A friend for Kevin

I can't remember whether I blogged that we worked out that Kevin the bunny is a Kevin and not a Julia or not, but if not, we worked out that Kevin is a Kevin. Isn't he gorgeous? Kevin is now booked in for a desexing and innoculations at the RSPCA clinic on 2 January, poor boy.

Kevin was seeming rather lonely and as though he needed perhaps a companion. Not wanting to end up with eleventy-three extry bunnies, we'd thought a guinea pig might be a good plan - also guinea pigs are supposed to be v good permaculture animals and will help keep the soil fertility in our garden up.

So consequently, I got Hugo a guinea pig for Christmas and he had to open the parcel right away since we didn't think she'd enjoy being under the tree til Christmas - here she is:

She has red hair, and naturally her name is Julia. This is actually entirely coincidental because Julia (the artist previously known as Ginger) was advertised free-to-good-home by a nice family in Northcote who are moving to the tropics, which guinea pigs evidently don't like.

Here they are together. They seem to be getting along okay, and we have found them snuggling a couple of times. However there may be a small flaw in our not-ending-up-with-eleventy-three-small-furry-critters plan, as Julia rather seems like (unlike her namesake) she has NOT deliberately remained barren and may in fact be eating for eleventy-three. Either that or she is just extremely fat and has a squirmy belly. Anyone know how to tell if a guinea pig is in the family way? And should we separate them before the babies are born?
And in an irrelevant picture, my niece (contrary to appearances) is not actually trying to stuff a cat into a box. The cat had stuffed itself into the box and Zoe was trying to get her out, since cats CLEARLY do not belong in boxes.

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree

Well, I promised weeks ago to post some photographs of the Christmas tree. Here it is in all its natural glory, having just been delivered by the lovely Oxfam volunteers and now sitting in the Christmas tree stand that I had sneakily been storing in my parental units' hayloft (they do not realise that there is a ton of my other crap up there too including a dolls' house in case the fairies need somewhere to holiday):
And can I just say also, how nice do our floors look?
Here it is with all the lovely purple decorations I have collected over many years (mostly by buying them in the post-Christmas sales when they cost approx 2 cents each!) (I exaggerate, but they are *very* cheap after Christmas - I am pretty sure the lovely purple tinsel cost 50 cents)
Here it is from a bit more of a distance - you can't see the lights because it's daylight, but I'll try to remember to take a piccy after dark tonight and add it.

And here is the crowning glory - a peacock. As my PU#2 said when they came for afternoon tea today, "That's not a partridge. But nor is that a pear tree". As indeed it is not. But I do think the peacock looks rather pretty. He was not bought after Christmas, and he was excessively extravagent. But look at his tail! I had to have him!

And oh, the excitement, presents under the tree!! Hugo's mum went quite mad and brought round eleventy-three parcels to put under there, including two for the cat (mad in a v good way, obvs) plus there are our parcels for everyone. I was going to make gorgeous fabric bags to put them all in, but stupidly put the bag of purple Christmas fabrics in a very safe place and so clearly as a consequence I can not find it. Instead we have wrapped them in entirely re-used paper saved from previous years, and the tags are last year's Christmas cards cut into bits. Anyway it all looks quite festive, if not as colour-coordinated as the purple bags would've.

Friday saving the world post

And because it's Friday - check out this water-saving technology (thanks to Chai for sending it through) and this new solar technology.

I may not blog again for a few days, since it's the weekend, PU#2's birthday, Christmas, etc.

Hurrah for two weeks off!!!

An all-new 100% effective method of contraception

More effective than the pill, more effective than condoms, more effective even than abstinence is listening to the women around me at work.

Although I'm *fairly* sure I'm grounded enough that I wouldn't feel guilty about not baking for my child's kindergarten when I was working full time (and you should have seen the looks when I asked if their husband also felt guilty about not baking), and I KNOW I wouldn't have to be distressed when I did controlled crying (aka Ferberizing for the American readers) at EIGHT WEEKS because my second child (and I quote) "wouldn't break" and just kept crying (child abuse imho, since babies do not have object permanence til around 6 months old and have no idea that you still exist when you're not in the room - and the reason why they eventually stop crying is because of what psychologists call "learned helplessness" - "a psychological condition in which a human being or an animal has learned to believe that it is helpless in a particular situation. It has come to believe that it has no control over its situation and that whatever it does is futile. As a result, the human being or the animal will stay passive in the face of an unpleasant, harmful or damaging situation, even when it does actually have the power to change its circumstances" - which is of course EXACTLY what you want to induce in your small child. I know quite a lot about the process of childbirth so I don't think I'm going to be surprised by it - whether it ends up being a home birth in a large tub of warm water with a midwife (which was what I wanted before I got put off the whole idea) or an emergency c-section, or anything in between, I have a large, large body of theoretical knowledge about the whole thing, due to the amount of reading I did when researching my honours thesis (that I never actually wrote) and since then because I am interested in birth from a feminist perspective. And I am also pretty sure that my entire range of conversation post-baby would not be reduced to bodily excretions.

