peanut gallery

no wait, i lied.

2009-09-26T15:42:00.001-04:00

check out www.boodafli.com

So long, blogger, and thanks for all the phish!

2009-09-03T23:57:00.002-04:00

i've moved on. boodafli.wordpress.com. please update your blogrolls accordingly, if you're feeling like it.

YES WE DID

2008-11-05T03:40:00.001-05:00

i cried. peanut goes, 'don't cry! we WON!' and then i cried harder.

i don't have words yet. i knew a change was gonna come..

tangled branches of a family tree

2008-10-09T15:30:00.003-04:00

so, we're exploring the idea that 'nammah' is mommy's mommy, just like mommy is pnuts mommy. so she's like, who's daddy's mommy? and i say, gram is daddy's mommy. and she says, well, then, who's daddy's daddy's mommy? and i said, that would be daddy's gram, your great grandma. she said or, my fablious (fabulous) grandma! or maybe my just not bad grandma.

potato. potahto.

signs you watch too much CNN

2008-10-07T21:03:00.002-04:00

So, I'm in the computer room, working. Peanut was in the living room, watching TV. Gene was out getting dinner. Tivo switched the channel to tape the debate, and Peanut comes tearassing into the office going MOMMY! JOHN MCCAIN AND BARACK OBAMA TURNED OFF MY TEEEVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

yeah. i know.

welcome niblette! (a birth story of epic proportions)

2008-08-26T21:40:00.002-04:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/boodafli/sets/72157606971201691/

(some gooey pix in that link--might trigger).

so. friday, my ctx were down to 2 mins apart, lasting btween 50 and 70 seconds each. i didn't feel pushy, but my mom and gene were both having heart attacks, b/c of the 'timing' thing. whatevs, i agree to go to the hospital and get checked, but tell them if i'm not at least 5 cm, i'm bringing my monkey ass home.

we go, they put me on a monitor (standard for VBAC here) and since i'm now on my back, ctx space back out to 5 or so mins apart. still strong and regular, tho.

eventually, my doc gets there, checks, and i'm only 2 cm.

she says baby looks good tho, and i decide to go home. i was already scheduled for an NST/BPP on saturday anyway, b/c that was the 41 week mark. so she said keep that appt.

go home, sit on birth ball. ctx come back, faster, but each time i check, there's no progress.

get up early, go to the chiro. he does some websters, and spends a ton of time 'opening' the pelvis. ctx stay steady, but increase in pain intensity.

head to the hospital for the tests. the NST is still picture perfect reactive, so they send us to the u/s tech. she's just supposed to measure fluid levels, but agrees to show us the baby if she can get a good view, since niblette wasn't cooperative during the 20 week u/s. so, she shows us the butt, and the belly, and the ribs, and one hand/arm, and the feet and legs. and then she's like, 'she might be too far down for a good face shot, but we'll try.' she succeeded, and there was niblette. with her arm over her head.

at least now i know why the 3 weeks of contractions never resulted in meaninful labor.

so at that point, i'm like, okay. the chances are, i *could* deliver her vaginally. they'd prolly have to break her arm or her shoulder or something, but i could do it. is it worth it to me to do that? no.

so while we're going back over to talk to the doc, i tell gene that we're going to go ahead and have the section, and he's like, are you sure there's no way to get her to move? and i was like, i don't think so. and i don't want to risk it. i mean, if her arm doesn't move--and we go for vaginal, and end up with a section anyway, how badly have we injured her arm?

get back to the doc, and she's like, 'well. your NST and AFI are fine. what do you want to do?' and i'm like, i want the section! and she's like, what?! since when? and i'm like, since her hand is all the way over her head! (i guess when they just check fluid levels, they don't note positions in the report, cuz she didn't know that. ) so my choices were that night, or wait till wed.

i'm not one of those people who's a big fan of being pregnant, so we went with saturday night. b/c i'd had breakfast, we had to wait till 6pm that evening to get the show on the road, so she let us go home for a few hours, which was nice.

so we get to the hospital, that evening, and get the show on the road. the plan is, the doc will tell gene right before she delivers niblette, so he can stand up and take pix. so, she says 'get ready!' and he stands up, and i'm waiting for the flash to go off.

and waiting.

and waiting.

and waiting.

and then i hear the doc say 'get the vacuum!' and i'm like, dude. it's a giant hole. wtf do you need a vacuum for? i don't say any of that outloud tho. and then i hear her say 'push push push' and i DO say 'are you talking to me? cuz that's not funny, yo' outloud. but it turns out she was talking to the three people who were putting their full bodyweight into pushing niblette out of my uterus. so i hear this hssssssssss pop! hsssssssssss pop! and it turns out that because niblette has a full head of hair, the vacuum keeps popping off. oy. so this went on for what seemed like EVER, altho i'm sure it was only 2 or 3 minutes. and then finally, i hear hsssssssssssssssss pop! SCREAMING crying!

oh she was pissed coming out. but out she came, via an EXTREMELY assisted c-section. 9 pounds, 2 ounces. 21 inches long. and...a 15.5 inch head.

anyway, the doc milked the cord before she cut it, (cuz she knew we wanted to let it finish pulsating, and while they can't do that in the OR, she did everything she could to keep it as close to that as possible.) and then she cut it super long so the ped could finish milking it, and so that gene could make the final, closer cut. she held niblette up over the curtain, and let me touch her face before she handed her off to the ped, and after they did the initial exam and stuff, they gave her to gene, and the drug guy took pix of the three of us together, and we were able to spend about 5 minutes together, before gene went with her to the nursery. he got to go IN the nursery this time, and he gave her her first bath, and stayed with her for the 2 hours of stitching up/recovery time i had. she was born at 7:54, and i had her in my arms by 10. (which is a far cry from the six hours between when i had peanut, and met her.)

she's nursing like a champ, and has already blown through the colostrum and brought my milk in. (srsly. she latched on at 10:30 saturday night, and unlatched around noon on sunday.)

she's sleeping well, eating well, and overall, making me fall head over heels in love everytime i look at her.

i feel like i've been run over by a bus. you can see the beginnings of some bruising where they pushed on my stomach, and taking a deep breath and laughing are still things i can only do right after the percocet kicks in, but it's okay.

with peanut's section, i felt like i had let the doctor make a really important decision FOR me. with this one, i feel like i made the decision, with the doctors help. in so much as i wanted the VBAC because i thought it would bring a little peace or closure or whatever, to the regrets i have over not being a bigger advocate for peanut--this section did the same thing, i think. because i know that, in this case, i totally made the right decision.

am i sad that i missed the wriggly gooey newborn on my belly sensation? yes. but other than the exit method, my doctor and the team at the hospital totally followed my birth plan 100%. (altho, after her enthusiastic delivery, i did opt for the vitamin K shot, because she had lots of little bruises on her head from the vacuum.)

so. i'm happy with this, all the way around.

belly shot

2008-06-23T17:23:00.001-04:00

0522080347
Originally uploaded by boodafli

7 months.

what you can learn on the internet

2008-05-22T15:55:00.002-04:00

it's interesting. i google all sorts of stuff (in fact, i might even be addicted to the google.) from baby soap ingredients, to amino acids for treating depression. i figure, i've learned more in a few years on the internet, than i did in most of my formal schoolin'.

since i had peanut, i've gotten involved in a few 'mommy boards', like babycenter, and mothering. (mostly mothering these days. more hippies, and a much wider selection of information.)

from mothering, i learned about researching vaccinations, not circumcising boys, breastfeeding till they're old enough to tell you it tastes like strawberries, and not beating the shit out of your kid. there, i found a community that gave voice to those things i was thinking, but never seeing put into practice in my social circle (since i was the first to get knocked up, that makes sense.)

anyway, after peanut was about 9 or 10 months old, i finally ventured out beyond the 'baby' forums. i discovered a 'dreadhead' tribe, and lurked there pretty intensely until i decided to lock. (and so now i'm getting to my point.)

today, i did a deep clean on my locks, soaking them in apple cider vinegar and baking soda, tea tree oil and lemon juice. (this gets any shampoo build up out, which is nice, since even 'residue free' shampoo leaves some reside behind.) anyway, i've done this 3 or 4 times over the lifetime of my dreds, but i've never bothered to write that shit down. so i ventured back into the dready tribe, to find the proportions to make the soak.

and here's what i learned on the internet today.

i learned that some significant others are assholes, and won't 'let' their partners have dreadlocks. or, they keep quiet during the locking process, and then make passive agressive snarky remarks about the immature locks.

i learned that even though sometimes, i want to strangle gene for being too nice (esp. when it comes to his job), i am really, truely fortunate, because i get to spend the rest of my life with someone who's biggest 'flaw', is being a sweetheart. because not only does he say nice things about my hair, he helps me maintain it, and he did all the backcombing and stuff to get them started.

so, on the internet, i learned one more reason why i love my babydaddy.

damn hippies.

2008-05-19T03:27:00.005-04:00

so, spring has sprung, and all that. we're in the process of pulling our yard together, and raking up all the leaves from over the fall/winter. (and there are a LOT since we have like, 10 oak trees.) rather than taking all these leaves to the dump, and taking up more than our fair share of landfill, we've decided to start a compost heap. we figure, since we've got half an acre, if we do it at the back of our property, it's not a huge project, we can just, literally, make a heap. i learned today, that, in addition to fruits, veggies, and coffee, you can compost paper towels, shredded black and white newspaper, toilet paper tubes, tea bags, leather watch straps, and all sorts of other totally random stuff. which is awesome. i mean, we use a dishcloth, mostly, but for grody bits, like chicken juice, i do revert to the papertowels for wiping stuff up. so, it's nice to know that i can do that, and then compost the paper towel, thus keeping it out of the landfill. woohoo!

and my mom is back to doing some gardening, so today, she and peanut planted 3 new azalea bushes out front. peanut is turning out to have quite the green thumb. i'm sure this makes my mom happy, since it totally skipped a generation. (altho, to that end, my cacti from last mothers day aren't dead yet, and we got some more over the course of the year, plus my aloe is actually, like, bigger, and even needed to be repotted. yay!)

and in the process of learning about compost, i discovered rainbarrels. now, the commercial ones seem absurdley expensive. it seems to me, that if i can find a plastic barrel, like those old batter barrels, with a lid, then we could get a plastic shower drain thingy, drill a hole in the lid, fasten the shower drain to it, and put a spigot down at the bottom of the barrel. we've got left over caulking from the birdbath, so i'm betting we could do the whole thing for less than like, 30 bucks. anyway, the idea, is that you put the bucket under your downspout, and when it rains, the water is caught in the barrel, and then you use that for watering your plants, washing your car, watering the compost heap, washing off outdoor furniture, or whatever. since we're actually, like, using the yard and stuff, i can see the benefit of having some non-hose water to do stuff with. i like my 17 dollar water bill, and i'm all about keeping it that way, right?

plus, this last week, i went through peanuts toys. cuz, really? she had a TON of shit. i seperated out the baby toys that we can reuse with niblette, and then purged THREE giant green garbage bags of toys and books. the salvation army is going to need a whole corner, i think. the interesting thing, is now that she has less stuff, she plays more. aaaaaaand, she's better at cleaning up without step-by-step instructions now. no more 'pick up the elephant. put it in the basket.' now she knows she's got a snuggly toy basket, and a hard toy basket, and a blocks basket. and she puts stuff away where it goes! hurrah! (she does still make me play bananaphone while she cleans, tho. and so i still want to rip my ears off and stick them in a blender. but at least her room is clean.)

and, round of applause, i'm caught up on my laundry! (thanks mom!) i moved the uncomfortable-while-pregnant clothes out of rotation.

oh! and, gene's mom LOVED her flowerpots. which, now that i type that, i don't think i blogged that project. for mothers day, peanut painted some flowerpots (and we decoupaged one, but i'm attached to it, since it was her first decoupage, so i kept that one) and we went to lowes and she picked out the flowers she wanted to send to her gram. we're supposed to be going to visit them in june, so maybe she'll get to help plant them.

all in all, i'm feeling the crunchy love vibes. (and i think i'm nesting. but shh.)

so now, i leave you with a random assortment of pictures, focusing mainly on yard work, and flowerpot creation. but some cuteness has been added for good measure. cuz, who can resist that grin?

open letter to corporate architects

2008-04-21T00:38:00.001-04:00

dear person who designs building layouts,

i feel like i might be over-stepping, given that all of my CAD classes were ones that i was in while cutting algebra, and i basically flunked my technical drawing classes, cuz they were the last period of the day, and, well, everyone knows that's when you get the best end-of-day-sales on dimebags in stairwell G.

that being said, i have some things i think might help you be more efficient at your chosen profession.

when you're designing, say, a bar, the location of the bathroom is important, but not crucial. one would hope that it would be close enough to the bar to avoid any drunken accidents, but you know, it IS a bar after all.

or an office building. i'm pretty sure the standard is one or two on each floor, plus one in the cafeteria, (especially if your cafeteria plans on 'mystery meat and succotash tuesdays'.)

but when you are planning a bookstore, with a large, dedicated childrens section, putting the bathroom on the ENTIRE OPPOSITE SIDE AND END of the store is just sadistic and cruel. to wit. imagine you've got a 3 year old, who is enthralled with 'the pigeon wants a puppy'. and you are six months pregnant, and have stopped off in the bookstore, because you know they have chairs! chairs!!! where you can sit! so you're sitting, after 6 hours of shopping. with a 3 year old. and did i mention that you're 6 months pregnant? which means that you basically look (and feel) like you're housing a small panamanian family under your shirt. and then you hear, 'i better poop, before i poop in my panties!' so, you pitch the book aside, and take said toddler by the hand. you breeze past your partner, and almost bowl over a cute, but VERY SLOW set of year-old twins. you toss a 'sorry! potty!' over your shoulder at the mother who is looking at you with that 'i will never let my kid wait THAT LONG to poop' look, and you're thinking 'HA! and i only had to potty train one kid. bitch.'

and, dear architect, i know that it is not your fault that bookstores eschew straight lines in favor of serpentine, labyrinthine layouts, requiring lots of weaving through the aisles, and past display tables, all full of interesting, shiny things that can distract a ground-level 3 year old. but this just brings me back to my point. because after you make that long and winding marathon trek across the store, with the wind at your back, and a lump of scatalogical terror in your throat, and you've pantsed your kid and plunked her on the potty, and all she does is fart?

you basically want everyone involved in the store layout to die a painful, eyes pecked out by angry roosters sort of death.

y'all know i don't church. but if i did, it'd be with this brother right here.

2008-03-21T04:19:00.002-04:00

soundbytes aren't ever the whole story. we're so quick to damn a reverend for anti-white, anti-american statements...even when the man is quoting a white ambassador from faux, i mean, fox news.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOdlnzkeoyQ (this is the 'chickens are coming home to roost 9/11 sermon, it's about 10 minutes long, and well fucking worth it.)

this is the 'goddamn america' sermon, and again, i say unto y'all, context makes a world of difference.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvMbeVQj6Lw

if you're interested in coming to your very own conclusions about reverend doctor jeremiah wright, instead of assuming the worst out of every angry nigrah you encounter, i encourage you to peep the trinity UCC youtube channel.

http://www.youtube.com/user/TRINITYCHGO

well, you know, gestation takes a lot of damn energy.

