Starting to Get Ready for It

Anyone else thinking about camping already?

Crafting Catch Up

A bunch of craft stuff I've done recently.

Two more pink jumpers. I was playing with increasing the pattern size by hand.





Another Rabbit Moon embroidery, this one with pink flowers and details.





Sunhats and Pajamas










I also did an embroidery piece last weekend for a craft swap but forgot to take photos before I mailed it off.

By the way, know what is suck? this is suck:

The worst spring snowstorm in decades continued to wallop Northern Alberta Monday, making the morning commute miserable and forcing road crews to haul out snowplows and graders that have been parked for months.

By the morning rush hour, Edmonton had received about 15 centimetres of wet snow, while areas north and east had received about 25 centimetres. High winds, gusting to 50 km/h, caused whiteouts in many rural areas, and generated wind chills that felt like –20 C.

It *was* Spring here a couple weeks ago and 20 C above. Ugh.

Royal Bison Art Fair

Edmonton's 3rd Biannual Royal
Bison Craft & Art Fair

Edmonton's 3rd Biannual Royal Bison Craft & Art Fair: this time around, the Bison will host some 55 vendors, and with the help of magic (ie. wind power, recycled paper, fine vendor choices and growing momentum) it hopes to break its December record of 1400 visitors. The fair uses incredibly low table fees to encourages homegrown vendors to sell what they want, rather than simply what¹s gauranteed to sell. They include independent jewelers, recyclers, publishers, printers, engineers, photographers, amp builders, crafters, inventors, artists, illustrators, designers, record labels,
yoyo-makers, and oh so much more. Sponsored by Independent champions CJSR 88.5 FM, Vue Weekly, Bullfrog Power and Beatroute magazine.

May 3rd - 4th, 2008 @ 10:00am - 5:00pm
Location: the Cosmopolitan Music Society building (8426 Gateway Blvd)
Cost: $2 entry, kids get in free
Contact: 433-4560, raymond@fifteen.ca
Website: www.royalbison.ca

Celebrate Earth Day in Hawrelak Park

Edmonton EARTH DAY celebration.

Join us for one of Canada´s largest environmental festivals. With 6 hours of world class music, environmental, social awareness and holistic booths; and hands on activities for kids to create, and discover with, Edmonton Earth Day is a great way for people of all ages to learn how to walk a little lighter on the earth.

Vegetarian Food, Eco-displays, Live Music and Entertainment, Drumming,Demonstrations, Celebrities, Circle Dances, Special ETS buses. VoA will be there along with all the Edmonton and area ecological and social justice organizations.

Come and welcome Spring.

Location: Hawrelak Park
Cost: Free
Contact: edmontonearthday@shaw.ca or 460-1756
Website: www.earthday.ca

There will be a free ETS free shuttle traveling between University Transit Centre and the Earth Day celebrations in Hawrelak Park from noon to 6:00pm. Look for the ETS diesel-electric hybrid buses - they’re providing the shuttle service.

Lemonade Stand

The kids on my street had a lemonade stand (except with orange juice) yesterday and it was incredibly cute and funny. Entirely kid "organized" and operated. They started off with 2 cups and some juice and quickly realized they needed to be able to wash the cups. Some kids disappeared and reappeared with a bowl of water and soap. Then they realized they needed a cloth. And so on. The spoon was put down on the ground and used again, adding some fortifying grass and dirt into the pitcher. 4 pairs of hands quickly picked out the grass, adding some other germs nutrients. They skipped down to the end of the block and back, yelling "Juice for Sale!" but sometimes got shy when anyone actually walked or biked down the street. They decided that all the workers got free juice so the first jug was quickly gone. Someone retrieved another container of juice, then they realized they needed water so someone went and got a glass of water. I fetched a pitcher of water and helped them measure out the correct proportions. When they almost ran out of juice they dumped in a bunch more water and then were suprised that it didn't taste very good. Another neighbour gave them a set of helium balloons for their stand which completed distracted them all as they took turns holding the balloons.

Oh maude, they were so cute. When they were bored of it they divided up their money and gave everyone 2 quarters then gave me the rest (about 7$) saying "you're the oldest. Can you give this money to the poor or the homeless? Or orphans."

Sometimes my neighbourhood is a little sketchy but stuff like that makes me so happy to be here.

Oh yeah- I found my camera! It was in my car glove compartment. *cough*dumbass*cough*

Houston, We Have Cable

After 12 years with bunny ears, we have spankin' new digital cable. Mr Blackbird needed it for his job (no, really, it's true).

I lost 2 hours yesterday to Family Guy and Futurama reruns.

What the good stuff on tv? I was watching L Word, but the season's over (any other viewers might be interested to know that Jan 2009 will be the last season, with 8 episodes). Weeds is returning this summer (yay!). Project Runway's between seasons.

What should I be watching? If you recommend a show, can you tell me what day it is on? Are there any Six Feet Under reruns I can catch?

Vancouver!

I love Vancouver and we should all move there.

Mr. Blackbird needed to travel to Vancouver for business so Jr and I went with him for a quick 3 night stay this week.

We stayed here, courtesy of Mr Blackbird's work (yay!)



The hotel was nice and in a fantastic location. It was practically adjacent to Stanley Park and right outside the doors was the seawall, a walking trail system that runs along the shore and into/around Stanley Park. Stanley Park was beautiful, of course. Lush temperate rainforest with huge old trees and all kinds of trails and fun things to do.

