feminine product reviews

happy buy nothing day! it's a holiday that everyone can enjoy, regardless of income. no purchase necessary!

contrary to the spirit of buy nothing day, i have a couple of product reviews for you.


no matter how opposed a gal is to accumulating stuff, once a month or so she's going to need a few accessories.
(as a side note, if you can't imagine what you'd do without menstrual products maybe you should donate to goods 4 girls, a charity that distributed cloth pads to girls in africa so they can attend school all month long. they're cool because they take both cash donations and handmade cloth pads, so people who don't have money can just sew some pads and make a big difference in a girl's life)

first, the keeper. i love my keeper. it's similar to a tampon in that it's internal, but better than a tampon in that it isn't a health hazard, holds more, is reusable, causes a lighter flow, is cheaper, is generally more comfortable*... i like it. there are a few different types of reusable menstrual cups. the divacup is another popular brand. the keeper is a little sturdier, the divacup squishes more easily. i suspect that i'd prefer a divacup for that reason, but i'm not about to trash my perfectly good keeper or go out and buy another. it's not like i can use more than one at a time, right? and the keeper is made in the states, so it's more ethical. either item is pretty freaking ethical, though. and economical. and environmentally friendly. look at this.

the downsides:
it sometimes seems to exacerbate cramps. i guess the walls of the cup push back against painful muscles or something. either way, when i'm really crampy i take it out.
public bathrooms can be a problem. i like to rinse it out and put it back in whenever i pee, which is hard to do in a little stall. i've found ways around this, like finding smaller, one-toilet bathrooms, but it is a little inconvenient.


the pros outweigh the cons by a lot.


but any girl who's ever had a period will tell you that accidents happen. regularly. and a reusable cup is no different from a tampon in that it can only hold so much. i generally prefer to have some extra lining in my underwear for my cycle, to keep me from needing to throw out perfectly good undies because of stains.

that's where this comes in:my organic cotton/ hemp pads from claire de lune. they're so ridiculously soft, i want to rub them on my face all day long. instead, i let my crotch enjoy them. and they are definitley enjoyable. after using cloth i could never use a scratchy, stinky, gross disposable pad. more common are lunapads or mother and maiden pads, but i prefer the smaller sellers on etsy and other places, since the prices and the customer service tend to be better. i throw my cloth in the diaper pail, but lots of other women just throw them in the wash with everything else. claire de lune says this in her store:

~Care~
Find a medium sized Tupperware container or buy a funky teapot to use as a soaking pot. This will reduce staining and keep you from having to launder everyday.
Hand or machine wash. I like washing by machine with like colors in cold-warm water. Cold will preserve the flannel better.
Tumble dry hang on your line!
If you are worried about staining try throwing in a natural oxybooster.

personally i'm not that worried about having a stain here or there. that's what they're for, right? and i spend less time rubbing them on my face when they're less than pristine.

*many women find cups to be uncomfortable until they trim the stem. trim the stem, baby!

the stuff that ledgends are made of

every so often at social gatherings someone will come up to me and ask me if i really wore a diaper full of sub sauce. people i don't know. complete strangers have heard of my fame, my derring-do. and i have to answer yes.

here is my story.

years ago i was living in a house with a bunch of people, working at subway, spending most of my time drinking coffee and wandering around with my friends.
my favourite of said friends was this punk who had recently moved there from ontario. he had a great sense of humour, awesome tattoos, and my skin tingled whenever i accidentally brushed against him. i really liked his eyes. we spent hours wandering the city together, looking at cool houses and big trees, talking... but we were not an item. not interested. no sir.

it came time for me to leave. i'd had enough of living in that city and was going to mexico. i didn't plan on returning to that particular city, since the world was my oyster and, to quote kimya dawson,

I've had this itchin in my shoes since I was just a little kid

but i was bummed about leaving my friend behind. but no guy is worth getting stuck in some disustingly cold city for winter, right? um, yeah....

so back to the story. we decided we needed to do something awesome and insane together so we'd never forget one another. we grabbed some adult diapers from a hospital and i took a big bag of chunky ranch sub sauce from my work and we made memories, replicating the toddler experience.

i shouldn't have refrigerated the sub sauce.

we were sitting in my kitchen, playing cards. he wore just a diaper, lots of tattoos, and even more body hair. i wore a diaper and a t-shirt. chunky ranch sauce was running down our legs. the slime was oozing into places that no condiment should go. there was a knock at the door, and i made him answer it. i hadn't told him that my parents were arriving that day from oregon, a three day drive. i hadn't told them that a scary-looking dude in a diaper would be answering the door. i hadn't seen them for a year. i stayed in the kitchen for a moment and snickered, then went to the door to rescue my poor friend.

