Making sense of changed situations

This week began not in any way as planned as I had remarked in the odd place a few times Dad hadn't been well for a few weeks with a UTI and that one set of antibiotics just hadn't worked and that after something after a faff last Friday following a doctors visit a second lot had arrived.

Well he seemed to slow down and felt decidedly off colour over the weekend but rallied overnight so although I had worked a way of getting the shopping in he'd agreed to, he was adamant he was going out and attempt to Monday except he fell after some strange double vision eposides.

Thus I got back from doing most of I'd planned only to hear the sorry story but then finding he couldn't get up after a quick check over by the Paramedics so he got taken to A&E.

That meant I've been keeping people in touch with developments but also figuring out the washing machine as for one thing the machine I last used personally was a bit different when Mom was still alive and fighting a battle for control of the washing and while then Powder was still just that and liquids that came in sachets you cut and put into a ball  direct to the drum todays powders and conditioners are different so I needed to check.

No sense in acting in haste and possibly jamming something!

So towels and clothes got cleaned  as I also fixed food.

Hopefully he'll be back in a few days time.

Domestic skills and the girl

It has been a damp start to the week here back at the Dorm which if you're about and on foot as I was bringing bread and that back from the stores  you'd soon notice and in a way that connects to this post and a previous one Gender Spaces. on the other blog.
Sometimes it seems to me, a good few decades of life on earth on somehow we get ourselves lost for all the very best reasons conflicting two things.
Whatever we may feel people should be able to decide fits into their own idea of gender roles, there is much to be said for spending time with the parent of the same gender because it enables them to share with you their own experiences, such as what being a girl is about because actually they've lived it and so have valuable lessons.
No amount of equality training can replace that.

It is the most natural instinct in any society for you as a child to emulate the parent of the same gender as yourself and to spend time with them and for girls that can mean making or buying similar outfits. Most of us actually enjoyed this before the gender studies people came along and said we shouldn't do this. 
Strangely enough at six or seven we do want to be a gender!

We get things wrong when we start to object to the idea a girl shouldn't be expected to learn about cooking and instead elevate the physical and academic over it not because she shouldn't learn these things too but because we fail to ensure boys are also taught and expected to help out in the home too.
Because we don't, we try to protect her by ensuring she can't be taken advantage of by saying it's not her role. The problem is we all need to this for ourselves and that includes her as well as her male siblings and so teaching nobody doesn't help. Cooking is a skill boys need too.

As many a student can recall, next to paying for food, getting the laundry done efficiently matters if everybody isn't to be suffering from stale smelling clothes so there is nothing wrong with showing your daughter how to and even having her help as some of it is bound to be hers.
The problem here is because we're so hung up about sexism and roles we start to say she shouldn't be cos it's sexist. What is sexist is not having her brother do the same, carrying some domestic 'weight' in the household and she needs to see females insisting on it.

To me in trying to fight sexism and the notion it's a females role to run the household exclusively we seem to have devalued that which just needs doing without tackling the core issue:
Putting contributing to the smooth running of the household into core responsibility of boys and men.