losing the Strine*

Recent blog cruising has reinforced a pet peev that I have had for years about the increasing use of 'Americanisms' in our language. Now i know all language evolves over time, but its usually a bit slower than the infiltration i see before my eyes. Randoms in life and Aussie bloggers, probably me at times ( let me know if you spot one), using standard, non-slang terms like ...

cookies - not, its a biscuit
frosting - no, its icing
store - a shop
soda - uhhuh, its soft drink
vacation - we go 'on holidays'
thrift store - op shop, second hand shop, Vinnies
trash - rubbish
yard sale - we should probably use this term, never actually been in a garage at a garage sale, maybe under the carport and on the lawn...

Niow, if this incroising arptake of stindid Merrykin lingwidge is tapeal too ah Merrykin blogin roidership or ta hilp roiders unnerstin whad we're tawkinbout, then jist splainit, use the Merrykin term boy all moins, but asn addendum to hilpem terpret the kalowkwial.

Language helps defines us as a culture, lets not lose ourselves in the bloggersphere. (If you're the grammar police, then please ignore all my posts).

Nothing personal going on here, its all academic, heck (LOL) my sister in law and mother in law both live in California, but lets avoid the cultural cringe.

*Strine - The term is a syncope, derived from a phonetic rendition of the pronunciation of the word "Australian" in an exaggerated Broad Australian accent.

(can you tell im lacking in adult company?)

energy [r]evoloutions' proud wife

Thats him, thats my main man, the one on the left, where? there, behind the smoke. Whoohoo! First sighting in a week. There are still 4 activists on the roof of the stack and they're blogging up there. If you're interested, join them.

Haiku Friday

can't sleep anymore
what will the next posting be
bloggings' the new drug

* for Haiku freaks out there, I know you're supposed to have a reference to the weather in a traditional Haiku but im over the weather.
** also to anyone who is interested, I hate reading poetry, Haikus' included, but i love writing both, always have. I even did my whole final Yr 12 australian history assessment in the form of a bunch of poems and not essays; covered WW1 WW2, the depression, the invasion, the lot. Topped the state with those poems!

he's been busted again...

oops. we knew it would happen, but this is simons second arrest in under 8 months. Good thing he's not looking for work or to rent a house! Greenpeace entered Swanbank B power station this morning sometime and scaled the stacks. Swanbank B causes more than two million tonnes of carbon emissions a year. That's the same pollution as 300,000 cars a year. Queensland is the best solar state in the world, so its a bit tragic they dont do more. I hope his prospective day in jail will be better than the last one which he spent in a rather cold cell in his boxers as they confiscated his orange suit as evidence. Guess what the standard police meal for remandees or whatever they call them, is? MacDonalds! Too funny. Poor copper went in and offerred 13 Greenpeace activists McDonalds for lunch. * rolling on the floor laughing* Apparently the police force have a corporate deal with Maccas. Needless to say they said no thanks. I think their lawyer ended up bringing over wholegrain sandwiches or something. Precious.
Anyways, will have to wait and see when he is coming home. He's out saving the world and im at home making cordial, hmmm...there's a few feminist threads in that statement i could run with..

Sustainable birth

Peoples reaction when i tell them that i homebirthed my 3 kids is generally a comment on "how brave" i am, the underlying paradigm being that homebirth is a risky choice. I think "how dangerous" is really what people are trying to express. As with everything, ignorance is the biggest culprit for peoples' misperceptions. Homebirth is not just for 'hippies', in fact the fastest growing demographic of homebirth women in Australia are educated middle-class professional women who have done the research and discovered for themselves that birth at home for low risk women is not more dangerous than hospital birth, it actually results in lower morbidity for mothers and babies and mortality rates are statistically the same. The iatrogenic interventions in birth accounts for a large proportion of the "im so glad i was in hospital because the baby got distressed and i needed a cesarean" births. Click here for interesting story. Satisfaction with the birthing experience is systematically always higher for women who birth at home. Why? homebirth allows control and choice and supports birthing to be what its supposed to be; labour. In a hospital context, every stage of your labour is timed and when that time is up, you are set along the pathway of the next intervention to speed things up (resist if you dare!). Besides being a safe, life enhancing, exhiliarating, affirming and estatic choice for the individual woman and her partner, homebirth also has a public health context which sits in the debate about about appropriate use of social resources and the connections between environmental problems and community health , community cohesion etc. At a very basic level of economic and environmental impact, surgical birth and hospital birth requires more people, more drugs and more equipment, costs more and produces more waste than a home birth. Between 35-50% of birthing women in Australia will end up with a surgical removal of her baby. The WHO recommends a C- section rate between 5-10%; currently only independent midwives achieve such low rates with their hospital transfers. Choosing to view birth in a way that fits within greener, sustainable values is possible however this is not why i chose to homebirth; i wanted a safer and more grounded, non-medical birth for my babies and myself. Homebirth requires being present, mindful and educated and ultimately taking responsibility for ones own health and the health of your child, just like choosing to live in a sustainable way, homebirth is a part of the philosophy of SLOW.

how to live a low-carbon life [for Mummies]

Last night I finished Chris Goodalls' book 'How to live a low-carbon life' and I was struck towards the end by a sentence which pleased me no end. Now, I have tried to live by this principle for many, many years now and children have solidified this principle but to have it sanctified as carbon friendly...magic!
"..we can choose to wash our clothes less frequently...[and] rather than wear lightly coloured clothes, likely to be marked on one wearing, we could switch to deeper colours upon which the impact of day to day activities would be less visible." Urban chic black is now eco-de rigueur. Im way ahead.
Apologies for the gender typing title- but mummies rhymed with dummies and its to late and im too tired to come up with anything better.

ta dah! leftover lemon kaw-dial

Took all day, but i did it. Somthing so simple with about 3 ingredients becomes a days work with a new baby; feed baby, change baby, play with baby, put baby to bed, squeeze lemons, oh yeah, have some breakfast (oops its lunchtime) have some lunch, change baby, feed baby, play with baby, go to shops, put baby to bed, combine all ingredients ( oh no! i need zest, pick lemons, zest lemons), find bottles, sterilise the damn things ( in my case remove thick layer of dust/strange sticky substance that bottles get when stored in pantry for a long time without use), pour into bottles, feed baby, you get the idea... here's the recipe if you are up for it and have a lot of lemons you need/want to do something with (recipe below is double the original due to lemon problem mentioned in previous post!)

Storable lemon Kaw-dial adapted from Stephanie Alexander
Juice from 40 lemons (1200 ml)
Zest from 10 lemons
4 cups boiling water
Sugar to taste (i used 2.5 kgs)
1/2 cup citric acid
2 tsp tartaric acid

Combine all ingredients and stir until sugar dissolved. Let rest for couple of hours for colour to develop and oils to infuse. Strain through fine seive or cloth and pour into sterilised bottles. Makes a very thick rich syrupy cordial.