Its been almost a year...

I disappeared again. I needed to.
I lost my job, took forever to find a new one. And when I did it felt like I was gone for too long to start again. But then again, I thought I have something to say, even if it is just to myself... so here goes the update.

I am engaged. That fact alone still blows my mind. If you have read this post on my adoption blog, you would know what started it. When you find out how much money someone donates to an orphanage in your name, just to prove to you that they get "it" well it melted my cold single mom heart. In lieu of party favours at the wedding, we will make a donation to this same orphanage in Harare Zimbabwe.

We are planning on visiting Zimbabwe in December 2010 to visit with PN's family and of course to see the Orphanage that rekindled the relationship.

So the Wedding date is August and in Banff/Canmore, and will be a small family affair and will ad hear to as many of my feminist sensibilities that PN and my family can handle.

As for the EX... he moved to Montreal. ML was devastated. Got called in to speak with her Kindergarten Teacher asking what happened as she was no longer the same little girl. This obviously broke my heart and it has taken months for her to become the same little girl. This also prevented me from blogging, as there was just too much hurt.

What has helped is PN. ML is a special girl who has 2 fathers. Her Father in Quebec and her Step Dad who lives with us. It has been a hard adjustment, but we are working through it. There have been temper tantrums and the expected who is the boss/parent in the house, but I can tell you that ML is happy. Everyone says so. Since PN has become a permanent fixture in her life, people have commented how happy she is. And she tells EVERYONE that she has 2 dads. In her language she calls The Ex her "real" dad and calls him papa and her step dad whom she calls Dad. The calling PN Dad was her idea... When she speaks of PN she just calls him Dad, and when someone refers to him as her Dad she just gets a little smile on her face and agrees with them.

To help with the bonding, we went on a trip to the Bahamas. This did wonders for us as a family. The time we spent together just playing on the beach and experiencing things was priceless.

So that is my life in a nutshell these last 11 months...

Oh and in 2 days I am going to Vegas with my sisters and friends for my stagette!!

HPV Vaccine and Some Bishops

The HPV Vaccine is in the news again. This time in my province. Here is the article if want to read it.

I have ranted and raved about this before on here. Why do (in this case) old men think that by providing a vaccine to protect women against 70% of cervical cancers will lead girls and young women to run into the streets looking for anyone to screw? At 13? What year is this again? I guess women can do all kinds of things, but to actually be educated about a vaccine? Apparently this is beyond us. These Bishops believe that no matter what we teach our girls they will only hear "Yay!! I can have unsafe or unprotected sex with anyone and all because I had this vaccine when I was 13...what was that for again?"

Why is it with all the talk about abstinence that the teenage pregnancy rate in the USA is on the rise. "National data showing a 3% rise in teen pregnancies in 2006—the first increase in 15 years...

Maybe we could use this as a reason why there are 17 girls pregnant at this school...

Or maybe it is these Bishops who can't seem to be educated...

Oh no!! What am I to do??

-1 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

45 As a 1930s husband, I am Average Take the test!

Toddler Couture

You know the saying more money than brains?

Purising the internet today I found this article.

Ridiculous.

World Malaria Day

Today is World Malaria day. I have mentioned this on my adoption blog, but it really has nothing to do with adoption for me. It is a problem that is preventable and treatable. Just wanting to bring some attention to the issue.

I know that for me to live the life that I am meant to, it has to do with advocacy. Not just for the issues in the country I live, and the country I will adopt from. I know I am a bleeding heart. But I am figuring out that is my calling, To be a bleeding heart and to bring awareness to those who otherwise wouldn't.

This link from the Canadian Red Cross, and it explains and shows the problem better than I can write a blog post about it. Please check out the longish clip about net distribution in Sierra Leone.

Things you see on TV and what they lead to

Being my nerdy self, I was watching the Discovery channel last night, and a commercial comes on the TV... earth shattering right? Hardly, and I don't usually pay attention... but for some reason last night I didn't change the channel for this commercial, and I saw a friend I have barely scene since my university days, selling shampoo.

I think to myself... nah, can't be.... then I log onto my trusty facebook account, look for him, and see that he is now stationed in New York, so it is a possibility... then I start looking up more old friends from this time in my life, see what they are up to...

What this leads me to do is realize I need to make a change in my life. Realized I need to get back to being the girl I was back then, knowing that I was going to do something with my life that was out of the ordinary. Not that I was going to save the world or cure cancer, or even become famous. Just that I have always assumed that there was more for me in this life than the standard fare of husband, house, job and 2.5 kids.

I have for too long pushed that part of me to the fringes of my life. Last night seeing this friend going after a dream, and seeing so many others that I used to know doing the same, was a sort of wake up call. I need to make a change. It has been consuming my thoughts ever since.

I will keep you posted on what that is when I find it.

I'm not the only one...

It seems I am not alone in my thoughts and opinions on the Horton Hears A Who Movie...

Movie Date

Last Thursday I took ML on a movie date the the fancy new theatre in our city. She was going to spend the weekend with her father, so I thought a Thursday night outing would be a nice treat.

I took her to the new movie Horton Hears a Who, as I have heard lots of mom and kids say that it was very cute. Well the animation was very cute, but the story .... not so cute.

In this movie, it is said many times that the Who has 96 daughters and he schedules them to spend something like exactly 12 seconds with each, but he has 1 son. He dotes on him, even though he won't speak, won't participate in the family, telling him that he will take over the business... you see where this is going. The original Dr. Seuss story has none of this "plot line", just that there are lots of kids and the youngest/smallest saves the day. Well in the movie version, it isn't the youngest or the smallest, it is the only son.

