MrsBrown's philosophy of life and stuff

I've been planning to write this for a few days, but it seems to be making me cry and I have better things to do with my energy, so this is now a list of the things I can do, rather than mourning the things I can't.

I got Covid on Oct 12, took antivirals and was not very unwell at all.  I spent some time over the next few weeks noticing my excessive heartrate and my need for an afternoon nap but had plenty of days when I felt fine and tried to do all thie things that were most important to me - picking up grandchildren on my bike (the 3km bike ride version, not the 30km version I had been doing each week), making dinner for the family once a week, moving into my new kitchen, going shopping occasionally. 

I'm now having my second crash in energy since then.  The first came after a 8km bike ride, when I spent 3 days extremely fatigued and this time after christmas when I thought I'd been careful but felt pretty good so probably kept going when I shouldn't have.  Anyway, I spent the past few days thinking about all the things that I'm not sure I"ll be able to do and it's terrifying.

Anyway, here's my new, couch based lifestyle plan.

Working - I can do almost all of my work while lying on the couch.  I'm not sure that it's a great use of my energy, but my TPD insurance will only cover half of my expenses. Which would be useful if I was really ill, but I can still work from the couch and I have my life set up so that I don't have to work full time.  I'm even more annoyed that when I applied to double it last year it was rejected - full rest might have been a really good option.

Cmmunity activism - Can also be modified to be a mostly couch based activity.  I seem to feel better in the evenings, so I've been able to attend meetings without obvious ill effects the day or two after. I was hoping to be stage manager for the community festival MrBassman and I have been part of organising, but February might be too soon to expect to be better. 

Grandmothering - This is hard. I can't stop myself from over exerting myself when it comes to meeting the needs of my grandchildren.  I had to cancel a caring session on Saturday because I knew I was too exhausted.  I guess I can arrange to hang out with them in their own home, or with another caregiver.  I can probably also do sleepovers and an hour or two some evenings. This feels like an important time in their lives to enjoy hanging out with them, and one that is worth prioritising. I particularly hated my 8 weeks on the couch with a broken foot for the grandmothering I missed.  I'm also aware that a solid commitment is harder for me to make right now, even if it's more useful for my kids.

Bike riding - I can do pootly rides up to about 2km round trip where I just gently move my feet enough to enable the electric motor. It's easier than walking.  I can take a child on the bike for short distances.  I can sit on the back of the bike and be ridden places, but none of my family members are as keen as I was, so they won't ride as far.

Gardening - Everything is mostly in place for summer, but there's a bit of weeding and pruning that needs doing and I'm not really up for.  Is this something I can make part of Rose's gap year personal development? OTOH, when I have Rose working on something she needs to have a body double or she'll just stop.  Maybe I'm just asking for over exertion if she does that.  Hmm, maybe that's how to get my Dad involved in the Rose Gap Year Plan? Or I need a gardener.

Rose Gap Year Plan - Planning this can be done from the couch.  There is a support worker I can make use of for some of the outing based stuff and MrBassman is always good for transportation.  The plan is to set up a bunch of activities, courses and life skill development so that Rose is able to find her own things to do, interests to follow and ways to earn money.

House Renovation - After a quick discussion, it appears that if I threaten to hire a tradesperson to do a task I would normally do, MrBassman loudly proclaims that he can do it.  I'm just going to have to ask for help with the furniture moving, and keep the tradie threat in my back pocket.

 When I started writing for LiveJournal I soon learned that it was very easy to use this format to complain about my life, but that the journals I enjoyed reading didn't do that. I've tried to keep it upbeat ever since and my FB the same. But maybe now that I'm down to 5 readers here, I can return my journalling to the mind dump of my worries it used to be.
The last week has been a flurry of caring responsibility, together with worry about the Festival prep that neither I nor mrbassman has done. Normally I can allocate my caring energy a little to each of of my children, but this week I've felt like I finish caring for one with the next waiting in the wings. It's all been doable, just relentless and it's involved active care for three of them, with worry about the fourth hanging around whenever I remembered.
Oh well, I'm off to the National Folk Festival on Thursday and I can just leave them to their other parent and my mother.

