TheLionRampant.net

J.Crew has gone Scottish with loads of tartan as well as using models that are all locals from the Isle of Skye. Check out the link above to see the intro and some of Skye’s breathtaking scenery. Who doesn’t dig bagpipes, tartan and green landscapes?

Last Saturday we went to the highland games in Ventura. Since it was his first time to see highland games, Ezra decided to don the kilt his mom made for him.

Celebrate October by buying Fair Trade. Oxfam has information about how to celebrate Fair Trade month that you may find helpful. If you have a Trader Joe’s near you, they stock fairly traded coffee (the workers get paid a living wage), so pick some up and save the world! I know it’s not nearly that easy, but buying Fair Trade is an important way to “care for the least of these” amongst us globally. Also if you’re in the LA area, consider buying gifts or coffees/teas at Ten Thousand Villages on Lake in Pasadena, or shop from their website.

I’ll do my best to get a post up on the whys of buying Fair Trade by the end of the month.

I don’t watch Oprah, but I guess that The International Breast milk Project was featured on her show. I just found out about it and am considering donating some milk. From their website: “The International Breast Milk Project is the first organization in the world to provide donor breast milk from the United States to babies orphaned by disease and poverty.” Twenty-five percent of the milk donated goes directly to Africa while 75% is used for critically ill infants in the US; as this 75% garners $1/ounce in proceeds, this is then donated back to orphaned children.

Check out how to donate milk if you’re a nursing mother, and if you’re not, you can always donate money.

for your reading pleasure…

Totally Like Whatever, You Know

In case you hadn’t noticed,
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you’re talking about?
Or believe strongly in what you’re saying?
Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)’s
have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences?
Even when those sentences aren’t, like, questions? You know?

Declarative sentences - so-called
because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true
as opposed to other things which were, like, not -
have been infected by a totally hip
and tragically cool interrogative tone? You know?
Like, don’t think I’m uncool just because I’ve noticed this;
this is just like the word on the street, you know?
It’s like what I’ve heard?
I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?
I’m just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty?

What has happened to our conviction?
Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?
Have they been, like, chopped down
with the rest of the rain forest?
Or do we have, like, nothing to say?
Has society become so, like, totally . . .
I mean absolutely . . . You know?
That we’ve just gotten to the point where it’s just, like . . .
whatever!

And so actually our disarticulation . . . ness
is just a clever sort of . . . thing
to disguise the fact that we’ve become
the most aggressively inarticulate generation
to come along since . . .
you know, a long, long time ago!

I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,
I challenge you: To speak with conviction.
To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks
the determination with which you believe it.
Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.
You have to speak with it, too.

I met up with two other women from my Bradley birth class last week at a local park. Here are some pictures. It was quite odd; cross country runners from a local high school were training in the park while we were there. I felt so very far removed from that world (high school, not running, as I have never been in a running world!) and yet felt odd to be “that group of moms with babies” as I don’t quite feel mom-ish.

Also, if you haven’t seen already, there are more pictures of Ezra up on our flickr site. He’s a whopping 9 pounds now!