Documentation about my experiences being the only (human) vegetarian in my social circle, wondering if we're doing a good job raising our kid and dog, being a horseman, feeling conflicted and having entertaining dreams.
I know someone who lucked out and found a family of weasels living in her barn. They keep the mouse population under very tight control. Now she doesn't need a barn cat. I've always felt bad for most barn cats. They like living in a barn but it doesn't always work out. Sometimes they disappear. Weasels are tough as nails - after all, they're related to honey badgers (warning: gross but funny) . They're cute little bastards.
Last year something that looked like late blight affected our garden bed so we started from scratch this year and built square foot gardens. At first I wasn't crazy about the idea (even though I'm the one who bought the book) because it meant buying stuff to grow in instead of using free dirt. Square foot gardening, if you go by the book, is outdoor container gardening. Here's a photo of the row of SFGs built over what was two long raised beds:
...and here are some tomatoes (Brandywine and Great White) planted deep in big pots:
I started all my seeds indoors on February 7. The ones transplanted into deep, wide containers are much bigger than the others. Still, I'm pretty optimistic about the SFG. I'm not sure I'm joining the cult though.
And here is the first ripe tomato of 2011 on June 26, a Siberia that I bought at Paulino's in Denver. It's one of the few I didn't plant from seed, the others being a Mr. Stripey (my first!), Red Robin and a Sweet Seedless from the farmer's market.
EG and I ate it. I don't think he actually likes raw tomatoes but he wanted to pick it and asked every day if it was red enough yet. I give up trying to rush the tomato harvesting. I experimented with plastic cloches on some pepper and tomato plants that I put out in April while waiting until late May to bring the rest of the seedlings out. The ones brought out early are no bigger than any others. This box has the ones that were camping out with cloches over them at night in mid-April:
The 3 little plants in the southwest squares have been out since mid-April
The cage keeps our dog from swiping vegetables. She will do an entire agility course for a green bean.
At my first show over fences and the LRM's first show of any kind (as far as we know), we earned Reserve Champion. Granted, there were only 3 horse/rider teams competing, but that doesn't make me less happy or proud. LRM was excited but kept her head on straight. She settled down when she saw the jumps like she was saying, "Oh, that's why we're here. Jumps. Piece of cake." She had a whole audience of supporters from the barn and liked the applause.
-Vegepet supplements by Harbingers of a New Age: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegepet
-Lush soaps and all their other products http://www.lushusa.com/shop
-Spectrum all-purpose cleaner: sparkleclean.com - a concentrated, cost effective cleaner we have used on everything from floors to diapers.
Pix: I adopted this mixed breed dog from Dalmatian Rescue, a wonderful organization that places dogs very carefully with homes they're suited for. She was maybe 10-12 months old at the time and the fastest, most hyperactive animal I've ever seen. She is also obsessed with birds. I put her in obedience and agility training right away to bond with her and get her to focus. She loves work, loves being part of a team. Five years later, she gets as many compliments for her manners as she does for her athleticism.
The Little Red Mare (LRM): My friend has several horses and not enough time to exercise them all, so I get to ride them. LRM was one I initially had last on my list to ride, because she's hot, had a reputation for being pill and made me nervous. She's the boss mare in the field and has twice sent big geldings over a fence to get away from her. Granted, those were bad decisions the boys made. We're talking about the equivalent of Bernadette Peters telling Arnold Schwartzenegger where to sit in a theater, and having him freak out and jump off the balcony. With people, she's sweet and cuddly.
But my friend always said she was loads of fun and I should ride her. When I did, she pranced sideways and tossed her head in impatience. Once she gave me a bloody nose. It was obvious she thought I was boring, so for fun I took her over some little jumps. She had a cute jump, as it turns out, but would get so amped up at the sight of a jump she couldn't contain herself. After one session with the instructor, she stopped freaking out and has been on a mission to jump like a pro. She has a new career and a place to focus her energy, and my friend was right - she is a blast to ride. She came from a rescue, so we don't know if she'd been a jumper before. I think she was a barrel racer.
