Tough times

Katie is expecting her fourth child at St Mary's in Knoxville. She's having a rough time. It sounds rather unpleasantly like my own experience. She's resigned herself to a c-section after many days of labor.

People ask me how I managed with three days of labor - how could they have let me go that long. Well, probably like Katie, I never thought it would go that long. You don't think after the exhausting first day - oh I've got two more days of this. You think - hey, if I'm lucky I'll have a baby in a few hours - 8 hours away tops - not 48 more hours. You never think that. I didn't want a c-section so I tried everything not to have one. It didn't work.

Good baby milestones

I took Baby Cletus out to the shops today and for the first time he didn't scream his head off for a healthy portion of the trip. He either slept or gurgled cherubically in his stroller, while occasionally batting the jingling cow baby toy that I've named Shambo - after the recently slaughtered holy bullock resident at a Welsh Hindu monastery.

He was so good that I wished I could reward him with some teeth rotting candy or an age inappropriate DVD.

Before and after

An expectant blogger mom has pretty much finished her nursery - all bar the finishing touches and, well - the baby. And it's all pretty darn impressive.

I have to say it makes me feel a little like an underachiever. It pretty much looks like it's out of a book and their before was a gutted attic, so many would be hard pressed to do that much. But we're a long, long way off that.

Ol' Cletus hit the 8 week mark on Sunday and our "nursery" looks a lot more like a before than an after. I'm not a home decorating guru, so I set the bar reasonably and realistically low on our nursery standards and we haven't even met that. For example I was asked:

What color are you going to paint the nursery?

I was just thinking of leaving the walls the original off-white. I like off white - it's the best pallet for the imagination. But I will get some spray cleaner and wipe off those random marks on the wall and I might clean the kitty nose prints off the window.

Progress update: strange black marks and kitty nose prints still intact. On the other hand, we did manage to clear a shelf for all of Cletus's new clothes. And now instead of a random pile of law books and novels on top of the dresser there's a random pile of baby stuff. And for us, that's a big, big deal.

We don't even have a crib set up. It's still propped in pieces behind a chair in our living room. Thank goodness we planned on co-sleeping.

Spiky things

Echinacea at Wisley

A few words on the astronaut scandal

You know how NASA has had to admit that sometimes the astronauts are flying high? And they just let them go ahead because it would cost ka-jillions to scrub a flight.

But the thing is, they have B-team astronauts, or at least they used to. One of my college professors was an astronaut also-ran. He was selected and trained and all and they probably fitted him for a suit with a bubble head helmet - but he never went up.

If I were the a B-team astronaut, ready and waiting for my chance, the day the A-team astronaut got gastric flu or something and I found out that they were letting A-listers fly drunk, well I would be really pissed.

They shouldn't throw stones

The Vol-in-Law and I took Baby Cletus down to Wisley today - a Royal Horticultural Society botanical gardens. It's hard to tell what an 8 week old baby likes (besides milk), but Cletus really seems to like seeing trees against the sky - and Wisley has plenty of those.

The place was absolutely packed and it seems like many people had come to see the new glass houses.



This is a long awaited development and they are pretty fancy and shiny and new. But we didn't stay long in them because

1. It was the first nice day in a while
2. It was forecasted to be the last nice day in a while (and it's raining heavily again as I type)
3. There weren't enough trees against the sky for Cletus's taste and he let us know.

We decided to come down and get a closer look in the winter time when it will be nice to be inside and warm.

We also had a look at the urban display gardens - including two that use artificial turf.
They also had a look at the model urban gardens that included artificial turf





I asked readers some time ago what they thought about artificial turf and the response was unanimous - a big old resounding, that's tacky. But it actually looked pretty good in these gardens and it might be softer on a little old toddler head next summer.

The hand that rocks the cradle...

...rules the world. At least that what they say. I hope that's true, 'cause I've been playing Medieval Total War II while nursing the baby. That's why blogging has been light. I've been simultaneously trying to conquer the New World and fend off a Mongol invasion and breast feed.

Baby tending and world domination leaves little time for blogging, my friends.

When I die...

Since one of our most frequent recreational past times is taking a walk in the nearby cemetery, we play the "when I die" game a lot.

When I die:

• Don't bury me in this crappy cemetery.
• I want a kick ass floral memorial - like maybe this one - only in single malt/ sipping whiskey flavor.
• I want to enter the fossil record, so you have to bury me in a zone of accretion rather than erosion (I majored in Geology in college)

But never once has either of us said:

When I die, please steal a street sign, turn it around and write my whole life story in both Arabic and English and cover my grave with a random assortment of fake flowers which you may or may not have collected from other parts of the cemetery.