2008-03-06T06:03:00.002-05:00

so it's not like i haven't wanted to blog. i have. but this fetus? he is eating my brain. and my usually pithy self has been reduced to occasionally over-zealous endorsements of cheetos, jalepeno poppers, and barack obama. all three of those things, have made the last four months of dry heaves, all-day sickness, and general maliase, totally worth it. (you know, so has the prospect of niblet, of course, but that's one of those things i presume is assumed...) anyway.

the only thing more annoying than losing 20 pounds while pregnant? (cuz, you know, you're SUPPOSED to get bigger..but i've always been a rebel...) hillary freakin clinton. seriously. in 2003, when we were betting on who would run, my boyfriend and i were in a heated argument over hillary. he said that, no matter what, he'd never vote for her. i told him he was being stubborn, and probably a little bit sexist. and he laid out his reasons, which had to do with shady politics, and underhanded dealings, and 'issues' that were never resolved in the media to any great satisfaction. (to his credit, he didn't bring up vince foster or the blow job once.) i told him that he'd been paying attention to CONSERVATIVE media, and that, while BILL might be a shady assface, hillary just wanted to help the women and kids!

boy is my face red. i actually said yesterday, for the first time, 'if that heifer gets the nomination in november, i will stay the fuck home.' and gene was like, 'wait. you told me back in the day that you WANTED a woman president! and i know you love you some obama, but not voting? really?' and the answer, ladies and germs, is yup. well, if cynthia mckinney manages to stay on the green ballot, i'd vote for her. but the salient point is, i will NOT vote for hillary rodham clinton come hell or high water. that heifer is on notice.

i was mad about South Carolina. i was mad, but i was like, okay. after this backlash, they'll settle the hell down. nope. here comes bob johnson. here comes charlie 'uncle ruckus' rangel. here comes stephanie tubb jones (who better watch herself, cuz she's up for re-election soon, and black folks are gunnin for her ass-i promise she'll have a primary challenger this time around.) and you know, now it's not a mistake. the muslim email in iowa. it was a low level staffer...i could see it as a mistake. your boy who was like 'they'll call him a drug dealer!' was a surrogate, and i thought, well...maybe that's coming from his own media-fed paranoia of the scary black drug dealer. she fired him too. but after SC, she established a damn pattern. dismissing states with more than like, 3 black folks. waiting until she was at the state of the black union to give a half assed apology for her dumbassed husband. (although, if he were DUMB, i'd forgive him! but his ass grew up in the south! he's dealt with black voters all his political life. so that comparison to jesse jackson was a calculated as a math problem.) the muslim garb photo--even if she didn't release it, here comes stephanie tubb jones AGAIN talking some 'he should be proud of his 'native garb'!' bitch, his native garb is khaki's and a damn polo shirt. he was born in the USA just like bruce springsteen, so STFU. omg.

then on CNN, she's all 'he's not a muslim...AS FAR AS I KNOW'. well. hillary isn't making backroom deals with the canadian government to smear obama...AS FAR AS I KNOW. she's a lawyer. she knows the power of a good qualifier. that left just enough wiggle room. karl rove is prolly taking fucking notes for november.

and then she blacked him up in her TV ad. and not only did she make his ass darker, but she made his face squatter, and his nose wider.

i love black features. i love african beauty. i am proud of my nose, and my lips, and my hips, and my dreds, and i even bought that 'black is beautiful' t-shirt back in the 90s.

but she tried to make that shit ugly. forget the outright race-baity ignorance of it all. she tried to turn this beautiful black man, into a stereotype. the scary black man meme.

fuck her all the way to denver, america. show her racialicious ass that we love obama. we love him lightskinned, and we love him as the 'skurry negrObama'. and we won't support ANYONE, republican OR democrat, who tries to win the presidency on the backs and souls of black folks, while simultaneously telling white folks 'be scared of obama. be scared of muslims. brown people are dangerous. they will break into your house at 3am and eat your babies! rawr!'

now that i've riled you all the way up, go donate 10 dollars to my halfrican hero. barackobama.com

why i love me some dick gregory, and also redlasso

2008-02-25T03:53:00.000-05:00

preach it out loud, yo.

an open letter to hillary clinton

2008-02-04T14:27:00.000-05:00

an open letter to hillary clinton
well. as if 'welfare reform', NAFTA, the kyoto debacle, and monicagate weren't stark enough reasons to GOBAMA, there's this.

so much for no corporate interests, eh hills?

Dear Hillary,

By polling logic, I should be your supporter - Democrat, older woman, white, liberal. I was even in a dorm with you in college. I have pulled for you for years. But something this past summer fundamentally changed my responsibility to my children and grandchildren. In the time I have left in my life to protect them and others, I need to speak out.

I saw a News Hour piece on Maharastra, India, about farmers committing suicide. Monsanto, a US agricultural giant, hired Bollywood actors for ads telling illiterate farmers they could get rich (by their standards) from big yields with Monsanto's Bt (genetically engineered) cotton seeds. The expensive seeds needed expensive fertilizer and pesticides (Monsanto, again) and irrigation. There is no irrigation there. Crops failed. Farmers had larger debt than they'd ever experienced

And farmers couldn't collect seeds from their own fields to try again (true since time immemorial). Monsanto "patents" their DNA-altered seeds as "intellectual property." They have a $10 million budget and a staff of 75 devoted solely to prosecuting farmers. http://www.grist.org/comments/food/2008/01/17./). Since the late 1990s (about when industrial agriculture took hold in India),166,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide and 8 million have left the land.

Farmers in Europe, Asia, Africa, Indonesia,South America, Central America and here, have protested Monsanto and genetic engineering for years.

What does this have to do with you?

You have connections to Monsanto through the Rose Law Firm where you worked and through Bill who hired Monsanto people for central food-related roles. Your Orwellian-named "Rural Americans for Hillary" was planned withTroutman Sanders, Monsanto's lobbyists.

Genetic engineering and industrialized food and animal production all come together at the Rose Law Firm, which represents the world's largest GE corporation (Monsanto), GE's most controversial project (DP&L's - now Monsanto's - terminator genes), the world's largest meat producer (Tyson), the world's largest retailer and a dominant food retailer (Walmart).

The inbred-ness of Rose's legal representation of corporations which own controlling interests in other corporations there and of corporate boards sharing members who are also shareholders of each other's corporations there, is so thorough that it is hard to capture. Jon Jacoby, senior executive of the Stephens Group - one of the largest institutional shareholders of Tyson Foods, Walmart, DP&L - is also Chairman of the Board of DP&L and arranged the Wal-Mart deal. Jackson Stephens' Stephens Group staked Sam Walton and financed Tyson Foods. Monsanto bought DP&L. All represented at Rose.

You didn't just work there, you made friends. That shows in the flow of favors then and since. You were invited onto Walmart's board, you were helped by a Tyson executive to make commodity trades (3 days before Bill became governor), netting you $100,000, Jackson Stephens strongly backed Bill for Governor, and then for President (donating $100,000). http://www.financialsense.com/editor...2006/0828.html

Food and friends, in Clinton terms:

Bill's appointed friend Mike Espy, Secretary of Agriculture, who immediately significantly weakened federal chicken waste and contamination standards, opening the door to major expansion of Tyson's chicken factory farms (www.financialsense.com/ editorials/engdahl/2006/0828.html). Espy resigned, indicted for accepting bribes, illegal contributions, money laundering, illegal dispersal of USDA subsidies, .... Tyson Foods was the largest corporate offender. http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.ne.../monsanto.html

But what Bill did for Monsanto "genetic engineering" goes beyond inadequate concepts of giving corporate friends influence: He unleashed genetic engineering into the world. And then he helped close off people's escape from it.

Genetic engineering is many orders of magnitude different from "normal" (even polluting) business in its potential biologic ramifications. The warning myth of Pandora'a Box - letting irretrievable things rush out into nature - has become real. The harrowing change to the world from nuclear fission and fusion is the closest parallel.

What did Bill do?

1. Bill's put Monsanto people in at the FDA, as US Agricultural Trade Representatives, on International Biotechnology Consultive Forums, and more ... (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/072600-03.htm) or http://www.monitor.net/monitor/9904b/monsantofda.html or http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Revolving-Door.htm

2. Bill's FDA gave Monsanto permission to market rBGH (a GE bovine growth hormone), the first genetically engineered product let loose on us (or did tomatoes with fish DNA get there first?).

3. Despite reports of bovine illness and death, Bill's FDA did not recall it or put warnings on it. Even "a very angry, very vocal nationwide consumer base" had no impact. " http://www.wafreepress.org/14/Envirowatch.html

4. Bill's FDA wouldn't even label rBGH as "present" in milk.

5. When dairy farmers tried to label their own milk rBGH-free so the public could choose, Bill's USDA threatened all dairies that their products could be confiscated from stores. Michael Taylor, USFDA Deputy Commissioner, was formerly Monsanto's counsel.

6. How were consumers to protect their family, given Bill's FDA enforced public blindness, except to buy only organic? But Bill's FDA tried to close off that last escape, proposing to include in "organic" standards, "the dirty three" a : genetic engineering of plants and animals, use of irradiation in food processing and use of municipal sewage sludge as a fertilizer. (My emphasis.) The FDA backed down. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...5AC0A96E958260

Had this gone through, Monsanto could have finally labeled rBGH milk ... as "organic." And animal waste from factory farms, a pollution nightmare for Tyson and others, could have been sold as fertilizer.

USDA head Dan Glickman: "This is probably the largest public response to an [Agriculture Department] rule in modern history." In fact the response was 20 times greater than anything ever before proposed by the USDA. http://www.orpheusweb.co.uk/john.rose/orglab.html

Personally, I resent years of effort to protect my children and now grandchildren, from that crap.

Politically, Bill sided against small farmers and against the public's right to know, and with Monsanto.

A snap shot of our food:

Oils: Sheep died in India after feeding on Bt cotton fields (http://btcotton.blogspot.com/). We feed our children Bt cotton, as cottonseed oil in peanut butter and cookies.

Grains: 49% of US corn acreage was planted in Bt corn in 2007. A French study proved Monsanto's GMO corn causes kidney and liver toxicity (http://www.organicconsumers.org/arti...ticle_4790.cfm). Soft drinks and candy have highly concentrated Bt corn, in the form of high fructose Bt corn syrup. The US food system depends most on two crops, soy (90% GMO, 90% of traits owned by Monsanto) and corn, the largest crop (60% GMO, nearly 100% Monsanto traits). "[E]ssentially our entire food supply is genetically modified, to the benefit of one company." The Grocery Manufacturers of America in 2000 estimated that 70 percent of US food contains GM traits. http://www.organicconsumers.org/arti...ticle_9716.cfm

Meat: Steroids bulk up atheletes. Monsanto steroids bulk up animals - more weight, more profit. We feed our children steroids in meats. Is this why our children are fattening, like Hansel and Gretel?

Poultry: Bill's USDA weakened chicken waste and contamination standards and attempted to allow sewage sludge as fertilize crops. I will say more about disease from industrialized poultry farms waste, at the end of this letter.

Milk: Over 30 scientific publications have shown increased levels of IGF-1 in milk with rBGH increases risks of breast cancer by up to seven-fold, also increasing colon and prostate cancers risks. Canada, 29 European nations, Norway, Switzerland, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa ban U.S. rBGH dairy products. Bill's USFDA put no restrictions, no warning labels (not allowing labels at all). (My emphasis.) http://www.sustdev.org/index.php?opt...2127&Itemid=35

American children eat that food and drink that milk, Hillary. Coincidentally, American children are increasingly fat and sick.

Here, Bill ignored pleas for labeling. Abroad, Bill ignored intense international objections over the same issue - unlabeled US food exports - badly straining trading relations. Monsanto's "good ole boy," he betrayed American families at the deepest levels conceivable - their family's health and their democratic right to know. He betrayed our rural life and American family farmers - backing corporation deceit and control, over honesty and clean farming.

But, HIllary, it is one thing to not label a regular ole food product to sell it, and quite another to sell a suspected-dangerous food product (rBGH), but Bill's administration didn't label (or stop) a well-known, terrifying threat - Mad Cow Disease.

Bill's FDA's August, 1997 regulation permitted "known TSE-positive [Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy] material to be used in pet food, pig, chicken and fish feed," only requiring the label to read "Do not feed to cattle and other ruminants" in the US.

Monsanto added to the problem. "There is evidence that rbST use [Monsanto's GE bovine growth hormone] reduces the useful lifespan of a dairy cow. ... Given that the incubation period for BSE is at least three to five years and perhaps longer, rbST-treated cows could harbor "hidden" BSE. That is, they might be infected but still asymptomatic when sent to slaughter." (My emphasis.) http://www.consumersunion.org/food/bgh-codex.htm

Bill let TSE into our entire food chain. And who owned the feed and slaughter and genetic engineering corporations whch benefitted?

Please, tell me, Hillary, what he could possibly have gotten in friendship or favors, that could ever justify his exposing millions of people to this?

With genetic engineering itself, Bill did something to the whole world, which tried to object. Words are inadequate to express how astoundingly immoral, beyond human bounds and conceit and power, that was.

"Even for the biggest "winners," it is like winning at poker on the Titanic." Jerry Mander: Facing the Rising Tide

He had no right.

Do you hear that?

Bill had sex from Monica Lewinsky. That's "dinky immoral." That's chicken feed immoral - excuse the Tyson pun, excuse the TSE-laced pun. Bill let genetic engineering lose on NATURE itself.

"Our way of life is likely to be more fundamentally transformed in the next several decades than in the previous one thousand years…Tens of thousands of novel transgenic bacteria, viruses, plants and animals could be released into the Earth's ecosystems…Some of those releases, however, could wreak havoc with the planet's biospheres." Jeremy Rifkin, Biotech Century

Bill did this to us, like it was some nothing and he, some big dumb ass Southern boy, just smiling and getting in good with the Big Boys, thinking about as much about the consequences of something this immense and about us human beings out here, as he thought about you, when he was unfaithful with Monica. Just one big fool getting off on the power and used to getting away with things.

Terminator genes, developed by DP&L, a Rose Firm client, prevent seeds from "working" after only one season. Farmers "must" repurchase (patents and suing not certain enough control, it seems). Those "killing" genes pose the apocalyptic risk of breaking out into nature. Natural seeds could fail, too. Nature could fail.

Far-fetched?

GMO fields are already contaminating normal species (http://www.foodfirst.org/pubs/backgr.../sp02v8n2.html. Berkeley Professor of Microbiology, Ignacio Chapela, wrote an open letter, warning the Mexican government about just this breaking out phenomenon happening in maize (http://www.slogefree.org/newsletters...04-12-21.4353/).
And it has already happened with weeds - pesticide resistant GMO seeds break lose and weeds become pesticide-resistant Superweeds (http://www.newscientist.com/article/...-uncommon.html).

But Bill's USDA spokesman, Willard Phelps said the USDA wanted the technology to be `widely licensed and made expeditiously available to many seed companies.'
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...articleId=3082

"Genetic Engineering is often justified as a human technology, one that feeds more people with better food. Nothing could be further from the truth. With very few exceptions, the whole point of genetic engineering is to increase sales of chemicals and bio-engineered products to dependent farmers." David Ehrenfield: Professor of Biology, Rutgers University

Hillary, one third of the world's bee colonies have collapsed. Gone. Farmers in India are killing themselves. Farmers and bees. Since organic farmers in India are fine and organic farmers report no colony collapse, what does these farming catatrophes say about "industrial agriculture"?

Mad Cow Disease is another direct result of industrial agriculture. And now ....

... transnational poultry factories are implicated as the source of bird flu. ... Small scale poultry farms and wild birds seem not to be the problem [just as small farmers are not the issue in Mad Cow Disease], and yet "initiatives are multiplying to ban outdoor poultry, squeeze out small producers and restock farms with genetically modified chickens. ... http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2...6-02-27-01.asp "Of the few outbreaks that did occur in [Laos], more than 90% broke out in commercial poultry operations, not free-ranging flocks." http://www.birdflubook.com/a.php?id=75

Monsanto (and others) is currently working with the USDA (http://www.farmandranchguide.com/art...s/update01.txt)
to force small farmers to tag every animal with a global tracking device (NAIS - National Animal Identification System). Allegedly related to food safety, Monsanto and others would be creating a vast corporate digital library on every move of small farmers's livestock. http://goexcelglobal.he.net/~natpropg/nonais.html

But small farmers do not create the contaminated environments, do not supply the feed, do not grind up diseased animals into feed (how Mad Cow began) and then sell it. In fact, their farming methods, free range and small scale, are significantly healthier and safer for animals and food than the massive concentration of animals by corporate industrial agriculture.

