the pieces of my life

–I’m not sure why my family doesn’t see it as an act kindness that I am willing to eat all the expired gummy bears by myself? What if they’re poisonous now? Why don’t they understand I’m simply taking one for the team?

–I don’t like to think of myself as a fair weather environmentalist, but I officially declare a hiatus on composting until the first thaw. If we could even get to the composter, I don’t think we’d be able to pry the lid off (sorry for the haze–the only way to take the picture was through the window screen):

–Yesterday was a snow day. A sleety/frozen rain/snow-covered snow day. The boy simply stayed in his pjs the entire day (the girl went on a playdate,so she had to dress. God FORBID there is a day without a friend in it!). But when he woke up in the morning, the first thing he did was go to his math workbook, where he has extra math that he requested from his teacher, and he did a few pages of algebra. “I need to warm my brain up,” he told Adam.

–My car got stuck in my own driveway today. Wheels spun. Wouldn’t move. “Move it up slowly and then hit reverse fast,” Adam advised. Um, there is no forward. Forward is only a giant snowbank. I did get it out eventually. “Maybe we should make our driveway double wide,” Adam said. “Maybe we should move our driveway to Miami,” I replied. “Um,” he said, “my way’s cheaper.” Yeah? So?

–I love that when I now use my “Can’t talk; noveling” mug, I no longer feel like a fraud about it.

–I think those gummies were poisonous! I definitely feel nauseous right now. I guess you shouldn’t eat gummies that have been expired for a year. Or maybe it’s that I ate all 3.5 servings in one sitting? And how is it possible that that one little bag could be 3.5 servings? No, it must be because they were expired.

When the boy became a Cub Scout, the girl started saying, “I want to be a Girl Scout! Can I be a Girl Scout?” It was a refrain I heard often enough that when she started kindergarten, I sought out a Daisy troop (Daisies, which didn’t exist when I was a child, is the first level of Girl Scouts, before Brownies. It’s for kindergartners and 1st graders). Of course, there wasn’t one for her.

So I started one. Of course.

Today was our second meeting. The girls are working on their “Use resources wisely” petal, so for the past month, I have researched crafts. I have experimented doing crafts at home with the girl to make sure they were doable. I have checked out kid recycling books from the library. I have begged friends and neighbors to save me their toilet paper rolls. I’ve shopped for paints and jingle bells. I annoyed Adam with the mounds of recycling that I wouldn’t let him get rid of “just in case I needed it for one of the projects.” I carted three huge bags of supplies over to the school. I got yummy–yet allergy-free–snacks for the girls. I send the boy off to hang with a friend. I, with the help of another mother, shepherded the children through egg-carton jingle bell ornaments, toilet-paper roll bracelets, bottle lid magnets, foil ornaments, toilet-paper roll ornaments. I read about where our garbage goes. I listened to them share ideas about how they can reuse–and about their stuffed animals. I clean up the mounds of paper mess.

We get home. I unload the bags from the car. I sort things and put them away. I eye the wine. I ask my daughter, “So, how was the Daisy meeting?”

She looks up at me, cocks her head, and shrugs one shoulder. “It was medium,” she tells me.

“Medium?”

“Yeah, medium. Not good, not bad. Medium.”

And that’s when open the wine and count the minutes till Adam gets home.

On Mondays, Jasmine comes over after camp. Jasmine is just at the end of her toilet training, and I realized I was all out of M&Ms;, the universal potty treat. So I ran to CVS to buy a pack. I opted for the small pack, as I’ve been known to reward myself a little too liberally for bodily functions that I myself mastered a few decades ago. Doesn’t everyone have to say to her kids at some point or another, “What are you looking? I peed! Seventy-two times. Yes it is possible and no you can’t do it. Go away!”

But back to my point. First of all, who knew a normal-sized package of M&Ms; is 79 cents (and where’s my cents symbol? Hello, cents symbol! I don’t see you!). But what really killed me is the ratio of paper to purchase. I paid in cash. No credit card receipts. No debit nonsense. Yet the sheer act of handing over one dollar bill and receiving back 21 cents (again, symbol?) required the amount of paper you see here. How many trees died for my–I mean Jasmine’s–potty treat? Gads.

Me: Ugh. I forgot to ask you to mow the lawn this weekend.
Adam: I looked at it. It wasn’t too bad.
Me: It’s getting long.
Adam: Actually, it’s more EC to not cut your grass too short. You’re supposed to keep it long.
Me: Uh…
Adam: Ha! And it’s actually true! I read what you wrote last night. See, your EC can come back and bite you in the ass!

Damn! Sometimes I wish he didn’t read my blog…

I’ve been jumping on the green bandwagon lately, trying to do the little things that will make an impact. I’d like to say I’m looking to make an impact on the world, make it better place for my future great-grandchildren. But that’s not why I do it. I do it because our electricity and gas bills are out of hand and because I worry about my kids’ health with all those chemicals we inhale in our daily life.

And what I do are definitely baby steps. I’m not riding my bike everywhere. I still keep the AC on. I won’t be buying a hybrid till they come out with a minivan one. But I’m doing little things like phasing out all our Cascade and Windex for Seventh Generation and the like. I’m taking more books out of the library instead of just mindlessly buying them, as I’ve been wont to do. I’m trying to recycle every last thing I can. I’m trying to Freecycle instead of toss. I try to use more Tupperware and fewer plastic bags when making the kids’ camp lunches. I’ve eliminated most of our junk mail and catalogs by using GreenDimes (which has shown me, without junk mail, we get no mail). I’ve gotten to the point where nine out of ten times I actually remember to take my cloth bags with me to the store. I randomly yell things to the kids when they’re washing their hands, such as, “You guys! The environment!” (And I know it’s working when I hear Doodles say to Pie, “Pie! Turn off the water! You’re killing fish!” which may be a slight distortion of what I tried to teach them, but close enough for me.)