What does your garden grow?

I like to have a container grown tomato crop. I always forget how big they get, though. But you know what they say...there's just two things in life that money can't buy...and that's love and home grown tomatoes.

I can usually do OK with tomatoes, but my garden is tiny and sometimes our summers here are a little too damp and cool and we're absolutely overrun with snails and slugs. Sure, there are crops that I could grow - like rhubarb which need more cool and which wouldn't do so well in Tennessee. But isn't rhubarb Yankee food? It's a weed. And while I'm all over eating weeds and garbage fish (e.g. catfish) and other peasant grub - I really only ever crave my own soul food. I guess that's the point of soul food.

Sometimes I fantasize about the veggies that I would grow if I had more space, more heat and more blazing sun - i.e. if I were gardening in the South. I would grow tomatoes (lots of them), yellow crook-neck squash, cucumbers, zuchinni, okra and peppers. I might grow asparagus, too - the foliage is so pretty. Maybe I'd grow onions and tomatillos, too.

12 US Senators harbor a dark secret

It's true. Twelve US Senators harbor a dark secret. I know that it's true because I saw it in black and white. Some canny reporters blew that story wide open. Phil Gramm, sneaky bastard that he is, couldn't even muster a denial in the face of the stone cold facts.

"It's all true," it quotes Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, as saying. "I'm amazed
that it's taken you so long to find out."

Only one paper was brave enough to tell all.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Going where no congressional critics have gone before, a
supermarket tabloid contends that 12 U.S. senators are space aliens. And many
of them are "admitting" their otherworldly origins.

The Weekly World News.

And now they're closing down. And why? Why is obvious.



The Bush Administration knew they were getting too close.


We can't handle the truth.








------
Hat Tip to Joe Powell. And I still have my WWN t-shirt which proves that 12 US Senators were space aliens.

UPDATE: Someone might be willing to take on the gaping void that the Weekly World News will leave.

Rage against the heavens

It's wet in England.

Now normally, I bet you'd say...yeah, it's England - what do you expect. But actually, it doesn't rain that much here. Sure it rains frequently, but not that hard and not that much and especially not in summer. You don't normally get the kind of torrential rain that I knew in Tennessee. But we've had it recently. And now it's flooding.


So who's to blame? Can we rage against the heavens (like ol' Cletus here)?



Kathy has a list of the usual suspects (and a low down on the flood story):

The Independent names the culprit: global warming. But The Guardian implicates La Niña as well. Others blame the fact that 10 percent of homes in England are built on a flood plain. They didn't call it the Doomsday Book for nothing.

Me and the Vol-in-Law are scouring the government websites to see if we're in any danger of flooding. Turns out we could be if the rain keeps up and the Thames swells at an inopportune time.

Holy Cow!

Well, not exactly a holy cow, more like a holy bull. Shambo is a temple bull at Skanda Vale, in Wales, who tested positive for bovine TB. So, as part of the effort to control cattle consumption, Shambo has to go.

But the monks of Shambo's temple don't want him to be sacrificed on the altar of agribusinesses. They say that Shambo should be allowed to live.

I would tend to agree.

Now, first let me say, I'm not entirely sentimental about hamburger on the hoof. I've been to bull fights (and had a good time) and I do like steak (medium rare). But it does seem to me that he can be suitably quarantined from the rest of the cow population of Wales and saving Shambo could avoid a lot of unnecessary human suffering and much kerfuffle.

There have already been two appeals of the slaughter order. One to overturn the slaughter and one to overturn the overturn. So Shambo - according to a high court ruling today - is due to die.

The temple devotees are not going to give up on Shambo. I can't imagine that there's going to be a Waco type standoff, but they clearly mean business. On their website they promise:

We could no more allow the slaughter of Shambo than we could the killing of a human being. Ultimately we would be willing to defend his life with our own.

and they have exhorted others to come to their aid. I'm not really ready to form part of human chain around Shambo or even sign the online petition, but I'll happily direct interested readers saving Shambo online - in fact here's an image from his web cam (of course he has a web cam).



I can't recommend it as the most exciting online viewing. But it was kind of cool when he moved from the right side of his pen to more kind of the middle.




And that's no bull.

