Sometimes, it really is the small things. You don’t notice them until you stop to look and then you wonder how on earth you missed them before.
Blog
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If politicians were like mummy bloggers
– There would be no talk of a leadership spill before it happened.
– The entire spill and speculation would happen via email.
– There would be no face to face discussion about it. Ever.
– The Australian people wouldn’t know what happened until Julia and Kevin refuse to attend the same event.
– Someone will be left standing on their soapbox screeching about “the good of the community” and how “they’re TEARING US APART”.
– Support will be silently given and received.
– Any information made public will have an overtone of “we know what’s best for everyone, so follow along and don’t worry about a thing”.
– The second-in-command will let the power go to their head, and end up trying to micro-manage the ensuing conversation.
– Everyone else will be entirely confused about what is happening, but they will all agree that it was a terrible terrible thing and please can’t we just move on.
AND
– At the end of the day, you will be left with split factions, who seem to think that they control some sort of power.
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On pregnancy, listeria and being risk aware
We’ve all heard about the dangers of Listeria, supposedly lurking in every single piece of cold food that you didn’t prepare by hand, yourself. No soft cheeses, no restaurant salads, no uncooked egg based sauces, no ham, salami or other deli meats and certainly certainly no sushi.
Today I made sushi using smoked salmon and I enjoyed every single mouthful of it. The benefit to eating something that I felt like eating, for me, far outweighed the minuscule risks associated with eating a cold prepared food.
Listeria is a food poisoning. It isn’t a bacteria that is present in all cold food – no, it’s food poisoning that can potentially grow in cold prepared food and is killed by heating. You’ve probably got more chance of contracting salmonella than contracting listeria on any given day.
And yet, I find that as soon as I’m pregnant, there is this Listeria Hysteria that surrounds every mouthful of food I eat. Does that contain ham? Has that lettuce been washed and stored properly? Is that egg cooked through entirely?
I’m just a little bit sick of it. Especially considering if you’re hospitalised during your pregnancy, the hospital sends you up commercially prepared ham salad sandwiches for lunch anyway and the midwives don’t bat an eyelid.
Pregnant women seem to become public property. Everyone suddenly has a say in what we’re putting into our bodies and it’s getting a bit ridiculous. I’ve already given up a lot of things in order for this pregnancy to progress safely, I don’t particularly feel like giving up all cold foods too.
My baby might die from listeria – but also, I might get hit by a car tomorrow. Or a truck might crash into my bedroom. Or I might fall down a flight of stairs.
I don’t think it’s about being frightened, so much as it’s about being risk aware. If I prepare sushi at home, using ingredients I trust, in a clean environment, then my chances of listeria are probably smaller than my chances of contracting salmonella, or breaking my nose walking into a wall (very real possibility).
This is my fourth pregnancy and hopefully our third baby. Any number of things could go wrong yet. My chances of pre-term labour are higher than normal, my pelvis might fall apart, I might dislocate a hip and end up hospitalised. I might get an infection (again) and land in hospital for a week (again).
Anything could happen, but provided I am careful, I am doubtful that it is going to contain listeria.
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12 week update and asking advice
Twelve weeks. Yes, really, I’ve managed to hit the milestone that is meant to herald the start of pregnancy being amazing. You know, for all those normal people out there.
I was going to crop out most of the garden, but I thought some people might like to check out the edging of green. I had to change the angle of this photo from the last one, because my tomatoes have grown too high to be seen over. (Tomatoes in bottom left corner) Behind me is the black currant and jostaberry bushes, getting ready to drop their leaves and in the bottom right corner is the flowering perpetual spinach. It makes the whole garden smell like honey.
So far this pregnancy I have lost 5kg (11lbs), which has sent my Ehlers Danlos into a spin.
Normally my EDS is managable, provided I don’t lose too much weight, but obviously I wasn’t able to control the weight loss, even with anti-nausea medication and here I am.
Basically this means that my gastic system has gone on strike, leaving me unable to eat a lot of foods. Dairy being the main culprit, with meat being close behind.
Now, my anti-nausea medication is excellent for controlling morning sickness and making life bearable, but it is less effective on EDS nausea, merely stopping me vomiting while I wait the waves of nausea out. Not vomiting is always a bonus, but I’d prefer I was able to actually eat things.
Even worse, being unable to digest dairy means that I have effectively lost most of the fat content of my diet. Rich food makes me unwell at the healthiest of times and I’m left wondering what on earth I can eat to stop the weight loss and keep myself relatively healthy. Any ideas? Currently I’m living mostly on fresh fruit and crackers.
I recently bought a trail mix of dried fruit, seeds and nuts and have been snacking on that, but there is a limit and I’m afraid that my body is going to pull the same trick it pulled with Amy’s pregnancy, which left me incredibly unwell for the entire nine months and a good 10kg underweight.
So, there’s that.
On the upside, aside from the nausea and weight loss, this has been the least eventful pregnancy I’ve had, with only a tiny bit of spotting at 5 weeks and not a single drop of blood afterwards. A huge improvement from the pregnancy with Isaac, that included bleeding through all three trimesters.
Frankly, I am a little surprised at the lack of bleeding, knowing that there was a large patch of blood inside my uterus at my ultrasound. But I’m certainly not complaining about it.
No real food cravings, unless you count the fact that I want to stab everyone who mentions sushi or sashimi. I swear, I would kill for some sashimi right now.
And finally, I’m pretty sure I felt the baby move, which seems to be following the same path as the other two kids, both of whom I felt at around 12 weeks.
I guess there are benefits to being underweight, because the first thing I thought was “Thank God you’re not dead.”
Bonus.
Did you have any food issues while you were pregnant? How did you manage these?
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On fiction, lies and envy
Sometimes, I find myself envying song writers and poets. Not because I feel inferior (although I do, sometimes) but because their version of written reality seems less sharply defined than mine.
I think that is the problem with writing mostly creative non-fiction. I’ve got free rein to be creative in how I write and edit a story, but at the end of the day there is truth. The things I write about here, they’re happening to me, in real life.
It takes a lot of my brain cells to work out how I want to continue writing, when the itch is there, but there is nothing tangible that I can put my finger on to write about.
Some days, the blog posts flow like water and I press publish and everything is great. Other days, the itch to write is intense, but there isn’t the time to write fiction (have you tried writing fiction with two children demanding cuddles and lunches and playtime?) and nothing especially exciting is happening here.
I have two blogs, the other of which is ostensibly for writing. It’s meant to be for the short pieces of fiction (which go down like a lead balloon in Internet-Land) and the unreal realities, for the untruthiness and the warped reality. Sadly, it’s also sorely neglected and almost entirely truthful.
I think that might be the problem with the Internet. The Internet demands truth and raw ripped souls. It is an insatiable machine, filled with LOL-cats and fuzzy bunnies and the dark dark undercurrents of don’t you dare lie to us.
I’ve written fiction on the other blog, tagged it as fiction and still had readers assume that it was a representation of my life. It was …… uncomfortable. For me, anyway – probably not so much for them.
Sometimes, I am drawn to starting a new blog, one filled entirely with lies. Stories of sex and death and art and music, all wrapped up together and quietly, somewhere, tagged as fiction. The urge to deceive, to create a whole world that is entirely my own – that appeals to me.
Then I wonder – wouldn’t I be better off putting that energy into some of the fictional pieces I am meant to be working on? (Yes. Yes I would)
But the urge is there, and I expect it will remain – at least until I can comfortably write fiction every day and save the Internet from wanting to lynch me for it.