Working mom

So,

As I understand it, working moms have been around for a while.  It's not a new thing.  Mom's have worked in factories on assembly lines, they have worked as waitresses and so many other things for a very long time.

Single mothers, though more common are also not a new thing.  Mothers could become widows have have to go back into the workforce for a very long time as well.

So WHY is it that school have such a hard time with the concept that mom might, just might NOT be at home during the daytime????

Ever since my children have started school, I have had difficulty with getting school personnel to understand that they should not be calling me at home during the daytime.  That in case of emergency, leaving a voicemail at home where I only get back to around 5PM is not the most expedient method.

Sure when my daughter first started school, in kindergarten and grade one, I could be reached at home, but that's because I worked night shift.  (11PM to 7 AM)  I would sleep during school hours with the phone next to my bed.

Since I have worked in a call centre for many years, it has not been that easy to reach me at work, so I got a cell phone to make it easier to reach me.  With voicemail.  I understood the need to reach me.  I especially understood it where my son was concerned as he was not adapting well to school.  I have always wanted to be reached by school for my child's wellness.  That's why I got a cell, why I have been paying a monthly plan since 2004.

To be quite honest with all of you, I am somewhat of a techno-peasant.  I don't adhere to new technology just because it's there.  Also I don't particularly like taking on the phone.  In fact, the years that I have worked in call centres have almost made me develop an aversion to phones.  I much MUCH prefer emails (and maybe texts)  Working in a call centre, emails were the fastest way of reaching me because I could go offline...
If it wasn't for school, I would be perfectly happy to not have a cell.  Sure it has proven useful at the odd times, but I would have managed without if it had not been there.

The reason I underlined voicemail up there is because I work in a call centre.  If I am called on my cell while I am dealing with and important or irate client, or while I am in the middle of an important meeting, I can't IMMEDIATELY answer the phone.  A voicemail can be left and I can call back at the earliest opportunity.

Let me tell you, when called by school personnel, they don't take lightly to you not answering the phone right away.  Their urgency MUST be an urgency for all. They'll leave you a message at home or on the cell with threats to contact police or Child protection services because you dared not answer their call right away.

Anyway, back to my original rant.

Schools need to understand that :

1. Today's mothers often work outside the home.  Even homes where there are two adults, both of them often have to work to support today's demands for luxuries.
2. When mom is at work, as much as she LOVES her child, her employer has an expectation that she will do the job that he is paying her to do.  This means if mom is busy with a client, she will need to finish up what she is doing with the client prior to dealing with personal matters.
3. With telecommutes, mom may be more than 10 minutes away.  I have had many school personnel give me a hard time for taking 30-40 minutes to get to school to pick up my child for whichever reason.  I have gone through the extra expense of driving to work and paying for parking (a very expensive thing) to be able to get to my children faster as taking public transit would sometimes take 60 to 90 minutes.If it's so urgent, (sick) by all means call an ambulance, I will meet it at the hospital, else deal with the delay.
4. All the wonderful techniques they they learned to help make the child cooperative to learning (the non-confrontational methods which many teachers just forgo) should also be used with parents.
5. Parents are NOT STUPID!  Just because they are educators, doe not mean that they are smarter than parents.

I don't think any of the above is so hard to understand.  Is it?

Well I have been trying to make my current son's school understand for 3 years now that I want to be called on my cell.  Even after repeated demands that they completely REMOVE my home phone number from their files, leaving only my cell, work phone number and two email addresses, would you believe they STILL call me at home.

They call me at home for URGENT matters.  They'll call me at 10 AM and get angry because I have not returned the call by 2PM.    Is this acceptable?   Apparently so.


Well anyway, thanks for reading!

Exercising for mood and health.

Why don't more people exercise?


Here are 4 big reasons:

1. It's giving to yourself instead of others (mothers!)
2. It takes time, and it's not a habit.
3. It friggen HURTS!
4. The benefits don't happen right away, nor are they obvious.

Most people, by the time they have mood or health problems they think need treating, have children and/or jobs.  These are essential responsibilities, right?  You can't put your needs ahead of these kinds of needs without serious trouble.  Most people lose out on exercise right there.  They're good, responsible people.  They get their jobs done first, then if there's anything left, which they might take for themselves, they still consider giving it to their kids or their work!  Isn't that how you do it?


Now of course in the long run those kids and jobs would be better off with a mom or dad who's not troubled by mood and / or health problems, and exercise is purported to treat mood and health problems.