Monsanto is also aggressively pushing for state laws to limit farmers' right to choose what to plant and the public's right exclude GE plants from their communities http://www.rense.com/general65/righto.htm

Cattle bloated by steroids, lapse and loss of 10,000 year old normal seeds, immense pollution from factory farms, deadly-disease-ridden feed, world-wide bee colony collapse, poisoned soil and depleted water supplies, Superweeds (http://www.newscientist.com/article/...-uncommon.html), lawsuits against farmers, loss of family farms, and ... India farmers killing themselves in what may be the largest mass suicide in recorded human history (on average ... one farmers' suicide every 30 minutes since 2002 - The Hindu 1.30.08) - that is industrial agriculture.

Monsanto and Tyson are two of the largest industrial agricultural corporations in the world. Industrial agriculture is represented by your Rose Law Firm.

Your claim to care about food safety is terrifying double-speak given what Bill did and who you take donations from. Your idea of a Department of Food Safety would centralize control of food - in whose corporate connected hands? You talk tough about labeling food - ah, but "foreign" food - a sleight of hand tricking a public desperate for safe US food. You talk about food safety but Bill degraded food in every imaginable way and prevented minimally sane labeling.

I am a person before I am a woman. Your gender means nothing. It is a media distraction. Your policies on health and food and women and children, are meaningless in the face of connections that have threatened those groups profoundly, connections you have never denounced.

Monsanto uses child labor in India, primarily very young girls, exposing them to a lethal pesticide 13-14 hours a day, for pennies in pay. http://www.indiaresource.org/issues/...ounilever.html But you take donations from their lobbyists. You say you care about black people but as the poorest people in this country, they are least able to buy organic and are forced to eat the contaminated foods Bill let into our food system. The National Black Farmers Association has a boycott out on all Monsanto products.

Do you eat organic?

So, who are you with, hapless black consumers and black farmers, or Monsanto? Mothers left to give their children rBGH milk, or Monsanto? Women exposed to 7 times greater risk of breast cancer, or Monsanto? Desperate farmers in India and young children forced into child labor in cottonseed factories there, or Monsanto? Animals suffering from lives in filthy cages and disgusting feedlots, shot up with steroids and hormones and antibiotics, or Monsanto? Our children who eat candy with high fructose Bt corn syrup associated with kidney and liver toxicity, or Monsanto?

Edwards was right about your corporate connections. I just didn't understand until I saw that PBS show and read about Monsanto, how personally affected my children and grandchildren, and all people around the world, have been.

I will not vote for you. I will vote for someone who will commit themselves to work on behalf of small farmers and real food and decent treatment of animals and to end this industrialized agricultural nightmare that is taking us off a cliff.

Linn Cohen-Cole
Atlanta

Disclaimer. I am not a scientist. I have read for months on this subject, and am including only a tiny portion of the horrifying things I have learned. I am expressing my opinion as person and may be wrong. Perhaps things are swell out there and rBGH is fabulous and TSE-laced feed is great, and genetic engineering is the best thing since manna. But I am scared for my family and I have not only a right to say so but an obligation to do so. I am angry that Monsanto was allowed the influence it had and has done the things it definitely seems to have. I am disgusted by industrialization of every tender and beautiful part of our world and hope, for all our children's sake, we are not too late to pull back.

yes, we can!

2008-02-02T14:37:00.000-05:00

yes we can!

need speakers and sound.

geek much?

2008-01-14T05:45:00.000-05:00

80%

peanutty lookalike

2008-01-04T06:02:00.001-05:00

MyHeritage: Celebrity Collage - Family history

just pix of christmas, and the end result of our crafty crime spree

2008-01-01T04:00:00.000-05:00

so, there are more wooden animals, and a ton of video, but that should whet your whistle for now, eh?

i might have a new addiction

2007-11-27T17:53:00.000-05:00

mosaic stuff is mind numbingly easy! and it looks like hours of effort, yo. but once i decided on the pattern, it took maybe 30 minutes to glue it on. then, today, the grouting took 25. 15 of that was waiting for it to set up so i could wipe the excess off of the tiles. and i bet it would look even nicer if i'd actually had rubber gloves on, instead of ziploc baggies over my hands. (shh. the rubber gloves are on a top secret mission somewhere. probably the shed.) anyway. pics of the grout-in-progress, and the finished pot.

a month to go, roughly.

2007-11-27T01:24:00.000-05:00

so. let's see. today, i got the tiles glued for the first of the flowerpots for my mom. i still have to inlay the grout, but that should be the easy peasy part. (i hope. i'm sort of terrified of grout.) here are pics. it's mostly a repeating design, with (what i hope looks like) a flower on the 'front'.

and, i've got most of the knitting part of the dino trio done. then it's off to the yelloooooooooooo dye bath, a quick air dry, seaming/stuffing, and they'll be ready for their closeups.

rest of to-do list.

*slippers for my dad
*rest of flower pots for my mom
*fingerless driving gloves for mom
*boho baby knitted dolls for pnut
*felt board for pnut
*rest of the board books for pnut
*rest of wood cutouts
*paint/decorate the dollhouse
*fingerless biking gloves for gene
*paint the wooden treasure chest
*paint wooden mailbox
*make mail carrier bag
*make letters and messages
*sew felt food

CC2K7 update. (get it?)

2007-11-22T04:27:00.000-05:00

so. in the crafty christmas department, my playsilk blanks arrived from www.thaisilks.com. they're very nice, a soft habatoi silk. i got some in 22x22, some in 27z27, and some in 36x36. and i got them all dyed today while i was making pumpkin cake for genocidal pilgrim day. w00t. anyway. the process of dyeing these is very much the same as dyeing wool. with these, i used food coloring, just cuz i was out of koolaid. i wasn't sure how that was going to work out, but they've been washed and dried, and they're color fast! w00t! i did the basic ROYGBP, and then i did a sort of tie-dye night sky effect on one, and a sort of KMFDM cammo style on the last one. i wet the scarf, and then just went all jackson pollock with the little vials of food coloring. then i simmered in vinegar just the same as always. it came out nicely, i think. here are the pix

all of them in one shot.

longshot

close up of ROY

close up of GBP and the odd ducks

close up of the odd ducks

i've finished some contract knitting. i'm feeling especially pleased with myself, cuz this is super sproingy yarn, and the resulting hat and mittens should be SO warm and cozy. here is my faithful model peanut, although they're not for her, she's enamored enough with the hat that i'm going to knit one for her as well. even though it's only cold enough for a hat like that for like, 2 days down here, and we've already had one. it is so so soft, and i heart knitting with it.

hat

mittens (peek-a-boo!)

so we're going to have thanksgiving with some friends of ours down here, and it's like a potluckish thing, although, since it's at a restaurant, they do the majority of the cooking. this is our contribution. the recipe is linked above, although i switched out their heavy glaze for a lighter, confectioners sugar/water/rice milk/vanilla extract mixture. same flavor, but no weird greasy aftertaste. what i love about bundt pans, is that they make all baking seem tremendously more complex than it really is. and also more elegant. i'm pretty sure even jello would look elegant with fluted sides. okay maybe not. but pumpkin certainly does.

so there you have it. those are the latest updates on the crafty christmas so far. stay tuned! more to come!

progress update

2007-11-12T04:39:00.001-05:00

no pix yet, but

1 blue/beige wintery gnome

1 fully knit, waiting to be dyed, stuffed, seamed stegasaurus dinosaur

1 felt tiger hand puppet

the beginnings of a story about a day at the beach for one of the blank board books we got (www.barebooks.com)

and, purchased 1 hand carved kenyan kalimba, 1 peanut sized acoustic guitar.

total plastic so far? none.

it begins

2007-11-09T03:00:00.000-05:00

here's some stuff...2 hand puppets out of felt (the elephant and the giraffe), the knitted bits for the playfood (i still need to dye them to their appropriate colors), one woodworked ladybug, and 2 knitted gnome dolls. the punkin gnome, and the autumn gnome.

i'm counting on public accountability to keep me on track. i am hopeful that if i put myself out there as queen crafty christmas, then perhaps, i'll actually get it all done on time. hopefully.

48 days till christmas!

2007-11-06T03:17:00.000-05:00

so, you know i'm all like 'eek! lead!' about toys made in china. and while the hippy stores online are nice, they're farking expensive, and i know it's cuz it's hand made shit, but you know, i make handmade shit too...which brought about my decision for....'a very crafty christmas 2007'! so far, i've knit some play food sandwhiches, sewn a felt elephant hand puppet, and started a felt giraffe hand puppet. i bought a kit at michaels for an unfinished wooden treasure chest, and i ordered some blank board books at barebooks.com, and some plain silk squares from thaisilks.com, which i'm gonna dye with either koolaid or cake dye. i bought a jigsaw, too, so i can make some little wooden animals. and i found a pattern for a totally awesome handmade play kitchen here http://fortytworoads.blogspot.com/2007/10/toy-kitchen-is-finished.html which i have BIG plans for. she covered hers in white contact paper, but i googled, and they make marble and granite papers, and papers that look like tile, and stuff. so i'mma go to our local store and see if they offer samples, cuz i wanna do most of it in wood grain paper, and then cover the oven door with silver paper so it looks like stainless steel, and then just a granit counter, and nice tile backsplash, and for the shelf. i've got patterns for a bunch of other playfood, little cakes and snacky things for knitting, and then i've got patterns for fruits and veggies out of felt. i have a pattern for a knitted tea set, which is stankin adorable, but i need a size of needle that i don't have yet, so that's on the back burner. and we saw this unfinished wooden dollhouse, like a bookcase dollhouse, so we're gonna get that, and paint it, and make tiny furniture and dolls for that. and i've got this idea for a play canopy, out of a lampshade frame, and some cotton duck canvas, with little windows cut out, and some fun stuff attached inside...but i don't have a pattern for it, so i'm not sure how that's gonna pan out, but it's worth a shot, right? those are the things that are FOR SURE for christmas, come hell or high water. then, if i get all that done, i've got plans for some stocking stuffers, like ispy bags, and bean bags, and those water/oil/food coloring things that look like baby lava lamps.

this weekend coming up, we're gonna go through peanuts toys and get rid of most of the plastic, made in china stuff. i gave my parents and the outlaws a list of hippy stores, so that if they wanna buy toys, they can buy toys that are lead free/pthalate free, and won't make my eyeball twitch.

i'm SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i've never done an entirely homemade christmas (well, and i'm still not, i guess, cuz the people in my life who no longer gnaw on things like a ferret are getting storebought stuff in addition to handmade stuff) but i'm feeling the buzz. but that's why i haven't been on lately...cuz all my free time is being spent furtively crafting. the knitting i can do in front of her, cuz in her world, *everything* i knit is either a hat, or a sweater, so that's not too tought. but the wood kit takes sanding, which is loud and raspy, and the other tiny woodkit i bought takes paint, so i've been keeping that in the kitchen, and 'cleaning up a big mess' a lot, lol.

and the verdict was.....

2007-10-17T17:42:00.000-04:00

(the resolution of peanuts felonious pee)

she calls me up to the stand, and she's like 'okay ms boodafli. you're charged with (glances down at paper) disorderly conduct for---what??!! (looks ay cop incredulously over granny glasses) public urin--how old was this kid??!!' (sounding more and more perturbed. i say, 'she's two, your honor'. she goes 'TWO?????!!!!!!!!! (exasperated sigh) case dismissed'

and then the cop says 'but, the real problem, your honor, was that she was (looks at me with unbridled contempt) parading her pantsless daughter in front of a bunch of strange men!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'
so the judge gives her the raised eyebrow and i say 'your honor, if i may--'
and she interupts me with a dr.evil style 'shhhh!' and says-'get a porta potty. case dismissed'

so i call my mom, cuz she kept pnut
and i'm like 'mommy (all sniffley) this is my one phone call. i got 5 years HARD LABOR!!!!!!'
and she said 'see? told you they'd dismiss!' and i told my dad the same thing--only i said chain gang
and he said--'you b!tch them before they b!tch you. i'll send cigarettes.'

yay judicial system!

i have had it

2007-09-24T17:14:00.001-04:00

with humanity

i'm opting out. i'mma go live with the monkeys like jane goodall.

so, dp wanted to go get nitrogen put in his brand new tires, cuz apparently it's teh noo hottnezz for tires, or whatever. fine. we go. we're potty learning, and peanut has been doing wonderfully on the potty. so we pull into the work bay at this place, and she tells me she has to pee. i ask mechanic dude if they've got a bathroom i can take my 2 year old to use. he says nope. fine. i take her behind some bushes, and let her pee there. a cop sees.

so now, i have to go to court, for violating the local ordinance about public urination.

and i wouldn't be mad about that...

except that the cop said she was citing me because 'i should have known better than to strip my daughter half naked in front of strange men and let her pee in public. what if they'd been perverts, who went home and rubbed one out while thinking about her.' and i said, well, unless i missed som ething, i can't control what people think. and she said 'i'm citing you to teach you a lesson about protecting your daughter.'

i'm livid. i don't like cops (meta, not the obligatory, w00t cops! i know this cool cop) and this is not doing anything for my opinion. this chick looked like she was maybe 19. if you want to cite me for having my kid pee in public, do that. if you wanna cite me for being stupid, bite me, it's not against the law.

ARGH!

i am too angry

2007-09-22T04:01:00.000-04:00

to have any coherent original thought on this. i've written four blogs, and deleted them all, because i cannot seem to get the important parts across without a lot of anger and venom obscuring them. so--i'm lifting the 'share this with your friends' email from colorofchange.org.

I just learned about a case of segregation-era oppression happening today in Jena, Louisiana. I signed onto ColorOfChange.org's campaign for justice in Jena, and wanted to invite you to do the same.

http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/?id=2402-464197

Last fall in Jena, the day after two Black high school students sat beneath the "white tree" on their campus, nooses were hung from the tree. When the superintendent dismissed the nooses as a "prank," more Black students sat under the tree in protest. The District Attorney then came to the school accompanied by the town's police and demanded that the students end their protest, telling them, "I can be your best friend or your worst enemy... I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen."

A series of white-on-black incidents of violence followed, and the DA did nothing. But when a white student was beaten up in a schoolyard fight, the DA responded by charging six black students with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

It's a story that reads like one from the Jim Crow era, when judges, lawyers and all-white juries used the justice system to keep blacks in "their place." But it's happening today. The families of these young men are fighting back, but the story has gotten minimal press. Together, we can make sure their story is told and that the Governor of Louisiana intervenes and provides justice for the Jena 6. It starts now. Please join me:

http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/?id=2402-464197

The noose-hanging incident and the DA's visit to the school set the stage for everything that followed. Racial tension escalated over the next couple of months, and on November 30, the main academic building of Jena High School was burned down in an unsolved fire. Later the same weekend, a black student was beaten up by white students at a party. The next day, black students at a convenience store were threatened by a young white man with a shotgun. They wrestled the gun from him and ran away. While no charges were filed against the white man, the students were later arrested for the theft of the gun.

That Monday at school, a white student, who had been a vocal supporter of the students who hung the nooses, taunted the black student who was beaten up at the off-campus party and allegedly called several black students "nigger." After lunch, he was knocked down, punched and kicked by black students. He was taken to the hospital, but was released and was well enough to go to a social event that evening.

Six Black Jena High students, Robert Bailey (17), Theo Shaw (17), Carwin Jones (18), Bryant Purvis (17), Mychal Bell (16) and an unidentified minor, were expelled from school, arrested and charged with second-degree attempted murder. The first trial ended in June, and Mychal Bell, who has been in prison since December, was convicted of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery (both felonies) by an all-white jury in a trial where his public defender called no witnesses. During his trial, Mychal's parents were ordered not to speak to the media and the court prohibited protests from taking place near the courtroom or where the judge could see them.

The Jena Six are lucky to have parents and loved ones who are fighting tooth and nail to free them. They have been threatened but they are standing strong. We know that if the families have to go it alone, their sons will be a long time coming home. But if we act now, we can make a difference.

