Amazing space age products from China!

The other night I went with my sister-in-law and mother-in-law to a "Ladies' Night" at a community hall in Edmonton - no, we don't have some kind of weird relationship where we hang out at the man-strippers as a family, it was a sort of trade show with reps from pretty much every home sales company that you can imagine. I thought it would be a good chance to get some Christmas gift ideas, and it was - I didn't buy anything, but I was interested in some of the kids stuff and picked up some business cards. All the big names were there - Mary Kay, Tupperware, Pampered Chef, NorWex, Discovery Toys, Anion Feminine Products, and many more.

Wait a minute, you are asking, did I say Anion Feminine Products? Well, now that you mention it, yes I did, but let me get back to that. So, after a leisurely browse through the booths and one small purchase, the three of us decided to call it a night, so we left our door prize tickets with a friend of my sister-in-law and went home. After we had dropped my mother-in-law off at home, my sister-in-law received a call from her husband saying that someone had called the home phone to say that my mother-in-law's ticket had been drawn for a Mary Kay door prize - nice!

So we continued on our merry way, and after we got to my sister-in-law's house, we were surprised to get a second telephone call from her friend, and this time the lucky winner was ME! I was pretty interested to hear what I had won - free makeup? Jewelery? Crazy chemical free cleaning cloths? Toys? Storage solutions? Muffin mix? Nope, much better! ... I won a basket containing 3 packages of Anion feminine products.

I opened the package and was immediately suspicious due to the Engrish on the lable, along side the Made in China.Not being one to make a decision before doing my research, I decided to do a little googling and came up with a website for "Love Moon Anion Sanitary Napkins" (http://sanitarynapkin.110mb.com/).

On their site, I was enlightened by many interesting facts including: "As much as 107 bacteria can grow and multiply on 1 mm sq. surface of common sanitary napkin" and "Compliance with national hygiene standards (China) and prevention of infection ‘Keeping dry, air permeability and cleanliness’ are three main principles of genital care. Production of healthcare sanitary products must strictly comply with the GB15979-2002 hygiene standard." And than there's this interesting note in the "Anion & Health" section: "Negative ions (Anion) will move up to the womb through the vagina, improving blood circulation. Thus, the silt and blood clot stored long in the vagina can be discharged more smoothly. The womb can be repaired and improvements can be expected in 3-5 days. Then, inflammation disappears and no smell is left." And there is more - much, much more! There is even a collection of videos, including a You Tube photo montage where it appears that a baby's bacterial skin infection is cured by covering his skin in Anion panty liners!

To Chinese techno-health product companies: please consider this my official offer to provide editting services for your websites (at a cost). Your product appears to pretty much sell itself, but with a few editorial adjustments I think we can convince any remaining skeptics.

Goodbye Fooddownunder.com...you will be missed

A few years ago, my brother introduced me to a food website called fooddownunder.com. It wasn't fancy - there were no pictures or ads, and it wasn't endorsed by any celebrities, but it was a great resource. Whether you wanted to cook an authentic Indian meal, find a new twist on home made hamburgers, or just felt like browsing random recipes in search of dinner time inspiration, fooddownunder.com was the place to go. But alas, fooddownunder.com's glorious and extensive collection of recipes is no longer to be found - it appears that the URL expired and has been snapped up by some money grubbing meany and filled with useless sponsored links.

In honour of this sad occasion, here are a few words from my brother which really evoke the meaning that fooddownunder.com had for our family, and probably for countless others:

This morning I was chatting with my sister about what to cook for my date this evening and I decided to make Korean short ribs as one of the two meat dishes. When I make Korean short ribs I refer to a special recipe that I found online, and follow without fault. It is not often that you find a recipe that you like so much that you will go through great lengths to insure that the ingredients are portioned exactly as directed by the recipe. The recipe that I use won $15000 USD in a competition in Korea. The cook took the liberty to share it with the world through Fooddownunder.com. In preparation for the evening of cooking I sat down in front of my computer to make a grocery list. When I went to load the recipe I was redirected to another site. Fooddownunder.com is no longer. Fooddownunder was a unique community. It was a collaboration of over 100000 recipes shared by people who all had something in common; an understanding of the gift of food. Not every recipe was perfect, but each person who took the time to post their recipes was trying, and giving. If I had ever cooked for you, take a moment in silence this afternoon and pay tribute Fooddownunder.com. I didn't just use Fooddownunder to find a variety of recipes to create my own unique dishes, I used it as my personal "recipe box". I used bookmarks in my browser in the same way that people use cue cards to collect recipes. Fooddownunder has been there without fail to help assemble recipes for countless nights of cooking and sharing with family and friends. It proved to be an unlimited source of inspiration since I discovered it nearly six years ago. If you attended Naivasha and Hannes' wedding, each dish that was served had at least one ingredient that was recommended in a recipe from the site. It was more than just a website, it was part of me.

