FUD: Fear/Uncertainty/Doubt

We’ve got Middle Class White People Problems July 27, 2010

…or Help Us Because We Have Too Many Choices.

Mike and I have been talking a LOT lately, about what to do with ourselves. We have (shh, I apologise in advance) too much money right now. We have no idea what to do with it. There is a plethora of options and we can’t easily choose between them.

* Move to Europe. I love this idea, but I’m concerned about being so far from family (plus our families would be sad because we are SO AWESOME).
* Move somewhere random, like Japan. I’m not so keen on this but Mike is applying his engineer’s brain and is intrigued by the structure of the language - and if that isn’t a reason to move then nothing is.
* Fly to Singapore, buy a caravan and spend a couple of years travelling around Asia and Europe. Crazy but cool, and also unlikely.
* Stay here. SO BORING UGH.

Then there’s the less permanent, short term ideas:
* Go to Florida in October accompanying Mike on his next work trip (he’s just back from Prague)
* Go to Australia in December to see Muse in concert and take the kids to Dreamworld etc. (Cheaper and closer)
* Save up until January and go to Europe with Mike on another of his work trips, and check out Spain and relocation possibilities.

Another problem with moving is that I’d probably need to get my Master’s or Honours to qualify to teach overseas, as most countries require a four-year degree. I’m thinking about doing my Masters in Education part time anyway because some of the course material is cool.

Oh, and another, more boringer option is:
* Pay off the mortgage as quickly as possible. HOW BORING.

The Whole Tooth November 19, 2007

A week and a bit ago, Ethan and Amy and I trundled off to the dental nurse (in NZ, dental care is free until age 18 and most primary schools have a permanent dental clinic on the property) for the kiddies to get their regular checkup. For Amy it was a case of counting her teeth — twenty, “and oh my goodness what lovely spacing she has between her teeth! Just lovely…” — but for Ethan it was a shocking, incredibly shocking, five fillings.

Five!

I was agog, aghast, astonished, all those things, and then felt the parental shame of implied neglect when the dental nurse asked: Does he brush twice a day? (Yes.) Does he drink juice? (No, only water.) Does he use adult toothpaste? (Yes.) Does he have sugary snacks? (No.) I second-guessed everything I’d ever done in the space of about a minute and came up with no significant reason.

Today was his second visit to get teeth filled. Last Monday he got two done (bottom left canine and incisor — the holes were in the space between the teeth) and today two more (same again, bottom right). Dental nurse kindly said that if we were indeed doing everything right, then we should consider fluoride tablets.

In most of the South Island of New Zealand, and I don’t know how much of the North Island, the water is not treated with fluoride. New Zealanders typically are suspicious of any form of nannying by the government and consider fluoridation thus. Every time a district council suggests treating the local water, about half the district will support it and half will vocally and viciously reject it, calling on all kinds of conspiracy theories.

I’ve never cared one way or the other, to be truthful (I like the fact that our water is generally chemical-free and “pure”), but I think I’d support fluoridation now if indeed that is the cause of Ethan’s problems. It will be interesting, if we start taking tablets, to see how his teeth are a year or two from now.

Stab stab stab February 17, 2007

We recently acquired a secondhand Windows laptop for Mike to use for coding stuff. This is BAD, because it came with Spider Solitaire installed, and I have always been a sucker for Spider Solitaire since cards were invented the year I got my own account on the university computers.

The good news is I have been stabbed in my mousing finger by my evil arch-nemesis, the rose that lives in the corner of the front garden. Every time I weed that patch I threaten to pull the whole damn rose out and throw it away, and the rose is like, oh yeah? and I’m all, yeah bitch you better reckanise. Today it stabbed me in a futile effort to extend its lifespan.

It is so dead.

I have a thorn embedded in my fingertip and efforts to dig it out with a pin only served to push it in more as well as widen the crater it formed, so when I finally gave in and swiped Savlon cream over it so it won’t fester in my sleep, I may as well have used Polyfilla.

The reason it is good news is that I can still write. So I’m guessing now that it was probably the best thing to happen two days before university starts. No solitaire, mucho writing.

Also, Amy just came in and looked at me like she was expecting, I don’t know, some sort of service? Then she strode purposefully from the room and returned to hand me to following items in order: one clean nappy; one mohair jersey that doesn’t fit her any more; one pair of pink shorts with frilly cuffs; and one polo shirt. Then when I failed to react she all but rolled her eyes and went into the lounge to extract the baby wipes from under the couch.

If she could, she’d just change her own nappy her own damn self. Yo.

Bad mother story? Let me top it! December 1, 2006

Yeah, so the other day I posted a couple of horrific parenting tales involving my children and physical injury. Then I thought, ha, no one can do anything worse!