But although I am fairly sure of all these things, they still put me off. Even apart from the swallowing of all private contemplative time, the fact that "part-time" work seems to involve full-time work at part-time pay, the thing that REALLY gets me is the constant process of negotiation with husbands/partners over the domestic work. The men seem to be the ones negotiating from a position of power, the women are reduced to pleading that they need "help" (as though it's helping for men to do their fair share of the work in the house they live in) and so women are left in a position of less power economically, less power in their relationships, and more housework, childcare and paid work to juggle - something the men seem to be able to deal with easily, by leaving most of it to their wives.

So who would want to be in that position?

Although the whole baking thing was completely insane.

And the Mitfords

I am reading the Mitford letters. They are so fucking hilarious that I am laughing out loud at them, and last night I got into bed at 10.30pm, thinking I'd just read for a couple of minutes, and then looked at the clock and it was almost midnight. Crap. As a consequence I am quite tired today.

The expressions they use are just hilarious. "In pig" for pregnant, or as one of them put it "I'm having a pig, did you know?" And the bizarre nicknames they call each other. And the terribly accurate but unkind and witty observations about various people and how dull they are. And the reason (I think Jessica) gave for wanting to get married - imagine, one can have as many lovely dogs and things as one likes, and no-one to tell them to get off the furniture.

Anyway, I am reading PU#1's copy, but since I am in an extravagent pre-xmas mood, and when I googled the Mitfords just now to see what I could see on line signed copies came back (signed by Charlette Mosley, who assembled the collection and is a Mitford grandchild) I simply had to order one. Actuarly, since PU#1's copy cost $60 in hardback (it is simply EXTRAORDER how much books cost here in Australia), and the signed copy with postage from the UK only cost me £26.97, I feel mine is the bargain since it cost approx the same but is signed. So ha.

Christmas shopping = complete

I can has very good xmas presents for everyone!

I almost freaked out when Readers' Feast didn't have the book I was looking for for Pete, but then I breathed deeply several times in a most benevolent and yogic manner, and lo, it appeared in the biography section, rather than in fiction with the author's other books. So all was well.

But I am most frustrated in my attempt to give the President of the NT branch of the AMA a gigantic slap for this outrageous statement, which I read about this morning on Hoyden About Town:


Northern Territory AMA president Peter Beaumont says the statistics [on STDs in children in the NT) are shocking but are not new: “It doesn’t surprise me at all - Pat Anderson and Rex Wild’s report into the Little Children are Sacred shows quite clearly that sexual misdemeanours against children and babies is rife in Indigenous communities,” he said.

Parking in front of a firehydrant is a misdemeanour. Jay walking is a misdemeanour. Littering is a misdemeanour. R*ping** a child or - ugh - a baby is not a misdemeanour. It's an unspeakably vile crime. CRIME. I'm going to call him up and ask him what on earth he was thinking. No doubt he won't come to the phone, but this will then be followed up with an e-mail, and letters to the papers. Vile, vile, vile man. Fucking doctors.

**(r*ping is asterixed in case of people vile enough to be googling that term).

Whoops, I forgot to blog

Gentle readers, I *am* sorry I've been neglecting you so fearfully. I didn't even get around to doing a Friday saving the world post, or posting my list of green Christmas gifts (I'll do that next, so you don't have to wait much longer, promise). I guess blame it on the fearfully busy time of year. Or, you know, just think I'm slack, which frankly I am, in so many ways.

I'm feeling quite festive, actuarly. Hugo's Christmas dishwasher has just this morning been installed by the plumber, so all that remains is to stick a bow on it on Christmas morning. Yesterday I went to do some Christmas shopping, having been tempted by the weekly Borders e-mail offering me 40% off if I bought four books. And I found myself whistling "Joy to the world" as I walked through Melbourne Central (although after a good 15 minutes in the queue in Borders I was feeling slightly less festive). I just realised I haven't got around to posting photos of our lovely tree, either. I shall attempt to do that tomorrow.

