Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in tikiwanderer's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012
9:42 pm	Language development Some quick notes on where my two kids are with their language, for the later sake of my dodgy memory. Robin (at 11-12 months) is at the proto-sounds stage. Lots of "bo", "ma", "wak", that sort of thing. Also some more complicated sounds like "brə" (with whatever that double-consonant sound is called). I know boys are supposed to be a bit slower at language than girls on average, and bilingual exposure also slows things down on average, but I think I have a little talker here. He has been having conversations with me in gibber-and-gabber-and-coo for quite some time now, likes to sit with me and tell me stuff. And he seems to be singing or at least making sing-song when playing on his own or with his sister lots and lots. But he does seem to be starting to try and make certain sounds for certain things - for instance "brə" is most likely to get said when he's looking at or pointing at bread. "Ma" always means he wants me (or my breasts). He said "pa, pa" when I was wiping up his poo on the change mat yesterday and he doesn't commonly make the "p" sound. So there's a hint of proto-words and of attempting to say the words that we seem to be saying, and not just making emotive sounds like "Whoah!" or "Ow!" (which both happen correctly in context). This morning both James and I clearly heard him say "milk", and we're fairly sure it was an accident but it was clear enough that Sparrow started asking for milk too. He doesn't repeat sounds ("gagaga", "baba"), just makes them singularly. Doesn't try to say "mummy"/"mama" or "daddy"/"dada" or any variant of those other than "ma", and often around the 12 month mark kids are attempting to name their parents, but Sparrow didn't either for a very long time. I don't think the relationship we have with our kids requires them to formulate names for us at this age. Robin just thinks I am the particle that keeps all the atoms of the universe at the correct distance from each other, and so whenever I leave his universe starts to come slowly crushing in on him. But I don't have a separate existence or anything. Sparrow (at almost 3 years) is quite the little conversationalist. She's currently going through a slightly frustrating stage of telling us the question we need to ask her. So she won't say "I want an apple" or "Robin hit his head on the bed", she'll say "Do you want an apple? Is that a good idea?" or "What happened?" and wait for us to repeat it, then answer. While this has its uses in helping work out what she thinks a situation involves, it would be easier if she'd just say "I want an apple". She is at the age where she makes a constant stream of understandable background babble, and a lot of it's stuff she's heard people say that she's just repeating. That can also be revealing, because sometimes it's random and sometimes it's relevant so I can find out a surprising amount by listening to what she says. Especially if she's telling Robin what to do or what not to do. She hasn't yet worked out that if she tells him she's going to do something she's not allowed to, I will come and catch her at it. I do have to concentrate though because the random bits particularly can be in any of three languages as well as her own made-up language so I need to be aware that the sounds I'm hearing probably do have meaning and not just tune them all out. The fun bit with her language at the moment is that she has a very broad collection of simple parts and sentences to use - but they are simple, and she's starting to try and discuss more complicated concepts. So she's having to construct these concepts out of the tools she has handy. The other day we'd been watching some Woody Woodpecker cartoons on a DVD borrowed from the local library. I returned the DVD on its due date, and the next day she asked if we could watch some more of "the little red baby duck". Yesterday we went and visited Gemma, and we had driven down to a local shopping centre carpark to go for a short walk for lunch. I was chatting to Gemma and talking to Sparrow about what we were doing, and hadn't got the kids out of the car yet - they were still buckled up in their car seats. Sparrow was very interested in what we were going to do and asked if I could strap her out so that she could put her backpack on. I love the phrase "strap me out". She's never heard us say that at all, but we always say "strap you in". And she's been able to take that and correctly reverse the parts, even though the result is not what we'd think of as correct. Her bilingualism has hit an interesting point in that she seems to now be aware that there are three different languages we're speaking and reading, and that different words and sounds go to each, and that the one I speak to Robin is different to the one I speak to her. She hasn't quite got the hang of which language has which name, but she knows that if she brings me one of Robin's books (in Spanish) she has to specify that she wants me to read it in English or else I read it in the language it's written in. She occasionally asks me to read it in German and sometimes I oblige if it's a book I can do that with. She has though started asking for English in preference to German, even with her own German books that she might otherwise quite like. So I think her ability with English is getting far enough ahead of her German now that trying to listen in German feels a bit like crawling when you know you can walk. But I will persevere in small ways without forcing it, because she still loves watching videos and listening to songs in German. Individual words are still fun, it's just sentences that are hard work. And that's to be expected as I don't do much sentence stuff with her - I still struggle to master most sentence forms myself. Several of her books I read and realise that I know what every individual word in the phrase means but I have no idea what the phrase is actually saying. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, March 19th, 2012
7:55 am	Moving dates set (ish) OK, it's road trip time! Well, that's how I'm selling it to myself, anyhow. Yes, we've bit the bullet and set a date. We'll pack up the family in the next eight weeks and hit the road on the 13th of May, assuming agreement to this plan with movers etc. Maybe the 14th if the timing is tricky. Exact route details not set, but we'll be wandering slowly (very slowly) back across the continent from Melbourne to Perth. Due to arrive sometime before June. So there will be a goodbye party for folks here in Melbourne sometime in late April, and a housewarming for folks in Perth sometime in June, dates on those still to be set. I have mixed feelings about the move. * I'm well over Melbourne (have been since 2007) and am ready to get out of here. But my body is now climatically adjusted to being here - my range-of-comfortable-temperatures is about six degrees lower than it used to be - so Perth's going to be hard the first year. (I'll probably even need to use the air conditioner in the first summer, and aircon is something I hated and found really uncomfortable when I lived in Perth before. But then, I only had to use the heater regularly in my first winter here in Melbourne so hopefully a year will be enough to start adapting.) * I'm delighted that the kids will be close to the grandparents, they can have regular and frequent time together and we won't have to do the family-trip-at-Christmas thing. But I don't know that *I* want to be as close to them :-) Still, I feel that this is the time to move, so that kids and grandparents can have that interaction at a time in both their lives that is meaningful to them. My mum thinks this feeling is a bit daft and I should be running off and having more adventures. But I don't think she will mind it as much when we're settled in and visiting her more than once a year (which she admits she is looking forward to). * Settling in and rebuilding friend networks will be interesting. The kids will have to do this from scratch, so I'll be helping with that. James is returning to his friend network and giving up none in particular here (he's made very few friends in Melbourne and hasn't really tried to either). But me... at this point in time, I'd say I have as many good friends in Melbourne as I do in Perth. There are two big differences - first, in Perth I will get to see them more than once a year. And second, in Perth they are friends from a further-ago time in my life, some now little more than acquaintances, and for many of them I'm not holding my breath that we'll find much basis to try to be more than that. So the basis of my friend networks I'm expecting will be part-old, part those I build new with my professional affiliations. * Work will be interesting. Setting up professional affiliations and networks almost from scratch (because my work experience and options are so different now seven years on), in a town which is really quite small and easy to get Perthed in. Half dreading that, though I'll get over it. The dread is just the idea that I might be trapped somehow back into some perception of "who I was" and not "who I am". Which is the same subtle fear underlying the friend network problem too. But I'll face it and see, I guess. -yells loudly- Road trip, here we come! (13 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 15th, 2012
