from the depths...blah, blah, blah

I did intend on posting on Avery's 1st birthday (July 15th), but everyone in the house was sick. I did write her a really nice letter which I may post if I get time. For now, enjoy the picture. I am battling menstrual cramps and a flooded basement (2nd thunderstorm of the day) and husband is at work.





More later.

some complaining

As I type this, I have a tissue jammed up my nose. No longer do I bother constantly wiping my nose that has not stopped dripping for three days; now I just jam tissues up there until they are no longer absorbent, then replace them with a new one. My husband finds this disgusting. I can't blame him, but I am now on my THIRD FUCKING COLD of this summer and I have fucking had it.

Also? I am going back to work on August 5th and I still haven't weaned my baby. She still suffers from constipation, is rarely interested in real, solid foods, and still wakes up 5-6 times a night.

My hair is still falling out in big clumps and my nails keep breaking off (toenails included). I am exhausted.

Some days I feel like I'm doing it all wrong. Other days, I realize that we have not had any help from any of our family members and my husband and I have yet to have one night out together alone. People kept telling me that it would get easier, and in some ways it has, but I think that not getting a good night's sleep in about a year is taking a toll on me.

One more complaint: summer sucks here. We can't have one nice sunny, warm breezy day. It's like the fucking Mekong Delta out there with the humidity. Every day.

That is all.

Hippy Chick

Forgive me for not writing very regularly. You see, as well as caring for Avery, who is about as much work as a set of sextuplets on crack, I have been slowly turning into a paranoid, establishment hating, vegan food loving, cloth diaper using hippie.

It all started when the husband and I read Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma". Which is fascinating and terrifying and life-changing to read. Then, bit by bit, we started changing how we live.

1. We stopped eating meat
2. We stopped eating processed foods (except for the occasional take away pizza)
3. Goodbye disposable diapers and wipes. Hello cloth and tea tree oil.
4. We started buying only organic produce for us and making Avery's food with only organic produce.
5. We dug up the backyard and planted a giant vegetable garden. Fresh food in the summer, canned and preserved in the winter.
6. No more pesticides or herbicides.
7. We bought 2 rain barrels.
8. We had an environmental assessment done on our house.
9. We bought a tankless hot water heater.
10. We got new windows.
11. We put up a clothing line in the backyard.
12. We bought a reverse-osmosis water treatment filter for the house.
13. We tossed out all of Avery's baby shampoos, lotions and diaper rash creams and bought all natural ones with no harmful chemicals in them.
14. We planted some trees: 2 apple, 1 peach, and another maple tree.
15. I stopped shaving my armpits. No, just kidding. Although I must say that I'm not as good at keeping up with things like that these days.

So, we've been pretty busy. And the amazing thing is, I am so used to living this way now that I can't imagine going back to the old way of life. Next step: wait for the housing market to crash and buy a farm.

Seriously.

And I am totally going to have my own donkey.

fuck off

I’ve just been scanning the news headlines as I do every morning because I don’t have time to read a paper at work and I have come across some things that I am tired of hearing about. I have decided to dedicate this post to people like me out there who just feel like saying “You know what? Fuck off.”

Here we go.

Muslims hold new protests against Salman Rushdie knighthood

You know what? Fuck off. Why the fuck are we giving this shit any press time? The Ayatollah wanted this guy dead years and years ago. Then Rushdie went into hiding. Then they lifted the death penalty in Iran, and then Rushdie came out of hiding. Now Mr. Rushdie has been knighted. Big Fucking Deal. Now some people in Iran and Pakistan are mad. There was even talk of suicide bombings and how they would be justified in this case. Really. Like these idiots need an excuse for a suicide bombing. Ebrahim Rahimpour, the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s director for Europe said “The British Government’s insulting, suspicious and ill-considered act is an obvious sign of Islamophobia which has terribly hurt the feelings of 1.5 billion Muslims.”

Hurt the feelings of 1.5 billion Muslims? Because of a fucking book that was published how many years ago? Get over it. And fuck off. Oh, and I hardly think you are speaking on behalf of that many people worldwide. I’m sure that the majority don’t even know who Salman Rushdie is.

Do yellow ribbons show support for troops or for war?

City of Toronto politicians are arguing over whether fire trucks and ambulances should keep displaying the yellow “Support Our Troops” ribbons. City Hall is voting on this today. From the Globe and Mail today:

“The issue arose at city hall yesterday after a news report that the city, in response to complaints from people opposed to the Afghan mission, had ordered the decals removed from 170 fire trucks and a similar number of ambulances. The decals were installed last year, without council's involvement, after the firefighters' union paid $3,000 for the fire-truck stickers; emergency medical services dipped into its taxpayer-funded budget for a similar amount.”

You know what? Fuck off. Stop wasting time and taxpayer money on stupid ass shit like this. There are a hundred WAY more important issues that need to be addressed than this. You are voting on this in council today? What the fuck? Are you doing anything about the fact that that idiot David Miller has run this city into the ground and we are now facing bankruptcy? The same idiot who thinks that public transit is the answer to everything? That taxing people who own cars and charging families that create more garbage is the “green solution” to end all environmental woes? Someone needs to walk up to this blond-haired buffoon, this NDP idiot and flick him in the forehead and say “Hey douchebag, the firefighters are a militarily based organization. They are structured around military principles. Many reservists and former members of the Canadian military are firefighters. They are supporting their brothers who THIS COUNTRY has decided to send into a chaotic war zone to be killed for nothing.”
You don’t have to support this useless war but for fucks sake show a little compassion and humanity for the poor bastards who got shipped over there. And stop wasting time and money on issues like this. Start talking about incinerating garbage, about stopping big business from polluting the shit out of our city, about solving the immigration backlog and shutting down grow houses and putting the teenage gangsters in Jane and Finch in jail so they will stop shooting each other and terrorizing the neighbourhoods in our city.