And I can't be bothered writing any more, so here's the list of green gifts (bear in mind, I wrote this for work, so it's not ULTRA green - I'm a big believer in hand-made or second-hand gifts, which don't feature largely in the list. But there are some cool things on there none-the-less:

Rudolph the green-nosed reindeer will be delivering these eco-friendly gifts on Christmas Eve:

• green kids’ toys - from fair trade soccer balls to solar-powered helicopters that really fly – shark swings made of recycled tyres and second-hand kids’ books (with carbon-offset shipping) from Better World books
• beautiful locally-produced hand-made items from madeit
• eco hampers
• Lonely Planet’s Code Green guide to sustainable travel
• sustainable Secret Santa stocking stuffers
• great gifts for the person who has everything - chickens, goats, fruit trees, donkeys, clean water, fishing nets and piglets – given on their behalf to people who really need them, thanks to your support for Oxfam Unwrapped. Your friend or loved one receives a card, showing how their gift can make a difference in Oxfam’s work, and the donation goes to where it’s needed most – supporting their life-changing programs
• natural body care products, solid bars from Lush (think of all the packaging you save!) and pamper packs full of gorgeous natural skincare
• a Bokashi bin – you can compost even if you live in a flat
• SIGG bottles – the incredibly stylish alternative to refilling plastic drink bottles
  · sustainable alternatives to the usual socks and jocks
• Christmas carbon offsets.

Get the kids busy making green Christmas wrapping from old newspaper with potato stamps, and check out these ideas for making cards from reused paper or recycled card. If you’ve run out of time to make them, there are beautiful eco-friendly cards here, here and here. And don’t forget to recycle your cards after Christmas through Cards for Ark – until the end of January, most Coles Supermarkets will have Planet Ark recycling bins, or you can get a free postage-paid recycling envelope from Australia Post. Your Christmas cards will be recycled into new packaging or ‘SAFE’ toilet tissue.

Finally, remember less can be more! You don’t want to buy gifts for people that they don’t really love and that will end up in landfill. Perhaps you could do a Kris Kringle for the adults in your family instead of everyone having to buy gifts for everyone. There are more ideas for simplifying your holidays in this brochure that offers practical tips for having a holiday with more joy – and less stuff.

The Brisbane Times, Kwality World News

Ok, is it just me, or does the Brisbane Times report ALL the important global news?

Viz:

• The diplomat couple who UN-adopted their Korean baby because she wouldn't "eat their food"
• The deceased triplets removed from the stomach of a one-year-old (one of them only had a head and digestive system, the other is described as "complete except for limbs" - I would have thought a torso with a head was not all *that* complete, personally, but I guess arms and legs... well, not so essential. Especially if you're stuck in your triplet's stomach, in which case there's not much chance of going for an afternoon stroll. Just saying).
• The man who got stuck in the toilet (note the lovely gender stereotyping going on in this one) (also he was forced to drink tap water - oh the horror!)
• and finally, the "mathlete" - The world's fastest human calculator - (oh, the portmanteu) who "smashed" the world calculating record.

I think that covers everything that's going on world wide. Top-kwality journalism all round.

Also, just FYI

***SERIOUSLY GROSS WARNING***

Close browser now to avoid reading my gross story.

The cat, because she is an insane Siamese who is seriously neurotic and unbalanced, keeps trying to eat the Christmas tree. By "trying to eat" I mean she sits on the floor under the tree and munches on the lower branches. Needless to say, since pine needles do not play a noticable part in the natural diet of feline-kind, this makes her sick.

This morning (for the third time since we got the tree on the weekend) I came downstairs to find two (2) puddles of cat vomit full of pine needles. Yes, I warned you this was seriously gross.

And it's not like I don't bring her grass. She's seriously unhinged.

Mt Vesuvius has erupted - in our bathroom

I came home last night to find the entire apartment coated in a thin (well, in some places thick) film of white dust. The tiler had actually turned up and started the process of coating our house in an unfeasible amount of dust. He hadn't actually thought to get us to move anything out of the bathroom, nor had he bothered to shut the cupboard doors, so now everything in there is thickly coated in dust and we can't use the bathroom.

Future civilisations will be able to see how we lived by examining the artifacts perfectly preserved in the thick layer of tile dust. They will note that we seemed to use excessive amounts of lavender oil (possibly for ritual purposes, such as ritual baths), bicarb of soda and various things that came in tubes. They may be mystified by the fact that I have two hairbrushes (perhaps they will think the smaller one is used for different hair, ahem). Or the fact that there are three (yes, count them, and I don't know why) shaving brushes buried in the debris, or the fact that there's a jar of pens and pencils in the cupboard. I don't really know why they're there either.