11:51 am	Superheroine plot lines Various readings have reminded me about the thought-arc I started on some months back and haven't followed through with writing about. (Well, I mentioned it briefly on Facebook and got flamed, and flamed back, and that all turned to shit so I'm not counting it as "followed through".) But anyway, thinking about why you don't see many superheroines in mainstream entertainment (yes, I know there's heaps in the non-mainstream but the problem I'm thinking about is why 51% of the population shows up less than 10% of the time in the mainstream and what the writers and makers of the mainstream must be thinking). And, what plot arcs are "valid" when you have a heroine instead of a hero. Back then I think I was thinking about how the "redemption" storyline that works for a lot of male superheroes - some irresponsible lad or scaredycat boy has to step up to the line and become a brave and responsible hero when/because they get their powers - doesn't work as well for women. I think I was following the line of thought that society as a whole doesn't accept female "lads", so having one of those get redeemed and have to learn responsibility doesn't sit right with us because women are already supposed to be responsible and if we're not, we're trash. Or something like that. But I didn't get that far at the time. I'm mentioning it now because I watched the "Smurfette" and "Women in Refrigerators" trope videos on Feminist Frequency and that got me thinking again. What arcs are acceptable when your protagonist is female? Do we accept any development of female character, or does it have to be based on solving a problem? You get both in movies about male heroes, and the action movies are more usually towards the problem end. The "man against the odds" is a classic formula. And that would probably be acceptable with a female protagonist, though she'd have to be kind of like a boy with boobs. "Man against the odds in a closed box" (e.g. Die Hard and its sequels/clones) also probably works. In fact, any arc where the protagonist is just named Jane instead of Joe but is otherwise an identical piece of cardboard probably goes OK. You have the slight hiccup of a surprising number of people who think that muscles on a woman are ugly (because of course women must never actually use their bodies to do anything /rant), but otherwise Elke Schwarzenegger has some feasibility. (and I can't believe that Firefox just corrected my spelling of Schwarzenegger.) What about character, though? Can a female protagonist go through a character-building journey without a film being labelled a "chick flick" and dismissed as only being interesting to women? (Because of course *everyone* knows that women will watch stories about men but men won't watch stories about women.) Sometimes the problem is that the qualities "we" want women to develop are... not suited to the superhero world. Or, to be honest, not that interesting overall in an action context (and superheroines really do have to be part of the action genre) - would we care if she's made peace with her irrascible mother when we're waiting to see if she saves the world from nuclear annihilation? I'm trying to think what possible character arcs we have in the male world that we would also accept if the hero is female. * Do we accept the development of courage? Can a female superhero start small and timid, and become big, brave and lauded for being out there ready to save the world? * Do we accept the development of necessity - that moment where the heroine comes home to find her husband carved to pieces on the kitchen table or gets to the villain's lair thirty seconds too late to free her husband before he gets blown up, and falls to the ground screaming that SHE WILL HAVE REVENGE, that makes her a more sophisticated and complex character ready to take her skills up a notch in order to complete the payback? Or does that just sound wrong when it's a woman doing it instead of a man finding his wife so? This is a bit rambly and unfocused, I'm writing fast rather than carefully. But you can probably see where I'm going. I'm interested in which arcs we give validity to. And which forms of character development are acceptable to us when we see them in women, because the most compelling film scripts contain elements of that development mixed with the action. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, March 4th, 2012
10:12 pm	Automotive engineering and the Phantom Menace 1) I forgot in my previous post the other thing I keep thinking that Sparrow will grow up to be - an automotive engineer. Or perhaps a mechanical engineer that specialises in helicopters. Not sure why, but she certainly loves moving and mechanical things, and she will get enough basic physics during her childhood for that aspect of it to seem quite natural. Though she did go off helicopters a bit when she discovered tractors, so who knows. 2) I just re-read the Phantom Menace again. Not the Terry Brooks novelisation, but the Scholastic one by Patricia C. Wrede. It's only 178 pages. And once again, I'm reminded of how... tricky a story this is. When I read the Terry Brooks one, I was delighted to have the story come to life in a way the movie hadn't matched. It was more real, more believable - an excellent novelisation. For the first half of the novel. Then I think TB realised how much bloody more there was still to go, stopped filling in the interesting bits and just started writing out the screenplay shot by shot to get through it. The Scholastic version is less painful because it's full of holes but in the usual junior fiction fashion the holes are just kind of strung together in a way that makes sense. Kids' stories don't *have* that much explanation so the Phantom StoryMenace fits right in without a blink. It makes me think again about something I've wondered - if, as an exercise, if I took the Phantom Menace base story and tried rewriting it to make a tighter and punchier story, how I'd go. This is purely from a developing-my-writing-skills point of view - could I take this raw material that does have some truly potent moments in it and tell it in a better way? I've avoided doing so because it's such a fannish thing to do and there are some aspects of science fiction fandom I really dislike. But it seems like I'd be almost guaranteed to succeed in my aim to tell a better story -grin-. One challenge of the material is that Anakin and Amidala are very young. Somehow, this and the average age of Star Wars fans together got translated logically into "therefore it's a children's film". I think it should be a film for adults, despite it starring two children, given that it leads into two much more serious films - or if you insist on it being a children's film, then redone very differently (for one thing, fitting it better to the traditional children's attention span (Harry Potter not withstanding)). Another challenge of the material is that there is a lot of setup for not just the sequel, but *five* sequels, which all kind of gets shoehorned in - but a lot of that probably isn't necessary. After all, we first watched movies 4, 5 and 6 without ever knowing the story of 1, 2 and 3 (and they were *better* for it). So, get rid of any setup that isn't an integral part of the first trilogy's