Resilience and Gingerbread

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What builds resilience in individuals – and what diminishes the capacity for resilience? I’ve been thinking about this a bit over the last few weeks whilst trying to manage the turbulence that is life-with-puppies.

First of all, what is resilience? Well, it’s generally considered to be the capacity individuals have to cope with difficulties/stress, ranging from personal tragedy or trauma to issues at home/in the workplace, financial pressures or health problems. The more resilience you have, the better you are at rolling with the punches that life throws at you, dusting yourself off and carrying on.

Different people cope with similar situations very differently, and sometimes even those who appear quite resilient in one set of circumstances may be very vulnerable in others. However, experience and observation (very unscientific, I know, but there you go) has shown me that resilience is an attribute that can both be learned and expanded upon with use. The key seems to be to try to avoid being overly change-averse. Or, to put it another way, to focus on having a flexible outlook.

I’ve found that honing my capacity to manage change has in turn made me more able to notice and manage stress when it arises, to think positively and even to learn new skills. That, combined with support from loved ones and a good night’s sleep makes an enormous difference in coping with vagaries of life.

But building resilience takes work and, at times, it can seem insurmountably difficult to achieve. Indeed, after multiple dog dramas and two emergency vet runs in as many weeks, my personal resilience capacity sank to what felt like an all time low. It happens. But T and I managed to accommodate the dramas, move through the emotional responses and, if not bounce back, exactly, at least totter back from the outcomes.

And each time we manage to bounce back – no matter how slowly we do it – we’re better equipped to do so the next time something comes up. We’re building our resilience without even realising it. We certainly know where our local emergency vet practice is located now and that Thursday nights is their busiest time!

Today we rewarded ourselves for surviving another puppy-infested-drama-laden-week with… gingerbread. We all need to be looked after and sometimes self-nurturing is the most useful gift we can give ourselves. Today, that gift is gingerbread. Lots of tasty gingerbread. I feel significantly more resilient with every slice 🙂

Nik’s Gingerbread Recipe

I’ve made this gingerbread loaf countless times over the past 30+ years. It’s never failed to be soft, moist and absolutely delicious. It’s dead easy to make and freezes well – and if you slice it beforehand, you get to have a treat a day for as many days as there are slices. This recipe makes two medium sized loaves or one really big one. Plan accordingly 🙂

Set the oven to 180C (350F). Line two medium-sized loaf pans with foil; lightly coat the foil with oil/butter.

3 cups plain flour , 1-cup sugar (I prefer raw sugar, but use whatever sort you like), 3 teaspoons ginger, pinch of salt, 2 teaspoons mixed spice, 1 teaspoon baking power, 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda – mixed with 1/4 cup of water, 1-cup oil, 3 eggs. 1-cup golden syrup (or treacle, if you prefer – both work), 1-cup lukewarm water

Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl. Pour the mix into the prepared loaf pans. Bake for approximately 55 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack for about 10 minutes or so before turning out. Serve warm or cold – and with butter if you like it that way.

Note: if you bake this in one LARGE loaf pan (as I did today), then it’s a good idea to drop the temp to about 160-170 — it takes longer, but the top won’t get that interesting darker-than-dark shade and super-delicious crunchy bits 😛

Puppies and Piñatas

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With a pair of toddlers (otherwise known as puppies, 18 months and 3 months old respectively) at home, I’ve been thrown back into the deep-end of stay-at-home-mum life. The gaps between feeding them, playing with them, walking them, cleaning up behind them, making sure they don’t chew anything important or squish each other (one weighs 25kg, the other 5kg!) are few and far between.

Puppies are fun, no doubt about it, but this stage does remind me of when my human children were small. When they finally conk out for a nap it comes as a welcome break, but it’s also quite regularly when my brain starts reminding me about the restless nights monitoring said children/pups. Sleeeep, it says, sleeeeep nowwwwww…

With the children, well meaning friends and relatives – even strangers – would tell me, ‘Nap when the babies nap. Make the most of your time.’ After a while I started to wonder whether they all had home help. Or perhaps they had a secret supply of magical wee folk lurking in the background, ready to do all the nasty accumulated chores in exchange for small gifts of food…

In the absence of magical or other help, and with catch-up-sleep the stuff of daydreams, I nevertheless learned that it was possible to chunk away at various tasks while the babies napped – sometimes even while they entertained themselves for brief periods.

Similarly, the first few weeks with the two dogs together have been pretty full on. House-training a new pup takes determination and vigilance, also a goodly supply of paper towel and a bottle of clean-up spray. We’re getting there and, in some ways, it’s no worse than potty training. If anything, it’s easier as it’s taking far less time. Nunzio/Cassie’s conquered the doggy door and now usually makes it to the lawn in time (and there was great rejoicing!).

As with any toddlers, playtime can be a tad fraught – although Molly has been surprisingly patient and it’s suddenly clear just how much she’s matured over the past few months. However, the puppy has an endless supply of nippy little teeth and a good deal of persistence, and patience definitely has its limits. The trick is to leave them to it and to intervene/distract just before drama happens. That way some learning happens, but she doesn’t get chased and stomped on too badly. This too shall pass – Molly’s coping and her Nunzio’s getting bigger and less squishable each week.

