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My aunt Mairin likes to say that she would always let my cousin Frank out of just about any work if he would play music for her (I am sure his memory of the truth of this might waver from her own).
My boyfriend moved in with me about two months ago and with him came a host of guitars, amps, keyboards and the like, which now enjoy taking up a whole quarter of the living room, always ready for a moment of inspiration or a need to escape other things that might be going on. It has been fantastic.
While he is getting excited about playing music at various places in the city*, and hoping to get involved in new groups, I get to have him sit on a stool just outside the kitchen and seranade me as I wash the dishes. I think I get what aunt Mairin was on about.
*like the Free Times Cafe on Tuesday the 14th of August!!
August 6th, 2007
“Jewish lesbian couple support alleged Islamic terrorist.” A neat story with one heck of a headline.
*I’ve been a bit of a news junkie the last few days waiting for a story I’m expecting to break. Runners up for the heck-of-a-headline title included “Missing zebra found dead in Carrot Creek“
April 14th, 2007
…it is unacceptable to have a green Christmas, and the lake I grew up on still not frozen over by New Years but to wake up on April 5th to a snow-covered ground.
April 5th, 2007
My cousin Jane was telling me that in a documentary on education she saw a class with a young child drawing a picture at the back of the class. The teacher asked the child, “What are you drawing?”
And the girl answered, “I’m drawing God.”
The teacher said, “But nobody knows what God looks like…”
“They will in a minute,” the girl responded, and continued drawing.
Try seeing God in everyone. He’s there.
March 7th, 2007
This is me on the edge.
Awake enough to be frustrated that I’m not really awake.
Here enough to know that I’m not really here.
Give me two more weeks. Just two more weeks without messing anything up too badly.
Then give me one more winter here.
One more year to finish this damned degree.
Then, please God, let me move somewhere where the days don’t get so stiflingly short.
March 7th, 2007
**This post is for girls only!**
No seriously guys you wouldn’t be interested. It’s not some sexy secret…honestly. You really probably don’t care to know.
Seriously. It’s about periods.
Now ladies: has anyone heard of the Diva Cup, or anything like it? I heard about it about two weeks ago and was shocked I hadn’t heard about it sooner. I would have posted about it right away but I wanted to try it first so I could give an actual review of sorts ;).
So what is it? Basically it’s a small silicone cup that you insert during your period instead of wearing tampons or pads. It collects everything for up to 12 hours, you take it out, clean it, put it back in for up to another 12 hours. It’s incredable: a. It feels totally clean. Like a tampon, you don’t even know it’s there. 2. It doesn’t leak. At all. Even overnight. Even if it’s getting full (it will just get heavy, you’ll notice, you’ll take it out).
For me it has three huge amazing benefits, each of which is a big enough deal to convince me to use it.
Environmental
Do you have any idea how many tonnes of pads and tampons end up in landfills every year? OK me neither. But it’s alot. Like ALOT. You don’t throw these things out. You use them for up to 5 years. That’s saving an unimaginable amount of waste.
Cost
Did you read that bit about using them for up to 5 years? Ya I was serious. And they’re like $35 dollars. The savings involved there over a lifetime: incalculable as far as I’m concerned. Mostly just cause I’ve never calculated how much I spend each month: cause it’s depressing. And it’s not like it’s a cost I can really cut back on: “hmm…low on budget this month, I’ll just use less tampons *coughcough*”
General Feeling
It feels clean. I know cleaning it out might seem gross, but it’s not really at all. It’s not all cotteny and soaked in and nasty, you know? Yuck. Ya. It feels clean. Like normal. mmm.
So anyway. Obviously choices about things like this are extremely personal, but if you’re at all interested check it out. And either way please tell other women! Because while these choices are personal, they should also be informed and these things aren’t exactly widely advertised or available at your local shoppers drugmart (in part of course because they are not making a fortune like tampons and pads must). So let’s inform people!
Some places they are available in Toronto are:
Whole Foods
Essense of Life in Kensington Market
Grassroots Environmental Products
The Big Carrot.
Use the ’store locater’ on the website to see where you can pick one up or order one online.
Also, anyone who has heard about them, let me know how/when if you get a chance! Thanks girls :).
November 16th, 2006
So I got this letter from my dad. My address was scrawled across the front in a manner one might expect, but in the top left corner there was something a little strange. My father must have forgotten to put his return address, because it was nowhere to be found. Instead there was a helpful stamp from the “Post” which said “ALWAYS INCLUDE A RETURN ADDRESS ON YOUR ENVELOPE”.