Then I let my kid knock another kid out cold. Beat that, suckahs!

We went to a thing where there was morning tea, neighbours, other kids, including Ethan’s friend Hannah. The two of them along with half a dozen other kids were running riot, and I’d already told Ethan off twice for running around a bunch of elderly ladies — he’d stop for a bit, then when I looked away he’d take off running again. I gave up since no one else seemed too concerned.

Then I was chatting to someone else and we all jumped at a tremendous BANG! behind us. Ethan and Hannah had collided head-on. I and Hannah’s mother rushed to the scene, where our respective offspring were laid out on the wooden floor, both screaming. I gathered Ethan up and checked for blood — none — and realised that Hannah’s screaming had stopped. Her mother picked her up and she was limp and silent, obviously unconscious. They didn’t stop to talk about it but rushed out the door to the medical clinic.

Fortunately it turned out they only had a 24-hour concussion watch — waking Hannah every half-hour to make sure she could be roused. But yes. I can see now my genetic predisposition to clumsiness has not, sadly, skipped a generation.

A blue day. November 10, 2006

I love the smell of bipartisanship in the morning. Smells like victory!

I feel light at heart, young, giddy even. I may have to skip a little bit next time I check the mail. Because over here, ten thousand kilometres away from it all, safely distanced from the utter insanity that has ensued in the US since September 11, 2001, it does actually feel, even a tiny bit, like things might just be better.

We were living in Santa Cruz when Bush was elected. Neither of us had the right to vote, being residents for tax purposes only and, you know, because of those drug smuggling charges. I was in San Francisco staying at a shoddy hotel above a middle-eastern restaurant with nightly belly dancing, attending an anthropology conference at the nearby Hiatt or Hilton or something with an H. I spent election night sequestered in my room, talking angrily to Mike on my cellphone as results came in, changed, concessions were made, and then I went to sleep after much frustrated tossing and turning. That was fine, everyone thought, we’ll just suffer through four years of spoilt rich Texan offspring and elect Hilary or something.

Then, of course, September 11, followed by insanity. As H1 visa holders, we felt like we could be legally evicted from the country for tying our shoes the wrong way. I had to stop using cheap Mexican labourers to import my fine Columbia cocaine, because the repercussions? There were some. Wow.

And now? Maybe a little balance. I don’t ask for a drastic swing back to the left, but I’ll be happy with middle ground. Live and let live, yo.

(This rambling pseudo-intellectual political post brought to you by my camera’s flat batteries, because I can’t download photos until tomorrow. Man! Cursed much?)

In which I play detective for the good of the proletariat. October 9, 2006

Today in my student-email inbox, I was forwarded a promotional email advertising cheap laptops. Let’s not get into how annoying it is that the head of the college students’ association spends her time forwarding every little thing to “ALL STUDENTS URGENT!!!” and move straight on to the dodgy business practices, shall we? Mmkay.
The text of the email was thus:

LAPTOP COMPANY SPRING SPECIALS

Open Wide & Say

Ahhhhhhh!

Just open up the screen on the new Toshiba A100 and wait for all the Ooohs & Ahhh’s

Its stunning 15.4” WideScreen with high gloss finish will draw acclaim from even the most avid desktop user.

Wireless ready to work with you wherever you choose.

High performance without the price the Toshiba A100-OMY010 features the advanced new Intel® Core™ Solo processor. It’s a feature-rich, full-size desktop replacement that delivers high end performance at an affordable price.

Highlights

Intel® Core™ Solo Processor T1300 1.66GHz. This is one of Intel’s new generation of processors – powerful, capable and able to handle demanding applications.

15.4” TruBrite™ widescreen 1280 x 800 (WXGA) gives you lots of space to work in and produces bright, high quality pictures. Ideal for presentations with superb clarity and a wide viewing angle

Windows XP Pro operating system – essential if like most businesses you are likely to link into a network at any time.

Only $1799 + gst

Kind Regards

Prue Gibbons
Sales Manager
(note the new Ddi number)

161 Kilmore St
PO Box 13694
Christchurch, NZ

Ddi +64 3 964 9476
Phone- +64 3 366 7647
Fax - +64 3 366 1003
Cell - +64 0275 294 664

Don’t you love how I saved all that nifty HTML formatting so you could truly appreciate the beauty? Anyway. I googled “The Laptop Company” and found their website, here. But…there is no Toshiba A100 on their website. Buh? Huh.

Then I googled “Toshiba A100-OMY010″. There is only one place on the internet selling that particular Toshiba, and here it is. LaptopHQ has the same contact phone number as The Laptop Company, which is also the same contact phone number in the email, so presumably the two companies are actually one and the same, targeting two different markets.