The Off-track Arabian (OTA): This 6 year old mare came from FAWOR Foundation (http://faworfoundation.org), another reputable rescue that retrains, evaluates and rehomes Arabians that had been racehorses. She is the LRM's pasture mate and her polar opposite. Although energetic and spirited, she is sensible and ladylike beyond her years. She was adopted by first time horse owners who are kind enough to let me ride her regularly. She has also started jumping; this video is of one of her very first sessions:
Animals resting in peace:
The Kitty: she is no longer with us in the physical sense. I got this kitty over a decade ago when my roommate, who adopted her from the Human Society, wanted to travel for a year. Long story short, she was with us until recently when her kidneys failed and I took her to the vet to be euthanized. It was not traumatic for her. I have not been very good at explaining it all to EG. He knew she was sick and that we would try to get her to eat, and he would pet her and be very gentle. Once, at breakfast, he paused and pointed to the air to make a point. "The kitty," he said between bites, "is my favorite pet." He wanted to know, physically, where she was the day after I took her to the vet. I said she was at the vet and he asked if she were still sick. I said she was not sick anymore and he was satisfied. He still talks about her but knows she isn't coming home.
The Pony: I got this little grade Arab/pony mare from a family that had gotten her as part of a BOGO deal, meaning they bought an Arab mare and the seller dumped the little filly on them because he didn't want a project. They didn't either and sold her cheap. She was my buddy. By the time she was 4 1/2 she was a fun pony to ride and I started her over crossrails. I got a call one morning from the barn owner that she's gotten out of her paddock and was standing, injured, near the hay. I don't know how she got out or what she injured herself on, but took her sedated to the University where they determined the damage to her hind leg was, in short, extensive. I had her put down that day.
The Boxer:
When I was young and naive I got an adorable puppy from what I now recognize as a backyard breeder. Unlike the dog we have today, she did not get the benefit of professional training and a stable home. She moved across the U.S. with me and then from rental house to rental house until I finally bought my own. She was a good sport and charmed everyone with her sweet nature. At the age of 13, way too young IMO, she was peacefully put to sleep at home after a short battle with a brain tumor.
My dog has been vegetarian for about a year and a half. It took a little research to find these supplements and recipes so that I could be confident that she's getting the nutrition she needs. In the past she's eaten Wellness and Natural Balance kibble, both of which I think are good brands. But she was prone to ear infections and some kind of gunk that would build up in her ears if I didn't keep cleaning them with salicylic acid. She hated having her ears cleaned and would have to be baited with treats and tackled. She'd wake us up a few times a night shaking her head and making her ears go flappity flap flap. So the vet said to try a simple diet to see if she had a food allergy. I did, and the flapping and irritation ceased. Her ears became naturally clean somehow. She was on a chicken and/or fish and eggs diet before she went veg. She still gets duck and chicken eggs, plus the insects she catches (I can't stop her). I found that whether her diet is vegetarian or not, as long as it's simple and homemade she is healthy. She always had a nice coat, lots of energy and ideal weight, but the ear thing seems to be associated with any brand of commercial food.
Her current diet consists of recipes combining Vegepet supplements with a selection of these ingredients:
-Quinoa
-Brown rice
-Millet
-Flax seeds, ground
-A green vegetable like spinach, kale, green beans or broccoli
-Garbanzo beans
-Lentils
-Oats or whole grains not listed above
-Nuts, ground
-Olive or canola oil (or coconut oil when I can afford it)
-Chicken or duck eggs if she's lucky
Now I don't have to put on plastic gloves, prepare meat that nobody else in the house eats, and disinfect everything the raw meat touched. I can go back to my regular habit of leaving the kitchen dirty. It's not hard to prepare and pretty cheap, especially since these are all things the whole family eats and we buy them in bulk.
I don't know who this person is, and won't say where the post originated other than it's a freakslist ad and the pony isn't for sale. The pony's cute. And the owner came closer to spelling "conformation" correctly than most people do. And she's wearing a helmet, so she has that going for her. But - do I have to point this out? - why would a grownup post a picture of herself barefoot, wearing a bathing suit and standing on a pony? I see it a lot. Is this a thing? I'm all for going barefoot, but not around horses.
Then again, who's the bigger idiot for looking at pics of horses to avoid working at 6 a.m.? Don't answer that.
My in-laws come from Midwestern U.S. farm families, and some raised or still raise cattle or pigs for meat. I learned that the ones who raise pigs don't like to be called pig farmers or ranchers or breeders, but pork producers. They're not the type of people you see in the undercover footage of farm workers who actually seem to hate the animals and are deliberately violent; in fact, most of my in-laws and their extended family are responsible pet owners and all are friendly and caring.
