More Than Minimum Standards?

Ha.

Still. Tomorrow's another day.

Minimum Standards

Today was a real Minimum Standards Day at my place. Mr de Elba left at 6:30am for three days away with work, and I've just kept my few small children alive since then. Alive, whinging and bickering.

My few attempts at Mothering Beyond The Minimum Standard included:

• • making a healthy breakfast of oats with no cane sugar, but with grated apple, sultanas and cinnamon instead
• • washing the backlog of dishes on the sink (but leaving all of today's. To rot, presumably)
• • taking the little cherubs to the shops (only to come home as soon as the photos were developed, leaving most of the things on my list ignored.)
• • watering the plants with Smoochy Girl in the afternoon.

That's not a lot. But I think that finally, this:

has turned into this:

and it hurts - a lot - to do things like stand, walk, sit still, and move. So you can imagine that shopping (with an impossibly GIANT crampy tummy, an armful of things to buy, one stroller and two small children who change their desire to sit in a stroller or NOT sit in a stroller according to whether or not there is a stroller to sit in) is pretty much out of the question for now.

The current problem for the de Elbas is that we need to EAT. And without my ability to buy -you know- FOOD, the de Elbas will not EAT. And they will waste away. This would provide a welcome reprieve from the whinging, but I am setting myself a goal of minimising the whinging while keeping small children alive.

As it is, if Sonny Ma-Jiminy suffers so much as 45 minutes of not-eating he begins to crawl around the house moaning that he is getting "so weak!" and that I need to feed him immediately. I of course recognise that as a symptom of boredom rather than of starvation, but I am physically incapable of becoming Mrs PlaySchool and setting up many exciting and messy activities for the children, and clean up after them.

(Aside: I can hardly bend down to pick up things off the floor at this stage. Putting my socks on and taking them off is a painful and difficult procedure, and I can no longer see my undies. If I don't feel my own bottom, I cannot be fully sure I have them on. I only discovered the lower half of my tummy has stretch marks by looking in a mirror one day. Hence I don't look in mirrors anymore.)

I plan to do better tomorrow. Tomorrow, I will Mother Beyond The Minimum Standard by doing the following:

• • getting good sleep tonight
• • taking the little cherubs to get some groceries early in the morning (though how I will clean my teeth without toothpaste tonight, I do not know. And don't come all bi-carb of soda with me, I'm a pregnant mother on the edge. Go suck a bar of soap.)
• • being very pleasant and good-natured all day
• • providing a variety of activities to small stir-crazy children who are largely caged-in by Winter
• • not sleeping during their rest times, working on the realisation that getting more rest is not helping the 17-day-long odyssey of sore/swollen throat and glands. Instead I shall be startlingly productive around the house
• • start writing that long-promised blog post on Smoochy's Otoscope Phobia. Which will be a let-down now, because you're expecting something hilarious.

That sounds so exhausting, I may just fall off the chair into a doze right here.

I fell short of promising to take my little cherubs to the town library to get books, because that sounds like it's way beyond me right now.

The Anatomy Exam

Fifteen years ago, I had a weird moment in an Anatomy Prac exam, and it is haunting me to this day. I need to blog about it.

I know that some of you readers have more delicate sensibilities and others of you have none whatsoever, but I believe that although this post is about -here it comes- the penis, it will not offend as it is discussed in strictly anatomical terms. If however you are offended, please accept my apologies.

Anatomy Prac exams are bizarre experiences. Deep underground in the anatomy labs, about 60 stainess steel tables are set up with a specimen on each end. 120 specimens with 120 questions for 120 students to provide answers to.

The questions attached to each specimen are usually very detailed. So detailed in fact that a pin is stuck into extremely precise structures or blu-tacked to bone with the point of the pin indicating a similarly precise structure. You don't find any general questions: everything is extremely specific.

Imagine my surprise when I moved to a station in my prac exam and was confronted with the following: a pelvis, male, with a pin stuck into the penis, and with the question, "What is this?"

Now the thing that surprised me was that the pin was just ... stuck in. Anywhere. Not in any of the superficial structures, not anywhere special, just ... stuck in.

A penis question would most likely be about the proper anatomical name of a superficial structure or it could be referring to an internal structure as indicated in a cross section. Or even a cross-section with the question, "What fluid does this vessel carry?" Or "what is manufactured here?"

Not a pin stuck in any old place with the question, "What is this?"