 Yesterday I spent the day on the couch with a headache, after I'd ridden for 40min with a teenager on the back of the bike.
Today I really need to get started but I'm still sort of tired in the way that everytime I push myself to get up and do something, I find myself sitting down again within 10min, but not tired enough to just take myself to bed.
It's the sort of tired that would probably go away if I had an external motivator, like colleagues or somewhere to be, but might also become read a book and fall asleep.
I guess I'm tired.

 This stressy feeling is about not being able to quieten my brain about all the things I need to do and be worried about. I usually manage it with compartmentalization, but because I've let loose the floodgates of acknowledging that I have a lot on, I'm constantly checking to see if there's a thing on my list that I could be doing in the quiet time.
Wierdly, I associate this feeling with the huge productivity I've had in periods of my life - the degree and small children, baronessing while working full-time, but this time I don't have many external constraints on my compartments, so they bleed and I'm stressed about all of them at the same time. I'm also super wary of triggering the anxiety spike/burnout experience I had in 2015 and 2016. I don't have time for that shit.
I can admit that I have some extra burden this week - top of that list is mrbassman having shingles and needing me to take on the housework/shopping duties that are normally his, but also Rose hitting her stress limits so that I have to either let go of the homework regime I was pretty proud of, or change the approach.
It's that thing where the stress makes it harder to do the thing, but your stress reduces when you achieve it. Gah!

There seem to be a lot of things I both want and need to do and I need to work out a hierarchy, so I can make decisions on the fly that work with my intentions.  I also need to get a lot more strategic about doing stuff that maybe I need to delegate.

Here's what's currently on my list of things that are important to me;

Hanging out with Grandchildren
Hanging out with children
Getting Rose through VCE in a way that maximises the result, while keeping her happy
Gardening
going to Festival
Making things projects including clothes for Tam (started), wicking bed for Tam (started), thermal pants for A, my clothes projects
Regularly cooking interesting meals for people who enjoy them
Leading the Neighbourhood House committee
Being an active participant in my local community - North Richmond Reference Group, nifty grant opportunities
Keeping up to date and suggesting fabulous new things for the local community
Keeping my clients happy while avoiding being overwhelmed by work
Hanging out with my parents
House renovation
regular exercise
Active travel advocacy
Getting enough rest, both physical and mental, when I need it

Work has a bunch of urgent things, as well as a couple of important, non-urgent things that I'm just not getting to.  The important, non urgent thing was employing someone to reduce my workload, but has become rearranging my accounting systems so that I can easily manage employing someone .  The change in problem is because  my brain has almost processed the way to do this, so I should be able to start soon.

 
I also have a couple of life admin things that I'm not getting to, and it's starting to get me down that I haven't done them - my will, my dad's (updated) will and power of attorney, working out how to negotiate and approach care for my dad and step-mother.

In the past week, I've started doing some time blocking stuff that's working pretty well.  I'm working on one or two non urgent , important things each morning, the afternoon involves sitting in bed regularly working on a weekly deadline, then Rose comes home and we do homework.  Some days I've also gotten up earlier and done some work in the garden before I start work or I've done garden for 20min after Rose's homework. I also have regular commitments to grandchildren some evenings.  I'm a bit surprised that the time blocking thing is working - I often get quite rebellious about rules about when to do things, even when I made the rules.

Another thing on my list is to find a way to move my family into more of a mutual aid community, rather than me as the provider of all support.

This has become urgent because I need to work out if I have the time/energy to do a Diploma of Governance course, which has a scholarship available for women like me and fits well with my special interest in community. Can I allocate 5 hours a week to this?  Could I do it by going away for the weekend once a month and doing it intensively?  I keep putting myself into positions where this would be useful, but have been putting off doing it for the past 10 years.  If I don't do it soon, when will I have the time?

Actions: 
1. Expand the time blocking concept (without stressing myself out) and make a weekly timetable for me.  It will include allocations of "pottering time" when I don't have a regular schedule to do things.
2. Dedicate some extra time to the "employ someone" action item.