story. That cuts out a bunch of stupid moments that have no other purpose (apart from rewarding fans of 4,5&6, who probably wouldn't care anyway if the story was better). But the story left is still... lingering. It dawdles. It stretches to cover a lot of stuff. Does it even end in the right place? Qui-Gon's death is logical, certainly, but the rest? Maybe some events need to be rearranged chronologically in order to fit better. After all this is fiction, not a history. We can do that. And then you have all these threads trying to get an equal look in - the politics that elect Palpatine, the finding and retrieval of Anakin, the relationship between Anakin and Amidala, the discovery that there is a Sith Lord and what that means to the Jedi - action and romance and adventure and political drama all kind of squeezed together but not ever sharing scenes. I don't know why scenes aren't being made to do more work and cover more aspects so there can be fewer of them - and that would mean some *serious* rewriting and reimagining. Or have some threads shifted between the movies so that they have slightly different flavours instead of having equal shares in everything. I can see in a kind of hand-flailing way that it could have gone together differently, but I'm not quite sure how yet. It would be fun to try rewriting it from scratch and see if I could figure it out. The sad thing is that I think what this would need is for me to rewatch all three prequels and make a concept map first, so I could track what was meant to be where (and add in some of the missing-but-important bits such as the start of the Rebel Alliance and anything else that implied Amidala had a backbone). Making the map would be fun. I'm not sure if watching the prequels would. But hey, Sparrow is probably old enough to love the Podracing scene by now. She's just not old enough to not like Jar Jar Binks yet. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, March 2nd, 2012
10:23 pm	Future careers (OK, I've showered, so I thought I should at least write one quick thing.) I imagine that every parent wonders what their kid is going to grow up to be like, what kind of career they'll follow, that sort of thing. I don't have any particular vested interests, well I do but they're things like "continues to love learning", "uses rational thought", "seeks to make the world a better place with the things they do, regardless of whether it's in a big way or little way" and I figure all of that is pretty likely given their genetic heritage and family environment. And I don't believe in pigeonholing people, especially not this young and especially given that our world continues to change so rapidly. My kids will hopefully be futureproofed in their thinking and able to change as their situation changes (even if it changes beyond my or James' imagining), and will probably have more than one career in their lives because of that. None the less, I do sometimes catch glimpses of what my kids might end up doing. Robin is addicted to our piano, stands and plays it happily, seeks out ways to make it make music that he can dance to. And I watch this and wonder: will he be a concert pianist? Take up DJing as a hobby? Sparrow has more to show in terms of what she likes and values. I used to joke with dalekboy that our kids would rebel against us and become accountants. With Sparrow, that's actually possible. She is a meticulous counter and loves to count and arrange and make things neat and in order. Which is typical of her age, so I won't hold her to that, but it's notable. She'll easily have the mathematical ability and the patience required. Though I suspect she might show the other, more wickedly cheerful side of her nature at the same time and run away to join the circus - as their accountant. That was always my first half-joking idea. Recently though I've gone a different direction - supermarket CEO, or at least manager of whatever forms supermarkets take in the future. Sparrow loves going to the shops, loves people, and we've spent a lot of time visiting the shops downstairs just to grab this or that. It's a regular excursion that she's quite fond of. And she's also started making food the big conflict between us. It's always been something she needs to own, and while it's common for this age group to have food-power conflicts ("NO! I won't eat dinner!" etc) I note that it is the one area that *she* has chosen to battle us in to have control and authority over her life. So it matters to her. I can't help but look at this interest in controlling the food chain (which runs in the family and IMO is quite a sensible and species-characterising* thought pattern) and think that combined with the early wiring of "shops = secure friendly environment" that she'll end up, oh, I don't know, running a delivery-only grocery franchise or something else that takes food shopping into a new century. My interest in controlling the food chain transformed itself into gardening/farming, both growing my own and guerilla-style public food spaces. Hers will go a quite different way, I'll place money on it. I'm sure I will see and think of more as they grow. It'll be interesting to see what happens in the end, though (as with many parents) I hope I don't see their end, that it remains a mystery to me and fully their creation. * This relates to another post I want to write on the vegan-vs-omnivore battles I occasionally see, about how the two sides are not fighting the same fight even though they think they are and that that's why the combatants come away feeling battered and embittered about the other. But I should go to bed now. (Comment on this)
8:08 am	I should write here. I should write here. But when I'm child-free for long enough, I'm usually also tired. Or have a million other things to do in the same time. Which reminds me, I need a shower. Washing my hair is one of those things that has to be done when kid-free as it means I can't leap out of the shower quickly to deal with problems and may not hear them happening in the first place. So it's been about a week. After I've showered, you might see me write here again. Or not. No promises, the way things are going lately. I'd like to post about language, tool-using, birds, sparky people, egg donation (end of round 2 and beginning of round 3), the Phantom Menace, poetry, my children's future careers, travelogues for South Australia and a bunch of other stuff. But who knows. Maybe. (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 18th, 2012
11:16 am	[screenplaygnome] Going Postal Another in my erratic series of learning-by-writing about screenplay writing - this time, on Going Postal. The short version: The credits include "mucked around with by Terry Pratchett". So he must have had some input into the final version. It's an excellent example of how to take a complicated and complex storyline from a world already overrich in interlocking plots, references and IBID, and turn it into something that you can make for TV and watch on TV. As a lone story, it plays out fine. But why, oh why, did they rewrite the personality of *every main character*??? ( The longer version ) (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, January 7th, 2012
