March, 2009

eyeglasses, originally uploaded by julie wilson world.

I’m officially “on vacation” these days. My maternity leave ended on March 9th and I’ve taken some extra time in order to find childcare for Eliza – childcare that doesn’t make me run away screaming. Many people assume that I’ve taken this time because I’m reluctant to go back to work, because I love my daughter so much, because being a Mother is so rewarding, because I love planning dinners and making sure the house is in order each day.

All this is true – but all this doesn’t mean I don’t want to go back to work. Sure, this work that I do isn’t exactly my life long ambition but it’s work and it’s helpful and it brings money to the table. It’s also productive and social and ordered and regular – much unlike Eliza’s nap schedule. The nap schedule does not feel productive, is most definitely NOT social and regular? Lets not set our clock on anything.

Regardless of my childcare difficulties, I am expected back at work on May 1st. It makes no difference that I’ve been on 12 wait lists since she was born. It makes no difference that I’ve got a willing and capable replacement in my position. It makes no difference that I’ll need to be trained on everything once I return due to changes in software, personnel and structure – Oh, the changes, my mind hurts to think of the changes!

So, I’m getting my act together. I’m making notes on her nap schedule (Ha!) and on her likes and dislikes. I’m thinking about the bottle introduction (anyone with a good lead on bottles? hook me up, my internet sisters). I’m making an appointment to get my teeth cleaned and my eyes checked.

It’s not that I want to have extra pearly whites for my co-workers, but I skipped out on extended dental for the year I was away and now that I’m back on pay again, I need a few things done.

1.) A cavity – something I would have gone back for previously but well, the last experience was… here.

2.) My vision is horrible (pregnancy does this to me, I think). My eyes are so bad that I can’t read a recipe without my glasses. I need a magnifying glass for my seed packets. I need a microscope for the map. I need some new glasses – something most likely thick and heavy. Really Sexy.

I should probably think about getting some tops for work as well. I’m still sporting some large (for me) breasts as we are still breastfeeding quite a bit. At least, I think this is why the tops aren’t fitting… Everything else fits like it did before. My weight is back down… I think…

Ummm, just lie and tell me that I have the figure of a goddess. I can’t see anyway.

Many people have send The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard to me at one time or another.

Directly below is a youtube trailer of the 20 minute animation but I suggest that if you haven’t seen it, click on the link above and take a bit out of your day to watch it.

I thought the piece was very well done and extremely well presented. It was so clear and straight forward, in fact, that I showed it to Franklin. After we watched it (there were two places where I had to pause it to explain why she depicts the corporations as larger than the government and why her friends thought the government could be symbolized by a tank) we sat on the couch and talked about what we had just watched. I wasn’t sure if he would grasp everything in the clip and I’m sure some things went over his head but I was particularly impressed when he mentioned something he had seen on television once, a child issued credit card. Basically, this is a credit card that parents can load up on and the child can take to the store and purchase anything they wish. No one looking to see the violence rating on the game or the cleavage on the Brat. Franklin thought that in light of seeing Leonard’s story, this was a problem.

“Kids want to buy everything, Mom. They don’t care about that stuff when they are in a toy store.”

However, should they? Recently, a friend of mine placed The Story of Stuff on her facebook wall with the additional comment that this wasn’t something for kids to see. I disagreed and told her about my productive discussion with my 6 year old. However, she doesn’t advocate (generally) for the potential guilt trips bestowed upon the next generation for cleaning up the mess we’ve created. As a result, she had thought it wasn’t something for a child to see.

However, she’s not a parent and, with all due respect, I don’t think she sees what is happening to children and how they are targeted these days. As a parent, I still think that something this clear and powerful is useful. It’s good to start discussion (which, I should add, she agreed) on subjects like this because ultimately, the parents are the one who are setting the limits. Dickson and I are not “Because I Said So” parents. We explain our decisions constantly – and probably get a few rolling eyes from bystanders and grandparents while doing so. Franklin should understand why I don’t want to constantly by him Kinder Surprises (crap) and why I don’t want to load up goodie bags with dollar store paraphernalia (more plastic crap). The latest and greatest in Bakugan, Club Penguin, Star Wars, Mutant Ninja Turtles are all phases. I don’t want him to get caught up in all of that and believe that his happiness is contingent on “stuff”.

Parents are at a disadvantage these days. In the eyes of corporations, a child is a potential life long consumer. “Get them to log onto a brand now and you’ll have them forever.” How many of us get giddy when we see a childhood toy come back onto the market? This isn’t retro fashion, it’s all marketing. It’s not coincidence that Strawberry Shortcake makes her return right when those who grew up playing with her are now at child bearing age. She’s already imprinted in our minds; “I played with her, she’ll be great for our kids”.