I am currently mystified by the fact that (a) I can't have a bath or a shower and (b) I can't do any washing, because the washing machine repair man took the washing machine away to stop it leaking and brought it back, with a worse leak than previously. Last night I showered at my grandmother's (we were there for a family dinner anyway), but will have to think of somewhere to shower tonight. Was thinking perhaps of asking our neighbour Jo. Or calling my PUs. Probably calling my PUs. It seems a bit strange to rock up on a neighbour's doorstep asking "Hi, can we have a shower?" but not nearly so strange to call my parental units and ask the same thing, because I frequently had a bath there anyway until August, when we moved, because the old apartment didn't have a bath. And sometimes a girl just needs to be immersed in water. And of course when I was younger I bathed there every day.

Hmmm. What to do, what to do. It's all supposed to be ready by Christmas. I'm still really hoping it will be, and that I can then paint over Christmas and have a beautiful new bathroom in time for the new year. Hurrah!

Consent

I have always had the impression that the age of consent, before which one can not legally consent to sex, was there for a reason. Being that before that age, one is not really capable of consenting because one does not really understand the ramifications - emotional and otherwise - of sex.

And I generally think that the ranting of the tabloid media in this country about "out-of-touch Judges" and jail sentences generally being far too leniant (he stole a pack of bubblegum? Give him 18 months' jail and a public flogging by jeepers) is well, just ranting. But then I happened to glance upon the front page of the Oz this morning and discovered that, by jebus, I agree. Sentencing is way too leniant. And apparently the age of consent no longer means anything.

"NINE males who pleaded guilty last month to gang-raping a 10-year-old girl at the Aurukun Aboriginal community on Cape York have escaped a prison term, with the sentencing judge saying the child victim "probably agreed" to have sex with them.
Cairns-based District Court judge Sarah Bradley ordered that the six teenage juveniles not even have a conviction recorded for the 2005 offence, and that they be placed on a 12-month probation order."

So the fuck what if she "probably agreed" - she was TEN YEARS OLD. There's no way she could possibly understand the ramifications. I feel sick to my stomach. One of the nine men was 26 years old. The judge said "The girl involved was not forced and she probably agreed to have sex with all of you."

It wasn't sex. It was rape. Someone under the age of consent can't consent to sex. Sex without consent is rape. What does it say about our society that a judge is normalising a gang of nine men raping a ten-year-old girl by calling it sex? And the judge kept doing so:

"All of you have pleaded guilty to having sex with a ten-year-old girl and (one of the juveniles) has pleaded guilty to having sex with another young girl as well."

No, they didn't fucking well plead guilty to "having sex", they pleaded guilty to RAPE.

Nine men raped a ten-year-old girl. Nine men walked free - no jail, not even a conviction recorded against them. One girl is now in foster care, so god knows what was going on in her family and how she's now coping with the rape that the judge says she "agreed" to.

So much for Australia saying no to violence against women.

I'm thinking of all the rantings I read on the intertubes last week about the Saudi woman who was sentenced to a public flogging for being alone with a man who wasn't a relative, when it "led" to her being raped (not by the man in question, I hasten to add). I'm thinking of the inherent smug Westernness in most of what I read - the implicit belief that these sort of things only happen in nasty foreign countries, that we nice (white) Western people don't behave like that.

It's bad, what happened to that Saudi woman. But how about we remove the log from our own eye. A ten-year-old girl was raped by nine men. They all walked free. In Australia.

Friday saving the world post

I'm even more grateful that it's Friday than usual - yesterday I was stuck in a room rewriting a document from 9am til about 5.30pm with no discernable breaks. But on to the world-saving.

I'm getting rather excited about the whole Christmas thing this week. We have a real Christmas tree (from Oxfam) being delivered tomorrow, and I'm SO excited about decorating it with the solar LED lights I bought (which seem to work really well - the tree will be in the front window and the solar collector outside) and all the decorations I have from past Christmases. They're all purple and silver (I love purple as a colour for homewares) and I bought most of them in post-Christmas sales - much, much cheaper than buying decorations before Christmas! I will admit to buying one new thing this year - H and I were walking up to the op shop and there's a Christmas shop opened just before the op shop. They had the most magnificent peacock decorations in greens and purples with real peacock feathers as the tails, and I couldn't resist getting one to sit at the top of the tree instead of a star. I'm imagining it like the bird that sat in the tree of immortality in the walled garden in The Magician's Nephew. It should be splendid and I will post photos on the weekend.

