13 April 2012

Thoughts

We are officially in the first week of school holidays here and I the boys and I have had a lovely time playing, catching up on life around the home and taking a sigh of relief from all the stuff going on with Luke. Apart from spending some time each day doing a bit of 'homework' with Luke I have been able to have a rest from the thoughts surrounding the issues with Luke and now that I have had some breathing space there are many things that were talked about during the last ten weeks that are circling around my mind.

During this break from 'Luke thoughts' there has been alot of thinking about our journey to a simpler life, there is always a lot of talk about it around here in some form or another from the extreme dreams that I am totally not ready for like owning a farm to finally getting us some chickens to spending more time bush walking and expanding our veggie beds. Lately there has also been a lot of talk about the hierarchy of food that we buy. I already have my own system but I recently bumped into the zero waste home and discovered that there is more that I could be adding to my list. Here is the order that I usually purchase items in:

1.Local and organic
2.Local or Organic (depending)
3.Then Brand name- hopefully an Australian brand
4.Then Home brand

We are still buying from leading supermarkets, which I am not super happy about but has really been our only option at this point with Luke. Because taking him shopping is an undertaking within itself and it is simply impossible to take him to more than one shop. So we have been doing the best that we could but on the horizon is the thought that he will be at school soon and this will free up more time for me. And although we live quite a way from where we could get what I really want the time may be soon there to go further. Anyway I do worry that at some point these supermarkets will simply only sell there own brand products and we wont have too much choice because we have voted with our dollars  to buy the cheapest option for too long.  Not to mention that in Woolworth's especially I notice that they are not putting other Organic brands on the shelves to meet demand but are putting there own organic home brand products.
But the next option to add into this is no packaging. It now seems obvious that the energy put into the packaging could well be more than put into the product itself and then the packaging goes straight into our landfill or worse still into natural environments killing it. My six year old is already aware of this through movies like happy feet and finding nemo as well as wildlife shows and is constantly ask questions relating to it. I have been questioning where I can get all of the above options without having to go to a gazzillon different places. I realise that I am going to have to put some systems into place if I want to not be bringing in more packaging.Yesterday I spent some time sewing up some veggie bags so I no longer have to use plastic so the question is: Where can I get Organic Local Not packaged goods mostly in one place????

Back to Luke and those circling thoughts...Luke is in a position where we need a group of people to help him on his way and to make a diagnosis, not just one person will be able to give this. But Luke has more than one issue, he is a whole being and has a whole group of issues and one thing may be able to help connect those dots for him so that the other dots can be connected easily. Luke is at an amazing Kindy with a fantastic team who have in the last few weeks fought tooth and nail for him. And I am so extremely thankful that they have done that for him, he needs it. He received 6 hours of support! Amazing! But what completely baffles me is that he only received this after a fight, after being firm, after tantrums were thrown. With other children being completely left by the wayside.
Is that not so ridiculous!
The government completely refuses to fund help for these children just because there problems seem small.
Although the government will end up paying for these children ten fold in the future. Are we not supposed to be fixing the problem not just waiting to patch it up later.
Not only that the system is so screwed that if you choose to go private and pay a whole pile of money you will no longer receive public support- even if your child really needs both or even if this would help your child get there faster and therefore relive the problem sooner.
Now you will have to choose between the care that you get in our instance we are choosing some public and some private. Private can become super expensive especially if you need more that one type of person. I would love to switch Luke over to private speech because public speech is simply sparse in that you might only see them twice in 10 weeks but we cant afford to put one more person on the private list.
We are the lucky ones, we can afford this although we will take a hit we will be ok. Luke will most probably be diagnosed with a developmental delay or a  form of mild autism but what if you were dealing with more than that. How on earth do you pay for the help you need?????

Then you do pay for the help you need and you get doctors who are over worked who are slotting you in amongst the 50 other patients they are seeing today.

I am giving myself a headache.

To me the Luke thing and the Food thing are the same THING.
Because I could take an environmental standpoint or I could take a political standpoint and may be these ways would get me further. But I am not a fighter! I see others taking that route and it doesn't inspire me. 
When are humans going to stop doing things with only money in there mind.
When are they going to stop thinking in dollars.
The only lens I can look through at this is love.
If we all just started to care about each other, it would be so different.
When you care you do the right thing, when you put love in you make love come back to you.


1 comment:

Nell said...

Well said Amy! Keep fighting the good fight! Do you use the fruit and vege store out at Gumeracha? My friend also recommends the Barossa Farmers Markets for local bread/cheese etc without the packaging :)
p.s. for what it is worth, I am happy to throw as many tanties as we need ;)xxx