The truth about wine

It's fun for a while



But eventually it all ends in tears

Tammy Faye

Ginger has a post about redemption - the redemption of a figure of fun and scorn Tammy Faye Messner, the ex Mrs Jim Bakker of PTL scandal fame. Now you can go over and read that post to see about the resurrection of Tammy Faye's reputation. The Bakkers and PTL are almost entirely unknown in the UK. The English, sadly, missed out on the dial-a-prayer and the collapse of the 700 Club and the Christian building schemes and the rivulets of mascara stained tears. So there is absolutely no interest in the return of Tammy Faye as a exemplar of Christian acceptance here and I've missed out on the whole phenom.

But it did remind me of a book I read about the PTL scandal years ago. I don't have the book - I loaned it out reluctantly with much swearing on granma's grave that it would be returned to me - and I've never seen it again. I think it's out of print and I tried to Google it, but couldn't find it and I can't remember the exact name or the author. But it was brilliant.

I believe that it was written by a professor of accounting at the local university who sent his students on research trips and to sit in on the trial. (Isn't student slavery great? Some kids will do anything for extra credit.)

The book outlined the classic nature of the collapse. It was basically a case of fiscal recklessness and overextension and weak corporate governance. Yes, there was greed, but it was greed of the sort fueled by denying yourself too long. The Bakkers basically told themselves they deserved nice things after struggling and building up a church and offering salvation. And I finished the book thinking - they didn't set out to defraud. They did defraud when they realised they were over their heads and had to backfill, but I think they always thought that it would come good in the end.

I read it during a trip to Amsterdam while drink Dutch beer and overlooking the canals. It had chapter titles like Where were the non-executives? and Where was the audit committee? and I could hardly contain my suspense when the book addressed the question I had wanted to know Where were the auditors?

The book was a testament to the importance of process and transparency; the necessity of good corporate governance.

And it was so exciting, I never did manage to sneak a peak at the red light district.

Hell and highwater

There's been a lot of flooding in England over the last two days. Fortunately, we're still high and only slightly damp. Or rather we're slightly damp and nervously quite low. The local cemetery, which lies in the same flood plain that our house is built in (but lower down the gradient) experienced some temporary high water after yesterday's torrential rains.



There was even more water yesterday, but much of it has drained away. This photo was taken today in the very low lying "memorial garden" section of the cemetery. There are only markers and urns of ashes (at that) - so no fear of bodies floating in the streets of Tooting.

Somewhere in the world, it's cocktail hour

The Croydonian has an interesting map of global drinking ages.

All I can say is,

• if I'd only known, I'da been in Italy when I was 16
• The US has a drinking age more in line with Muslim countries

Who's that man?

When I'm watching the news and the announcer says "Today the Prime Minister..." and I look up and it's Gordon Brown....

...and it freaks me out a little.

Just sayin'.

Not the look I was going for

I try to take lots of pictures of Cletus, keep the good ones and discard the bad ones. But sometimes, you have to keep ones that weren't quite the look you were going for:



The Vol-in-Law says he looks like a character in a low budget 80s sword and sorcery film.

I think he looks like an aspiring glam rocker.

What do you think?

Still waiting

I'm still waiting for my first ripe tomato. Readers in the South (of the US, not England) will be jealous of cool, moist weather. I however wouldn't mind just a little BBQ weather and enough sunlight to ripen the 'maters. Particularly this imported strain - Cherokee Purple - reputed to be a heritage variety from Tennessee.




See what interesting folds and ridges it has. I did know I was taking a chance with this tomato - it might not do well outdoors in this cool clime (it was recommended for greenhouse growing) but neither of my other two varieties have ripened either.

But each of my three tomato plants are still blooming and fruiting and growing.


I call this picture "Attack of the killer tomato blossom"

Hooray for Harry

I've never read a Harry Potter book. I saw the first film, thought blechhh, and never had any desire to read any of the books.

I'm not really against them - I just never had any desire to crack the spine of a Potter tale.

But even I can get a little excited about the imminent publication of the latest (and last?) in the series. After all, here was my (rather splendid) entrepreneurial idea the last time a book was published:

I often see people reading Harry Potter books in the Underground. With the most recent one I had a great idea. I knew that a character died, so I hunted around for the spoiler on the Internet. I know who it is. I thought I could wander around the Underground looking for those in the early pages of Harry Potter and the Half-Brain Prince and threaten to tell them who dies unless they give me £10, or maybe £5 if they negotiate.

And this time with all the leaking, I could make a cracking start.