Why My Television Rocks

Well, it's taking me some time but I've recovered from our days without television.

We did it. We turned the TV off. We told the kids that we were having a few days of no TV. Remarkably, they didn't pester us endlessly to turn it back on. They did, however, increase their request for DS time (Nintendo handheld) and computer game time. We tried to steer them away, keep them busy, and spend more time outside. We did feel the need to make more trips out with them to fill some time. Our kids don't exactly have a long attention span for playing on their own, and getting anything done when their constantly demanding your attention is impossible. But overall, they did well and we had many more creative Lego ships with heavy fire power by the end of that week.

My husband loved no TV time. Lately he's found that the TV gives him a headache, and he'd much prefer to listen to music and read on the couch at night. I, on the other hand, simply replaced my nighttime television watching with Facebook and computer games...and maybe a little Super Mario Bros. on my son's DS. So I'm fairly sure I did not honor the ideals behind that particular part of my No Impact Week. No excuses here, either. I have no guilt about the television, and I'll tell you why. Unless you're not interested, in which case I'd stop reading if I were you, cuz that's pretty much all I have left to talk about.

For my husband, he gets to go to work in the morning, and leave his work to come home in the evening. That isn't to say that once he walks out the door all thoughts of work are out of his mind, far from it, but once his day is done the work he has left for the next day is not staring at him from every direction, every corner, every Cheerio crunched under his foot.

For me, once the kids are in bed and my time is my own, there's still piles of laundry on the chair in the corner of the living room, chunks of crackers, cereal and lately, pomegranates sticking to the bottom of my sock in the dining room, Legos and babydolls and Candyland cards on the carpet in front of my sofa blocking my ability to open the recliner, dishes on the counter and filling the sink in the kitchen, and a host of other tasks awaiting my attention. But I keep my sanity by ignoring all that come 8:00. Truly, if it hasn't been attended to by then, it ain't gonna happen today!

Every mom who reads this knows how important this attitude is. And every mom reading this knows how the stress of "resting" with all of that surrounding you is like trying to sleep while someone shines a flashlight in your face. All that stuff is staring at me. Eating at me. Taunting me. It's egging me on to get up and take care of it, allowing myself a moment of triumph when, for just one night, for 12 short hours, it could all be gone and done...but it always comes back. The triumph is so brief. The clean just never lasts. And the precious evening hours that could have been spent sitting and recouping can never be recovered. So, I choose to ignore it. I pull the sheet up tight over my head. I turn on the television, open the computer, or, if I feel like it, a book, and I tune out the mess and tune in to whatever the heck I want on the TV. And I enjoy it! Even if it's one of my many silly, pointless, brain-cell-sucking reality shows, it's better then letting my unfinished work bury me.

As I've said before, this lowering of my family's impact on the planet and efforts to consume locally, it's only going to work if it doesn't cut into our happiness or lower our quality of life. I've added steps to my day (more work and effort) in order to reuse, reduce, and recycle; it's worth it, and it makes me happier. I've spent way more money by shopping as local and organic as possible; it's worth it, and it makes me happier. But turning off the television? For me, it's just not worth it. Maybe I'll change my mind some day. Maybe it works for you. But that's the beauty of this whole thing, everyone can make the changes that work best for them, and if we truly make as many changes as we can handle, the earth still wins!

No Impact Week - Day 4

Forgive me Colin for I have trashed...and driven...and eaten Cheeze-Its.

TRASH:

Here's my trash list for the last few days, ya know, for those who are interested in going through other peoples trash:

• Night time Pull-Ups - 3 a day
  
• Plastic clothing tags from new jammies my mom brought the kids
• Plastic wrapper from Trader Joe's frozen fish
• 4 small backings to kids Halloween tattoos
• Contents of the dustbuster
• 1 very broken crayon
• My 6yo's lunch crusts
• A cheese packet from Annie's Mac N Cheese
• Stonyfield Farm yogurt topper
• Plastic straps from 2 new doors that my father-in-law and husband installed in our house
• Trader Joe's Sesame Sticks bag (so yummy)
  
• Taco seasoning wrapper
• Wrapper from a package of ground bison meat

What I didn't do.

• Reach for a paper towel instead of my perfectly good, handy, useful, compostable Skoy cloths.
• Allow my semi-potty trained kids to get away with Pull-ups during the day. (cleaned up a lot of pee though)
• Throw out food scraps that I normally would have just because the kitchen composter was full and I think it's way too gross to go empty. I emptied it. For the first time. You're welcome honey.
• Throw out a perfectly good reusable ziploc bag just because the food that had been in it had gone bad and I really didn't want to have to clean (smell) it.
• Fill the trash can in one day. Or even two days. Crazy!

