cuteness overload

i should have waited one more day to post the rabbit saga. this morning one of phyllis' young was out of the nesting box for the first time, hopping around, smelling things and looking at things. i took pics of the unbearable cuteness then put it back in the box.
my boy is mostly potty trained. he wears underwear (but no pants) around the house. he's stayed dry at night twice. i think what made the difference was switching from raisins to gummi bears as a reward for using the potty. i know i prefer sugar as a reward. this morning he was wearing this:
don't you hate it when your underpants get caught on your legwarmers when you're pulling them down to pee, then you need to hold your superman cape up so it doesn't get in the potty, but it's hard to see because of your batman mask? i know it's a problem for me....

oh, and the heart is drawn on with marker. we were talking about internal organs and their locations. that was more than a week ago. he's had me redraw it every day since then. are there any health hazards associated with being drawn on with permanent marker?

bunneriffic!

rabbtastic!

mid-july: we got phyllis and gladys. they had just been bred.

the next 3.5 weeks: we were not sure if they were pregnant or not. hoping they were.

august 13: they started pulling tufts of fur out of their chest to line their nesting boxes. we got them nesting boxes. said boxes were too small so they ignored them. found one bigger box and gave it to phyllis, continued to hunt for another box for gladys

august 15: in the morning we noticed that phyllis has given birth. in the afternoon gladys kindled, too. but her babies were born on the wire floor of the cage. (newborn rabbits look like this:they aren't exactly cute)
gladys' offspring were on the floor of her cage, struggling pathetically, and on the cement floor of the basement. there's a little gap at the bottom of the cage that they must have been magnetically drawn to, since there was no other way for them to get out. either way, there were babies all over. one was dead. i gathered the babies into the too-small nesting box and went upstairs to call around for a properly sized box. i found one pretty quickly. when i went back downstairs to move the babies to the bigger box i found that phyllis had tipped the box onto it's side so she could feed her young. their bellies were taut and they were too deeply asleep to notice when i moved them.
i was really impressed with gladys' mothering. i'd read that mothers often abandon their young if they're handled too soon after the birth, and i was afraid that we'd lose the whole brood. i was reading up on getting phyllis to foster them. gladys and her instincts kick ass.

august 16: in the evening i went downstairs to check on the babies and feed the mamas. i found a baby on the floor a few feet from the cage. it was very cold and barely moving, but when it smelled its mama it started squeaking. did you know that rabbits can squeak? only when they're really freaked out. anyways, i checked on the baby a few hours later and gladys had fed it. such a great mama.

august 17: in the evening my partner found another baby several feet from the cage. it had to have been on the floor for at least 48 hours. this one didn't make any noise when it smelled its mama. it died a few hours later.

august 21:august 26: the bunnies have gotten at least 5x bigger than they were at birth. they're really cute. they opened their eyes.

august 27: i've been reading up on vermiculture (aka vermicomposting, using worms to compost) and am trying out a worm bin under gladys' cage. so these are the newest residents of the house:red wigglers!!!

how the mighty have fallen

i'm posting this from the city library. people are behind me, waiting their turns on the computer, reading over my shoulder. alas, i have no internet at home. and the phone isn't really working. but it might be fixed on thursday, we'll see.

i'm so, so bored without internet. and when i have a sudden thought i can't go google it right away, as is my habit. so i haven't yet learned all wikipedia can tell me about buffy st marie, although i started wondering about her a few days ago.

on the bright side, i'm getting lots of reading done. and some knitting. and if it weren't so blisteringly hot i'd be canning and baking and stuff. instead i'm eating ice cream and counting down the hours to to thursday.

i have to go, the line behind me is getting long and grumbly. but my bunnies have had bunnies. i'll tell you all about it as soon as i can, i promise.

i'm such a rabblerouser.

i sometimes post on a forum called motheringdotcommune, a huge online community of mostly like-minded folk. i was part of a thread discussing the westjet fiasco described in my last post. i paraphrased the email i received from westjet then wrote 'for the whole text click my siggy'. my siggy beingwith a link to this blog.
here's the email that occurred between the moderator and myself following that benign (or so i thought) post.

