Podington Bear

Working or painting I often find myself wanting to listen to something that's upbeat but not too distracting. So I've fallen for the music of Podington Bear. It's happy and wordless and keeps me going at a good pace. And Podington is so cute. You can have some major helpings for free HERE.

Camera Trap Codger

Lately, I've been enjoying the blog Camera Trap Codger. Written by a retired Smithsonian Biologist that sets up camera traps in the California wilderness. The pictures are amazing and accompanied with a lot of interesting animal information. There are deer, coyotes, mountain beaver, bears, bats, squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons and more. Some of the animals clearly feel the way about being photographed that I do, like this bear. He investigates the camera, decides he doesn't like it and for the next couple of weeks destroys every one he comes across.

Bradley

So Aaron and I are going to take a Bradley class and it starts this weekend. To get ready for the class I bought the book Natural Childbirth The Bradley Way. It is by far one of the scariest books I have ever read. I attribute this to the fact that I haven't read any other book on child birth so some of the information was more than a little disturbing.

Thankfully, this specific book includes the original photos used in the 1984 edition for, I assume, comic relief. The women and the men, but particularly the men, have some awesome 80s style going on. I tried to convince Aaron that it's part of the Bradley method and if we want to have a successful birth he needs to find himself some super short running shorts, grow a mustache, curl his chest hair, and wear a gold chain necklace and sweat bands to our class. For the extra mile he could get a perm. We'll see how supportive he's really willing to be.

Reading the book, I have to keep reminding myself that it isn't the book that upsets me (I think the material itself is reasonable and very helpful) it is the actual process of birth that I've got objections to. I do not understand why in His infinite and loving wisdom God didn't let us be marsupials. Marsupials give birth when the fetus is still miniscule. The baby then minds its own business, feeding itself in a convenient little pouch, until its ready to hop out and go its own way. What a great idea! Now that's a life process I can get behind.

Unfortunately personal opinion seems to count for very little in this situation so I can expect a normal mammalian birth in a quickly dwindling space of time. I really am grateful for what I've learned from the Bradley method so far. It's big on educating you about the process and it has lots of exercises to help you train mentally and physically for child birth. I trained for my first 5k run when I was 12, where all I had to do was not stop running. You can't get more basic than that and I still trained for it, a lot. Why would I not train for the physically demanding and potentially life threatening condition of labor? Why isn't it common to train for labor? Doesn't that seem weird to anyone else? Was everyone else born knowing something I wasn't?

Skip

Don't you wish there were some days you could just skip past? Today was one of those days for me. I woke up this morning and found my body had remembered how much it loves throwing up. I thought we had moved beyond that. But I spent a considerable part of my day sipping ginger ale only to puke it back up. I still got some work done but felt very alone and sick and frustrated. Thanks to a variety of world events, the Russia-Georgia conflict, Musharraf resigning etc Aaron is at work past eleven with no end in sight (he he he). So I decided to indulge and I let myself watch the Newshour twice and the Antiques Road Show. And I sent in a little project that has this fairy. I think she turned out alright so I'm trying to remind myself the day wasn't a total loss.

EFY Water Song

Go Dan! Almost makes me wish I went to EFY.

INDEPENDENT LENS | Wordplay | PBS

This movie is at the top of my Netflix queue and I'm really looking forward to watching it. I'm sure it's going to hurt my already pained vocabulary ego.

Gratuitous Chicken Violence

Working from home has given me the option of watching day time television. The Olympics have been on constantly which is incredibly entertaining and dangerously distracting. During commercial breaks I strayed to a few other channels to check out what else was on and I've decided I haven't been missing much.

Except when it comes to the Spanish channel's telenovelas and we get THREE Spanish so at about one in the afternoon there are three telenovelas to enjoy.They are INCREDIBLE. The other day I flipped to the channel and there was a woman dressed in a very tight black cowboy outfit holding a chicken and a gun by a river. She said (in Spanish) "Hey, do you remember me?!?" "Do you remember me?!?" I was a little taken aback but she wasn't addressing me but a guy pinned down on the bank of the river by two other guys with knives. Then she took the chicken she was holding and threw it in the river. The chicken flapped for a few seconds struggling against the water, then sunk to its watery grave. The camera focused on the little bubbles coming up to the surface. The man looked up from the drowned chicken, squinted and asked Barbarita?? And she said YES! But I haven't been called Barbarita for a long time... Now that is television.