the fear and loathing decade....

For some reason, I completely missed the fact that we are about to hit a New Years milestone.  It took being surrounded by year end lists, when i realized a whole decade had scampered by.  Could that be?  Has it really been 10 years since we all fretted over a massive Y2K meltdown that was supposed to trample over the wires and ways of computer technology?  I guess so.  Gee, I still had a little one in diapers back then, and now he's out of my arms, having travelled to Costa Rica to attend a month long international village for 11 and 12 year olds!  I also had a little girl who rarely left my side and clung to me like a baby Koala.  Now, she's juggling work and school and her network of friends. 

I've been driving backwards since I learned that we're about to stamp this decade as complete, allowing the events which will define it to filter up.  And the more I thought about it, the more I could see how easily this collection of 10 years could easily be labelled "the fear and loathing decade......"  Events beyond our control, were foisted upon us and thrown into our lexicon and lives so radically that we are still reeling and dealing with them, the most obvious being the events of September 11, 2001.   Though terrorism was not a new concept, it truly became a personalized one as the fear factor ratcheded up to hyperventilation mode.  All of a sudden, it felt like we plummeted into a global cat and mouse, hide and seek game with evil.   We watched our leaders puff out their chests and make pronouncements about catching Bin Laden and his boys...... to eradicate Islamic fundamentalism, to target underground cells of disenfranchised Muslims through brute force. 

Bin Laden still rules the game of hide and seek. 

We have grown in awareness and weariness as the decade tick tocked away.  Afghanistan, Iraq, bombings in Indonesia, Bali, Spain, London, weapons of mass destruction were never ever found.  War children, extreme poverty, natural disasters where thousands perished despite the ability to prevent it through early detection.  Our anger increased as we learned of serious hot spots around the globe where violence and brutality against other religions, children and women. Patriotism was used shamefully to guilt many who expressed their opinions against the violent retaliatons.  Politicians continued to stumble and sputter while we became more aware of the smoke and mirrors they held up.

Sadly, Islamic terrorism reared its head again on Christmas day sending the airline industry into a tailspin.  Airports are full of weary angry people desparately trying to get on a plane to seek escape.  Flying will never, ever be the same again.  Our sense of safety will never be the same again. 

SARS, Swine, Bird......FLU!!!!  We became paralyzingly fearful of the pandemics which reared their gut wrenching illnesses which spread as fast as a sneeze in flight. Warnings became the order of the day.  Toronto became a pariah.  It took years for that city to regain its reputation as a tourist town.  We take this fear and loathing issue as well into the next decade, though many of us are now innoculated.  For the time being. Don't you wish you owned stocks in hand sanitizer and face mask making companies?

Politics has also added to the brewing fear and loathing felt in the pits of our collective guts. Has any politician maintained their full integrity?  Leadership tanked globally.  Lets hope it was just a bad gene pool??

Walls went up........a barbed wire prison the size of a city was the "answer" to an eternal war of hatred.  Piracy off the coast of Somalia.  AIDS killed.  Warlords maimed. We became consumed by raging talking heads........on the left and on the right who believe in their own brilliance as they rant on and on and on throughout the mainstream media and in our newer forms of sharing news and editorials.  Most of the best known blogs are lightening rods for nasty loathing and skin crawling opinions.  Scandals, fraudulent business schemes and blatant conflicts of interest ran rampant during this decade.  If the 70's was the ME Decade, then the first decade of the 21rst century has to be called the ME ME ME decade.....

It's a sad, sad state of affairs we are pulling into the next decade.  Reading about the background of the latest terrorist, who came from a well respected, well off family........ who was schooled in International schools, I was struck by a gut wrenching fear that on most days I can keep some control over.  Why?  Because despite the fact Bin Laden and his boys have targetted disenfranchised humans in war torn African countries and in poverty stricken neighbourhoods filled with angry young men with no future, it was a privileged radical fundamentalist who had chosen that direction, who had consumed the hatred, who tried to blow up the plane flying from Amsterdam to Detroit. It made me realize just how doomed we really are, and how we are basically held hostage to their sneaky tactics to kill. No one is safe. 

Fear and loathing............sadly, it will continue long after we put this decade to bed.