Join me in demanding that Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco get involved to make sure that justice is served and that DA Reed Walters drop the charges against all six young men.

http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/?id=2402-464197

Thanks.

mason dixon insanity

2007-08-09T19:08:00.001-04:00

0809071737
Originally uploaded by boodafli

here be a set of baby stuff from the MDK book. a heartbreakingly cute one piece baby kimono, a baby bib o love, and a baby genius burp cloth.

basically, that right there, took less than 12 ounces of cotton yarn. that means, that that's a whole gift set, HAND MADE for under like, 12 bucks.

if you do not already own mason dixon knitting, you should go buy it RIGHT. NOW. because it's the best knitting book. ever.

oh look! a petition!

2007-08-05T01:15:00.000-04:00

because we should so have to sign our names to get congress, or whoever, to STOP LETTING KIDS TOYS BE TAINTED WITH LEAD AND SHIT. whatever. sign. tiny revolutions, people. tiny revolutions.

Dear MomsRising Member,

As if being a mother of young children isn't challenging enough, now I have to sneak around my son's room in the dead of the night to confiscate his Elmo, Zoe, and Big Bird. As you may have heard, on August 1st, Fisher-Price recalled 967,000 plastic preschool toys because their paint contains excessive amounts of lead. For more information on the recall, see the websites listed at the end of this message.

This is a disturbing trend. A little over a month ago we were sneaking Thomas the Tank engine out our children's toy boxes. What toy will we hear about next? This has got to stop.

SUPPORT EFFORTS TO INCREASE TOY SAFETY: Sign the petition to let Congress and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) know that, "Testing children's products for toxic chemicals must be a priority. No more toxic toys and children's products!"

*Just click here to sign the petition for children's safety now: http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/momsrising/signUp.jsp?key=2362&t=petition.dwt

*Please forward this email to friends!

**Please also forward this email to friends! First, they need to know to get rid of these toys. Second, we need them to join us in demanding higher toy safety standards. So, if you have already signed this petition (or even if you haven't) please forward this email to your family, friends, school, sport, and faith communities. We'll deliver these petition signatures to key members of Congress, and the Executive Director of the CPSC, Patsy Semple, to let them know we demand safety and higher standards for our children.

LEGISLATION NEEDS CITIZEN VOICES: Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., introduced a bill last month to expand the Consumer Product Safety Commission's ability to protect the public. Another piece of legislation, introduced by Sen. Durbin and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., would require third-party testing of products for young children.

Now that good legislation has been introduced, let's make sure it gets passed. Too often bills get lost in the crowd of demands being place upon our legislators. Let's make sure this is a top priority. Tell Congress and the Consumer Product Safety Commission that they must take action now to protect our children from toxic toys and goods!

*Don't forget to sign the petition for children's safety at: http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/momsrising/signUp.jsp?key=2362&t=petition.dwt AND please also forward this email and petition link to your friends and family!

Thanks for taking time to make a difference! --Donna, Joan, Katie, Kristin, Nanette, and The MomsRising Team

To learn more:

* CPSC Info on the Fisher-Price recall: http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml07/07257.html
* CBS News story on Fisher-Price recall: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/08/01/national/main3124623_page2.shtml
* Center for Disease Control web site about lead poisoning: http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/faq/about.htm
* List of recalled children's products: http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/category/child.html

i'm not dead!

2007-07-30T15:44:00.000-04:00

really. i've just gotten sucked into the obscenely addictive world of ravelry.com. if you are a knitter, you MUST go sign up right. this. moment. go ahead. i'll wait.

there. that's better.

anyway, i've been tagged. 8 things you prolly don't give a turd about, with regards to me.

1. i like poptarts, but i hate them toasterfied.

2. i like flylady.

3. honey mustard is my fave

4. i miss smoking cigarettes.

5. i ROCK at guitar hero.

6. i wear jelly bracelets.

7. if i never wear anything but flip flops for shoes, i'll be happy.

8. i love the beach, but hate sand. irony?

more fun with fotos!

2007-05-01T05:51:00.000-04:00

internet? i am old.

2007-04-30T17:27:00.000-04:00

so, i've been lurking on a message board for peeps with dreds, because i like to see how other people without textured hair have succeeded on their loc quests. and there's a whole thread dedicated to pictures, which is wonderful, since i don't really feel like trying to decipher this new internet speak which makes even less sense than the internetspeak i grew up on.

anyway, there are these kids, with faces full of piercings. now, i have my tongue, my eyebrow, my nose, my belly button, (used to have my nipple, took it out while preggo, too chicken to see if it's still open.) and several ear peircings. so it's not as though i'm anti-body mod. quite the contrary. i think people without extraneous holes are weird and prudish.

but four lip rings? the bridge of ones nose? a FOREHEAD?! seriously? that's not cute. and that's how i know i'm getting old. 6 years ago, i wouldn't even have batted an eyelash. but now, all i can think is 'wonder if he has to use a sippy cup?' 'god that gives me a headache' 'how does one decide to pinch up skin on their forehead, and jam a barbell through it?'

and it kinda makes me fear for future generations. i mean, in my moms world, only the rebelly bad kids and convicts had tats. my older bros, it was only gangsters, rebelly bad kid, and people who were trying to 'express' themselves. my generation, it was every kid who wanted a big reactionary eff yew to their parents, and all of the above listed people. but now it seems like, it's a contest. to be the most extreme, to push the envelope as far as possible, and it doesn't even seem to be about actually liking your jewelry. i've seen kids with freakin keyrings as spotholders. okay, so i know good body jewelry is expensive, but there is a REASON for that! it's cuz when you put holes in your body, you open it up to infection and scariness. so you need things which are not going to be full of weird contaminates, like lead and aluminum. things which are NOT keyrings, or safety pins. honestly.

kids these days. i tell ya. my rules for peanut? no peircing the forehead, the nosebridge, the cheek, the neck, the back, the yoni. everything else is fair game, but only one piercing per body part. (cuz not even lenny kravitz makes multiple nose holes sexy.)

bare

2007-04-30T03:39:00.000-04:00

so steph over at adventures in babywearing has decided to do a makeupless blogger party thang. and since i'm feeling stuck in a blog rut (hence the long interludes between posts) a picture blog seems a good way to at least get back on the blog wagon. i rarely wear makeup, (as in, only to weddings and funerals) so this was easy. this is also a really recent pic, as i was documenting my dred journey (after having to rip some of them apart, because they'd gotten too attached to one another. (ow. yeah. it hurts as much as you think it does.) so. there ya go.

my kid? twisted.

2007-04-05T13:25:00.000-04:00

so, a while back, we went shopping. and there was this toy bin, with all of these toys of a sort of dubious origin. i mean, it seemed as though some of them were happy meal toys. but there was some cute stuff, too. like a shiny purple octopus. which is what i was rooting for. but my daughter apparently inherited my moms social worker genes, because she chose the one toy that made my insides feel all squirmy. the one eyed cat. okay. it was a quarter. okay, other than the GIANT HOLE WHERE IT'S EYE SHOULD BE it's cute. okay, it's exactly the right size to fit in her hand.

did she have to name it spot?

pictures from the second year. (all 2 days of it.)

2007-03-17T23:47:00.000-04:00

two.

2007-03-15T13:46:00.000-04:00

i can't even explain it. she talks, and makes jokes, and pees on the potty, and wipes, and asks to go to bed now, and decides what she wants for breakfast and lunch, and what she wants to drink, and what she wants to wear. i know that i chose AP parenting because it seemed logical that, if you meet the need for dependence, you foster independence, but holy crud i didn't think she'd be her own little person so soon. it's incredible to watch tho. she knows what books she likes best, what tv shows, she's got very set ideas on what she wants to do at the playground. she is her own little person, her own little juggernaut of opinion.

but she is still my baby. when her head gets all heavy on my shoulder, and her drool runs down my arm, she is my baby. when she wraps her tiny arms around my legs, she's my little baby. when she's explaining to her bunny bun that he needs a piwwow and a bwankwet to go to sweep, she is totally my little baby. (and one that i'm never taking for speech therapy, because, god. bwankwet. that's too effing cute.)

watching her grow has been a priveledge. one that i'm not sure i deserve, but i'm damn grateful for it. she amazes me every. single. day. but i can't believe she's two. pray for me, i hear it gets worse from here on out.

travelling miles tonight

2007-03-13T04:49:00.000-04:00

it's been a long time
since i've walked this line
thin, blue, aurally fine
but i'm travelling miles tonight
these notes move swift beneath my
feet tapping rhythms i can't remember learning
i sit still
because i'm travelling miles tonight
his crystal clear breath holds me
exhales me
i linger here on the fading
waiting
my heart beats drums like
a syncopated siren call
all i need is this sound
this music that moves me like ground
i cover, like lovers
i'm travelling miles tonight
space and time
such sublime conceptions
directions i've never moved in
tuned in
spaced out like mars, stars and the moon
this trumpet croons and i swoon
these sounds divine,
like when god said
i am
the world bloomed then
and in this room when
that music looms
i have to move and
i'm travelling
miles
tonight.

2007-03-13T00:16:00.000-04:00

so we're peeing on the potty pretty regularly. we're using the phrase 'poop a potty' interchangeably with 'pee a potty', so mama never knows what's coming out until it happens.

i'm still knitting.

we've added grumpy, beside the seaside, and clean it up to the list of songs peanut can sing.

i feel like that might be all the news these days. i had some other ranty stuff, but i feel pretty calm today. went to the Y, and the park. overall, a good day.

i can't believe she's almost two. crazy.

bump shot.

2007-03-05T03:30:00.000-05:00

steph over at adventures tagged me. so, here is my belly the day before my c-section.

why i heart boobies

2007-03-03T04:53:00.001-05:00

because peanut got her first 48 hour tummy bug, and spent all of that time puking. even water. and yeah, she puked up a ton of breastmilk (reminiscent of her refluxy noob days) but she kept peeing, and asking to nurse, so all in all, (aside from the two times she missed the bucket and got my shoulder) it was just a really super snuggly 48 hours. with some puke. i coulda done without the puke. but i'm glad she was on the boob. my mom mentioned how, when i'd get my migraines, she'd offer me all sorts of stuff, from un-jelled jello, to broth, to soda, to keep me hydrated. (i puked a LOT with the migraines.) and so it was nice to know that, given how quickly breastmilk is absorbed and useable, that she was getting more than just 'fluids', but that she was getting fats, proteins, carbs, and all the other stuff that one loses when one is consistanly horking up ones toenails.

the heartbreaking bit, (aside from the fact that she totally got her daddy's ability to vomit--read--she's terrible at it) is that, she'd barf, and then go, 'i don't want this mommy! i don't like it!' sooooooooooooooooooo sad. but so cute at the same time. i'm impressed that we made it this far, but i have to say, my ocd is annoyed that i missed the two year mark by exactly 2 effing weeks. but i guess it's close enough for government work. and now? i'm off to nurse my peanut.

neat

2007-03-03T04:15:00.000-05:00

got this from steph over @ adventures in babywearing.

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

lucy lawless, who knew?

2007-03-03T03:57:00.000-05:00

behold, aside from the breastfeeding going on...prefolds and covers on that cutey baby bum! EVEN XENA IS A CRUNCHY MAMA! w00t!

i hate me some people.

2007-02-25T03:39:00.000-05:00

i'm just gonna do a giant copy and paste from 'the lactavist' blog, cuz her post has all the info in it straight up, and i don't wanna fuck it up in translation. but let me just say this--i hate people who are stupid on purpose. and this here? this is a classic example of stupid on purpose. how much you wanna bet the daycare owner formula fed her kids, and has that whole guilt/hate thing for moms who breastfeed. anyway. here's the blog.

Now if this one won't get your feathers ruffled, I don't know what will. It's about ten times more important that we spread the word on this than it was to spread the word about the Pork incident ladies, so please help me out.

Here's the deal...

There's a mother named Robin Neorr here in the Columbus area. After her daughter was born late last year and she went back to work, she enrolled her daughter in one of the City Kids Daycare in downtown Columbus.

Robin was told that she would need to pay an extra $50 per WEEK because her 3 month old daughter is breastfed. You read that right, an extra $50 a week to feed that little girl the best food available for her.

Why?

Well, Robin was given several reasons.

She was told that her milk was a hazardous body fluid that had to be kept separate from all other food. As such, the day care center kept the prepared bottles of breast milk in a separate refrigerator in the director's office. (They even labeled it with a "bio-hazard" sticker, apparently confusing breast milk with, I don't know...uranium?) They also claimed that they would have to purchase a separate warming pot for heating up the breast milk. In other words, they had to go through SOOO much extra trouble that they would have to charge her an extra fee.

What was their reasoning for needing all this extra fuss over breastmilk? Well, Robin was never really able to find out the answer to that question.

The Centers for Disease Control does NOT consider breast milk to be a fluid that requires "special precautions." The Ohio Department of Health also does not consider breast milk to require any special handling. In fact, when I searched the Ohio Administrative Code, I stumbled across Chapter 12, which covers the Rules for Licensed Child Care Centers. I found it VERY interesting to read the section on "Infant formula and food."

Here are a few snippets from it...

Center policies and practices shall support parent preferences in infant feeding, including breast feeding and introduction of solid foods as long as developmentally appropriate and not detrimental to the health of the child.

Infants shall be served food in conformity with dated written instructions from the parent or guardian or physician. The instructions shall include amounts of food, type of food, and feeding times and be updated as needed based upon the child's needs and parent's instructions.

Now, it gets more interesting if you keep digging. Here's what it says about the requirements for day care centers as they handle bottles of breast milk.

If breast milk is provided by the parent or guardian, it shall be labeled with the child's name and the date of receipt and immediately refrigerated or frozen. Refrigerated breast milk shall not be stored for more than twenty-four hours. Breast milk shall be kept frozen no more than two weeks.

and...

If formula or breast milk is to be warmed, bottles shall be placed in a container of hot (not boiling) water or be placed in a commercial bottle warmer. The container of water shall be emptied and cleaned each day. The bottle shall be shaken well, and the milk temperature tested before feeding. Frozen breast milk shall be thawed under cold running water or in the refrigerator.

and...

The unused portion of formula, breast milk or food remaining in a container from which the infant has been directly fed, shall not be reheated or served again.

Now, that doesn't really seem so tough does it? Take a gander at what's required for the handling of formula...

Bottles prepared at center: when infant formula is prepared by the center, it shall be prepared in conformity with written instructions from the parent or guardian, or physician. All powdered or concentrated formula shall be prepared according to the manufacturers' instructions unless written instructions from a physician or an advance practice nurse certified to prescribe medication are on file at the center.

and...

The center shall clean and disinfect all counter surfaces and equipment needed to prepare the formula. All equipment shall be washed in a dishwasher or scrubbed with hot water containing soap, and be thoroughly rinsed. Equipment not washed in a dishwasher shall be boiled for five minutes or more just prior to filling bottles. Handwashing facilities shall not be used for formula or food preparation or for rinsing or washing dishes and bottles. Handwashing facilities shall not be used for formula or food preparation, or for washing dishes and bottles or rinsing for reuse.

and...

Open containers of ready to feed and concentrated formula shall be covered, dated and refrigerated. Prepared formula and food shall be discarded if not used within twenty-four hours.

and...

Any formula or food to be stored at the center for any period of time, whether prepared by the parent or guardian or the center, shall be labeled with the child's name and date of preparation and shall be used only for the intended child.

and...

Until used, all formula or food shall be refrigerated immediately after preparation or upon arrival if prepared by the parent or guardian. Formula or food that is commercially prepared may not be required to be refrigerated until after opening. Formula and food shall be stored no longer than twenty-four hours.

Now tell me...which one do YOU think requires more work?

Exactly.

Here's where it gets even more interesting. One of the posters on the AP Village discussion forum called City Kids to ask about enrolling their own child. According to her post, here's what she was told:

"Well, I have to see, I think there is a new policy about breastmilk. We might charge extra or maybe we aren't taking them any more. It's nothing with me or the director but the owner has a problem with breastmilk."

When asked by the caller if they were serious she stated that "all day care centers are going to this policy soon."

Yeah, can you even believe it?

