This isn't one of those usual, I wish it would stop raining its been such a crap summer posts. In fact, right now the weather where I am is glorious. Except. I'm not at my house, we've been evacuated. With the river predicted to reach 10 metres, that means our house is going to get wet. Wet, wet,wet.
I spent most of yesterday pretending it wasn't happening. It was too annoying, too unfair and too unlikely. Everyone had said it wouldn't be as bad as the 2010 flood, and anyway, floods aren't meant to happen every 2 years, they happen every 20 years. In 2010, North Wagga got cut off and water inched up to the top of the levee banks, but it didn't make it over. All that moving, all that evacuation, it was all okay, not even a clean up needed. At 5pm yesterday, the SES realised it was going to be worse than 2010, and that means the levee could overflow.
We got most of our stuff out of our house in about 2 hours. Everyone was helping everyone else on our street. Two family friends rocked up to our house with their ute and burly son, and said "Hello we haven't seen you since you were a little little girl, what shall we move?". They took a lot of our stuff (including the smeg and piano!) up to their garage right on top of a hill. They just jumped in and did it, I was dithering and still telling myself, "Well we might have to evacuate but I'm sure the water won't come over, it'll be fine."
When we arrived at our (very new!) friends house in central Wagga at 10pm last night, I had a wave of panic. Crap. We should have gotten everything out. Stuff that was deemed not important and replacable has just been put up higher, but not 3 meters higher. It's okay. We are blessed in so many ways. We have beautiful friends to stay with - who even ave a super big and secure back yard for our Lola, we have insurance. We have each other. It's okay. It's just a freakin' bummer.
So, now we play the waiting game. Waiting for the river to peak, waiting for the water to subside, waiting to see what the damage is. Despite the annoying thing that we only just unpacked, we have so much less to loose. We only have a months worth of gardening to loose, only one rooms new paint job. It's gonna be fine. It's gonna be fine. It's gonna be fine.
{Pictures filched off the SES facebook page for the Riverina. The second is of the dam which is overflowing.}
Does anyone scrapbook? And would anyone be interested in digital scrap booking? I've been offered to do a promotion on this blog and I'm not quite sure what to think. I personally don't scrapbook and can't imagine myself spending time digitally scrap booking. Heaven knows I spend too much time on the computer as it is... But if I have readers that are keen...
It's funny, I was so stoked to reach 100 followers because, way back when, I remember reaching 20 and being completely over the moon and husbando telling me... "ohhh when you reach 100 you should monetise your blog" and I was like: "Ha! Yeah right" but also "Yes!!".
I'd like to say it was never my aim to have lots of readers, but it's simply not true. It's nice to feel liked and appreciated. And now, 2 years later, here I am and I'm nervous about this offer. (I kinda feel okay writing this because I doubt they've actually read my blog. If they had they would know I don't scrapbook!)
What do you think? I know lots of bloggers like to be ad free and that's cool, I read blogs with ad's and promotions and enter giveaways for such things... and I read blogs that don't too. I just don't feel like this blog is particularly focused enough on any one thing. I'm not a mummy blogger (though I read heaps of them), I'm not a craft or sewing blogger (though I do craft from time to time), I'm not a food blogger (but I love to cook). I just errr... blog. And that's okay. Sometimes I don't feel like blogging so I write short posts. Sometimes I share a lot. It's all okay. You're all here. And no matter what husbando and my mum will read along. (Thanks guys!)
Beth wrote an interesting post about this a while ago when she got sent a whole heap of toys for her kids to review and perhaps maybe she would blog about it. I felt what she describes - "Whoppee! A company wants to use my blog because I speak to The People!" And then for me "Um... actually I probably just passed some statistic test and they send out 500 of these emails every day...annnnnd I don't scrap book..."
What do you think bloggy friends?? Wisdom, Insight, Feelings? My Facebook followers have said that if the business fits then the business can buy me chocolate (money buys chocolate) butI'm honestly not very sure if this business fits. Scrap booking anyone?
Vegetarianism.
This can be a tetchy subject and invariably it isn't me that brings it up. First up I want to say this. I am expressing my feelings, opinions as well as some hard-nosed facts here. I am not judging anyone, I may challenge you, but I dont judge anyone. Everyone is different. And everyone cares about different things. I just happen to care quite a lot about this particular thing. I've been vegetarian since I was twelve years old. I remember loving steak and kidney pies and I remember loving lamb chops covered in tomato sauce. The smell of roast chicken makes me salivate every time. I get the feeling that the reason I often encounter so much aggression from people who ask me why I'm a vegetarian is that they believe (no matter what my response is) that I am judging them. I know a lot of people think about what they eat and take it quite seriously, I also believe (here we are entering opinion territory), that a lot of people don't think about what they eat, what the consequences of there eating is (on themselves and the environment), and the huge variety of food that there is out there.