Health Canada probes phony toothpaste sold in Ontario

Hey – how about you don’t buy your toothpaste from the dollar store? Did you notice all the other weird ass products on the shelves in there? Would you buy powdered soup from Kazakhstan? Do you really think that Colgate is selling it’s toothpaste to dollar stores?

Fuck off.

You know what else? Maybe we should stop outsourcing our manufacturing and farming to places like China, a country that seems to have no problem poisoning its own babies with contaminated formula and then not informing its public about it. A country that sent over contaminated additives for use in our pet food production, resulting in the deaths and illnesses of thousands of animals. You think that the produce and other food products you are buying at Loblaws aren’t affected by this? Guess again. Where is your garlic from?

These countries use pesticides on our food that should be banned as a weapon of mass destruction.

I think it’s time we became more concerned and conscientious as consumers and realize that cheaper is not better. It is toxic to us, to our economy and to the planet. Why are we shipping whitefish from our waters over to China to be processed and sent back to us?
Something is very, very wrong.

Okay, that’s my doom and gloom for the week.

damn you Facebook!

I am oh, so addicted now.

the mortal remains of bees

It’s been a strange week. On Monday, I arrived early at work to find not one, but two dead deer on the property. Two full sized deer; one near the employee entrance I normally use, and the other near the main entrance. Not only is it odd that there were two of them, but also strange because we are not near a major or busy road, so it would be hard to believe that someone would hit two deer whilst driving down the winding road that our building is off of. Also, we are right on a lake, so I can’t imagine where they were crossing from. There is a small wooded area further up the road so I suppose they could have come from there.

Even stranger than this is the fact that I had a dream about deer the night before. Coincidence, I’m sure. I’m not one to believe in psychic stuff. Creepy nonetheless. Worse still is that today is Wednesday, and the deer have still not been removed from the property; something to do with government workers being off on holidays over the weekend. Someone has laid a tarp over each of them and marked the spot with some pylons. When I look out the window it looks like a crime scene.

Last night, I dreamt that one of the deer was speaking to me. It told me that it had a broken leg and managed to make it over the building before it collapsed, where it shivered all night in the cold before finally dying. I woke up very upset and even writing about it now is bringing tears to my eyes. Welcome to the wild and weird world of pregnancy hormones.

Another thing I have been noticing not just this week, but last week as well, is the number of other coincidences that have been occurring. I am not necessarily going to make anything out of this but I thought it would be interesting to document it. There are four “subjects” that have come up again and again, either on television, in the conversations of others I have overheard, or in something I have read. I have been writing these down. Here is my list:

Genesis (Adam and Eve)
Shel Silverstein (the guy who wrote “Where the Sidewalk Ends”)
The Crimean War
Bees

The reason I started writing these down is because, after I had watched a nature show on bees with my husband, we had a long conversation about how few bees we have seen in our garden over the last couple of years, and how we wondered if they are a gauge of a change in environmental conditions just as frogs are. The next day I was scanning the news online and came across an essay written recently by Fidel Castro on US Brazil relations and environmental issues. One of the subjects in his essay was bees, and how the bee population in North America has decreased by 25%. What is alarming about this, according to some scientists that are studying this issue, is that there are no mortal remains of bees to be found, it’s like they have simply disappeared. Something about those words ‘mortal remains of bees’ struck me as particularly beautiful and ethereal. It also made me sad, just as the deer have, and have brought back those feelings of vulnerability that I think accompany pregnancy for so many women. Perhaps the reason I am documenting all of these things is because I am secretly looking for a message in all of this.

A few years ago, when I worked further West, I was driving home in the evening along one of the back roads I usually took to avoid the rush hour traffic. There are a lot of farms along this road. As I came up over a hill I noticed that the traffic ahead of me was slowing. As I approached the other vehicles, I could hear a strange pounding sound. To my shock, a huge black horse came racing down the side of the road, a colt right behind him. As they wove in and out of the cars, I noticed that the black horse still had reigns on him, and guessed that they must have escaped from one of the farms. Though all of the eastbound traffic had stopped, the westbound traffic could not see the horses and was still flowing. For a moment, I was in a movie and everything slowed down as the horses crossed right in front of my car, just as a truck approached from the other direction. I felt my hand go to my mouth and waited for the truck to see the horses. It did not. I felt my stomach drop and prepared myself (I think) for what I was about to see. Somehow, the horses got across the road before the truck got to them. I watched in my rear view mirror as they continued down the road, cars pulling over to the side to let them through.

I remember the sounds that the horses made to this day. I heard the black one breathing through my open window as he crossed in front of my car; saw his terrified eyeball rolling in his head before he dove back out into the chaos. It was one of the most beautiful and haunting things I have ever seen in my life. It felt like it was supposed to mean something. I guess I feel the same way about the deer and the bees and all of the other random coincidences.