Originally Posted by Cynthia Mosher

Hello,

It is my understanding that you were informed by a moderator that emails from others are not to be posted on our forum in discussions. This is an accurate description of our policy. Emails are not public domain material. You do not have a right to share an email with the reading public without the writer's permission.

I see that you have posted "eta: click my siggy to see their letter in its entirety." and placed the censored smilie as your signature and linked to the blog post containing the email.

I am issuing you a warning for this placement in your signature. Please do not circumvent the rules we have placed in our User Agreement through such smile use and linking. I appreciate the lactivism in getting this information out there to people and we would normally support you in your efforts. But the correct action would be to get permission to share the email and respect our request to do so, not post in a way that skirts around our request and use your signature to avoid doing so.

~Cynthia

so i replied: (it's disjoined, i wrote it while nursing the baby and listening to bush spout bullshit)

hello cynthia
the link is to my blog; i did not create my blog or that post in an effort to 'circumvent the rules'. it is my personal blog and my readers are interested in the westjet issue. the link has been in my siggy with that smilie since last fall. i don't see how referring people to my personal site is deserving of a warning; i did the same thing when someone asked me about raising rabbits this week and didn't receive a warning. it's not my intent to be a mdc outlaw and i feel that you're overstepping your bounds, telling what i can and can't blog about.

about thirty seconds later she replied:

You can blog about whatever you want. We don't set rules for your blog posts and I did not issue this warning due to your blog post. I issued it for the reasons I stated in my PM.

We do get to make decisions about posts and inappropriate use of signatures here at MDC. Since the clarification was made to the thread that we do not host posting of emails without permission we would expect you to respect this policy. It may be true that your signature linked to your blog since last fall but placing a censored smilie in your signature that links to your blog does indicate to readers that you are linking to material censored on our boards. And your telling members to click your sig to read the post does circumvent our desire to respect copyright law. We will not host posts or signature that do so. Please edit your signature to remove the link and smilie.

~Cynthia

so i guess i'll quit visiting that forum again.
mdc is like the united states, in my mind. the people (mostly) kick ass, the government scares me.

my inner lactivist rears her head

first, read this.

it pissed me off mightily. so i emailed the company. this is what i said:

i have been flying westjet several times a year for more than five years. unfortunately that trend will be suspended, thanks to your shameful and discriminatory treatment of erin tarbuck and her child. i am a nursing mother and will not fly with an airline that interferes with my child's need to eat. When ms. tarbuck has recieved a formal apology and westjet has created pro-breastfeeding policies i will be happy to book my next flight with westjet, but until then i will fly with air canada.

they just emailed me back. they sent this same email to several people.

Good Afternoon,

Thank you for taking the time to write to us with your concerns.

WestJet has a responsibility to act in the best interests of all guests on a flight. If a guest is engaged in an activity that makes others uncomfortable, or has the potential to make others uncomfortable, flight attendants have a responsibility to engage the guest in an effort to find a solution. Under the circumstances, we believe the solution proposed by our flight attendant was reasonable.

WestJet supports a woman’s right to breastfeed. We also support the rights of all guests on our flights to have a safe and comfortable experience while in our care. If at any time we decide that a situation exists which has the potential to interfere with the comfort of our guests, we have a responsibility to address it.

WestJet does not have a policy on breastfeeding. We do not feel one is required because we fully support it. At no time was Ms. Tarbuck asked to stop breastfeeding.

We do not believe it is possible, or even desirable, to have a policy for every possible occurrence or situation that may arise. We believe and trust in our WestJetters, and empower them to make decisions based on common sense and good judgment.

WestJet has responded to Ms. Tarbuck’s complaint by apologizing if Ms. Tarbuck felt the request to cover up was unwarranted. However, we believe the decision by our flight attendant was reasonable, and in the best interests of the other guests on the aircraft. Ms. Tarbuck was never asked to stop breastfeeding her child. WestJet supports the right of every woman to feed her child, whether by bottle or breast.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact us. I hope we can look forward to welcoming you aboard a WestJet flight in the near future.