10:32 pm	Pretty pretty pretty One of the things that was odd about being at my mother-in-law's house was watching her dress up Sparrow. When we go there she always has a few little dresses that she's picked up at the baby market that she thinks Sparrow would like. She's very conscientious about trying not to over-pink things because she knows I don't like pink, but none-the-less every dress is distinctly girly. I actually don't mind that, I think it's a bit funny and I like girly things that are girly without being stereotypical, but it does make me laugh. I always get the impression that she feels I don't let Sparrow be enough of a girl. Maybe I don't, but hey, she's two. She likes to run in circles and more circles, she kicks soccer balls with glee and she's recently discovered climbing trees. Dresses are pretty, but they're kindof a nuisance for a lot of the stuff she likes doing. Then there was the hair. I keep Sparrow's hair cut in a style that needs no brushing or "doing" to look OK. Just getting her to put up with a hairbrush can be a major battle, and I really don't need to have it every morning. The idea of trying to "do up" her hair while she's kicking and screaming? Ridiculous. Yet, here comes Oma with her little bag of hair ties saying "How about some ponytails? You'd look really pretty in ponytails". I'm smiling to myself thinking "OK, here we go, let's watch this". And to my surprise, Sparrow says "Yes!" and comes and sits down in front of Oma and lets her brush her hair and stick them into pony tails and then carry her to the mirror to admire them. I couldn't believe what I was seeing! Not complaining, I think anyone who gets Sparrow willing to brush her hair is doing us a favour, but it really wasn't the reaction I was expecting. Sparrow loved what she called her "hairtails", and got them put in almost every day. Kids can make you laugh a lot with stuff like that. And it continued on, every day that we were there. Nothing major, nothing worth worrying about, just a grandmother and granddaughter who don't see each other more than a couple of times a year, slowly building common ground. But eventually I heard something that made me stop and think. We were about to head out, and Oma said to Sparrow "Come here and sit with me while I brush your hair, you're going out and you have to look pretty first". I know that that's partly just a nice, simple way to explain to a two-year-old what's happening without getting their back up about it (and boy, does Sparrow dig her heels in over totally random things). But I suddenly twigged that there was a very different idea going on here than the one I constantly present Sparrow with. And it was not just the idea that you should try and look pretty, but even more the idea that pretty things make you pretty. I try and encourage appreciation of beauty in the world around her (though not that hard, I'm more likely to focus on developing her manners at this age). But when it comes to people or Sparrow herself I never focus on looks for looks' sake. I hadn't even realised that I didn't do it. I never use the phrases that my parents used with me such as "getting dressed in town clothes", because they aren't necessary. We already live in town, not on the farm like I did as a child. Sparrow's clothes will be a little grubby when she goes out regardless, but I don't really care, she's two. When I talk to Sparrow about people we see on the street, in the train, in the shops or the library, it's usually about the way they were behaving or the things they said. Sometimes if what they're wearing is unusual we'll talk about it, but it's as likely to be a conversation about the colour as anything. I did give her and her cousins a dress and a couple of sets of necklaces this Christmas, and you'd think that would be about looks - but it wasn't. The dresses were designed to allow full movement, with the pretty bits on the front where a little girl can look down and see them. The necklaces were about texture, colour, shape and light, using buttons and interesting wool and things to feel in the fingers because I know they'll be played with more than they are worn. The one more traditional necklace (made with actual beads) was deliberately on a very long cord so that again, a little child can look down and see it all, it's not behind their head or under their chin. What this is all trying to point at is that the difference here is that what I gave them was something I thought they would think was pretty, not something that would make them pretty. There's no putting it on and imagining themselves in it. They can see it, feel it, it's right there, it's not a part of them. It's another object. And I hadn't consciously done this at all, it's just the way I think about children and their world and for that matter my world. I think I'm pretty (though less so now in middle age), but it has nothing to do with what I wear or how I dress or any kind of "prettifying" object or substance. It's just an inner belief about my inner and outer nature, one that I don't even think about most of the time. Even as a kid exploring my mum's jewellery box, I'd put on a pair of earrings or a necklace, look at myself in the mirror and think "Those are pretty". Not "I'm pretty with those on". It will be interesting to see how these concepts continue to take shape over the next few years. I do hope that I can continue to build that sense of pretty being something you are, rather than pretty being something you make yourself by adding stuff. I hope I can help Sparrow's cousin build that sense as well, because I suspect it's the kind of self-belief where the more role models you have for it the better. And if your beloved Oma regularly tells you you have to be pretty to go out, and likes to spend time "making you pretty", there's a lot of internalising that can happen there that will need to be overcome. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, January 6th, 2012
10:49 pm	Gender and language in the first six months - case study 2 I wrote a post on gender and language in the first six months for Sparrow, and thought I should do one for Robin as well. It's a bit late (he's almost nine months old!) but I don't get to writing as fast now -grin-. First, the methodology. With Sparrow, if people asked me if she was a boy or a girl I just agreed with whatever they thought - and that was a split of about 50-50, which gave me a great field to see if there was much difference in the way people talked to little boy babies and little girl babies. I was interested to see if there was a difference. And I found some mild ones. Repeating it with Robin I didn't get the same 50-50 split. Most people assumed he was a boy. I still dressed him in mostly gender-neutral clothes but where there was gendering it tended to be "boy" clothes (blue stuff handed down from Sparrow, plus we were given a LOT of very obviously this-is-a-boy clothing as baby gifts). He also didn't have eyelashes for those first three or four months, so he didn't have the same overwhelming cuteness that Sparrow did. I don't know for sure if it was the eyelashes, the blue, or something about his face, but people rarely thought he was a girl in the first four months. As his eyelashes developed I started to get a split closer to half and half but still weighted to "boy". So I can't use him as a single data point as easily as I could with Sparrow. I did find that the positive words people used were different. He was still primarily complimented on his appearance, but where with Sparrow I always got "gorgeous", with Robin I'd get "spunky", "he's such a spunk", "look at those chubby little legs". The latter is interesting. I think Sparrow was equally chubby. She did get a fair share of mums exclaiming over her chubby healthiness too. But I think it was less than Robin gets. Whether that's because there was something more obvious to exclaim over (her amazing eyes) or whether even at this very young age we adults are subconsciously being careful about statements about weight, I don't know. I suspect it's a bit of both - I can imagine much less fear/restraint at praising a boy for his bulkiness than I can over praising a girl for the same. I think the biggest difference I noticed was that people do like to compliment babies but most of us adults struggle to find something nice to say about most babies. They are cute, yes, but they also look kind of like puffy squashed red frogs, and it's not like they do much. Without something obvious in their appearance to remark on, people just kind of scratch around. What they come up with in their scratching is revealing of the way they think - for instance, nobody has yet told either me or James to get the rifle ready for when Robin's a teenager, and we heard that a lot about Sparrow. Instead we hear things more like "we'll need to lock up the ladies". But we haven't heard even that very often. It's not like you need to protect the ladies from a puffy squashed red frog. Now that Robin is past six months, the compliments he gets are mostly oriented towards either his mobility or his eyes. His eyelashes have grown, his eyes have finished changing to a deep deep brown, and he's learnt to flirt with them. So he does get some compliments on his basic appearance. He doesn't sit still much though, and he's moving very strongly very early (standing unsupported already!) so that really shows up to people looking at him. It will be interesting to see what the range of praise is that he and Sparrow get as they grow older and change, how heavily oriented it is towards the visual/appearance and what other qualities of theirs get noticed. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 7th, 2011