Cookbooks make dinner is more complicated than it needs to be.  A successful family meal at dinnertime includes food that everyone is happy to eat, some protein and some vegetable.  But the most basic requirement is to feed people without resorting to takeaway delivery and without spending more than 20min on it.

This is a collection of recipes and philosophies, together with essential pantry items, regular fridge contents and supplements that are intended to support you to answer the question, OMG! what's for dinner? 

OMG dinner ideas start with answering the question, "pasta, rice, potatoes or pancakes?".  They also rely on you making them often enough that you know exactly what to do and don't have to think or worry about them.  Anything that fits the 20min or less and really easy for you to make, will qualify as an OMG dinner. 

A bonus of adopting OMG dinners and eating them regularly is that kids like eating familiar foods so they eat more.

I suggest that you start with one of these meals and make it once or twice a week for a while,, before adding in another option.  The recipes here are a collection of OMG dinners from the past 30 years.

Recipes:

Pasta
I keep egg pasta in the pantry and, when I remember, I buy fresh ravioli to have with these sauces.   G might like the pumpkin flavour.  I often serve with broccoli.

Pasta with red sauce
Put pasta water on to boil.  Grate carrot and other veg, then fry in lots of olive oil (cover the base of your deep frypan at least 2mm deep).  Add passata, mixed herbs, salt, pepper and frozen peas.  When the water boils add pasta and set timer for 1min less than cooking time.  Add broccoli(if you have some) when timer goes off and cook for 1 min.  Scoop pasta and broccoli into frypan with red sauce and mix.  Serve with too much grated parmesan and more black pepper.   You can also add white beans.

Pasta with egg and cheese
Put water on to boil. Put grated cheese, pepper and eggs (1-2 per pasta serve) in a bowl.  Cook the pasta, then mix the hot pasta with the egg mixture until it looks good.  Lift the pasta directly out of the boiling water so some of the water goes into the egg mixture - it works better that way. 
You can add crumbed broccoli to this - cook the head of broccoli in the water for 1-2min before you put in the pasta, then chop the broccoli finely and mix it in at the same time as the pasta.
It's also pretty good with chopped smoked almonds on top - for the bacon like flavour.

Rice
I find it pretty easy to make rice, but my Dad has been doing well with precooked rice sachets from Aldi.  Keeping some cooked rice in the freezer is also an option.

The Moosewood cookbook includes a number of sauces that you pour over steamed vegies and rice.  At it's simplest, precooked rice, with mixed veg from the freezer and satay sauce would be a quick way to avoid takeaway.

Satay sauce
heat grated ginger in oil and add curry powder.  After a min add some water, then soy sauce, brown sugar and peanut butter.  Cook until it's all mixed and looks right, add more water to make it runnier.

Potato
Mashed or roasted? 

Roasted
If you have time, a collection of roast veg, including potato is pretty good and you can add haloumi for protein.  There are lots of sheet pan recipes out there that would work well as OMG dinners.


Mashed
Mashed potato is a meat and three veg sort of meal.  I like to boil carrot and potato together, then mash with too much butter, pepper and salt.  You can also add cheese.  Serve with a mix of veg cooked individually and some protein - fake sausages, bought veg burgers, haloumi etc.

Pancakes, fritters, okonomyaki.

The essence of okonomyaki is finely cut cabbage or kale, with a bunch of grated vegetables, including carrot and the green bits of spring onion.  Put the veg into a bowl, add salt, a bit of flour, some sesame oil and eggs.  Fry them in patties and serve with mayonnaise and tomato sauce.

Okonomyaki are just fritters, with other flavours.

Spinach and corn pancakes use pancake mix to hold the spinach and corn together.  Served with cheese, they're reasonably quick and filling.

This is the start of a post for my work blog. It's a bit of a dump of all of the thoughts and research I've done over the last little while.  It needs refinement and some more research.

