Taking up the ass for Facebook to see

This week www.boingboing.net reported a story about two nurses who were fired after taking photos of a patient’s x-rays. They apparently also posted them on Facebook. The x-rays were of a sex toy lodged in the man’s rectum.

First things first... there are some ethics issues to address. Would I find it interesting/ funny as fuck/ something I would want to tell people about if I was in the same position? Yes. Would I ignore the ethics teachings I must have had to become a nurse in the first place and take photos? I would be very tempted but probably not. Would I post the photos online? Fuck no!

Second things second… the use of anal toys. Okay peeps, lets have some backdoor information from your friendly neighborhood ex-sex shop working educator. Your rectum is the last part of your digestive tract before the feces hits the anus and gets lodged into the world.. The thing is, your anus can expand really fricken big and your rectum can hold a LOT. It can hold even more when vibration or with genital stimulation happens first. Unlike a vagina, where things can only go so high before reaching an end, you can actually loose things in your ass. SO, how you do stop this from happening? The best way is to make sure all things that go up your ass have a flared base. Both butt plugs and dildos* have a flared base and both can vibrate if you have the ability to insert a bullet vibrator into the end.


I have the feeling this is going to be a long series of posts on the joys of anal toys. For now I am just going to leave it there. Buy flared based toys. Don’t use phallic objects from around the house that don’t have a flared base. Shoving stuff up your ass can be fun, but not if it gets lost because then some nurses are going to post your anal play experience on Facebook.



*Dildos have varying degrees of a flared bases. Ask at a shop the circumference that suits your level of conformability and experience.

A woodland walk to soothe the soul

The sun was so bright when we woke up this morning we decided a trip to a new forest was in order. The chosen land was a mile and a half trail with some rather varying terrain. The bluebell leaves were just starting to come up from the soil. In another 6 weeks the forest floor, with its small streams winding through the ravines and man made wooden bridges perfect to make wishes from, will have a bright blue carpet as far as the eye can see. We picked a bit of wild garlic and some honeysuckle. The first was to smell and eat, the second to grow up our fence. It was the most perfect walk I have been on in ages. I am tiered enough from the ups and downs to make myself feel appreciative of the exercise, yet not so much that I am wishing I never went. The best thing about this particular nature reserve is that we didn’t see anyone until the very end of our walk. There are lots of uncommon birds to identify and whose songs are loud and clear. There are many different types of trees which means in the fall there are going to be LOTS of mushrooms and fungus in general. The welcome sign in the parking lot suggests a whopping 700 different species of fungus alone! (swoon)

What a perfect way to spend a beautiful spring day. Now, while some of my fellow Canadians are sitting in yet another 10cm of snow, don’t be dismayed. Next week we are back in storm central and back to the-rain-that-never-ends that England is famous for. This is a break in the grey. It will continue this weekend and our plan is to erect our green house. Hotdogs and coleslaw to follow. Milk that spring vibe!

Happy day everyone… hope some daffodils are blooming in your area.

The Fat Argument...

Something that I have come across in the arguments against fat acceptance is the thought that at some point you can be "too fat". That fat acceptance is taking a stand saying all fat people are healthy. I think the point is being missed. As far as I can tell, as as far as I am concerned, fat acceptance is fighting for the rights of equality. There are lots of fat people who are unhealthy, and there are thin people who are unhealthy. Getting good health care shouldn't be the privilege of the thin. I would like to sit in a restaurant, doctor's office, airplane, with chairs available that are wide enough for a fat person's hips. I would like to be able to buy snowpants, rent skis, ride a bike that isn't an adult trike, buy maternity clothing that comes in my size or can handle my weight.

So to the young folks in the waiting room at the fetal scan who teased me because I needed to ask for a chair without arms in the waiting room that had didn't have a chair that fit my ass, I hope the child you bring into the world opens your eyes to the privilage you expressed when you openly laughed at me. It was a mighty couragous thing to do, considering the volitile state I am in.