We went to the aquarium, which was even better than I remembered it. Their exhibits are truly impressive and well designed. Blackbird Jr loved the children's section, especially the Animal Hospital where he x-rayed stuffed seals to see what was the matter with them (each seal with a different malady), then weighed and measured the seals before using a stethescope to listen to their breathing and hearbeats. His second favourite highlight was a "little house", as he called it, which was a small corner you could enter by crawling through tunnels that were fish tanks. There was also a hands-on area where you could touch sea stars, but he wanted nothing to do with that. My favourites were the seahorses and jellyfish.

Our main transportation around the town was the Vancouver Trolley Company (picture from their website):



Cute, huh? It runs on a circuit stopping at different tourist attractions and tickets were good for two days. Much cheaper than cab rides, easier than sorting out the transit system (though we did use the Sky Train for a ride to Science World) and plus it stopped at our hotel. Easy peasy. The drivers were really nice and gave our tour info on the history or other information about the city as well.

One place we visited that was suprisingly very cool was the Vancouver Maritime Museum. I admit, I wasn't sure if it was going to be any good. I'm a prairie girl and my idea of what a maritime museum would be about is pretty limited. But, Blackbird Jr is into any kind of transportation, including boats so I thought we could check it out and I'm glad we did. The first thing we saw when we went inside was this huge boat, which turned out to have a very interesting history as an RCMP sailboat (a floating police detachment). It was used to carry supplies, transport criminals, and also transport Inuit children to residential school (ugh). We got to go on the boat and check out the under deck bunks (where the children slept?? ack!), the cabin crew's quarters and the captain's lookout. You can see a virtual tour of this boat here. There was all kinds of other cool stuff in the museum, including a submarine, mastheads, and anchors and other artifacts from sunken ships. Then, tucked in the back, there was a fantastic children's section! Blackbird Jr could have played there for hours. He pretended to drive a tugboat, used magnets to tuck boats into harbours, a crane to load pretend wheat onto a boat, we read some stories, there were costumes and all kinds of fun stuff. He asked to go back to the "Boat Museum" many times during the trip.

We also went to the Science World and the Vancouver Museum. Vancouver's World of Science was super cool. My favourite exhibit was where you got to shoot a ball out of a vaccuum pump up into the air, where it would land in a pool of water 2 stories up and then you could manipulate the waterfall to change how the balls go down in the water. We were there for a couple hours and only touched on a couple exhibits. Next time we will plan for an entire day there for sure.

The Vancouver museum was interesting, but more for me than Blackbird Jr. I cried reading about how in WWII Japanese Canadians were ordered into camps and all their posessions (they were allowed to bring 2 suitcases) were surrendered upon entry for "room and board". I remember learning about that in school but seeing the photographs and suitcases in the museum really touched me.

We also did a lot of walking along the seawall and watching the seaplanes land at the airport (seaport?) near our hotel.

I can't wait to go back. In summer they have a miniature railway and a children's farm in Stanley Park as well as splash parks and an outdoor pool along the oceanside.

ANTM a la Family Guy

-video removed-

We're off to Vancouver later today and I can't wait to see some GREEN outside and to go to the aquarium again!

Nation’s Largest Hospital to Ban Vaginal Birth, NY State Likely to Follow

New York City’s St. Sister Mercy General Regional Hospital, which is the nation’s largest hospital and presides over more births than any other facility, announced today* that it would no longer offer vaginal deliveries. Hospital spokesperson John Smith stated, “We were on track to reach a 75% c-section rate within the year, and believe that women unnecessarily suffer when they attempt labor with a very small chance of being successful in our facility. Because most of our patients will eventually need repeat cesareans anyway, we believe that we are getting them off to the best possible start. We are encouraging other hospitals to adopt the same policy.” The hospital is also letting go its team of certified nurse midwives, banning doulas, and banishing fathers back to the waiting room. According to Smith, “Given our new policy of cesarean birth for all women, we feel that support personnel are not needed for our patients, and simply get in the way of the physicians’ work.”

Asked about women who arrive at General unexpectedly in labor and whether they can offer informed consent to a mandatory c-section and implicitly agree to this by showing up at the hospital, Smith responded, “These women have a 75% chance of having a c-section to begin with - we all know that women are less capable of giving birth vaginally than they were just 20 years ago. We simply can’t treat unplanned patients any differently, or it would encourage women to just drop in when they’re in labor, and that would be a nightmare. We’ll bring in the machine that goes “ping,” and that will let us know they need a cesarean anyway, and proceed from there.”

At least one General patient agrees with the new policy. Consulted following her own primary cesarean, Jane Downt said, “I’ve always thought that birth would be so much easier if women’s bodies were designed differently, if they could just pop open a little panel and remove the baby. A c-section is just like that, opening a window into the body to pull the ‘bun out of the oven,’ so to speak.”

Women’s health, birth, and reproductive rights advocates, along with an aging hippie community in the city, have reacted strongly to the decision. One activist responded, “General had a very high c-section rate, and the CNMs were the only thing keeping it from reaching 100% already [the hospital banned VBAC five years ago]. They already insist that all women take home formula samples, even those who aren’t yet pregnant, keep the lights very bright, and allow women to leave the hospital without calling Child Protective Services if those women don’t plan to breastfeed. This is just another appalling new development, and it will drive women into their homes for birth.”

Smith responded, “The last thing we want women to do is give birth at home. To that end, we have proposed legislation that would ban pregnant women from being in their homes, or other homes or shelters, from week 30 of pregnancy until the birth. We believe in general that the safest way to give birth is not to do so at all, so we are working on a long-term plan to prevent any babies from being born in New York State. We just have to work out a feasible plan that will accommodate the rush of women eager to have their fertility and reproduction controlled by the State. We hope the visionaries in Washington, D.C. will take note of our leadership, and implement similar plans for the Nation.”

*Mark it on your calendar

April Fool's! Article by Rachel from Women's Health News