Proud to be a really bad consumer...

This post was inspired by a comment by Ken Silver on a very inspiring older post over on Erin Doland's Unclutterer

I found out the other day what the bank folk call people who pay off their credit cards on time or early: deadbeats! Obviously that’s because the banks don’t make any money from the card users.

Gosh, I'm so darned proud to be a bank deadbeat that I feel all choked up!  We've been making banks unhappy for years now - paying off our first mortgage years before it was due and always paying off credit card debt so we get free credit days and cashback points.

I'm thrilled that both DH and I are very debt-shy.  It is possible that this has stopped us from making the proverbial "killing" in the real estate market.  It's also possible this has saved us from being overstressed and financially overcommitted and in serious trouble.

Other things I am proud of:  

1. Shopping the grocery loss leaders instore or online and not buying lots of extras to cancel out our savings.
2. Looking for secondhand deals on Trademe or in charity shops before buying retail
3. Donating my unwanted stuff to friends or on freecycle so others won't have to buy more stuff.

George W Bush can go hang for all I care; the solution to our problems is not to go shopping.

• Research indicates that George W Bush saying this may be a media legend - but I'll say it again because I like the sound of it - George W Bush can go hang for all I care.

The era of the consumer superculture is over and shown as the pyramid scheme it always had to be.

It's not my responsibility to use hard-earned money to buy things we don't need in a doomed effort to regain what we really never had.  And it's not yours either.  A healthy economy needs to build on real gains, not the cycle of continual product failures.  And we need to reclaim some independence from the money-go-round because we were never the winners.

See this great Alternet article on the topic...

What real change would you like to see to our economic base for a sustainable future?

In defense of Peter Pan

 

Breastfeeding in public has become an active topic around my neck of the online woods for at least 6 months.  I contributed my bit to the Carnival of NIP (very much on one end of the spectrum).  The mainstream media have also been plugging away regularly on the topic, soliciting the feedback of Joe and Jo Q Public on the concept of children being fed anywhere, anytime, in front of them.

Answers fall in the following general categories:

1. Breastfeeding is wonderful and natural and women need to be encouraged to do it, not hidden away.
2. Breastfeeding is OK and I don't mind as long as they are discreet and maybe use a cover
3. Oh my god, have some consideration for everyone else and feed your baby in private - pump it into a bottle and use that rather than whipping your breasts out in front of everybody.

OK, so you already know I'm biased!  But variations on number 3 go all the way to "stay at home until your baby is weaned" and this makes me pause for thought beyond the automatic outrage I have as a BF mother at the attitudes people have.

Children should not be seen or heard
Our society has reached a point where large sections of the adult population feel entitled to not see children at all - breastfeeding, bottlefeeding, running around having fun, whatever!  24/7, 365 days a year, children are taken care of, invisibly, by somebody else (thank goodness).

Adults like me (a younger child of two), from coming of age until I had my own children

1. live alone or with childless peers of a similar age
2. go to study or work where nary a short young person of insufficient years is tolerated, and family responsibilities are kept invisible
3. finish the day with activities scheduled after small children are tucked up at home safely

We have no idea about children except as an unwelcome surprise intrusion into adult space, and no idea about their carers except as objects of mild pity and scorn.  And many of us will defend our preferences vigorously!  These preferences for the adult world only please are heartfelt and genuine - and based on the most artificial separation between children and adults in human history.

How did this happen?
The small, mobile, nuclear family has as much to do with this as the workplace.  With fewer siblings, there is no continuum for children to learn about childcare in the family.  Families are more likely to live in different cities or countries, and only in direst circumstances in the same house!  So how could children absorb the childcare needs of their cousins, or hear stories of growing up in grandma's day?

And then the saddest punchline is that then some adults like me have children.  And we and our children are at the mercy of our own ignorance, our exposure to childhood experts that span a full 360 degrees of advice, and if we are lucky, our parents' faded memories of how they raised us 20, 30, or more years ago.