Mr. Sun

With my husband away in the middle east, I have the opportunity to have sole responsibility of my day. No outside demands and no cute ass to watch. The air outside is crisp but the sun is bright. I have the wedding quilt my mother made hanging on the line, sprayed with a lavender linen spray I made moments before. The laundry is going and dust is showing on all bare surfaces. If my man was home we would be outside without a doubt. We would be hiking, gardening, avoiding all responsibility. With a bright sun, there is an obligation in our house to suck every last ray up we can.

Today I am attempting to bring that sun inside.

Not only inside my house but inside my heart. I have missed happiness. I have been consumed with the ill feeling of morning sickness for a few months now. With only slight flickers of nausea, I rejoice in the change of seasons in this pregnancy.

little baby a-ok

I am a bit out of touch with my blog this week because I have been out of town helping some 12 year old boys with their biology, chemistry and physics revisions. Topics covered included sexual reproduction and health effects of drug use.

Do you have any idea how surreal it is to talk to young men about how many sperm are ejaculated (300 million) and how many actually make it to the ovum (100) while you are sitting there in front of them pregnant? Or how strange it is to be talking to kids about their textbook lessons regarding the effects of pot on their bodies when you used to smoke a bag a day? One thing I like about being in this position is the fact that you can tell the truth. For example, they learned that a woman’s cycle lasts 28 days and that they ovulate on day 14. Which, as most people my age know, is largely untrue. After talking to them about what they had to memorize I just let them know that one day, when they have sex, to know that a woman can ovulate on other days surrounding their 14th day and to always use a condom. Or, for example, when they are taught that pot is a hallucinogenic and acid is a hallucinogenic, it is important to know they aren’t the same kind of drug.

I kept myself busy so I wasn’t constantly thinking about today. Today was our first baby scan. After reading stories about parents who find out at their scan that their baby was dead, I couldn’t help but have a slight worry. Today, though, we watched our kid’s heart beat.

Life feels really good.

Tomorrow I am off again for more talk of sex, drugs, and elemental compounds. It will be nice when this week is over and I can rest at home with my little blurry photos of my kid.

Fat Friday (Sunday): Fat Pregnancy in the Media

There has been a lot of media attention surrounding the negative effects of obesity on pregnancy this week. First, an article came out from the Daily Mirror about a study that was done out of King’s College London. That led to an article about low birth weights from fat mums in the Times and in the Telegraph. The BBC busted out with a doozie, including a nice side bar summery of the risks obesity has newborns:

"PREGNANCY RISKS FOR OBESE WOMEN
Small babies
Large babies
Pre-eclampsia
Diabetes
Premature births
Stillbirth
Instrumental deliveries
Postpartum haemorrhage
Caesareans"

The problem with studies, and the articles that are spewed through out the media once they are released (and especially when they come with a press release as part of their scientific publication), is that headlines are read and that is all. The Daily Mirror is a tabloid magazine. They publish articles with titles such as “Deathly Peril to Fat Mums”. The article states that obese mothers are at a higher risk for pre-eclampsia, premature and underweight babies. That is right… UNDERWEIGHT. Which is a much different story than the ones I have read that say fat women need to watch out because they have fat babies they can’t push out. The thing is, although this study did find these statistics, they also used women from another study that had targeted women considered a high risk for pre-eclampsia.

NHS:

“It reports results from a subgroup of women who were originally involved in another study (a randomised controlled trial) examining the effects of vitamin supplementation on risk of pre-eclampsia in women at risk of the condition.”

“To set the context for their study, the researchers report that maternal obesity carries well established risks of complications, including for gestational diabetes (high blood glucose during pregnancy), pre-eclampsia (high blood pressure during pregnancy), high birth weight babies and stillbirths.

However, it is not known how maternal obesity specifically affects women who are pregnant for the first time. In this study, the researchers were able to explore what the risk of poor pregnancy outcomes was in obese women who were pregnant for the first time.”

According to Plus Size Pregnancy they have no proof that losing weight counter acts these findings. They just assume that it will.