But animals raised for food are deliberately objectified as their end product: pork, beef, fryers, etc. My theory is that at least some people need this label to be able to distance themselves from the fact that the meat is made out of what was once a living, breathing creature with feelings and reactions of varying complexity. The similarity of the feelings to human emotions can be debated, but there's no denying that if they're not vegetable or mineral, they feel. Businesses are referred to as "egg producers" or "pork producers," but the real producers are animals. If we want this stuff they produce, it is hard for most of us who didn't grow up in farm country to consider its source in detail. For me, it isn't worth all the resources and dirty jobs needed to get that stuff to the grocery store, because I don't need or want to eat it. But I understand few people feel that way, and I would be very lonely if I didn't know, love and respect people who don't think the way I do about everything. They don't condemn me for not buying the products their families sell.
Dairy: breast milk from a cow or goat ("breast milk" is redundant, but by default the word "milk" without "breast" means "from a cow")
Process: slaughter and butcher
Grass-finished beef : meat from an animal who grazed on fresh forage instead of grain
Game hen: a chicken slaughtered young; to be fair, it's probably better than being an actual game bird and fighting
I'm conflicted because I'm not against having domestic animals or agriculture on a small scale, it just got out of hand and became dehumanizing. If we have to numb ourselves a little or deny ourselves information to consume what we do, maybe it's because many people are sensitive, but love or think they need meats. Maybe for others it's because they feel entitled to the products, and are uninterested in the processes that get it from farm to drive-thru. And for a lot of families it's extremely hard to afford and prepare better food. There must be a lot of things I'm ignorant about and use every day, so I'm not as different from any of those examples as I would like to think. I recently found out my synthetic leather riding boots were made from a petroleum product and their existence probably does more harm to the world that 1000 acres of Monsanto corn. It shouldn't have been a surprise - what would they be made out of, recycled tires?
You don't want to be a pig in your next life. At least, though, it would be a short life and you could move on to your next incarnation. Once the creating and killing of animals became as efficient and automated as the assembly lines in factories, we all became a little less human.
So far I think I like this: http://www.digitalvolcano.co.uk/content/duplicate-cleaner for cleaning duplicate files in a Windows OS.
I love ccleaner (piriform.com) and thank Black Swan Image Works (http://www.bsiw.us/) for introducing me to it.
After two whole years, I still like malwarebytes for sweeping internet bacteria that your paid antivirus didn't get.
Comodo is very effective at blocking malware, although its "Danger, Will Robinson!" messages can be disturbing or annoying.
Open Office (or Star Office) is still my office suite of choice (vs. MS Office with Word, Excel, ect.) after 12 years. But it can be a little buggy, resource hogging and slow to start. For tips on how to remedy this:
Linux - http://the11throck.wordpress.com/2008/01/12/make-openoffice-startup-faster/
Still, I didn't pay for it. As opposed to having paid for it. It hasn't wasted enough of my billable time to justify buying slightly less bloated but limited software that produces over sized files (I can't keep saying bloated).
For an exhaustive discussion of OO being bloatware: http://slashdot.org/story/05/10/27/1425232/OpenOffice-Bloated
Every parent thinks people want to hear about the cute stuff their kids do or say, so why should I be any different? EG is funnier than me anyway. Babies and robots are very similar. You have to consider how they will process information you give them without any life experience. The logic is sound though:
-If something isn't plugged in, then it must be plugged out.
-If you go outside and it's hot your cheeks get a little red. If you go outside without sunblock and it's hot, your cheeks get a big red.
-If playing drums is drumming, then playing guitar is guitaring.
-Something you stub your toe on is called a stubber.
Tweeted by @CareNews - this article says some New York politicians who were previously on the fence about a bill that would give all marriages the same status whether the spouses are opposing genders or not are now supportive of it. I have never heard a good argument for requiring that married couples consist of one male and one female spouse. Homophobia is a hot topic and deserves a lot of discussion, but the other underlying issue is defining gender. Several years ago someone I was talking to (probably about the whole baby boys wearing blue and girls wearing pink thing) pointed out that gender isn't just one or the other. It's a range, with male being on one end of the spectrum and female on the other. You can fall anywhere on that spectrum and be defined by the characteristics that dominate. You can also change gender. I talked to a writer who over the years had befriended two transgendered people, both female to male. One had been married to a man and the other a lesbian before the change, so they became a straight man and a gay man. Very few people can say they've had the experience of being both a married woman and a gay man.
