An announcement

In older times, it was all engraved stationery and announcements in the newspaper, however those days are gone, so forgive the use of technology, however ...

Kaitlyn O'Dowd and Ashley Grieg wish to announce their engagement!

Yes, it is true - Yvette is to be a mother-in-law! But first, she gets to be mother-of-the-bride! EEK!! They always seemed so much ... more mature?

Everyone is thrilled - except Frodo the cat, who declined his consent (if anyone is listening?) and would like his mum to come back home and bring his bed!

No dates set, however the ring is GORGEOUS!!

The Nestle Factor

I am reading with interest discussion across the blogosphere about #nestlefamily.

And feeling very uncomfortable.

You see, I have been a Nestle boycotter for many years. I truly believe their marketing of artificial baby milk in some parts of the world leads to infant deaths. My kids have grown up (or perhaps, groan up!) being ear-bashed about Nestle. I am not a coffee drinker, but have inflicted those who are with non-Nescafe products. I will not buy any product with the Nestle brand and I do my best to avoid supporting companies owned by them. After many years of loyalty to The Body Shop and a moisturiser I was not sensitive too, I wave goodbye sadly when they were sold to Loreal, who are owned by Nestle. Or more correctly, when Anita Roddick sold out to the very type of company she had set up against :(. Hoping she is not RIP over that one.

I do consider the Three Es when I shop - Economy, Environment and Ethics and I believe I do it well. But there is no doubt I haven't maintained the rage on Nestle as well as I should. As my children got older and began making their own choices, products found their way into my home independently. My daughter likes their coffee. My son likes their sweets. They own the brand Maggi, whose 2 minute noodles are one of the few things my son will eat! I haven't kept pace with who they have bought out in recent years and they probably profit by some of my purchases.

Most shamefully of all, my son and I had an all expenses paid trip to Sydney when he won a Wonka bar contest several years ago - I agonised about going and allowing him to go, but I went for the easy option in the end.

This new controversy has me thinking again and renewing my vows. My children are all adults now and can make their own decisions. One has left home, another lives independently at home and the youngest is about to leave high school. If they wish to have products tied to Nestle, so be it, however I will no longer purchase them on their behalf. I will review once again the list of companies and brands to avoid and will do so. I will continue to make my workplace a Nestle-free zone, but will also make proper effort to keep them from my home.

We cannot be complacent. While the boycott may not prevent their marketing tactics, at least I am not endorsing them with my shopping dollars.

Baby Milk Action

Nestle Boycott

nestle-free zone and Nestlé-Free Week 26 October - 1 November:

What a difference a year makes!

Here we are, the end of September and I feel like all my ducks are in a row. At home and at work there is peace and order.

Flashback to this week 2008 - not so much!

Hard as it is to believe, it is a year since we opened our ABA Victorian Branch Office in Dandenong - to be known as The Breastfeeding Centre. This time last year, I was in the midst of packing the office from its temporary location in my lounge room, whilst coordinating removalists, utitilies, connections etc and wondering if our grand plan would actually work.

So far, so good!

The empty space I received the keys for last year is now a cosy community space and also an efficient administrative base. Throught the wonder of www.freecycle.org, generous donations and karma, my wish list is pretty well ticked off and the BF Centre is the hub for breastfeeding

that we envisaged.

A new season!

I am so glad another Winter is over. I really don't "do" Winter - I much prefer Autumn and Spring - and Summer when it isn't being extreme!

So the season of new life is upon us, what better time to bring my blog up to speed and make the usual resolution to post more regularly?

There have been many changes here in our home (which always reminds me of the top of the Faraway Tree - you never know where you will be when you poke your head through the cloud!) A few weeks ago, Kaitlyn moved out of home - the first of our chicks to officially leave the nest. (Melissa backpacking for two years doesn't count - leaving the nest involves taking your stuff elsewhere to live!). So we are now down to a household of only four, after often being one of six, with Ashley around most of the time. They have set up house together, just them, three adult friends and a four year old girl :) - they may not be feeling the same level of change as we are!

Of course, Kaitlyn barely took the last item from her room (leaving only a sad, unwanted poster of Eminem) when I had the paintbrush in hand and began decorating my new scrapbooking room! What else do mothers do to compensate for losing a fledged child? I followed the fine example my MIL set all those years ago, when Rod moved in with me - she actually tore down a wall and made his room into a second living area!!!

I am sharing my creative space with Melissa. It is a Scrap and Sew room. So far this is working really well, as we have different peak times for creativeness, which tend not to overlap too much. As I vacate for bed at 8.30pm, she is just getting around to thinking about starting :) So we can each get a good couple of hours work in without stepping on any toes (virtual or actual!)