Tomorrow, I will take on another angle......... Because as much as it has been an emotionally heaving 10 years, in a negative sense, it also was one that has beautiful blooms too.  It was bad, but not all bad.  

fight the swine! fight the swine!

my beautiful family dressed for success

The global hysteria over the swine flu entered my body sending shivers through my system last Thursday when my son came home from school complaining of a headache and coughing a dry hack. Alert! went my Mommy radar! Alert! All hands on deck! Bring out the Pine Sol, the medications, the hand sanitizer! Where's the thermometer? Ginger Ale?

I informed my husband that I was convinced we were about to face the dreaded Pork problem. He looked at me like I was bonkers because, well I'm not very level headed when it comes to my kids getting sick. However, he also knows that I 90 percent of the time, I call it right. It's that intuition thing I recently wrote about? I can sniff out illness in my kids the moment they catch something. The first sign of croup..... I heard it. The moment my daughter's cold turned for the worse when she was 7 months old, I knew. So.....even though Max only had the early early signs of H1N1, I knew it was upon us.

For two nights, he coughed for an hour before he fell asleep. That was about it. No temperature, no upset stomach, no aches and pains. A cough and a headache only. His appetite was fine. His energy was fine. He went to school Friday, came home upbeat and went to a Halloween party. Saturday, he laid low, but ate well and had no temperature. He went out trick or treating. When he got home that night, he crashed and slept through the night. Sunday morning, he woke up and looked like he had been on a bender. Low grade temp, aches and pains, upset stomach, cough and headache...... plus fatigue. On the Swine scale? He score a perfect 10. But, thank God........ a mild case. One hysterical Momma began to breathe relief and focus on managing things.

As soon as the tylenol kicked in and relieved the symptoms, he poured out his Halloween candy onto the floor to check out the loot and touched every single package. Why? To SWINE it of course! The little bugger!

Today, he was supposed to get the vaccination at school. That didn't happen. Instead, he fought off the waves of the yuks, posted updates on facebook, connected with his friends who are also home from school dealing with the same porcine plague and slept..... and slept. Every now and then, I would sneak up beside him to check his breathing. He's fine.

Just to make sure, I phoned the doctor's office and spoke to the secretary. God love her, she still has her sense of humour intact after answering hundreds of calls, questions, and booking appointments beyond November 20th! I railed off the symptoms to her, informing her that I didn't intend to bring Max in, but just wanted to double check. She agreed with me that it sound like Swine flu, and NO they weren't keeping tabs on the numbers. So, who does? It seems to me that most of my friends have at least one of their kids on the couch with the same oinky ailments. Whose keeping the numbers????

Tonight, I took my daughter to the local clinic set up on the high school gymnasium. Her hands are already red and raw from the hand sanitizer she's been rubbing on them. She's a hand sanitizer addict and a worrier. She did not want to wait for the planned high school clinic in a couple of weeks. She wanted the vaccination NOW! I'd like it now too, but I don't qualify as a priority. Somehow I envision the children of this country nursing their sick parental units in a couple of weeks when it hits them!

We arrived at the school about halfway through the clinic hours and managed to get there when there was a bit of a lull in the perambulating line-up with many people we recognized. Still, the process took 2 hours of standing in line with families who were all so anxious and tense from the hysteria. Kids were running and jumping and jiggling all over the place. Babies were squirming and practising their squawking and walking all along the snakey line. The last time I was in a line up like that it was to take a ride through Space Mountain at Disneyworld. That was WAY more fun.

As much as we've heard many complaints about the chaos at these clinics, about the shortage of vaccine, the lateness of the whole flu shot program, I've got to say that I was so darn impressed. I kept thinking about all the other folks across the country in every community who were doing exactly the same thing we were doing .......... how in a month or so anyone who wants this FREE vaccine will be innoculated .... how it must've taken a hell of a lot of planning and calculating to get us to a line up to receive a dose of protection. What an amazing undertaking!!!!

When it was finally my daughter's turn, she was as nervous as she was when she was a little girl receiving a needle in the doctor's office. The nurse who had been working crazy hours over the past week shoving needles into people's anxious arms smiled broadly while calming my daughter down. She was kind and interactive, almost pleased to be doing her job under such circumstances. I was struck by the fact that she was definitely in the right field... Public Health.

So, I have one who's Swinish and on the mend, and another whose vaccinated and will hopefully be H1N1 free if she can keep her hands off her brother's Halloween candy and stay out of his way for two weeks. November may be the longest month of the year. Already it feels like it should be halfway over, and we've only just begun.

Stay well will you?