we were married two years later.

on voting

first:
congratulations, world, on ousting bush. felicitations, americans, on electing a black man. may things turn out as well as you hope. (because, you know, he's secretly a marxist muslim arab terrorist who eats babies, but he won't reveal his true self until after he's sworn in.) (i'm kidding, people)
the only way nov 4 could have gone better is if prop 8 had been resoundingly defeated in california and i had won the lottery.

but i digress.

a few weeks ago we canadians had our federal elections. being the political junkie that i am, i was reading and talking and theorizing about the whole thing nonstop. i would have gone out and volunteered, but my son was sick, then my parents were here.
on the day of the elections my partner and i had a discussion on why voting is important. i consider it to be a duty and one of the most important things i can do. especially as a woman. i owe the women who fought and suffered so i could vote this much, as least.
but, he said, if everyone else is voting one way why even vote? if we vote with the crowd it makes no difference and if we vote against the flow it makes no difference. why bother?
i bumbled and stumbled and tried to articulate why we should always vote, but i didn't have the right words for it.

this past sunday i went to a bob dylan concert. his showmanship was mediocre at best, but the thrill of actually being there was incredible.it looked like this.

in the middle of the concert, when the whole arena was clapping and screaming and whistling, i had an epiphany.

voting is like applause.
really, it makes no difference if i join in applause. i can clap or not, either way it's a deafening noise. you can choose not to clap, too, it's ok. but if everyone chooses not to clap, you don't get applause, do you? if everyone chooses to put their hands together for someone or something, something amazing and communal happens. so, fine: don't clap. don't vote. but you're just standing there like a douchebag while everyone around you is contributing.

brothers and their mother

the baby is going through a phase where anything vaguely humanoid is 'mama!'. the boy is going through a phase where he practices being literal and anal. so the baby walks around the house spotting all sorts of things and calling them mama and the boy follows him around, correcting him.
'mama!'
'no, that's mickey mouse.'
'mama!'
'no, baby, that's a veggietales!'
'mama!'
'NO, BABY!!! I TOLD YOU!!! that's the BROOM!!'

they have such different personalities, but they passionately love one another. with the sort of love that has room for violence and cruelty and indifference as well as hugging and sharing and playing with a dump truck in the kitchen together for a whole hour.

this week the boy went to see a pediatric gastro-endocrinologist. for the last couple of years i thought that my son had celiac disease. it turns out he doesn't. he has a mystery illness that includes dramatic responses to exposure to gluten, shitting blood and mucous and something that looked just like a placenta, a weak immune system, and very poor growth. and it seems to be getting worse. the doctor recommended a bunch of tests, since she has no idea. she specializes in this type of thing and has no idea whatsoever. that is simply not reassuring. i got to hold my boy down while he screamed and writhed as 6 vials of blood were drawn. partway through his vein collapsed. it was even less fun than what you're imagining. the next day i divvied up his morning poop into five sample containers. it was a fantastic 24 hours, i tell you.

i try not to think about the various things that could be wrong with my little boy.

*trying desperately to cheer up so this post doesn't cause depression and despondence across the blogosphere*

i've been knitting a ton. the holidays are coming and i have a huge list of things i want to make for people. i'm happy with what i've churned out so far, but i can't post pictures because *sob* my camera doesn't work. still. agh.

off to angst about sick children and dead cameras.

:(

blogging seems so empty and pointless without pictures.

i'm a winner.

remember the contests i mentioned a couple of posts ago? well, let me tell you.

i won!!!!!!

i'm stoked. i never win things. except that time i won an ipod, but that was a total fluke, because i never win things. i came in last in a 3-legged race when i was 4 and got a little medal for it, and i still have it because i never win things. have i mentioned that i never win things? anyways, i get one of the wristlets from here. i'm going to leave it in the shipping package and get my partner to give it to me for christmas or solstice or whatever we decide to celebrate, in the end.


other news:

you, my most astute of readers, may have noticed that my posts have been sadly photo-less of late. my camera died. i need to call the company (damn you, olympus!) but i hate calling people and i hate confronting people and i'm pretty sure i won't get a new camera without both calling someone and being (politely) confrontational. so i've been putting it off for a couple of weeks and it sucks. i hate not having a camera. every day moments happen that i have to just sit and enjoy instead of running for the camera and missing. it sucks. i'm stuck watching the baby obsessively hug and kiss the boy. and i have to listen to the baby figure out new words instead of just recording them and watching later. and the boy's silly faces and clever, articulate observations? i have to actually enjoy them and respond to them instead of just putting a small recording device in his face. woe is me.