The big deal, in my opinion, is the fact that there was no control group for the study. These women were already high risk for pre-eclampsia and they were only compared to each other. The NHS states:

“The findings of the study are difficult to interpret because of the lack of a comparison group. In a study questioning whether obesity is a risk factor for something, it is usual to have a non-obese comparison group. Equally, in a study questioning whether first-time pregnancy in obese women is more risky than other pregnancies, it is usual to see first-time mothers compared with mothers with one or more previous pregnancies.” (highlighting added)

And then, The New York Times puts out this: Obesity During Pregnancy Linked to Infant Birth Defects

The article begins:

“Obese women are more likely to have babies with rare but serious birth defects, including spina bifida and other neural tube defects, and to a lesser degree heart anomalies, cleft palate and hydrocephaly, a new study confirms.”

Then:

“Dr. Laura Riley, medical director of labor and delivery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said she was skeptical of the findings regarding babies of overweight women. She pointed out that pre-pregnancy weight is often self-reported in studies, adding, “People lie about their weight.” If obese women underestimated their pre-pregnancy weight in their reports, they may have inadvertently been included in the category of overweight rather than obese mothers, skewing the results, she said.”

“This confirms what we know and certainly tells us the association between obesity and neural tube defects is real,” said Dr. Riley, adding that she routinely advises her obese patients to lose weight or consider bariatric surgery before becoming pregnant.”

This is where you lose me completely. It is better to consider bariatric surgury before becoming pregnant?!! What?!!

As JFS sites:

“The Mayo Clinic reported in 2000 that 20% to 25% of gastric bypass patients develop life-threatening complications, but the recent Lap-Band U.S. clinical trials done to earn FDA approval reported 89% of patients had at least one adverse event, one-third of them severe. Complications from lap bands are more likely to require surgery to correct and the bands result in so much more vomiting, they are known as “surgical-induced” bulimia among medical professionals. While many consumers believe the newer, less invasive laparoscopic bypasses and lap-band procedures (which tighten a constrictive band around the stomach to make it smaller) are safer, they merely have their own “unique set of complications,” according to surgeons Shanu N. Kothari, M.D., and Harvey J. Sugerman, M.D. writing in Healthy Weight Journal. Ulcerations and the bands eroding into the stomach can happen and usually are why the bands are not reversible or removable. A September 2003 and an August 2005 Blue Cross-Blue Shield TEC Assessment scientific review of the evidence on the newer procedures concluded they had also “not demonstrated improved net health outcomes.”

For an amazing review of some fact/ fiction on the risks of bariatric surgery check out this link. It is a short article and one that I have sent to friends pondering The Band (they got them anyway).

So yes, we know the media sensationalizes everything. Fat isn’t going to be any different. The reason why this is pertinent to me is because I am on a pregnancy forum where I belong to a sub group of fat soon-to-be mums. Each time one of these articles comes out a barrage of women freaked out that they are mutating their kid, killing their kid, going to have a fat kid, going to have a underweight kid, or their kid will be disabled all because they are fat. There are women crying and talking about the diets their doctors still have them on to lose weight while they are pregnant. Others who cry because their doctor says they won’t be able to get pregnant because they are too fat. Some write in desperation because the people performing the scans tease them when they can’t get a good angle of the baby through the fat on her belly. How many of these women are going to have more stress at the time of birth? How many are going to be worried that they are going to be judged for how well they perform? How many are going to have increased amounts of adrenaline causing a slowing of the final stages of birth and therefore increasing the need for a cesarean?

“The obesity-related medical research that gets most grant funding is that which supports the war on obesity — and that is very different from caring about fat people and supporting research devoted to improving medical care and health outcomes for the obese.” JFS

Today... tomorrow... oh, and 4 years ago

Today: Blood sugar checked out okay. No gestational diabetes for this mama yet!

Tomorrow: Dawn till Dusk in Brighton

Today: Good friend visited the farm

Tomorrow: The company of two young boys, a husband, and 8 hours of imagination

Today: Content

Tomorrow: The memories of February 14, 2005

My thoughts develop legs, like wine swirled in a glass. Light catches on the hues of red revealing new aspects of a delectable experience. Thoughts drift from an unusual calmness to marbles of insecurities being dropped. I finally have some space inside my head and in my pretend day timer to decorate my slate with thoughts.