• Don't get me wrong:  I'm the biggest fan around of not having to produce every child I fall pregnant with as the natural course of things until it kills me before my time.  I just feel sure we don't have to throw it all away along with the 10 children.

There have been some lovely posts recently on what kids can teach us:

• Minimalist lessons from my kids
• Follow the Leaders
• Short and sweet
• Adora Svitak - age 12

Is it really a good idea for a large proportion of us to lose touch with the magic (as well as the more obvious annoyances) of children?  Who never learn to live with, communicate with and understand the needs of a child?  And be a proudly defiant subculture?  Only children are often considered disadvantaged by lessons they never had to learn in their families, and surely there is a parallel here.

Any of us born grownup?
We were all children, for better or worse.  If you refuse to understand what children are, or what you were, as a child, how can you hope to understand the adult that grew from that child?  That goes for the adult in the mirror, across the dinner table, or across the boardroom table.   The things kids do naturally read like a menu from the self-help books.

• I am not saying you must have children of your very own to do this - simply that avoiding children as distasteful biological necessities that happen to other people, or even just casually scheduling your life with no contact, is probably not healthy  

One of my favourite communication books is How to Talk so Kids will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk
by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish.  It's great for talking with your kids but the very same methods work their magic with anyone of any age who appreciates honesty and consideration.

And let's turn this to the dark side and look at...

Things children learn from the adult world

• things are more important than people
• schedules are more important than people 
• invented fantasies on the screen are more interesting than your own imagination, other people, or real life
• you will spend most of your time working at something you probably don't like to earn money to buy things, and the rest of the time you will be too tired to do much else
• you have a limited time to enjoy any activity
• fun and excitement are annoying to other people
• your activities are strictly defined by whoever's in charge
• joyous use of your body "just because" is weird - physical activity must be to some organised purpose - unless you're drunk or otherwise drugged
• men don't care for children
• and plenty more...

And thus these children become the next wave of adults.  Why would Peter Pan want to grow up?

I found the BEFORE pictures!

Just like on the infomercial, I'm really excited about this!  Because some of my biggest work happened in our downstairs area before I started on this blog and now I get to show it off...

If it can be called showing off to display how horrendous things were before.  

• Believe it or not, I took these pictures to show this area to an organiser for student host families.  Do I blame her for refusing us?  Why was she even polite?  In my defense, had anything come of it, I would have made exactly these improvements.  The real hangup was the lack of a wall and door enclosure to the bed area.  If anyone knows an easy way to ventilate a room surrounded by concrete wall and ground, post now!

All right (deep breath).  Here we go.

That's not too horrible, for a downstairs area...after all, we have had guests here on a regular basis.

And in fact, the after shot isn't a huge improvement.  Lots has changed but it's not much less crowded.  Gotta love the new mirror - bargain ex-dresser mirror from our local charity shop and installed by handy dandy DH!  And the actual working desk area.


















So, in our before shot across from that futon bed.....things are getting worse!







Well, you have to tidy extra furniture somewhere...right?  Right?  Of course you do.


And now?  This is so great...we discovered there was a wall back there.  To help convince you this really is the same space, on the far left of both, you can see the edge of our large food storage pantry.  That sucker ain't movin'!

















The dresser behind SuperTorchMan there and the hamper on top are empty!  And the tall brown cupboard is now completely hidden behind the big pantry when you walk into the room - same storage area, less visual clutter.

Now, for Super Uber before picture of the rest of the downstairs area (ooooh, I can't look, it's too scary)!

Did I say the downstairs area?  Sorry, I meant the disaster area.  I'm so glad I have an after shot coming... 

What a difference! It's like day and night!  OK, it is day and night, but that's not important right now.  We have rediscovered the floor...and walls...and bits that restore the roomy quality of the room, while losing that je ne sais quoi, junk pile decor we had going before. 