1:28 pm	Regarding the Tent Girl assault To the Minister for Police and Emergency Services Victoria, Peter Ryan (cc Member for Williamstown, Wade Noonan) Dear Mr Minister, I am very concerned about the incident on the 6th of December where police officers assisted in the forcible public removal of an individual's clothing. We have a three-part arrangement of law: politicians who make the law, police who enforce it, and a judicial system that assigns the punishment for breaking it. These three parts are deliberately kept separate in our nation, and it's something to be proud of. Regardless of the actions of a (supposedly peaceful) protester, the job of the police officers is to enforce the law, and where it cannot be safely and peacefully enforced, to arrest those who are breaking it. In no way does removing a person's clothing (regardless of how silly or unusual or even illegal) and leaving them crying on the grass count as "arrest" or even "enforcement". It is punishment, pure and simple. And as such it steps far out of line of where the police may go. Do police who catch an unarmed thief in the act rip the valuables out of his hands and put them back before dumping him naked on the kerb outside? I don't think so. As a reasonably attractive woman I have worked endlessly to hold my own head above water in the pervasive rape culture that exists in this country. I have tried to avoid becoming part of any issues even to the detriment of my career or social contribution, in order to preserve my own safety the best I can. I have remained silent on the times I have been sexually assaulted myself, knowing that rather than my assailant being required to prove innocence, I would be required to prove that "I didn't deserve it" and that this would be nigh-impossible, there's always a reason why a woman deserves what she gets. I've instead focused on the things I can do, can give, can achieve, for the betterment of Australia. And I've coped all right. But now I have more than just me. I have a two-year-old daughter. And I feel sick to my stomach. This sexual assault, even so minor as it was, wasn't done by a slightly drunk teen, a supposed-friend who should have known better, a celebrity who might be forgiven for thinking a girl was just "shy". It was done by our police. The people who I would want my daughter to go to for help if she was being assaulted. It's the last straw. I am taking my daughter and my family and moving interstate as soon as our lease is up. I do not want my daughter to grow up in a state where the police think it's OK to assault people if they're the ones doing it. We are voting with our feet. And we are leaving. I sincerely hope many many other women make the same decision. Yours, Tiki Swain Altona North (14 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 26th, 2011
10:16 am	It's situational Dear MIL. A little tidbit you might like to know is that children in the (approx) 1-5 age group are good with rules - but they conceive them as situational. As in, in this situation you do (or don't do) this thing. So they are very good at remembering rules to do at this house or that house, they learn the difference between what they can get away with at home or at daycare. The problem is that they don't see situations the same as we do, or remember that they might STILL be in the same situation, yes, still, yes, even now, yes, still going. They also don't attach the situations to rules that we would, so you don't know what they actually think the rule is. Just sayin'. Now, PLEASE put a lock on your poisons cupboard, and don't just say "she'll be a good girl, I'll tell her not to open it." (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, November 20th, 2011
1:29 pm	Egg donor update C3 (number 3 in the third set of updates) I'm so not remembering to update :-) Several things have happened. On Tuesday I had the first scan. It showed 15 follicles beginning to develop, 9 of which were of a credible size, and four of which were large enough that I needed to begin the suppressant immediately. Compared to last time, when only six were visible at this point and I didn't start the suppressant til the following Saturday, this is a much higher result. It's probably around the top end of what they look for you to go through safely. Two things happened at the scan that amused me. One was meeting another lady who is donating eggs. I guessed that she was when she arrived for the same set of appointments as me with her two nine-month-old twins in a pusher. She had much the same reaction I give when people ask me if I'm trying for another one - kind of a polite hysterical laughter, interrupted by trying to grab the child that is escaping while wiping the nose of the other. The other thing was the scan technician asking me if I wanted to insert the DildoCam myself (he didn't call it that). That's the first time I've been asked that, and it's a nice question to ask I think. I don't care, but it's one of those things that can massively reduce the intrusiveness of the procedure. Friday I had the second scan and blood test. I don't know what they saw in the way of follicles, I wasn't given the results. My nurse rang me late Friday to confirm the remainder of their instructions, based on those results. I was to take the last dose of FSH (Puregon) last night, which I've done, and the last dose of suppressant (Orgalutran) this morning, which I've done. The trigger injection is tonight at 10 pm precisely, and the surgery is scheduled for Tuesday morning. I need to be there at 10:30 am. The surgery is scheduled for midday but Dr Weston usually runs early (and he certainly did last time, I went in more than an hour ahead of schedule). The needles this time have been quite straightforward. The Orgalutran ones have consistently hurt more though and just about every needle I've given on my right side has bled and bruised. Nothing major, just noticeably more annoying. Side-effect-wise, Friday night I was quite horny, and told James how good he looked. He told me I was shallow and cracked jokes about fifteen eggs saying "Fertilise me!" He also reminded me that feeling horny on a nice warm day was how Robin happened. Which is all sensible, but he should have enjoyed the attitude more as I haven't been horny since. Too achy. When the kids try to climb on my belly, or if I have to lean over, or just in general, there's always an ache there and I do feel a bit bloated. Which makes sense - I should have at least nine follicles approaching the 2cm size by now, at a guess. So there's a bit less room in there than normal. I've been feeling ready for them to take them out since Saturday, and now I'm just kind of hanging on. I've definitely felt the side effects more this time, which I guess you'd expect given my response is two to three times stronger than it was the first round. Interestingly, a boost in creativity is one of the side effects. I really really have to write. I wrote fiction Friday, more yesterday and today, and it's just buzzing in my head. I've got other stories sitting there ready to go but am restraining myself to the very short ones that already have someplace to go. Which is a shame, because if I could put more time to it I'd write the South Australia post-apocalypse shorts that I thought up while travelling there last month, or maybe the adult-fairy-tale I've had slowly growing in my head the last few days since a chance sentence triggered a whole universe of idea. Instead I'm restraining myself to things that take 1000 words or less (i.e. a max of two hours to write and edit). And I'll stop this post here. (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 6th, 2011
