It's the economy, stupid... or the stupid economy?

The economic meltdown is yet to really hit here in Australia - there's bits and pieces about it affecting a shift at the car manufacturer here, (but that is probably because they insist on making big V6 cars here in Adelaideand making the much more sensible in oh so many ways smaller cars overseas) or a mine here, or an exporter here, but as yet it's not Really Hit Home. I find the web is therefore a REAL eye opener about people losing their jobs suddenly and horribly for that reason.

Comments around various blogs about the manufacturing issue with the USA - applies here too. We lost our entire clothing/footware manufacturing not that long ago, and not only did we lose the skills but there was also a move away from blue collar work being available to people, and towards people having no choice but to be unemployed because they can't (or granted, won't) do the work available.

In some ways I agree with the throwaway comments being made about "bring on another depression". People are soft. They don't know how to cook, or sew, or grow, or look after animals, or bake, or live communally, or raise children, and that means they are chasing something unreal and "higher" and ?more laudible than making a home and family work.

I just read a rambly post about this topic from the perspective of Gen X. It talks a lot about the change that people are making to going back to their hearth and raising children and running on one income rather than outsourcing childcare and food making and clothes construction, and chasing a bigger house and a second car and more and more debt. So many things have been outsourced and that makes us all very vulnerable when the economy contracts and people aren't able or willing to do those things.

And I include myself in all of this - I rely on society to do things for me that I don't want to do. Society is about that at a basic level (we can't do everything for ourselves!) but it costs money to do that, and it costs more for Jane to do x for me than it would me for to do said x for me, so there is an inflation involved in that. As more things are outsourced, I have to earn more or rack up more debt to get the same things as before, and so I am now living beyond my means. Multiply that by the whole economy and we're suddenly screwed. And there will be a day/year/decade of reckoning of this and it's going to hurt.

Where are the communes these days? Not so much in the free love kind of way, but in the "farm with workers" or the "boarding house with employees living in" or the "large house with family running it" etc. We live in way more space than we need or use and have spare rooms just in case, and a craft/yoga/study/library room that we use hardly ever and try to fill with stuff that we can't afford to have and don't use and so we spend more money that we don't have to entertain ourselves instead of reading a book or doing a workout or crafting.

And raising families - it takes a community to do this. An article I read recently suggested that what defines Gen X and Y from the previous generations is that we count our friends as or above families in terms of how much we see them and what we ask of them or do for them.

This also comes at the same time as peak oil is more part of the discussion, and people are worried about the impact that the reduction in cheap energy will have. I see so many of my friends getting bikes and scooters, and moving close to where they work, and reskilling, and embracing crafts and reuse/recycling/repurposing, and living in share houses even when in adult years.

I am trying to work through what this means for having a family plans in the next year or so as well. If the economy does implode here, I am relatively safe as I will always be able to find work. I can't say the same for many of my friends and family though, which is distressing.

Thinking about food and my childhood

Well how's that for a specific post title.

I am in the mood for some simple cooking today. So I had a look on the interwebs for a recipe and found one from my childhood - Weetbix and marshmallow slice. And that's what I'm going to do in a minute once lunch is ready. I am amazed that none of my friends have ever heard of what I think of as a quintiscential Australian food (Weetbix slice that is) so maybe I'll convince them?

It got me thinking (again) about food that I ate as a child. Handmade bread, lots of meat-and-three-veg, lots of eggs, and pikelets, and beef stroganoff, and nasi goreng from a box, lasagne from homemade bolognese, tinned two fruit and icecream, meatloaf, chicken legs, gluten steaks, gluten patties in tomato sauce, Anzac biscuits, ... it goes on.

With the move away from eating at home and towards eating out, where we tend to eat the Same Dish regardless of where we eat, and where eating different cuisine is not the indulgence it used to be.

Oh look - it's a privelege example. Again.

Silent abuse - triggers, and a post in which I get rambly

Something different for today - a post about abuse. I've spent the past couple of months with a foam sling on my L arm when I'm at work, because I work at the House of Bun (a hardware store) and I have 1kg lifting restrictions on my arm, so I can't use it, but unless it's tied up, I tend to use it and it gets sore and I get really really grumpy.

By the way - Panadol Osteo is my best friend. Slow release paracetemol is the best for pain like I've got (joint pain) and I highly recommend that you talk to your GP about it if you have an ongoing issue. It reduces the overall amount of drugs that I'm taking and makes me less foul tempered and mouthed.

So anyway - the number of times people cracked jokes to me about my partner beating me and that's why I was in a sling. Why do people think that joking about domestic violence is amusing? There are lots of forms of overt abuse as well as a few that are "silent" - an article I came across recently about this really opened my eyes to the fact that a lot of what I went through as a child and teenager was this kind of abuse. It worries me a lot that I might fall into that cycle because I don't know how to deal otherwise with people. I'm very conscious of it now, especially in my close personal relationships, as I am worried about repeating the mistakes of the past, especially as I consider procreating.

On that line and in the vein of this is my blog and I can cry if I want to, I got contacted by my mother yesterday with her usual passive aggressive crap of "I have something for you let's meet up"... and this time, she also said that she had some things that she wanted to say to me and so maybe she'd email me. Now the quick among you will have noticed that she didn't say that she wanted to talk to me, or discuss things with me, or anything like that - she has some things to say to me. Unless they are very specific apologies for past wrongs, and a change in how she deals with a specific family member, then I am not the least bit interested in hearing what she has to say. Not the least bit interested in stirring up past hurts and incidents. Not the least bit interested in picking off scabs from wounds THAT HAVE HEALED in whatever fashion I have had to. And not the least bit interested in hearing her side of the story because I don't care whether there is a side to it other than my own. I just don't.

Skeletons and closets - that's a match made in heaven.

We are, generally speaking, a product of our past. We integrate things that have happened. We learn, and we move on. The moving on bit is REALLY important for our sanity, and for shaping who we are. Not who we were, or who we want to be in the future - but who we are right this freaking second. And given that I've been to two funerals in the past week and have had a crap day with my shoulder and physio, and am still not back at work, and am broke because of this, and am distressed enough without having to deal with 28 years of "things what made me Me", I politely messaged my mother with "thankyou but I don't need anything from you and don't think I want to hear what you have to say, so please don't email me".

And spent the next five minute crying. Just because I've made peace with not having my mother in my life doesn't mean that the pain of it goes away. It's taken me a LONG time to get to this point even, where I don't feel obliged to have anything to do with her - but I still feel that societal and probably primal requirement to have something to do with my dam. And knowing that she is not going to change, and that having her back in my life is just going to hurt and suck even more, makes me strong enough to send messages that make me want to throw up.

But being brave is not being terrified - it's about being terrified and still doing them. So I guess that makes me brave.