I'm a member of the Yarra Active Transport Advisory Committee and we've recently provided advice on the draft Transport Strategy.  Then my mother had her bike stolen from the "secure" bicycle parking at her apartment building and my son moved into a 70's apartment block without any space for bicycle parking at all and I realised that there's a gap in the mindset of those of us who want to encourage active transport, particularly bike riding.

My understanding was extended when I was part of the community consultation for the local Public Housing Estate.  The draft masterplan includes reduced car parking, but hasn't acknowledged the resident experience of insecure bicycle parking.  People on the estate currently have nowhere to store a bicycle but they all have access to carparking. 

We can build as many bike lanes as you like, but if people don't have somewhere convenient to put their bikes, they won't own them and they won't ride them. (I wonder if that's what makes electric scooters so popular?) 

When I decided to shift more of my regular transportation to the bike, I had to make sure that my bike was easier to get out than the car.  It had to have the lights on it or nearby and the same with weather proof gear, locks and the helmet.  Here's me on the radio talking about what I did.  What role do councils and advocacy groups have in promoting great bicycle parking facilities?

As a Green Star assessor I see lots of bicycle parking facilities that are supposed to be a positive addition to a building but I'm convinced that lots of architects have never ridden a bike, or used bike parking facilities or had a bike stolen.  Here's what I think every apartment building bicycle parking facility should include;

• suitable paths between the entry door and the next available locking position
• flat access in the facility
• ramp access from the street to the facility
• a mix of flat bar and vertical bike parking to allow for children and older bike riders, as well as the able bodied who can lift their bikes.
• security nuts on all locking frames
• Obscured view of the bikes inside - no chain wire!
• cctv of the entry
• individually identifiable access cards, with building manager followup to make sure that access is removed when moving out.
• more stuff here after I hear from apartment residents in Yarra

Sustainability Victoria have a Waste Management and Recycling in Multi-unit Developments. Better Practice Guide.  It includes an appendix with full calculations and suggested layouts for various size apartment buildings.  It would be great if there were something similar for bike parking.


Other references;

https://www.bicyclenetwork.com.au/our-services/bike-parking-experts/
City of Yarra Transport Factsheet
White paper on AS2890.3 by a bike parking equipment supplier
Better Apartments Design Standards only worried about access to bike parking, not the quality of the parking provided.

I haven't been able to settle to work since Tuesday.  I have a fee proposal to complete that my brain is refusing to focus on.  I sit down at my desk and wonder what I'm supposed to be doing, I look at my work list and then remember it, again!  I open it and type a few words and then I'm off checking facebook, my email, wondering if I'm hungry and I find a distraction activity before I sit down at my desk and start again.   I'd really like to put on some music and finish this stupid fee proposal - that's almost identical to the last 4 fee proposals I've written that normally take me less than 1 hour and which I've been trying to do since Wednesday afternoon. So here, have a dump about all the things/emotional turmoils and general worry I'm having.