Now, I am asking you not to judge me when I tell you I have been watching Masterchef. And you know what I've noticed? Every main course that is served up has meat or fish in it. Every single one. (I may have missed the vegetarian episode, if it exists, it has to be said - but for the last few weeks its been meat all the way.) When nutritionists recommend we eat meat 3-4 times a week why is it that every meal that is prepared involves it? I have the same grudge with a magazine I buy. It has a seven-day food menu in the back and I would say occasionally it has one meat-free meal. One. No wonder people are always asking me what I eat!
I find it astounding that with all the climate change kerfuffle that is happening, the media has managed to gloss over that one of the best ways to help the environment is to eat less meat (or none). Even when it does get mentioned, no one really knows what it means. Does less meat mean once a day?
Now all this aside there are some really really good reasons to go vegetarian, or certainly cut down on your meat and eat free range.
The environment. Here are some facts*.
* Did you know that if you switched from meat eater to vego you would save more carbon emissions than if you switched from a regular car to a hybrid car.
* In Australia, we are reducing our animal species at a higher rate than any other country except the USA. The biggest contributing factor to this endangerment is habitat destruction caused by clearing land for animal pasture.
* 92% of all land degradation in Australia is caused by animal industries.
* Australia is the driest inhabited continent in the World. 67% of water in Australia is used for agriculture whereas 9% is for household use.
* It takes up to 50,000 litres of water to produce 1 kilo of beef. It takes 2500 litres to produce a kilo of rice.
* We each use about 500 litres a day through direct household use (toilets, showers, drinking etc). A person on an average Australian diet actually uses about 3,500 litres a day. A vegetarian uses about 1,000 litres a day.
* Animal industries pollute our fresh water supplies. In the US, factory farms are polluting rivers more than all other industries combined.
* 30% of greenhouse gas emissions in Australia are attributed to animal industries.
* Animals produce Methane, which is, in the short term, a much worse greenhouse gas than CO2. Over the next 20 years Australia's livestock will produce more warming than all of our coal fired power stations!
* Grazing land takes up nearly 50% of the continent, this is in addition to the land cleared for growing hay and other food for animals. If a small fraction of that land was reforested we could "soak up" Australia's carbon emissions in a few decades.
People.
* 790 million in the world are chronically undernourished. Most edible grain is used to feed animals for meat and dairy production.
* The world's cattle consume enough food to feed 8.7 billion people. Yep that's more than the world's actual population.
* Vegetarians live 5 - 10 years longer than meat-eaters. They are much less likely to have heart disease, cancers, diabetes, multiple sclerosis and other diseases.
Animal rights.
I appreciate that not everyone is into this. One of my good friends delights in wearing his t-shirt, "I love animals - they're delicious", around me. However, I challenge you to consider where your food has come from. (watch this interview!) If you don't think you could look a cow in the eye and kill it then perhaps you don't deserve to eat it. If you can't grab a chicken by the neck and break it, then pluck it and cut its head off then you don't deserve to eat it. It's about respect really. Animals are living things, I believe all living things deserve respect. Meat farming is shrouded in mystery. It is almost impossible to visit a farm or abbatoir. You know why? Because it's horrible and not what you want to associate with your dinner!
I really hope this leads you to think about where your food is coming from. Look at the labels on the food you buy in the supermarket. As Jonathon Safran Foer says... it may be cheap on the price tag, but the cheaper it is the more expensive it is to the environment. If you think of yourself as a person who cares about the environment then you are probably being hypocritical when you enjoy your big mac. If you envisage that the food you eat comes from a green pleasant field then you really need to do some fact checking. I'm tired of hearing "yeah I know its bad but it just tastes so good" by people who I know to be intelligent and informed! I think it's lame and lazy. I don't miss meat one bit to be honest. The few rare times I've tasted it in my 13 years I've been very disapointed.
This is a really excellent and interesting article my boy sent me. It is particularly pertinent as the election date has been announced and we are going to be bombarded with "facts" by politicians. But I find the ideas and notions in it to be true of many situations.
"Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger."
I'd love to go on about people I know that behave like this even when presented with solid facts, but more important is that everyone is like this. Including me. I won't give certain politicians (especially ones in budgy smugglers) the time of day - not that I've even read their policies.
"Generally, people tend to seek consistency. There is a substantial body of psychological research showing that people tend to interpret information with an eye toward reinforcing their preexisting views. If we believe something about the world, we are more likely to passively accept as truth any information that confirms our beliefs, and actively dismiss information that doesn’t. This is known as “motivated reasoning.” Whether or not the consistent information is accurate, we might accept it as fact, as confirmation of our beliefs. This makes us more confident in said beliefs, and even less likely to entertain facts that contradict them."
I also find this interesting in terms of faith. How fascinating that some people can get two opposite messages from the Bible. I know people that will tell you that the Bible says homosexuality is wrong. I know others (I'm one as is my husband - for the record) that know the Bible doesn't say that.
Anyway it's a curious thing. Have a read of the rest of the article and be challenged.
{via}