Sincerely,

Char
Specialist-Guest Relations
WestJet

they are so, so full of shit. so i said:

you're missing the point entirely. from what ms. tarbuck and her family say, the only person who could see her feeding her baby, aside from the family themselves, was the flight attendant. if the flight attendant is so uncomfortable with a normal human activity perhaps she needs to find another job.

the canadian charter of rights and freedoms protects breastfeeding. it says nothing about breastfeeding under a blanket, but we aren't expected to only exercise our other rights and freedoms under blankets, either. women can either breastfeed on your flights or they can't. which is it?

to be continued.

rabbiteering

we have rabbits! three of them. phyllis and gladys are new zealand whites and french fry is a flemish giant. phyllis and gladys are pregnant, due any day now. french fry isn't the father this time, but he will be soon. here are pictures.


french fry has a 'love toy'. he's right next to the ladies but can't get to them, and my partner feels bad for him. i don't particularly think that mr. fry is experiencing sexual frustration, but whatever. so my kids' fish stuffie, boromir the asshole*, shares french fry's living quarters. boromir gets bunny snuggles pretty constantly but no bunny lovins'.

phyllis (on the right) and gladys (on the left) are knocked up. they spend their time chillin', ignoring french fry. my boy would gladly spend all day pushing bits of grass and leaves through the wire cage, trying to get the greenery to land on the rabbits. phyllis is his victim in this picture. if this were a video you'd hear peals of delighted laughter. my son managed to get the leaf to land on the huge rabbit (in repose)
hey, cheap entertainment! and meat!

* boromir the asshole has a fellow fish stuffie, faramir the hottie. three guesses who named them.

batman: the dark knight

i couldn't stand the new batman. i know that puts me in the vast minority of humankind, but there you have it. it was too dark, too violent, too disturbing, too long... plus they hid heath ledger's gorgeous face. they could at least have given me that.

basically it's the joker (working alone as an agent of anarchy, good at blowing stuff up but otherwise unskilled) vs. batman (strict personal ethics, has two assistants and vast resources, plus all the latest gadgets). it's a fair fight, since the joker always has the element of surprise on his side (no one ever knows what he's going to do next) and he doesn't have to worry about a secret identity, a self-enforced code of conduct, or hurting other people. but batman is batman.

there's a subplot about how batman can never be the hero gotham needs because he wears a mask, blah blah blah. without it, harvey dent couldn't have been in the movie, but that doesn't really redeem it. allegedly the politician can be a hero that the people of gotham can really look up to and so on and so forth... it all seemed really abstract for a movie about guys killing each other.

i can't deny that it's an excellent film. it's incredibly well crafted. i normally never notice camerawork, but the skill in this movie was obvious. the script was good, the acting superb... the whole thing was fantastic, except that i didn't like it. i like artful violence (think crouching tiger hidden dragon) and this was just brutality.

so if you like being startled, scared, bored and shocked in turns, this is the movie for you. but not me.

but if you're looking for reasons to see it, here are three:
or if those three aren't your cup of tea:
but, if you're like me, this will be the image that makes you happy:

miscelany

this month i have made:

• enough jam to last ~9 months (we love our jam around here so i'm counting on needing about a litre a month. but this is the world's best jam so we might finish it by halloween) (pics pending)

• this hat: the intended recipent, my brother in law, has a truly tremendous cranium. gigantic. so i meant to make the hat bigger than the pattern suggested. but i'm not the world's greatest knitter, it turns out. so it fits the boy. i guess my little dude gets to wear an extra-cool toque this winter.

• these socks. rather, i finished one and knit the other. it was a sock swap. kara (the best person in florida, possibly the southern states) knit me a beautiful pink sock, then sent me the pattern, the yarn and the one sock. i was to knit the other. but i was short a little yarn so i took the yarn from the first sock's toe to finish the second sock, then gave them matching white toes. it looks like i meant to do it.

• my garden has flourished. the tomatoes are almost ready and i think i have a hot pepper (i'm giving it a few more days but i could pick it now if i wanted) so today i got my first fruits: i thinned the beets. there's a scarce handful here, so i took a close-up so they look bigger. then i added a couple of carrots and some garlic and sauted them in soy & sesame oil. then i added in a shiitake mushroom and some water, then some miso. and a bit of cayenne. and it's delish. mmmm.

and the boy told his first mom joke the other day. he was touching me with a frozen water bottle and i was shrieking dramatically and jumping around.
me: aaaah! it's cold!
my 2 year old: your mom's cold!
i almost died of pride, right there. also my baby started walking, but that milestone seems small compared to the awesomeness of starting telling mom jokes.

