Category: CVID

blog action day: like the weather

blog action day: like the weather

Posted on by wrekehavoc

every year, i participate in blog action day.  i like to tilt at windmills as much as the next grrl, and they always pick topics about which i tend to care.

this year, the topic: climate change.

as a mom and as a somewhat crunchy being, i tend to worry about polar bears and glaciers and all sorts of seemingly unnatural alterations to our present time-space continuum. i often wonder when the day will come when kansas develops coastal waterfront property. i ponder whether my kids — and, G-d-willing, their kids — will inherit a world that continues to turn and continues to exist as we know it. and, being one whose own health is a somewhat fragile topic, i also do imagine the potential health issues that happen when climates go awry.

greater heatwaves hit people, especially those poor folks who don’t have air conditioning or who choose (insert tongue firmly in cheek as that word is said) to live al fresco.  (well, that’s what my conservative friends tell me. homelessness, apparently, is a life choice. and apparently, climate change is a complete farce. next, they’ll be telling me that i should trust in big business and the free market. but i digress. per usual.) and when it gets very, very hot, all sorts of diseases can become even more of a problem before. for example, mosquitoes would dig climate change, if they had brains bigger than an atom, because it increases their ability to find a date and dinner, which of course can lead to all sorts of happiness for mosquitoes but also a whole world of trouble for us two-legged buffet tables.

and when it’s cold, well, in short, people freeze to death.

i suspect there are potential long-term problems in the offing. agriculture can suffer, which could mean people could go hungry, people might have to move.  while in the midwest recently, i saw a news segment about a farm that had a bumper crop of pumpkins thanks to the hotter, wetter summer. however, every other crop of theirs — tomatoes, etc — went straight to hell thanks to rot. i’m not especially a fan of pumpkin pie, and i don’t want to face a future where i have to eat any sort of squash in order to maintain my existence.

see, one can only eat so much zucchini before one contemplates something drastic.

now some people think that global warming is a crock of shit.  but i find that a lot of the commentary on global warming tends to be from people who cherrypick their data. i will freely admit that as someone who doesn’t study the topic 24/7, i try to comprehend the information that bombards me. but i cannot understand people who shut down the discussion. i have plenty of friends who think the whole idea of global warming is bunk, and they pull my tail at all turns (and they will likely pull it in the comments section as well. go for it, kids.) even if you believe global warming is bunk, can you not fathom the idea that perhaps looking toward some better practices could only improve health on the planet? is it so wrong to try to develop and use new technologies to use fewer amounts of non-renewable natural resources and possibly, just possibly, make the air cleaner and easier to breathe? is it wrong to try and work on agricultural solutions that don’t employ so damn many chemicals, some of which are polluting not only the earth but ourselves, thanks to the toxicity of these antibiotics and other supposedly-safe substances on our systems?

i get very tired of the naysayers who don’t want to explore solutions and who only want to piss on the progress parade.

so all right. who knows whether the ice age is coming. who knows whether we’ll all evaporate into vapor. who knows whether animals as we know it will die out.  we could all be drinking beer with jimi hendrix in heaven tomorrow for all we know. but i believe that  it is our responsibility as people on the planet to encourage anything to help us all live healthier lives, and that includes voting on policies that encourage safer and environmentally-friendly industrial practices. who knows: there may be an economic stimulus in there somewhere that will help us get out of this global financial rut we’re in as well.

it could be a win-win on the health front: our health, and the health of our world.

hello

hello

Posted on by wrekehavoc

just saying a howdy to anyone who might have wandered here thanks to the magic of television. i’m your host, wreke, and i’d love to tell you a little about the place.

i’m a mom. i’m a writer. i’m a webgrrl, too. i’m also the toilet paper fairy and apparently the only person in this house who realizes that bath towels do not jump up and clean themselves. oh, and i’m from NJ; and yes, i can trace the first 24 years of my life based on exits. (for you jerseyan trivia buffs, i grew up at exit 82A (GSP), went to college at exit 9 (Tpke), and have lived off exits 105 (GSP), 8, and 10 (both Tpke) until moving to the Commonwealth. and no, i do not sport big hair but i do sport a big mouth.)

i’ve been blogging since 2002. i tend to write about my kids, daughter Beloved Child (BC) and delightful hellboy Jools (an equally beloved child; he was just born after i had been blogging about BC for awhile.) as a political animal, i often tilt at windmills, large and small, in the political arena.

and i lurve music. every monday, i feature a guilty pleasure song that would make my music snob pals cringe. i’m evil that way. one month, i featured blatantly bad 70s songs, every single day of the month. oh, the humanity!

i don’t capitalize often. i do know how, and it isn’t an e e cummings thing. i’m just l a z y that way. unabashedly opinionated, i’m sort of like a cross between erma bombeck and iggy pop, only i don’t smear food all over my chest when i’m pissed. i simply write. (well, i irritate my Beloved Spouse, aka BS, generally. but the warranty is up, so he can’t throw me back, no matter how annoying i become.)

and occasionally, i’ll talk about CVID, something i wrestle with daily. it stinks, but i intend to live to be a pain in everyone’s collective ass for a very long time.

so welcome. poke your nose around. kick the tires. applaud me. argue with me. whatever floats your boat.

just don’t mind the dust bunnies. my masters isn’t in housekeeping, you know.

guilty pleasure monday: message to my girl (split enz)

guilty pleasure monday: message to my girl (split enz)

Posted on by wrekehavoc

this one’s late. and for a good reason.