Happy One Year Anniversary of my Baby Due Date

Today is exactly one year since I was "due" with my baby boy (who I did not yet know was a baby boy). I remember the anxious excited feelings, the nervousness, being unable to eat/sleep/pee properly, sore ribs, nursery ready to go, bag packed, long brisk walks with a fleece jacked barely stretching all the way over my enormous belly, trying EVERYTHING to bring the baby faster, feeling like pregnancy would never end. After my two LONG hospital visits October 31 (due to what turned out to be a UTI) and November 1 (due to the car accident), I was ready to meet the little person inside of me and to be able to lay down without having my organs crushed. Eight days after my due date, on November 25, I was admitted to be induced, and about 10.5 hours later, just 7 minutes after midnight on November 26, my perfect little baby arrived. So happy due day to me - I hope that next time you're not just another meaningless day of waiting.

Things no one tells you, or that you don't believe before you have a baby

I think I did a pretty good job of preparing myself for pregnancy/childbirth/parenthood. I read The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy, a good portion of The Pregnancy Bible, a GREAT development book called "What's Going on in There?", attended a birthing class at the hospital, spent weeks on Google, and asked every person I knew with kids millions of questions. So how then, did these important facts of childbirth and parenthood evade me? Your guess is as good as mine (and my guess is it's all a conspiracy).

1) Anyone who has taken grade 10 biology, watched the Discovery channel, or even just thought about it for 2 minutes knows that birth is not pretty, and it is obviously painful (less painful with drugs, thank you epidural!!). But what no one prepares you for is the horrible horrible pain AFTER the drugs wear off, and the copious and terrible amount of blood that you lose in the weeks that follow birth. Seriously, I know this is gross to talk about, which is why probably no one does talk about it, but mamas-to-be have a right to know!! Luckily the shock and sleeplessness resulting from having to take a real live helpless baby home apparently cause this and other traumatic parts of the experience (pretty much labour through the first 8 weeks) to become a fuzzy blur, resulting in many families with more than one child.

2) Your kid's poo and pee actually aren't that gross after a little while. Don't get me wrong, I will take every chance I get not to change a diaper, but seriously, after the first couple times that your own baby poops so much that it goes all the way up the back of the sleeper and into their hair, the shock and disgust fade. You may even find yourself laughing hysterically when he pees everywhere, including in his own ear, and than fires a big wet poop across the change table all over your hand. Childless people may be shaking their heads in disgust, but anyone with a baby has had this experience. And if you didn't laugh, seriously, you should lighten up. However, when someone else's kid does this to you - still disgusting.

3) You actually have parenting instincts. This is not to say that you should just play everything by ear when it comes to your kids - I'm very much into the research side of parenting - without it how would I know that if you feed a baby under four months spinach that hasn't been cooked the right way they could get nitrate poisoning (blue baby syndrome)? But as overwhelming as being the 24 - 7 personal butler for a fragile little human may be, it actually comes surprisingly naturally!

4) Time flies. Now I know that you don't need to have a kid to understand this one, but something about watching day by day how that helpless tiny baby (as much as they didn't FEEL tiny coming out) 11 months later progresses to standing on top of the subwoofer in your living room all by himself that just makes you feel how fast the days really pass.

5) You may enjoy raising your child more than you thought you would. Before I had my baby I pretty much was all for the idea of popping out a couple kids, hiring a nanny to deal with the boring/messy/bratty baby and little kid stages, and getting on with my career. But as we approach one year and I see my little baby growing up, I can barely stand the thought of leaving him with someone else during critical developmental periods. Don't get me wrong, I still pretty much feel the exact same way about other peoples' stinky, illogical little brats, but somewhere along the lines my brain got hijacked by mom hormones and I feel a strong tug to raise my spawn myself. Totally unexpected.

6) Having a pet is NOT anywhere close to having a kid. I have a puppy who I love very much and before I had a baby, he did a pretty good job of fulfilling my need to nurture. But once you have a baby, you realize that the responsibility of raising a human child with such HUGE potential for success or failure is so gigantic, serious, and important that any relationship with an animal, no matter how loving, just cannot compare. In one overused word that I swear never to use again on this blog - it is epic.

7) You will actually love your kid more than anything in the world. We've all seen those little brats at family functions, the mall, the playground or mom's group who are so intolerable that you think if you were their parent you would die. But if they were your kid, despite all their intolerable brattiness, unless you had some kind of mental breakdown, you probably would love them unconditionally. I can't explain this one - it's just true.