stuffing the doubt and nighttime/early morning learning

[Kelli Traaseth]

I felt like sharing some thoughts that I've had floating around in my
head lately. :)

My oldest 2 kids are on the nightshift right now. I try and stay up
with them, as late as I can, and then I get up early to see if they
need anything (and to be up with my youngest). They also know they can
come and get me and wake me up if they need anything. That being said,
I'm usually fine with them being up, yet I still have little voices in
my head telling me they should be sleeping when I'm sleeping.

I sometimes start questioning if I'm doing enough for them. Maybe I
should be right by their side more? I make sure they have easy to warm
up food, and snacks they like. I make sure I spend a chunk of quality
time with them when they are awake, but I still worry. I'll ask them
if they're happy (they look happy, but I want to make sure, my doubt
again) and they'll enthusiastically answer "YES!". I ask them if they
want to be doing some other things,,(I'm thinking,,, like stuff during
the day<g>) and they'll answer "but Mom I'm doing what I want to do"
and they laugh at my doubt.

So I go back and forth, being confident in what I'm doing and then also
questioning it. I think because I'm not around anyone in real life who
lives their life like this its much more difficult to remain confident.
When I do question it I need to stop and look at my kids, see the joy
and see the learning.

Ok, so what are they learning? <g> A few, off the top of my head
things: yesterday Abbi HAD to find out if the poem "ring around the
rosie" came from the Black Plague. She loves snopes and looked it up
http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/rosie.htm (don't know if
that'll transfer or not). She really didn't want to believe that a
beloved kid poem would be associated with that. She was happy to find
out that Snopes believed that that claim is false. She sat there for a
couple of hours reading and researching.

Then this morning when I got up she was just bubbling over with
enthusiasm, that's the way she usually is when I see her in the
morning. :) She comes to me and tells me that her new favorite word
is Antidisestablishmentarianism. <g> Apparently some people were
talking about big words and threw that one out there. She had never
heard of it,, she loved it. She also told me that when people were
throwing that word around someone said, "how about sesquipedalian?"
(which means the use of big words, I had to google it, I had never hear
of it ;) So she had been looking up different words, reading about
long words (she loves dictionary.com). She also had to share this new
word with her friends on myspace and made a bulletin about her newly
found favorite word.

She continued to talk about this and that, different things that she
had done in the night, commenting that it was nice to talk to me
because Alec (her older brother) had been in some raids last night
(groups with other people on WoW) and not as talkative as she would
have liked. Usually she has a couple of friends that are up with her
on IM through the night and some will be on WoW (World of Warcraft),
some not. Last night apparently her friends weren't around so she
ended up doing some other stuff. So she's talking and talking and
then she stops and says, "OH, I HAVE to ask you this! I've been
meaning to talk to you about this then I get sidetracked." I'm
thinking oh my gosh,, getting myself ready for something deep and
serious. And she asks me "what was the Black Plague?" :)

So the research we were doing yesterday morning resurfaces and we get
back on the computer and look it up. How many things can you learn
when you look up the Black Plague/Bubonic Plague? <g> Wow! Its a
lot. Tons of history, science, biology, toxology, pathology,,, it
keeps going. Disease, geography of Europe and Asia, rat info, flea
info, history of diseases, even warfare (they believe that it may have
been spread by one army catapulting infected corpses onto its enemy,
the disease spreading and those people leaving their country and it
coming to Europe).

Finally after reading about the Bubonic Plague for about an hour she
decides its time to lay down for a while. Its 8:00 and she wants me to
get her up at around 2:00-3:00. I had told her about a couple of
artists that are going to be showing how they do their artwork in one
of the art studios in town. She won't be getting a lot of sleep today
but she'll probably make up for it tonight. When its something she
wants, she makes it happen.

I continue to be amazed at this life of ours. Even when I sometimes
question myself or have people questioning me, I know deep down inside
me that its the right thing. The energy, happiness and joy I see in my
kids is so proving.