10:22 pm	Gizzards! commentary and recipes... Yes, recipes. Recipe times three. That's because I bought a kilo of the buggers, and it took me several goes to get a dish that anyone else in my family would eat (fusstards that they are). This started because I was thinking about the whole meat-philosophy I have, which is pagan-Force-ish and farmer-ish in origin. Basically, if you must take a life to eat, then take it within the harmony of Nature (eg in season and from the excess) and value and honour the life you've been given. I was thinking that I'm not vegetarian at the moment, so I should be living this philosophy more fully and using more parts of the animals than just the few cuts that I know (having been vegetarian for most of my adult life my culinary knowledge of meat doesn't go much past mince). And this is the ideal time to learn. I am eating meat (which I plan to stop again in a year or so when I finish breastfeeding), and I live in a shop strip with three butchers who sell a lot of basic food. Not fancy sausages and pinwheels and pre-made stuff, but chunks of body parts. Often in five- or ten-kilo lots. I decided that now was the time to learn to cook with giblets. Some quick Internet research turned up a few different things, lots of "make broth and give the giblets to your cats" but a few other options too. I liked the sound of the one where you bake them for a few hours and then keep for later use in soups, stews, frying etc. Or just frying them and then slicing them for use in Asian-style noodle soups. Armed with this, I went downstairs and ordered a kilo of giblets from the first butcher I saw with them on display. We had a little language problem though - he didn't speak very good English, and I didn't know what he was talking about anyway (because I know nothing about giblets). So what I got was a kilo bag of gizzards. Giblets normally includes heart, liver, gizzard, and sometimes neck and kidneys. I just got the gizzards. So I had to find out what they were. Turns out gizzards are a muscle, not an organ (so not actually offal). They're a throat muscle, used for a kind of "pre-chewing" before the food gets to the stomach. Which makes sense given that chickens don't have teeth. And I saw several glowing reviews of people loving to eat them, mainly from the Southern states of the USA and related cuisines. So I decided to bite the pullet (sorry!) (actually, no, I'm not sorry :-) and fry them. I'd seen nothing clear about how to prepare gizzards for cooking - some people did nothing but wash them, others salted them and left them overnight, and one person mentioned "paring" the silvery lining off to make them less chewy. I had a close look at one and realised you really would have to pare it - it didn't seem to peel away easily, so you'd be slicing it off with the knife. That sounded like something I'd get tired of very quickly, and not a process that could be interrupted by a toddler or baby. So I just gave them a quick wash and hoped that the people who never did the paring were right. Recipe 1: fried gizzards. I layered the gizzards in a dish with Murray River artesian salt flakes, ground mountain pepper leaf and garlic powder sprinkled over each layer, and left that til I was ready to cook. At dinner time I melted duck fat in a deep frying pan, dipped each gizzard in plain flour and fried them in batches. Result 1: hm. I thought they were really tasty. But it turns out they're not so easy to cook evenly if you're interrupted by children and not really sure of what you're doing, so half of them were still raw inside. So they got turned down purely on that basis. The other problem was the texture. As heard, they had a popping kind of feel, like they burst in your mouth when you bite them. It's a dense rich flavour as you'd expect from that kind of muscle, so that was nice, but the texture was very unlike (e.g.) breast strips with their loose fibres. Having not told James they were gizzards and only called them "chicken bits", he was willing to eat them but was unprepared for that texture. He and Sparrow are very texture-oriented and texture -sensitive in their food so they really weren't up to the concept in the end. Paring the gizzards might have solved this, I don't know. So I decided to go back to just a simple soup, put them through the processor to break them up finely and make a chicken noodle soup. Recipe 2: Gizzard soup. I took the fried giblets, put them through the food processor til they looked crumbly, put it all in a big pot with water and a large helping of mixed herbs and simmered for a while. That smelt absolutely wonderful. And the gizzards cooked through very nicely, so that was one problem solved. Result 2: oh-oh. Turns out that the chicken really doesn't break down well in the soup. So the flavour and smell were still awesome, but the meat still had that chewiness to it. It was a chewy crumble. And it just didn't work as a soup. I strained some of the gizzard-mush out and put it in a sandwich and that was really nice, but it was So. Not. Soup. So I didn't continue with my original plan of cooking alphabet pasta into it and making chicken noodle soup, just left it there to think. Conclusion: there was no way I was going to make the gizzards into a form that either James or Sparrow would eat. The cats, however, were weaving around my feet telling me they could be convinced. So, I came up with a new plan. Recipe 3: Bean-and-potato broth. I fried mushrooms in butter, moved them to the side of the deep frying pan and fried finely-diced potato in olive oil. When that began to soften I added in finely diced celery, and stirred the lot together. Then I got out the giblet soup intending to add just the liquid. Turns out that when it's cold you can't separate the liquid and the chewy puree at all. So I heated it in the microwave for a minute, poured off some of the liquid into the frying pan, heated it again, poured off the rest. And into this I added a tin of Foul Medammas, which is localspeak for fava beans. I let this all cook together for a few minutes then we ate it. I gave the leftover gizzard puree to the cats. Result 3: Awesome! It was very tasty, good texture, and everyone in the family loved it. Robin even tried a little of the broth (he's not officially up to meat protein yet but it's soon, he's only just starting vegetable protein). Though admittedly he was just as happy with the plain fava beans mixed with a little water. Sparrow ate heaps of it, as long as we avoided giving her any beans in the spoonfuls she cadged from our bowls. James really enjoyed it. So that was a win. However, at time of writing the cats have pretty much ignored the chopped gizzards. Even the alley cat who sneaks in to steal our cats food came in and then slunk out again without touching the plate. So, I feel like I have explored gizzards. When I first mentioned the concept to James I barely got through the first sentence about meat philosophy and having access to butchers before he interrupted to say "If this is leading in the direction of 'So I thought I'd buy some' the answer is NO". He may now be a little more willing, but I can see that it'll be hard to find a way of serving them that works. I thought they were good though, so it's worth remembering. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, November 4th, 2011
10:06 pm	Recipe: tomato-and-curd goat curry I forget where the original idea for this came from. I remember I was looking at a lot of Youtube videos of Indian cooking, maybe I was trying to look up saag? I'm not sure. At any rate, I finally got around to trying the 17-Spice-Rub that my aunt sent me from my cousin's company, Pinch Spices. I'd planned to try it in a goat curry, seeing as I love goat and the new butchers downstairs has goat in free-quantities on a regular basis. (The other butchers have goat fairly often, but you have to buy a whole one and not just half a kilo.) They always label it "goat curry", and it's certainly slow-cook kind of stuff, lots of odd bits and pieces on the bone. But it's good for stews and curries and slow-cooker food, which suits me fine. I did this one on the stovetop, kind of made up as I went along based on a few concepts I remembered from one thing or another. 1. Big pot (I used my 8 litre one). I rubbed the 17 spice rub into one side of each piece of meat and put them in a little bit of heated oil on the bottom of the pot, over medium heat. When it began to sear I rubbed more spice into the tops of the meat/bone chunks and turned them over to sear the other side. Because they were odd shapes they didn't entirely sear, but it doesn't matter. 2. I added... chopped onion? No, I skipped that because I didn't have any and didn't want to go get some. Hot water. Yes, that's right, hot water (I'm trying to remember five days ago and it's not working very well :-). I put in enough hot water to cover most of the goat (but not all) and let it simmer on slightly lower heat for a while. 3. I added a tin of diced tomato (which comes out mostly pureed). I would have used fresh diced tomato but didn't have any, see the note above on the onion. Kept it simmering for a while, letting the water cook out a bit and the sauce thicken up a little. Turned the goat a couple of times to make sure it was all cooking. 4. I added a few large spoonfuls of pot-set natural yoghurt (the unsweetened, unflavoured kind that has a good tang to it) and stirred that in. Presto: tomato and curd sauce. I let that heat through and then turned it off and served it over rice. It came out very nice, quite repeatable. The spice wasn't very strong having done it this way, but you could taste that there was something more complex than the tomato going on. And it didn't really need the onion, I think, the balance was quite good and goat is quite a flavourful meat anyway. (Comment on this)