Because the answer would have to be "penis" and that's an answer for Year 4 Primary School Sex Ed, not for 1st Year University Anatomy. I'd spent ages learning all the specifics of every bone, ligament, muscle, tendon, nerve, artery, vein and organ in the body, and in the exam, they are going to ask me to name the penis?

I looked at the student who had completed that station before me. He was buried in the next question and showed no confusion over the preceding question.

I looked around the room trying to find the Candid Camera. I couldn't see one.

I imagined a scenario where there was a specific point I'd missed, and the real answer to the question was precise and complex (like the other 119 questions on the exam) ... the lecturer marking my answer rolling around lauging, calling the other lecturers over and hooting, "Look what this idiot has written! Question 61! "Penis!" Ha ha ha! Didn't she learn that in primary school? Ha ha ha!"

But, due to the random placement of the pin, there was no other answer to the question. I shook my head, wrote down "penis" and moved to the next station.

After the exam as my friends and I were discussing and debriefing, I asked them about it.

"Hey ... about question 61?" Blank looks. "The penis. You know."

"Oh yeah?" they said.

"Was the answer really ... Did I miss something? I mean, was there something more specific than ... 'penis'?"

"It was 'penis'," they replied, looking blankly at me. Their looks implied, "Did she find that question difficult? What's the matter with her? Didn't her mother teach her anything?"

And after a brief, disbelieving pause, they went on with their discussion. Again, I shook my head and vowed to forget about it and move on.

At the end of the semester, students are only awarded a grade. There was no way of getting feedback on which questions I answered correctly and which ones I missed.

To my amazement, I received a Credit for the subject.

But fifteen years later, with my degree on the wall and some successful jobs to my credit, I still shake my head and wonder about that question.

Could it really have been that simple?

Cold Turkey

My small niece, Peanut, is going through dummy withdrawal.

"dummy" = "pacifier"

I was talking via Google Talk with my brother-in-law, Constable Crazy, about this.

Me: Is Peanut managing without her dummy?
Const: The turkey is cold but living.

Oh dear. So what does a mother do when she has a number of dummies in the house and doesn't want to cave in and give them to her daughter in a moment of sheer desperation?

She sends them to her sister. Express Mail too, unless that round yellow sticker on the left is a breastfeeding joke.

I assume these were sent with the explanation that "the baby will need them."

Ah yes. Thanks. I will -er- keep them, and then I will -er- I will ... umm ...

Still. A kid sucking on a dummy is probably better than:

ElbaPlague 2009 - Over and Out

You wouldn't think these people were the sickest I've ever seen them just a few days ago, would you?


Tonight after dinner, Sonny Ma-Jiminy mentioned the phrase "Pass the Parcel" and Smoochy Girl, who most probably doesn't even know what Pass the Parcel is, joined in the chorus. Soon, they were both clamouring for Pass the Parcel (?) and I wasn't prepared to put together a parcel to be passed! I'd done a full day and was completely exhausted, not to mention the fact that after I'd bathed them, cleaned their teeth and put them to bed, I was going to head off to do a very large grocery shop in peace and quiet.

But Daddy, oh wonderful Daddy, that man who not one week ago lay in his bed so sick he was barely lucid, came to the mythical party. While Sonny hid his eyes, Daddy quickly put together a parcel.

And this is how the game went:

1. The parcel is passed to the music "Funky Town" as sung by the cast of Veggie Tales.

2. Daddy wins a pair of his own socks.

3. Sonny Ma-Jiminy wins a lemon.

4. Smoochy Girl also wins a lemon.

5. Sonny Ma-Jiminy wins a second lemon.

6. Game over - and the children are still so small that they thought it was GREAT! Daddy is the hero of the hour. Him and his socks and his lemons.
I think we've got ElbaPlague beat.

Thanks

Thanks for all your well-wishes. Sonny Ma-Jiminy is back to normal, Smoochy Girl is nearly there, and Mr de Elba and I are 75% well.

Femina: Yes, torrid was an okay word to use!

Tracy P, Mimi and Joy: Thanks for your prayers. How special to have people from the other side of the world praying for us!

Cynthia K: Yes, we have been sicker than we've ever been since moving to our new town. I'm not going to read anything into it though ...

Crazy Sister: I love that you yourself are so off-the-wall, but it amazes me that you MEET people who are similarly crazy. Like that elderly lady who has to keep telling you the dimensions of the room in which she nursed her husband to death. Crazy begets Crazy. As you just posted.