Most people in the North America have tight schedules.  So most people would have to change their schedule to make room for regular exercise.  Exercise is not the routine thing, it's an extra thing.  There's the second huge reason why it doesn't happen:  people leave their plan for exercise to a repeated decision.  That's like repeatedly deciding to take a medication.  One of those times, taking two minutes to do so will seem less important than something, like getting the kids to school on time, and poof!  medication missed.  And if it requires 30 or 40 minutes, like exercise, poof again!


Thirdly, for people with Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue, exercise really really hurts.  I mean you're in a lot of pain and already exhausted before starting, and people with CFS don't get that endocrine high, just total and utter exhaustion that they have trouble surmounting for days.


Last, the benefits don't happen right away.  That's another predictable way for human brains to miscalculate,  something else of more immediate value will win out, even if it's nowhere near as valuable in the long run.  Worse yet, the benefits of exercise are subtle.  So even when they're happening, they're pretty easily missed:  increased strength (how often do you use that?); increased stamina (same problem); better weight control (too many ways to mess that up!); less depression (unless you have other reasons to stay depressed or get depressed again, like stresses or genetics).  And the well-know, undebated benefits like lower heart disease risk and osteoporosis protection are invisible, especially to our decision-making brains.

Could I do this? 

The main "no" must be coming from my head.   Name some physical limitation and you could find somebody somewhere who's got that limitation too but has overcome it somehow.  So we're really dealing with motivation and time/money/other-resources barriers here.

Of course motivation is not a depressed person's strength, right?  If you have depression, you know:  cooking dinner is hard enough.  And look, how many people who aren't depressed exercise regularly?  (people's self-report, which is surely exaggerated -- wouldn't you?-- says that about 5 in 10 North Americans who aren't depressed still don't do anything regularly).  So if they can't, or at least don't, why should someone -- including me -- expect that I can?

Ah, but there's a trick here, one you might be able to use.   "Motivation" may not really be necessary!  "Motivation" is a feeling, right?  An inclination, a state of energy and willingness.  Yet people act differently than they feel, all the time, right?   I feel like yelling at my kid, but I choose to wait, calm down a little, and speak softly but firmly. 

So, maybe it's not motivation I need to look for.  Maybe it's the ability to do something different than what I "feel like".  Now even that is a problem for a lot of people, and more so for people with mood problems!  Being less "impulsive", being more deliberate about my choices, can be very hard, especially when my emotions have too much hold on me. 

So let's think about what kind of physical activity I could do repeatedly for a long time and not skip very often. In my view there aren't too many of these.  In my view, the one that wins over everything else by a long shot is....brace yourself.... walking with a friend.... nearly every day...... for a short walk.  The friend part is almost as important as the "walk" part!  My friend will be out there when I’m not really "feeling like it", but she or he will be waiting on me.  That's a better motivator for most humans than their own health benefits.


We are talking about extra walks, more regular walks.  Not the walk to and from the bus stop every day, even though that walk is a good 5 minutes.  Not the walk to the grocery store rather than driving every few days.  OK I don't do enough of that last one.

I thought of getting a dog, a dog is man's best friend is he not?  But a dog requires training knowledge that I don't have, a dog is so much more energetic than I am.  Sure I could play fetch with it to tire him/her out


I was able to quit smoking, I was able to climb back from Obesity and Mobility impairement once, I was able to stop drinking coffee for over a year, surely I can surmount this?


I know the doctors want to put me back on meds that will make me gain even more weight, reducing my ability to move even more, increasing the pain, I have to find the will soon or it just may be too late.




Thanks for reading!

Some good books

So while I was writing the post of the best chick flicks, my daughter suggested I do one about which books, in my opinion were some of the best and why.

This post might be a work in progress because I have read a great deal many books in my lifetime.

I am a reader.  When I read, I am one of the lucky ones who "sees" the characters and the actions.  Reading to me is like watching a movie, it just takes longer.

Sometimes I read books just to pass the time, other times I want to be captivated by the story, become part of it, so I read a variety of books.

To start off, I have a few favorite authors



John Saul

 John Saul is a writer of suspense and horror.  This man has a wonderfully twisted mind.  His monsters, if you want to call him that, tend to focus on children, or be children.  He covers mad scientists, many souls with unfinished business, hauntings, possessions, human experimentations.

I own almost all his books and I am slowly converting them from paperback to hard cover.  He is the only author that I wrote to the publishing company to order books I could not find in bookstores (This was before my Amazon and Chapter days).  I highly recommend him. 

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Iris Johansen



Irish Johansen writes in two very different styles: crime fiction and romance novels.  I first discovered her under the romance novel umbrella and noticed that she had a wonderful style.  One day I noticed her name on the cover of a book in the suspense section.  When I picked up the book and flipped it over I saw by the photo that it was the same author.  The book seemed very different from the medieval novels I had been reading from her.  That when I discovered the world of Eve Duncan and Joe Quinn.