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Meantime, I fit writing in where I can, conquer the household chores where possible and – today, after a certain amount of procrastination, have finally started my chicken-piñata. This has already entailed a certain amount excitement. The first balloon I inflated exploded – making both dogs duck for cover and me dive for the remains before either of them could decide they were edible! Later, the second balloon – now part-covered with strips of soggy papier mâché – got knocked off it’s stand and fell on Molly’s head, pretty much confirming her notion that balloons are très dangereux 🙂

Piñatas take about 50 hours to create, from start to finish, depending on how large and how complicated you decide to make them. The process is done in stages to allow the layers of papier mâché to dry, which is just as well since nap times are fairly brief. I’m 3 hours in, having made the glue, torn up some newspaper and started to apply the first layer. With luck, by the time I have this piñata completed we should be through the worst of the toddler stage…

Self-Publishing

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GirdleOfBones_BlogSizeWhen I started writing Girdle of Bones, it seemed like a great idea to try to produce a simple, easy to read brochure on joint replacements. I imagined it as something that might empower prospective patients and their families, helping them to manage the plethora of often-incomprehensible information available on the topic.

So what equips me to offer these insights? Well, whilst I’m certainly not a medical professional – just what has at times felt like a professional patient, I do have over a thirty years of experience on this particular subject. I’ve undergone nine rounds of surgery on my left hip, a combination of total hip replacements and/or revisions of existing hip replacements. These experiences have provided me with answers I wish I’d had much earlier in the piece. Collating them into a self-help publication to assist others in a similar situation appeared logical.

However, the project rapidly took on a life of its own. I found myself detailing my experiences as a story, rather than in a linear or academic fashion, and the brochure turned into a memoir. This speaks to the fact that I am, by nature, a storyteller and firmly believe in the power of story to push the boundaries of understanding. Stories are a particularly effective medium through which to communicate meaningfully with others and this memoir seemed like a good way of getting the information out to the widest possible audience.

However, when I submitted my manuscript to Fremantle Press last year, I was told that memoirs of this sort might not elicit a wide enough readership to make them commercially viable.

Thank you for the opportunity to consider GIRDLE OF BONES. It has now been reviewed for our nonfiction list and regrettably I have to tell you that the decision was against making an offer to publish. The manuscript has a lot to offer, including a detailed personal narrative and real insights into the experience of those whose lives are impacted by a serious long-term condition. Unfortunately we were not convinced we could find sufficient readership for GIRDLE OF BONES to make it a viable proposition for Fremantle Press in the current very difficult publishing environment. I’m sorry not to be able to write with better news and wish you well in placing the work elsewhere.

As a novice author, this didn’t come as a great surprise – I had been warned by many other writers about the much-feared rejection slips. So I filed the letter, edited Girdle some more – polishing and re-polishing the manuscript, thought about it a lot and wondered whether I really wanted or needed to publish. What was the vision I had for my book? Who did I think would be interested in buying it? If published, how many copies did I hope to sell? Was I after commercial success? Personal satisfaction? Professional recognition?

The answers are fairly simple. In short, my vision revolved around a combination of personal satisfaction and a desire to help others. I wanted to draw a line the hypothetical sand and say ‘It’s done’ – to complete the project. I also wanted to provide an engaging and readable work of narrative non-fiction that might assist other people in dealing with big issues in their own lives.

As to who might buy it – well, I guess anyone who’s interested in connecting with the lived experiences of others or who may be searching for a different perspective on life. Or it might just be readers who’re looking for a good read and who may connect with the fact that the story is real. If the book makes me some money along the way, that’s a bonus – but it was never the key objective.

In the end I chose to self-publish and to do it via Kindle Direct – it’s easy and it makes the book affordable to a wide range of people. I’ve also opted for the print-on-demand version via Create Space – for those who may not be eBook oriented. I’ve just received the digital review copy to check, but have ordered a print version as well – just to be sure that what they print is what I expect! Once I’m happy with all that, Girdle of Bones will be available to purchase as a paperback.

ETA of my print copy is 3 May, so it should be good to go online by the end of that week. Exciting times 🙂Create Space_Screen Shot 2016-04-17 at 4.05.40 pm

Mid-week parenting dramas

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It shouldn’t come as a surprise that parenting – whether of human children or of furbabies – doesn’t get easier with time, it just changes. Even so, each new parenting drama rolls over us like a ton of bricks, leaving us sleep deprived and stressed.

Yesterday, furbaby#1 ran off with something naughty. I could tell it was something naughty from the way she paused outside the laundry door, looked at me (through the kitchen window), dropped her precious-something on the ground in front of her, looked at me again, retrieved it and retreated a few steps.

Her body language said, Look, I’ve got a thing – it’s naughty – it’s mine and you won’t want me to eat it… but I will! Go on, I dare you to try stopping me.