i'll call the camera company next week.

ps. i have no idea why the font is so big today. but i kind of like it, it'll make life easier for those readers who are optically challenged.

book review: supreme courtship

i love a good christopher buckley book. and i liked this novel.

mr. buckley, in my mind, is the author of brilliant, cutting, hilarious books about american politics and commerce. little green men, florence of arabia and boomsday are witty, clever, and informative. the chuckles kept coming as the pages kept turning. i highly recommend all of them.

supreme courtship is about an honest but unpopular president who, to spite washington, elects a tv judge to the supreme court. things get a little convoluted, but eventually the president end up campaigning against his will and fighting for a presidency he doesn't want. a respected politician goes from being the chairman of the senate judiciary committee to being the president (on tv) to running for president to...
read the book.

it should all be there. the plot is fascinating, the characters good, the pace just right, the writing intelligent. but it's not as sharp or clever as buckley's previous work. i can't put my finger on exactly what's missing. i still think it's worth reading, but i'm not as evangelical about my recommendation as i would be if i reviewed his other work.

so go ahead, read it. supreme courtship won't hurt in the slightest and you'll probably really enjoy it.

etsylicious

i'm in love with etsy.com
my partner has asked me to compile a holiday wishlist for him, so i've been perusing the merchandise over at etsy for a few days, and it's addictive. i lie down to sleep at night and suddenly think 'oh, i should see what ecoetsy has by way of yarn...' and before i know it i'm out of bed, turning on the computer, starting another obsessive session with the crack otherwise known as etsy.
most stuff on there is handmade. my favourite stuff is eco-friendly (just ender 'ecoetsy' when you're entering your search, it takes the work out of finding the good stuff) and canadian-made. tonight i discovered that the official transcanada etsy team (quelle mouthful!) is hosting giveaways, here and here and here and here. get on it, yo! handmade, canadian made, beautiful stuff!

off to etsy a bit more...

freaking ugh.

when i lived in mexico there was a donkey carcass by the highway. it was at least 35 degrees* every day for months and months. the carcass stayed there and rotted for months and months. the flies swarmed. the air was unbreathable. we would walk miles out of our way to avoid that section of highway. there are no words i can use that would adequately describe the way that dead donkey smelled.

but my compost smells worse.

it's a healthy, living compost. writhing with bugs and worms and maggots. the bottom is beautiful black gunk, worth its weight in gold to my garden. and i believe in composting, it's one of the best free things a person can do for the planet. but it stinks. not particularly when you open the top to put stuff in. it doesn't smell at all from a few feet away. but if you open the bottom to scoop out the composted material, watch out.

food scraps, newspaper, rabbit shit and garden scraps, swamped with rabbit piss every few days and left in a black container in the sun to stew. sound tasty?

and i plunged my hands in, up to the wrist. crouched over it. spent half an hour breathing it in, filling small buckets and carrying it to my garden. i had to come in partway through, it was too much. i seriously contemplated running across the street to the fire station to ask if i could borrow a rebreather.

ok, done whining. i'm headed back outside now.

*that's 95 degrees in americanspeak

book review: in search of april raintree

in search of april raintree by beatrice mosionier is freaking intense. it's like the colour purple or i know why the caged bird sings in that it's the based-on-a-true-story account of a little girl becoming a woman through the most incredibly brutal circumstances. i actually prefer it, since it's more relevant to my culture. i've never experienced firsthand racism towards black people, but i have witnessed some of the scenes described in this book.

april raintree is the daughter of a couple of alcoholics and the older sister of cheryl raintree. they are a metis (part native) family living on the canadian prairies. the story is april's account of the girls' removal from their parents' home and placement in various foster homes. april fights valiantly to survive, rise above her miserable circumstances, and protect her sister. it's terrifyingly honest, showing the girls not as brave little survivors or victims, but as human beings who make bad choices and suffer the consequences, and are seriously messed up from all the evil that is done to them. the protagonists are complex and real. they aren't innocent by any means, and i, as a reader, didn't like them at certain points in their development, but it was a damned good book.

my culture is profoundly racist towards native and metis people, but after years of seeing it i had become desensitized to it. this book reopened my sense of outrage that people could treat other people so very badly. after crying my way through segments of the book i wanted to go kick the shit out of some white people.

as a white person i want to apologize with every fibre of my being for all the disgusting, horrific, insidious wrongs people of my skin tone have perpetrated upon pretty much every other people group on the planet. we suck. please forgive us.