Sunday, January 14, 2007

Missing a time I never even knew...

So I recently read that almost all mammals sleep 10 hours a day. That is except for humans. Well we used to - until the invention of the light bulb - now we average 6. People wonder what is wrong with our society, could it be lack of sleep? This information and my new tightwadding skills which lean heavily on cooking from scratch got me to thinking about the "old days". Are the conveniences of modern living actually convenient? I will bullet my thoughts since I have the tendency to bounce around from one idea to the next.

  • Children - Land: I wish I could send my kids outside without feeling like I have to hover over them. I offer the backyard frequently but it doesn't hold the interest like the front yard. Moms are made to feel guilty either way - kids shouldn't' sit plopped in front of the TV and they can't be unsupervised outside. ARRRGGGHHH
  • Chores - not that I want more work - so maybe this should be under the children category. Sometimes I feel like I make up jobs for the kids to do to teach responsibility. I can't imagine this being necessary on a farm - Everyone has something to do on a farm - or you don't eat - now that is what I call motivation. There were no self-help books in the 1800's people were too busy.
  • Food before high fructose corn syrup - enough said. (No posts about dieting please - I am well aware of what to avoid - but if you pay attention that stuff is everywhere)
  • I imagine the world a little dirtier back in the day - and weird as it may seem I view that as a positive. People worked a lot outside, had animals, at the very least heated their home with a furnace and or woodstove. e.g. more dirt. I am a little tired of the germ-a-phobe moms - you know exactly the kind I mean too. I am the only one here I know who has a dog, a cat, burns real wood in my fireplace, let my kids play in the dirt, and is a full supporter of the five second rule.
  • Are allergies a new thing? Probably not and full apologies ahead of time to those with legitimate ones. I am tired of the myriad of weird allergies. Nursery here is bizarre with the things kids can't have. I mean has anyone ever really needed an epi-pen for an animal cracker? I know things like nuts are serious - but it seems like some moms forget that kids just get sick a lot. Their kids barf once and they can no longer have what they happened to have for dinner. Then you got one mom making three different dinners because one kid can't "handle" gluten and one is allergic to eggs, or food coloring, or citrus or water or air sorry I could go on...

There are some things I wouldn't want to give up: air conditioning, washing machines, indoor plumbing, and modern hospitals. Benjamin's ginormous cranium would have killed one or both of us during childbirth.

2 comments:

Kleanteeth said...

I have been checking at hfcs is everywhere, but I figure if it's not in the top five, it doesn't count.

The A Team said...

this is an old post, i know. but it was before my blogging days and since you posted it on amanda's blog, it's new to me.
i'm a full supporter of the 5 second rule too and am not really a germaphobe. my kids licked every thing when they were babies and it totally grossed me out (the worst was that green bar at the movies...yuck!) but now they don't really get sick. ryan's missed 1 day of school and aside from a few snotty days and some stomach issues, noah's been pretty even keel too (he gets sick a little more often then his brother and ryan licked more). i attribute it all to the lack of a sterilized environment when they were younger.