I think it may be one of the most not-quite-relevant-but-good-thought kinda messages I’ve ever seen. Cause really I’m sure they only ever use that stamp when people forget the return address. …but the mail is getting sent on forward–in fact without a return address there really isn’t any way to send it back, that’s the whole problem. So why stamp it with a message clearly most suited to the sender of the mail, and then pass it on to the reciever?
I suppose they’re counting on my good will to relay the message back?
November 15th, 2006
K …I need to write another post with referance to my one from yesterday…
the topic I was discussing is a complicated and difficult one, but I think it is incredably important.
I was bouncing it around with a friend of mine this morning and I think(/hope) I can be a little bit more clear about what I am trying to say. What I mean to take issue with is the way we discuss war, and the way we are taught to look at it.
When it comes to the war in Iraq most Canadians I’ve chatted with are in agreement on the ulterior motives of the American government. Bush went on about the war on Terror and about bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq–and we all knew Saddam was a bad leader. The genocides were well documented–we knew they’d happened. But the truth, we began to find out, was that the American government had been supporting Saddam for years, that many of his weapons had come from American sources…that the fact of the matter was America hadn’t cared at all about the freedom of Iraqis, and that if they were going to war in Iraq now it must be for some other reason.
Now this means something very tragic. This means the lives of young American men are being lost because of politicians making very questionable decisions. And in many cases these men believe* they are really going to ‘fight for their country’, to ’spread democracy and freedom’. They believe it because it’s what the media is telling them, its what their president is telling them, and it’s what they have indoctrinated into them once they join the army. So they sacrifice their life for this cause. And this cause is a lie.
Now, it could be argued that this war is differant from the ones that Canadians have fought in–and maybe it is. But there is a very big part of me that doesn’t believe that to be the case. When it comes to WW2, I wonder about the fact that Canadians turned a ship of Jewish refugees away. I wonder about American companies making huge profits off of the war (anyone know that IBM got their start by creating the record system of Jews in camps used by the Nazis?). I wonder about all the money in Swiss banks. And it makes me think that we didn’t go to war because of the atrocities the Nazis were committing. That it simply wasn’t that simple–that the governments were lying then too, and that the men who ’sacrificed their lives’ were being lied to, and it disgusts me.
I want to make it clear here that I am not simply trying to argue that war is bad. I know we all know that. What I mean say is that the way we are taught to look at war, and the way we discuss war is bad, and that there are political motivations even for that.
For example, when it comes to WW2 we discuss the fact that Hitler and the Nazis killed 6 million Jews. We learn about this atrocity in school and we learn that it was very important to stop Hitler. But we don’t learn about how many soldiers died fighting, how many Canadian, British, French, American wives were left without husbands, children without fathers, mothers without sons. And I do NOT mean to say that those lives were any more important–but they were still lives. So why don’t we all know offhand the number of soldiers who died? Why isn’t that a number recited as often as 6 million?
I would argue that it has to do with the politics of how we look at war. If we looked at the number of people who died fighting it would be harder for politicians to justify sending more people over. It would be harder to justify Afghanistan, for example.
I remember there was an argument when Harper was elected over whether the flag on Parliment hill should be lowered to half mast each time a soldier died…If I remember correctly it was decided that it shouldn’t be in times of war. That it should be lowered on Remembrance day to honour all lives lost, that these soldiers should be honoured together.
I believe that to be a convenient way for the government to gloss over just how many people are dying. Lower the flag for every soldier. Talk about every life. Then maybe we’ll start to take war more seriously. Then maybe we won’t just look at it as bad, maybe we’ll start to look at it as unacceptable.
To be clear: I will start wearing a poppy, if I can find a dove to wear with it. I take the lives of men lost very seriously, and I sincerely apologize if that was unclear.
November 13th, 2006
Every year I struggle with the idea of remembrance day. When I walk by veterans wearing their medals of honour, and think of the men that died in the wars or had to come home and live with the memories, my heart bleeds–and yet I never stop and donate because wearing a poppy has always seemed like it was a way of comemmorating the act of war.
We are taught that we are to remember and honour the sacrifices of the men who fought and died for our country. But I don’t agree with that.
I believe we should honour and remember the men whose lives were lost but I believe it’s just that: they were lost or destroyed. And I believe they would be(/are) disgusted to see that the fighting hasn’t stopped. Less wealthy Westerners are dying, but I’m quite sure that that doesn’t mean the world’s a better place.
Check out Matt Good on the topic.
November 12th, 2006
“Finding a shirt is like finding a man, except it involves more chance and more fate”
–a girl in my class
Wow. I couldn’t agree less, in more ways.
November 8th, 2006
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