The image of D and I lying on beach chairs under the night sky, bellies full, laughing at stories about families and lifestyles, brings back feelings of contentment. I left that evening feeling thankful, rounded with smiles, good food and wine. Sand remained hidden in my belly button for two days after, due to a dirty glass. I would find one some and play with it as a nice little granular reminder. The reason I asked him out in the first place was because his presence made my eyes close and neck extend. I expanded but didn’t pick with the sides of my thumbs in nervousness because of it. The desire to listen and touch is a fun feather for the brain to titillate.

Over the week we ebbed and flowed out of each others space. Each time I felt this simple clean hope I would see him again but complete serenity if I never did. Those things never go hand in hand with me. There usually is a mucky residue of freak-out lingering in the background. I am not sure if it is because of D or because of my growth and understanding of what I appreciate about men through this past year and a half. Each meeting revealed a new solidity in my spirit and the discovery of different ways a man’s face can smile. The last night of his trip I finally asked if he wanted me to stay, in the smoothest way I could (jumbling of words vomited out with a smile) and when he said yes I sprinted into the bathroom to sing this song:

Just around the corner,
There's a rainbow in the sky,
So let's have another cup of coffee,
And let's have another piece of pie.

Trouble's like a bubble,
And the clouds will soon roll by,
So let's have another cup of coffee,
And let's have another piece of pie.
Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee
(Irving Berlin)
From Songs of the Depression

I managed a small jitterbug dance and unstuck my top lip that had adhered to my gums from the smile I was sporting. I casually went back to the group of people we were sitting with. Later I fell asleep with his heart beneath my hand, the smell of his neck in my nose and peace of mind to be sharing a bed with a beautiful man. When I woke up out of a hot haze and remembered where I was, I curled into him again and enjoyed the feeling of hair on skin. Good morning was muttered and smiles cracked the stillness in the air. I think I could have lain there all day, sopping wet from our heat, my hand on the back of his head or his fingers relaxingly caressing the side of my face.

The gentle curve of his mouth after a kiss and the desire to taste more has tiptoed into my thoughts for the past few days. Life catches up to me and I adapt to my solidarity. Bae is away and the silence that surrounds the vacant houses around me is noted. I walk with pie graphs entering into my mind, dividing feelings of delight, acceptance and insecurity into pretty colours of pink and red. I found the following art work by Mark Jennings Reese that seems to illustrate this imagery to a T. The small sliver is for insecurities, the rest… delight. I would draw a balloon over the entire thing if I didn’t think it would ruin it, to symbolize the breeze of desire to see this man again.

The Goddess in the Clay

I just got back from my pottery class. I strayed from my usual mug and bowl turning and made a goddess etched platter. A design I have painted and carved and molded into many different art projects. Just not for a long time. It is the return of the goddess. The archetype of femininity. I can tell that the energy is there for the birth of ideas. My ideas. The nurturing that this energy provides allows for these ideas to come to fruition.

What is this spiritual garbley guck? It is a reprieve from the highs and lows that I have unleashed on my man. It is a motivation to express myself in a way that is constructive instead of the short tempered bursts. It is a chance to see beauty.

Have you looked for beauty today?

Remembering Africa

I just needed to revisit these today.

Kimya Dawson's Smoothie Song... my new favorite

D has had Kimya Dawson’s latest album “Alphabutt” downloaded on his computer for a few weeks. Today, while we were eating sushi, and I was getting impatient with the squishing sound of his chewing, he suggested we listen to it. He also suggested it will be my new favorite album. So I listened. It made me smile wide. This was my favorite song:

Smoothie

Hey Papa, make Mama a smoothie
make mamma a smoothie right now
Hey Papa, make Mama a smoothie
coz when Mama drinks a smoothie little baby goes WILD

And it starts splashing and a-splishn like a school of little fishes
If a school of little fish was in me
Then glub glub glub like a fart in the tub
like a fart in the tub inside of me
and then the head and butt start rollin
like two balls bowling, perfect games on the lanes inside me
then a great big kick up under my ribs
that feels like nothing else
but assures me of the health and the length and the strength of my little baby

