How do I tally thee, let me count the ways

The other day, Daniel fulfilled one of his civic duties by filling out our family's StatsCan Census form. Did a good job of it, too. He had to ask me about our area & postal codes, and Chris' and my birthdays, but otherwise he did it all himself with only a minor mistake - spelled Chris' name "Christoher" in one box. Not a big deal; so did the Ministry of Transport a few years ago. And they refused to admit that it was their mistake, so Christoher just waited until the next time we moved to correct the mistake.

Got the following e-mail from Egale, in case anybody wants to pass it around:

Egale Canada
ACTION ALERT
May 4, 2006
---please distribute widely---
(le français suit)

Egale is writing to you because the upcoming Census 2006 treats same-sex couples unfairly. We're hoping you will take a simple action to show your support for same-sex couples across Canada.( Read more... )

And this was also interesting to me, as a history geek:
( Cdns will disappear from annals if census not filled properly: genealogists )

Camping and heartbreak and cooking and Tories

Boys went camping this weekend. All the boys - Daniel with the Cubs pack, for two nights, Justin with the Beavers for one night, and Chris with Justin, as Beavers were required to have a parent with them. And apparently, despite the unseasonable cold, they all had a great time and came home smoky and grimy. And found a very clean house, and a very relaxed Mama :)

***
Unfortunately they also came home to post-frost plants, and I swear the worst part of being a parent is how deeply your children's pain slices you up. Chris and Justin have been nursing a bunch of plants for weeks - planting, watering, lighting, re-planting, etc etc etc, and Justin has done an amazing job, taking his gardening duties very seriously. I'll just very quickly skip over his heartbreak upon realizing that most of his plants had died, because if I write about it, I'll want to cry.

Anyway. He's (mostly) OK now, and he and Chris will be planting again next weekend. I hope.

***
I got caught up on some e-mail, cleaned the house, and planned some veggie food for us, courtesy of the Green Door cookbook. Awesome stuff, although the kids didn't like any of it except the vaguely gingered carrots. And I'm quite curious to see what some of these things taste like with umeboshi vinegar, which is in about half the recipes but appears to be in short supply in Ottawa. The Bulk Barn told me to try Asian grocery stores, the stores on Somerset St. told me to try health food stores, and the Korean grocery store said they were going to order some in because apparently nobody carries it. I'm trying different substitutions for it, but as I have almost no sense of taste, it's totally hit and miss.

***
I also got caught up in terms of politics, which is hardly ever a good thing, unless you enjoy watching your country go to pot. Or rather, not go to pot; pot would make us more mellow. Instead we've got Graham attacks 'mean-spirited' Tory agenda in speech to Ontario Liberals. And yeah, it really is. Mean-spirited, that is. And stupid, too. Yeah, let's please do what feels good no matter how short-sighted and destructive. Eg, by all means, gut Kyoto & screw those damn Natives! And bring in mandatory sentencing and get rid of house arrest and conditional sentencing and a whole bunch of "soft" solutions to crime. That'll show 'em!! And let's please completely disregard, among other things, decades of correctional research from around the world that show that "get tough on crime" measures do nothing to decrease recidivism or combat crime, but sure cost a hell of a lot of tax money.

And the astonishing thing is, people swallow this garbage. The Tories say "American experience has shown that these methods work!" and nobody bothers to look it up and see that almost every study ever done says American crime rates are going down because the population is getting older. It's the same reason crime rates around the world have gone down, whether they have ridiculously high rates of incarceration/runaway spending on corrections or not.

OK, so not going there.

***
Which brings up something. I may be totally asking the wrong people for help here, since I don't think most of my f-list would self-identify as conservative. But some of you do. And some of you identify with conservative ideology in some areas, whether you call yourselves generally conservative or not.

Can any of you help me out here? Can you please explain what you believe "conservative" means? Because from watching our Federal Tories right now, "conservative" seems synonymous with "selfish, shortsighted, & greedy," and I'm pretty sure that's not what it's supposed to be all about.

...

OK, I've tried to re-word the above about eight times now, trying to make it get across my genuine desire to understand and my lack of desire to insult those of you who identify as conservative. I'm frustrated and angry with the people currently running my country, not conservatives in general. But I don't think that's coming across terribly well, and I don't know how to make it clearer, so if you're feeling offended, please accept my apologies; it's not my intention to insult you.

Perhaps I should just go to bed.