Saturday mornings can quickly go sour. Doesn’t take a whole lot. Take one grumpy grandma and two whiny kids. Bingo. Sucky Saturday arrives.

 

I am not sure what relationship there is between a child’s temperament and the weather, but there most definitely is one. 

 

I love cold, rainy days.  Days when the sky is a mottled grey, clouds moving along nicely.  Very occasionally a glimpse of blue, but no bright sun to glare in your early eyes.  Days when I can throw up the windows and let fresh, cool air right into my home. Free, fresh, cool air.  Air that doesn’t need to be heated or cooled to be comfortable.

 

Children, on the other hand, HATE them.  To them, my mottled grey clouds who move along in interesting patterns are a harbinger of disaster.  I think they wake up and immediately get SADS. What the heck is that anyway.  For years and years everyone knew that when winter and the resulting grey skies came, well, some of us got a bit blue, as in depressed.

 

Now, they name a freakin syndrome after it. Seasonally Acquired Depression Syndrome.  They tell you to increase the amount of sunlight by installing an artificial sun lamp in your home and expose yourself to it for 10 hours per day.

 

Right.  Like I am gonna DO that.

 

Noses run, tempers flare, the WHINE MONSTER attacks beautiful, sleeping babies while they dream and they awaken to turn into absolute HORRORS of snivel.

 

And you, me, the caretaker, mommy, grandmother, pappy, whomever, will give into them for just about ANYTHING they want for a number of reasons, the first and primary of which is to SHUT THEM UP.  Their little whinyness starts at the base of your spine and CRAWLS up right into the muscles between your shoulder blades and quickly moves on to the back of your skull where you end up with a pounding headache for the rest of the day.  Needing quiet, you don’t get it.

 

Other family members quickly jump on the whiny wagon,  and they complain about the children complaining about everything. Then, they start snapping at YOU, as if it is somehow YOUR fault that the kids are whine monsters today.

 

Right now, I have fond memories of my first two children, back when I was a single parent, with no older children around, no one to report to.  I could just let the whine monster work through the angst until the children approached human.

 

Me, of course, having no one at all to whine to, must blog about it.  Life in the 21st century.

 

I have noticed other things that we used to take for granted and which are now HUGE.  They also are related to small children.

 

What used to be called a bad cold is now called RSV and they hospitalize babies for it.  It can be fatal.  They hospitalize them so that they can monitor their breathing.

 

Moms used to do that.  I can remember tenting a baby in a swing under a sheet and putting the humidifier under the tent to keep the secretions liquid in the baby’s nose.  Then, you followed that with sucking the secretions out with a little blue bulb every ½ hour or so.  Meanwhile you gave the baby antibiotics to keep the infection down.

 

Apparently, that wasn’t good enough.  Now they put the babies in the hospital and do virtually the same thing. Only, as in more than a few things, it is somehow much more serious now and costs lots of money.

 

Stress.  We have always had it.  We had other ways of dealing with it.  Work. Physical work. Every mother knows about this, whether consciously or unconsciously. Stressed out? Clean your house.  Slam cupboards. Run the sweeper. Clean out drawers.

 

It’s a mom thing.  If you cannot arrange your life to suit you, at least you can arrange and clean your HOUSE.  And, it helps.

 

Life used to be busy.  Just keeping food on the table and the bills paid required physical work.  Farmers by group have more stress than any executive, and yet, I think if they took a poll, they are on less anxiety medication than anyone.  Because, farmers are still up with the sun, into overalls and feeding/milking/caring for stock.  Or planting/weeding/fertiliz ing.  Or both.  In the off season, mending fences, doing farm stuff that got put aside during lambing season.

 

But we don’t do much physical work anymore. Desk jobs are the rule.  And so we take anxiety drugs and don’t exercise.

 

Off to karate.  Sucky Saturday.