Lucy's birthday

Lucy's birthday and party were today. Everything as expected. Lots of excited children, happy adults, yummy food, a very cute birthday cake and a gorgeous birthday girl.

All the cousins.

And earlier in the day, I sent my kids to play outside. This is what I found them doing. Which is hilarious if you are aware what I spend much of MY free time doing!


Last week I put all the kids hair in little tiny buns to try and make it curly. Even Ryan wanted in on the action. As you can see, it worked! For a while anyway, until it reverted to its normal dead straight.

Celebrities

We are currently local celebrities, being stopped in the streets for autographs and just so people can gaze upon us.
Well perhaps not quite, but lots of people have commented about our latest appearance in the local paper.
Sophie and I appeared near the front of the paper in relation to a Cycling and Walking Plan that I was involved in developing
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Bethany appears in the photo accompanying the writeup of the school production. It's a bit hard to see but she is just to the right of centre in the front row. You can also see the back of Ella's head in the audience as she watches.

A Hannah funny

Hannah is on the SRC at school - they have two children from each class and Hannah nominated because she knew Ryan was already on there. At SRC they decided to have a charity fundraiser to raise money for the people of Burma. She was so cute for a while trying to pronounce Myanmar. After I explained that the name Myanmar had been imposed by the violent ruling junta, we decided that we should refer to the country as Burma. Anyway, the fundraiser they decided on was Spare Change Week. She's been reminding us for weeks that Week 10 is Spare Change Week for Burma. We are just about to enter week 10 so she was trying to work out exactly what to do. 'Do we wear our school uniforms?' she asked. I explained that it wasn't Wear what you want day so yes she'd have to wear her uniform. 'But when do we get changed?' she wanted to know. Bringing spare change to school of course meant a spare change of clothes! We explained what was meant and she gave a little laugh, 'oh THAT kind of change' (although I don't think she's probably ever heard of coins referred to as change before.

New mountain bike

As you can see by the pic (and probably deduce from the title of this post), last week I did buy a new mountain bike. An Orbea Sherpa. The child I already owned.

As much as I love it, there is a whole bunch of buyer's remorse associated with it. Of course, there is the fact that it is NEW, to start with. Not to mention I spent approximately 50% more than my budget. Oops. And then, there is a whole lot of other buying of things that is required for a bike. For example, I need a bottle cage for it. I pilfered one off a child's bike, but it is too little and won't fit a fullsize water bottle on. I also need a bike pump holder (I can swap the pump from bike to bike though). And it didn't even have a rear reflector (illegal to ride on the roads). I pinched that off an old child's bike too. I knew there was a reason I had a shed full of bikes!
And I'd really like a bike computer for it. So I know how fast I'm hooning down hills and how far I've travelled. While I'm wishing, I'd actually like a GPS for it. Well, it is a MOUNTAIN bike.
Seriously, it would come in useful. Today my mountain-biking friend Amanda and I went to Cudlee Creek National Park, where there are lots of trails. We cruised around for a couple of hours, having no more than a vague idea where we were at any one time. We randomly took a turn that actually ended up right back near the start, but we could just have easily roamed around in the bush for days.
And a way cool mountain biking story, especially for my overseas readers. Well, I thought it was very cool, the kids were a little less excited. But then they'd been at a circus this morning so I guess they were over animal antics.
While we were out in the middle of nowhere today, Amanda nearly got knocked off her bike. By a kangaroo! Well, three of them actually. I was ahead of her and saw them hopping along to the right of us. I stopped at the bottom of the hill to wait for her and watched them still hopping along. They caught sight of me and changed direction, right across the trail! They jumped down off the hillside, the first one in front of Manda, the second over her head and the last one behind. I guess I'm glad she didn't get knocked off, but what a cool story she'd have to tell about her injuries.

Little drummer boy

For the last I don't know how many weeks, the kids have been working hard at school on a drama production. The school is extremely lucky to have a very talented drama teacher, who is well known for his large scale spectaculars so we were all awaiting this one with anticipation. The performances were today, and the show lived up to the hype.

