Interesting book on why famous scientists became scientists here. Me, I became a 'scientist' by accident. I signed up for a Horticultural Science degree thinking it would be mostly horticulture. WRONG. It was mostly science. And I didn't have the guts to change degree, and didn't want to listen to my dad going on about how I don't finish anything, so I stayed and got a science degree.
I may be this close to having a PhD in science, but I still don't think of myself as a scientist.
Hubby is having one, and suggested I blog about it. Two things occur
1) Its not my issue to blog about
2) I have nothing to say about it.
But 2) is possibly not true. The original plan was to get my tubes tied if I had another ceaser. I had the ceaser but chickened out of having the tubes tied, as it seemed very VERY permanent. I know three children who were born after a vasectomy reveral. Its not quite as permanent. But it is not my body that is going to get adjusted, its his. So the decision to have a vasectomy is his, but the decision not to have any more children is ours. I am amazed at how many people he has told - I would have thought it was a pretty private thing, but he seems to have told the entire army! They are full of advice, like wait till h is one year old, or wait till you are forty, or good one mate, or buy lots of frozen peas.
Dunno about that pea thing - I don't think I would want to eat them after they had thawed and frozen, thawed and frozen.
Have you seen the ads for VXXgra, where you get the fifth box free? Daddy did, and is laughing about it.
Question: is homologous the same as homeologous? Have you noticed the wildly varying standard of editing in scientific literature? The paper I am trying to decipher has several sentences that have no subject!, or are written in seCd language style english. It's a top journal too...
Its a beautiful sunny warm day. I solved the mystery of the missing error bars in the weekend, and I have reached the minimum goal for today. The little sprog is over 7.5kg now, and is still remarkably average on the Plunket graphs. I acquired two pepper trees in the weekend, and when we moved some plants together we created a garden, and a lawn that will be very easy to mow. All is good. Nothing to complain about...
Nothing much to blog about
Last night I was accused of hanging up on my husband due to the presence of a snail in the lemon tree. This morning I nearly hung up on the sis-in-law, due to the presence of FOUR snails in the lemon tree. WTF? I thought the damn things ate little seedlings and stuff on the ground. I'm gonna kill 'em all with beer, I am. That lemon tree is precious, MY precious. And it is not big enough to hold a snail Cference in...
When you have a baby and decide to breast feed that baby, you are going to enter the world of leaking boobs. Some women will leak anywhere, anytime. And it ain't just a discrete ooze either, some of us let down like we are feeding the starving millions of Africa, and we can squirt across the room, fill cups and drench shirts.
So you need a boob pad or two, to soak up the waste.
You go down to your local supermarket, and there are three brands. The cheap ones in the purple pack - they wouldn't absorb the let down of a starving gnat. They sell them in packs of 40 because that how many you need to survive a week. Or less.
The middle of the range in the blue pack, they are okay. They are good once you are over the initial breast enthsiasm, and the system is better tuned to your baby. The middle of the range are the middle of the road. Okay, but not amazing.
And the most expensive ones in the red pack - they are luxury level milk absorbers. They have the sticker on the back to keep them where you put them, instead of fishing around in your bra in search of... They have gel crystal stuff in them, and they WILL keep your shirt dry. They are shaped boob shaped, and are comfortable and discreet. No-one will know your boobs are leaking. Of course, they cost more, but you don't use as many. But they are still the most expensive option.
This is my first week without needing boob pads, at nearly 5 months after the birth. Its actually a measurable expense (though much less than formula), and essential if you don't want that soggy feeling all day.
This information is brought to you by a user, and was current in 2004. No trade names were used in this article!, and no responsibility is held for the accuracy of this information, its only MY truth, not THE truth. May your shirts be dry.
Last week while walking out with the sis-in-law, I saw there was a house for sale. So I rang the agent, and went round to have a look. It looked pretty good to me, and so I rang a mortgage broker, who reckoned he could get us money and we could make an offer. At this point I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming. I mean, hell, we don't have a huge pile of savings, and are on one income.
So I rang Mummy. Who booked a plane ticket.
This was all getting pretty serious. Perhaps we were about to become home owners. We didn't think we could do that. We had no idea we had enough money. We thought us and the market were hugely and irredeemably seperated by a gulf of thousands.
So Mummy arrives, and we went to the house, which she reckoned was too small, and so we went round zillions of open homes. Some of which we could afford. According to the broker, who spent some time with us working out our finances. And we found an old house with one careful lady owner, fifty years old, with a kick-ass garage according to the husband, but in a pretty bad location with busy roads... But money looked really tight, like the very bare bones of our collective asses till I went back to work, and with the location I just didn't know if this was a good idea. We would have paid interest only for the first six months, so actually in fact and without any pretending, renting the house off the bank. No capital gain at all.
And as you can tell by the tone, we didn't get approval for a mortgage, and I feel wonderfully relieved. We had celebratory gins last night because we got turned down!, and we are so looking forward to going shopping again in six months, when I am working again and we can buy a house where we actually want to live. Its going to be so cool. And our asses won't have to be bare.