Now Ohio does have legislation giving moms legal protection when they breastfeed in public but it currently has no laws on the books in regards to the use of breast milk in day care centers. In fact, only the state of Louisiana has a law (House Bill 233) making it illegal for day care centers to discriminate against breastfed children.

Robin understandably wanted to avoid negative press while her daughter was still being cared for at the center. However, her daughter's last day was Tuesday and Robin is now on a crusade to not only spread the word about this day care center that has chosen to discriminate against breastfed children but also to push for new Ohio legislation that would keep this same situation from happening to other breastfeeding moms.

So, what do we need you to do?

First, help spread the word. It took all of two days for the National Pork Board to change their course when faced with the onslaught of phone calls and emails from the Lactivist community. If we can mobilize to protect one web site then we sure as heck can mobilize to show day care centers that we will not stand for this type of discrimination against breastfed babies. So please, blog the article, post it in your favorite discussion forums, get the word out.

Second, make your voice heard with the parties involved. Patricia Elam has owned and operated the downtown Columbus and Hilliard City Kids centers since 1989. If you'd like to contact her to let her know what you think of her center's policies, you can email City Kids at citykidsdaycar@aol.com or you can call either of their centers at (614) 464-1411, or (614)777-4320.

If you are a Central Ohio mom and would be on board for a potential nurse-in at City Kids Daycare, please drop me an email so that I can start building a contact list. If you are a mom anywhere in Ohio, please give serious thought to contacting your local representatives and your state senators about the need to push through legislation that would protect breastfed children.

If you are a lawyer or know one that might be interested in taking on a civil suit against City Kids Day Care, get in touch with me and I'll get you in touch with Robin. If you are a reporter that would like to cover the story, drop me a note and I will DEFINITELY get you in touch with Robin.

We can not let day care centers dictate what we feed our children.

knitty

2007-02-20T16:56:00.000-05:00

happy vd!

2007-02-15T03:29:00.000-05:00

so it was a good day today. i woke up to this
which was really nice. balloons and a card are a fantastic way to start a day after a night with a snotty baby who wasn't all that into anything but nursing all. night. long. until 430am, that is, when she decided to wake up and be adorable. she sat up and crawled over me to get to her daddy, and laid her head on his shoulder. i thought she was going to sleep there, but about 2 minutes later, she popped up and started to sing the bull frog song. and tickled us, and hopped on the bed, and hopped on us, and sang more songs, and asked 'daddy, want some apple juice please?' and then proceeded to chug down like, 2/3rds of a sippy cup. (that was one hella diaper, i tell you what.) so we slept in today. and then we made valentines cards for daddy and nammah. gene made dinner tonight, and it was fantastic. chicken with capers and olives and lemonbutter on rice. that right there, is why he's my babydaddy. and then he unloaded the dishwasher. and now, he's in bed with the peanut, and i'm thinking about how glad i am, that he's in my world.

so, peanut has hit a new milestone, in that she's very certain about what she wants to eat. if you ask her, she will tell you exactly what she wants. she has odd taste. this morning, she wanted dwy cheeweeos, and fries. yesterday, it was eggs. tonight, tho, she was all about that capery olive chicken rice thing. and when i laid her down tonight, she stirred a little bit, and said in her sleep 'want chicken! want RICE!' but then promptly started snoring, so i haven't made it to the kitchen yet.

i have other cute things to post, but that'll have to wait, cuz i have a playdate, LLL thing tomorrow, and it's early, so i should sleep.

yeah. what he said.

2007-02-12T17:17:00.000-05:00

punk knitters remix

2007-02-10T06:22:00.000-05:00

koolaid dyed with black cherry koolaid. here's what i did..

presoaked in hot water with half a tablespoon of ecover dishwashing liquid

brought 4 packs of koolaid and 6 cups of water and half a cup of vinegar to letting off steam temp

added soaker

accidentally let it start to boil...turned heat WAY down

pulled soaker partway out with tongs to see if i'd effed up and felted it.

sighed with relief when my stitch definition was still there.

let it simmer for like, 25 minutes, till the water was close enough to clear

used tongs to move the soaker into a plastic bowl of cold water for like, 45 seconds

rinsed with ecover and warm water

lanolinised with lansinoh and monkeyfarts baby bath from northernessence.com

hung to dry

took it down to take pictures

hung back up to dry.

and that is how i made my punk knitters soaker even punkier.

then, i took it down again, and felted the crotch to better waterproof it. cuz my stockinette is big. word.

sweeeeeeeet

2007-02-09T02:58:00.000-05:00

punk knitters diaper soaker.

2007-02-08T18:14:00.000-05:00

this is the soaker i started after i finished the sweater. it's a superfast knit, i started it day before yesterday, and finished it this morning (well, i finished the i-cord this afternoon). i might koolaid dye it, but i haven't decided yet. it's either that, or knit the butterfly from the 'butterflies are free' scarf in SnB nation. i'm torn. maybe i'll do both.

new finished knitting! w00t!

2007-02-07T11:54:00.000-05:00

this is the easy baby cardigan from vogue knitting baby knits. it still needs pockets, but other than that, BOOM! it's a sweater. my model is napping, so these are just pix of the sweater.

six weird things

2007-02-06T23:32:00.000-05:00

i got tagged by kidlets mum to do the six weird things. i lurve getting tagged. it makes me feel all special. so. here goes.

1. i HATE having my knees touched. totally skeeves me out. i can't deal with it. not even when peanut does it.

2. the sound of styrofoam makes my brain feel like it has a thousand paper cuts. that squeaky sound, you know what i mean? i abhor it. more than any other sound. if i had to pick between listening to styrofoam squeak or nails on a chalkboard, i'd pick nails every single time.

3. i count gene's moles. he's really pale, so i'm always worried that he's going to get skin cancer and we won't notice.

4. i could eat nothing but french fries and diet coke for the rest of my life, and be totally okay with that. (unless i have PMS, and then chocolate of some sort would need to be included.)

5. i narrate stuff in my head. so like, if someone says something to me with a lot of added drama, in my head, i'll say to myself, 'she said, dramatically'. i also have musical soundtracks for stuff in my head. currently, my soundtrack for peanut is fine young cannibals 'she drives me crazy'.

6. i take an absurd pride in never having googled myself, or any significant other.

i am too lazy to tag anyone, but if you feel like doing this, then comment me so i can come learn about you.

tatted meme!

2007-02-02T04:06:00.000-05:00

courtesy of WD&I2. you can play here too--if you've got ink, post pix on your blog, then comment here so i can come ogle your tats. here are some poorly shot pix of mine. the first one i got was the butterfly on my back, with the chinese characters which mean 'illuminate life' (or, beef and broccoli, who knows.) then i got the arm band, then the kokopelli, and then the drummer (the words underneath her say 'the rhythms never change').

are ya ache'n? for some bacon?

2007-02-02T03:27:00.000-05:00

Behold the lamest move yet by a corporate Goliath. my hotdogs were all beef before, but i guess i'm switchin over to turkey bacon now. join me in a lil piggy boycott, eh?

sleep training

2007-01-31T01:53:00.001-05:00

Sleep Training...

OK, here's my situation. My Mommy has had me for almost 7 months. The first few months were great--I cried, she picked me up and fed me, anytime, day or night. Then something happened.

Over the last few weeks, she has been trying to STTN (sleep thru the night). At first, I thought it was just a phase, but it is only getting worse. I've talked to other babies, and it seems like it's pretty common after Mommies have had us for around 6 months.

Here's the thing: these Mommies don't really need to sleep. It's just a habit. Many of them have had some 30 years to sleep--they just don't need it anymore. So I am implementing a
plan. I call it the Crybaby Shuffle.

It goes like this:

Night 1--cry every 3 hours until you get fed. I know, it's hard. It's hard to see your Mommy upset over your crying. Just keep reminding yourself, it's for her own good.

Night 2--cry every 2 hours until you get fed.

Night 3--every hour.

Most Mommies will start to respond more quickly after about 3 nights. Some Mommies are more alert, and may resist the change longer. These Mommies may stand in your doorway for hours, shhhh-ing. Don't give in. I cannot stress this enough: CONSISTENCY IS KEY!!

If you let her STTN (sleep through the night), just once, she will expect it every night. I KNOW IT'S HARD! But she really does not need the sleep, she is just resisting the change.

If you have an especially alert Mommy, you can stop crying for about 10 minutes, just long enough for her to go back to bed and start to fall asleep. Then cry again. It WILL eventually work. My Mommy once stayed awake for 10 hours straight, so I know she can do it.

Last night, I cried every hour. You just have to decide to stick to it and just go for it. BE CONSISTENT! I cried for any reason I could come up with.

My sleep sack tickled my foot.

I felt a wrinkle under the sheet.

My mobile made a shadow on the wall.

I burped, and it tasted like pears (I hadn't eaten pears since lunch -
what's up with that?) The cat said "meow" (I should know. My Mommy reminds me of this about 20 times a day. LOL.)

Once I cried just because I liked how it sounded when it echoed on the monitor in the other room.

Too hot, too cold, just right--doesn't matter! Keep crying!!

It took awhile, but it worked. She fed me at 4am. Tomorrow night, my goal is 3:30am. You need to slowly shorten the interval between feedings in order to reset your Mommies' internal clocks.

P.S. Don't let those rubber things fool you, no matter how long you suck on them, NO milk will come out! Trust me.

it's like donuts

2007-01-29T08:12:00.000-05:00

blogging, i mean. like, sometimes, i can go for MONTHS without donuts. but then, there's this like, deep, soul-rooted urging...like my spleen sends these little signals to the hungryplace in my brain and screams 'you will go forth and get me donuts NOW!' and then i get donuts and eat like, 4 in one day, and then feel sick, and then i'm done with donuts for a while. now, i've never gone MONTHS without blogging, but i do go days sometimes weeks. and then, there are times like this, where i have this serial posting problem. and it's not like blogger doesn't have an edit button. it's not as though once i hit submit, i'm locked into whatever i've already said. i mean, i could totally add this on to one of the four. hundered. posts. i've put up today, but i figure, i'm on a roll. i'm hot. smokin. see? actually, let's be honest. i don't really want to taint any of the other entries with my lameness. and internet? i. am. lame. for the last 48 hours, i have been in excruciating pain. my entire body has felt like a big, newly tattooed, and then acid burned bruise, and i've had a headache similar to that of the one after my 21st birthday and the jetfuel flavored shooters people kept pouring down my throat. and as queasy. my hands have been shaking, and i've been falling asleep unexpectedly, dreaming of weirdness like my dreds morphing into an afro, and then singing (the afro, not me) aretha franklin music but in james ingrams voice (i attribute that to the influence of teevee, but still.) so. i'm in withdrawl. not a sexy withdrawl, like brittney. not even a lax, sort of more for looks withdrawl like lindsay. it's not anything cool, like heroin chic, or expensive, like coming off a week long coke binge. nope. i'm in withdrawl. from. prednisone. let me say it again, internet. i am so lame. my feeble little skeleton got addicted to a drug they give to old people for arthritis, and asthma. can i talk about how this is like, the pinnacle of irony, to me? i mean, my misspent youth never caused me pain like this. if i had to feel like this, i'm really irritated that i got here legally.

i like this

2007-01-29T06:36:00.000-05:00

i need to keep it in mind. like, when she's licking the cats flea collar for the 899th time, i need to remember that it's the absolute value of, um, flea breath. yeah.

THE DAILY GROOVE ~ by Scott Noelle
www.enjoyparenting.com/dailygroove

:: The Absolute Value of Your Child ::

If you were forced to study algebra when you were a
teenager, it probably didn't occur to you that it
would one day come in handy as a metaphor for
unconditional love. But here it is...

In mathematics, the "absolute value" of a number is
its *magnitude* regardless of whether it's positive or
negative. So the numbers +50 and -50 have the same
absolute value: 50.

Likewise, the Art of Unconditionality involves
disregarding the negative interpretations of a
condition or behavior and finding a way to see it
in a positive light. For example:

* Whether your child says "I love you" or "I hate
you," you can appreciate the magnitude of her
expressiveness and emotional honesty.

* Whether your child rebels or complies with your
wishes, you can appreciate his absolute freedom
of choice.

Today as you observe your child, if you see any
"negative" behavior then ask yourself, "What is this
telling me about the 'absolute value' of my child?"

http://dailygroove.net/absolute-value

This Daily Groove message was originally presented
on July 13, 2006.

Feel free to forward this message to your friends!

Copyright (c) 2007 by Scott Noelle

some updateish bits

2007-01-29T03:08:00.000-05:00

i still have mono, but i seem to be doing better with the whole cough thing. peanut seems fine, altho there was a brief moment there where i was concerned that i'd accidentally dried myself up with cough meds, but we had a day here last week where we stayed in bed and on the couch all day, and she nursed pretty much non-stop, and i stopped taking the damn cough meds, and we seem to back to normal. it's funny, even though i am committed to child led weaning at this point (despite the occasional frustration with nursing during my period) and even though i know she'll let me know when she's done, that moment of terror at not having any milk for her pretty much solidified my committment to the natural weaning process. because she made it abundantly clear that she wasn't done. what cracks me up about nursing her this long, is the peculiar questions i field. i mean, i know we've all read the stories of moms who're nursing the toddlers, right, and the in-laws are comparing it to child abuse, but i've never encountered that in real life. (thank god.) but like, it's been suggested to my mom that she should tell me to wean peanut so that my mono will go away. what? i'm fully convinced that, A)mono is a virus, so it's actually better for peanut to keep nursing because then she's getting my antibodies, and so won't get mono, and B)it's not as though i'm over here wasting away. i should be so lucky. and like, my dad often wonders aloud about her food consumption. and no matter how many times i explain that she eats everything (even beef now!) except dairy, he always seems to hold in his head that she is getting ONLY breastmilk. i dunno. i'm glad, certainly, that they're not like, overtly critical in that judgemental fuckerupforlifewiththatshit sort of way, but it cracks me up too, that there's this much interest in what my kid eats.

i gave up on the damn socks. i got bored, and also, three stitches fell off of one of the needles, and i'd just gotten the vogue baby knits from the library, and i decided that i'd make the easy garter stitch cardigan in the pumpkin wool i got for christmas. i'm actually really happy with this pattern, because i think i can pretty much use the same idea, (just do a swatch, and then some mathy type things) to make my mom a sweater. and also, i think that, if i knit the front the same as the back, but keep the neck shaping at the center, that i could totally turn it into a pullover pattern. it'd be baggy, i think, with hardly any shaping, but it is a baby sweater after all, it's not like she needs darts. i've got the back completely knitted, and i'm about 2/3 of the way done with the left front side. since it is going to be frickin freezing here tomorrow, i plan to stay in, and knit.

peanut has started making up songs. did i mention that? i'm going to mention it again, because it's stinkin adorable. she's got this song about a dinosaur, who moos. that's about the gist of it, but there's a lot of 'dun dun doo doo dinooooosaaauuuuuuuuuuurrrrr MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOo' and bum shakin involved. and i have cute video of her singing other stuff, pending my lazy ass uploading it. and she has this crazy bionic nose for chocolate (chawkwhat!) my mom was eating a lindt truffle thing the other day, and peanut wasn't looking at her, so she popped the whole thing in her mouth, and chewed, and had the wrapper balled up in her hand, and all of a sudden, peanut popped up like a jackrabbit, and made a beeline to crawl in her lap and yelled CHAWKWHAT! i love that kid. i can't blame her tho. assuming she's sensitive to the ins and outs of my cycle, i got my period today, so she prolly had the same chawkwhat jones i had that day. i think she's got a future as a dentist. she spent about twenty minutes today, sitting on my chest, prying my teeth apart while hollering 'open that mouth! open your mouth!' and then shoving her fingers down my throat and yelling 'teeeeeeeth! tongue! mouth!!!!' and then giggling hysterically while i gagged and coughed. and then, her and her daddy spent about 30 minutes dancing on newspaper, which was more cuteness than you could shake a stick at, i tell you what. and THEN, oh my god. why are they always cute when i have pms? so then, gene takes her, and helps her stand on his feet, and they danced together that way. *tear* and that is why, i lurve him. i know he wonders lots, if he's doing well in his daddy role. and i worry that he doesnt' listen to me, when i tell him i think he's doing a fabulous job. but he is, and it's shit like that, that i wish i could secretly video, and show to him later. (he'd never let me video it straight out, he's worse than a girl about stuff like that.) anyway. i think that's all the shizz thats fit to blog, so, i'll go to bed now.

w00t! my kid? still a farkin geenyus!

