HayFever

Did you know that Hay Fever is simply one of those nonsensical terms for allergic rhinitis? I didn't know that until I googled up the term last night after spending an entire afternoon and evening sneezing the nose off my face and wondering if there was a quicker way to drain my sinuses. Like maybe removing my eyeballs and just scooping the snot out. This morning we are all sneezing, dripping and snuffling to some extent. Part of the trouble is the near ubiquitous state of renovation we live in. Not complaining, mind you. Every project started and completed is another step closer to selling the house and building a new one together. Still, the reality is that I am allergic to dust and I live in a continual state of it. The other side of the tipping point was that Rob is using the fire-pit in the backyard to dispose of some of the old wood from even older reno projects past. He also decided yesterday to burn paper. Between the two of us we have the death of a what appears to be a whole forest on our hands. Some of it is the accumulation of paper generated by years illness on the part of both our late spouses. It's hard to know what needs to be saved for this or that purpose. Much of it was just the inability to deal with concrete tasks when so much of our reserves were split, unevenly, between day to day survival and sorting through the inner piles of "paperwork" that grieving generates. The end result though is that today we are snotty, and not in that satisfying way of sticking out our tongues at the world either. Drippy, mucousy, wheezy, throat-clearing yukkiness. Rob deals with it by refusing to acknowledge it. If he doesn't say the words "I have allergies," out loud then it just isn't so. Such a man thing. My dad and my late husband have/had similar coping strategies. As a women, while I lament the need to do so, I would rather just own up and begin to seek a solution. So far, I have not found a solution to my allergic woes. I systematically have purged offensive foods from my diet and this has helped but the whole rhinitis issue can't be rectified unless I stop breathing air. I kinda need air, as filthy polluted as it is, and have only imperfect remedies. Anti-histamines. Decongestants. Herbal teas. A pitiful arsenal really. The commercials you see with happy, snot-free people wandering cheerfully through a Disney picture perfect wilderness that begs for Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty to come waltzing through with their entourage of cheeping, squeaking and squawking menageries are an offensive load of poop. Drugged up to the hilt, the truly allergic can maybe manage not to drip, but the truth is that your eyes still sting and your sinus cavities sting and ache and you can still hack up a nice wad of phlegm at a moment's notice.

Hay Fever is a sign of a hyper-vigilant immune system. Personally if my immune system wanted to be really useful it would be coming up with ways to protect me against the coming Bird Flu epidemic, but I guess dust and pollen is the best it can do in its off hours when it isn't fighting the good fight against all the viruses and bacteria that penetrate our systems from time to time. Practice is practice, I suppose.

Egg Shitter

The book is called NO KIDS: 40 Reasons Not to Have Children and was written by a French author named Corrine Maier. In it this psychiatrist, and mother of two, attempts to dissuade young childless French women from succumbing to the baby fever which is currently sweeping their country. Unlike most other countries in the EU where birthrates have fallen well below population replacement levels and young children are swiftly becoming an anomaly, the French are experiencing a renaissance of motherhood thanks in no small part to government sponsored maternity leaves where mothers are paid full wages for up to sixteen weeks, receive "bonus checks" for having more than one child and enjoy a creche, or childcare, system that is unequaled anywhere. Ms. Maier feels that these programs are part of a larger plan to imprison women in the traditional, and largely unfulfilling, role of "mom". The phrase she coined for women who buy into the myth that motherhood is the ultimate goal for a women is merdeuf which a French speaker would recognize as the contraction of mère de famille, which is the traditional phrase for a full-time mother or a housewife and someone who makes the act of mothering her career. The contraction of this term, however, sounds like a combination of merde, which any first year French student can tell you means "shit" and oeuf, which means "egg". Combined these two sounds seem to imply that these xeno-phobes disguised as patriots and uber-mommies are in fact little more than "egg-shitters."

Now, it may seem ironic that someone who has given birth to and is raising children of her own would counsel women who have not yet had children to steer clear of the "profession" of motherhood, but only if you weren't a mother yourself. Even the most rabidly devoted mother has moments when she wishes she had opted for the power career or the guy with no real potential other than showing her a really great time. Why? Because it would have been easier and finite. There is no end to motherhood. No way to quit or backtrack. Just 15 or 20 years of intensive, sometimes mind-numbing, and certainly unappreciated but for hindsight freakin' hard work. For nothing. There are no monetary rewards. No company perks. No advancements. If men had been handed this role at the dawn of creation the human race would have began and ended with Adam and Eve. And yes, I know as a mother myself that there are intangible rewards to having and raising children that shouldn't be compared with the consumer-driven objectified greediness of the material minded, but when you stop to consider that in the vast majority of the world women are little more than breeding cows with nearly identical rights it is hard to argue against Ms. Maier's attempt to warn off future generations of brood mares.

It could be the poor translation but I think some of Ms. Maier's reasons are stupid, but a few drive home the point that women are still being forced to choose between having children and having a life, eg. career. Children are limiting for women in a way that they are not for men. You can argue the point as much as you like but the facts are the facts. Mothers, even really crappy ones, are tied to the early development of their off-spring in a much more physical way than fathers are and because of this, they will inevitably lose time. Time for education or building careers or simply to pursue some personally fulfilling dream. We can't have it all in the same way men can and it's time this was acknowledged and made generally known to women before they have babies. An uninformed choice is hardly a choice at all.