Reflections on life and work from Aotearoa New Zealand
Writing a book is so hard. Well, drafting a book was relatively straightforward. But the post-review rewrite and edit has been brutal. It's not that I can't do it, it's finding the time and space to have uninterrupted writing and editing that allows me to retain the whole book in my head while I finish... Continue Reading →
Lately I have been feeling very disillusioned with the academic life. I mean, I've always intellectually known that our reach is often short, our work ignored and overlooked, and our lifestyles completely overrun by our work. But recently, I have been feeling it more, and feeling more dissatisfied about it. Then a few things happened... Continue Reading →
I recently read Elizabeth Emen's 2019 book The Art of Life Admin. Well, perhaps inhaled is a better verb to describe what I did with it. I got it out of the public library on OverDrive and read it while travelling with my four kids and husband during the Easter school holidays. This travel to... Continue Reading →
It is a milestone week. My baby is now past the six week mark. We saw our wonderful wise midwife for the last time professionally and were transferred into the care of our medical centre. I took my son for his vaccinations, somewhat more anxiously than with my older three: a Facebook friend had called... Continue Reading →
So Boochani wrote his award winning book on WhatsApp. And I have been blogging so irregularly: firstly because I have way too many writing deadlines and even when I have wanted to blog, I worry what people expecting writing from me will think if I am wasting time blogging! But the other reason that writing... Continue Reading →
I had a quiet weekend not feeling well a few weeks ago, so I decided to binge read Jo Walton's A Just City, chosen for me by my husband and daughter on their weekly library visit. My daughter wanted to read it immediately, after looking at the first few pages and realising it was a... Continue Reading →
So most of you have probably worked this out well before me, but once your kids can read LISTS ARE AWESOME. My blogposts this time last year were about the emotional labour of managing a family and resentment at having to make sure everything that needed to be done got done. And the nagging. I... Continue Reading →
I normally avoid talking about toilet-training and elimination communication on my blog -- not because it is not interesting and worthwhile, but because it has become so much part of our everyday lives that I don't even think about it much any more. Until it all grinds to a halt, that is. We have practiced... Continue Reading →
Last year I bought a semester parking ticket because, even though I bike or walk in each day, my husband parks near my building and brings the baby up for a feed every day. This year, I was thinking about how much this cost us and how it was not really feasible for my husband... Continue Reading →
So, I have been the primary income earner in all my 14 years of marriage. And in that time, I have had three children. I breastfed my first two for around two years each, and plan to do the same for my youngest. But my work requires travel. When I say 'require', I wouldn't lose... Continue Reading →
In a previous post about the parallels between education and maternity care I argued that although public health and public education are extremely important for equity reasons, informed homebirthing and homeschooling are probably the gold standard for maternity care and education respectively. After reading an article on 'short-term homeschooling' I wondered about short-term homeschooling for... Continue Reading →
In the previous posts 'Wife of a Stay-at-Home Husband' and 'How to get children to help around the house' I began to think about shifting out of the role of 'Household Organiser' that I seem to have acquired over the years. One of the commitments I made while writing the Wife of a Stay-at-Home Husband... Continue Reading →
The wonderful Avalon Darnesh shares her grounded and compassionate strategies for getting children to help around the house. I need to do this. Want more help around the home? In this article you’ll learn how to nurture your young child's innate desire to contribute, and what to do if your older children don't give a... Continue Reading →
I have long been aware of the statistics that place planned homebirth on a par with public hospital births in terms of best outcomes for mothers and babies. For just as long, I have been aware that births in private hospitals have the worst outcomes generally. This did not really surprise me when I discovered... Continue Reading →
Throwntogetherness 