Of course, I got rid of loads of stuff during this transformation.  but I also did some thinking.  We had cleared the space for the desk (invisibly holding up towers of boxes in disaster shot) to go across from the bed and be a desk. Then I clicked:  perhaps it's not the best feng shui to build my Great Wall of Boxes or even the new Lesser Wall of Boxes in direct line of sight of the door to this room...which is also the first room on view when visitors enter the lobby of our house.  I couldn't hurry them up the stairs before they saw our shame.

Now Wall of Boxes is invisible unless you step into the room - which most visitors won't.  They do see the kiddy art tables in artful disarray most of the time, but at least that's now against the wall instead of halfway across the floor.

The amazing thing is, I didn't really think we had a major problem before I started on it.  Even though it wasn't really out of sight, I had put it out of my mind because we have a sizeable house and this isn't our living space.  But the feeling of accomplishment?  Priceless...

What about you - any hidey holes in your sanctum of peace that you're pretending don't exist?

Nursing in public

Welcome to the July 2010 Carnival of Nursing in Public



This post was written for inclusion in the Carnival of Nursing in Public hosted by Dionna and Paige at NursingFreedom.org. All week, July 5-9, we will be featuring articles and posts about nursing in public ("NIP"). See the bottom of this post for more information.


***

Our first child, our unexpected son, was born only 1.7kgs (3lbs 12oz) while I was unconscious.  Instead of being introduced, he lay in an incubator under Daddy's hands while I was treated with increasingly painful measures to stop my haemorrhage.  While my life was saved with drugs and transfusions, my sister singlehandedly prevented the routine formula feeding of our tiny boy.  She quoted to the special care department the WHO recommendations for supplementation when mother's milk is not available...and did not back down.

• In fact, it is standard hospital policy to formula feed babies who are small (so they can gain chart weight) and babies who are big (because mum couldn't possibly produce enough milk for a big appetite).  A friend of mine with a large baby was told she would need to supplement before she had recovered from her epidural!

During our stay in special care, Alex and I were on a frequent feeding schedule and I pumped after each feed.  I was just able to supply the tube-feeding supplement schedule the hospital prescribed - they were clearly so reluctant to use the donor milk available.  Alex was judged by staff to be feeding very well, when in fact he was too weak yet to do it properly.  We learned by ourselves at home instead.

I nursed Alex on cue, round the clock, while in an as yet unrecognised state of post traumatic stress disorder from his birth.  If I couldn't nurse him in public, I couldn't have left the house.  I nursed him above 2 kgs, and 3 kgs (a normal birth weight), and exclusively until about 7 months.  I nursed him past 1 year, and 2 years, and sometimes painfully through my second pregnancy.  And we all learned a new relationship when Nadia joined us.

• It's my right to feed my babies in public. I've earned it. 
• It's my duty to feed my babies in public, so other children won't grow up as I did, with no memories of seeing a baby at a mother's breast. 
• It's my pleasure to feed my babies in public, to show that a good baby is one who trusts her mother will respond to her needs, not one who has given up asking for a response.
• It is my habit to feed my babies in public without even stopping my conversations, and I hope that my nonchalance will be contagious.

I am still tandem feeding both Alex and Nadia.  I appeared on a local documentary for this rarity, and felt quite badly represented, but couldn't pass up the chance to explain the breastfeeding continuum from newborn onward - and why there is sometimes no good reason to stop.   

But...

I feed 2 year old Nadia only in friendly places, and the only friendly place to feed my 5 year old (18kg) Alex is at home.  Because we still have a long way to go, baby....









Welcome to the Carnival of Nursing in Public




Please join us all week, July 5-9, as we celebrate and support breastfeeding mothers. And visit NursingFreedom.org any time to connect with other breastfeeding supporters, learn more about your legal right to nurse in public, and read (and contribute!) articles about breastfeeding and N.I.P.


Do you support breastfeeding in public? Grab this badge for your blog or website to show your support and encourage others to educate themselves about the benefits of breastfeeding and the rights of breastfeeding mothers and children.

