Grief...

People think of February and many think of Valentine's Day.  Me? I think of grief.

This week has been no exception. I know 3 people who attended different funerals this week. Nobody I know died, so I have been lucky enough to not have to attend a funeral myself. Instead, I have organised a few people to meet up to ensure a friend had something to do on the second anniversary of her mothers death. For her February 2010 sucked. She had two family members die in less than a week. One expected, one not - both painful and heart breaking.

Even though I have coffee with her most weeks, my friend W will have a rough week or so soon. We will probably catch up more than once as she has her birthday, the fourth anniversary of her husbands death and what would have been his birthday.  Sometimes it feels as though that time has frozen and that that family hasn't moved on. I'm not really sure but then again, is it any of my business? People grieve differently.

I am an example. It's been five years since my mother died, almost 13 since my dad died.One expected, one not. I spoke at both funerals. Last year, I spent Christmas day in my pajamas. When someone asked me why I replied off handedly "because you can do that when your parents are dead and your in laws don't care." Just because I can joke about it and don't talk about the dates my parents died doesn't mean I don't care. 

I grieve, not overtly, but quietly. I don't go to the cremetorium to acknowledge their birthdays or date of death. As I said, people grieve differently. It doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt. It just means I might be better at compartmentalising my life.

Thankful Thursday 9 Feb 2012

I’m joining in with Kate Says Stuff for Thankful Thursday. 

 

I am thankful for school starting again!  Yes I am one of those parents who struggles with the Christmas school holidays.  The 6 weeks seems to drag for me. I work at home and my work doesn’t stop during the holidays so I feel like I am constantly saying “I’m working right now and I’ll and see / play with you / feed you soon”.

I am thankful that  Girl Child has gotten ready for school relatively quickly so far and we have been on time for school. It could have been close this morning as she didn't actually get up until 8.20.

I am thankful that Boy Child is doing well and seems to be coping okay even though he doesn't have a single teacher from last year (except for roll group which is 5 minutes every morning).  For a child with Aspergers he is coping with the changes remarkably well.

I am thankful that we are doing fine while Mr E is away in Sydney this week. Last week, the kids and I went to the coast  for 3 days and let’s just say that I was not a very calm mother while we were away.  I was afraid that this week would be similar but it’s going well – so much better than I hoped.

I’m grateful that Dr Jesse gave me a med that helps my head. Due to an issue at the chemist I have been unable to have it for 3 days. While i am much better than last year, I can feel the lack of the migraine med.  Hopefully I will get a new prescription today (it takes 2 days) because I took the last one I had on Monday

I am especially thankful that the volunteer webmaster role that I took on (sort of by accident) is not trying my patience as much.  There is still more work than I expected but I’m coping better with it. 

I think I might be getting my motivation to blog back too! That’s another thing for me to be thankful for.

What are you thankful for? Why not join in over at Kate Says Stuff?

This mothering gig.....

Sometimes it sucks.

I've really been struggling with it lately.  Trying not to make the same mistakes my parents made with me, but making my own along the way. I grew up in a house where one person drank and one person hit so I was determined not to make those mistakes with my children. For the most part we have managed or more likely, just muddled through.

But this holidays I'm not really coping well.  I have yelled a lot more than is normal for me and that makes me feel bad.  Last night I ran away to a friends place just to get away from Girl Child, who insisted on following me around while I was on the phone.  It was just for 90 minutes or so but it was enough to help clear my head.

I probably talk more about Boy Child on here than I do about Girl.  But despite having Aspergers he is the easiest of them both (personality wise anyway).  They are both stubborn, but Girl Child has a lot of attitude to go with it.  She was the child who could throw up on the way to daycare at the same place every single day for weeks, she was the one who told me I'd ruined her life at age 4 when I gave her the wrong bag for her preschool library books.

But over the last few weeks her attitude is doing my head in. Add to that, we have found out she needs fillings (including one in an adult tooth) and on Friday we discovered that she has a lazy eye.  You would have thought that as she has assessed twice last year at the same place and has glasses from there, although by a different optometrist, perhaps it would have been mentioned earlier. At almost eight and a half, she is too old for patching. Boy Child's lazy eye was obvious when he was quite young and he wore an eye patch for maybe nine months when he was about two and a half. Hers isn't obvious to me (Boy's was noticeable early) but apparently she barely uses one eye at all.  She is now also short sighted like me.

For me, though, apart from the dodgy genes she has inherited are the issues she is having with others.
Rarely a shrinking violet, she unfortunately spent most of last year playing with a troubled child which then meant no one else in class would play with her.  Once the other child left near the end of term 3, she had no one.  While she did make one good friend (L) she was held on to tightly and clashed with another child in her class (Z) over L.  Now Z and Girl are going to be in the same class for the third year in a row, unfortunately they clash big time. L is going to be in a different class to them which is probably good for L and may help Girl even though she is devastated.

Form L's parents, I have heard on a few occasions about things Girl Child has done that have worried L. In fact they are all in a kids computer site like Club Penguin and I have been spoken to twice by L's parents about things that Girl Child has said there.  The first time she admitted what had been done and apologised to L.  