It turns out that food waste is one of our biggest trash contributors, and being thoughtful about our garbage kept me from dumping that waste when it could be turned into beautiful soil for our spring garden.

TRANSPORTATION:

We do not live in a city. In theory, I could walk to a specialty grocery store nearby, in about 45 minutes. Maybe more, because I gave away my double stroller and my 4yo would whine the whole way about why my 2yo gets to ride in the stroller and he doesn't. Then he'd say his knees hurt and he'd drop to the ground and whimper. I'd continue walking, because there's no way I'm going to cater to that kind of behavior. Then I'd come to a crosswalk and realize, that yes, actually I did have to go back for him because they tend to call the cops on people who leave their 4 year olds on the other side of a busy intersection even though they deserved it because they were whining...again. So, no, we're not going to do that.

Nothing is close. The library, the playgrounds, the schools...not only are they too far to walk, but they're not even near each other. The same is true for a hardware store and a shopping center and a large retailer (Target), they're all 23 minutes away from me, and 23 minutes away from each other. So grouping trips is tough. When I do need a Target run I try to buy it all so I can not go there again for a few months. It's been working out. I'm also, of course, trying to buy less so I don't need to go out at all.

EATING LOCAL:

Yeah, they just don't make Cheez-Its around here. I've looked. They don't make Doritos either. Bummer. These were a house staple when I was growing up. Around here, they're a treat, a sometimes food.

What they do make is Stonyfield Farm yogurt and milk, so I buy that. And I love picking up organic potatoes that come from Massachusetts. And I get my meat from a lovely local CSA called Chestnut Hill Farm. So, we're not doing too shabby. I also try to buy a lot of organic products, with the hope that at least the production of these items had a lighter impact on the planet.

SUMMARY:

I guess what I'm saying is, we're not doing too shabby around here. I don't have any feeling of failure about this project so far. I have not followed it as closely as I could or as closely as some will. But where I am now and where I was 5 years ago is like night and day. Every day I take active steps and I think, I truly stop and think (when I'm not mindlessly picking up cute tassled boots for my daughter), about what I'm doing and what more I could be doing. And even when I do buy those boots, those not snow-appropriate thus not seasonally required and not reused but cute, soft and well-loved boots, I think about it. Maybe next time, I'll walk right by them. Maybe.

People must recognize that the only way this lower impact way of living can be successful for the masses is if everyone just takes it a little at a time and gets to a point where they're doing the best that they can do and still live lives that are happy and meaningful to them. That's what I'm doing. So far...happy. :)

No Impact Week - Day 1 Make No Unnecessary Purchases

Define "unnecessary". My usual focus being on food, I thought I was off to a good start because my freezer is stocked from my October meat delivery from my meat CSA and my produce drawer has some green stuff in it left over from my last (thank goodness!) vegetable CSA pickup. I figured the only thing I should need to buy this week is milk, and that definitely falls under the category of necessary.

Did you know it snowed today? Here in Massachusetts, for most of the day, the biggest fluffiest snow flakes I have ever seen came down and made their best determined effort to stick and accumulate on my still blooming mums. It's supposed to be 60 on Wednesday. How is this pertinent?

My husband and I have been on a major cleaning out of office, basement, garage and house in general. That story of stuff thing? That's us. The part where the house is so full of stuff that things are bursting out the windows? Yeah, one more Christmas (and it's not that far off people!) and we'll be out on the streets while our stuff is all cozy inside...everywhere....taking over and multiplying. Cuz it totally does that! It's like you go to bed with not that much stuff but when you wake up in the morning...more stuff! It was a very wet summer. Maybe I should be keeping my stuff dryer.

Anyway, so we've been on this mission to get our cars back into the garage before it snows (missed that). We've been moving things out of the house and into the garage, and then listing them on Freecycle or Craigslist or Ebay. Slowly but surely things have been leaving. And slowly but surely I have been discovering things like my daughter's 24mth snow pants and jacket as well as the 24mth snow pants and jacket that someone had given me when my daughter was an infant, so I could use it when she grew into it, ya know and not have to spend the money to buy a new one. Oops.

I'm not exactly sure where I was headed with this huge tangent.... sorry. I'm sure it would have been an amusing tie in... Let me think. Nope, not sure. I did have a point here. Maybe I was trying to distract you from the original point of this blog post; my necessary spending. Well, I'll get back to it now and we'll see if I can link all of this together.

We were out of pull-ups. Yup, no trash day is going to be more like low-trash day here. All three of my children are potty-trained-ish. As long as I set a timer for every 30 minutes and insist that everyone goes every time it beeps, we're good. That includes through the night. So...pull-ups. I decided to go get them, taking my oldest along for the ride.