Now maybe you think am over-reacting, reading too much into a children's cartoon, but I don't think so. Why couldn't the story just have been one of the kids, one of the sons? One of the daughters? Why the only son, who got all his dad's attention, and the only one who was being groomed to take over the family career?

Why must the movie industry only give girls 'princesses' or relegate them to bit players? Why do we still need to have story lines with the prodigal son who is the one to save the day? Where are the strong girl characters?

/rant

(I have soemthing to say related to adoption as well if you want more rantings of a single mom)

What the Tolerance Post was about

(warning this is a long post)
When I wrote the post about teaching my daughter tolerance, I didn't specifically say what it was I was referring to.

Here is a bit of background info.

I was raised a Roman Catholic, went to Catholic school had my first communion, reconciliation and confirmation done through the school system and had mandatory religion classes.

When my daughter was born, I wanted to have her baptized Catholic, so she could also go to Catholic school and have the sacrements, and it was really important to my mom. When my mom was growing up, their family was the only Catholic family in a protestant town, and they were harassed and teased about this, especially since her family had 12 kids, she didn't want my sisters and me to ever go through that.

To have my daughter baptized, the church requires that both parents sign the consent form. My Ex and I split when my daughter was 6 weeks old, and I left the province we were living in. Before I left, he signed the papers. She was baptized when she was 5 months old, it was a big family celebration. She is registered to start kindergarten in a Catholic school in the fall. The dayhome that my daughter attends is run by a wonderful family from El Salvador, they are Catholic as well, and there are discussions about God during the day.

Now why is this important?

As this post states, my daughter came home and told me that her father told her "God is dead. Smart people know this, not smart people think God is alive and real". Now these are my four year old's words, I don't know exactly what was said. I have asked him many times to tell me what he said, but he refuses to speak to me. Since my daughter's birth, The Ex has decided that he is an atheist, and is not happy that ML attends church.

This teaching a child to hate, based on religion. My ex is telling my daughter anyone that is not an atheist is "not smart". As you can imagine, this distresses me a great deal. Not only becasue this hurt her, she might start to look at people who think or pray differently than her and think that they are "not smart". It is not acceptable for any parent to teach a child that someone else's beliefs or ideas make them " not smart".

What runs through my mind is all the genocides, the horrible hate crimes, what things were said in the homes of those who perpetrated these crimes. Hate begets hate. Whether it is about religion or the color of one's skin, differences should be celebrated not looked down upon. That is what I am trying to teach my daughter, and it is so hard when it feels like you have to "compete" with another parent that is teaching the opposite.

Teaching Tolerance

Oh the things you need to talk to four year old's about...


It started at Christmas when ML noticed that not everyone went as crazy as we do with the decorations and lights. She asks "Why" about everything! We discussed that not everyone celebrates Christmas, not everyone likes putting lights on their houses, and unfortunately some people can't afford it etc. etc. But that it was OK that people didn't. That There are lots of things people do that we don't participate in, and that makes learning about other people and ideas fun.


These Questions were mostly forgotten once the Christmas season was over, but teaching tolerance to my daughter became very important recently.


Unfortunately, I have had a child with someone who no longer believes in tolerance, (and he is mad at me, another post) and has told my daughter that smart people know "something" and not smart people don't. (I will discuss what this "something" in a later post, it is not about race, it is about religious beliefs, and I think it deserves its own post). So I had to go back to our discussion about Christmas with ML.

I know how to teach adults tolerance. However, I am having a really hard time with this conversation with a 4 year old. I know I can say the same things over and over until she is old enough to understand, but I am afraid that she will go to school in September and say what she has heard and this will either either hurt another child, or me receiving a phone call from the school. I find the words and examples I want to use are hard for her to understand


I have purchased a few books to read to ML, (and if anyone knows of more good ones, please let me know...) One of them so that she knows that it is OK that she has epilepsy, that it is OK to be different, the others I purchased in anticipating that another person would be joining our family, and most likely will not look like either me or ML.

Any suggestions would be most welcome.


All the Colors of the Earth by Sheila Hamanaka

We're Different, We're the Same by Bobbi Kates

Why am I Different by Norma Simon

Thoughts

I have done a lot of thinking since the shootings at Virginia Tech.

First I must say I feel absolutely horrible for every person that lost a loved one, the pain and grief they are experiencing must be unbearable. Secondly, I hate guns. I hate that guns are so easily accessible in this world. I will always assert that more guns are never the answer.

And thirdly, and this is where I might become very unpopular, all I can think about it the thousands of people that die in this world from preventable and treatable diseases every day, and they never receive the coverage that this tragedy has been receiving. While watching some of the in depth reports last night, this was all I could think about.

With all this going around in my head, I came up with an analogy.

Imagine everyone that you have known that has had a Cancer diagnosis, dies. Imagine as well that the reason for this cancer is from western world greed and environmental pollution, hence it is our fault that so many are dying from this cancer. Now imagine that in (insert any country/region's name here), they have a treatment for this cancer, that although it doesn't cure cancer, it treats it. This treatment means that a cancer diagnosis is no longer a death sentence . However, those that have found/created the treatment, do not care to share. It is, after all, our fault that cancer is killing so many. It is because of our lifestyle and life choices (i.e. greed and polluting) that so many are dying. Why should people half way around the world care about us here, they need to look after themselves, their problems and their country/region.

In my life there has been 6 people who have had a cancer diagnosis. 5 are still alive. This is why this analogy really hits home for me. I would be screaming at the injustice of the world, as would the rest of North America, if this was happening. But it is this continent that is preventing the millions affected and dying of AIDS and other preventable and treatable diseases from obtaining the necessary treatments and/or vaccinations every year.

Ok, that felt good to get out.

Now go read There Is No Me Without You by Meilssa Faye Green and Race Against Time by Stephen Lewis.