In her crime novels, she has central characters around which most of her stories revolve.  Eventually , like a soap opera, you become addicted to the lives of these characters and wonder what kind of new adventures they can have.  Of course, also being a romance novelist, her crime stories have a bit of romance and descriptive love scenes, the best of both worlds.  I am also building up a hard cover collection of her books.

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Catherine Coulter



Catherine Coulter also writes in two different styles.  She reminds me a little of Ms. Johansen, but she does have her very own way of telling a story.  She writes romantic suspense thrillers and historical romances. 



Catherine has a FBI series which has a cast of central characters.  Each book however stands on it's own.  It's interesting to see how each character interweaves through her stories.

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Nora Roberts

Nora Roberts is a truly prolific writer.  How can one person write as many books as she does is a mystery to me.  Sometimes I wonder if J.D. Robbs is not an actual twin or CLONE!  Yeah that's right, clone.  J.D. Robbs is her pen name for her crime series "in Death".

She is at the bottom of my top four because she is the more "commercial" author.  I did have to include her however as I read a great many of her books, and I know that whatever she writes  will be a pleasant read.  She is a safe author, which is probably why she is so popular.

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Now on to my favorite books.  Let's take for granted that any book written by the quartet above is going to be on that list.  What other book have I enjoyed reading?  Well I enjoy almost all books!  Which ones did I enjoy more you say?  Oh you should have said so...

Here they are:

Elizabeth George

This Body of Death

On compassionate leave after the murder of his wife, Thomas Lynley is called back to Scotland Yard when the body of a woman is found stabbed and abandoned in an isolated London cemetery. His former team doesn’t trust the leadership of their new department chief, Isabelle Ardery, whose management style seems to rub everyone the wrong way. In fact, Lynley may be the sole person who can see beneath his superior officer’s hard-as-nails exterior to a hidden—and possibly attractive—vulnerability.

Elizabeth George is a master at describing the torments of her main characters and keeping the secret of "who done it" till the end. 

Unholy Child 

Catherine Breslin

UNHOLY CHILD is a year in the life of Sister Angela Flynn and the people around her, a story of how this secret she's kept affects not only her but everyone she's come into contact with. From the title, I was expecting something like the anti-Christ, but what I got instead was a dead baby and a nun who doesn't remember being pregnant. The twist to this story is that Sister Angela has a split personality, there's also Gayle Flynn (Gayle was Angela's birth name before the order gave her "Angela"). Gayle is a lot freer with herself, drinking, having fun, and picking up men. Angela has no idea Gayle exists. When Angela comes back from a blackout to find herself somewhere she doesn't recognize, hours missing from her life, she doesn't know what to think, and she keeps this a secret as well. 

To be continued...

Being a copycat - Best chick flicks

Well I don't have much to say today, mind you I didn't have all that much to say yesterday either, I was so tired (as those of you who read yesterday's post might have been able to tell) that I decided to steal the idea of a friend of mine and customize it.

The Best Chick Flicks, according to me.

For the original post  http://feliciamaystevenson.blogspot.com/

What makes a good chick flick?  I like to have a good dose of humour in my love stories.  Keep in mind that humour is NOT mandatory, as you will see below.  Must the guy be a hunk?  Man no, I don't find some of the guys from my favorite movies to be hunks (Billy Cristal) but the personality just makes up for it.

If the guy can do something amazing for her, (build a house, travel in time, write letters from the grave) even better!

I have a really hard time figuring out levels of best, like the NUMBER  1 BEST, so I just want to enumerate a bunch of great chick flicks I've seen without trying to grade them.

So here goes

The Proposal: Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock

The older woman and the younger man, and what a man it is!  The underling winds up having some power and a B*tch becomes human and lovable.  I love when she is chanting with Betty White in the forest.  Priceless!

PS I Love You Gerard Butler and Hilary Swank

Not much funny in here, it actually made me cry.  There are moments of cuteness for sure, like when he is protecting her from the fierce will dog...  I also like when she kisses her longtime friend and they discover there is no chemistry.

I do but I don't  Dean Caine and Denise Richards

A divorced wedding-planner who falls for the groom-to-be.  This movie was made for TV, yet I still included as a good chick flick.  First Dean Caine is HOT.  Second, there was a lot of comedy in this movie, many moments of tension and a great finale

The Notebook  Ryan Gosling and Rachel Mac Adams

This movie needs no introduction, I don't think there is anymore on the northern hemisphere who is not aware of it.  He builds a house for her...  and that line "... it's STILL not over"  SWOON.  Now ever since I saw Ryan Gosling in Young Hercules, I will never be able to summon hormones for him, BUT this movie came close...