Bethany was a love dancer and had a quite complicated dance to remember.
Ryan was a sprite/drummer and had, well, a drumming routine that we all got to remember very well after he's practised it on every surface over the last couple of months.

Even though I've heard the drumming over and over and over and over and over again recently, I was amazed during the actual show, about how great it sounded. And totally totally amazed by my son. Up there, playing the drums, holding the beat, enjoying himself. I was so ridiculously proud it's kind of embarrassing. But at least I was sitting next to Paul, who was possibly even prouder than me.
Bethany did beautifully as well, remembered most of her dance and smiled at the audience.



Bethany before the performance.



Ryan and friends at the wild, crazy after-party. That's right, playing chess.



Bethany dancing. She's pretty much bang in the middle.

I'm being an indulgent proud mama and putting up three videos of Ryan drumming. These were taken by my mum at the evening performance (there were three performances in total today, although the kids tonight were quite buzzing and were hopeful they'd get a chance to do it again tomorrow).

I willn't be two any more!

Sophie turned three! I guess I need to stop calling her my baby now, huh? She's a big girl, and we better not forget it...
The usual extended birthday celebration ensued - dinner at the Gawler Arms on Sunday night with 'cousins' and nana and papa, and then dinner at Fasta Pasta with Paul on Monday (her actual birthday).
The winner present was the trampoline. I was going to get her a bike, but by chance, the chef at our cooking class this week was talking about this way-cool tramp she bought for her little girl, so in an unusual bout of acquisition lust I rushed out and bought one straight away. I set it up in the lounge room and it has been jumped upon many times. Although we haven't yet set up the slide from mum and dad, and that might come close.

Sophie was so ready to be three. She is incredibly precocious, but fortunately incredibly cute with it. Her current favourite thing is to sing the national anthem, first AND second verses.
Most of her cute pronunciations have disappeared over the last little while, but there are still a few around - 'willn't' instead of 'won't' is my favourite.



Sophie and Charlotte with Sophie's icecream cake at the Gawler Arms.



All children assembled for a photo. Business as usual...



Sophie with her daddy, and her 'three balloon' which came to dinner with us.



One for Adam and Eva: Lucy meets Huck for the first time.



Sophie on the trampoline!

Buy Nothing New update

Since we are rapidly approaching the middle of the year (what, you mean Sophie is three soon? And Lucy is ONE??!!!) I thought I might just ramble a bit about not buying stuff.
I've done very well, I think, with not buying stuff. Some of my happy finds are the big new tv for $70, and the child seat for my bike for nothing (thanks Freecycle). Although I still haven't fitted it to the bike...
One thing that is really hard is the non-immediacy of not buying new things. For example, Hannah wanted some black long sleeved tops to wear under her school t-shirts. Normally, you'd just head down to BigW and pick something up. But I have to just keep it in my head, and keep an eye out when I hit the op shops or garage sales for something that fits the bill. Children's clothes in general are difficult. Kids will keep growing, and the seasons will keep changing. I've bought some things on ebay which I've found a bit frustrating - when I do actually win something, I feel like I pay more than I would at an op shop (but of course less than I would new) and I'm not exactly sure that posting things across the country really fits with the general environmental theme. With op shops, most kids stuff is hideously daggy or of course, never the right size. I'm doing better about buying out-of-season clothes though, if something looks nice and will approximately fit a child of mine, I'll buy it generally, but I do still have a mental block about looking at shorts in winter.
One thing I caved and bought for myself after a long time of looking is a pair of tracksuit pants. I was after something with narrow legs that I could wear on the bike when I didn't want to get all dudded up in the lycra. I didn't want to go with parachute pants, or anything with bands around the bottom, so that pretty much ruled out everything in any op shop I've ever ventured into. In total fitting with this year's Back to the early 90's theme, I ended up buying a surf brand (although not Rusty or Stussy, which would have really fit into the retro theme). And it still took me trying on approximately 400 pairs in a sports/surf shop to find some that were okay, and then paying an exorbitant price just because they have some glittery logo plastered across the butt. But they are nice and narrow-legged, and very comfy. I can see why some people wear trackies all the time!
The next big purchase I see looming is a mountain bike. I've been thinking that I would buy a second-hand one, since for the same price I could get a better quality bike, but Michael convinced me (admittedly it didn't take much convincing) that the problem with a 2nd hand bike, particularly a mountain bike, is that you don't know what's happened to it in the past. It might have, for example, thrown someone off and caused them to roll down a mountain breaking both their shoulders or something. And then sit there all innocent looking just waiting for its next victim. Plus I don't know enough about the components to know what's a good bargain secondhand. All this, tied in nicely with some bonus money from work, points me to buying a new bike. Soon. Of course I don't know where I'd put it as the garage is full of bikes already. Scarily, for a family of five, we own nine bikes!