Because when baby is feelin lazy
Mama goes crazy thinkin something’s wrong
And then Mama runs to Papa and she sings him this little song

Hey Papa, make Mama a smoothie
make mamma a smoothie right now
Hey Papa, make Mama a smoothie
coz when Mama drinks a smoothie little baby goes WILD

And it starts splashing and a-splishn like a school of little fishes
If a school of little fish was in me
Then glub glub glub like a fart in the tub
like a fart in the tub inside of me
and then the head and butt start rollin
like two balls bowling, perfect games on the lanes inside me
then a great big kick up under my ribs
that feels like nothing else
but assures me of the health and the length and the strength of my little baby

Hey Papa, make Mama a smoothie
make mamma a smoothie right now
Hey Papa, make Mama a smoothie
coz when Mama drinks a smoothie little baby goes WILD

Big Fat Friday: Intuitive eating and the right to have whatever relationship you want with your food

In Thailand I lived in a situation where my household consisted of a Thai woman and her husband, myself and an elderly gentleman. The Thai woman was fat. While living with me she gained a considerable amount of weight. One evening, while sitting on our patio looking over the Andaman Sea, she sat down with a sandwich. Inside: butter, mayonnaise and chili sauce. We often teased each other about what the other ate. Fish heads, vs solidified moldy milk. When it came to this particular conversation though, I received an insight to poverty and one woman’s defiance of body ideology for pure pleasure. Bae, my friend, grew up in a small village in northern Thailand. She told me stories about how her family would suck on soil at a certain part of the year because they had no food. She lifted her sandwich and ate it happily saying, I don’t care if my husband leaves me because I am too fat. I am going to enjoy my food.

I had a similar reaction when when spending time with a parent I know. She feeds her children well, but eats a maximum of two meals a day and considers a cup of yogurt a meal. I consider a cup of yogurt a meal, when it has fruit and granola in it. One of the presumptions about being fat that offends me is the thought that I consume more than I should. “Should” being a relative term to the proportion of my ass to waist ratio. I recently realized I, in fact, do eat more than many of my thin friends. It is what I eat, though, that is not suspect. But is that wrong? In evaluating this, I also thought that most of my peers strive to live a healthy lifestyle. It is that our definitions of health that very. For many of my peers, thin= healthy. They chose their food through these glasses. For me health is not being obsessed with food choices, eating what my body needs and trying to be clear about the difference between needs and wants. This is called intuitive eating.

Now, as a quick disclaimer, when I lived in Thailand I worked out for about an hour and a half, six days a week. I ate less than I do here, but I drank a lot more. Oh, and I went dancing almost every night of the week. It was during the end of my stay that I started eating western food again, and also started on Dr. prescribed weight loss drugs. During those years I lost 100 pounds. My back went out for the first time, and I had uncontrolled uterine bleeding for a year. Since I left I have gained it all back, plus the 25% more that they say yo-yo dieters always do, and I have had only a handful of back flair ups since. I know I can be thinner but I chose not to pursue that path. Instead, I strive for my own definition of health and part of that is a friendship with food that defys my culture, my family, and most of my peers.

These are the principles of intuitive eating written by Evelyn Tribole, MS, RD and Elyse Resch, MS, RD, FADA.:

10 Principles of Intuitive Eating

1. Reject the Diet Mentality Throw out the diet books and magazine articles that offer you false hope of losing weight quickly, easily, and permanently. Get angry at the lies that have led you to feel as if you were a failure every time a new diet stopped working and you gained back all of the weight. If you allow even one small hope to linger that a new and better diet might be lurking around the corner, it will prevent you from being free to rediscover Intuitive Eating.

2. Honor Your Hunger Keep your body biologically fed with adequate energy and carbohydrates. Otherwise you can trigger a primal drive to overeat. Once you reach the moment of excessive hunger, all intentions of moderate, conscious eating are fleeting and irrelevant. Learning to honor this first biological signal sets the stage for re-building trust with yourself and food.