2007-01-23T23:35:00.000-05:00

why? because not only can she count to ten, but she can actually count 7 items. correctly. she's adding new songs to her hit list each day, and i think she's making some up as she goes a long. today, she was singing about a spider in a boat. i'm never, ever bored when she's got her on switch flipped.

we went to the library tonight, and she tried to poke gene's eye out with a pencil. he seems to be okay tho, but he did make a really loud noise in the library. prior to that, though, she was sitting in his lap, and i was standing at a shelf near them, where she could see me. so i walk around the end to look at the other side (out of her view) and she goes 'mama! come back!' super loud. i'm lucky to be friends with the librarian, or we'd so be kicked out.

why does my podunk library not have the miseducation of the negro? isnt' that like, required reading these days? i have to unpack all of my books. i'm pretty sure i own that one, i just didn't feel like looking for it.

so, in the great sense of humor department, peanut has taken to lifting her arms to you beseechingly, and saying, 'uppie? uppies?' so that you'll pick her up, right? but when you put your arms out to pick her up, she squeals no!!!! and runs away giggling. then comes back 30 seconds later for a repeat. this can go on for ages.

her newest animal learned, is raccoon. which she pronounces 'ratoon!' and i think it's cute, and don't want to correct her.

i'm pretty sure those are the big updates.

blogging up some karma here

2007-01-22T04:45:00.000-05:00

so. my last post was political. this one is too, but it's not nearly as whiny. in fact, it's more of a celebration! why? because my favorite human being is running for president. maybe. at least, an exploratory committee has been formed. this person mirrors my ideals, my hopes for america, my dreams for the sort of nation that peanut can grow and thrive in. who? barack obama of course! i've donated 25 bucks to his campaign. this is big, since i currently have no income which is purely mine. so i was sort of hoarding that last 100 bucks for like, i dunno, new yarn or something. but sometimes, someone so extraordinary comes along in politics, that you just have to put your money where your mouth is. and stumping for future president obama is most def on my list of shit to do this year, but sometimes money talks. this is also the first time i've contributed to a political campaign in a fiscal manner. he wrote back (well, emailed) a really beautiful letter, about grass roots, and humility, and restoring america. tear worthy. i like him, but not just cuz he's black. i like him because he's a writer, and he's got this way with words that make me want to have his babies. i like him because he refuses to call anyone an asshole, he just says they disagree. i wish i were as nice as he is. i also like him, because when asked on the tonight show with jay leno, if he inhaled when smoking weed, he said 'isn't that the point?' which tells me that he's got a sense of humor about himself, and he's comfortable enough with his past to admit to his hijinx. i wish that hilary heifer would cancel her damn exploratory committee. it's not that she doesn't have her good points, it's that obama has more good points. and he's nicer. and he doesn't come complete with all that blowjob baggage, you know? but i've been voting on the web polls, and so far, it's looking like the top 2 will be rudy and barack. i am, (despite being the daughter of a politician) fairly uneducated on how one selects a candidate for a VP, but i personally think, that if barack asked rudy to be his veep, they'd win it by a landslide! at any rate, he's probably going to come up again here and there as i blog. because i lurve him like pie. and now that i'm in the south, i lurve me some pie.

anyone who donates to his campaign, leave a comment, and i'll put you in a special sidebar section on my blog roll thingy! let's start us a revolution!

we are halfway through january

2007-01-18T03:01:00.000-05:00

and that means, that, we've made it through another rote MLK day, where most of us slept in, or went grocery shopping on our 'day off'. it also means that we are fast coming up on black history month. so i'm gonna be radical this year, and say what i feel about black history month. ready?

i realize that carter woodson had his heart in the right place, when he started black history week. he said "those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history". and he's right. and i fully and totally support all the rhetoric about martin, and malcolm, and rosa. i do. but martin did not create the civil rights movement. the civil rights movement created him. same with malcolm. and rosa. they were products of an environment which begged for drastic social change. i mean, i could be wrong, but i'd be willing to bet that rosa parks wasn't the first person to be like 'piss off. my feet hurt.' i do think, that she had the connections with her church, and her community at large, to be able to facilitate the organization of such a large scale boycott. i mean, it wasn't the not standing up thing that was revolutionary, it was the not standing up, and then telling other people to NOT RIDE THE BUS for 381 days, that caused the revolutionary change. at any rate, i respect her for her balls, i will say that. and i respect her rightful place in the pantheon of black history.

what i have a problem with, is the current marketing of black history. we don't start in africa, you know? they don't talk about the hittite empire, or the kingdom of kush, or credit early africans with the initial math. nope, we start black history with WHITE folks, taking the black folks on to their big bad ships. we're chained and shackeled to our past as victims, and we trudge onward, trapped in this xeroxed ethnomemory of stinking death and salt water. so we get to the new world, and we're beaten with whips, and our tongues are cut out for insolence. we're allowed to sing, lawd lawd, we's a sangan' bunch, and we magically invent blues! then, abe lincoln realizes that slavery isn't working out economically any longer, so he's like, 'i proclaim all y'all negroes emancipated.' and then we run to new york, and form harlem, and romare bearden paints pictures on walls, and the black bougousie is born, and lo! the harlem rennisance. so we're bobbin all on jazz now, but only in OUR clubs, and we can pee in public, but only in OUR restrooms. and we can even take the bus! but only in the back. and through out all of this, let's not forget the mean white people who keep lynching us, and burning crosses on our lawns. and exploding our little black girls who are just doing what's right and hangin out in church! CHURCH! those poor girls. so then, we get irate. and we're like, this wouldn't suck so bad if we had better schoolin. so we send 9 kids to school in arizona, and they're teased and tormented by more mean white people, but they persevere, and we win brown vs. the board of education! so now, we're being bussed all over hells half acre, but we're getting taught at THEIR schools now. and because of this access to white education, suddenly, we're smart enough to start all that boycottin, and sittin in, and protestin, and fightin the powers that be. and then jim crow is repealled, and the civil rights act is put in place, but not before we have 2 diametrically opposed martyrs lost in the struggle. and i'm sure some places will mention jesse jackson for fun, but mostly, that's the extent of black history month in public schools.

so what? it seems pretty concise, and, after all, you ONLY have 28 days to cover that shit. less, cuz of weekends. but my problem with it, is that it paints this picture of persistant victimization. we get TAKEN on boats. our DEAD are tossed overboard. we're BEATEN, and MAIMED, and ENSLAVED. then, we're SEPERATE. eventually, we tack equal on to that. then they ASSASINATE martin and malcolm. but they didn't die in vain because look how far we've come. right? but even if you don't start black history with african history-even if you start on the slave ships, you have mutinys, where we took the ships back. (even more than just the amistad, but don't tell steven spielburg, or he might make another interminable movie). we ran away. nat turner organized the biggest (tho i'm sure not the only) slave rebellion. we fought in the civil war too. see what i mean? from the start, we've been fighters, revolutionaries beating the path to our own freedom. but in each and every ditto handed out, you'll read about the poor 'bama bombing girls, and emmet till who got lynched for whistling at a white woman, even tho it wasn't a cat call, but just that he had a stutter, and his mom taught him to not stutter by whistling, and all that pooorrrr emmet wanted to do was buy him some bread. it's victimology, and we eat it up.

i think that, if carter woodson were around for the current iteration of black history, he'd prolly lynch his ownself. because he also said "If you can control a man’s thinking, you don’t have to worry about his actions. If you can determine what a man thinks you do not have worry about what he will do. If you can make a man believe that he is inferior, you don’t have to compel him to seek an inferior status, he will do so without being told and if you can make a man believe that he is justly an outcast, you don’t have to order him to the back door, he will go to the back door on his own and if there is no back door, the very nature of the man will demand that you build one." and i see that shit played out every day on the television. baby mamas, pimps, hos, bitches, niggers, what are we doing to our young black children? how early do we start the internal self loathing that eventually leads to that sort of culture being played out across the nation?

i think also, that part of the problem with the marketing of black history, is that it's all about FIRST black this. as though we have to show that we are equal. i mean, neil armstrong was just the first man on the moon. he wasn't the first WHITE man on the moon, see? when you categorize an achievement racially, you also categorically label it inferior. because if it was just an achievement, then it would just be a first. i give much respect to those first blacks, tho. i mean, the first sucsessful heart trasnplant was done by a black doctor. but see how that sounds? how it looks? does that make it more impressive than if i'd said 'the first sucessful heart transplant was done by a doctor', you'd be llike, duh. of course it was! but you'd probably also assume, that it was a white doctor. because, after all, if it was a first, AND it was done by a black person, OF COURSE i'd clarify. it's insidious, isn't it?

and now, even now, people are still playing to the firsts. i hate me some GWB, but either he, or his handlers, have some brilliant wag the dog ideas. i mean, right there in the midst of all that WMD drama, what does george do? he says 'i'm gonna nominate me a black woman as secretary of state'. boom. our focus shifted completely away from all that 'he lied!' shit, and beamed straight down on the awesomeness of condi, the FIRST BLACK WOMAN secretary of state. i mean, they debated forEVER on CNN and FOX as to whether she'd get confirmed. of course she would. because, despite her total failure to act on three warnings pre 9-11 about the pending attacks, she is a BLACK WOMAN so if you vote against her, you are obviously a racist chauvanist, and probably a card carrying member of the KKK.

i don't want peanut to be about someone because they were the first black person to do something. or because they were the first woman. or the first halfro. i want her to be realize that she's got strong fighters on BOTH sides, that one side didn't 'save' the other. that black people are not victims. that we do have the power to change things, and that, contrary to what she may learn in school (if she goes) the black political struggle did not end in the damn sixties. we've still got a long way to go to equality. and i want her to know how to be about getting there. that's MY black history month. foment me a peanut revolutionary.

i got my lunch box and i'm armed real well!

2007-01-14T03:26:00.000-05:00

i woulda skipped the second Blade flick

2007-01-14T03:13:00.000-05:00

i might be crazy, but

2007-01-14T03:10:00.000-05:00

but it seems to me, that sending more troops to iraq is a bad fucking plan. especially considering, that 20 000 is a somewhat paltry number, when you compare it to the 130 000 already in place. but seriously. they keep shooting each other. it's a civil war. let them solve that shit on their own. america is like a pagent mom. i mean, we hover over shit, and we never let other countries figure things out on their own. so then, once we decide it's all copasetic, or we run out of cash, or we elect a new prez, we back out, and leave these nations floundering without our guidance. i don't think pulling out completely is a plan. but i do think that giving the current government in iraq some basic lessons in how not to be fuckups, or get overthrown, would be a better idea than sending 20 000 more people over there to get shot at.

i mean, there was a big ass war in south central LA, between rival gangs, and that shit didn't even warrant the police chief. just some beat cops, you know? and that was here. that was americans. what the hell are we doing, sending our kids over there to die?

i hate that fucker. i hate him like brussel sprouts

thanks ali

2007-01-12T02:02:00.000-05:00

My blog is worth $23,951.78.
How much is your blog worth?

long, and sort of term-papery

2007-01-11T18:00:00.000-05:00

when i was pregnant, and found out i was having a girl, i told people not to buy my kid pink stuff. that we still wanted the gender neutral tones of yellow, green, and so on. and my mom told me that i was taking the 'fun' out of shopping. but to me, starting in infancy, training our girls to be frilly, pretty princesses seemed counter-intuitive to raising independent thinkers. so much of feminine identity is wrapped up in image, and i just didn't want my kid getting off to that sort of start. i don't mind so called 'girly girls', so much as i despise the categorization of women. and face it. you put a kid in all pink, and give them the full disney princess press, and even if they don't wanna be, they end up looking the part of the girly girl. the princess. the 'good' girl.

so then, my kid was born, and i kept the no pink rule, altho i relaxed some, because bitches don't listen, and we got a shit load of pink anyway. and when you've got a refluxy, spitty kid, whatever is clean is gonna look damn good. but i had a whole new problem. toys! i hadn't even considered how gender biased toys were (infant toys, no less) and now, in addition to the no pink rule, i felt the need to add on the whole, please don't ONLY buy her dollies and kitchen sets. this is ironic, since i'm a stay at home mom, basically putting into practice all the things that dollies and kitchen sets teach little girls. but i also know how to apply for grant funding, and hotwire a car...so i mean, i want my kid to have choice.

my mom says i've effectively made it 'hard' to shop for my kid. i totally disagree. i think that if anything, i've made it simple, because the gender limits aren't in place. a good friend of mine, when peanut was smaller, sent her a sweatsuit with dinosaurs on it. and it is still one of peanuts fave shirts. and as a result of it, my kid, who isn't even 2, can identify several dinosaurs. now, she calls them all dinosaurs, not by the actual name like t-rex and so on, but you can show her almost any dino, and she'll say, dinosaur. she can identify butterflies too, because of a shirt. so i say fashion does play a part, and that those kids who get to wear only girly stuff are missing out. no trucks, no dinosaurs, no firefighting stuff, no sporty stuff (unless it's like, 'soccer cutie' or 'cheer princess') and why? because there are no female truckers? paleontologists? firefighters? i think not, but this is the message we send to our kids from infancy. that boys are rough and tumble do-ers, and girls are supposed to shop, and sit and look pretty, and be a princess. and nurture. and cook. i posit that girls can do all of that-but they can also do all that boy crap too! and it may seem kinda duh-ish. but think about it. you start at 0-3 months with the 'mommy's lil princess' or 'daddy's lil buddy' stuff, and you're essentially ingraining the cultural gender stereotypes that limit our girls (and our boys, but that's a whole other rant.) and if you start it, if the parent does it, then the kid is going to believe it. and it doesn't matter how many times you play 'free to be', she's still going to live up to that expectation of feminine that you've been feeding her in teh form of clothing and toys. bratz? passion for fashion. polly pocket? how many outfits can one midget possible need? barbie? at least she had a few careers to choose from, in addition to being housewife barbie.

i guess my basic rant, is that we limit our kids, when we stay within typified gender ideals. we talk so much about wanting to give our kids the world, and wanting them to have better than we had, but it seems the scope of girlhood is getting as narrow as it was in the 50s. girls are being trained to be watchers, consumers, and to stand idly by looking hawt for the boyz, while the boys are being trained to objectify, and to crash, bash, and rampage (all names of 'boy toys' on the market) and we wonder why more young women are being sexually assaulted, why more boys are ending up seriously injured, or dead from fights, why our kids in general, are as 'troubled' as they are. and i think a huge part of it, is the way gender identities are marketed. mattel doesn't care about your daughter. her self esteem, or her self worth. tyco doesn't give a shit if your kid shoots someone. it's all about the benjamins.

so what, right? i've got all this complaining, but so. what. so i say, let your girls play with trucks and blocks, starting young. let your boys play with dolls and kitchen sets, starting young. and TALK to them. if you watch a crappy princess flick, ask your daughter why the princess had to change for/wait for/catch the boy, or why the butler was the one with the sage advice, and not the mom, or the spunky best friend character. ask why in chick flicks, the girl wars are featured, why the 'bad' girls are always one dimensional, and schemeing, but we never know why they're so angry...just that the 'good' girl always wins. talk to your boys about how they don't have to be rough and tumbley macho men. talk to your kids. let them know that the marketing stereotypes, the cultural ruts that hold the gender bias in place, are things that they don't have to pay attention to. teach them to think critically about the toys, the clothes, the images in books and movies and magazines. ask them to show you when they find something that defies the norm.

there was more, but my kid is coloring on her toes.

how funny is my kid?