But you can't have a public restroom for each of these sub-genders, so it's easiest to just divide them into potties for people with wieners and potties for people who cannot pee standing up. Summary: genders being opposite is really, really important to us, for better or for worse.
And for people who will never recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex, I want to say, "evolve." But I do understand it being hard to accept from this perspective: a marriage with more than two people would really make me squirm. I would feel like my right to practice monogamy would be somehow threatened, and I don't know why.
Last night I had a dream I was talking to a friend I hadn't seen in 20 years. We were remembering the eighties, and I was wearing a t-shirt that said "Hey Bud, Let's Party." I don't know where that came from, because I wouldn't have thought of it while awake. I don't think I had one of those shirts or ever even quoted Jeff Spiccoli.
1. Any yogurt marketed for kids/babies. I don't eat yogurt but Masher and EG do, and they love plain yogurt. There's no reason to put 20-some grams of sugar into a little kid's yogurt, or into a little kid. Anyone who works at Horizon Dairy in Marketing should babysit for me after giving EG a container of that stuff.
2. Retractable leashes: This might have been a good idea when it first came out and people bought them for microdogs. I don't think it was intended for dogs that aren't trained to walk nicely on a loose lead. I sympathize with people whose dogs pull on the lead because mine was nearly impossible to train out of it. What the retractable leash does is give them 16 feet to build up more momentum when they pull on the lead, making the force on your rotator cuff that much greater. And if they're out of control at 6 feet, they're both out of control and out of reach at 16 feet. Plus they tend to get tangled in other leashes when sniffing other dogs' butts and going in a circle.
I'm hoping this blog will generate some traffic and my comments on products will help producers of vegetarian products, especially vegan ones, to reach their market(s). But I'm not a vegan by any definition because I make exceptions for:
-Eggs that come from my friends' chickens and ducks
-Anything Masher, the one who gave up meat when we got married, makes me even if he puts butter in it
1. Sunshine Burger: http://www.sunshineburger.com/ these have only a few simple ingredients. They are vegan and gluten-free (although I have nothing against gluten). I like the texture and the unique taste; it's not one of those imitation meats, but a veggie patty, so it's not really for converts looking for a meat substitute. EG doesn't like them though. He spit out the one he tried.
2. Veganaisse: taste close enough to mayo, and the texture is very similar. I've tried other fake mayo and the texture wasn't velvety and it gagged me.
3. Vegan Gourmet "cheese" good texture, and I like the white ones (mozzarella and monterey jack). It melts and you can make a grilled "cheese" with it.
4. Boo Bars: http://boobars.com/ very simple fruit and nut bars with no ingredients you can't pronounce. If you're a vegan who likes chocolate (I'm not, so I didn't try that flavor), the ones with cocoa are also vegan. I guess I'm not crazy about the name only because without a hyphen in the domain I just see "boob." Not that there's anything wrong with that, it just makes me think it's breastfeeding forum or something instead of a snack food.
In another brilliant entry from Cakewrecks , I posted a comment someone thought was funny and she said she clicked on my linky but my blog was blocked. Actually, I hadn't started it. So I thought if someone was actually going to read it, I would find something to write about. The Cakewrecks subject of the day was the irony of Wreckorators creating actual cakes - regular ones with baking soda, frosting, white flour, etc. - and writing Passover greetings on them. Of course, this touched off a heated debate about whether any other religion has a proper Seder. Most of it was hilarious, and about 20% of commentators took the subject way too seriously and missed the humor entrely. I call these people irony-impaired. This was my contribution: "OK, I'll join the fray just to get this alternative Seder thing straight. The important thing to know is that ingredients aren't allowed. Matzo is a cracker without any ingredients. For our Buddhist Seder, we hide a piece of it, which is easy because it doesn't have any ingredients and therefore doesn't exist. Finding it is like describing the sound of one hand clapping."
Apparently this was funny so I'm very proud of myself. For the record, I'm not Buddhist or even religious, but mean no disrespect to anyone who is.
I came downstairs one evening and my toddler, EvilGenius ("EG") and my spouse, Masher, were ROTFL saying, "Caterpiggle! Caterpiggle!" I don't know what they were talking about but I drew a caterpiggle, thinking it probably looks like a caterpillar with a pig face. Since EG can pronounce "caterpillar" I thought he was just being silly and clever. As it turns out, it was from a Caillou episode in which the little bald boy helps his little sister Rosie overcome a fear of insects. Oh well, too late, it's now my blog title. I hope the Quebecois producers of Caillou don't mind.
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