Thursday, January 24, 2008

No chicken, just egg

Everyday, I bring sandwiches to work because for some reason, I always have lunch time classes so I eat before I go to class and then have a late-ish lunch. Because I haven't had the time to go grocery shopping, the sandwiches end up being cheese based. But cheese sandwiches aren't filling enough so I often leave instructions for egg of some form to be put into it.



This morning, I realised in horror that in the last 2 days, I've eaten 5-6 eggs. I know I need the nutrition because I'm losing weight too rapidly. Even for the weight conscious me, this is becoming somewhat worrying. One morning, I tipped the scales at 47.8 kg and that's just not healthy especially since I'm still nursing. So, I eat eggs because they are super food.



But super food comes with cholestrol and the resounding thought the entire morning was "I hope I don't get a heart attack!"


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Ondine tossed this thought in at 09:57

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Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Bizarre much

Most bizarre observation of the day-

Needing to pee makes me a bad teacher.
- My impatience escalates as the need to pee increases.

Most bizarre question posed to me while I was out with Packrat and had Evan strapped to me-

Is that your baby?
- Hmmm, no, I randomly walk round with a Baby Bjorn and kidnap any unknowing baby along the way.

Most bizarre discovery of the day-

I have knees of an 80 year old woman, discovered while trekking up and down stairs at work.
- I think I need to buy Glucosamine

Most bizarre moment of the day-

When a senior citizen on the bus tries to pick me using the Joey line from Friends.
- What I want to say- "Sorry, Geriatrics don't do it for me"
- What I actually do- Smile and get off the bus.

I have so much bizarre.

Ondine tossed this thought in at 14:59

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Thursday, January 17, 2008

The Ostrich and the Turtle

I found this extremely interesting article. It was about maternity leave. And obviously, maternity leave for mothers. What made me do a double take and go back and read it was that the headline screamed Maternity leave, from Math class. Interestingly enough, it was about how there had been a request for maternity leave for high school girls who were pregnant. This was to make sure that they don't get loss in the wilderness that is life without a diploma but with a kid. Of course, I feel dumb adding this caveat but I'm adding it anyway, this is in the US.

Obviously, it's a very controversial issue and I liked it because it appealed to my social conscience and my wanting to champion the cause of the underdog. And I think part of that consciousness wanted to bring it up with the kids to broaden their somewhat blinkered perception of the issues that revolved around education. Feeling inspired, I IMed someone about it, only to receive a curt, decisive and holier than thou opinion. In order to protect the person's identity, I shall generically refer to said person as Chat Buddy.

The conversation went along these lines:

Me: I want to use it as a debate in class. It should be interesting.
Chat Buddy: No it isn't. There's no debate.
Me: What do you mean there's no debate? Of course there is.
Chat Buddy: No there isn't. You shouldn't use it.
Me: Why?
Chat Buddy: It's a classic example of doing damage control on something that shouldn't have happened in the first place.
Me: Yes. That's the point.
Chat Buddy: But it shouldn't even have happened in the first place. These girls shouldn't have gotten themselves pregnant in the first place.
Me: Ok, so because they shouldn't have gotten pregnant in the first place, there shouldn't be the introduction of this policy and because they shouldn't have gotten pregnant in the first place, I shouldn't let my students debate the issue in class?
Chat Buddy: Yes. It's giving credence to a bad idea. And it'll send out the message to your students that you condone the idea of unwed mothers. And besides, we teach abstinence, so why expose them to a policy that does damage control on the consequence of violating such a value?
Me: !!!!!

At that point, my brain was near exploding. This was a person who was educated and intelligent and I was just floored by the small-mindedness, selfishness and shallowness of the mind. How can it be a bad thing to expose students to such debate? It's an issue that they would never consider part of education because of the pristine and clinical environment in which they learn in. How can exposing them to such debate show that I was condoning the idea of unwed mothers? And was it wrong to want to support a policy that would allow such unwed mothers to have some small chance of getting back on their feet and getting an education for themselves, for their future and their kid's future? I have never at any point yelled from soap boxes or roof tops that I thought more teenagers should go out there and get themselves knocked up. On top of all that, I couldn't wrap my head around the turtle slash ostrich mentality of pretending that the problem doesn't exist and because of that, a solution shouldn't exist. That's just plain dumb.

And we can't blame the government for that particular brand of stupidity because even they know that even if you want to pretend the problem doesn't exist, you have to prepare for the possibility that it might one day become a problem and there better be a solution for it if it does occur. The terror threat's a pretty good example of that. We boast that we are safe, we warn and educate the public so that we might prevent it. By Chat Buddy's logic, that should be enough. But even the government knows enough to run drills just in bloody case something does happen. It really wouldn't t do if everything blew up around us (figuratively and literally speaking) and we were left holding the baby.