Swift Jan: Thanks for the wishes, hope Connor's ears are on the mend! De Elbas being delirious with tonsils doesn't make ear infections any nicer for others! Have been meaning to email you to apologise if I sounded pompous on my comment about Swine Flu. I don't know heaps about it, I just haven't found major cause for alarm, that's all. I don't expect you'll get it in Melbourne, and if you do, I'll pass you the tissues til you're better! And I don't know about you, but for a Mum of nearly-three, a little time in enforced quarantine sounds about as good as a holiday to Hamilton Island right now.

Jen: Hope I didn't talk up the otoscope phobia too much. It's funny but probably not stand-up comdey routine material. Will work on it soon.

Hippomanic Jen: Yeah, I wouldn't want to go through it again. Especially once the baby's here. That'd about break me I think!

Musingwoman and GreenJello: Thanks for your thoughts. Last night was the first night in over a week that I was able to sleep straight through - nobody woke me up. Now why, when I've been stumbling around like a zombie in the enforced wakings of previous nights, did I lie in bed unable to sleep until after 3am last night, of all nights?? Hoping for everything to align for a great sleep tonight!

Alison: Thanks for the thoughts. Stay well over your side of the earth, and enjoy Summer for us okay? Our new town is renowned for cold windy winters - no snow or anything, just near-freezing temperatures and lots of biting-cold wind. (I think in non-snowy places, we're just not set up for real cold, like in our homes and wardrobes! We could learn from friends in the US about how to dress and how to build houses.)

Sassy B: I love that you said "Sheesh" - I said that a few days ago and Sonny copied me. "Huh," I thought, "I've taught him a new exclamation, I hope that's not a bad thing." Hmm. "Did you say, 'Sheesh'?" I asked him. "No," he replied. "I said QUICHE!!" So there's his new exclamation: "QUICHE!" Weird.

ElbaPlague 2009 (condensed but still long)

Sometimes I don't blog for days because there's nothing to blog about. Sometimes it's because I'm just too busy. Sometimes it's because I'm just plain lazy.

This time, the reason I haven't been blogging is because the plague has come to our place. ElbaPlague 2009, we're calling it. The worst case of raging tonsillitis ever to hit one family at one time.

I have been writing it all down in a blog post, but it started to sound like a cross between a boring medical list of symptoms and a chat with an elderly person at a bus stop.

I am starting again, hoping to condense it. In order to achieve a condensed version, I will try dot points. Just like a uni student.

• Sonny Ma-Jiminy - 6 days, 3 doctor's trips, 2 different anitbiotics and 2 over-the-counter medicines to lower temperature.
• Fever caused vomiting and hallucinations, poor Sonny swatting away imaginary mosquitoes in the night.
• Broken sleep and shouting out in the night, "Ah! Ah! So bad! I feel so bad!!"
• Slowly got better, currently back to normal! Many prayers were said, much thanks is now due!!

• Mr de Elba - 5 days, 2 doctor's trips, 2 shots of penicillin, a course of penicillin tablets, one faint in the bathroom and a few mear misses
• Too sick for much talking, any TV watching, any walking out of the bedroom/ensuite area other than to get to doctors' appointments.
• Kept fluids and medicines down well, so declined the doctor's offer to admit him to hospital (it was just an offer, not a recommendation after all!) Good decision. More rest was had at home. And I looked after him well.
• But he was Scary-Sick for days on end, I won't sugar-coat that.
• Today he turned a corner. He walked to the kitchen! He had eggs for breakfast! We talked! Then he slept for the rest of the day again.
• He is still feverish. He is still sick. But today, he looks like a NORMAL sick person, not the death's-door sick person he has been.

• Smoochy Girl - 9 days, varying levels of sickness, two antibiotics, 6 vomits and one midnight trip to emergency.
• Two problems have made the Smoochy Management difficult:
1. Her phobia of the otoscope. Remind me to blog about this when I'm feeling better myself. It's sorta funny.
2. Her aggressive resistance to taking her medicine. This has prolonged her sick time.
• For most of the week, she showed signs of having a mild tonsillitis. She has been mostly well.
• But on Wednesday her temperature skyrocketed and thence commenced the vomiting.
• Picture if you will ... a mother was mopping up pools of vomit on the right side of her body while vomiting violently into the mop bucket on the left side of her body. Smoochy having a great time in the shower. Sonny watching the farce.
• Scary black bits in vomit on Friday night, midnight trip to the emergency centre after a few phone calls making sure I was doing the right thing (Queenslanders - use the 13HEALTH phone service - it's awesome!!)
• All's well that ends well. Um, actually all's well that ENDS. Yes. Probably not blood, but some food item that has changed colour on contact with stomach acids. New antibiotic, and I must keep her temperature down with constant medication.