Kelli~

http://ourjoyfullife.blogspot.com/

[Sandra Dodd]

-=- How many things can you learn

when you look up the Black Plague/Bubonic Plague? <g> Wow! Its a
lot. Tons of history, science, biology, toxology, pathology,,, it

keeps going. Disease, geography of Europe and Asia,-=-

New Mexico!
21st century New Mexico.
It's not pneumonic plague (usually, though it can become that, and if
it gets to that point lots of people would get it) but bubonic plague
cases come up here, and UNM hospital is the place to call if
someone's been in New Mexico, especially camping on the east side of
the central mountains, and they get fevery and have lumps in their
underarms. Tell your doctor to call the University of New Mexico
hospital.

http://www.dhpe.org/infect/plague.html

Keith used to have a t-shirt that said

New Mexico:
Land of the Flea,
Home of the Plague

Sandra

[Kelli Traaseth]

http://www.dhpe.org/infect/plague.html

Oooo,, I'll share this with Abbi.

Local,,ok, kind of local (our country is soo big <g>) plague.

Kelli

[pepsi cola]

My kids are all on the night shift now too. The 8 year old can't spell so hot, so when she wants to look something up, and doesn't get close enough for google to correct her spelling with "did you mean..." she wakes me up with questions. She's impatient and can't wait until the next day.

 

 

We live with my parents who are very traditional and get real worried about thier sleep shedule. I figure as long as they are quiet and considerate of others who are sleeping, it's no big deal. Unless we have something like a doctors appointment where we have to get up during the day, it doesn't really get in the way.

 

 

The only thing that worries me is that the older two spend alot of time in chats and MMORPGs and I worry that the only people on at that hour to chat with are pedophiles.

They're both pretty smart about personal info though.

 

 

Also, we aren't spending as much time together as we used to. I take medication that makes me drowsy so I drop off around eleven. I see them in the mornings until they drop off to sleep around 1 in the afternoon.

[Sandra Dodd]

-=-We live with my parents who are very traditional and get real

worried about thier sleep shedule. I figure as long as they are quiet

and considerate of others who are sleeping, it's no big deal.-=-

Because it's your parent's house, though, their opinions count in big
ways.

Other people don't have the right to come and do what they want in my
house. Is it actually your house and the parents are staying with you?

Sandra

[Schuyler Waynforth]

Wikipedia has a list of alternate possibilities for what the Black Death was. I knew about the Ebola hypothesis but not the others. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death#Alternative_explanations . I also didn't know that 10% of Europeans are resistant to HIV nor that that resistance was attributed to Black Plague.

As a side note, East Anglia, where we've just moved, was hit really hard in the 1600's by the plague. Many of the villages around us, including our village, have a churche that sits away from all of the houses. Apparently during the plague outbreak the way to stop it was to burn all of the houses down. Churches were made of stone and didn't burn. People didn't want to rebuild on the burnt houses, so the churches stand alone.

Schuyler

[Joyce Fetteroll]

On Nov 3, 2006, at 11:50 AM, Sandra Dodd wrote:

New Mexico:

Land of the Flea,

Home of the Plague

I think they may have imported some to Massachusetts. Kat has a cross country meet tomorrow where it says on the flyer that finishers 4-50 get medals and 1-3 get plagues!

Joyce

[Su Penn]

Connie Willis' novel "Doomsday Book" is about a time traveling
historian whose settings get mixed up by a few years, and she ends up
living through the plague with a village. It's a good read, and very
evocative about what life was like then.

Su

[marg...@gmail.com]

She may also be interested in the plague that hit Athens in the
Peloponnesian war. It killed about a quarter of the citizens of
Athens. It was a smaller portion of the population that the black
death, but it was still a lot of people and had an impact on the war
that was going on.

And on the bubonic plague - it isn't just New Mexico. Although I think
it is more common (thought still rare) in the southwest, it's endemic
to several western states. I'm in Washington state and I was really
suprised to find out in one of my epidemiology classes that it is
endemic here in Washington.