Saturday, December 26, 2009

Bad parents

Warning: totally judgemental diatribe is about to follow that may offend some people.

Today I saw the fattest six year old I have ever seen in my life. This kid was obese. Her stomach hung down in the front like a pouch, she had fatty boobs, and her eyes were slits in her fat face. She was in the park, eating junk food with her not-quite-as-fat older brother who looked about seven or eight. The two of them sat on the bench, sharing big bags of sweets and soft drinks then throwing their rubbish down on the ground, despite there being rubbish bins nearby.

They seemed a bit young to be at the park alone so I started looking around for their parents, and finally spotted her big, fat, lazy pathetic excuse for a father, who was parked in a car by the park, because he couldn't actually be bothered getting out.

I felt bad for this girl because I admit it - even though I know better, deep down I'm prejudiced against fat kids, assuming them to be lazy and greedy. I know a lot of teachers are prejudiced too, and LOADS of other kids certainly are. She doesn't have much of a chance, really.

My daughter and her friend noticed it and whispered about her weight which was unusual as she normally never makes personal remarks about the appearance of other children. She never even cares what other kids look like. But I think she noticed, because, barring a major medical reason, it is just wrong for a kid that age to be that fat. I made sure to tell her it wasn't the girl's fault, it was her parent's faults for allowing it to happen.

Kids have loads of energy and can handle eating a lot of fatty food without gaining weight so I shudder to think what kind of food that kid has been eating, in order to get so huge. What that family was doing to that child, letting her eat that kind of junk and getting to that size is nothing short of child abuse in my opinion. If I were her neighbour or teacher I'd be wanting to notify CYF and would probably do it. 

Not that it would get me anywhere.

Yesterday I went to the mall. I normally avoid malls like the plague on Boxing Day (and every other day), but I had to get mobile broadband asap so I went. The people there reminded me of why I hate malls and those who inhabit them. All these sour, unkempt, overweight, greasy, bad-bleach-jobbed unhealthy people stuffing their faces with burgers, dragging their overweight rats-tailed kids around with them. 

I looked at those kids and saw: future tagger, future petrolhead, dropout. I bet a fair proportion of them had names like Destyny, Mercedes, Harley, or Diesel. You know, cre8tv names. Some creative names are ok (although some are pure trailer trash), but combine that with an overweight kid with a rats-tail and you get 'the kid the teacher is likely to dislike on sight'. 

Anyway, after being in the mall an hour I caught a glimpse of myself in a shop mirror and thought gosh, I look thin! And for the record, I'm not actually thin, I'm normal. My BMI is 21 which is about right, and I'm certainly not underweight. In fact I could afford to lose a kilo or three.

But it was scary how my normal became completely abnormal in that mall, surrounded by mall-goers. Apparently something close to 60% of New Zealand adults are obese or overweight, and although that sounds crazy to me, looking at the people around me yesterday, I can believe it. I'm not talking about a few extra kilos here, or a pleasant bit of roundness there. I'm talking obesity becoming commonplace. If it is that bad now, it is scary to think of what the current generation's stats are going to be when they grow up. 

There are way too many bad parents (yes I said that!) sitting in cars, stuffing their kids with junk, because they just can't be arsed. I feel really sorry for their kids. That is, until they grow up to be petrolheads and taggers and burger-lovin' bad parents themselves and then I'll hate them.

Monday, December 14, 2009

So, today I:

  • Got up at 6am.
  • Did some work before my daughter woke up at 8am.
  • Got my daughter organised and off to school.
  • Completed a number of design and layout jobs for clients.
  • Paid my phone bill.
  • Shopped for bathroom tiles.
  • Tiled part of my bathroom while my daughter and her friend had a playdate.
  • Made some urgent changes to some ads I'm working on and got them ready for the newspaper.
  • Organised myself and my mother to be at the school tomorrow for final assembly.
  • Organised babysitting for next Saturday night.
  • Tidied up the entire house (which was a bombsite after aforementioned playdate) in preparation for my property manager to show around prospective tenants tomorrow.
  • Prepared dinner and tidied everything up afterwards. (Well, flung together some guacamole, chilli beans and corn chips - yummy)
  • Went through paperwork relating to my upcoming move, and my work in progress.
  • Got my daughter fed, watered, bathed and into bed. (Thank god there is no homework to do at this time of year).
  • Poured a herbal tea. (It is now after 10pm)
I barely stopped all day. And now I'm about to go to bed in preparation for a 4.30am start tomorrow and start it all again. 

I need to start this early as the school assembly is taking up a significant chunk of the working day, and then I'm going to a client Christmas lunch which will take up another big chunk. By which time it will be three o'clock and time to pick up my daughter and her friend from school. 

Luckily, I'm not a perfectionist. It would be a nightmare to try and get everything done perfectly. To be the best mother, the best designer, have the best kept house, to always eat a perfectly balanced diet. I do work hard to succeed in what I do, but I don't expect perfection from myself or others. As long as I feel I've done a good job to the best of my ability at the time, I'm ok with that. The only area I need to be a perfectionist in is when I'm preparing artwork files for print as it potentially costs thousands of dollars if I screw it up. (But, hey, no pressure or anything)

I'm tired. But it's good tired.