Go on a childcare expedition which involves
1) Walking to the train to catch the train and having to run to catch the train while keeping track of two pre-schoolers.
2) Travel on train with baby and another person whose name you cannot remember. Make the train crowded. Feed baby in public.
3) Miss first bus to Te Papa because it was too crowded to fit on 14 pre-schoolers and 5 adults and 5 pushchairs. Sit in cold windy bus shelters feeding chocolate yoghurt stuff to someone else's kid while your ass (and kidneys) freeze to death.
4) Get evil eye from bus driver all the way from train station to Te Papa.
5) Herd kids round Te Papa. The exhibits were pretty good for pre-schoolers! They liked the shakey house (we were there to see stuff on earthquakes, nature and volcanoes. So Te Papa was perfect for that.)
6) Wait for AGES in the cold windy plaza in front of Te Papa to catch another bus with more evil eyes back to train station.
7) Travel back on train with Own Child asking "Are we there yet?" at each station.
8) Walk back to car and spend a good 10 mins on the side of a busy road trying to work out how all this stuff goes in the car...
9) Have elder son home with you in the afternoon for an extra 1.5 hours.
Baby h was perfect, didn't cry once during the whole trip. And I mean he didn't say anything!!! 'Very interesting' was his approach, and he didn't sleep much cos he didn't want to miss anything.
Stuffed if I know how you could do that kind of thing every day and not become insane/addicted to illegal substances. Go the Early Childhood Teachers, they are heroes.
Saw the specialist today who gave a us a script for the Good Stuff. Today I have a boy who is almost scratch free, yesterday I could have taken the before photo, and everyone would have said "Oh the poor wee thing!". New skin for baby is all good. And we are not going to need much of this stuff if it is this good, which is excellent as well.
(Note to self: don't think too hard about what might be in the ointment!, Ccentrate on the happy non-scratching kid)
Making steaming fast progress on the thesis front. Good stuff.
The boys went into town yesterday to see the Model Train Expo, or something like that. They had a great time, saw lots of little trains going round and round, and decided they wanted to buy one! Old boring pants here said no. Its like my job, okay? Someone gotta do it.
And in the afternoon we drove 15 mins up the road to Kaitoke park, and went walking in old growth forest, crossed three bridges over large rivers, got rained on, found a geocache and had a Good Time. In the Rain, no less. I love the fact we can do this stuff without having to drive for hours. Its right here, in the 'city' and made very accessible. They have camping there - we think we might do it. In the summer.
Taking small boy to the specialist tomorrow, and will ask about the advisability of having the cats and dog in the house. If finding them new homes will improve h's quality of life, we will have to do it. I'll miss the vermin heaps, but the kid is far more important to me.
Here is a review of a biscuit .
Have a nice weekend
The supervisor has done a half day course in the graphics program I use, and feels he can now edit the graphs - heh! Should be interesting
Senior sprog has two holes in his teeth, and I feel a failure as a parent. Apparently they are not diet related, but are because he brushes his own teeth, and isn't skilled enough. We need to help especially with the back ones. Let this be a lesson to all parents out there, the four year olds still need you to brush their teeth for them!
I am having my very own pity party today. I do all the housework, I do the shopping, I do the cooking. I take the kid to childcare, do all the baby care and I do Cstant battle with Mt Washmore (also known as the laundry/washing). I walk and wash the dog, brush the fur critters three, and I do the lawns and the gardens.
And when h is asleep, I do the thesis. No wonder I sleep well, and no wonder the thesis is going slowly.
Actually, rather than a Pity Party, I should be celebrating the fact I get so much done. I must be wonder woman. Or maybe I'm nuts, and I should delegate some of this to wonder man. Hmm...
h Ctinues to scratch until he bleeds, I took his gloves in the doctor's office this morning, and within about 2 mins he had his head bleeding. The doctor was a little startled I think, and we are off to see a specialist. Its gonna cost money, but we might find out how to manage it. The wee sprat needs to have access to his fingers so he can learn how to use them, but is spending 24/7 in gloves at the moment.
Sprayed the roses this morning and it is raining now. Metservice was WRONG, very WRONG about the weather today, bother.
Back to thesis.
Once I spontaneously decided to go to England. Within a couple of hours I had tickets, had registered at a Cference and Ctacted the people I was planning to stay with. Supervisor left gasping - he said it was a side of me he hadn't seen before.
On Friday we spontaneously decided to go to the farm. Babies slow you down some, but only forty-five minutes elapsed between deciding and leaving. And I didn't forget anything critical. But I gotta buy a pill thingy so I can take just the pills I need, and stop leaving the whole damn Ctainer at other people's places.
The dinner went pretty well Csidering one of the guests had eaten and left before two others even turned up. They were late because the trains stopped running for a bit, so all trains were LATE. Once they arrived, and we had all had a wine, everything was okay... The food went fine, even though all the timings had been screwed by the public transport system, and much fun and silly stories were told by all.
This morning we killed about 10-15 sandflies in our bedroom. Spring is a lovely looking thing, but dangnabbit, I wish the bug life would stay outdoors and eat someone else.