I love my kids

It's so much fun having the kids old enough to get really excited about things like Mother's Day. They had been secretly planning my breakfast in bed for a couple of days. There were even a bowl and cup left in my room so they could do practice breakfasts.
I couldn't decide whether we should go out for breakfast (pancakes!) or have breakfast in bed (cold toast and soggy cereal). In the end, sentiment won out over taste...
There was no sleep-in to be had of course, Hannah was awake at about 545 as per usual, and she was out stirring up the other children soon after. I lay in bed listening to muttering and clinking noises. Soon afterwards my grand feast was brought in. All on plastic dishes, to reduce the risk of breakage while carrying them. Very sensible. And yes, cold toast and soggy cereal. And juice and water in (plastic) wine glasses! But all very delicious and beautifully presented. Ryan was of course directing the show, Bethany and Hannah brought the food in,

Photo: Bethany and Hannah with the feast. You can't see the time, but it's about 6:07am at this point!
then Sophie brought my cards in (on a plastic platter, naturally). These were gorgeous, of course. I think there were about six cards, the kids had all made some at school, then one at home signed by all of them, and some others they'd made at home as well. My very favourite bit is on Bethany's card, on the very back. It says 'BLURB. a card from the love of Bethany to mum'.

We took some time after the food was delivered, to remember Poppy, who died on Mother's Day last year. I had got the phone call from Paul just as I was eating my soggy cereal, in fact.

Photo: Sophie delivering my cards.


Photo: Me enjoying my juice in bed.


After the cards, all the kids sang 'Happy Mother's Day' to me.
And then Ryan got the good job - giving me my present. Which well and truly rocked. Wii Fit!! I was obviously pleased with the gift, but more so that the children had thought of it as something I would like. Ryan was at great pains to reassure me that they got it for me, not for themselves. And I am also pleased that Paul is quite happy to help the children buy gifts for me (and of course to pay for the vast majority of it). It is so important for the children to be able to show their love of both parents without feeling that they have to take sides or we resent each other. Choosing and purchasing gifts for a parent is an important development ritual and I am so glad it can be done in the right spirit.
On with the story...
In a true bit of serendipity, we'd only discovered the day before that our tv was not working (we turn it on very infrequently) and I'd happened upon one at a garage sale that was in good condition at a great price, so I'd picked it up in case our old one was unfixable (it's been fixed plenty of times before, I figured my luck's bound to run out one day). So, essentially, it could have been a sad present because we might not have been able to play it, but it all worked out in the end. Well, kind of, since the new tv doesn't fit into our tv cabinet, so it is currently on a coffee table in front of the old cabinet, making the lounge look messy. Yes, it's only the new tv making it look messy. Not the dozens of clothes strewn over the chairs, or the cups left on the table, or the papers all over the computer desk, or all the school bags in a pile in the corner, or the ladder in the middle of the room. All those things just add to the character of the place. The tv though, that's messy. I digress. Here's a photo of me happy with my new toy. I was pleased to see it was packed in with folded cardboard inserts, not styrofoam. Yay, Nintendo.