I am trying to make sure our Christmas is a green as possible, in terms of what we're doing, gifts we're giving, the tree (I did quite some research before deciding that a real tree is far more green than a fake tree). I'm assembling green gifts (I've also assembled a list of potential green gifts, if anyone wants it, for our sustainability Christmas publication at work) - locally produced, second-hand, home-made, consumable, depending.

I always save gift wrap and re-use it, so nothing new there, and if I get around to it we'll make some Christmas cards. Perhaps on the weekend - we don't have much on other than the PU#2 is coming on Saturday to connect the dishwasher, hurrah and HUZZAH!

It took some internal wrestling with my conscience before deciding that the dishwasher was okay, because it uses a mere 11 litres of water per wash, which is probably less than I use doing a day's worth of dishes by hand. And the actual dishwasher is second-hand (I bought it on ebay), dishwasher powder is not really as evil as hippies would have you think - it gets turned into salt during the chemical reaction with water during the wash, the cupboard has been altered with minimal use of new materials and of course it will be powered with our 100% green energy. Even so I feel sort of guilty about it. But not guilty enough to want to keep doing the dishes by hand. It's one of those domestic drudgery things - I love to cook, I hate to wash the dishes. Hugo actually managed to do them on his crutches yesterday, which was wonderful, but today I play not to do them at all as tomorrow I should be able to put them all in the dishwasher and run both drawers at once (it's a Fisher and Paykel double dishdrawer). Mind you, I'm still not convinced it's going to work, so in a superstitious manner I have not yet bought any dishwasher powder and won't until I've run a cycle through to clean it out and test it.

It is guaranteed for 90 days though, so if it doesn't work, I get my money back and can try again. O I really hope I don't have to though. And the cabinet maker did a superb job - you can't tell where he's altered the cupboard at all.

I'm also hoping I might be able to persuade my PU to install the ceiling fan while he's around doing stuff, since he's pretty good at illegal wiring as well as illegal plumbing. I called the electrician to find out what on earth had happened to him, only to discover that his wife had a heart attack and then feel incredibly bad about, well, the fact that I'd been cursing him for not calling me back about the fan. Mind you, I also can't get hold of the tiler, so who knows what's happened to his wife. He has sworn that our tiling will be finished by Christmas, but as anyone who's dealt with these things will probably already know, he didn't specify which Christmas.

So not that much saving the world this week. More like working flat out, trying to get tradesmen to turn up and do jobs, and seemingly doing endless dishes by hand. I'll be back on track next week, and if anyone wants a list of suggested green gifts, drop me a line.

Hard rubbish

It's hard rubbish collection time round our place, and I've been barely able to contain myself as I walk past heaps of stuff that I can't believe people are throwing out. I may have even found some more wood for our vanity unit (coming soon, if tradies are to be believed ever, which they're not from my recent experiences), cross fingers it's still there on my way home this evening.

While I'm currently still scarred from moving house, one day in the distant future I'd like to build a house from scratch, using all green, recycled materials and designing it so it's free of utility bills and designed for maximum ergonomicness. Ergonomacy? Ergomancy? Ergonomicisity? Gah. I'm emotionally scarred from turning 32, being unspeakably old and with one (1) foot in the grave, etc. Birthday cake and various exciting parcels wrapped in mostly recycled papers helped, but didn't erase my pain entirely. H gave me a book that I was really looking forward to reading - when it came out in paperback in September next year! - so that was extremely thoughtful. My PUs as always came up with something brilliant - an antique herbal and a framed original Arthur Rackham print - They will most certainly mischief you - plus various other friends and relations supplied lovely champagne glasses, a fuzzy bathmat, soap, Christopher Koch's latest book, an Australian Conservation Foundation diary for next year, mulch for the garden and two mini rose bushes. I feel very spoiled. Only not so spoiled that I'll be refusing future gifts or anything.

Now I just need to shop for the rest of my family's birthdays, which are all also in December (beware the Ides of March). I have an idea for my PU#1 and my sibling unit is sorted, but PU#2, my aunt? Christmas presents? Oh the horror. I did think of getting everyone an energy saving lightglobe and tying a bow around it, but I decided they all already think I've gone slightly too dark a shade of green and should cut back on the earnestness. But I may well end up ordering it all on line to avoid the seething mass of unwashed humanity that is shopping in December. Shudder.

Although I do have a little time now, between work ending and the wonderful Ms Deveny coming to speak to us at Labor Readers' Group, which starts at 6.30pm. If I didn't hate humanity so much I could go attempt to shop for my PU#1. Her birthday is in five days. Perhaps I ought. Hmmm.