we just returned from a trip to NJ to see family and friends during the holiday. it was a great visit; but when we woke up in the hotel this morning, BC started experiencing barf-fest 2008. the poor darling;  she barfed all the four hours home; she barfed while home; she’s just starting a teeny bit of ginger ale right now, which i expect will come back up shortly.

this is just not the best way to have a holiday.

whenever girlfriend feels sick — which is fairly frequent if you count her breathing issues and all the tough luck she has had the past few months — i always feel terrible. as a mom, i want to wave a magic wand and make it all better. that’s my job as a mom, you see. and of course, there are so many, many things i will not be able to make better.

one of the things i can’t make better is the fact that i get sick. when i became seriously ill two years ago, the one who really bore the brunt of it (besides BS, of course, who had to do everything) was girlfriend. hellboy was so little that, while he missed me when i was in the hospital, he truly didn’t understand as much about what was going down. girlfriend did. and there was a period of time thereafter where, whenever i went to a doctor, i ended up in the ER. it may take years, if not forever, for girlfriend to not freak out whenever i have a doctor’s appointment — which, as many of you know, is frequent enough. it makes me sad that i am actually the cause of her pain.

so  whenever i hear message to my girl, i think about all the things i wish i could do for madame. i want so much to be less self-involved, but being so ill has required that i actually stop being selfless and start taking care of myself. it’s a tough balance, believe it or not.

but then i hear these lyrics, and everything becomes clear:

No more empty self-possession
Vision swept under the mat
It’s no new years resolution
It’s more than that

No there’s nothing quite as real
As a touch of your sweet hand
I can’t spend the rest of my life
Buried in the sand

i have my new years resolutions all ready. many involve things i need to do to make myself healthier. and i have to remind myself it’s okay to do them — i need to do that in order to be there for my family.

but i will still need to take the time to be there during the journey, too.

happy new year to everyone!

love,
wreke

misty

misty

Posted on by wrekehavoc

recently, there has been a lot of discussion on a moms list i’m on about FluMist — whether it’s better to get a flu shot or let your older-than-two year old sniff up that misty stuff. as a mom who has a daughter who wildly hates shots, this is something near and dear to my heart. (in fact, i’m embarrassed to state that BC has not had a flu shot yet this year, thanks to her performance when she hid under a desk. it took two nurses, a doctor, and me to get her out. but i’m going to get her there.)

my kids cannot have Flu Mist, and it’s all my fault. see, Flu Mist is a live vaccine. you shed that yummy influenza germy goodness once you get it, and if you’re in the vicinity of a person who has a weakened immune system, you can make them deathly ill. so it’s shots for them, all the way. (we also have fun thinking about other live shots. i just try to make sure they get it right after i’ve had my IVig so that i have maximum infection fighting power in me, should i get sick. don’t know if it would actually work in reality, but it’s the only thing i can do. those kids are not going without their shots. period.)

i do get nervous about FluMist, though — there are a lot of grandmas and grandpas, for example, who may be exposed to their recently-misted grandkids. and they may get really sick because of it. and we’re not talking just a simple cough or sniffle.

still, at least i guess they’re getting vaccinated. it just reminds me of the situation with antibacterial soap and gel: someone devised it, thinking it will be an exceptionally easy way to kill even more germs than regular soap. what it does now is make those bacteria stronger and more antibiotic-resistant. but progress is all about making things easier for us, and this soap and gel was supposed to be emblematic of progress. and it is: progress gone awry. and now, we’re so damned frightened of making our kids have a few seconds of pain that we crave another solution, even if it might mean a public health problem for others.

i wonder whether ours is the first generation to wuss out over shots, as a friend put it.  we do not remember the polio epidemic; we cannot recall smallpox. we don’t know how horrible certain illnesses can be. heaven forbid our children have moments of pain, as if the pain is worse than the medical issue it’s meant to stave off. and some vaccines aren’t perfect; people sometimes get chickenpox even after receiving the vaccine. but the vaccines help more than they don’t; and i feel very strongly about immunizations.

that’s why i am sick to my stomach about a homeschooling network that exists specifically to homeschool because they do not want to give their children immunizations. i find this repugnant. while i have learned a lot about homeschooling since shooting my mouth off awhile back; and while i have a new respect for some who have chosen that path; this, to me, this particular thread is an outrage. this is not about education; this is a public health issue. to me, it’s tantamount to child abuse: these kids are sitting ducks for measles, polio, and other horrible illnesses. and no, it’s not just a week in bed and they’re better again, people.

and what will you do then — pray that they get better? exhaust your healthcare (if you have it) or else exhaust tax dollars (if you don’t)? all because you didn’t want them to get a shot?

i get really sick and tired about parental paranoia over the government. our government isn’t perfect. duh. but people talk about federal agencies as if they are composed entirely of automotons. guess what, folks: government agencies have just as many mindless people as you do in your office. there are people who care, and people who don’t. but mostly, and especially in the health sector, they do. people stake their careers on getting the info right. they know they have other peoples’ lives on the line. they’re not advocating immunizations because they think it’s a fun thing to do: they do it because they think it’s the right thing to do. and not just for your child — they’re thinking more globally. that’s what public health is all about.

so just as i will get extremely pissed at parents who let their babies swim in pools without plastic pants on (they put them in huggies swimmers and then marvel that their poop gets through, closing the pool down for fear of an E coli experience), i get extremely pissed at the parents who don’t immunize. oh, you say, you can’t trust the government. you don’t want the state telling you what to do with the precious children you’ve been entrusted.

i wonder who the hell entrusted you with those babes. if it was G-d, She must have been having a day off and you lucked out and squeezed through anyway.