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thanate*not dead, just chasing the baby. (or being chased by her... We have a bad case of "Mommy is the best person, accept no substitutes!" that kicks in most when she's tired, so an hour or two after grauwulf gets home from work.)
*I have much less oak tree, or rather a big jaggy-topped oak pillar, a bunch of giant limbs all over the back yard, and big pile of chip mulch. They didn't manage to fix their lift truck, so they had to have someone climb up and cut everything, which was rather impressive to watch. There is a lot of applied physics involved in coaxing large tree bits down in a not-large suburban backyard without hitting the house. Also a lot of ropes.
*I have also acquired a reputedly blight-resistant American chestnut which I shall plant beside my oak pillar. Reputedly the parent trees made it to 40 ft in about twelve years, so there may one day be shade to the bedroom windows.
*Just finished reading Sex at Dawn which purports to be a book about prehistoric sex adaptations and maybe some thoughts on what we do about that legacy, but is possibly even more about hunter/gatherer culture and things like alloparenting and leisure in a society where there's minimal wealth and everything you can eat counts as food. And like all good anthropology (tho possibly my concept of anthropology is somewhat skewed by having started with Elaine Morgan) bits of it jump out and connect up with all the things you already know or were just discussing and you suddenly realize that the early childhood iron deficiency thing the Megatherium's doctor was talking about is actually because we (unlike the birds) no longer start our children off on tasty, nutrient rich insects as their first solid food.
*EXCEPT, here I am going to have a pet peeve moment, that the book's authors seem to be convinced that breasts are about sex rather than food, with an off-hand comment about pendulous breasts not being necessary to feed people and a brief speculation about substitute genital swellings. Only the whole breasts=sex thing is a very western culture taboo.(scroll down to "acceptance of public breast feeding") Them what do not think pendulous breasts (and I mean the pre-supportive-garment version, as the modern silhouette is a very neotenous affectation for most of us) are related to food are invited to examine the amount of nursing advice that involves supportive pillows and contemplate the generally helpless state of the newborn human and exactly what, in a hairless biped, said infant is supposed to hold onto to stay in position if its mother gets distracted by something else. (My small 7-month-old gets quite cranky when I move about too much while she's eating, and I have chairs and books to read for purposes of holding still, and pillows to stuff under my elbow which *usually* fix the ergonomics, until she falls asleep in the crook of my elbow & cuts off the circulation to my fingers. Just saying.) You don't have to take my word for it! You can construct your own floppy fragile thing of about 10 lbs and try holding it up to your nipple for half an hour to see how sore your shoulders get! Boys can play too!
*But, anyway, alloparenting! So much sense! Particularly in a close-knit group where females spend most of their fertile life lactating, so alternate mommies *can* just step in for care whenever, and as there are always babies around the first kid "no, this is *my* baby" thing is liable to be a lot less dramatic. Also prevents most extremes of accept-no-substitutes mommy fixation. Unfortunately, in the world I live in, this impulse is reduced to occasional baby gifts from older relatives and friends of my mother, and creepy strangers [usually older, mostly female] who feel that it's appropriate to cross-question me about my baby in public. (It's the ones who ask what her name is that bother me.)
*The Megatherium is *my* baby, but she's also grauwulf's baby, and her grandma's baby, and her other grandma is terribly jealous because *we* got a girl and she didn't but she still can't be bothered to come visit for a weekend, and she (M) really needs more family who's within daytrip distance. Preferably who don't smoke. (Not necessarily relatives, just family: models for how to be a human.) The newest set of neighbors have some kind of mad multi-age babysitting co-op going on next door which I am not sociable (brave?) enough to try to break into, and then there was the thing with the cat and while they seem perfectly nice as neighbors, I'm not sure if we'd get on in much closer contact. This is the sort of suspicion I have about unvetted people after too many years of blank looks when I try to say things to strangers.
*I have recently discovered the existence of prius hatchbacks. Now I cannot leave the house without seeing at least one. In fact, I even saw one *in* the house by way of a football commercial, which claims they're called "liftbacks." Silly, Toyota. But I drive a white toyota 4-door hatchback ('86 corolla, '03 matrix.) It's a thing. Not that I intend to replace Camilla before she hits 200k, and at this rate it'll be a while.
*Also-also, has anybody done a post-apocalyptic utopia? Because that is the obvious writer-brain conclusion from a book that's on about how much better the hunter-gatherer lifestyle was...
*I have much less oak tree, or rather a big jaggy-topped oak pillar, a bunch of giant limbs all over the back yard, and big pile of chip mulch. They didn't manage to fix their lift truck, so they had to have someone climb up and cut everything, which was rather impressive to watch. There is a lot of applied physics involved in coaxing large tree bits down in a not-large suburban backyard without hitting the house. Also a lot of ropes.
*I have also acquired a reputedly blight-resistant American chestnut which I shall plant beside my oak pillar. Reputedly the parent trees made it to 40 ft in about twelve years, so there may one day be shade to the bedroom windows.
*Just finished reading Sex at Dawn which purports to be a book about prehistoric sex adaptations and maybe some thoughts on what we do about that legacy, but is possibly even more about hunter/gatherer culture and things like alloparenting and leisure in a society where there's minimal wealth and everything you can eat counts as food. And like all good anthropology (tho possibly my concept of anthropology is somewhat skewed by having started with Elaine Morgan) bits of it jump out and connect up with all the things you already know or were just discussing and you suddenly realize that the early childhood iron deficiency thing the Megatherium's doctor was talking about is actually because we (unlike the birds) no longer start our children off on tasty, nutrient rich insects as their first solid food.