And the new space has been just the prod I needed to get my scrapbooking mojo back. After most of twelve months only scrapping what I "needed to do", I am now back on track. I have finished off some projects, caught up to date with others and begun new ones. I am not sure what led to the down time - perhaps I just needed it - but am now enjoying creating once more.

Productivity?

My first thought when I hear that word is some sort of factory conveyor belt!

However, in my quest this year to LIVE (my word for the year), I have learned this word now refers to making the very best use of my time and Getting Things Done. Sounds like just the thing to reduce stress about stuff that is behind and increase time to do the stuff you want, rather than be a slave to stuff you have to do.

My other goal along these lines is to become as paperless as possible. Paper equals clutter and clutter equals stress and I don't need that!

So - here I am, mid way through the year. What is working?

Time management:

Remember The Milk RTM - working really well. I have it installed just about everywhere, which makes it really hard to ignore! I have gadgets on my Google desktop and iGoogle page, it is synced with Outlook and Google Calendar and I have the app on my Blackberry. I mainly use it for personal tasks that are done away from the computer, like getting prescriptions filled before I run out, remembering to get cash out to pay my wonderful cleaning angel and stuff to buy at various retailers.

I have moved away from using it to manage my work/volunteer To Do list, as I have now discovered Toodledo, I find Toodledo's options allow me to categorise projects/tasks in a more useable way, it also has an iGoogle gadget :) but not a Google Desktop gadget :( and an app for the Blackberry.

Information management: I am now a firm fan of Evernote, Delicious and Google Reader, who between them keep my information up to date and accessible.

Evernote replaces filing and notebooks, with searchable files and notes being synced automatically between my desktop and online notebooks AND the ability to read handwritten notes which I can scan or photograph and send to the pool. New rule - scan, save, shred.

Delicious - which I thought was "just" an online bookmarking service, has been much more, as it offers the ability to subscribe to tags of interest and brings up sites that other people bookmark under those tags!

And Google Reader allows me to subscribe to as many blogs as I wish, with a gadget on my iGoogle and a couple of great add-ons: a subscribe button on my toolbar and a next button, which lets me power through my reading by taking me straight to the unread blog post!

Access all areas:

I made the move fom Internet Explorer to Google Chrome several months ago. I mostly love it, resent it lacks some of my preferred tools (auto-fill, which is in the Google toolbar for other broswers, but not their own? And compatibilty with my beloved Robo Form password manager :( ) However, I love the functionaility of Chrome and am willing to wait til these tools come to it, rather than battle with IE. I tried Firefox, but didn't really like it that much.

iGoogle however, changed my life!! Alright, just my online life! Now my home page, it has gadgets that bring all the stuff I use to one place! My current set up includes Facebook, Twitter, Toodled, RTM, Gmail, Google Calendar, bookmarks, Google Reader, News Alerts, ABC news headlines, weather radar, Evernote and Delicious! All on the one page. I have a complete overview and can easily move to the full sites of any of these or just use the scaled down access right there. LOVE IT!!!

Google Desktop is a new addition to my tools but I couldn't be without it already. Permanently stuck on the side of my screen, all my normal stuff (browser, programs etc) open up in the slightly smaller than usual space, so the desktop is always in sight. As are the gadgets I choose for it to display - currently my RTM list, Twitter (how I found out MJ died etc), a battery monitor, analogue clock, current weather and a small note pad I can dump my brain into as needed!

Over at the central control centre AKA Microsoft Outlook, my world has changes as I embraced Inbox Zero as normal expectation instead of mission impossible.

Orla made the difference, an add-on that introduced for essential buttons to my life: Ditch, Deal, Delegate, Decide. Instead of emails building up in the inbox, I handle each one in turn with one of these buttons. Ditch is the most used button: 90% of what I read I don't need to keep just in case, so I don't! Deal means I either reply/forward immediately or it is moved to my To Do, Follow Up, Waiting On or Send to Evernote folders! Delegate I don't use so much - probably because I have no staff LOL! Decide means I need to add it to the calendar, create a task in Toodled or file it in the corresponding folder for future access. Three times a day, I work my email back to zero - in the morning (two shifts @home over breakfast and @work after I arrive), before I leave work and before I go to bed.

And because all work etc, I love my Xobni add-on, because while I process these emails, the senders profile pops up to the side - including their Facebook profile if we are friends! So a little bit of water cooler action without leaving what I am doing! Bliss!

So, that's some of the tools that will be migrated to my new laptop nect week :) Stay tuned for more.

A human barometer

At risk of sounding like Goldilocks, when it comes to temperature, I really need it to be just right.

