Back from the HBA Conference

I got home early this morning from my awesome adventure down south for the Homebirth Australia Conference. In the last 6 days, I’ve driven around 3200km (2000mi) and attended a 2.5 day conference.

Of course, I made great time, and rushed home to see Littletree, which was great, but now I’m paying for it with having come down with the flu. Purple has made me a wonderful, spicy tomato soup with lots of garlic and my homemade chicken stock.

Anyway, I left after lunch on Wednesday, and stopped for a rest at about 8pm. I slept a few hours, and woke up around midnight, feeling refreshed, and FREEZING – it was 2 degrees (35F)! So I drove onwards… The van was whining a bit, and I realised the battery was draining with the lights and heater on after a few hours, so I stopped to sleep again, making sure I parked in a rest area where there were other cars, lest I couldn’t start again in the morning.

When I woke up, the van started, no problem, so I drove into the next town; Coonabarabran (The astronomy capital of Australia) and stopped to fill the petrol tank.

Coonabarabran has Australia’s largest telescope, and the worlds largest scale model of the solar system – it is spread out over about 200km! I have to bring Littletree out there one day!

My poor van, Sunshine, wouldn’t start again – flat battery.

At least I was lucky enough to have made it to the town! and more luck: I had broken down right in front of the NRMA (roadside assistance club)! The NRMA guy came to jump start me, and I said I didn’t think it was charging, and it was probably a problem with the alternator belt.

The NRMA mechanics looked at it, decided indeed, there was a problem with the alternator. While I waited, I browsed Coonabarabran, and found this awesome dolls house for Littletree in the OpShop, for only $5!

Back at the NRMA, it took about 5 hours to work out that the problem wasn’t the belt, but the alternator, which they pronounced dead. Apparently, a replacement alternator could be found in Dubbo; 2 hours south, but not until the next day.

I politely declined the offer of a (NRMA-paid-for) hotel room and a 24 hour delay, and got them to charge my battery – I then set out for Dubbo with the number of the place that had the alternator, not daring to switch off the engine for anything, to find an auto electrician who could fix it.

In Dubbo, I pulled into the first auto electrician I saw on the road, and begged them to help me… Maccas Auto Electrical – true legends! They not only agreed – at 3pm – to do the job, the apprentice quickly worked out that my alternator was not dead, but just the belt (oh the irony!), and replaced it for me.

On the road again by 5pm! No thanks to the NRMA!

Anyway, even despite the 8-hour-breakdown, I arrived to Echuca by 11am the next day. Since I had nothing much to do till the conference registration/ cocktail evening started, I browsed around the op-shops and walked around, and finally, went out to the resort where the conference was to mooch about till starting time.

Another moment of Luck! Anne Frye, who is somewhat of a midwifery-guru to me, having authored my bible: Holistic Midwifery, was also mooching around with not much to do.

Like a total idiot, I went up to her and blathered “OMG you’re Anne Frye! I’m such a big fan!”, She was really nice and we ended up chatting, and we sat together at dinner the next evening as well :D

The way home was somewhat uneventful. I drove all day yesterday (which was my birthday), stopping for stretching breaks in all the little towns, browsing in the op shops – I scored some great stuff; small remote towns always have the best op shops! I passed 177777.7km on my odometer

and was treated to a spectacular birthday sunset, complete with sunset rainbow

It’s nice to be home.

Express Yourself

I’m leaving today to drive down to Victoria for the Homebirth Australia conference, so I’ll be gone for a week. I’m pretty excited to see Anne Frye speaking.

But just to tide you all over till I get back, here’s one of Littletree’s recent songs, it’s all about expressing yourself, and only believing what your heart tells you, rather than what other people tell you to believe, and taking charge of your own body and life. :D

All Day Drawing

I’ve been having a really busy week this week, and Littletree has a nasty cold, so I haven’t had much to write.

I did do an all-day life drawing group – a bunch of us spent seven hours together, taking turns to do the modelling; I did some nice stuff, you can see it all HERE

Highlights; a one-minute sketch:

Pencil drawing

pastel shading

Long pose

 

It was a great day!

International Midwives Day

Shouldn’t we all be celebrating? Wouldn’t that be nice. Wouldn’t it be lovely if the Australian government weren’t in the pocket of the Obstetrician-headed AMA? Imagine if Australia would uphold the basic human rights of women, and support them to choose where and how and with whom they give birth.

The government says they’re increasing availability and options for maternity care, that midwives will be able to claim under Medicare and get prescribe under the pharmaceutical benefits scheme. There’s a lot of talk going around at the moment about “eligibility”, though it’s been made plain to anyone who reads between the lines that virtually no one will be eligible, and in order to meet criteria, Midwives must prove that they have been thoroughly indoctrinated into medical-minded management, and beholden to a doctor. For a pregnant woman to be eligible for homebirth… well, they more-or-less “risk out” everyone, don’t they.

I keep hearing from people saying they can’t get a midwife to attend a homebirth any more, thanks to the new laws.

The reality is that in no other department of health care does one need permission from a specialist surgeon in order to see a standard practitioner.

If I had a sore throat, I wouldn’t go straight to see an ENT, just to prove that it’s not life-threatening and refer me to a GP. And while that might be a cute analogy, it’s somewhat irrelevant, as BIRTH IS NOT A DISEASE!

