Despite having two bouts of the dry heaves this morning in front of my very distressed child, I actually am feeling somewhat better some of the time. What helps:
– Herbal tea (peppermint and chamomile are my favorites)
– Ginger ale (the “diet chek”, a questionable-looking local generic, is actually quite good)
– Eggs
– Toast
– Yellow rice with peas and corn
– Salad
– Crackers (with and without peanut butter)
– Lying down
All this lying down makes me wonder what I’d be doing if a storm hadn’t ripped up our lives. I’d be just a few weeks from comps… just the thought makes my stomache do flips. The lack of work, absense of daycare, and total nothingness of being here is making me feel like a housewife… honestly, I really do believe it’s a terribly difficult job because I would loose my mind. I’m crafty and all that, but I don’t think I could handle it if my biggest daily acheivement was keeping the kids alive, making dinner, and getting extra points for some scrapbooking or something. Not to be crass, but shouldn’t we educated ladies be figuring out ways to have serious professional contributions in the world — but in line with our part-time, ever changing lives? If we don’t fight to make it exist, it’s not going to magically appear and lay itself at our feet. From that perspective, we’re not being kept down, we’re keeping ourselves down. Are we really that happy being kept women?
Fluorescences | 21-Sep-05 at 10:30 am | Permalink
Not that you need to be told this … but take it from a guy who knows a thing or two about anxiety … I wonder how much of this is pregnancy and how much of it is your body reacting subtly to the full panaroma stress that’s been in your life lately. You’ve obvious had a lot on your plate.
Holly | 21-Sep-05 at 12:18 pm | Permalink
Yeah, I have no doubt that stress is an active agent in the whole nausea department. Still, I wasn’t this bad with Will and was definitely under serious stress — it was the last two months of my dual MPH/MSW program at Michigan so I was finishing two masters degrees plus teaching three classes a week. That felt a lot more stressful. But at least that stress I could handle. This unknowing, homeless, uncertainty stress basically sucks. I feel sort of kicked to the curb right now and haven’t figured out the right combination to bump myself out of it. Maybe once we get the house situation squared away we can look to a temporary move overseas??? One can hope!
Randy | 21-Sep-05 at 12:34 pm | Permalink
I can’t speak for any women, but knowing that at the end of the day my job doesn’t really make any great professional contributions to the world, I am ready to be a kept man and raise some children where at least my efforts would make a difference in one person’s life.
Holly | 21-Sep-05 at 12:58 pm | Permalink
That’s just it. I don’t think that it should be one or the other. Part of a healthy, balanced life is having both fulfillment personally and professionally. I do not believe that they are diametrically opposed, although our society is set up to make them that way. My point is that we should be fighting the structure of our working and personal lives so that we can balance and find fulfillment in both. Families do best when they are filled with adults: no one person can do it alone, nor should we expect them to. I believe that we need to challenge our expectations around work and family and push our society to change in a manner that is respectful of both.