Photo: Sophie finishing off my cereal.


After the tv setup drama, we had a play on the Wii. And it is so much fun. Highly amusing watching Ryan trying to keep a virtual hula hoop spinning by wiggling around like a maniac. Or Sophie trying to header soccer balls. Or Hannah and Bethany going for a jog on the spot. Oh, Sophie was a classic at jogging. She could not jog on the spot and so ran four steps forwards and backwards about a million times. Highly amusing. I'm sure it's not amusing in the slightest to watch me trying to ski slalom or do the Tree yoga pose.
After much play it was off to the playground at the Aquatic Centre for lunch with the family. Besides the usual suspects we had Tanya's parents and Eva's parents which was nice. Oh, and Emily's boyfriend. Who seems very nice as well. Ha ha ha Emily has a boyfriend!!

Photo: Charlotte and Sophie taking high tea. Note Charlotte's pram full of stuff that must come with her everywhere.


Photo: Which one is the tree? Haunting impersonation.


Photo: Great Nana and her kids (with Jake standing in for Tony). This is the first photo I took and everyone is smiling! I didn't need to take seventeen extra ones after this.


Photo: Miscellaneous people eating and talking.


Photo: More people eating and talking.


Ryan must be growing up, he didn't want to play on the playground much. And he hadn't brought a book, so there was nothing for him to do except ask every 2.5 minutes whether it was time to go home yet. I gave him the camera and he took unannounced profile shots of everyone at lunch. I will refrain from posting any, but suffice to say, not one of them is flattering!

Making yogurt

I realised that one way we generate a lot of waste is by eating so much yogurt. First I stopped buying those little six or twelve packs and just stuck to the kilo cartons but I'm not so sure there is any economy there as it still tends to get all eaten at one sitting!
I thought I'd give making yogurt a go. I had a look online and there were tons of people saying how easy, cheap and delicious making your own yogurt is. It's a fairly simple process, making it from scratch: you boil some milk (to kill any nasties in it) then let it cool to blood temp, add some starter culture (other yogurt), and then keep it at blood temp for 8 hours or so. Fiddly, but essentially simple, right? There is a contraption out there that is supposed to make yogurt making Easi (geddit?), and I managed to procure one of these from the Freecycle list (have I explained Freecycle before? you can list things you want to get rid of that are too much hassle to sell but too good to throw out. you can also ask for things - I asked for the Easi-Yo as I figured it was the sort of thing people would have sitting in the back of their cupboard).
First I tried to make yogurt from scratch as described above, using the Easi-You to maintain the temp as required. It didn't turn into yogurt. Fine, perhaps I didn't let the milk cool enough, or maybe the starter yogurt didn't actually have any live cultures, whatever. I tried again. Still no good.
Then I bought the sachets of yogurt starter from Easi-Yo. These are pretty foolproof - add water, shake, put in the contraption (basically a big thermos) with boiling water around. Easy, right? Well, I got yogurt. But it was sour. I snuck it into smoothies and things but there is no way you could eat it straight. I tried this a couple of times, always sour. Then I wised up and figured maybe there were some bad bugs living in the plastic container you make it in. So a good scrub, and soak in vinegar. In the meantime Nicole gave me a whole bunch of the starter sachets she had at home (yes, she's one of those with a EY sitting in the back of the cupboard!).
So these, I can't get to work either. One time I got something that was kind of like cottage cheese, another time I got essentially just a lot of greenish whey. At least they're not sour. The sachets are just out of date (early April?) but you wouldn't really think that would make a huge amount of difference, right? Sure it's live cultures in there, but they're freeze-dried or something. A couple of weeks isn't going to make much difference, surely.
I can't believe that I, master of following instructions and cooking stuff, can't even make yogurt! However, I will bravely soldier on. I won't let ten or so failed attempts stop me. One day, I will make my own yogurt, and it will be DELICIOUS!!