1. My Dad is struggling with his new role as dementia carer.  I went over there on Tuesday night for his birthday and he was mostly great, but then he burst into tears telling us about a bad day that he'd had recently.  He also talked about how he has asked what other support he can get, but the care agency just told him that "they would get someone to call him back".  Now I feel like I need to include him in my list of people to support.  I spent Wednesday morning checking out Dementia support that would be suitable for the stage my Step mum is at. 
2. Which is also a load.  It's awful seeing my step mother stop talking at a family gathering, to hear Dad talking about the stuff she's struggling with.  It's obvious that it's basically time to mourn the person she was and accept our changed relationship.  It's shit.
3. And then, on Wednesday we found out that 17catherines had died.  I only met her once in real life but her chirpy view of her world and ability to share it with the internet meant that I've followed her life for the past 15 years or so.  As she reduced her posting here and on her politics and food blogs, I sought her out on Facebook and followed her day to day adventures.  I loved that she was able to provide the care and friendship that I struggled to provide to an old friend and I loved seeing their adventures together.  I 'm not grieving her as much as others surely are, but it's a loss that I've revisited a number of times over the past few days and it's made this week a bit harder.  I'll miss her stories about working at WEHI and her cooking enthusiasms and her cycling adventures.  I was so inspired by her plan to cycle from Brunswick to Williamstown and have a few days holiday, and then we found out that she'd died there.  Unfair!
4. I think I have more work on than I've had in a while.  Objectively, when I check my work lists, it's not more than I can do but my brain keeps revisiting the worry that I won't be able to get it done and then I sit at my desk and can't work out what to do first/next.  Thanks brain.
5. I sent an email to my builder on Tuesday telling him that I want to terminate our contract.  I'm in my legal rights to do it, but he hasn't responded and I wish he just would, so I can move on with the next stage.  I want my renovation done this year and I'd quite like to Owner-Build it but see item 4
6. We've booked to go to Rowany Festival and that seems to include making both tents and clothes in the next 7 weeks, which include a trip to Canberra for one weekend.  As I worry about being overwhelmed by the planning, organising and doing associated with this plan I've also been thinking about all the home based projects we've done in the past 2 years, that I think we had the energy for because we weren't sidetracked by Festival projects and the post-project slump afterwards.
7. I'm struggling to breath overnight.  My nose/sinus feels blocked and I've woken up with a headache a couple of times. I had it regularly until about a year ago when I started taking an anti histamine before bed.  Now I'm wondering if anti-histamines stop working and if I need to change drugs.
8. On Wednesday I was offered/appointed to this great local board position that I first applied for 2 years ago. There are some minor politics things happening around that that I'm feeling a bit uncertain about and the first meeting clashes with my first trip to the theatre in 2 years.  Made worse because I booked the theatre last year and they've announced the meeting today as the only meeting that the local MP can attend.  I think I'm going to the theatre, but I'm torn.  I hate missing stuff.
9. R started Year 11 last week and she's mostly doing fine.  I insisted that she do maths (I want her options open) but she's now had 2 anxiety driven days when she's felt that she needed to leave the maths class.  I've put in a request for a maths tutor at school but I'm aware that if it gets too hard, I might need to accept that it's too much for her.

There.  I thinks that's all.  Maybe now I can sit here on the back verandah and get this fee proposal finished.

About 20 years ago, my brother outlaw[1] died and, every so often, I'm reminded of him and have a little cry.  There's a well defined understanding of grief and that's part of it, so I have my little cry, decide if I need to indulge it or not, and then get on with my day.

Losing friends has only recently been described as a grieving process to me and it makes sense of a whole lot of feelings that I have about moving away from a very important friendship group.  It makes sense of sitting in bed for 2 winters, unable to do anything but watch another episode of Glee or Outlander and it makes sense of these times when I just have to sit and cry about it for a bit. Today I've written about the end of my friendships and the associated grieving because it's a great way to understand it better and to keep integrating the feelings into my actions.

When I was a child, my father was a part of a couple of friendship circles that were very intimate.  We ate together regularly and went on holidays together for weeks at a time.  The group worked on projects at each other's houses too.  And then as I describe it, someone slept with the wrong person and the whole thing blew up.  I watched it happen twice and, as an adult was aware that my friendship circle was in the same danger as those friendship circles of my childhood.  In fact, my friendship circle lasted longer than some of those groups from my childhood and I'm very grateful for that.  I still grieve for the loss of that circle in my life.

It started when she was unwell for 6 months in about 2012.  6 months of regular headaches, queasiness and inabilty to work.  I worried about my friend every time I heard about another bout of her being unwell, as well as in between when I wondered what could be wrong with her and if it was something that needed a full medical investigation.  I suffer from a bit of medical anxiety and I invested my medical anxiety brain space on her.  Unfortunately, my feelings didn't get better when I discovered that she'd been suffering from anxiety due to the secret she'd been keeping.  Then I just moved on to a sense of betrayal that the person who I told all my inner most thoughts, and who I thought told me hers, had been keeping this really big thing a secret from me.  And that I had expended so much of my emotional energy worrying about it.