3. Make Peace with Food Call a truce, stop the food fight! Give yourself unconditional permission to eat. If you tell yourself that you can't or shouldn't have a particular food, it can lead to intense feelings of deprivation that build into uncontrollable cravings and, often, bingeing When you finally “give-in” to your forbidden food, eating will be experienced with such intensity, it usually results in Last Supper overeating, and overwhelming guilt.

4. Challenge the Food Police .Scream a loud "NO" to thoughts in your head that declare you're "good" for eating under 1000 calories or "bad" because you ate a piece of chocolate cake. The Food Police monitor the unreasonable rules that dieting has created . The police station is housed deep in your psyche, and its loud speaker shouts negative barbs, hopeless phrases, and guilt-provoking indictments. Chasing the Food Police away is a critical step in returning to Intuitive Eating.

5. Respect Your Fullness Listen for the body signals that tell you that you are no longer hungry. Observe the signs that show that you're comfortably full. Pause in the middle of a meal or food and ask yourself how the food tastes, and what is your current fullness level?

6. Discover the Satisfaction Factor The Japanese have the wisdom to promote pleasure as one of their goals of healthy living In our fury to be thin and healthy, we often overlook one of the most basic gifts of existence--the pleasure and satisfaction that can be found in the eating experience. When you eat what you really want, in an environment that is inviting and conducive, the pleasure you derive will be a powerful force in helping you feel satisfied and content. By providing this experience for yourself, you will find that it takes much less food to decide you've had "enough".

7. Honor Your Feelings Without Using Food Find ways to comfort , nurture, distract, and resolve your issues without using food. Anxiety, loneliness, boredom, anger are emotions we all experience throughout life. Each has its own trigger, and each has its own appeasement. Food won't fix any of these feelings. It may comfort for the short term, distract from the pain, or even numb you into a food hangover. But food won't solve the problem. If anything, eating for an emotional hunger will only make you feel worse in the long run. You'll ultimately have to deal with the source of the emotion, as well as the discomfort of overeating.

8. Respect Your Body Accept your genetic blueprint. Just as a person with a shoe size of eight would not expect to realistically squeeze into a size six, it is equally as futile (and uncomfortable) to have the same expectation with body size. But mostly, respect your body, so you can feel better about who you are. It's hard to reject the diet mentality if you are unrealistic and overly critical about your body shape.

9. Exercise--Feel the Difference Forget militant exercise. Just get active and feel the difference. Shift your focus to how it feels to move your body, rather than the calorie burning effect of exercise. If you focus on how you feel from working out, such as energized, it can make the difference between rolling out of bed for a brisk morning walk or hitting the snooze alarm. If when you wake up, your only goal is to lose weight, it's usually not a motivating factor in that moment of time.

10 Honor Your Health--Gentle Nutrition Make food choices that honor your health and tastebuds while making you feel well. Remember that you don't have to eat a perfect diet to be healthy. You will not suddenly get a nutrient deficiency or gain weight from one snack, one meal, or one day of eating. It's what you eat consistently over time that matters, progress not perfection is what counts.

Economic England

I was taking a walk on the farm the other day when I ran into a neighbor and a farm hand. We had a small chat about the farm, the snowstorm that devastated England, and eventually got on the topic of the “credit crunch”. Both men said that they have more work now than they ever have had before. I am a definite outsider in this conversation. My neighbor shoes horses and the farm hand is a staple man on the farm. Both of them live their lives close to animals, machines and the earth. I have been seeing less than a quarter of the people I used to. My husband has just been asked to cut his rates to a price he was charging ten years ago. If he says no, will he get work from this person again? Will he be canceled off the only jobs he has lined up for the next few months? Where is the dignity in this situation? Horses always need to have shoes, farm equipment always needs to be fixed. People don't "need" my husband and I. We are disposable income. It makes me wonder how bad it is going to get.

Oh... and is anyone else freaked out about this?

She's Crafty!

A few years ago I was all about pop-ups. I think my first gift to D was a little pop-up book and I had every intention in the world to be the first personalized x-rated pop-up designer. Alas, when it comes to crafting, I enjoy mixing it up and changing genres completely. One thing that is consistent is card making. Usually I can combine whatever my thrill is at the moment and incorporate it into the card. I could tell, with these three, that I am a bit rough around the edges, but never the less, they were fun to make with each person in mind. All of them are 3D, meaning the layers are raised off each other.