<center><a href="http://www.nursingfreedom.org/p/carnival-of-nursing-in-public.html" title="Carnival of Nursing in Public"><img src="http://www.babydustdiaries.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/inip1.png" alt="Art by Erika Hastings at http://mudspice.wordpress.com/" border="0"></a></center>

This post is just one of many being featured as part of the Carnival of Nursing in Public. Please visit our other writers each day of the Carnival. Click on the links below to see each day’s posts - new articles will be posted on the following days:

July 5 - Making Breastfeeding the Norm: Creating a Culture of Breastfeeding in a Hyper-Sexualized World

July 6 – Supporting Breastfeeding Mothers: the New, the Experienced, and the Mothers of More Than One Nursing Child

July 7 – Creating a Supportive Network: Your Stories and Celebrations of N.I.P.

July 8 – Breastfeeding: International and Religious Perspectives

July 9 – Your Legal Right to Nurse in Public, and How to Respond to Anyone Who Questions It

Yo-yo day - say chocolate!

• Help mothers beat the Booby Traps and vote for BestForBabes!

OK, this is one of our toughest and most interesting yo-yos.  And a very valuable (and expensive lesson for me).

This is our lovely IXY 910IS digital camera - this picture was taken with our slightly newer but just as lovely IXY 910IS digital camera.  Confused?  Just wait.

The camera in the picture (let's call it #2, which is ironic if you happen to be into toilet humour) was our replacement camera that we bought after our perfectly good previous Canon digital camera (#1) went AWOL during our house move in 2007.  We kept assuming it would show up somewhere after the chaos of the move, but it never did (and neither did the pictures on it!)  So we got to upgrade as a reward for our carelessness.

We moved in August.  Fast forward a few months - Alex was 2 and a half and just loves cameras (and remotes and DVD players and anything at all that has buttons than make something light up or go whirr).  In a moment of madness, I let him have the precious new replacement camera (#2), thinking "he's got the strap round his wrist, he's not much more than 1/2 metre tall and he's on carpet so what harm could he possibly do?"

Well, now we know one significant answer to that question.  (Let's face it, there are probably more.)  What he can do is grasp the extended lens in his surprisingly strong grip and twist it hard enough to break the automatic mechanism.  Look closely at the photo and you may note that the lens is out... sort of....twisted 90 degrees from its originally designed stopping point.

Shocked and appalled but being the the frugal and savvy consumer that I am (if not so savvy childminder :-) we investigated repairs.  'Twas something like the week before Christmas and I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear that estimated repairs (for the known damage) would at least be a large proportion of the cost of a new camera, plus several weeks' waiting time.  We just couldn't be without the camera for Christmas with a deal like that.  Thus, we winced again, and camera #3 has been doing fine duty ever since.

And yet we still have the other camera which is now literally just #2, and I think the mistake that we are making financially is called valuing sunk costs.  Is there any chance that someone else would take the risk and hassle of getting it fixed to save a small amount on the purchase of a new camera?  We've waited so long that now it's not even attractive as a latest model.  Yet it is still on our shelf  - even if it's DH's office junk shelf.

I am open to imaginative suggestions for this yo-yo that beat just throwing it in the rubbish.  Feel free also to share stories that make me feel not so alone in my poor judgements about children's capabilities :-)

How not to go shopping

Whoa!  This really speaks to me:  Why Consumerism is unsatisfying...
No, really, click on this, read the quickie article, and come back.  Now this one from our lovely Leo - it's really short too.

OK, let's move on...

We've all experienced it.  And in general, buying less stuff is good.  I admit to having a natural advantage because I don't like shopping that much.  I find comparison shopping stressful and I can't remember ever going on to do more comparison after I've painfully decided what to buy.  I hate busy shops with lots of people and ads everywhere.  And I don't really like spending money. 

So how does the natural (that's me) shop?

