Am I jealous?

My friends and I were discussing an encounter we’d had with a “friend of a friend” at a recent social occasion. This woman hasn’t worked since she had children and now they are off her hands effectively. She effusively told us how they (she and hubby) had three houses now (two holiday  homes) and she was about to head off to play chalet girl to the sons down south.

And so we speculate … what does she do all day? And -  are we jealous?

We agree she’s looking pretty good. So it has to be about gym, beauty treatments and hanging out with the ladies who lunch. Apparently “someone” does the garden.

Two of us claim that we couldn’t stand such a vacuous life and if we were in her situation we would have to be studying, doing something creative and/or working for a charity – and really working not just organising a fundraiser ball.

The other wasn’t so sure – the idea of really having nothing to do except except look after yourself (well there is a husband who supports this lifestyle but he’s too busy earning money to be home too much) sounds pretty attractive when you’re desperately holding down a full-time job, managing children and a house etc etc.

I guess it’s a concept that comes with maturity that money breeds the very freedom that allows you to do what you want.

It’s not like for most of us that working a 40-hour-week is a dream come true (unless you are lucky enough to have the dream job).

So it’s interesting to see how disparaging the 21-year-old is of people stuck on the 9 to 5 treadmill (like his parents) and the materialistic world. On the other hand, as far as I can see he still has the wants and needs that come from having an income – and a reasonable one at that.

Then there’s the 19-year-old who is excited by the world of offices and jobs. Well this is also strange! But perhaps he is more likely to enjoy the process of making the money to get what he wants (and he does want lots). So the “journey” will be more positive, which is a good thing.

And that’s what it’s about for most of us – making work, work for us. One works to be free to do what you really want. Hence, I am trying hard to save up to visit the 21-year-old in Japan, not fritter money away and not grizzle about the treadmill that I’d like to get off.

Yes – I guess I am jealous – just a bit!

Desperately seekin inspiration – again

It’s another long gap between posts. As I start on the ritual checking of my oldest son’s adventures on Jivin’ Jimmy in Japan it occurs to me again that surely one should be able to find inspiration in one’s daily life and not just take it for granted in its mundanity. Or if it’s mundane, do something about it!

There’s J in a new country where every day is a new adventure – because it’s different, the challenge of making the shower work is an amusing story in itself. I’m thinking praps I should really commit (again) to the blog thing, partly to entertain the Jimmy.

So … what can I say. The O-one has taken to recording on his podcast his uni readings – this means reading it all out loud for hours. It may well be a good idea, but he certainly does like the sound of his own voice! He came home close to 5am Saturday (propping up the bar of the old Transparent chum) but to be fair, he did manage to go out with the grandparents and assist them in buying a new TV and DVD. That’s a task that takes massive patience!

The tall-T remains permanently attached to his laptop and buried in his room. I do find it kinda strange coming home and everyone is locked off in their little electronic spaces. A call from Telstra has meant that we have finally officially upp-ed our useage so we’re not paying thru the nose for extra downloads – god know why we hadn’t sorted that before!

And the old-one is attached to the sport on the TV or cacklin over QI. No film festival for us!

Times really r tough

oh the embarrassment as I look back at one of my occasional posts (20 July 2008) when I talked about the “tra la” around the economic crisis.

So yes, I admit it. It is a BIG deal! And I kinda regret my leap into the world of contracting as a start to changing my life.

But meantime, the middle child (yes the Commerce student and right winging type) continues to pronounce that jobs are “so easy to get”. He who has veered from discovering that selling KiwiSaver wasn’t so easy, is now full of the joys of after school care. Yes – that’s about beating 9 year olds at chess and discovering that playing soccer with primary school kids is exhausting.

How weird is that! He also has scored an internship in his second year of uni so is apparently on track for not only summer jobs, but a job at the end of the degree. So nauseating to the bros.

So an update on the BA. He’s off to Japan on the Jet programme to teach English – yay! From a mom’s perspective this means a trip o/s, a salary unlike the hand to mouth existence here and a time to grow up a bit and discover what to study next . Excellent!

What a relief. Still think he is destined to be a teacher (for a bit) [ie postgrad dip]. It’s not like it’s a lifelong commitment but a route to other things as his great grandmother, grandmother and mother have all discovered!

Wittering about Gen Y and Twitter

The media and those in my professional life – they all witter on and on about the mysteries of communicating, working with and dealing with Generation Y.

And there’s certain assumptions – oh yes all Gen Y are addicted to social networking and this is the way of the future and we all need to get up to speed or we will be left behind forever.

So here’s the funny thing, I have three Gen Y-ers in my house. They are all quite different as brothers of ages 16, 18 and 20 are likely to be.

Ask them – what do you think about social networking and they have no idea what you are talking about.