In Holland, the country with the best statistics in the world as far as maternity goes (and a lot of other things), pregnant women must first see a midwife for primary care. If she wants to see an obstetrician, a pregnant woman needs a referral from the midwife, and if the services of an obstetrician aren’t medically indicated, she needs to pay out of pocket for those services, while midwifery care is covered under the government health care scheme.

Having Obstetricians attend normal births is a waste of their specialised surgical training. It’s an insult to women’s human rights.

Anyway, before I end up ranting on forever, I’ll just leave you all with the wise words of Carla Hartley:

Birth is Safe. Interference is Risky. TRUST BIRTH.

Happy International Day of the Midwife

Walking on Water

This weekend we had a nice family day out – went to see How to Train Your Dragon at the big cinema in the city where they have 3D – such an indulgence, and I think we’ve used up our entire year’s movie quota in the past month! Two of the four times we’ve been to the cinema in the past 3 years were in the past 3 weeks!

The film was lots of fun, and when we came out, we saw these huge balls floating out on the lake by the shopping mall. On closer inspection, it turned out you could actually go inside these balls and run around on the water.

Littletree was super-keen to have a go – how odd!

She listened carefully to the instructor, who explained how she had to get in, and how to do a “time out” signal if she wanted to get out.

Littletree isn’t keen on loud noises – a carry-over from her almost-defunct sensory processing issues, but she endured the noise of the air compressor filling the ball

Cautiously, she stepped out onto the water,

Promptly fell over, and then she was off!

Here’s a short video I made of the fun

In any case, it was a highly educational event – we learned how much oxygen time a child has in a 180cm ball – up to 30 minutes, but with activity, best not to stay more than 10-15 mins. We learned how to run on water, and what it looks like at the bottom of the lake at the mall (dirty with seaweed). And we proved that with enough motivation, Littletree will overcome her fears.

Cane Toads

This week’s homeschool group was with a National Park ranger, who gave a talk about cane toads and frogs. Cane toads are a huge pest in Australia; yet another example of the idiocy of Western mono-agriculture.

Settlers decided to grow sugar cane in Australia. It’s not native here. And the crops were attacked by cane beetles. Some bright spark found this toad, and imported them here, because in lab conditions, the toad eats the beetle.

Only in real life, the beetles live at the top of the cane, and the toads on the ground, rarely meeting each other. Then along came the unpleasant side-effects of introducing a species into a new environment – the cane toads breed like rabbits (another nasty pest in Australia), and don’t have any natural predators here to keep the numbers in check.

And they’re poisonous. So local animals that eat them, like goannas and red-bellied black snacks die. The toads are also efficient competitors for food, thus reducing populations of other native Australian animals. The little blighters are spreading rapidly around Australia, at a rate of roughly 40km each year.

The kids learned about how to identify the cane toads, and not confuse them with other native frogs; Littletree found it to be fascinating – she’s always very interested in wildlife and loves documentaries.

Of course, the homeschool group ended up, as usual, with the standard tree-climbing session. Which is, of course, totally illogical. I’ve been assured many times by wyse wombyn that if I let my child wear pink dresses, she won’t be able to climb trees, or think for herself, so I find this behaviour very confusing. :P

***Updated to add***

Just a few minutes after I posted this, Purple was doing some work in the garden and called Littletree out to see something – he’d unearthed a couple of cane toads under a log. Littletree gave a short lecture about how to identify that they’re actually cane toads, and explained about how even the tadpoles are poisonous – apparently the tadpoles are the main threat with them as fish eat the tadpoles and die. Littletree then got us to catch the toads in a plastic bag and we put them in the freezer, which is, apparently, the humane way to kill them. She was so excited about it :)

Life Drawing Update

I have been a bit slack with uploading photos of my life drawing adventures, but I created a Flickr album for my art, which you can see HERE

I’ve started working with different mediums, like working on better paper than butchers’ paper for a start

And I tried out some different kind of pastel (working on extreme perspective)

On one 40-minute pose I did a series that I really love; the first one was a nice, “polished” piece, done in 30 minutes entirely with my (non-dominant) left hand.

   

Then I still had some more time left, but I felt the picture was done, so I started experimenting. I did the exact same picture again, but using both hands simultaneously, and without looking at the paper.

That took around two minutes, and I really liked it, so I did the same thing again, only holding a different colour in each hand

Then I decided to do a series of one minute sketches, left-handed, one after the other, all on the same paper. I did five sketches, one minute each, in five colours. I love the effect!

I also started trying out pencils

and watercolours

What I love most of all about this class is that the model is often breastfeeding

Where else can you do breastfeeding life drawing classes!? :D

Random acts of Science

I picked up a book of science experiments from the library for Littletree, and managed to motivate Purple to do some with her.

The first experiment was making a fire extinguisher out of bicarbonate soda and vinegar. I love mixing up bicarb and vinegar – there’s so many fun things you can do, like the time we made sodium acetate and hot ice.

This experiment was pretty cool, Mix a little bicarb and vinegar in the bottom of a jar, give it a moment to build up some gas

And then put a lit match into the jar. The match went out instantly every time.

We tested putting a lit match into a similar jar without the gas, but it didn’t go out.

The next part was to put a tea light into a small jar, and “pour” the gas onto the candle. The candle went out.

After trying several versions, Littletree put the lit candle in a jar and put the lid on, timing it to see how long it took for the candle to go out. According to Littletree’s experiment, it takes seven seconds for a tea light to burn up all the oxygen in a salsa jar.

Making fire extinguishers is perhaps appropriate, since Littletree spent the evening before playing with sparklers and the long-exposure setting on my camera.