Oh my god, it's raining!

A Day at the Zoo

Today we went to the zoo with a family we are friends with from school. The three children are the same ages as my oldest three, and in the same classes. Very convenient.
I was really motivated to get to the zoo these holidays after Sophie started asking a bunch of questions about how a zoo worked and it was clear she didn't remember at all the last time we visited (to be honest, I don't remember how long ago it was either). Sophie is very scared of animals though (will not let me put her down when we are at a house that has a cat, even if said cat is outside, for example) and she was a bit worried about all the animals that could be at a zoo. Of course a zoo without animals is really just a fancy garden, but she would have been happy with that, I suspect. The only animal she thought she would be happy to see was the hippo. I didn't have the heart to tell her they are actually extremely dangerous. She made me promise not to go anywhere near lions or tigers, even after we talked about cages and fences.
We had a lovely day though - the weather was perfect and all kids behaved extremely well. We didn't see all the animals, but we enjoy our visits there much more now we don't try and race around to see everything.

Sophie kept matchmaking every group of animals - 'look, there's the mummy and there's the baby. where's the sister?' and remained convinced the crocodiles were fake. Okay, they weren't moving, and they were 'silver, not green' so I can see why she thought that.
She was pretty happy to see the hippos early on in the day - they must have just cleaned out the tank and were just filling it up again, so the hippos weren't hidden underwater.

I got my first surprise when she didn't freak out at the siamangs, which were very noisy as usual. She had a great time watching them and laughing at the funny noises they made. I don't have any photos of the one that was hanging right out of the tree as far as it could reach to get as close to the humans as possible. Hannah was taking photos at that time and there are a lot of the lovely lush trees but none of the actual monkeys.

Sophie happily walked through the rainforest exhibit spotting different birds. I commented to Sonia that she must have not realised that there weren't actually any barriers between us and the birds.

We were totally astounded when we made it to the children's zoo and Sophie happily patted rabbits, chicks and a quokka. She loved the quokka, although I didn't get a photo of that.

And, yes, in the photo following you can see my totally animal-paranoid daughter standing right up next to a kangaroo and patting it with both hands! Amazing. Next to her is Hannah, and in the foreground Toby.

We made it to the lions, which are in quite an open enclosure, and she was even happy to hang out watching them for a while. I think she finally realised they couldn't actually get out!
The tigers were harder to find - they have built these gorgeous plant-filled enclosures where you are slightly elevated above the ground, but of course it's ridiculously hard to find the actual animals. Bring back the days of a lone tiger pacing back and forth in a barren cage, I say. At least you can actually see them! But we did catch a glimpse of the one tiger's stripy back way back behind the trees if we ducked down and looked under the railing. And in the other enclosure you could see some movement way back at the back of the enclosure behind the trees which was presumably the tiger.


Photo: Ryan and Mitchell ham it up in the rainforest walk.


Photo: My biggest baby all worn out in the pram.

One cool but gross thing we saw was the ghost bats in the nocturnal house eating. They were eating chicks, hanging upside down, holding the chicks around the necks and eating their brains out through their beaks. Actually the nocturnal house was the only place Sophie got spooked. It was dark and there were lots of kids running around, so it's understandable.

And a funny - Sophie kept asking the keepers if we could buy the animals. Fortunately she wasn't too ambitious with this, her favourites were the guinea pigs and rabbits.