Wedding Date  Dermot Mulroney and Debra Messing

A single woman hires an escort to accompany her to a wedding to make an ex jealous.  He teaches her all about romance and sensuality and of course he totally falls for her.

Lots of funny moments, Debra is a hoot.

When Harry met Sally  Billy Cristal and Meg Ryan

Harry and Sally meet when she gives him a ride to New York after they both graduate from the University of Chicago. The film jumps through their lives as they both search for love, but fail, bumping into each other time and time again. Finally a close friendship blooms between them, and they both like having a friend of the opposite sex. But then they are confronted with the problem: "Can a man and a woman be friends, without sex getting in the way?"

Practical Magic  Aidan Quinn and Sandra Bullock

In this movie, the four main actors are all women, Sandra, Nicole Kidman, Stockard Channing and Dianne West however there is a side love story that ties the whole thing together.  I love that scene where Sandra runs toward her love.

Wedding Singer : Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore

Anything that can make the 80's look this amazing gets my vote.

Robbie, the singer and Julia, the waitress are both engaged to be married but to the wrong people. Fortune intervenes to help them discover each other.

Say Anything John Cusak and Ione Skye

High school senior Lloyd Dobler wants nothing more than to go out with beautiful and intelligent Diane Court. Lloyd attempts to win her heart over the objections of her over-protective father before Diane leaves for a scholarship in England.

27 Dresses

Two things about Jane: she never says no to her friends (she's been a bridesmaid 27 times and selflessly plans friends' weddings), and she's in love with her boss, George, nurturing dreams of a lovely, romantic wedding of her own. She meets Kevin, a cynical writer who finds her attractive, and that same week her flirtatious younger sister Tess comes to town. Jane silently watches George fall for Tess, a manipulative pretender. Worse, Jane may be called upon to plan their wedding. Meanwhile, Kevin tries to get Jane's attention and has an idea that may advance his career.

Sabrina  Hunphrey Boggart and Audrey Hepburn

A playboy becomes interested in the daughter of his family's chauffeur. But it's his more serious brother who would be the better man for her.

I saw the remake with Harisson Ford and Julia Ormond.  Both version have their own positives, but nothing beats Boggart and Hepburn.

  

The Lake House Keannu Reeves and Sandra Bullock

A lonely doctor who once occupied an unusual lakeside home begins exchanging love letters with its former resident, a frustrated architect. They must try to unravel the mystery behind their extraordinary romance before it's too late.

Somewhere in Time Christopher Reeves and Jane Seymore

A Chicago playwright uses self-hypnosis to find the actress whose vintage portrait hangs in a grand hotel.

Things I'd rather be doing...

1. Sleeping
2. Lying down with a good book.
3. Doing laundry
4. Vaccuuming
5. Taking a hot bath with scented oils
6. Sitting in a hot tub
7. Sleeping
8. Cooking
9. Playing a computer game
10. Shopping in a store
11. Shopping online
12. Scanning documents to save electronically (gotta fix scanner)
13. Converting VHS to MP4
14. Sleeping
15. Sorting my linens, for giveaway
16. Sorting my clothes for giveaway
17. Sorting my son's clothes for giveaway
18. Watching a movie
19. Watching something on TV
20. Cuddling with a cat
21. Did I say sleeping?
22. Getting a massage
23. Getting a facial
24. Getting a manicure
25. Getting a pedicure
26. Having my hair washed and styled
27. Doing a crossword puzzle
28. Sleeping.

Living With the Bipolar Label.

In previous post, I mentioned that I have been living with depression for as long as I can remember.

The first time I went on anti-depressants was a few years after my daughter was born.  It was the first time I had a "family doctor".  She was the doctor that served the College I was attending, the one who had found the cancer and referred me to the oncologist/gynecologist that treated my cancer.

I admitted to this doctor that I felt like killing myself.  She referred me to the first of many psychologists I would see and gave me the first anti-depressants.  She made me sign a non-suicide contract and did not call child protective services like today's doctors would do.  The psychologist tried to make me admit that I wanted to kill myself because I wanted to punish people.  (Boy this guy had it wrong!)

Anyways, I went on Zoloft.  I loved anti-depressants; they made me feel so good, and gave me so much energy!  I felt so much better.  When I felt better I would stop taking the medications.  I would slide down into deep depression again so I would take the pills again.  I did this off and off for a few years, then stopped taking anti-depressants as my life was somewhat better.