I read Consuming Kids by Susan Linn a few years ago and the measures companies take to find out the whine breaking point for parents has been carefully researched down to seconds. If only they put this much time studying cancer as they do the buying habits of tweens, we would have found a cure by now. There is a new documentary out that talks about this topic by the Media Education Foundation called Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood. Below is the trailer but you can find the entire film on you tube in sections.

I’d like to know other parent’s viewpoints on this. Are we laying a guilt trip on our kids by showing them this kind of stuff or are we just arming them with knowledge in order to fight against the overpowering marketing superpowers that surround them everywhere they go?

Head of a Black Carpenter Ant (Camponotus pennsylvanicus), originally uploaded by Opo Terser.

When we first moved here in May of last year we arrived to a slew of dead ants. My first domestic chore of the house, sweep up the ants and dispose of the ant traps laid out by the care taker. Alarms bells of chemicals and brain cancer and small children were ringing all over the damn place. I thanked the heavens that my father (the doctor that sends me pesticide action newsletters) wasn’t helping us move or we would have been out of that place before you could say Disodium Arsenate.

The rest of last summer was spent evading the spray of the perimeters of the complex. The city assured us that their spray was safe but we vacated during the sprays anyway. I also stopped growing herbs by the house and only ate from the allotment plots. One day we found an “ant highway” from the unit next door into the woods behind us. I thought I had found the nest. The caretaker threw a few buckets of gravel on top of the brush in the woods and sprayed the highway. I had my doubts about this.

Fall came and the ants were gone. I hadn’t really thought about them until recently. Recently as in Spring. Today is the first day of spring and Hello Ants! You fuckers.

As I was nursing Eliza this evening I slipped into one of my fantasy stupors – what? doesn’t everyone get these? Many (many many) times I start horrific scenarios (kidnapping, fire, break ins, earthquakes) and panic when I realize that some of the scenarios aren’t easy to escape from.

Here, welcome to my brain for a bit:

We have two kids. A fire breaks out in the kitchen. I need to get both kids out. I can’t get downstairs. We need to escape from the second floor. Grab Eliza and then go to Franklin’ room. Go out his window to the roof and drop from there. Do I go first? What if Franklin doesn’t jump? Do I get Franklin to go first? That basically means throwing him off the roof. How to jump with a baby? Dammit. I need to get me ladder and store it by his window. Make that two ladders – for each child’s room. No, three. Then we have one for each bedroom. Perhaps I need to sleep with my cell phone by my bed… Moses, I need to charge the damn thing, never mind have it near me. Where is my cell phone, anyway?

This time my thoughts flowed a little differently:

Franklin’s at school and I’m reading in the living room while Eliza naps. I notice a uncomfortably strong stream of ants coming from the closet where the crawl space is. I look outside and ants are covering the outside of the building. I run upstairs. I grab Eliza and brush the ants off of her body. Oh yeah, grab a blanket. I race downstairs and grab my boots – my feet crunch ants as I slide into them. I grab my vest with my phone (gotta remember to find / charge / place my phone in my vest) and my car keys. I need my wallet. I should keep my wallet with my boots from now on. Do I grab the car seat or go a la Brittany Spears? Grab the car seat. Get to Franklin’s school and calmly excuse him – I don’t want to start a stampede because apparently I’m the only one who is aware of the ant attack. Call my brother Adam, pick him up on my way downtown to pick up Dickson. All is calm as I navigate my way – sometimes the car is sliding on ant bodies, sometimes I’m still the only one in the know about the ants. We are all safe and all headed to the airport. We use the credit card (where is that credit card? Gotta keep that in my wallet) to buy tickets off the island – Edmonton? It’s a capital city, family and a National Guard or something, right? Call my parents, tell them to get to Edmonton. The ants are invading. Tell them not to panic. They really need to get an airport in Salmon Arm. As soon as we lift off the ground I look down and see The Earthquake start to happen. Damn Ants.

I know, right?
I’m totally prepared for this shit to go down.

Deer Bones, originally uploaded by BrightonJel.

This week has been a week of recuperation. Franklin is in the midst of Spring Break so he’s been hanging with Eliza and me each day.
Monday was Pajama Day
Tuesday was Lego Day
Wednesday was Ohlordyouneedtostoptalking Day
Today was CSI Animal Bones Day.

Before you roll your eyes, these days weren’t planned. I didn’t sit down with a white board and mark out what we would be doing each day with a colour coded sharpie. A sharpie would have totally destroyed the board, yo.

No, seriously.
Pajama Day was in lieu of the Pajama Day he was missing at the centre he had planned to go to but he was sick the day before so we hunkered down instead. Lego Day is just a day that I don’t suggest that he do something else for a little while and they were swimming at the centre and well…. psssst, Franklin can’t swim despite/because of? the 5 billion “lessons” he’s taken/splashed around. We went for a two hour walk to get green food for dinner that day but rest assured, the conversation was all Lego the entire time.

