, fever, more bloody prednisone tablets, time off work that I can’t afford, and sinusitis to top it off.
I would sleep to get better but I keep waking myself up with my own coughing. I felt guilty this morning when DD told me in the car that she had heard me coughing during the night. Poor darling, she needs her sleep, and I let her sleep in this morning. Tomorrow we’re back to the usual nose-to-the-grindstone routine. There has to be more to life than this. I’m not saying that I think that women can have everything in their life. I’m just saying that I’d like some of the crap removed, thanks.
I thought I’d have a go at the Spin assignment and this week it’s Happiness.
A little part of me wishes it were as simple as the Patridge Family make it seem. A whole lotta lovin’? You gotta be kiddin’! Tho I had a little crush on one of the boys.
Just to continue the irritation:
OK, now I’ve got that out of my system, here’s a philosophy on happiness.
You don’t get to be happy all the time. There are no guarantees. Happiness sneaks up like a cat on soft paws and jumps in your lap with an unexpected weight (and joy!). It is in the small moments. Sometimes it’s in a surprise. Sometimes it’s in the big moments, though meeting those big events with an expectation of happiness to be there can end up in a big let-down.
You can’t rely on another person to be the source of your happiness. You can create happy moments for yourself and also hope that you will give some happy moments for others.
Happiness is not the be-all and end-all of existence, but it sure beats a lot of other things. As a depressive, I learnt to appreciate and love the sweet moments of grace through unexpected happiness – shafts of sunlight in a grey life. These graces kept me going in hard times.
The adrenaline rush that I seemed to run on for two weeks after DH died seemed to disappear. Then I became sick. The one thing that seems to make a difference between me being sick for ages and recovering well is sleep. Ah, blissful sleep! But also elusive. While I was recovering, that was when DD became ill and started coughing all night. Cue trips to the doctor trying to make myself taken seriously.
Strangely enough, when DD was given asthma medication, her coughing decreased very quickly. Not that I’m saying that I’m an expert on my child’s health.
I will refrain from going on about my work here. I come to work, I do work, I leave. I wish I had more exciting stuff to do but not in this financial climate and not under my current financial circumstances. They have me over a barrel and they know it.
I’ve gone through some more paperwork. I have to give myself a cheer every time I get another thing done. I figure no-one else will.
Work is a madhouse thanks to scholarship rounds, results processing, endless meetings that are surely generated in the seventh circle of hell, and the ongoing strain of having to learn how to do new tasks while doing what was already a full-time job.
DD is still unwell. A sort of underlying not-up-to-doing-anything, maybe better expressed as a “malaise”. First it was her tonsils, then the inevitable ear infection, and she’s still not eating properly. I can’t believe how I worry about that! Boy, is she vile when she hasn’t had enough good nutrition and her blood sugar levels plummet.
And then there’s the refusal to go to the loo. Nothing weird in there, but she’s got a thing about it. Never mind. I have nappies for emergencies and the carpet still hasn’t been cleaned. Just in case, I mean. I really hope that this is temporary but I’ve had 3 weeks of this crap, along with poor sleep because of her coughing. It seems stupid to say that I need a holiday but darn it, I really do! The few days off I had a month ago were very refreshing, a lovely time with very dear people, and any relaxation that I may have experienced evaporated as soon as I arrived back in this city.
I wonder if I should be rethinking my work, my commitments, or what. I am sick of feeling miserable and it’s beyond the usual winter blues. Perhaps regular sleep would help? I would love the chance to find out! LOL!
Nothing bright and breezy to post today. I am struggling with back pain yet again. Yes, I get physiotherapy and I do all my exercises and I am trying to lose weight. In the meantime, I have to suck it up and deal with it. I also have severe neck and shoulder pain today.
Added to this is trying to explain to my DD why I can’t pick her up. She’s tall and solid and true to toddler form, she will do the amazing flop while I’m holding her hand and walking. That’s where suddenly there’s a huge weight dangling off your wrist and your shoulder threatens to pop out of its socket with the downward exerted force. Tempted as I am, I do not let go and leave her on a busy pavement to her own devices. She also chooses to do a flop at the dirtiest spot in the path or next to a puddle or right beside a pile of possum poo. Go figure.
Betsy Shaw at BabyCenter blogged about changes in fertility rates in North America and Europe.
In Australia we have the baby bonus, originally a sum of $3000 given to parents when a child was born back when the scheme started on 1 July 2004. On 1 July 2006 the baby bonus was increased again. Now, if you had a baby due on 30 June, would you be tempted to hold off as much as possible, if it were medically safe? Would you delay an induction?
Professor Joshua Gans and Dr Andrew Leigh wrote a paper called “Born on the First of July: An (Un)Natural Experiment in Birth Timing”. Gans and Leigh estimate that over 1000 births were moved to ensure their parents were eligible for the baby bonus, with 1 July 2004 showing the highest number of births on one day in the past 30 years. Obviously there were births which occurred in the week from 1 July 2004 which were expected to have been in the previous week.
Analyzing a subsample of birth records, we find that babies born in early-July were significantly heavier than those born in late-June, which would be consistent with parents delaying births to obtain the payment. All of this provides an indication that shifting was, in fact, real and not a result of reporting issues or fraud.
Given that the policy was announced only 7 weeks before it came into effect, planned conception for the baby bonus can be discounted.
Section 5 of the paper looks at parental and child characteristics.
If the introduction effect caused parents to delay birth, then it should be the case that babies born after the Baby Bonus was introduced will weigh more than those born just before the introduction. [...]
The increased share of high birth weight babies that accompanied the introduction of the Baby Bonus might potentially have led to adverse health consequences. While babies born pre-term and/or underweight are less likely to be healthy, the same is also true of babies born too late and/or overweight. [...]
Nonetheless, while the evidence on birth weight suggests that the introduction of the Baby Bonus might have put some children at risk, we do not find strong evidence that this had more dire consequences.
Food for thought.
No, we don’t have a dog. Can you imagine the carry-on the cats would create if we brought a dog into their close-knit family?
Rather, I have a toddler who coughs and coughs. The doctor hasn’t been much help with this apart from when her cough turned into a croup cough, for which she was given prednisone syrup. For children at DD’s age, doctors are reluctant to diagnose asthma. I can say outright that cough syrups are next to useless, ditto the usual “folk remedies” like honey, Vicks Vaporub on the chest and soles of the feet, etc.
On Radio National’s Health Report on 12 May 2008, there was a report on persistent childhood coughing, defined as that which continues for four weeks or more and doesn’t have asthma-like conditions (eg getting worse with exertion). Anne Chang, who’s Professor of Child Health at the University of Queensland, examined the use of cough syrups that are basically anti-histamines. Amazingly, the efficacy of these medicines has hardly been studied in the past.
Professor Chang said: If the cough is acute [and it's not asthma], meaning that it’s less than four weeks then it’s probably going to be post viral and you wouldn’t advocate any sort of therapies except to watch and wait.What we’ve advised practitioners is just to watch and wait because the majority of them would actually just go away. We’ve done a study just looking at 108 kids and in kids with a dry cough, and it’s chronic, something like 20% of them actually just resolve spontaneously. [...] What is advocated is that every child with a chronic cough should have as a minimum a chest X-ray and if they are old enough to have a spirometry as well. [...] The treatment that we would advocate is simple stuff like rubbing Vicks on their chest and using honey and lemon drinks which probably soothes and changes your receptors: so just non specific treatment as opposed to medication.
All very sensible stuff and most reassuring, though I will keep a close eye on DD all the same. I should also invest in a pair of earplugs so I can get some sleep from 5 am when DD starts up the coughing every morning.
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