After my son was born, I suffered a bout of postpartum depression.  I had a new doctor by that time as I had moved to Ontario.  He prescribed a new anti-depressant, Paxil.

During this time, I was living with two housemates.  This was a very good thing as living with other people enabled us to discover exactly how good I was feeling while on antidepressants.  I would stay up all night, I would rearrange our furniture this way and that, I would cook for an army, I would want to go out and have fun.  My well-meaning housemate let me know I was a little hyper, and my doctor also found out how hyper I had become.  That is when I got the label of bipolar for the first time and was prescribed Lithium.

He took me off Paxil, and just kept me on Lithium.  This medication seemed to stabilize me, but the balance was very difficult to obtain.  The "therapeutic" amounts were toxic to me.  They tried for some time to try and get the right balance, increasing and decreasing the doses on a weekly basis.  Blood tests every week, sometimes even twice a week.  The toxicity would depend on the weather, exertion, anything.   I could not stop taking my medication because keeping my children became conditional on my being medicated.

Shortly after my son was born, a trusted friend (I believed) betrayed my trust in the most horrendous way.  When I reported the betrayal to the cops (as one should) they involved child protection services.  Somehow this turned against me.  They found out I was "bipolar" and used it to accuse me of being involved in all kinds of sick things (which I wasn't).  I ran away from the Ontario child protection services only to get caught up in the Quebec system. (This may have been better as they are slightly easier to fight).  It took me a few years to get them to understand that I was not prostituting my daughter during bouts of mania.  I was not a danger to my children.  They said that because I was bipolar, that I had "black-outs" and did not remember abusing my children.

I am not proud of many of the mistakes I have done as a parent, but the things they were accusing me of, I never did.  They did manage to take my daughter away from me for a year, and one of the conditions to being able to get her back was to be medicated and follow counselling by two therapists, one of theirs.  I had to admit to the things they were accusing me of in order to possibly get my children back.

I have to admit it was very hard for me to keep my sanity and not be depressed during this period in my life. One of the therapists I was seeing was trying to get me to understand that all the bad things that happened in my life was because I was too impulsive and made bad decisions as a result.  I am not an impulsive person, but they wanted me to admit to all they said that I was.  They told me I was a monster.  They also told me I was rapid cycling.

I fought and eventually I did get my child back without having to admit to being the monster they accused me of being.  After having my children back, I moved back to the Ottawa region.  Without a doctor to follow me, I stopped taking lithium, and was finally free of weekly blood testing. This was in the summer of 2002.

Eventually I became depressed again.  I visited this clinic and a doctor there accepted me as a patient.  We discussed my being bipolar and he decided to put me on anti-depressants but rather than put me on lithium which was so difficult with me, he decided to put me on valproic acid (or valproate). I forget which anti-depressant he prescribed, but eventually I went down to only valproate.  I was on this medication off and on until 2005 when I moved back to Ontario.  Then my son's psychiatrist prescribed me valproic acid for a little longer, until he closed his practice in early 2007 I think.

I was un-medicated and functioning well.  I took a while for me to find another doctor.  When I did, upon taking my medical history, I mentioned that I had been labelled as bipolar but was functioning well off medication.  It became an obsession with her to have me be medicated for the bipolarity, going as far as being uncooperative in treating me for my other illnesses.

Eventually I became depressed again.  I went to see her and said that now; I needed help and would agree to going on medication, I however did not want to go on valproate or lithium.  She prescribed an antidepressant with a mood stabilizer called Seroquel, which she was giving me to help me sleep.  Even with the mood stabilizer I started becoming manic.

Suddenly it hit me.  The only times I ever became manic was under the influence of anti-depressants.  I required help with my chronic depressions but I didn't get manias, only when medicated.  I could function very well without mood stabilizers when I was not depressed.  Also mood stabilizers were usually not very good for treating my depressions.

I requested to be properly evaluated by a psychiatrist, which I had never been.  I suspect I might not be bipolar, much less rapid cycling.  As a person with FM and CFS, we are prone to some mood swings and depression.  Also because of the recurring depression, I definitively have something.   I could be bipolar.  Considering that my son is currently being treated with Abilify for his mood swings, there is undoubtedly some genetic thing causing it.

After a long wait, I have finally been contacted by a psychiatrist from the mood clinic.  Once we are done playing phone tag, maybe I will finally know...




UPDATE : September 29, 2011.  Met with the psychiatrist, she asked me some questions and after about 15~20 minutes thinks that I more than likely am bipolar.  How can someone be bipolar if one gravitates only to one pole?  Should it not be unipolar depressive?


Course the solution is drugs....

Thanks for reading!