• Twitter? – never heard of it.
• LinkedIn – is that something for old people?

OK – let’s be more specific. The 20-year-old (just finished a BA let’s stereotype as liberal folksinging caring …), he uses MySpace for music stuff – to promote gigs and upload music; and Facebook – strictly back-up – to promote his music not for personal use.

The 18-year-old – about to enter second year commerce at uni – total opposite to above – obsessed by money (plan to have house by end of uni and $1m by 30), recent convert to Facebook (from Bebo) because that’s what “serious” people do.

And 16-year-old – no known social networking activities apart from gaming (arena of world unknown to mum to remotely comment upon); eratically (annoyingly) checks cell.

In short, my view remains – it’s very unwise to make generalisations about “generations”. Age, sex, culture and personality can determine behaviours. Strictly speaking, I’m a young-ish “babyboomer” but that doesn’t mean I fall into all the stereotypes that that suggests …  I believe!

And I have to wonder how much “the media” drives the concept of “social media” because they can.

It’s the mum’s fault – she didn’t go with her gut feeling

Five years after the rest of the world read We need to talk about Kevin, I finally did it. And now I’m compelled to have “that conversation” with people – was Kevin simply evil from the start or was it the mother’s fault for not being bonded to Kevin, or why, why did he go on a murdering school gym rampage?

The first person I tried to have the conversation said (of course): “oh god I read that at least 3 years ago and it’s just fiction – Lionel Shriver is obviously picking up on the whole sensationalist bandwagon around highschool massacres to sell books”. Indeed maybe that’s why I didn’t read it at the time.

However, I also know that it’s been a talking point for several friends whose teenagers have been less than perfect angels. So for one person, their view is that some children (such as Kevin) are destined to screw up and there’s nothing that you can do about it. For another, the reason for things going so very wrong was somewhere in between – kid born different/difficult/whatever plus mother-child issues/dynamics.

My view – is that it’s the mother’s fault. Why? Because she had a gut feeling from early childhood that there was something wrong with Kevin, but she never did anything about it. Obviously her husband was completely blind to the problem, but this was an intelligent middle-class woman. Bad stuff happened again and again – she knew it was an issue.

It is fiction, but it’s also what made it not completely ring true. The simple fact that she didn’t act – she didn’t seem to have any friends to share her concerns – and she didn’t seek out her professional support or analysis. That’s what Americans do, don’t they? That’s what parents do don’t they

And the final straw really – the acid burning her daughter’s eyes – how did she continue to fail to act? Not alert anyone to her concerns? Not seek help in some way.

It is very hard to go with your gut instinct – and I guess you don’t always get it right. But I do believe that a mother’s gut feeling is essential to parenting, especially when things are going badly – and that could be a kid with behavioural issues or health problems. It’s the latter I’ve had some experience, and I do believe that when I’ve acted on my concerns, it’s usually been right!

Coping with cost of living badly

With all the tra-la-la about a global economic downturn and the media wheeling out stories about how to save money on everything from food, to power, to fuel to frugal/recession fashion shopping, I feel I need to do my bit.

It only seems a few short years ago when my friends and I talked about how hard it was keeping the family supermarket shopping below $200 – today it’s more like $400 would be a nice goal.

I do now have teenage boys so that’s a big extra cost isn’t it? And, I admit that the supermarket shop does include a few bottles of wine – not strictly essentials! Actually, that’s one thing that does not seem to be afflicted by price rises – wine. There’s so many great deals – the lesson is, we can drink more wine but eat less cheese, the  price of which has continued to sky-rocket.

How else could I save money? I admit I get sucked in buying those jars of bolognaise sauce – and even butter  chicken. It’s not that I’m not perfectly capable of making my own – I could blame lack of time. However, annoying in today’s Sunday Star Times mag – in “The art of eating” Joanna Knox says members of Slow Food are some of the busiest people she knows. Dammit!

Interestingly, the saving money thing is infiltrating work. One of the people in my team has brought in a plunger and proposes we stop the buy the takeaway coffee habit and make our own. So far, that just means I drink more coffee – I can’t stop myself buying it first thing, then have another with the others when they arrive.

And what about fuel. The husband and I do our bit – we both walk to work and bus home. But … shame about the teenager who seems to be out in our car constantly. The naive husband said – oh at least he puts petrol in it. Haha. Yes – he puts petrol in it and I pay him back.

Oh well – will resolve to do better – chicken bones will get boiled up post roast tonight!

Brain health and why you need to check your blood pressure now

It’s not good news for stroke patients in New Zealand according to Sarah Barnett in this week’s “Listener” as apparently we languish near the bottom of OECD figures for stroke mortality rates.

Bad news then for my mother and brother (who have always been fit and slim and hence defy the stereotypes of smokers and/or diabetes sufferers) who are on medication for high blood pressure. And, also my teenage son, the renal transplant patient.