2007-01-11T17:46:00.001-05:00

sooooooooooooooooooo funny.

so we've mastered the concepts of push and pull, right? so she was sitting in my lap, pushing on me, going, push, push, push. and then she pushed on my boobs and said

wait for it

squishy.

and then, she gets the idea of tickle, right? that mommy tickles her feet, and her ribs, and such. so the other day, we were all at home, and gene was changing her diaper. since we use cloth, we've got wipe solution in a spritz bottle, right? so it was a fairly gooey poopy dipe, and he spritzed her directly on the bum, instead of spraying the wipe first. so she goes, 'daddy! no tickle the bum! tickle the feet!'

i peed a lil bit.

and she's into dancing. and she's been able to say shake your booty for a while now. but you know how we rock the babylegs a lot. and they look like leg warmers. so when she dances in those, i tell her 'flashdance' and she stomps her feet a la jennifer beale in flashdance.

and

my mom gave her some old costume necklaces, and she calls them bling. and she'll ask for her bling, and i'll put a necklace on her, and ask 'how do you look?' and she makes this CUTE lil sneery face, and says 'i'm fierce!'

yesterday she yelled at me. i was figuring out our bills, and she'd been playing nicely on the floor with her blocks. and she keeps a constant stream of chatter going, all day long. but usually, if she's talking to me, she says 'mama' or 'mommy' first. so either she didn't say it, or i didn't hear her, cuz she got in my face and went 'DRAW ON PAPER! NOW!'

i love this kid, but i may die from laughter before she's three.

mo'dredy pix

2007-01-09T18:37:00.000-05:00

new years revolution

2007-01-03T03:36:00.000-05:00

i have been reconnectingwith myself
and the earth
and so many of the thoughtst
hat have been careening
in my being for the past
three years
i roll my hair in my fingers
thick and matty
while i re-watch michael richards
for the 23rd time
talk about lynchingin 2006.
i wonder if mel gibson called himto commiserate?
moving my fingers to the root, i circle clockwise with my left hand
surf the web with my right hand
and read about little girls in cars
in my hometown, threatened at gunpoint
by policemen, and women on planes
who are asked to cover nursing breasts
because it is offensive
(but didn't i just see brittneys coot over on TMZ two clicks back?)

i have high hopes for this new year,
for my family,
for my daughter, of course
for my hair, and my ability to nurture it into self-sustainable locks

and for the world, becauseif we taunt saddam, when he is dying
if we excuse bigotry with alcohol
if we accept gitmo, and homeland security
if we just
sit
back
and watch it all on foxhow can we hope to stop it?

so i am fomenting a new years revolutionand it won't have cammo, or boots
but i'mma rock my dreds proud
i'mma nurse my kid proud
i'mma protest the war loud
i'm gonna question why gerald ford got three days of press
and the only reason i knew james brown died
was cuz i got a text message on christmas
i'm not gonna be quiet when intolerance is otherwise accepted

this is my new years revolution
wanna join me?

by popular demand, pics o the dreds!

2006-12-29T02:42:00.000-05:00

that feeling of dred

2006-12-28T04:12:00.001-05:00

rather, a note to self, that on this night, dec 27th, 2006, i will be going to bed with a full head of dredlocks. those of you who know me oldschool, know that i have wanted to dred for the last 13 years. my first obstacle was my parents, and being 'under their roof' and such. i smoked weed instead. let that be a cautionary tale. ;) then i went to work. and i fell into the 'you'll shoot your eye out' trap of being fired for being dredy, and having that be scary enough to keep me from embarking on my knatty path. so, now i'm a mom. and i stay home, except when i'm out, which is lots. but i'm not exactly employed, by any rigid standards either. and both parenting and dreding are journeys in patience. both require some self knowledge, some self worth, a lot of love, and a genuine ability to be okay with looking like a fucktard now and then. both tend to make you think about spirituality, and your place in the world. i mean, nothing says human like the pain in your arms after palm rolling for an hour, and then lifting a 25 pound toddler to nurse. maybe it all comes together for a reason. as much as i love havin the peanut, i tend to get lost being 'peanuts mama' you know? i used to write phat poems and protest shit. i used to go clubbing, and get made fun of for being easy AND cheap. but like that commercial says, having a baby changes everything. and i freely admit that, because i was terrified that i wasn't up for this task of raising another human being in a responsible, non-serial killer sort of fashion, i might have thrown myself into it more voraciously than if it had been a planned event. and i don't regret one single second of my obsessive chart-reading, googling, nightsweat having self. i feel like that was just part of my trip to momdom. but there is more to me, than nursing, than diapers, than the astounding number of words my kid can say (todays? jalepeno. so cute.) and spending the last 2 days transforming myself into the vision of me that i've had for 13 years was essential to remembering that i am a person, apart from 'just' a mom. i write phat poems. i protest shit. i still can't hold my liquor. i have dredlocks. word.

yep

2006-12-11T11:58:00.000-05:00

(stolen from the tiny revolution--welcome back!)
Kids don't get building blocks of learning from high-tech playBy Barbara F. Meltz, of the Boston Globe The year Nancy Carlsson-Paige’s first grandchild, Jack, was 22 months old, he got lots of presents at Christmastime, but what he most enjoyed was something of his own creation. He tossed a plastic ball in the air, and it landed in a nest created by a kitchen stool that was turned upside down, legs poking in the air.
‘‘Stuck! Stuck!’’ he cried excitedly to Nanny, who, like most other grandmothers, knew that her delight in his discovery and her tolerance to play it with him over and over would add to his pleasure. But there was something else about the interaction that buoyed Carlsson-Paige, an author and early childhood education professor at Lesley University.
‘‘He watched my face, read my signals,’’ she says. ‘‘If the ball hit me, he knew to be sad. We would experiment by throwing it harder and softer. If I picked up the ball and dropped it into the stool, we would laugh and laugh. It was a rich experience.’’
Jack was getting a crash course in human communication, with chapters on empathy and compassion. In a world where more and more toys have batteries, buttons, screens, or agendas, it’s a lesson early childhood educators worry too many children are missing. Wheelock College professor Diane Levin has even coined a term for children without it: compassion deficit disorder.
Unfortunately, parents unwittingly abet the process with the toys they buy.
‘‘The ability to relate to others builds slowly over time through many, many little everyday experiences,’’ Carlsson-Paige says. ‘‘The more we give them toys that take them out of relationships instead of putting them into them, the more, little by little, they are missing out on the slow construction of social skills.’’
Compassion deficit disorder is a metaphor, of course, not a literal condition, and it’s the concept behind the TRUCE Toy Action Guide, published for the 12th year by Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children’s Entertainment (truceteachers.org), based in Somerville. Levin, a cofounder, says this year’s ‘‘Toys of Value’’ list focuses on open-ended toys such as blocks, easels, and props for dramatic play.
Contrast that with the Toys ‘‘R’’ Us 2006 Fabulous 15 Best of the Holiday list, which includes only two toys that don’t use batteries or a screen, or with Hasbro’s Something for Everyone 2006 Holiday list, which boasts the return of the Baby Alive Doll, whose updated version requires four batteries so she can ‘‘eat and poop, just like a real baby,’’ and Star Wars Force Action Lightsaber, ‘‘the most authentic lightsaber-playing experience ever,’’ batteries not included. Of the 26 toys included, all but four are electronic or require batteries.
In response to questions about its list, Hasbro issued a statement saying, ‘‘As technology has increased in our everyday lives, Hasbro has incorporated some of that technology to produce some wonderful products to enhance the play experiences of children, but only where it makes sense. ..... We encourage [parents and caregivers] to be involved in all aspects of their children’s day, including television viewing, computer time, reading, playing and just having fun.’’ Toys ‘‘R’’ Us declined to comment.
Levin and others who study the relationship between toys, play, and development say toys with electronics bypass the process by which young children learn about cause and effect, including cause and effect of the human kind, such as body language and nonverbal clues. The more high-tech toys a child has and the younger he or she is when they’re introduced, the bigger the potential problem. The first three toys on the TRUCE ‘‘Toys to Avoid’’ list, for instance, are a Baby Einstein video for 9-month-olds, and two electronic learning systems by Leap Frog and Jakks.‘‘These kinds of toys entice parents ..... but they undermine the process of being an active agent, of being a problem solver,’’ Levin says. That’s a major factor in compassion deficit disorder, she adds. (Levin and Carlsson-Paige are coauthors of ‘‘The War Play Dilemma.’’)
Educational psychologist Jane Healy of Vail, Colo., says what children need in the first two years of life is a responsive human being, not exposure to a screen or battery-operated toy.
‘‘There’s a critical part of the brain thought to be responsible for reading signals and feeling empathy and relating to other people, part of the orbital prefrontal cortex, that develops early on. But it needs input from real-life people,’’ says Healy, author of ‘‘Your Child’s Growing Mind.’’ ‘‘It’s appalling, the toys that talk in electronic voices to young children, to babies, at a time when what they need is the lilt of the human voice, its nuances and the facial expressions that go with it.’’
In a typically developing child, the process of reciprocity begins in infancy when parents coo, babble, and make silly faces at their baby. In the toddler and preschool years, it’s firsthand experience they have in the three-dimensional world — moving objects, pushing and pulling them, touching, smelling, and dropping them — that help them see cause and effect.
It’s open-ended toys — blocks, clay, puppetry, animal figures, sand, markers, chalk, paint — that preschool teacher Sarae Pacetta hopes parents choose this holiday season.
‘‘Parents think they aren’t doing a good enough job if they can’t provide toys that have buttons and make sounds. It’s just not true,’’ says Pacetta, who teaches at the Lee Academy Pilot School in Dorchester. ‘‘I’d rather see a child playing with empty cereal boxes and tubes from toilet and paper towel rolls than with electronic toys.’’
The TRUCE list reflects that sentiment. It includes ‘‘Shoe Box Gifts,’’ which involves taking an empty box of any size and decorating and filling it with open-ended items around a theme. A rescue/first aid ‘‘shoe box’’ might include a flashlight, bandages, eye patch, toy stethoscope, and surgical mask. Larger boxes can be recycled and decorated to create a car or spaceship, a house or a cave.
Tufts University professor David Elkind says there is no electronic toy on earth that compares favorably to a board game. ‘‘Here’s just one thing they process from it,’’ he says: ‘‘.‘Grandpa made the effort to spend time with me, to enjoy my company.’ There is no cost-benefit analysis to the sense of security that builds and the compassion it generates, and no mechanical game can provide it,’’ he says. His newest book, ‘‘The Power of Play,’’ is due out next month.
Carlsson-Paige, who is the mother of actor Matt Damon, has three other grandchildren now. This year, as always, she’s looking for unstructured, low-tech toys that are not tied to the media. Among her favorite gifts over the years: her homemade play-dough (for her recipe, visit boston.com/living), generic plastic animals, Bristle Blocks, fat chalk, oversize drawing paper, and markers of all kinds.
What will she give her newest granddaughter, Isabella, born five months ago to Damon and his wife, Lucy?
‘‘She’s just about at that stage where she loves to reach and touch things,’’ Carlsson-Paige says. ‘‘I’ll find a book that has a tactile experience on each page, some large [non-toxic] beads on a string that will be fun for her to push and pull, and a few rattles. Rattles are a wonderful gift because she can see how she makes the noise happen.’’LINK

pictures! all cameraphone, all the time!

2006-12-11T11:06:00.000-05:00

ibbydibby pider

2006-12-05T16:02:00.000-05:00

intarweb! i have missed thee! i've been blogless here for a bit because, i've been having whole entire conversations with peanut. and this has yet to lose it's novelty. what started out as simple declaritve statements (look mama, the moon!) has morphed into an astounding grasp of the english language and its legion of nuance. for instance, one morning, she woke me up by hollering BALL! i'm baffled, right, because we're in bed, and there is no ball. so i look at her, and say, what ball? and she says, complete with pointing gesture to clarify, 'the ball, over there.' and lo, there on the dresser, is the ball that i'd stashed in my cargo pants yesterday when she'd fallen asleep in the car. so i said, okay, i'll get the ball. /endscene. so then, the next day, or perhaps a few days later, it's all sort of hazy now, she wakes me up hollering BUNNY! and, again, in my sleepdrunk state, i'm like, what bunny? and she again, points in the direction of the object, and says, 'that bunny! over there!' and i said, oh, that bunny. which was on the nightstand. so then, she says 'i'' get it.' and hops off the bed, gets the bunny, and climbs back up. other complete sentences include

i dropped it
i'll do it
i want it
let me see it
i missed you
i love you
where's my -x-
i brush my teeth
i brush my hair

so, yeah. my kid is a lil blabbermouth. i dunno where she gets that from...

when she nurses, i will sometimes sing 'nurse nurse nurse, nurse nurse nurse, nurse the peanut' to the tune of shake your booty. so, the other day, i did the whole, nursex3 thing, and she went, nursey peanut, nursey peanut! in rhythm. i almost peed a lil, i laughed so hard. she can also do all the hand movements for the itsy bitsy spider. and she sings it too, altho her version is more the ibbydibby pider. which is more adorablness than should be legal. and she can sing twinkle twinkle little star, and the happy birthday song from sprout. of course, the bane of my existence, is trying to get this on camera. because each time i bust out the camera, she stops being adorable, and goes 'pictures! want to see pictures!'

those are the cutey peanut updates. in knitty news, i've got two hats on the needles for other peoples kids. despite my insistance that i rather enjoy knitting, they're paying me for the hats. i'm only charging them for materials. after i finish these, i think i'll brave a sweater. i feel like i've got increasing and decreasing down pat. it'll be a peanut sized sweater, so that it doesn't take forever.

so that's the updatey bits according to garp.

over a hot stove

2006-11-28T16:04:00.000-05:00

for those who asked about recipies...

the pumpkin bread

pumpkin bread (2 loaves)

3 1/2 c. flour 1/2 tsp. ginger
3 c. sugar 16 ounces pumpkin
2 tsp. baking soda 1 c. oil
1 tsp. cinnamon 2/3 c. water
1 tsp. nutmeg 4 eggs

preheat oven to 350 F. grease and flour two 9 x 5 inch loaf pans. in
large bowl, combine all ingredients. using a hand mixer, blend at a
low speed until moistened; beat 3 minutes at meduim speed. pour into
prepared pans. bake 1 to 1 1/2 hours until toothpick inserted in
center comes out clean. cool 5 minutes; remove from pans.

Note 1: you can also make without hand mixer by combining wet
ingredients and the sugar. combine dry ingredients and add to wet
mixture. mix well. pour into pans and bake.

Note 2: as an alternative to the spices, you can just add 1-2 tsp.
pumpkin pie spice (cloves, ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon). i usually add
more spices than called for, but it is to taste.

Note 3: you can use egg alternative as well, but it makes the bread a little denser.

for the cookies

Snicker Doodles

1 C. butter (or margarine or shortening)
1 1/2 C. sugar
2 eggs
2 3/4 C. flour
2 t. cream of tartar
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
cinnamon sugar

Cream first three ingredients. Add flour, cream of tartar, soda, and
salt. Chill. Roll into balls and roll in cinnamon sugar. Place on
cookie sheet and bake at 400F for 8-10 minutes til lightly brown and
soft. Yield: 5 dozen. (These cookies will set up and be somewhat
crunchy when they cool).

thanksgiving thoughts.

2006-11-24T17:20:00.000-05:00

i'm not a big fan of the premise of thanksgiving. i suspect that that whole benevolent savage saves the pilgrims thing is a model for fibbing about history. but i like food, so i don't mind the cooking bits. well, that's not entirely true. i'm still recovering from a few years ago, when i made my first turkey, and mistook the neck for another bodypart. i ended up naming that turkey mandingo. none the less, last year, we spent a fairly craptastic day at my aunts house. as a result of my uncle being an asshole, we decided that we wouldn't repeat that disaster this year. so my moms new friend has a sister who owns a rib joint downtown. so we went there for thanksgiving, and spent it with her family. and of course, like any family, they've got their dramas, and their baggage, but they seem so much less in need of therapy, than my extended family. i mean, i think part of my cynical attitude about thanksgiving stems directly from my own experience with the nutty family from which i come. but somehow, when it's some one elses family, it's easier to forgive them their quirks. i suspect this is because, it doesn't matter how odd they are, they don't have anything to do with the genetics you pass on.

anyway, it was really nice to be around people who actually like each other, and respect each other. i like that peanut will have examples of that.

this deal was somewhat of a potluck. the rib joint provided the meat, and everybody else brought sides, and dessert. so i made chocolate chunk cookies, snickerdoodles, and dairy free pumpkin bread. ooo.

and i met a baby. a 3 month old baby. who had on nail polish. i love the south.

they CAN'T be serious.