Of course, I have Mr. Whatever Man living in my house, and I’m constantly shutting the basement door behind him (no need to air condition the basement) and turning of basement lights that he leaves on overnight (good idea–make sure the bugs can see their way to your papers). He’ll go along with most things I propose–as long as they don’t require any actual thought on his part (meaning, when I put out a sponge for the counters, he’ll not wipe the counters with the sponge instead of not wiping them with a paper towel; but seriously, he humors me on almost all of it). We’re planning a few changes around the house (more on that another time), and I have some plans for that too (switching the family over to cloth napkins, using more efficient heating, considering a few solar shingles…)

My issue these days is in doing the research. Everyone is so holier than thou in their greenness, and it’s a total turn off. I read Deirdre Imus’s Green This: Greening Your Cleaning (checked out from the library), and she had me convinced until she wrote, “A word on Microwave Ovens. i don’t approve of them, but if you have one and insist on using it, wipe the interior down with a nontoxic all-purpose cleaner.” (p. 107) Hey, lady! We’re not all gazillionaires who can hire help for the home! Sometimes nuking out a meal is the only way my children are going to be fed lunch!

And then there’s my favorite, the Great God of Environmentalism himself, Al Gore. I know I’m way behind the times and that everyone knew about this a year ago, but how can anyone respect him as an environmentalist when his own house is such a sinkhole of energy. I just read in No Impact Man about Gore’s latest call for renewable electricity and I just can’t take him seriously anymore. I was fine with Gore–Global warming! World in crisis! I’m with you, Al! Yes, sirree!–but then Adam told me about how Gore’s home monthly electrical usage is twenty times greater than the national average. I chalked it up to Adam’s general Republican blather, but as it seems the whole world already knows, it’s true. I don’t buy the “We work from home. Our home is bigger.” Isn’t that half the point of it all? Have a smaller home! Maybe I’ve been watching too much Living with Ed, but Ed seems to walk the walk. Al Gore? Not so much.

I don’t know why I’m ranting about this now, except that as I contemplate house changes, I’m doing ever more reading, and as I do ever more reading, I just want to go around smacking people. Bite me, Greenies. Yes, I’ll go green. But in spite of you, not because of you.(Except for you, Ed. I definitely heart you, Ed.)

Anyone else find it a wee bit ironic that at the opening weekend of WALL-E–a film about the devastation of Earth by mankind, a film about how humans had to abandon the planet because they had so trashed it, a film that opens with a good thirty minutes of visual magic about the literal mountains of garbage people left behind on their planet–anyone else find it strange that on opening weekend they were giving away crappy plastic watches that can’t even be set properly? Pie has already discarded hers somewhere and I’m pretty sure Doodles’s already broke his when he got it wet while playing. Pul-lease!

I’ve been on a conservation kick with the kids. One of my new year’s resolutions was the oh-so-trendy “go greener.” I’m trying to impart the respect-your-earth values to them, with limited success. Of course, I don’t always have the lightest touch. I confess, I’ve been known to say, “Turn off the water! Fish need that water! Don’t kill the fish!” (Which has resulted in Doodles yelling, “Mom! Pie is wasting water! She’s killing fish!”)

Jumping on the plastics-are-bad-and-will-leach-harmful-things-into-my-children wagon, I decided I was going to order my kids some Sigg bottles. Just this morning, I told each child they were going to pick one bottle that they were going to live with for the rest of their lives. It was going to be their bottle for all going-out purposes and there was no switching or changing minds. Doodles picked out an astronaut bottle. Pie picked out Hello Kitty. The pink one. I found a lovely one for myself. Of course only after my little online search did I discover Hello Kitty is out of stock. So I’m searching for a place where I can buy all three because I’m too cheap (um, I mean environmentally aware!) to buy the bottles at multiple stores. I decided I’d hold off a day or two and see if I could find them locally. But no. Heading out to the playground today, I grabbed their sippies. At the playground:
Pie: I’m thirsty.
Me: Here’s your sippy.
Pie: No! I want Hello Kitty! The pink one!
Me: Sweetie, it’ll take a little while to get here. It won’t be here for a while [and that’s only after I order it!]
Pie: I want Hello Kitty now!
I was able to distract her until… bedtime.
Pie: I need my pink Hello Kitty.
Me: You don’t own a pink Hello Kitty yet. We just picked them out today!
Pie: PINK HELLO KITTY!
I think I need to get off my butt and find that bottle in stock. With expedited shipping. So much for saving money and packaging.

And then there was the conversation Pie and I had this week:
Pie: I need a paper towel.
Me: For what?
Pie: To clean.
Me: Use a dish towel.
Pie: Nooooo! I need a paper towel!
Me: That’s wasteful, Sweetie. Use a dish towel.
Pie: I need a paper towel. I need it, I need it, I need it!
Me: Do you know where paper comes from? It comes from trees.
Pie: [sniffle]
Me: Trees are killed for paper towels. Do you want to kill a tree?
Pie: Yes! Yes! Kill the trees! Kill the trees! [sobbing now] Kill the trees! Need a paper towel!

So now you know what conservation is all about. Dead fish. Downed trees. Pink Hello Kitties. Sent Fed Ex. Hope you all had a more productive Earth Day.