We walked into our local KMart and picked up our pull ups. Then we noticed they had snow pants out, and just the size we needed for my oldest son. They also had spiffy looking Spider Man snow boots, how cool is that? Oh, and the cutest little brown boots with tassles with poof balls at the end of them for my daughter. We also snagged a box of crayons, a box of pencils, and some dry erase markers.

Hmmm....necessary? Yeah, so I was so caught up in the whole house purging thing that I totally forgot that today was don't buy stuff day and so I went to the store to buy something necessary but then I bought, well, stuff. Stuff that maybe we needed eventually but definitely not today. Stuff that will hang in a closet for about a month and a half until real winter comes. Stuff that if I'd taken the time to look on Ebay, Craigslist, and Freecycle I probably could have picked up in used but good condition. I have a bin with over 300 crayons in it for my kids to use and color with. Is it necessary to buy a brand new box of 48 just because my oldest wants his "own"? Ugh!

I failed the don't buy stuff challenge. I failed in my efforts to purge my stuff because in the middle of it I went off and bought more. I failed in being a thoughtful consumer. I walked in, and thought there's a deal! There's a bargain! There's a shiny new whatever!

I'm not even going to bring up the disposable pull-ups thing, because if that were really the only thing I had purchased today it might be a debate worth having, but pull-ups are the least of my worries. As good as I thought I had been doing to buy less, think more about what I buy, and reuse what's already out there, today proved that I can still be just as careless with my acquirement of stuff as the next guy. girl. whatever.

But I am trying. I have been buying less. I have been shopping MUCH less. I have been thinking more. I have been looking for alternatives. I have been pushing myself to think and to be conscious of my actions and to use what I have instead of looking for the new and shiny. Today was a day when I should have been at the top of my game, and instead it was an eye-opening example of just how much further I have to go. But the good news is...I'm on my way! And taking part in this experiment is just one more step I can take in the right direction.

Please join the experiment.

My No Impact Week

As I set off on my journey to attempt eating locally my husband suggested I take a look at the blogs of some other writers who maybe have worked out the kinks of this eating locally thing and could offer some suggestions. I, of course, not wanting to hear about others and determined to pave my own way towards local consumption without the help of anyone who maybe had this thing all figured out and could offer some good suggestions and advice, ignored him. I usually do. He has some really good ideas, too. I'm just stubborn. But I don't realize I'm being stubborn until much later. I usually come around. Eventually. Unless of course he's just wrong. That has happened before, once or twice. What was I saying? Oh, yes.

So, a couple months into my project, I had this brilliant idea to see if there were any other bloggers out there looking to find local food and live more environmentally friendly, and that's when I discovered and started following Colin Beavan, aka No Impact Man.

Colin sort of dragged his wife and child through a year long experiment to live as environmentally responsible as possible in New York City. I say dragged his wife because that's how it seemed to be going in the teasers for his documentary about the experiment, but I've recently come across some disturbing information about Mrs. Beavan, and I have to say I feel slightly forsaken. You see, Colin's wife was apparently addicted to reality tv. I can sort of somewhat a little bit identify with that. Not completely, mind you. I mean, there's some seriously good reality tv out there, and some seriously bad reality tv. I only watch the good stuff. The good clean entertainment offered by professionals and nice people stuff. The educational stuff. You could even say that the shows I watch are helpful in assisting me in my environmental pursuits. Let me explain:

• Top Chef, for instance, is great for learning exciting new cooking techniques that I can use on all the local produce I've procured this year.
  

• Project Runway has taught me one or two things about making my own clothing, you know, if I ever thought I might want to do that for my family and all I had was 30 minutes to sketch, $150 for materials, and 1 day to "make it work"

• So You Think You Can Dance just makes me want to get up and dance. Maybe I'll take a dance class at the gym next week. Exercise is good for me and the environment. Maybe if I was in better shape I could walk and bike more and drive my car less. Excellent! So far so good.

• Americal Idol is all about perseverance and never giving up on your dream and finding the superstar within the girl next door, and if you're not her well at least they're brutally honest so you don't go around thinking maybe you are her and then you know for certain that not only can you not sing but you are a bad person for ever thinking you could and you should really go back to working at Walmart now. But not me! I'm the environmental girl next door. Yay me!

• America's Next Top Model is so obvious it's insulting that anyone can't see the environmental upside. We have such an overwhelming food shortage in this world and Americans are the biggest gluttons of all. Just take a look here and see how much more we eat in a single week then they do in other countries. Then, watch Top Model and tell me that you are even thinking about eating more then water and locally grown celery until you've lost those last ten pounds. Seriously, those girls are the epitome of minimalist eating. That, or they vomit a lot. No one is naturally that skinny.
  

