babies, trees, food!!!

Dudes, I am coming to BC!!! Hurray!!

Not that I don't love Edmonton.

Cops flailing around tasers, strip malls on every corner, house-sized trucks ready to run over my car with hippy bumper stickers (courtesy of my parents), and two solid weeks of minus 20 plus a hardcore prairie windchill.

Hey, the people are nice.

I'm super excited to see everyone in BC. I have to admit I get a bit lonely out here. Hugo learns new smiles and sounds and sometimes I am the only persn to admire it. And I have been really thinking about maybe going for a walk with another grownup for, say, 3o minutes. And it would be nice to eat with other people. I mean, I eat in FRONT of Hugo, and he eventually eats what I eat.

Are we what we eat? Is he me?

My Christmas expectations are: regain all baby weight, watch Trailer Park Boys Christmas Special, stare at sparkly Christmas tree, see my sisters, my youngest brother, my niece and nephew, Mikara and Chris and Alora and Ava.

When I get back I hafta go back to skool . . . . . sigh.

Big Big Baby

OK, this post is just pure braggery.

Braggacio.

Braggeyo, in Alora vernacular.

Hugo, ahem, is 5.9 kg!

Thats 9 pounds for you imperialists out there.

At 10 weeks, this puts him in the 75-90 percentile.

Oh yeah, he is heavy, and long, and chubby and awesome.

the sky and love

So, three days ago I went to my very first 0 to 5 (and parents of) drop in playgroup.

I was pretty shy when I got there.

There was: a big posh community centre room. Hardwood floors and big beautiful windows.

On offer:

Instant coffee, for 25 cents.

Packaged cookies, for free.

Attending:

about 8 Mums, one Dad, and a bunch of kids.

It was interesting to see how other folks parent, to see how kids are at different ages, and to talk to other Mums about how the first year of parenting is.

Number one topic on that issue: sleep. One lovely woman, all smiles, so smilingly told me that her little 11 month old girl has been waking up EVERY 15 MINUTES for the past 4 months. All night. Every quarter hour.

She was so calm - though perhaps well medicated?

There were a few other stories of post-partum breakdowns.

But all the scary, exhausting, confused stories were bracketed by love.

Every woman said that she loved her baby, that her baby was perfect, that the baby was amazing and that she didn't mind not being able to sleep/think/speak/emote normally for months on end. And that she would, in a minute, do it all over again.

It's crazy - for whom else would we put up with constant sleep deprivation, intense emotional demands, and the occasional accidental injury (like birth)?

And, and this is also intense, to do it well, being a parent, that is, you also have to expect that your child will take you for granted. Like, if your kid was every adequately, fully grateful for all you went through, he or she would grow up to be obsessed with their parent in a pretty freaky way.

They kind of have to just expect that you will be there, 24/7, in any situation. Like air, or the ground, or the sky.

Or something: Zincofax Toxicity Produces Insanity in New Mother

So, Hugo, aka Pumpkin, Hugito, or Mummy's little Chavista, has fallen in love.

With a Panda.

It's all about trans-humanism these days, right? Since it's a stuffed panda on his mobile above his changing table, it might be "stuffed trans-human cyborgism."

He smiles and googles at the Panda a lot. A lot. Like, he's smiled at me exactly 4 times and at the panda about 400. Yesterday I was wearing a black parka and a black toque. My underslept pallid face gleamed down at Hugo in his carseat and he cracked a nice big smile, followed by an exclamatory fart.

So I was thinking of covering my face with Zincofax, smearing eyeliner around my eyes, and wearing my black toque permanently.

You know, to stimulate my baby's brain so that he grows up to be, um, a genius zoologist.

Or something.

Not that cute

I am so keen to get to BC.

Last night as I was trying to sleep the smell of fire kept on waking me up.

Just my neighbours having friendly backyard fires.

In the city.

Fires and beer and trucks with Support Our Troops and Jesus Fish bumper stickers. In the city. Without the benefit of fresh lakes, pine forests, dragonflies or sunsets.

Between flashbacks to the Okanagan Mountain Fire, the sweet lullaby of sirens, revving engines and the dark buzz of heavy bodied black flies smashing into the ceiling, it was not fun going to sleep.

Not to mention that if I roll onto my left side I wake up dizzy and out of breath.

Sigh.

Not that I expect I'll be getting enough sleep when this baby is on the other side of my body.

But at least I'll have someone cuter than me to look at when I stumble around at 3:45 am.

I'm not super cute right now. Especially today.

And here is another link to the Alberta Federation of Labour website with a complete list of Molson products to boycott:



http://www.afl.org/news/default.cfm?newsId=444



Solidarity in other beer and in wine!

Boycott Molson products!

I did a radio story on the Molson workers here who are striking.

They were really positive, friendly folk, who are striking because the Molson Management is cutting wages for all new hires by seven bucks an hour.

Management assumed that the previously hired workers, many who are getting ready to retire, wouldn't care about the new hires. They even offered increases to the existing workers, like a bribe.

Hah!!

Solidarity!

The workers said they wouldn't compromise their solidarity and wouldn't feel right working next to people doing exactly the same job for 7 bucks an hour less.

They are asking people to boycott Molson products - Molson, Coors, Rickard's Red, Heineken and Corona - until they are off strike.

Molson and Coors are one company, and there are rumours that it will be bought up by Miller, an even bigger American conglomerate. Miller would be a heck of a lot less interested if they were worried about the labour dispute . . .

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jun2007/wkrs-j05.shtml

Thought I'd let my blog friends know about this.

When my radio spots are uploaded I'll add a link.

hey kids i'm back

it's been a really long time since i posted.

a lot has happened. whew.

um. i'm super pregnant now.

i've been readin gabout marxism. and agrarian socialism.

did you know that in 1960 when Saskatchewan's awesome NDP government introduced medicare, the doctors went on strike? nice one guys.

we're advocating for rent controls in Alberta, and the sad cry of "But the poor landlords! What if they went out of business?" is heard from the Mall to the Legislature.

what a sad world indeed, with no landlords . . . . just available housing . . .wait a sec, doesn't that sound suspicously like the UNDHR call for Universal Housing?

Nah.