12:24 pm	Egg donor update C2 (number 2 in the third set of updates) I visited my IVF nurse yesterday. This is the sort-out-the-paperwork and pick-up-the-medicine visit. There was a receptionist there today, or at least an administrator (she didn't seem to be spending her time taking phone calls so much as running around sorting out people's files). When I arrived the administrator clarified who I was, then brought me the first set of paperwork. Three Medicare slips (which she zipped my card through). A Medicare claim form with the bits they wanted me to fill in highlighted. I gave it back to her with none of the bits filled in and just my signature on the bottom - because it's all about the claimant's details, and I'm not the claimant. So they will fill in my Medicare number for me, and sort out the other stuff with whoever is the claimant - presumably the person who pays for it in the first instance, and I don't know if that's Monash IVF or the recipient. I also had to do a new surgery form, and try and remember everything I put on there last time so it matches. The surgery form is my relevant medical details, including weight and BMI (which I don't actually know exactly, but they take it again on the day anyway) and whether I've had any aspirin or a cold in the six days before surgery. I left those bits blank again, seeing as nobody knows yet when the surgery will be. I didn't have to do a new consent form. My nurse was fairly sure I wouldn't have to as it's for the same recipient, but checked with the administrator. I didn't think the consent form applied to only one recipient, but I wouldn't know. They were in the next room and I didn't hear all of the conversation, but the bit I heard was that the form I filled out last time is valid for two years. So, no new consent form. That's good - that was a really long, kind of complicated form with lots of bits that needed signature witnessing and James's consent and six different sets of consent in one. I'm glad I don't have to redo it. If I'd had to it'd be a hoop in the system that was really unnecessary, too. As it is the process still seems a little more complex than necessary, but it's hard to say what you'd take out and still have enough redundancy and safeguards. So many bits of paper! The nurse spent quite a bit of time trying to make sure she had all my papers, and all the *right* papers. I joked about it being a drowning-in-paperwork thing, and she seemed to be concerned that I realise her desk wasn't really messy, it was very well organised and just looked chaotic. Which was funny, that wasn't really what I was getting at at all. But I did take the chance to ask how many people they have in each clinic, and she said up to forty. Then she added that there are people doing frozen cycles as well, and that can take it over forty. So with this much paperwork for each of us I can appreciate that they have to keep track of each page really carefully. I picked up the needles and Puregon, all nicely set out for me in an unlabelled brown paper bag. No cold pack this time, but I already had one. So I have the Puregon I start with, twelve days worth, plus three suppressant needles (I may need more but they won't know when or how many until I take the first blood test) and the final trigger injection all ready to go. On Saturday I take the last of the contraceptive pills (can't wait!) and then on Thursday next week I start the injections for this donor cycle. Feeling real again. Sort of. I'm a bit more ho-hum about it this time, but I'm having a bad week with the contraceptive medication - it's very much got me in a Care Factor Zero loop, and I'm having trouble caring about anything. I'll be glad when that's over. (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 3rd, 2011
9:54 pm	Recipes - beef stroganoff-plus, and Japanesy mushroom-orange rice 1) Beef stroganoff, made my way - much like normal beef stroganoff, which has stirfried beef plus fried mushrooms in a sour cream sauce that may or may not be seasoned with dill (seeds or leaves). Except... I added a few things. I did use dill - dried dill tips (James usually skips the dill when he makes it). I also used ground pepperberry and a little ground sea salt (but not much). I also grated in avocado. There's a trick to this - you know when an avocado is too hard to eat? Well, it's not too hard to grate. Dried grated avocado (dry it in the microwave) is a tasty snack on its own, but you can use it grated without drying in a number of dishes (nachoes and enchiladas spring immediately to mind). Just get the skin off first. (Getting the skin off is easier if the avocado is maybe half-way through the time between picking and eating i.e. maybe at 5-7 days after pick, because the skin will peel away at that point if you slice it, but you can pare it off with a knife at any time.) So, this stroganoff had grated avocado in it, and also chopped snow peas (which are really nice right now). Looked nice and colourful with the various shades of green, and tasted great. I suspect if I play around with avocadoes and get the timing exactly right I can replace the beef completely with avocado chunks, and just make an avocado stroganoff. That would be awesome. I'll have to try it. 2) Japanesy mushroom-orange rice. This was dinner tonight, made with various things I had on hand seeing as shopping got screwed over by various children's naps, pickup times, etc etc. I started with the general plan of risotto, but these things sometimes take on a life of their own. In the frying pan: rice bran oil and sesame oil. Fresh mushrooms, roughly chopped, frying on medium-high heat, with rice wine vinegar splashed over them while frying. When they were starting to look golden and crispy in spots I moved them to the side of the pan and added garlic salt and arborio rice to the middle. When the rice was starting to look ready for liquid, that starting-to-but-not-quite-crisping point, I added the juice from two blood oranges, stirred well, then slowly added a cup of hot water. From there I just added hot water slowly from time to time, stirring as I went, the way you make risotto normally. This combination gave a pretty good flavour. I added broccoli as well, chopped very fine, because I had some to use up, but I really shouldn't have. It was nice with the broccoli but I think it's a better dish without it. More of a side or companion dish, needs to be accompanied by something, but it's the sort of dish that you can't just keep adding things into to make one complete meal. Still, I may try the combination again, the balance of orange and wine vinegar and sesame was just right. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, October 30th, 2011