• Hell's Kitchen. Um. Okay, well...maybe sometimes I just like watching those idiots who go on reality television shows get told to f@@k off a lot.

My point is, I'm not watching totally worthless reality tv. It's all applicable to my goal, my journey, my mission. So I was more then a little disappointed when, not far into my borrowed from the library audio edition of Colin's new book, I found that it was Colin's wife who said that the first thing they should do is give up the tv. Why would she do this?! I identified with this woman. I counted on her to stand up for us. Crazy eco-conscious husband wanting to do the right thing for the environment but infringing on the personal happiness of his wife - I've got one of those! Starbucks - love it! Shopping - need it! Television - addicted to it! Give it up? And lose all of it's endless possibilities for education and inspiration?

(Yeah, no honey, this is not where I say that I'm willing to give up forever our 42" LCD with HD-Tivo. It's just not going to happen. There are some sacrifices that are beyond me.)

But I will do this. I will join Colin Beavan in the No Impact Experiment, which starts Sunday October 18th. And for one week, I will live a little bit as Colin and his wife did for an entire year.

On day 1, I will forgo purchasing anything but that which my family and I cannot live without.
On day 2, I will make no trash.
On day 3, I will give up driving unless absolutely necessary.
On day 4, I will eat foods that are grown or produced only in New England.
On day 5, I will um...I will....*deep breath*....I will unplug the television.
On day 6, I will use less water.
On day 7, I will pay it forward.
On day 8, I will plug the television back in.

It won't be easy, I know. But I look forward to this challenge for myself and my family. I hope we're successful in finding alternative ways to enjoy each other, have fun, and be more responsible stewards of this life we've been given and the planet we live it on.

Please join the experiment.

Our Vegetable CSA Experience

This spring we took the plunge and signed ourselves up with a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). For an upfront fee we got a box of fruits and vegetables, as they became available, from June to October.

As those of you who read this post know, I am not exactly a vegetable lover. I did a lot of research into the CSA's in my area and ended up picking the Stillman's CSA because it seemed to offer mostly the vegetables I will grudgingly consume. Plus it's right near my sister-in-law's house, and I could beg her to pick it up when she got her own, thus saving me a "boring" trip out with the kids.

Now, I'm fairly certain that I cannot blame Stillman's for the 60+ days of rain that we experienced in June, July, and August. I also can't blame them for the subsequent crops that flourished in said 60+ days of rain. Regardless of who is to blame, what I seem to have received this summer went a little like this:

June: Beets, kale, beets, kale, zucchini, beets, kale, zucchini, small container of strawberries.
July: Oh look, more beets. A container of blueberries.
August: Zucchini, lettuce, some corn, and kale. 3 golden plums.
September: Eggplant, cucumber, weird lettuce, eggplant, cucumber, corn, weird lettuce, eggplant, weird lettuce, some apples, a melon.

Now, I'll admit that I'm paraphrasing. There were a few tomatoes, string beans, potatoes and other things thrown in, and I know that the Stillman's folks weren't intentionally loading me with ultra-healthy but ultimately, in this family anyway, inedible greenery. But honestly, I gave half of everything we got to my in-laws. By the 4th week, my sister-in-law refused to take any more beets or kale, and they may possibly have ended up in my garbage. I have guilt about this.

I'm starting to realize that if I had been born pre-supermarket I would have been naturally selected out of existence. You can call me childish or fussy or absurd (I do), but foods that don't please my palate generally make me gag. It's not that I don't want to eat kale, it's just that once you wilt the lettuce the texture is so revolting. I can appreciate the beauty of a freshly picked tomato, it's just that when you take a bite the guts squish out in your mouth.

Anyway, I will delve no further into this particular neurosis. Suffice it to say, while I thank Stillman's for their hard work and effort in providing fresh local produce to me and mine, and while I encourage you to seek out and connect with a CSA program local to you and your family, I will limit myself next year to supporting my local farmers market.

Okay, It's Time

I'm back. Where have I been, you may be asking? Or not, you may not care, and that's fine too. Just around the time we moved last year, and on through the summer, I was sooooo unbelievably tired. Sleeping 9 or 10 hours at night, and napping during the day, and finding no relief. It turns out, I had sleep apnea, which causes fatigue. Oh, and restless leg syndrome, which causes fatigue. Oh, and iron deficiency, which causes fatigue. Oh, and vitamin D deficiency, which...you guessed it, causes fatigue. So, if I met you last year around this time, please forgive me because there is virtually no way I remember your name.

Due to the consistent encouragement of family and friends, I am determined to pick this blog back up again. While my writing temporarily ceased, my locavore attempts did not. So, with the assistance of my new vitamin regimen and my killer bi-pap machine (yes, it kills me to wear it) here I go.

(not right here. you'll have to go to my next post.)