Here’s the confusing (or perhaps evil) part: The above deal is for the Toshiba A100 laptop for $1700 plus GST. That adds up to…uh…carry the one…$1,912.50. The LaptopHQ website advertises the same laptop for $1,999 including GST.

So for a savings of less than $90 on a two-thousand-dollar laptop, how many students will be suckered into blowing their student loans on an overpriced chunk of hardware? And is $90 still a special as the salesperson claims? I rest my case.

Meh, bored now.

Current holiday status: zombie September 28, 2006

We are into Day Four of the school holidays, and this is how they have gone thus far:

Monday - both children in daycare. Tra la la!

Tuesday - morning, shove a DVD in the player. Afternoon, in my holiday enthusiasm I take Ethan out for a mother-son date: lunch at La Porchetta followed by a trip to the library.

Wednesday - ugh. Why is it so cold? Why won’t Ethan stop asking me for snacks? Why won’t he go and play. Anywhere else? PLEASE?

Thursday - I am dead inside. No, Ethan, you have eaten EVERY MORSEL OF FOOD IN THE HOUSE GO AWAY LALALALA. No, Amy, I’m not picking you up because YOU WERE THE ONE WHO BANGED YOUR FOREHEAD ON THE WALL. ON PURPOSE.

I’m sure the next ten days until kindergarten starts again will go just swimmingly.

…

I’ve changed the comment settings again: now anyone who has had a prior comment approved should be able to comment freely. Please test!

It was a hot summer night. September 16, 2006

Also, these are the places I have attempted to nap today:

1. My bed.

2. The floor in Amy’s room.

3. The couch. Three times.

4. The lounge floor, until Amy wrestled me into submission.

5. The dining room floor, until Ethan threw a ball at me.

They say there’s no rest for the wicked, but I thought on the whole I was a reasonably nice person.

Ethan is blind, bliiiiiind! August 18, 2006

Ethan failed a sight test for the second time this week. He had his first eye test on his first day at kindy, and when he failed I put it down to excitement and distraction and thought little more of it. But on Tuesday? He failed again. I’m awaiting a referral to the local specialist in kids’ eyes. We’ve been to see him once before when the Plunket nurse thought (mistakenly) that Ethan had a squint, and I know he’s a great doctor, but who wants their preschooler in glasses?

Mike and I both expected the kids to have eyesight problems, given our own state of joint myopicness. I’ve been wearing glasses since age 7, Mike since 12 or so. For both of us it’s been a slow progression from mildly nearsighted to completely reliant on glasses for our everyday lives. I have a terrible feeling that once Ethan gets his glasses, he’ll have them for the rest of his life.

And I feel absolutely terrible. And I know it’s dumb to feel bad about it, because hey! they’re only glasses, right? But damn.

On a much more positive note: we have a disco to attend tonight! The kindergarten is running a fundraiser and I offered to do the music, thinking woo! Lots of rocking out on vintage Elton John and Elvis and maybe some Cash — but of course I didn’t factor in the request list from the morning kids: the Macarena, Crazy Frog, Schnappi, the Bird Dance. I’m buying industrial-strength earplugs to prevent the horrible horrible earworms. And I can’t wait to see seventy preschoolers bopping around and having fun, and I’m dying to get Amy out there wiggling her hips to the music and laughing until she falls down. It’s going to be awesome!

I’d walk in her shoes, but you know, the crushing of tiny bones and all. August 16, 2006

At last, we have before us a toddler. Amy has been walking back and forth, with no encouragement, all afternoon. She strolled into the kitchen earlier and started rummaging through the hot-water cupboard (you know, the one where we toss all our plastic grocery bags and matches and lighter fluid and sharp knives?), so I took her by the hand and she patiently followed me through to the lounge: “Oh hello nice lady, why yes these floors are slippery — and would you be so kind as to remove the six-pack ring from my neck while we meander? Ta ever so.”

I have been reading a book called Frogs, Snails and Feminist Tales about avoiding a black-and-white view of gender and sexism in children, and studies in how gender factors into the way children relate to each other. It’s a fascinating book, not least because the author was inspired by The Paper-Bag Princess, which was one of my favourite books as a child.

These entries have been brief lately because a) I’ve been having trouble finding the time to write; and b) I’ve felt rather uninspired lately and unable to write teh funny. I know the funny is there; it’s right in front of me every time Ethan opens his mouth or Amy whacks Mike in the forehead with a lead block. But I can’t get it from in front of me to on the keyboard. Sorry. I’m sure the funny is lurking.