One of the joys of this friendship circle  was the lack of judgement I felt in that set of friends.  There was a freedom available that I never knew I had missed.  It was particularly powerful to have this experience as I recovered from my first non-marriage.  Most importantly, I felt like my children were a welcome part of my friendships and my parenting style was accepted and supported in a way that I rarely felt in the rest of the world.  I thrived in their company and I felt like my kids developed great relationships outside the family unit too. 

Then I had a baby.  A baby who I looked forward to bringing up within the friendship circle.  A baby who could give a parenting experience to these people who for various reasons weren't having babies of their own.  I had what I recognise as unrealistic expectations about what it would be like to have a child grow up in this circle.  Because it didn't work exactly as I imagined.  It might have worked if the girl was as easy and pleasant a companion to my friends as my older children had been [2], but she was different and I was struggling to work out how to change my parenting style to meet her needs.  It meant that sometimes her needs weren't met and being around her was unpleasant and difficult for other people.

In about 2014, we were still regularly hanging out and doing a bunch of the things that we always had.  I had a feeling of unease in their presence but we could keep things light and still work together on SCA stuff.  I still thought I had a friend that had relationship issues that could be resolved.   Then I found out that they were regularly hanging out with a group of SCA people who spent time critiquing my parenting of the girl.  AND THEY WEREN'T ACTIVELY DEFENDING ME!!!!! (Woah, based on my emotional response to this, this is the thing that made remaining a part of stuff untenable).  Not only had my "best friend"  broken my trust, but my SCA expectations of acceptance had also been broken.  AND, to be candid if awful, at emotionally weak moments it makes me feel like my daughter's disability caused the loss of my friendship circle.

Not long after this, I announced that I would not be participating in our regular camping experience.  I was still telling myself that this was a set of relationships that I could talk through the issues and just needed to hang around with for long enough and then things could go back to how they were.  I now understand that I blew up that prospect when I forced them to rename our campsite. 

The feelings I have about losing these friends are awful but I also know that I chose them.  It was very uncomfortable feeling these feelings while trying to rebuild the friendships.  I just couldn't do it even though I tried for 3 years.

Yesterday, I found out that my older child has been invited to a party with that old friendship group.  It's OK and reasonable that I wasn't invited, with the pandemic and my unease in the SCA, I haven't even maintained a surface friendship with that mob, but today I'm sad.

I'm sad that I've lost that inner circle of friends. I'm sad that I don't trust that group of SCA people, and I'm sad that my child's support needs got in the way of one of the best friendship circles I've ever had in my life. I'm also sad that I can't currently see how I could develop a new set of the friendship relationships that would be as good as what I had.

This is grief.  It comes and goes and I will be OK.


[1] The thing you call your inlaws, but when you're not married.
[2] No, they weren't always great, but they were mostly pretty good

 It doesn't happen often, so I plan to celebrate.

Rose has spent most of the time over the past 3 weeks on her computer.  It's been disquieting but also pretty normal.  It's her preferred activity and displaces so many of the being a human activities that I both really hate it and feel completely sucked of the energy to do anything about it.  There were occasional glimmers of hope - she made cookie dough spontaneously one day, and we could always get her to come and hang out with the family for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  I also really loved the DnD campaign that finally got started after being talked about for months.

Last week school started and I wanted to get a bit more motivated to get her into a routine, so we had the win last week where we listed what needed doing that day and she did 2 of them and then had enough and withdrew back into youtube.  On Friday we didn't really get anything done.

On Saturday, I thought a bit more and decided that I would make a list of the activities I wanted her to do more of and that for each activity she would earn 30min of computer time.  The winning part (for now) is that she has turned into a computer time hoarder.  Yesterday she "earned" 9 hours of  computer time and she's currently reading a book (30min=1hour) after finishing 2 classes worth of school work while sitting at a desk (2.5 hours), wearing pants, coming for a walk, eating breakfast with us and playing a musical instrument for 10min (2hours). When I commented on the hoarding approach she told me that she was planning to avoid using  her computer "unless she really needed to".

I expect that she will get to a point where she is comfortable that she can be on the computer as much as she likes and will then stop.  But I think she will also run down her time and realise that maybe there is a balance.  Let's see!