We were having fun. He could have gone to the centre for Wednesday but it was so nice to have him home.

Then Wednesday… ah the power of a six year old. Did you know six year old children need to hum while they are eating? Yes. Even when I scare him with tales of talking children who choke and bite their cheeks. Talk Hum Talk Sing Talk Talk Talk Hum.

By the time Thursday rolled around I contacted a friend and we brought the children out to the Swan Lake Nature Sanctuary to investigate their CSI Animal Bones project – a dead duck (real maggots!), a decomposing deer and enough bones to make into a light sabre (which, really only takes one because my all sensitive, all loving, all gentle boy can make pretty much anything into a sabre / sword / ninja weapon. He will also tell you all about it – over and over and over again.)

This is a ninja weapon. This is a ninja weapon. This is a ninja weapon like the turtles. Which ninja turtle do you like the most, Mom? I like Mikey. I like the swords. I would use them like this. Like this. Like this. Like this. Mom, I would use them like this.

The nice thing about going out with other six year olds is that you realize that Franklin is really not a verbal freak of nature. He’s a normal kid. Other kids are all talking out their actions as well. This afternoon I slowly came to the conclusion that the ongoing description of the ant going down the toilet drain (and the subsequent description about 6 or 7 times after the incident) was pretty much the same as all the other kids describing the bees, the wasp nest, the maggots, the beaver fur, the goat skull, the bat sounds…. Even during our little break to eat Pirate Booty, the kids were humming and eating and talking and stuffing their faces.

It’s more bearable when you know everyone else is suffering.

PLANTOYS Balancing Cactus, originally uploaded by orzaction.

Posting will be a little light here for a bit. Dickson’s mother is here and my mother comes tonight. We are celebrating Eliza’s first birthday on Sunday. Add this to a lasagna gardening project and three beds to raise, some biosolids to pick up and some horse manure to deliver.

I’m also going to try to be a good hostess – you know, cook a meal every night and have fresh coffee in the morning. Things I don’t usually do.

Also, time for visiting. Time for letting the ladies shop for Eliza. Time for talking over tea. Time for discussing the downturn of the economy – ugh, who else is wishing they would pick a larger variety of catch phrases when BIG things happen. Now, when I hear that phrase on the radio and turn the station.

I’ll downturn something…. your top lip over your bottom.

Speaking of the global financial crisis, I have a tip for all you investors. Buy stock in Plan Toys. Eliza is about to get a whale full.

See? We’re all going to be okay.

Bethge Hamburg Phases of the Moon Calendar Page, originally uploaded by GreerChicago.

My first year in the community garden was all about getting to fit as much as I could into the space. Some of that included edging out my plot until I could no longer innocently say that was the natural size that I started with. When my father came at the start of the summer, he really showed me what a garden could hold.

I did well. It was a nice hot summer and I even got a few cantelope! I tried to grow garbanzo beans and although they grew well, I decided not to grow them again because of the space they took for the amount of yield. I was trying to be practical. I also tried to grow Oka and failed miserably. Sometimes I wonder why people sell things that are clearly not meant for the climate. It’s just plain mean. This year also began my love for artichoke – the plant, the flower and the fruit.

My second year introduced the aphids. My poor artichoke. They are hardy buggers though! A few billion ants don’t get them down! I also discovered that I suck ass at growing corn. I didn’t know much about soil composition but that season I felt increasingly guilty for not adding to the soil during the winter months. My plants seemed to suffer tremendously. I tried many of the same plants as the year before and things were either eaten by pests or taken over by weeds. It wasn’t my best year. I had started a new job and wasn’t able to get out to the garden as much as I should have. It showed.

My third year was just after the birth of Eliza. I had thought that I would have oodles of time to tend to the garden during my maternity leave. Unfortunately, her timing was a tad off. Had she been born a few months earlier, perhaps I could have really done something. As it was, I planted and watered as much as I could. Moving a block away from the gardens helped and the summer was spent there everyday. However, I learned how much Spring preparation is needed. You can’t really throw a few seeds in the ground while breastfeeding, cover them with your toe and hope everything turns out for the best. They turn out, just not in their best form and definitely not in a straight line.

This is my fourth year in the garden. I’m hoping for a repeat of my first year. I’ve added to the soil. I’m experimenting with composted biosolids (read a PDF info sheet here) and considering how I’ve done absolutely nothing in the past, it should really show a difference. I’m also planning everything out and planting things we eat and enjoy growing. No more unlikely or hopeless cases (cantelope, oka) and no more just for fun but space hogs (chick peas). I’m trying to use companion planting rules and I hope (fingers crossed) to plant according to the phases of the moon.

Here goes!