Double century

This weekend, two 100's. The second was filling my car with petrol and having it total $100.77. What?! That is just wrong.
But the first was way more exciting - I rode my first 100k ride on the bike. Actually it was more like 120k in the end, but I set out to do 100. It was a beautiful day and I headed out well. I rode my standard path into the city, through DSTO and then back streets, to avoid Main North Road, then I headed down the linear trail along the Torrens, then along the beach to Semaphore (where I bumped into Dianne, walking down Semaphore Road), then back through Port Adelaide to home. And because I'm a geek, hopefully the map I made will work. I had two punctures, the first times ever I've had a puncture I've had to fix on the road (the other couple of times have been slow leaks I haven't noticed until later). I was out on the bike for about 7 hours, but my computer told me I spent 5.5 hours actually riding (I also stopped for some lunch). I averaged around the 22km/hr mark which I was very happy with. The roads are almost all flat, but there was a headwind coming home, which made the last 30 or so km slower going.

Rachel's 120

Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com

Hannah is five

Hannah's birthday, and as always at our house, a party-alooza. On her actual birthday we had dinner at the Bluegums with Paul (essentially overpriced pub fare) and an icecream cake later at his house. The following week (when I'd finally got my act together) she had her party. She chose bowling, which turned out to be lots of fun. Dad and one of the other dads stayed and helped out, leaving mum and I and another mum free to sit back and chat. Much fun and sugar was had by all (the best party ever, again, apparently). And her cake was well received. Well, actually not really, it was a caramel mudcake whale, not high on kids yum list apparently. But Hannah and I liked it and that's the main thing really.

The other photo here is of Hannah's class presenting assembly, which was very exciting. She also got to go out the front for everyone to sing happy birthday. There is a little video here too, of her speaking into the microphone at assembly.

A 'How To' for less junk

I'm really impressed with myself lately for the amount of rubbish I've been able to reduce. I put my green bin out tonight - for the first time in NINE weeks! That's right, me and four children took nine whole weeks to fill up a little bitty green bin. And these are not your standard big green bins, ours are only 120L little things.
And my recycle bin is not going out this week either. This is a bigger 240L bin that goes out every other week, but it's only half full. And that's after two children's birthdays as well.
I wanted to post a neat post from Colin at No Impact Man. This is his list of 42 ways to reduce your rubbish. I do quite a bit of it and aim to do more. I really need to start buying many more things in bulk.

Some more photos

Dad and the giant sunflower.


Lucy discovers toes at the beach. Much tastier than eating sand.


Hannah the cyclist.


Bethany's birthday cake. How on earth did she get seven already?!


The house across the road from us has put up a new fence. Now it looks like a construction site when I go out the front door. There are no big dogs or children to keep in, so what's the guess? Dope house or meth lab?

Photos from Melbourne

It turns out I actually only took photos while we were in Wye River. So no photos of Michael and not many of anything else. Of course, there wasn't much new and exciting in Melbourne itself anyway. Who needs another photo of a tram? We've got our own here now, thanks very much.


This is the view down the hill from the place we stayed at Wye River. Note the inconveniently placed house right in front of our balcony.


Our house was somewhere up the hill to the right. Everything is way way steeper than it looks too.



We had crimson rosellas and king parrots come visit us as soon as we arrived. In the house was a big jar of sunflower seeds which kept the birds (and humans) occupied.


Steve: thinking deeply or napping?


Darren, our friendly neighbourhood koala. Steve, the resident koala-ologist, managed to spot not just Darren, who hung out in the trees right near our house, but three of his mates as well. Me, I mostly looked at the ground.

Travelling girl

Thanks to the always amazing mum, dad, Nicole and Raff, I got a leave pass for Five Whole Days to go visit friends in Melbourne. I gather that those that remained in Adelaide had a reasonably good time, both Sophie and Charlotte managed to survive intact and everyone else enjoyed themselves. Ryan churned through even more of the Harry Potters - if Raff would get his act together, he'd have them all finished less than three weeks after starting the first one.

And Melbourne was, well, fabulous. The weather was lovely, a lot nicer than what Adelaide was getting, and of course the company was terrific. I spent two days in Melbourne (Carlton actually, with some visits out to scenic Ringwood) and three days in a little town called Wye River, which was just lovely. Beautiful scenery, cute little house (although the driveway was a tad steep, like we nearly had a heart attack every time we climbed it, not to mention all the stairs at the top of the driveway too) and a great beach.

