I can NOT believe it has been six days since I posted something. Where has the time gone? Well, mostly it has gone to getting up at the crack of dawn to watch the early a.m. World Cup matches. Woot!!
Are any of you watching? Are any of you annoyed and irritated beyond belief at the flipping vuvuzelas? Those horrendous horns that are like a big long kazoo and when you have 50,000 of them going all at the same time for 2 hours straight, it doesn't get annoying at all. And when you watch 3 matches in one day, that doesn't make it any better. And you know what?
There's an app for that!!! Yes indeedy, there are apps out there that can put that oh-so-annoying sound right on your phone. Just in case you want to create axe-murderers out of your family members who have to listen to it. Guess who got not one but TWO different vuvuzela apps on her phone? Yep, it was me!!! Annoying my family and loved ones since heaven knows when!!
I also attended a birth this weekend. Mom and Dad both did such a beautiful job getting that baby born. And what a large, healthy and precious baby boy! He was born exactly one month after his cousin. I was at her birth as well. Isn't it nice when sisters have their babies close and then the cousins can grow up together? I wouldn't trade my relationships with my cousins for anything! Extended family is a beautiful thing. I dated a guy in high school whose parents were both the only child. That meant no aunts, no uncles, no cousins to play with or fight with or anything. By the time I knew this family there was only one grandma. Such a difference from my huge, rowdy, loud family.
My car is off getting it's 5,000 mile check up and new tires, new brakes, spark plugs, the whole nine yards. It feels really funny to know that I am going to stay home, nowhere to go, and no way to get there. Of course, I could always walk to the corner and hop on the bus if I had to, but being car-less it's a different feeling. One we might all need to be getting used to.
Which leads me to the BP oil disaster. I am refusing to call this a "spill" or a "leak". This is a disaster of epic proportions and it is ON-GOING, people! Thick, gunky crude petroleum is spewing out of the earth at rates no one seems to be able to quantify with any accuracy. And how can I be all outraged and upset if I am still using a gas powered vehicle? This a real pickle we have gotten ourselves into, being all dependent on oil and mostly foreign oil and no easy solutions. But hard changes are coming and the sooner we face them, the better off we will all be.
What are the options for Americans? We have built this infrastructure over the last 60 years of highways, and being completely dependent on them for not only getting ourselves from point A to point B on a daily basis, but also hauling all our food, store goods, everything. Our train system is a joke. Traveling by bus within the city is one thing, but to use the bus or trains rather than our own cars is a HUGE pain in the ass to figure out and ridiculously expensive. Four years ago in Jan. of 2007 I joined The Compact in an effort to learn to quit buying new. And over the last few years I have learned so much and implemented so many changes to my life all due to the Compact. There are currently between 10,000 and 11,000 people all over the globe on the Compact list and everyone shares their little bit and we all benefit. Changes that I have made over the course of my time on the Compact include:
* No more paper napkins, paper plates, plastic cups, disposable anything (except paper towels and tp)
I already own a ton of cloth napkins. Now we use them on a daily basis and it has added almost nothing to my laundry.
* I make all my own cleaners and laundry soap and dishwasher soap.
Making your own cleaners is a great way to get chemicals out of your house. If you have any sensitivities to chemicals, you need to do it anyway and you just won't believe how easy peasy it is to do this. Not to mention the side benefit of costing waaaaaaaaayy less! Win, win on this one.
* Revived my composting ways. I have composted off and on for years, but forced myself to get serious about it. And let me just say this, if you take everything that can be composted out of your garbage and then you take all your recyclables out, there is just not very much garbage left. Which leads to . . .
*Changed my shopping habits. If there are two products available and one has lots more packaging and plastic, start buying the other one. Make it a priority to purchase things with less packaging. Don't bring it in your house and then you won't have to deal with it.
*Changed my shopping habits, part 2. I am really strict about taking my own shopping bags with me. No more plastic bags coming in the house! If you don't think plastic is a problem, watch this and this.