• Me - ARGH! ME! I forgot there was such a creature.
• 9 days, mild sickness threatening to engulf me if I shut my eyes for too long. Countless trips to doctors and pharmacies, many different medicines in different doses at different times of the day for 3 sick people, and lists and charts and reminders to help me not stuff it all up. Lots of disinfectant. More shopping trips with two rambunctions half-sick kids than I'd care to remember.
• Pregnancy is an absurd strain on the body. But it is all fogotten in the bizarre day-nightishness of around-the-clock nursing of multiple sick people.
• I have had a sore throat, swollen glands and blocked eustachian tubes the whole time, but I am fighting it off - Betadine Throat Gargle (pharmacy) or the Nyal equivalent (supermarket) are both good things. Very good things. Also a snort of Vicks First Defence a few times a day goes a long way.
• Sleeping at the opposite end of the house, trying to stay well to look after everyone!
• Baby monitor comes in handy - it's sensitive enough to hear all three of my lovelies in the night.

• My parents - rendered much service in the way of washing and drying and folding and ironing earlier in the week.
• Have now spent three days driving to Mt Isa to spend a week with my dear Wee Bro, my little brother, whose definitely-worse side is pictured here.

• Mr de Elba's parents - rendered much service to us today, in taking out children for hours so that Mr De Elba and I could have some child-free time to SLEEP. We did.
• First, we had a hot breakfast together and talked without interruption, laughing at Smoochy Girls' otoscope phobia
• Then we slept. I had four solid hours of sleep before I dragged myself awake to await the return of the children, and make them dinner. Things have been back to normal crazy since they returned. And I love them.

It is too late and I am too sick to proof-read this post. Please accept any errors and my profound thanks for your thoughts and/or prayers, and for the grandparent's assistance over this week. It's not yet over for Smoochy, and I'm not sure whether I will head downhill or up, but whatever happens, I'm here, reading your blog posts whenever I can!

All Dogs Go To Heaven ... Don't They?

This tickled my funny bone!

Mainly because I'm not fond of church signs.

As a Christian, I cringe to see my Lord being represented by signs saying critical things like "Dusty Bibles Lead To Dirty Lives" and thoughtless things like "Empty Cradle - Empty Christmas" and innocuous, empty things like "And Mary Stored All These Things Up And Pondered Them In Her Heart." All those travesties were perpetrated in my last town, and I saw them all with my own eyes.

This is an Internet hoax (but how FUNNY it is!) about a supposed face-off between a Catholic Church and a Presbyterian Church arguing about the eternal destiny of dogs. Apparently, these pictures were made with the Church Sign Generator.

The thing I found funny was IF they were real, and IF I drove past on some random day and saw

"Converting to catholocism (sic) does not magically grant your dog a soul,"

I would have crashed my car from laughing so hard!

Shut the door, wipe it clean, make it tidy.

My little girl has some funny quirks. She has a thing for completion and tidiness. All cupboard doors and drawers must be shut, evidenced here in our Kitchen Game:



I get my wrists slammed in the drawers frequently when I am putting away the cutlery, and sometimes I open a cupboard, turn to take hold of a Very Large and Heavy Kitchen Object, turn back to put it way, and ... the door is shut.

Many of the internal doors in the house need to be shut (unless a parent needs them shut, when they must be open, e.g., when we are in the bathroom for some peace & quiet.)

It's good when things are untidy, because you can play on her need for tidiness and get a little help around the place.

But tonight as I turned to see the lists of things to do on my whiteboard, I realised she was taking things too far.


My lists used to fill the whiteboard. Now I've lost the lower half of them, including some important phone numbers.

Wiped clean. Up to Smoochy's reaching height. Great.

You know your two year old is spending too much time with the dog ...

... when she throws library books at your head and shouts, "FETCH!"

Update on sick de Elbas: Three-quarters of us are okay, even if we feel a little down from time to time. Sonny on the other hand continues to be very sick. We're having difficulty managing his fever, and he will often wake from fitful sleep shouting, "So BAD! I feel SO BAD!!" And we know he does. We're off to the doctor most days and we're getting looked after well, but this thing is hard to shake. The primary problem remains nasty tonsillitis, but wow. The secondary stuff is getting a little worrying. If you're a praying person, we'd appreciate prayers for Sonny to get well (you can call him Nat in your prayers) and for me and Mr de Elba to have wisdom to know what to do. If you're not a praying person, all positive thoughs are appreciated.