There were many highlights: World's Best Butter Chicken (tm) at Westfield Ringwood in the car with many exhaust pipes, the longest trip ever from Carlton to Hawthorn via somewhere really far from either place (blame the driver), the bear in the pub, completing the crossword, being taunted by all that chocolate, breakfast at Sugardough, and of course the catamites (don't look it up, it won't help you much and will just make you wonder what really went on!).

I ate a lot, laughed a lot, read a lot, talked a lot (really?!) and perhaps complained a little too much (that stupid Earth Hour!). One thing I didn't do was take a lot of photos. I did take a few but right now the battery on my camera is flat plus I've been shaped. I should get some up soon though.

I am really so grateful to my parents and sister for 'letting' me go - I had such a fun time. And grateful to Steve for letting me stay at his place and wash his dishes - hopefully I didn't get in the way too much ;) and to Michael for cooking me dinner and a whole lot of Awesome.

Swimming

Well, it's been a chilly week here in Gawler, and that can only mean one thing. School swimming lessons! Yes in the outdoor pool that's never heated quite warm enough. Actually the days have been warm enough but the mornings (when lessons are on) are cold, with a cool breeze, never a good thing when you're wet. Ryan is lucky, his lessons are later in the term, and at the indoor pool. Of course, the way things work out, the three girls all have lessons at different times, so if you stay for all of them, you kill the entire morning. Everyone seems to be enjoying the lessons though. Here is Hannah, very excited because she was in the big pool, and Sophie, sneaking a quick paddle while we watched the others.

The other photo is for Adam and Eva - this is mum the day we talked to you while having coffee and cake in the Barossa. Note the nearly destroyed delicious cake as well!

Long life lightglobes

In my lounge I have two light fittings, both with three globes. These seem to go out with annoying regularity. Last time, I bought some long-life low watt bulbs and put these into one of the light fittings, sticking with normal bulbs in the other fitting. This was, oh, maybe as long as four months ago. The normal bulbs are still going strong and the long-life ones just died, all within two days of each other. So, since the long-life ones are approximately 10 times the cost of the other ones, I guess I'm back to buying the old sort again. Strange, and annoying. Meanwhile, until I get to buying some more, I sit here half in the dark typing this.

Alright, menstruation!

Boys, don't tune out! Read on and discuss this issue with all the women you know.
It seems to be all the rage at the moment (at least on the blogs I read) to be talking about menstruation and in particular its environmental impact. Just think of all those little plastic packets containing all that processed cotton and plastic that every single woman uses and discards Every Single Month for decades (except those in poor African villages that don't even have that - Crunchy Chicken has been suitably inspired to set up a website to help them).
But even if you're not inclined to donate or sew your own pads, there are things you can do.
Get pregnant and then breastfeed. That stops menstruation for months. Okay, that's not real helpful for a lot of people. :)
The simplest and best thing you can do is invest in a DivaCup or Keeper menstrual cup. One bit of molded rubber or silicone that you can reuse for up to ten years. Sounds kind of gross I know, but don't dismiss it straight away, have a look around on the internet, Crunchy had a DivaCup Challenge which is a good starting point. Cups are not that expensive when you consider what you spend on disposable products, and they come with a three month money back dealie in case you really can't stand it (although I seriously doubt that!). And if you have any questions about how they work, just ask. Oh, for women who travel, these would be the best! Just one thing to carry, no running out to shops in a strange city, easy to clean, can keep in for 12 hours or so.
But, if you really can't handle the thought of a cup, then use cloth pads. There are plenty of people selling these online, mostly work-at-home mums. They are easy to use and wash (but the Keeper is way easier!).
And if even that makes you squeamish, at least buy organic cotton products preferably in cardboard or paper packaging.
And, last but not least, discuss this with other women.

Alright, I think I'm over talking about bleeding for today.