2006-11-22T21:40:00.000-05:00

i saw this over on motheranarchy. i clicked, assuming that it was a joke, like those dog cages that made the 'ap' rounds about a year ago. nope. it's real. i have no words. hang your kid by the neeners while you pee? i haven't peed solo in 20 months. and i've never had the need to hang my kid up. matter of fact, (tmi) i've even managed to poop, with the babe, in a public restroom, sans assistance. and neither one of us left icky, or e.coli ridden. natch, i've tried on jeans, with the peanut, sans assistance. and this was pre-walking. and we all know, that i'm not the most coordinated of people. i mean, i've dislocated my knees more times than i can count. so it's not as though these were feats of remarkable balance, or whatever. it's just what you DO, when you have a damn kid. honestly. get a dog. put it in a purse. hang that up. at least it won't need therapy.

and, (coming back to this from earlier) don't they send around an email which says not to hang your purse on the hooks in public bathrooms because purse snatchers lurk about, fixing to snatch them the minute they hear your pee hit the water? so, i can just see all the fendi diaper bag carryin, kids as accessories mamas hanging the fendi on the door knob, so it doesn't get swiped, but then hanging their BABY on the hook.

i hate people. seriously. if i didn't adore socializing, i'd be a hermit.

mmm. warm cell phone.

2006-11-21T06:10:00.000-05:00

front (note the button and the yarn over for the antenna. ooo.

back

dishpan hands

2006-11-21T06:05:00.000-05:00

so these are the fingerless gloves that i knit for my mom
because her hands get stiff and sore, but she's got a typey job
so these should keep the pain at a minimum.
i have, however, requested that each time she puts them on, she breaks into a chorus of borderline.

another tiny hat for a tiny baby. w00t.

2006-11-20T16:45:00.000-05:00

without flash
and with flash

excusing the general mess

2006-11-19T01:54:00.000-05:00

where's peanut?

there she is!

w00t! i am on a roll now!

2006-11-19T01:50:00.000-05:00

photographically speaking, that is. i've got pix of my newest FO, a knitted kittyear punk hat. it's pistachio chocolate chip colored, and it matches this little fleece we got her for when it gets cool down here. models are peanut, who is, as always, fierce! and bongo, the sultryeyed male model with the attitude problem.

finally. more FO pix..

2006-11-15T02:35:00.000-05:00

so here are the loverly pix of the three knitty bags. you've seen the blanket. i don't have a shot of the cell phone cozy, or the 1 and 1/3 fingerless glove set yet. but bask in my knitty goodness. mmm.

the knitty gritty

2006-11-14T09:06:00.000-05:00

since i got bit by the knitting bug, i've completed 1 wool baby blanket, 1 LARGE cotton tote bag, 1 small acrylic bag for peanut (she picked out the yarn, i think because of the colors.) 1 small coordinating cotton bag to hold wallet, keys, cellphone, bubblegum, and chapstick inside aforementioned large tote, (because otherwise they get buried beneath the current knitting and the diapers). a cell phone cozy for my mom, and a piece for warm up america, which provides patchworky blankets to shelters and families in need.

next on the sticks: handwarmers/fingerless gloves for my mom, since she started a new job and her office is chilly, and her hands get sore when they get cold, but she still has to type. and socks. and a pillow covering. i'm into knitting. it's too bad i'm so camera lazy. i need to take pix.

and so it officially begins

2006-11-14T00:43:00.000-05:00

the unschooling of peanut. via the computer. and specifically, via http://live.wildlife.wavelit.net/451OK. the 'african' webcam. i'm honestly not sure where in africa this is. i know there's a webcam in botswana, but i don't know that this is the same one. in anycase, we've been watching it a lot over the last few weeks, and she's starting to be able to identify some of the animals. this is so stinkin awesome. interestingly enough, since we started watching this, she's started to show an interest in zoboomafoo, that animal show on sprout. i tried to get her to watch that before, and she was like, boooooring! but i think now she's got a context in her head, so now that show ties in with the animals we see on this cam. awesome, no? the cam is pretty hit or miss. sometimes, it's a hoppin lil pond, and sometimes, (esp. at night) you could lapse into a coma. the good news is, the nature sounds seem to calm her into sleep. so all in all, it's a useful website.

whoo!

2006-11-12T02:56:00.000-05:00

You paid attention during 80% of high school!

68-84% Pretty good, you know that there are libraries and newspapers, and you remember what you've read. You were a child that wasn't left behind!

Do you deserve your high school diploma?
Create a Quiz

the irony here being that i actually didn't even attend during 80% of high school. and i probably have the only group effort diploma in all of Peabody history. so, you know, putting the high in high school didn't impair my internet quiz taking ability, at least. hurrah!

can you smell what the hunk is cleaning?

2006-11-11T02:55:00.000-05:00

http://www.cleaninghunk.com/

pick jason. as a rocker. and latin music. trust me. and don't drink anything you don't want to wipe off your keyboard.

it's things like this that make me not want to be a housewife. i mean, if this is the sort of asinine marketing they're going to foist on people who stay at home, maybe i should go to work, so that like, stephen hawking will come use a robot to scrub my oven.

updates, and such.

2006-11-05T15:56:00.000-05:00

so. peanut is sick. scarily sick. she's got this horrible cough, and it's making her breathe funny. we've been doing lots of steam, and homeopathic cough remedies, and it seems to be helping. but mommy is looking for anyone who wants to donate valium to me. :) the paternal grand parents are in town, and they are just smitten with her. my mom got a new job, and she starts next week. yay!!!!! i finished knitting the bag, and the strap, and got it all sewn together. i lurve it. i will post pictures of all of this later. i really want to knit socks. i have to wait until we can go to savannah and i can hit a crafty store and get double pointed needles. or that book, about knitting socks on circulars. but either way, i have to wait, and this makes me sorta sad. cuz i really wanna knit socks.

EXTRA! EXTRA! cute baby newsflash!

2006-10-31T15:44:00.000-05:00

this is my inspiration photo. inspiration to knit her a little newsboy cap that actually fits. i feel sort of guilty, in that i've knitted a blanket for another baby, and now i'm knitting me a bag, and i haven't knitted anything for my kid. who does that? who behaves so scandalously? apparently, i do. i figure, she doesn't really care, and it's my own mommyguilt rearing it's ugly head. and by the time she's old enuff to care, i'll have knitted her several things. knit her? knitted? it's a hard verb to conjugate while exhausted. anyhoo, this is a shameless post in which to flaunt her cuteness. that is all.

early christmas present

2006-10-29T01:10:00.000-04:00

so i finished the blanket. and i knit a dishcloth, but the pattern doesn't lend itself to a verigated yarn, and it rather looked like it had a tumor. so i frogged it, and started over. and as i was doing the border of another patterned dishcloth, i thought, you know, this yarn is entirely too pretty to be a dishcloth. so, i turned to my current bible, knitting for dummies, and found the pattern for an 'everyday bag'. the pattern? knit a rectangle in garter stitch, fold it in half, and seam the sides together. as we've established from the first iteration of the blanket, i can knit a damn rectangle. so. i'm knitting me a bag in which to keep the things i knit with. my mother says that's irony. i think it's brilliant. since i'm using cotton yarn, i figure i'll line it with a solid fabric of sorts, because apparently, cotton loosens up, and i was already knitting loosely on purpose, since emily, my knitting sensei, told me i knit too tightly. so i can just see my pretty garter stitch turning into giant gaping holes through which needle points and notions may escape. altho, i'm only knitting on sevens, so perhaps not. but i think i was spoiled by the blanket, because it was knitted on 13s, and despite taking forever, it also didn't take long at all. whereas, at the rate this skinny yarn on these skinny needles is knitting, i'll be using my everyday bag to tote my geritol and calcium supplements to the damn nursing home.

i like knitting. i do. i just don't think i'm patient enough for skinny yarn and skinny needles. one or the other, but i feel like, (as with most things in life) it needs some chunk somewheres. skinny stuff makes me tense. like it wouldn't survive a famine. but i'm determined to persevere. even when i inadvertantly yarned over somewhere a few rows back, i didn't rip back to that and start over. i just thought to myself, it's ombre yarn, and no one but you will notice it. suck it up, ocd girl, and deal.

so, you're probably thinking, what on earth does this have to do with an early christmas present? well. i'll tell you. we went to get peanuts hair cut today. and near the salon was a bookstore. our small, locally owned, independent bookstore which i love. it has old style school desks with the flip top lids. i love that shit. anyhoo, we went to the bookstore afterwards, because i needed a treat for being a good girl during her haircut. so, we got peanut 2 books, (one called lets count, which has an attatched hand puppet thing, and one called don't let the pigeon drive the bus, which is hysterical.) and we got mommy 1 book, the invaluable stitch and bitch nation. i'm pretty excited about trying the flame sweater. so that's the early christmas present.

if i folded my rectangle and seamed right now, i'd have a shallow extremely long bag. good for holding like, six tubes of chapstick end to end. maybe i should knit chapstick cozys. because nothing sucks more than frozen chapstick.

peanut n a blanket

2006-10-26T16:41:00.000-04:00

boycot HSLDA

2006-10-25T19:17:00.000-04:00

because i just got an email about voting against same sex marriages since it threatens homeschooling. i think it's bull shit. so boycott. thank you for your time.

it's official

2006-10-24T14:36:00.000-04:00

my kid is a talker. sentences and all. i thought the look mama, the moon thing was a fluke, but the other day my mom alked in the room and peanut said "that's my grandma!" and we were watching zaboomafooyesterday, and she said look mama, a fish! (it was a clownfish) and then, she said look mama, and did her sign for elephant (it was a rhino, but thats hella close in size and color.) and when we were in here at the computer, rocking down for her nap, i was surfing some knitty websites, and one had a pic of feet in knitted toe socks, and she said 'those are feet.' and i said yes they are! and she said, 'and piggies!' (toes).

wow. we have conversations.

this shit rocks.

see my eyeball twitching?

2006-10-23T16:55:00.000-04:00

i may have posted about the blanket. you know, the one i'm knitting. by hand. with like, needles. and yarn. well, wool. a blendy wool, but wool none the less. and even with the new improved bamboo needles, and something as brainless as garter stitch, i am still remedial.

i didn't swatch. i'll admit that. i'm not even really following a pattern, since, you know, it's friggin GARTER stitch. but it seems to me, that if you have 100 stitches across, and 100 rows down, it should be a friggin SQUARE! no. instead, i get to row 100, bind it off, (which was an exciting thing in and of itself, as it's the first time i've done that) and lo! i examine

my carefully knit

table runner.

it's a rectangle. well, its not a rectangle anymore, because i unravelled the damn bindoff, and stuck that fucker back on the needles. and it's getting better looking. less table runnerish.

here's what i've learned, tho. if you plan to take up a hobby, say, like knitting...start with a pot holder.

up eye down!!

2006-10-22T18:24:00.000-04:00

shit.

2006-10-14T02:54:00.000-04:00

i frogged it. and started over with other yarn, and bamboo needles, so maybe i won't drop a million stitches.

holy sheep

2006-10-13T22:53:00.000-04:00

i'm knittin a blanket! yep. i've already told terri, so now i can blog about it, (which i've been yearning to do, hence the blogging hiatus...i just didn't trust my fingers not to betray the absolute glee they find in clacking two needles together with some wool.)

so far, it's 90 stitches wide, and 50 rows long. i won't talk about the color, cuz something has to stay secrety,

but

i taught myself how to join two colors. i think i did it 'wrong' so to speak, because the join looks phunky, but i actually like it. it's like the blanket thought, hey! maybe i want a new color. let me see...yeah! color!

anyway. i love knitting. we had a really good beginning, right? with just plain ole knit stitch. and then, i tried learning purl, (which is just the reverse of knitting, but it was the BANE of my existence for a good while.) anyway, then, i started a diaper cover, but i got too caught up in perfectionism, and i frogged it like, 24 times. and then, i cast on, and let it sit for a while. and then i pulled it off, and put it all away in disgust, feeling like my career *cough-hobby-cough* was over before it even started.

we went to walmart the other day, and it's october, and walmart doesn't care that, october in south carolina means 80 degrees. so there were all these sweaters on display. these knitty, mocking, cabely sweaters. i probably could've dealt with that. but then. THEN. the ultimate blow. a creme colored, chunky knit throw. it was, i swear to god, the cheapest looking acryllic, knit on like, size a jillion needles, in all garter stitch. and it was 20 bucks. and i thought, hell. if walmart can sell stuff that is this craptastic, i better get on the ball and start knitting so i can market my craptastical stuff to walmart. so.

home i came. and i brought out my big azz us 13 needles. (they really rather look like clubs for angry GI Joe dolls.) and i took out my wool. and i turned on the latest episode of degrassi TNG, and i started casting on. i got all caught up in the sean/emma drama, and i forgot to count my stitches, which is how i ended up with 90, instead of a nice round hundred, but 90 is taking long enough to knit. and i started knitting my own chunkyknit blanket. and as it came together, it started to make sense. it needed to be a blanket. not a soaker, or longies (especially with bumGenius 2.0 coming out!) but a blanket, for the first baby of my best friend.

so. i'm compulsively using my computer time to surf knittng websites and blogs. and my 'free' time (read, peanutty nap time, or when i'm on the can) i knit. which is why it's only fifty rows. but the baby isn't due for another 20 odd days. so i've got time. and the weekend is coming. and that means...2 days to knit my arse off! (and a trip to savannah to the yarn store that isn't wal mart. w00t!)

peanutty updates

2006-10-12T16:52:00.000-04:00

ankh (oink)
ack (quack)
bonkee ed (bonk me on the head)
appyappy (as in happy happy joy joy)
kipper (as in the dog on the cartoons)
oooopts (oops, but with a very distinct T sound)
dirty dirty (as in, the south, and also, pre bath conditions)
diaper
rice
chee-ken (chicken but in a mexican accent)
chair
toys
on
off (shirts, and electronic appliances both, for these)

and, in other hilarity, she can say both pillow, and sleep. and of her very own volition, if you hand her a pillow, she says, 'sleep now!' and puts her head down, and pretends to snore. seriously. she snores. i almost peed, laughing so hard.

we were out the other night, and the harvest moon was up in full effect. so i said, look, hannah, the moon! and she said, look! the moon! see the moon? and i decided right then, that she needed to stop growing up so damn fast

cunning linguist

2006-10-06T15:04:00.000-04:00

Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence

You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well.
An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly.
You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view.
A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary.

You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

so stinkin sweet.

2006-10-04T16:29:00.000-04:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4

watch, then comment. i'm interested in the dialogue we can start here.

so big!

2006-09-26T03:15:00.000-04:00

*new words
up-eye-down (for upside down.)
swing
sly(slide)
tubbies (for those horrid teletubbies)
E.T. (said with her index finger extended, as in, phone home)
MeNa (which is the current iteration of grandma.)
don't be up there (said, while climbing on the furniture i tell her not to climb on)
stars (complete with pointing upwards at the night sky)
noors (nurse. soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo cute!)
button (as in, belly)
piggies (as in toes)
pick me up
hey come here
wait
stop
mine
bum
diaper
poot (which i say after she poots, and now, she says it too, after she poots)

when she was tiny, she'd rub her hands together in this deliciously evil way, like mr. burns on the simpsons. you could almost hear her murmur 'exxxxxxxcellent.' and today, the baby i sit for did it, and i thought, i should blog about how she used to do that, so i don't forget.

i love this kid.