6:41 pm	Recipe - black sesame icecream Ingredients: black sesame seeds sesame oil brown sugar cream I made this while trying to remember how I made icecream two years ago when I was experimenting with it. So it didn't go ideally. I should have used whipping cream (which is so hard to find now - why does everyone go for the thickened stuff?) and aerated it well - the icecream I've got is a little too creamy, with not quite the right kind of texture. I also failed to get the black sesame seeds into a proper paste, so instead of getting a thin-but-powerful steady burst of flavour through each bite, you get sweet cream and then you bite down on these very intense and just a little bitter sesame seeds. The overall combination still works - which is why I love black sesame icecream to begin with - but this one hasn't quite worked out. I may have to investigate and see if the paste is available pre-made downstairs or in the Asian grocers at Footscray. Anyway, instructions: 1. Grind black sesame seeds into a paste, using a little bit of sesame oil. (I think if I do the sesame seeds in a spice grinder I can then add the oil afterwards rather than straight into the grinder.) 2. Grind/process brown sugar into the paste. 3. Gently mix with the cream (or in my case, just blend it all together and hope that that's sufficient initial aeration). 4. Spoon into ice-cube trays and freeze. 5. Grind the frozen cream cubes in an ice-capable blender to a lighter, yet again more aerated state and then refreeze. (This step didn't work so well for me - I'd forgotten that our blender SAYS it does ice but really it only works for liquids, you can only grind three cubes at a time and if there's only three cubes in there there's not enough weight to make it grind them. Stupid design. I bought the blender to have enough power for this job, and it has the power, but still can't do it.) 6. Eat. :-) (5 Comments |Comment on this)
10:13 am	Recipe: mini-chicken-meat-loaves Putting this here mainly so that I don't forget it. James has asked for a repeat. Ingredients: --- fresh basil leek oil --- chicken mince egg half a container of sour cream bread crusts (quinoa and flaxseed multigrain, in this case) 1. Fry leek slices, as they start to go translucent add mediumly chopped basil, let all cook together for a little. Drain off oil (I did this the day before and used the oil to cook the meat sauce I was making for dinner that night), set leek and basil aside. 2. Put leek, basil, bread crusts through the food processor til they're fairly finely chopped up. 3. Put in a bowl, mix in egg, mince and sour cream (which was just something I had waiting to use up), add salt and pepper to taste (I'd just had a container of white pepper explode on me so I used a bit of that). 4. Spoon mix into silicone muffin trays, bake on moderate until tops are starting to go brown and crispy (in our oven that's anywhere between an hour and an hour and a half, but our oven's crappy and it should be around 40 minutes). 5. Serve. They came out really awesome. James told me beforehand that meatloaf was the one dish I probably wouldn't be able to make as well as his mother. These didn't quite make it. But they came remarkably close. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, October 28th, 2011
10:53 pm	Why I've given up on communicating climate change (I'm getting very little time to write or post. This post has been building for a while but dot points is going to be as far as it gets. Sorry about that.) Why I've given up on communicating climate change why sustainability is not about being nice to cute fuzzy little rabbits and what this has to do with brushing my teeth last night I didn't brush my teeth. Yesterday I went to the dentist and paid $178 after rebates for him to fix things that wouldn't be a problem if I took good care of my teeth on a daily basis. It's the third visit in a month, totalling around $550. And last night, knowing all this, I was too busy, it wasn't important, the baby was crying... it comes back to the way we think about problems that have very long complex results that appear unrelated to any one thing we do right now. Our actions don't dovetail with what we say is our overall understanding of the situation. Our actions don't have meaning in the big picture. We are disempowered by reality, and ennui is a persuasive bedmate. giving up on science communication generally. The misunderstanding of the process of science is so appalling. If scientists produce conflicting results on the fine details of a large field of study, that means __science is working correctly__, not __science can't be trusted__. But changing that perception feels like a giant's task. people like to know about interesting science bits and pieces, new discoveries, curious and weird stuff, things that make you go "hmm". Climate change does not fit this. The problem has been around long enough that nobody is listening to any other point of view any more. Providing clear, quality information does not change this. People have their minds made up. Those who are concerned about climate change have already debunked the arguments against it to their own satisfaction and don't need to listen to them again every single time. Those who think there isn't a problem, or that it's not our problem, don't want to listen to anything that might convince them they're wrong. There shouldn't even be a debate - in the words of Bill Maher, when the topic is science, the non-scientists don't get a vote. Just need to move on. Solve the problem, get on with it. Did we take a vote on fixing the Year 2000 bug? No, companies just hired people to go through their stuff, see if there were any problems and if so fix them. I don't want to try and communicate this issue anymore. It's pointless. Doing something about climate change is not pointless, it's essential. Communicating it is something I can do, that I can use my niche skills for - but I'm not going to do that any longer. Time to find another arena I can work in to try and convince people that "sustainability" is not about being nice to cute fuzzy little rabbits, it's about being able to *keep on* doing the things we do **for generations** without destroying ourselves and our world in the process. (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 25th, 2011
1:27 pm	Egg donor update C1 (number 1 in the third set of updates) I'm doing another egg donor cycle. My recipient miscarried, and they had used both of the two successful embryos they'd got from me in the first transplant so they're now out. The doctor had rung me and asked very nicely if I'd do another cycle. I had expected it as a possibility from the beginning (IVF being a slow thing), had even known that day that the recipient had miscarried, so I was already primed to say "sure, no worries". So I've been on the contraceptive pill since the 27th of September or so. It's having the same effects as last time. My breast milk supply has gone down, though it took a couple of weeks for that to be obvious. This time Robin's drinking a lot more (being six months old instead of three) and I'm not starting from quite as large an oversupply, so in the last couple of days we've begun offering him formula as an evening top up once I've exhausted every last drop I can give. We're measuring his weight weekly and while it's still quite healthy, it's definitely plateauing. We would expect his growth to slow a little at this point anyway as he is just on the verge of crawling and is very physically active, but we think he could definitely use a little more food. At least, having it offered to him, if he refuses it then he must think he's OK. I'm also really struggling with the moods again. Some seriously bad days, particularly in the last four or five days. I just keep trying to remember that this was the hardest point last round too - I'm on mood-altering medication that makes the negative swings much worse, and my body is trying to put PMT into the mix. If I can make it til tomorrow, or Thursday, everything should suddenly be much better (if no easier). But really, these few days have been horrendous. I started to post about it and realised that it doesn't fit anywhere within the scope of what I post about in this journal (which contrary to some people's beliefs is actually a very restricted range of content, mostly non-personal with the exception of cross-over topics like the egg donation process). Let's just say that I haven't been comfortable living in my own head in this time. I am very much looking forward to finishing the Pill and going onto the injections, which last time were like an island of sanity in the miasmic swamp. And speaking of finishing, that's due to happen on the 5th. However, I only have enough tablets to last til the 3rd. So this week I need to see my doctor and get a new referral to the IVF specialist (as my old one has run out), and ask him for a new prescription too. Then there's nothing more new in the process til I go visit the IVF nurse on the 3rd, and pick up all the injection packages ready for use. (3 Comments |Comment on this)