So I decided that my respect for this person has plummeted somewhat. And I think, for a while, I need to stop chatting to this person on IM because I'd like to pretend that such a person doesn't exist because I have no ability to deal with such a person and have never really thought about what I'd do if and when I come in contact with such a person. So now that I have and am floored by it, I think I need to stick my head back into the hole and pretend that my world is right again and bad things like that don't exist.

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Ondine tossed this thought in at 21:58

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Thursday, January 10, 2008

The new working Mom

It's been back to work for me for the last two weeks. It isn't as hard as I thought it would be to leave the kids although I do feel a bit sad if I leave the house without saying goodbye to the both of them. Even though it's a new place and I'm still feeling my way around, it doesn't feel all that bad. Somethings are like riding a bicycle; you never forget them.

But it has made realise some new things about me. For one, I sure do eat a lot now. It's probably the breastfeeding but I really do eat like there's no tomorrow. At the back of my mind, I know I should start running again but I keep wondering how to magic some time out to run. I miss the running. I miss the running without getting a stitch two minutes into my feet hitting the asphalt. But I keep being reminded that I'm a different person now and my body's a different being now. A fact that I have not yet fully comprehended. And to prove the point, even though I'm eating so much, I'm losing weight. So technically, I don't have to run. But running's in my blood so... Now see the problem?

To do with my body being different, there's also a sudden fear of steps. And my new work place has reinforced this fear because there're tons of steps, everywhere. And I'm paranoid of missing a step and falling. Something that I have come to fear. Once again, it's a throwback to being pregnant and not being entirely sure where my centre of balance had been shifted to. I think it's also got to do with how my distribution of weight shifted so drastically during the days of blimp that my body hasn't caught up with my mind in terms of coordination and the latest updates that I no longer have the physique of a beached whale. To make matters all the more precarious, I've started wearing my 3 inch heels again so even though the belly's gone, I still worry about missing the step and plummeting to certain social and professional death with wild rumours about the klutz the management just hired.

So not only am I grappling with a new job, I'm grappling with a new body as well and I haven't figured out which is the stranger of the two yet. One is more exhausting, one is more confounding. Both are equally puzzling. I think it drives home the fact that I miss the status quo. Change isn't all bad, I'm not unhappy. It's just strange.

Ondine tossed this thought in at 17:05

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Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Back to work

I finally go back to work tomorrow after being off work for 8 months. I'm not going to count the 2 weeks when I went back in October because that was part time and I started work at the godly hour of 10 am rather than the usual 7am. I am thus, filled with some sense of hesitation. And my hesitation exists on many levels for many reasons.

1. It is my first day back to serious work after I was put on serious medical leave pending the arrival of the twins in April last year.

2. It's a new place of work. I decided that my previous work place was too far for me to travel to. This had initially filled me with a great amount of guilt because, while I did feel I was ready for a change of scenery, my previous work place had been extremely understanding to me all through my pregnancy and my leave. The only problem was that it was on the other side of the island and the travelling compounded by the shortage of sleep made it a dangerous drive back and forth. So anyway, new work places are always intimidating.

3. I'm sick. 8 months, I haven't really fallen sick but in the last 2 days, I've been sick with 2 different bugs. I had severe food poisoning where I threw up 5 times in the course of 3 hours and subsequently passed out for the rest of the evening till the next morning and then this morning, I wake up with a drippy nose which my brother assures me is caused by the same bug that I ingested that caused the food poisioning. Great. I however, think that it's just a psycho-somatic reaction to me having to go back to work.

4. As ditzy as it sounds, it's important to me. I don't have anything to wear. I can't seem to find my pre-pregnancy work clothes. I'm certain I had a large enough wardrobe not to ever repeat my clothes within a semester but I don't know where they've all disappeared to. And now that my favourite brands have, in the course of the last 2 years become part of a uni student's couture, I need to find new lines of clothes that don't look slutty, grungy or too boho which seems to be trend these days.

5. I'll miss my children and I'm torn. When I'm home, sometimes they drive me so crazy because they're always needing something and I can get through the day without having a clue what I've accomplished through the day. But then now that I'm going to be out at work consistently, I know I'm going to miss them. I'm going to be wondering what they are up to, what new tricks they would have learnt while I've been at work and whether I'll be doing our relationship any irreparable damage by going back to work. This is caused by all the breastfeeding and Stay at home Mom Nazis that have succeeded in imbuing the great demons of guilt and insecurity into my sub conscience.

So all in, I'm not sure about it. I know it'll be good for me though. I know we need the money. I know I need to get my brain working again. And I know that other women have gone before me back to work and their kids have turned out fine- my own mother and sister in law being the prime examples in my life. So, it should turn out okay after I get through my initial jitters. But till then, I'll be missing my kids and counting the hours till I can go home.


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Ondine tossed this thought in at 16:44

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" Far in the stillness, a cat languishes loudly"