Glasses help me to see, and appear to be directly linked with my brain function!

I can't find my glasses.

I can't think without them! I can use my iPad if up close,but I can't see a thing when walking around the house.

I feel lost, vague, confused and ..... Unable to think!

I am home sick with a rotten cold, but I would like to see well enough to watch some tv in my PJs. 

If anyone finds my glasses, please hand them to me. They were last seen on my bedside table, but not there now. I've fumbled around looking for them, but they aren't here. I'm wondering if a sneaky thief stole them so I couldn't identify the thief when they come back to pinch everything else. 

Or, perhaps they grew legs! 

And yes, I've looked in lots of places, but I can't see to find them. Do you see (hmmph, bad pun) my dilemma?!? What about my glasses?

I would judge me

I realised today that while I try to never say anything judgmental, and try to see everyone as individual, that as a human I make judgments.  I know, hardly rocket science, we all do this, but I hadn't realised the little ways I was doing so each day.

What prompted this? I was waiting for the lift in a car park. Waiting for the lift, with a great reason. Rather than taking the stairs as usual. And I watched others head to the stairwell to begin their climb, and felt a sudden need to justify my need for the lift. To explain that I am not lazy. That I'd take the stairs if I could, but that I can't just now.

Why did I feel this? I felt this need to justify my choice, my decision, because I have looked at others at times, as I walked towards the stairs. I have looked at them and wondered why they weren't taking the stairs. I know I do this, because I also try to work out a good reason for them to make this choice. A reason like they are pregnant, carrying lots of bags, older, frail, disabled. I do this as though I have a right to question this choice, as though I am superior, in a sense, than them if they take the lift when I take the stairs.

This bothers me. I would have judged me. I'm a relatively fit woman of mumble-mumble years (no embarrassment, just that I don't feel the need to share my age widely with people I may not know - there, I did it again!!) who is overweight, and I know if I had walked past someone like me I would have made a judgment. I would have wondered why they (I) didn't climb the stairs to add a little extra activity for the day, that they (me) looked like I could use the exercise and was probably being lazy.

Now at no point would I ever say this to someone, but I would have thought it. I'm not sure how I feel about this, except to say it embarrasses me. I take the stairs because, usually, I can. I see it as some activity to bookend a work day which can be too sedentary. I often walk at lunch for the same reason. These are my choices, and I'm glad I do this, but it isn't my place to judge anyone.

As an aside, my reason for not taking the stairs sucks. I won't share today because it would be like justifying my reason, explaining away to others, as though they have a right to question or judge me for my life choices. So I won't share this right now. I will however share this. I apologise to all whom I have judged harshly, even if only for a second. Even if I'm pretty sure they never knew about my judgment. And particularly if they did notice something about my glance. I'm sorry. I am going to work harder at focusing on my choices, being okay with my life, doing what feels good and right and fun and safe and worth it for me. I will do this so that I'm too busy working on myself to focus on judging others. Oh, and I'll try to not judge myself too harshly either.

When a $7 dollar "co-payment" is more than beer and skittles

So, there is this:
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/less-than-two-middies-joe-hockey-defends-7-gp-fee-20140515-zrdb6.html


My response to Mr Hockey is this:

$7 dollars isn't about cigarettes! It's 7 litres of supermarket milk; 2 loaves of bread; a sandwich for lunch; a 1kg block of supermarket cheese. It's food out of the mouths of children, pensioners, new mothers desperately trying to breastfeed their babies and needing those calories. 


Using a comparison to beer and cigarettes cheapens us all, as though that is the only measure we could understand. I can get a whole bottle of wine for $7, which would last me ages as I rarely drink. I could feed my family lunch for a fortnight in what my increased medical expenses may be for one visit (GP appointment, regular thyroid blood test, and prescription - possibly $20-30 extra). They wouldn't be exciting lunches either, just cheese sandwiches. That is what this government is taking away!


No parent is going to deny a sick child access to the doctor if they can actually afford to take them.  But what if that appointment is to help you address your own addiction to tobacco, seeking to cut down or quit. What if the help you need is to address your issue with alcohol. In the longer term, that appointment will be of benefit, but how do you afford it in the first place if your ADDICTION is the issue. Not a choice to buy cigarettes over taking your child to a doctor. Your addiction means that you need help to STOP spending $20-30 on a packet of cigarettes. And that help comes at a cost which may be prohibitive to those caught up in the addiction.

So Mr Hockey, you aren't being real. Comparing the $7 co-payment as you call it, to the cost of 2 middies (which makes no sense in much of the country, by the way - I have NO idea what sized drink that is, but then, I'm a Victorian so maybe I don't count!) is like comparing the cost of education to a holiday. They are chalk and cheese. It is elitist to do so, and suggests that you feel that all of Australia needs to compare costs to Pub beer prices to understand! Heavens, how very 1950s, when the thought was that men earned, women stayed at home, and a drop in to the pub for a beer was what a working man did on the way home. He held the cost, was in control of the "purse strings" and the "little woman" couldn't even enter the bar for fear of something clearly awful.

 It is 2014. Women work. Men work. Many families budget together. Cigarette smoking leads to nicotine addiction for many, and becomes an illness for which people self medicate by buying more smokes rather than a choice. Get with the program. Your cuts, your "co-payment" is a cost shifting exercise designed to reduce access to primary health services, and will hit the sick, the elderly, the very young, and the poor the hardest. That is your aim, and that will be the result. 

Oh, and it will work. I just hope that, as a nurse and a midwife, that you don't expect me to pick up the pieces for the next 30 years for your poor choice in government - but I fear that is exactly what you expect. And that you won't fund this either.