Kally's Cauldron

I've been a solitary practitioner pretty much from the get-go. At first it was more out of necessity as I had yet to make contact with the Pagan community. After I discovered the community, I attended one of their bi-monthly brunches. It was ok...I had already met one of the better known members of the community over coffee. Plus I had made contact with another Pagan stay-at-home-mom so she attended as well. Everyone else just kind of nodded at my presence. That didn't bother me, it's just sort of the way of things when there's a newbie in the crowd.
While eating breakfast that morning, the woman beside me attempted to engage me in conversation. I was thankful and readily answered question while asking a few of my own. Post conversation, a few other members of the community came up and started chatting. Nothing wrong with that of course. Until they started laying into Christians like there was no tomorrow!! I know, I know, the Church has hurt a lot of people, but can't we get past that and at the very least, just ignore them? There didn't seem to be any specific catalyst...just seems that Pagan conversation has to involve trashing Christians. Irritation hardly described what I felt at that moment. I didn't say anything of course...it seemed kind of unwise to trash talk one of the more senior members of the community, especially considering how new I was, but I've never gone back.
Why does it seem to be that disliking Christians is a prerequisite for being Pagan? I admit, they can get on my nerves but you always get kooks in every religion so I certainly don't feel the necessity to single out Christianity. Did I miss a memo somewhere??

This post came about after reading this article.

There are few things that I’m more passionate about in this life than breastfeeding. I openly admit to being a lactivist. I respect that women choose formula but I don’t always agree with their reasons for doing so. I was a formula fed baby, and I certainly can’t deny that the introduction of formula saved many babies who might otherwise have died BUT it was never meant to be the norm. Thankfully that thought is shifting but we still have such a long way to go.

I recently joined a group on Facebook called Eats on Feets. It’s an online resource that connects nursing mothers who have breastmilk to spare with mothers who need it. Unlike milk banks, this milk would not be pasteurized and of course there would be a certain level of risk involved. In light of this, Health Canada has recently issued an advisory about milk sharing. So what is a mom who desperately wants breastmilk for her baby to do? Move to British Columbia where the ONE Canadian milk bank is located. One. For an entire country, there is ONE milk bank. The government pushes and pushes women to breastfeed their babies and then provides no support whatsoever. I have countless friends who, due to a complete lack of knowledge and support in the hospital, have ended up supplementing and often, completely switching to formula. For those who genuinely couldn’t produce milk, their ONLY option is formula because we live nowhere near BC.

If the government wanted to help, they would start making an effort to have milk banks AT LEAST in every province. More would be better. Instead they issue blanket statements , invoking guilt in mother’s who are only trying to provide the best they can for their babies. If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.

So the providers of my hydro have kindly informed us that effective....well, sometime....if we use hydro during peak hours it’s going to be a significantly higher cost than to use it during non-peak hours. Ok, I get it. I’m all about going green. The problem I have is that non-peak hours are from 9pm-7am.

You see, there’s this thing that I do every day called laundry. I’ve spoken before about my cloth diapers and unfortunately, they don’t wash themselves (though if someone could invent self-washing diapers, I’d be all over that like white on rice!). Now, here’s a little riddle for you....if I’m washing diapers, it means I also have what? You got it! Children in diapers! Now for anyone who has or had children in diapers you know that by the time 9pm rolls around, you’re completely exhausted and the LAST thing you want to be doing is STARTING your laundry. Ok, fair enough. Let’s look at the other possibility...getting them washed before 7am. I rest my case.

Now, they’ve sweetly said that hydro will be at the cheaper rate over the course of the weekend. I appreciate this, I really do. Problem is the weekend is when we’re normally trying to do family stuff...ya know, since me and my boys don’t get to see my husband all week. Plus, this is the time I do those pesky chores that I have to be fully involved in...like cleaning bathrooms....while hubby has guy time with the boys. Combined with the fact that I only have enough diapers to last me 2ish days you have a recipe for a horrendously over-scheduled, exhausted mommy.

But, as the manager of my home, I need to keep our finances in check (by doing the laundry during non-peak hours to save $$$) and encourage green living (by doing the laundry during non-peak hours to reduce the greenhouse gases caused by the power plants). Just don’t expect me to be happy about it :P

I’m a cloth diaper convert. Munchkin was in disposables until he was 2 and shortly after his birthday, a girl I know was selling her cloth diapers and so I bought them from her. Bean has been in cloth since he was about a month old (technically 2 weeks if you count the time we were using the trial pack from our local baby store). I LOVE cloth! They are easy and cute. It’s also fantastic to know that I’m no longer sending hundreds of disposables to my local landfill where they will spend the next however-many-hundreds of years decomposing.

I write about this now because CBS put up this piece of garbage segment about Cloth vs Disposables. Now, admittedly, I’m no journalist, but watching this kinda made me wonder if the woman doing the interview had even studied journalism. Frankly, I would have assumed there would be a little more research done. And I can’t say much for the paediatrician either. I’m sure she’s great at being a doctor but her knowledge of cloth diapers is practically non-existent so I would maybe have interviewed her on something a little more related to her field...how to prevent the flu perhaps?

To me, a real VS segment consists of two sides. They should have spoken to someone on the cloth side of the fence and one on the disposable side of the fence...ya know, people who had actually USED the products??

That’s not to say that I look down on people who use disposables...as I said at the beginning, Munchkin was in them until he was 2. But it infuriates me that this type of journalism is passed as fact.

One comment after the video wondered about the “diaper origami” that the paediatrician performed and I have to say, she’s right. Cloth diapers come in many shapes, sizes, colours and prints....including all-in-ones (AIO) that are just washable disposables (these are what I use on Munchkin now). Practically no one uses the fancy folds she was doing and I have yet to meet a cloth diapering mom who uses pins anymore (maybe there’s some out there but I haven’t met them).

Alright, I’ll step down off my soap box now.

If you’re looking for good info on cloth diapers, here’s a great website you can check out.