Geeze, just reading that list makes me tired. It's funny how you often don't realise how much you accomplish in a day until you write it all down.

I'm giving myself a pat on the back for today. I deserve it.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

......aaaaand the sun appears!

Things are much better now since I last posted.
Good things that have happened:
  • We now have a place to live in Auckland! We went up last week to do the full-on house hunt and I found the right place on the third day. I walked in and thought, "This is our house.". And fortunately the landlord didn't seem to be frightened off by the look of us, so we are signed up, yay! It is a huge weight off my shoulders to have a place to go to, and I now have a place I can visualise us in, which means I'm starting to get excited about moving again.
  • It is just around the corner from what looks like a fabulous school. We went in to look around and the people were lovely. I have a very good feeling about this school.
  • It has been WARM and SUNNY lately. At least it was in Auckland last week when I was there, and then Christchurch kindly turned on a warm weekend when we returned. So that is a week of warm sunny weather, and what a difference it has made.
  • I've started talking to people again, now I'm no longer quite so preoccupied. I'm being social. I'm getting invites to places. It stops me chatting to the voices in my own head which has got to be a good thing.
  • I am no longer premenstrual. Praise be.
In other news, I just finished The Time Traveller's Wife, by Audrey NiffeneggerI admit it has been a while since I started it. Gone are the days where I could devour a book like that in a couple of days. At the moment I count myself lucky to get an uninterrupted half hour to read in a day, so books get read much more slowly than they used to be.
 
Anyway, my verdict is: I loved it. Even if I did bawl my way through the last few sections, because I was so emotionally involved with the characters. I'm already looking forward to reading the author's next book: Her Fearful Symmetry.

I know there is more to ramble on about, but I can't think of anything else to write right now. My child is demanding to be fed, and refusing to let me blog in peace until she gets nourishment.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Grey clouds

There have been a lot of grey clouds around me lately, inside and out. Most mornings when I wake up I have a knot in the pit of my stomach and I am finding I'm lethargic and negative during the day quite a bit. I don't like feeling this way but at the moment I'm struggling to find much joy in things.

There are a few reasons I'm feeling like this and some days one reason is more important than another. In no particular order, here they are:
  •  The awful weather for this past year and the past month in particular. Sometimes I feel this entire year has been one long winter, and spring and summer have been cancelled this year. We get the odd nice day but then have three more days of overcast to follow it. Looking out at concrete coloured skies day in and day out is depressing. I've barely touched the garden this year and I miss it. Not to mention it is cold. I need some sun and warmth!!!
  • Someone who I thought had my best interests at heart let me down. Badly. 
  • Some relationships with friends and family have been slipping away, due to life changes, apathy, and circumstances. Things just aren't what they used to be. Most relationships ebb and flow and some of mine are ebbing at the moment, maybe even ending. As our circumstances and lives change, so do our friendships and family relationships, and from reading cesca's and treezy's blogs I know I'm not alone in feeling disconnected from some people who used to be very important. I know it is all a part of growing and changing. But I do feel sad and sometimes a little angry about it.
  • In less than a month I'll be leaving my home and moving to Auckland. It is my choice to do this, and I do believe it is the right thing for me to take this chance, but that doesn't mean it is easy to do. I don't yet have a place to live, and don't know where my daughter will be going to school. I have no friends there. I'm giving up a lot - my hometown, my house and garden that I've put so much effort into fixing up, my support network, my daughter's school, my routines – and don't yet have anything to replace it with. I know I will in time, but for the moment, it feels empty and sad.
  • I work from home which is great, but I do feel isolated at times, particularly now. I work alone and my work is mainly conducted via email which means I can sometimes go a whole day and speak to no-one but my daughter. She's awesome, but I need grown up conversation sometimes. And I'm so busy at the moment that sometimes I don't have the time to get out there and see people, which I know I should be doing.
  • I need to exercise more and lose a bit of weight. I'm not liking the flab that has been making an appearance lately, particularly on my stomach. It's like my winter coat (the extra 3-4 kilos I put on every winter and take off in summer) has decided to stick around since the weather is so useless. So not feeling too happy when I look in the mirror. I've started fantasising about tummy tucks.
  • Oh yeah - and I'm premenstrual right now. It's not helping.
So that is my vent. I'm trying to put this out there in the hope that venting will help dislodge some of the block of sad and worry that is residing in my tummy lately. 

Although I have a feeling I might be feeling this way for a while. I can't do much about the friendship/isolation issue at the moment, I just have to stick it out. At the moment my life is in a state of flux and I have to attend to that before I can concentrate on rebuilding relationships or forming new ones. 

Change can be a great thing, but in order to get something you usually have to give something else up, and I am surprised at the mixed feelings I am having now I am this close to the move. I still want to move, but I've become so much more aware of the things I'm giving up so I can take this trip into the unknown. I have been told this is normal for any big life change, particularly when it also affects the lives of children as well, because there is also the worry about whether this is going to be ok for them thrown into the mix.

I know I will be ok and that I'll do just fine.

But it would really help if the bloody grey clouds around at the moment would just get lost so the sun could get though. Literally and metaphorically.