I must admit as a non-medical type it would have been kinda useful to have it actually explained “why you need to check your blood pressure now”. Or was the answer – it’s because you’re doomed if you end up with a stroke in NZ’s hospital system?

To be fair, our experience with the NZ health system has been generally good, but it has been a bit of a challenge to get the teen to understand the blood pressure issue. The specialist gave a complicated scientific explanation, all v fascinating, but didn’t inspire him to change his lifestyle to avoid drugs. Hey this is a kid who has been on drugs all his life so it’s like so what?

However, recently he has made some kind of mental leap and is on to early morning runs and being kinder to the body. I do understand that it’s pretty hard to be 18 and be given the hard word on your “lifestyle”.

And indeed the recent TV3 doc about a kidney exchange programme in the US was not happy viewing for families of transplant patients who thought they were going to watch an exciting new way of getting around the lack of dead donors. Only one out of the three recipients survived – it was depressing.

The joy of food

It’s a weirdly exciting moment in a mother’s life when her teenage sons show an interest in cooking and actually volunteer to do it. The eldest one’s passion for Japan resulted first in tempura vegetables – really fantastic!

What was interesting for me is that I have just about never deepfried anything in my life, but he did it – certainly without any coaching from me. And, then after his 7th form year in Japan, he returned to “have a go” at making things he’d enjoyed there – I admit the thing involving raw egg I wasn’t so convinced by …

A few years on – and am astonished when middle one volunteers for a cooking night per week. Yay! but hey has he ever attempted anything but micowaved brownies?

Even more than he older one, he eschews recipes … “oh I just want to be creative … I know what I like … recipes are for dummies”. So – the first meal involved some of his fav foods, ie bacon, mushrooms, pasta and cheese. He did consult a recipe book for the cheese sauce – briefly. It was pretty good for a first effort – I did feel READLLY full.

And indeed a little while later, I noticed that half a block of tasty cheese had disappeared – no wonder we all felt like blobs!

The next week – was artistic mounds of rice with chicken and mushrooms – lots of butter involved I understand – but a concept copied from a cafe where he’d worked briefly. It was great.

But the latest one – he debated a bit about what to cook – it had to be different. Imagine my surprise (horror) when he announced he would be cooking liver and onions. As an offal hater, have never cooked the stuff myself so he certainly is expressing his individuality!

Anyway – made valiant attempt to eat it – happily he’d already identified a need for red wine to make it more palatable. Didn’t tell the younger bro what was in store as far as I knew he’d never experienced liver – so maybe he’d like it? No!

It’s all good fun. But just while on the offal subject – that same week Martin Bosley did sweatbreads in the “Listener” – and the following week, celeriac. Yuck is all I can say. Or bring back Lois Daish!

John Keyes vs Marian Keyes?

The question is – am I more interested in reading about NZ politics or indulging in chick lit read? The answer is Marian of course.

Am total flake. Accept it’s time for a change despite Labour lean – no interest in the endless dissection of it all. Am bored already.

Not that am actually a superficial celebrity watcher either. However, the back-breaking-Veitch affair has been an interesting talking point at work. Generally agreed that $100,000 is not worth a broken back and a nervous breakdown, especially if you have a high-paid job. So why didn’t she go to the police?

Strange link here – Marian Keyes latest “This Charming Man” is about a politician who abuses women. Yes he gets his come upperance from the women, but I did feel that the weakest part was that they didn’t go to the police.

Guess I don’t know what it’s like to be an abused woman – thankfully! But it’s an appalling message that a high-profile presenter who was going through a rough patch should violently abuse a woman and continue his TV career. Not good enough!

Grumpy teen returns

The teenager returned early from the great tramping adventure. And what an adventure!

After the 3-day tramp was postponed 3 days, they set off late – apparently several hours late because of car problems. Hence they starting tramping at 4. A bit late for mid-winter NZ near Ruapehu? Well the hut was supposed to be only 2 hours away.

However, they didn’t find the hut – 2 hours later – still no hut – so they tramped back to car – 4 hours in the snow arriving at midnight.

So I said – were you scared? “No.” Were your two friends nervous or distressed? “No.” Do you know if your teachers had any form of emergency communications – hey you could have been still out there? “Grunt – no.”

What happened next? Well they went to another teacher’s bach that was conveniently not too far away as they were travelling in an unheated car and wet and cold after 8 hours in the snow.

So was there any talk of more tramping the next day? “No.”

Observation on teenage behaviour – the grunting monosyllabic grumpy male behaviour appears to be massively increased by tiredness and stress. That 15-year-old had been v pleasant recently – like a real person! Now see pattern – rowing season finished end March – result: behavourial transformation.

Guess a mother just has to grin and bear it!