now i'm going away for a few days. tata!

book review: the omnivore's dilemma

the omnivore's dilemma by michael pollan is my kind of book. i don't think my mom would like it at all (she doesn't like being questioned on the ethics of her choices) and not my dad's kind of book (no gun fights or intrigue) but i suspect that barbara kingsolver, david suzuki and i all deeply enjoyed the omnivore's dilemma.

the book traces four meals to their sources. a meal from mcdonald's, a meal from whole foods (an american organic/ natural grocery chain) a meal from polyface farm (only sells locally, all organic) and a meal that the author hunted, foraged and grew himself.

a book this informative can't help but have some dry parts. pollan writes clearly and eloquently, but on occasion he goes on for too long. i found 90% of the book fascinating, exciting and inspirational. some of the information he had on factory farms, corporate policies, environmental impacts, agricultural techniques and so on blew my socks off. this isn't stuff you'll find advertised on the walls of your local burger king. it's alarming, troublesome and incites both thought and change.

if you want to eat more ethically and tread more lightly, this is the book for you. one warning, though: you can't read it while eating at mcdonald's. (i had to leave it at home and take my knitting instead. but seriously, why doesn't a more ethical eatery have a playplace? i only go there so my kid can run around without too much supervision and i can enjoy the air conditioning. someone please start a local, organic restaurant with a playplace and a/c. near my house. thankyou.)

the last great adventure (that i missed)

five and a half years ago the western world was in a tizzy. bush was certain that iraq harboured weapons of mass destruction and was pushing as hard as he could for war. many people were equally certain that no such weapons existed and bush really just wanted some cheap oil. many, many people didn't really know what to think. it was fun times. remember?

my life was all in a tizzy, too. i had just started working at a homeless shelter (which i loved) and gotten engaged to a heavily tattooed man (whom i love) and was about to start jewellery school (which i loved). thins generally rocked. but this war thing - it bugged the hell out of me. and i didn't want to sit around and talk about it over a bottle of cheap wine. rather, i wanted to do more than that. my partner and i were considering joining cpt and going to iraq as human sheilds. yes, that's the group that included the people that got kidnapped a few years back. they're evangelical christians, but so were we at the time. the idea was that we'd document human rights violations committed by both sides during the conflict. when bombs fell from the sky we would be in hospitals and schools, hoping to protect the brown people with our whiteness. i was so noble and so naive.

it was actually pretty complicated. on the one hand, we could stay in canada and make out and plan a wedding and i could go to school and we could make out and things would be good. on the other hand, we could get married in a hurry and go to iraq and possibly make a difference and make out and have experiences that we could never replicate elsewhere and make out. so what did we want, to make out in the safety and boredom of canada, or the danger and adventure of iraq?

obviously we chose to stay here. we wanted to have a chance to be married and stuff before going into such a stressful, dangerous situation. at the time it felt like the impulsive, wild part of me was being squelched.

but it's good that we didn't go.

• the foreign aid workers were given an ultimatum right before the war began: get out or do what you're told. mostly they were told to go to weapons factories and power plants when the bombs dropped instead of the more humanitarian-type places. but hussein used foreign aid workers as pawns, the same way he used every other resource at his disposal. can you blame him? the dude ended up in a hole in the ground eating doritos, it's no wonder he did all he could to avoid that fate.
• 4 cpt team members were kidnapped. one was killed. that would have sucked. especially for our families back in canada.
• our families would have freaked right out the whole time we were gone. that's actually one of the main reasons we didn't go.
• our first year of being married was brutally hard. my birth control made me incredibly depressed. i was too young to be married. i was 20, for crying out loud! i'm glad that we got through that year here, with all the people who love us, instead of in a dusty war zone.

but there's a little part of me that looks back at that choice with melancholy. it's the last chance i had to go do something wild and extravagant and inadvisable. now i have kids and so i can't throw myself in harm's way. and i've gotten soft. i like having showers and a bed. running water, people who speak english pretty much everywhere... i'm used to this. it would be really hard for me to go back to being as flexible as i was. i was made of rubber back then.
anyways, i can't really blame the utter dullness of my life on anyone but me. i chose not to go to iraq.