In the middle of Summer, endless extreme heat cranks up the MS fatigue, leaving me with little energy for anything more than the bare basics. I revel in Autumn and its flip-side Spring, both being my most productive times of year. But here I am once more, creaking towards the shortest day of the year, with Winter aggravating my fibromyalgia.

I ache all over - every joint and muscle. Even my fingernails hurt! It takes me most of the day to warm up enough to make moving more comfortable - and then the sun slips over the bloody yard arm and it all winds back down again, so by bed time I am once again stiff and sore.

I remind myself of Pa in the old Ma and Pa Kettle movies - his rheumatism kept him grumpy and unable to do any work (offering him the perfect excuse to leave it all to Ma!) and I cringe to think that is how I might come across at this time, but it really is quite debiltating. Nothing much seems to help and I just have to suck it in and wait for warmer weather - studies may not be conclusive about cold weather increasing the condition, but they obviously haven't studied MY body! I am definitely a human barometer!

(and if you think some of the Fibro symptoms sound a lot like my MS sysmptoms, there is a lot of similarity, however tests have shown I am affected by BOTH conditions - a lottery prize I would prefer not to have won!)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheumatism

The term "rheumatism" is still used in colloquial speech and historical contexts, but is no longer frequently used in medical or technical literature; there is no longer any recognized disorder simply called "rheumatism." Some countries use the word Rheumatism to describe fibromyalgia syndrome. The traditional term covers such a range of different problems that to ascribe symptoms to "rheumatism" is not to say very much. Nevertheless, sources dealing with rheumatism tend to focus on arthritis. However, "non-articular rheumatism", also known as "regional pain syndrome" or "soft tissue rheumatism" can cause significant discomfort and difficulty.^[2] Furthermore, arthritis and rheumatism between them cover at least 200 different conditions.

There has long been said to be a link between "rheumatic" pain and the weather. There appears to be no firm evidence in favour or against; a 1995 questionnaire given to 557 people by A. Naser and others at the Brigham and Women's Hospital's Pain Management Center concludes that "changes in barometric pressure are the main link between weather and pain. Low pressure is generally associated with cold, wet weather and an increase in pain. Clear, dry conditions signal high pressure and a decrease in pain".^[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibromyalgia

The defining symptoms of fibromyalgia are chronic, widespread pain and painful response to touch (allodynia). Other symptoms can include moderate to severe fatigue, needle-like tingling of the skin, muscle aches, prolonged muscle spasms, weakness in the limbs, nerve pain, functional bowel disturbances,^[14] and chronic sleep disturbances.^[15] Sleep disturbances may be related to a phenomenon called alpha-delta sleep, a condition in which deep sleep (associated with delta waves) is frequently interrupted by bursts of alpha waves, which normally occur during wakefulness. Slow-wave sleep is often dramatically reduced.^{[citation needed]}

Many patients experience cognitive dysfunction^[16] (known as "brain fog" or "fibrofog"), which may be characterized by impaired concentration,^[17] problems with short^[17][18] and long-term memory, short-term memory consolidation,^[18] impaired speed of performance,^[17][18] inability to multi-task, cognitive overload,^[17][18] diminished attention span, anxiety, and depressivesymptoms.^[18] "Brain fog" may be directly related to the sleep disturbances experienced by sufferers of fibromyalgia.^{[citation needed]}

Mothers Meeting

Last Thursday, a group of mums and their babies met at our centre. They chatted, drank tea and coffee, played, breastfed and generally had a good time all round.

This is not terribly remarkable in the day to day experience of life in the Australian Breastfeeding Association and is generally the norm most days here at the Breastfeeding Centre in Dandenong.

So why was this gathering notable? 

These mothers were all Afghani migrants, with little English and no previous experience of the culture taken for granted by most Australian-born mums. As Muslims, their head scarves single them out in the community as *different* and cultural traditions tend to limit integration into our western society.

Now, I have heard for years, from various doom-sayers, that "these women" are not interested in groups like ABA, that they "won't go" to our coffee mornings and discussion meetings and anyway, they "don't have trouble breastfeeding". All possibly true, but not spouted by those who had tried and failed, but by those never brave enough to try and possibly fail.

My experience was, apart from my complete inability to speak any of their language and their limited abilities to speak some of mine, that this meeting was just the same as those I have attended during the past 25 years in ABA. There were a couple of mums worried about breastfeeding - one low supply that wasn't and one sore nipples that were! - and the others were just taking it in their stride. All were keen to participate in our limited discussion and indicated they would like to return another day.

It is time everyone threw out preconcieved notions of what migrant - and other - groups of mothers will or will not do. My theroy is, invite them and see what happens!