The Working Momma

With everything that has been going on at work in the past few weeks, I could really use a vacation. My HH and I decided that we were going to take our’s over the Memorial Day weekend and just take a few extra days too. Since I am the person that loves to plan things in our family, I inherited the job of planning our vacation. This all started a few months ago. Way before the fire at work and the ridiculously long hours.

Planning things at our house goes something along these lines:

TWM: “So, what do you want to do?”
HH: “I dunno.” (playing with laptop)
TWM: “Well, where would you like to go?”
HH: “A beach.” (still playing with laptop)
TWM: “A beach where?”
HH: “I dunno.” (now focusing attention on TV)
TWM: “How much do you want to spend?”
HH: “I dunno. Not alot.” (frustrated I am interrupting the TV)
TWM: “So, you don’t know where you want to go or what you would like to do or how much you want to spend but you want me to plan it?” (obviously getting frustrated)
HH: “I guess.” (back to playing with the laptop)

Needless to say, I started planning MY beach vacation and got it all wrong. I didn’t want to go to the beach here in the states. I had considered us going on a short cruise. Everything that wasn’t what he wanted. After I had started putting ideas together and coming up with a plan I brought it to him. I was shot down.

Instead of a beach vacation, we are driving to a relatively small town in the Texas hill country (no beaches, just rivers and hills). We are staying at a Best Western and we are going to spend at least one day at Schlitterbahn. Schlitterbahn is a waterpark that is on one of the rivers there. It is supposedly some awesome place but I have yet to have been there and I have lived in Texas my entire life. Of course there are other things to do nearby - sightseeing, shopping, toobing, more shopping and eating (but I am on a diet).

Should be interesting to see how things go on my not quite ideal first vacation with the boy.

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Yep, I have had a rash since January. Not a bright red, oh-my-god-you-look-so-awful kind of rash but a rash that just itches like crazy. It is the kind where once you start scratching you almost can’t stop. The worst is when I am at work and I start itching so bad that all I can think about is wanting to just scratch with abandon. Sometimes I cave in and scratch at work, the rash is on my back so leave your dirty thoughts at the door, and it always seems that someone from management will come by my office (open door policy). Its always the same question, what is wrong with you? I am already an outcast from my leave of absence last year and this just seems to put me one block closer to Crazytown. I go through the same schpiel every single time about how I have this mysterious rash on my back, no it isn’t contagious and I really am OK. They always react the same way, turning away with a look of doubt mixed with disgust.

I am sure you are wondering why I haven’t mentioned it before or why I still have it after so long. HELLO - go to the doctor already! Well, I have but now you are just trying to make me skip ahead in the story. We all know not to read the first paragraph of a book and then skip to the last page. If I had to go through it then so do you, in chronological order of course. This isn’t Pulp Fiction you know.

I thought that maybe it was just some kind of allergic reaction so I treated it as such. With hydrocortisone cream of course. That didn’t help. So then I happened to mention it to my shrink during one visit and he said that it could just be a reaction to the increased stress that I have from going back to work. He prescribed Atarax (an antihistimine) to help with the stress and the itching. I started taking it and bam I couldn’t seem to wake-up. It was really bad. So bad that I had to leave work one morning and missed the next day because of it. I pretty much slept through two entire days. I stopped taking the medicine and went back to my shrink. I think we might have messed around with some more of my medicine but I am not sure if it was relating to that problem. In the end he suggested I go see a dermatologist.

I called up to make an appointment and the first available was a month away. I took the appointment and it was yesterday. I was in and out within 15 minutes. She said that my rash on my back was folliculitis (infected hair follicles) and that it and my acne (recently started-never had it before) were probably being caused or exacerbated by the Lithium that I take for the bipolar. She told me to change bathsoaps to alcohol-free, use Lubriderm all the time, moisturizer with sunscreen for my face and Differin for my face. She also gave me a presription for Kenalog for the rash. I am trying to be open-minded about this helping but I can’t help but have some doubts. She barely even glanced at my back to check the rash. I wonder if this will work and if I can actually keep up the new routine.

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So, I thought this BPA stuff was just going to be another blip on my momdar but it seems to be turning into a much bigger deal than I thought.

I expected my other well-educated momma’s out there to pause and reflect on the news that this stuff in our babies plastic bottles could kill them. Instead, they run out to the stores and spend a fortune on BPA-free counterparts and throw the others away. Is that green behavior? Do they do any real research to find out if their current bottles/cups are OK? No, of course they don’t. They buy into all of the negative media hype against BPA and the chemical industry in general.

See, I work in the chemical industry and so does my husband. In fact, the products that his facility makes go into the production of BPA among other things. Yes, the chemical industry as a whole has done bad things in the past and yes they have made mistakes. I won’t deny that. There are regulatory agencies now that work to ensure that the products that are made are safe for consumers and that they are made safely. I know that government is not always on our side but in this case you just need to have some faith. There are Joe Schmoes and Jane Does that work for these agencies doing evaluations and analysis of the facilities that make these chemicals and the chemicals themselves. We need to believe in the common good that the Joes and Janes would not let something get past them that could harm themselves or their family.

We momma’s need to empower ourselves to make the right decisions for us and our families. We need to stop believing everything we read online and hear in the media. We need to check our facts and determine what we believe in instead of having someone else tell us what to believe in. We are all smart and talented. We don’t need someone else to tell us how to raise our children. We have been doing it just fine for millions of years, I don’t think things are going to change anytime soon.

If you would like more information on BPA and plastics, please go to The American Chemistry Council or Facts on Plastics. Get educated.

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