I think my next project will be to finish off a canvas I started before I was pregnant. It was a fertility project and that somehow seems a bit unneeded at the moment.

Effects of Lambing on Human Pregnancy

Sheep have a special place in my heart. My name, for one, means ewe or little lamb, in Hebrew. It is lambing season here on the farm. The time when the sheep give birth and there is an awesome opportunity to cuddle new little lambs. Not for me, though. No this year. According to Country Doctor sheep can carry these three different illnesses: Chlamydiosis (EAE), Toxoplasmosis and Listeriosis.

EAE effects on human pregnancy are “severe, sometimes life-threatening, disease in the mother and stillbirth or abortion.”

Toxoplasmosis on the other hand, has a much lower risk of infection. However, because it can be contracted from cats as well, it is what we hear about the most. When “acquired for the first time in pregnancy, may lead to infection of the foetus and this may lead to congenital malformation. Some affected babies may develop eye disease in later life.”


Listeriosis, similar to EAE has fatal consequences as well. “infection may cause abortion or premature birth. Infection in utero or during delivery may lead to septicaemia and meningitis with a 50-100% mortality.”

All of these are very rare to catch, even when helping with the lambing itself. They are a result of having contact with afterbirth, and / or contaminated food. That being said, it is important to be aware of the risks and judge accordingly. If you do have to help with sheep, it is important to wash thoroughly. Skin and clothing.

*All quotes are from Country Doctor.

Merry Imbolc

The translation of Imbolc is “in the belly”. This is the time between winter and spring, where hints of the changing seasons start to creep into the periphery and give us thoughts of warmth.



It is a time where, in Kent, you can have a day of warmth and sun, enough to hang clothing out on the line followed by a day where the snow rushes the feathers of sparrows, robins and tits alike.





Early season daffodils are blooming, as are the snowdrops we didn’t even know we had.


It is the return of the Sun.



In other traditions this festival is known as Oimelc. This means “in milk”. It is the time when cows and ewes give birth and lactation begins.




It seems to be that most of our celebrations fall when D is out of town for work. Many of the ways in which I celebrate are stretched over the season with the goals alone starting on the day itself. For Imbolc this year, I feel especially attached. For obvious pregnancy reasons, the symbolism resonates with me.

Here are ways I am going to celebrate:

Phase 1 of spring cleaning. This is more of a great big tidy, than a spring cleaning. Over the winter, in our little Kent cottage, our world has slowly come down to the living room. It is where the fire is, and where the fire is… we are. Because of this we have bits and bobs from everywhere in the house in the living room. Mostly in a moat around the couch. Phase 1.. make a direct path to the couch again.

Another part of Imbolc is the hint of new beginnings. It is a time to day dream of things to come. I am in the middle of the worlds. With only another 5 months to be able to lug a 25 kilo massage table up the stairs, and a university debt that I can’t defer because I am not living in Canada. Time to create, daydream and manifest some ways to bring money in with integrity.

It is also a festival of light. A time to make candles for the rituals for the rest of the year. This is something I need to get supplies for. I have been looking for a more local source and found this company. Not only do they sell bees wax but they also sell sheep skins, something that I have been looking for locally, but unable to find. That is a post for another day, but for now, I am impressed with my find.

The last thing, and the most witchy perhaps, is the garden of light I am going to plant. I got the idea out of a book called : Celebrating the Great Mother: A Handbook of Earth-Honoring Activities for Parents and Children by Cait Johnson and Maura D. Shaw. The idea is to write down wishes, dreams, hopes, thoughts, and plant them in a small garden. Then taking birthday candles and planting them over the wishes, you light and symbolically let them grow. There is a lot to be grateful for and a lot that needs light shinning upon it this year. I look forward to this very much. I have always found great comfort in ritual. Not magical rituals, just any ritual that turns an ordinary event into something with value.

But as I said, these are goals for the season. The goal for today was to build my first English snow woman....

... goal completed!