Don't go shopping
This is my first line of defense.  This may sound too obvious, but when your eyes gets hit with the goodies, your brain gets the gimmes! Marketing creatures are professionals and they are paid to know how you think.  What's your win/lose average for going shopping and coming out empty handed (or even with only what you went in for)?   Yeah, me too.  Wow, I didn't even know I needed that until I saw it....

This applies to

• Real shops
• Online shops
• Mail catalogues

Of course, we all must shop.  But with a strategy, some shopping trips can remain in the alternate universe where they belong while in this universe, I have more money and an uncluttered home.

1. Plan food shopping - schedules and lists are a must to avoid hitting the supermarket many times a week
2. Don't shop as casual entertainment or mood enhancement - the shop owner is getting better entertainment for their dollar than I am and remember that article at the top of the page?  Again, with planning you could spend that money on something really satisfying.  Shopping can be lots of fun sometimes, I do know that, so keep reading.

OK, so when you must go shopping

• Shop first at basic stores - this goes for food and anything else.  The fancier the store, the higher the prices and the better the "come-hither and buy me" tricks.
• Shop at secondhand and charity stores - when I feel the urge for retail therapy, I avoid retail stores.  Downmarket shops don't have flashy ads and plastic packaging, a lot of their goods are better quality than new in retail stores, a real range of fashions and sizes are available, and of course, if I feel like some seriously uncontrolled shopping, better at the charity shop than the mall.
• Group shopping tasks together - if I know I have to visit 5 shops before lunch to buy what I need, I am more focused and less likely to browse, even if I had the energy!  If you do a casual shopping trip each day of the week, you will magically discover more things you need to buy as you stroll down the aisles.

What's your shopping personality?  Does it interfere with any of your other important goals?

Breast is best - please turn on sense of humour!

This isn't a satire of non-breastfeeding mums!  As I was writing this, I felt mostly the total disconnect of communication that we have between these two "sides" in the mommy wars.

BF mum: “Breast is best.  After all, as mammals we…”
FF mum: “I am NOT a bad mother!”
BF mum: “What?  No, no, but studies show that…”
FF mum: “I had nipple problems.”
BF mum: “Ah, you see, the correct latch can be…”
FF mum: “My nipples fell off. They had to be surgically replaced.”
BF mum: “OH!  Umm, well, breast surgery can cause complications, but generally…”
FF mum: “My baby lost lots of weight.  When he was down to ½ kg, my doctor made me use formula.”
BF mum: “Oh dear.  You see, weight loss in the newborn is usually…”
FF mum: “I had to go back to work within 3 hours of delivery.  The only place I could express was in the construction workers’ lunchroom!”
BF mum: “Wow.  Did you know that employers are required to...”
FF mum: “If I don’t get 10 hours sleep a night, I attack people at random.  I just got out of prison.”
BF mum: “I see. Sleep deprivation is always…”
FF mum: “My religion forbids seeing my own breasts or I will go to hell and my soul will be distributed between legions of demons.”
BF mum: “I see.  There are often sensitive cultural aspects…”
FF mum: “My baby was born with three heads and I couldn’t feed and I wish people would stop looking at us like she’s a freak!”
BF mum: “Mothering multiples can be tricky – there are sometimes different positions…”
FF mum: “I’m an orphan solo mum living on a desert island…”
BF mum: “Isolation from the community is a very difficult…”
FF mum: “My baby was kidnapped by aliens and it was too late by the time we got him back!”
BF mum: “OK, but sometimes after periods of separation, bonding can be assisted by relactation…
FF mum: “My family owns a formula company and if I’d breastfed, my husband would have divorced me.”
BF mum: “Often your family isn’t where your best support…”
FF mum: “So you see, I had to use formula.  The most important thing is that the baby is fed!”
FF mum: “Hey sista, chill out, I had formula and so did my babies and we’re all Olympic champions!”
BF mum: “But, but, breastmilk has amazing properties formula can never match, and for most women with the proper support…
FF mums: “Stop making us feel guilty, you militant breastfeeder!”