When I went out the door – slowly, calmly, and armed with a treat-bribe – she retreated a few more steps, dropped her precious between her feet again, looked at me, then snatched it off the ground and gulped it down!

Aargh! Pounce, muzzle open, fingers down throat – but it was gone. Completely. And she was as pleased as punch – she’d eaten her precious treasure and received attention. So much win.

I started trying to figure out what she could possibly have nabbed from the kitchen area. It had to be something she knew she shouldn’t have and – no matter how careful we try to be – it could plausibly be something that could cause her harm. I’d been making tea. Could I have dropped a teabag? She’d tried (unsuccessfully) to run off with one of those before, so it wasn’t implausible.

Rather panicked Internet research ensued, the spectre of caffeine poisoning looming large. But everything I read on animal poison sites indicated that a single teabag was highly unlikely to cause a problem for a 25kg dog. Unless, of course, the tag was stapled onto the teabag. Aargh. Teabag research in kitchen proved that although the bags do have labels this time around, they’re glued. Whew.

Standard protocol indicated that monitoring the dog for the side effects of caffeine poisoning over the next couple of hours was the next step. The symptoms include severe hyperactivity, restlessness, vomiting, elevated heart rate – and a range of more complex issues from there on. I watched. I monitored. I lurked and stressed and waited. Nothing. She seemed perfectly fine. She shared the puppy’s lunch. We played fetch. They had a nap together.

Then, six hours after the great-gulping-event, I heard the sounds of retching and rushed outside in time to see her vomit on the doorstep. Not a teabag though; what she brought up was a sachet of desiccant. I assume it must’ve fallen out of the open box of mochi in the fridge when I put the milk away. I didn’t see it fall – but she obviously did and swooped to retrieve it as soon as I moved away from the fridge.

mochi and o-buster

After cleaning up the mess and putting the remains of the now perforated packet of desiccant into a container for reference, I headed back to the computer and the dog poison sites. Unfortunately, what she’d eaten wasn’t something simple and relatively harmless, like silica gel. It was a sachet of O-Buster, a desiccant that is 50-70% total iron and potentially highly toxic. No good, so the next step was to hightail it off to the vet, armed with both the dog and the remains of the packet of O-Buster.

Although  the desiccant packaging was perforated – and some of the contents will certainly have gone into her system, most of the packet appeared to have been regurgitated. That, the vet said, is a plus. The fact that she’s a big dog and the risk level is at the 20-60mg/kg level is another plus. With the packet largely intact, the vet considered it unlikely that she’d ingested much. On examination, Molly’s vitals were all fine, temperature normal, etc. The vet took some blood to send off for iron analysis overnight. The results will clarify as to whether chelation therapy – the administration of deferoxamine intravenously – wouldbe required.  Yikes – especially since the therapy itself has a number of questionable outcomes.

The vet told us to take her home and – yes – monitor her. She’d phone us as soon as the test results came in, hopefully first thing in the morning. Later that evening, just to add a little more fun to the evening, she phoned to tell us she’d spoken to a poisons expert about Molly. They’d agreed that it would be good idea admisiter 5-10ml of Milk of Magnesia (magnesium hydroxide) as a prophylactic measure as it might help to reduce the amount of iron her body would absorb.

Ah yes, Milk of Magnesia. I remembered it with some distaste from my childhood; it’s a particularly nasty-tasting white goop that was occasionally administered by my mother for ailments such as constipation (internally) and sunburn (externally). It used to be a bog-standard, over-the-counter medication that was found in most households when I was a kid.

However, several late night pharmacy and supermarket visits, followed by yet more Internet research, showed that MoM is no longer available as a commercial product in Australia and that there is no direct equivalent. As it was now after hours at our local vet, a phone call to the emergency vet ensued. She was aware of the situtation – was possibly even the person our vet had spoken to – and said that the MoM would be unlikely to make a difference anyway, so it would be best to – yup – continue to monitor her overnight.

Despite a restless night none of the symptoms (bloody stools, vomiting, depressed behaviour, abdominal pain) showed up, which was a relief. The vet rang at 4pm today (after several calls from me to check on progress) to let us know that the results were finally in and that Molly’s iron levels are 36 (on a magical scale of 15 – 41.7), so she should be fine.

The girls are outside having fun together and our stress levels slowly ebbing. Was it just yesterday – shortly before all this happened – that I was researching pet insurance just in case something untoward happened? Thank you, Murphy.

 

Mission accomplished

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A quick news flash on Girdle of Bones – I’ve gone live with a Kindle version of my epic tome.

Yup, after much late night procrastination – and many iterations of set up for Kindle Direct Publishing – and an awful lot of document previewing and checking, it’s finally happened. No doubt some of the set up would have been better done by light of day, but light of day currently involves a great deal of puppy-wrangling so it has not been an option.

I’m calling it mission accomplished – and have quaffed a celebratory fizzy drink to celebrate. *does happy dance*

Phase 2 is to use Create Space to publish the print-to-order version – and that will happen as soon as puppy management allows. I’m currently a little over stealthing off to do midnight to 2am edits while the puppy sleeps!

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