*EXCEPT, here I am going to have a pet peeve moment, that the book's authors seem to be convinced that breasts are about sex rather than food, with an off-hand comment about pendulous breasts not being necessary to feed people and a brief speculation about substitute genital swellings. Only the whole breasts=sex thing is a very western culture taboo.(scroll down to "acceptance of public breast feeding") Them what do not think pendulous breasts (and I mean the pre-supportive-garment version, as the modern silhouette is a very neotenous affectation for most of us) are related to food are invited to examine the amount of nursing advice that involves supportive pillows and contemplate the generally helpless state of the newborn human and exactly what, in a hairless biped, said infant is supposed to hold onto to stay in position if its mother gets distracted by something else. (My small 7-month-old gets quite cranky when I move about too much while she's eating, and I have chairs and books to read for purposes of holding still, and pillows to stuff under my elbow which *usually* fix the ergonomics, until she falls asleep in the crook of my elbow & cuts off the circulation to my fingers. Just saying.) You don't have to take my word for it! You can construct your own floppy fragile thing of about 10 lbs and try holding it up to your nipple for half an hour to see how sore your shoulders get! Boys can play too!
*But, anyway, alloparenting! So much sense! Particularly in a close-knit group where females spend most of their fertile life lactating, so alternate mommies *can* just step in for care whenever, and as there are always babies around the first kid "no, this is *my* baby" thing is liable to be a lot less dramatic. Also prevents most extremes of accept-no-substitutes mommy fixation. Unfortunately, in the world I live in, this impulse is reduced to occasional baby gifts from older relatives and friends of my mother, and creepy strangers [usually older, mostly female] who feel that it's appropriate to cross-question me about my baby in public. (It's the ones who ask what her name is that bother me.)
*The Megatherium is *my* baby, but she's also grauwulf's baby, and her grandma's baby, and her other grandma is terribly jealous because *we* got a girl and she didn't but she still can't be bothered to come visit for a weekend, and she (M) really needs more family who's within daytrip distance. Preferably who don't smoke. (Not necessarily relatives, just family: models for how to be a human.) The newest set of neighbors have some kind of mad multi-age babysitting co-op going on next door which I am not sociable (brave?) enough to try to break into, and then there was the thing with the cat and while they seem perfectly nice as neighbors, I'm not sure if we'd get on in much closer contact. This is the sort of suspicion I have about unvetted people after too many years of blank looks when I try to say things to strangers.
*I have recently discovered the existence of prius hatchbacks. Now I cannot leave the house without seeing at least one. In fact, I even saw one *in* the house by way of a football commercial, which claims they're called "liftbacks." Silly, Toyota. But I drive a white toyota 4-door hatchback ('86 corolla, '03 matrix.) It's a thing. Not that I intend to replace Camilla before she hits 200k, and at this rate it'll be a while.
*Also-also, has anybody done a post-apocalyptic utopia? Because that is the obvious writer-brain conclusion from a book that's on about how much better the hunter-gatherer lifestyle was...
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Date: 2013-10-02 03:47 am (UTC)Also-also, has anybody done a post-apocalyptic utopia?
Is what you're looking for the 'cosy catastrophe'? In which 99% of the human race is killed off and now Our Heroes have the freedom to stretch their legs (and Have Adventures, in the YA version).
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Date: 2013-10-02 05:46 pm (UTC)Maybe? Only not with the nostalgia. I think the scenario from this particular set of research would be apocalypse; warlike males kill each other/themselves off; a couple moms band together in a matriarchal group & you end up with a return of sex-positive low aggression nomadic lifestyles. With a sub-theme of getting rid of any pockets of still-violent males if you need something for the GRRM set... (This is not something I'm at all interested in writing, but I could see someone else doing it.)
no subject
Date: 2013-10-02 04:28 am (UTC)I HIGHLY recommend Priuses. There are now multiple models, all of which are technically hatchback, I think. My first Prius (in 2002) was an actual sedan with a regular trunk. The two I own now (a 2009 and a 2010) are both hatchbacks. They now make a totally electric version, a station wagon version, and a compact version, all of which are hatchbacks, too, methinks.
no subject
Date: 2013-10-02 01:04 pm (UTC)My parents got a prius in '02 which is still going strong and a quite nice car. I considered that when I got my matrix, but it was a little more expensive than I was up for at the time, and I am a huge fan of the 8' cargo capacity and all that. But at this point I need to move the car seat every time I want to use that, anyway, & grauwulf has a larger vehicle.
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Date: 2013-10-02 11:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-02 12:55 pm (UTC)I had a conversation with one of the neighbors a while back where he said that with his kids the favoritism passed back and forth based on which parent was the one taking them to daycare, and therefore presumably around for an extra hour or two.
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Date: 2013-10-02 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-02 10:33 pm (UTC)Good luck with the food thing; we've just hit the point where grauwulf can feed her jar food instead of a bottle if I'm only gone for a few hours. (We've been sharing things we have that are on her approved list-- sweet potato, squash, etc-- and getting fruits we don't normally have in the house in jars.)
no subject
Date: 2013-10-03 02:22 am (UTC)Please write a post-apocalyptic utopia! That sounds awesome, and I'm pretty sure no one has done it. It's usually all grim, gritty, scrounging to survive, rebuilding is hard and lets be nostalgic for the good old days when we had *things*. (Not that I don't like that kind of post-apocalyptic fiction, too, but a post-apocalyptic utopia would be a wonderful new twist on the genre.)