On Friday night I was contacted by L's parents with a copy of a message that Girl Child apparently left on the website.  The message itself was concerning as it talking about attacking Z when school starts. Girl Child  swears that she wasn't online the day the message was sent and that she didn't send that message. In fact when I read the message to her and got her to write it down the spelling of certain words was different. Add that to the fact that she had given her password out to a number of people and that she vehemently denied writing it and cried for almost 30 minutes, we don't know what happened. We can't prove or disprove it. So I have changed her password and she can only go on to that website while an adult is sitting with her. Normally someone would be in the same room as her but now we will be watching a lot more closely.

On another note, she will be in Year 3 this year and school hasn't started.  Girl Child is already worried about NAPLAN (Australia wide academic tests for children in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9). I wonder if that plus knowing L is in a different class but she will be with Z,  is adding to her attitude?

So there you'll have it.  My beautiful daughter and her very minor medical issues plus her very strong personality had this week culminated to dent what little faith I had in myself as a good (or even just a good enough) parent this week.  Tomorrow is a new day, right?

SYL Week #2 Define your Personal Values

Debra Writes:
Week 2 challenge: Go through the process and define your top 5 core values including ranking them. Share this information however you want next Monday (not on this post) – if you want please elaborate on your choices, talk about any difficulties in the process, any surprises or changes that came about. Blog it and link up, comment on next week’s post, share a journal entry or scrapbook layout, whatever method works for you…

I had actually done everything Debra suggested and somehow published and then lost my almost complete post.  Dammit!!
Given it’s so late at night I’m going to summarise what I had.
The values I ended up with were:
Love
Authenticity
Compassion
Inspiration
Contribution
I am having trouble with the fifth value. Right now I’m leaving it as Contribution but for a while there I had Courage. For now I’m going to add Courage in to Authenticity.
To me each of the five values I ended up with were chosen because to me they encompassed other words that I cut down to get to my five core values.
Love – Family, Nurturing, Hope, Intimacy and Positivity
Authenticity– Integrity, Honesty, Loyalty, Trustworthiness, Dependable and Courage
Compassion – Sensitivity, Open Mindedness, Understanding and Acceptance
Inspiration – Imagination, Dream, Intuition, Originality, Creativity, and Success
Contribution – Support, Connection, Intentional and Community
Debra defined that values are not Goals, Permanent, Universal or Another “should”.  So with that in mind, I think my list works for today.

What went right in 2011? - SYL. Week# 1

Like many others, I joining in with Debra Dane over at Home Life Simplified and her Simplify Your Life 52 week challenge. click on the button to visit and check it out.

Here's what she has to say about the challenge for Week 1.

At this time of year most people are focused on what they want to change, where they feel they failed or did not meet their expectations or previous “resolutions”.

We will start in the same tone as my blog and this challenge – positivity! 

What you focus on will grow and as much as you are here for change I can bet money that you had some successes and blessings in 2011.

For me, 2011 was an interesting year.  There were a few things that made me 'stuck' but I also had things which made me happy. Some examples are my family, coffee with friends, coffee (it's my adult or just plain old me time), helping children in Girl Child's class and our long awaited holiday to New Zealand. I think perhaps I wrote most of these things down when I linked up with Maxabella in her Grateful for. I felt at peace, when I got enough sleep and when life was stable and when I had enough me time to replenish myself.  Taking me time helped me related better to other and most importantly to my family.

I ended up spending a lot of the year having semi regular coffee dates with other Mums from school.  One who was already a friend but a few others became friends.  That was lovely and some of us managed to catch up for dinner twice during the year.  That is not something I would have really done previously.  I also pushed out of my comfort zone by going to some Nutrimetics demonstrations and actually learning how to apply makeup.  I managed to catch up with Leanne from Deep Fried Fruit a few times for lunch and it was great to talk blog stuff as most of my IRL friends don't know that I blog.  I raised about $1200 for the Leukemia Foundation by shaving my head.  But before I did that I was brave and had multicoloured hair for a few weeks and then a Mohawk for a few more before I shaved it off as well.  I had the Mohawk done at Girl Child's school assembly which I am very proud of because I tend to like to be in the background.  It's a little hard to do with multicoloured hair!  Best of all I wrote 50,000 words of a novel in November for NaNoWriMo.  That was very impressive.

Boy Child started High school (Year 7) in a school which we felt would meet his needs better than the local high school.  I was very relieved that it did meet his needs and he blossomed academically and received a Faculty Award for Year 7 for English.  He managed to catch the bus and cope much better than we thought he would with public transport, a new school and making new friends.

Girl Child made friends and her reading ability was recognised on at least two occasions. With her dance and gross motor activities she has grown in terms of strength and flexibility. She is maturing and that has been very noticeable socially as she has been invited to play dates and had friends accompany her to the pool.

We had a lot more contact with the extended family on both sides and lots of contact with my family during school holidays and for family occasions.  My children seem to be building a positive relationship with the other children in the extended family which is lovely to see.

So it seems that 2011 was more positive than I expected.  I am very grateful for that.