*Changed my shopping habits, part 3. I try really, really hard to buy as many local and organic products that I can. Yes, they cost more. Yes, it can be tricky trying to find them. Yes, it is necessary and it is worth it.
We all need to do more. Whatever we are doing to be good stewards of the earth, we need to do more. We don't need more. And one of the most important things I have learned over the last 3 1/2 years is this: There is no *away*. When you throw something *away*, you are just giving that problem to someone else.
And on that happy note, I will leave you with my favorite recipe for all-purpose cleaning. I mix this up and pour it in a spray bottle. This lasts about 2 to 3 weeks or so.
3 Tbsp. vinegar
1/2 tsp washing soda
1/2 tsp vegetable oil based liquid soap (Castile type soap like Dr. Bronners or Murphy's oil soap)
2 cups hot water
Mix in a spray bottle and use as you would 409 or any other non-rinse cleaner. Note: I use the tea tree oil version of Dr. Bronners and I also add in about 10 drops of real tea tree oil for extra disinfecting.
If you were to do a cost-analysis of this vs. whatever product you are currently using, I think you might be pleasantly surprised. Let me know if you do try it. And also if there are any other cleanser recipes you need, just give me a holler!
Nice ramble my dear. ;-)
ReplyDeleteAnd THANK YOU for the vuvuzela info!
4 yrs. ago when Hubs watched all those WC games I kept telling him how annoying the TV was....that noise, like a 'bigass insect buzzing/humming in my ear' sound that I couldn't STAND!!! Hubs had no clue what I was talking about....men! Are they really able to ignore shit like that?LOL
It was NOT my imagination or my ears weirding out on me....it WAS a highly annoying noise and I am not crazy!
This time around Hubs is NOT allowed to turn a game on unless he tells me first so I can vacate the room. I'm sorry....I'm not a soccer fan(unless someone is playing that I know, like my kids)and those vuvuzelas are enough to never let me like watching WC soccer.
As for oil spills. Folks around here are going nuts since the natural gas companies have moved in and are offering people buckets of money for drilling rights to their land which sits over the Marcellus Shale formation. They sell out for the $$ and guess what? Now we have the drilling companies having 'accidents' and contaminating local wells with run-off and natural gas. People with more money than they need in exchange for no palatable water.
I don't know....I don't think it's worth the trade off.
Sluggy, yeah, when the ones who got paid lots of $$ can move on to some other place with potable water and the rest get left with crap. that seems like a smart deal, doesn't it?
ReplyDelete1) can you email your recipes for laundry & dishwasher detergent + the all-purpose cleaner. We need to implement this asap.
ReplyDelete2) I have been REALLY lazy lately about plastic shopping bags. Mainly because *somehow* (and ** = your brother), all my cloth bags have been used to "organize" my "crap" in while they await action by me. Anyhoo, I took all those suckers to the store the other day to be recycled and renewed my dedication to my cloth bags.
3) World Cup... we were just talking about y'all last night. Convo went something like this....
Chris: I wonder if Jonathon has been watching
Me: well, I know your sister has been!
Chris: World Cup is awesome
I have completely tuned out the buzzing noise after a week straight of it....
4) your family is great. My family has just me/my brother, and then my brother's wife is an only child. So for my nieces on that side, it's just me & Chris for aunt/uncle. Poor kids ;) BUT... we get to be called the unequivocal Favorite Aunt/Uncle!
I haven't watched any of the World Cup (yet) so I haven't heard the vulvas or uvulas or whatever they're called.
ReplyDeleteI will definitely mix up a batch of your cleaning solution. I'm already big on recycling and I have several canvas shopping bags that I can NEVER remember to bring to the store with me.
Yea Kelly!!! One thing you might try re your shopping bags is to put them on top of or under your purse so that when you go to the car, you grab them along with your purse. I also have one really tiny little stretchy net bag that I keep in my purse. You would not believe the amount of crap I can shove in that bag! : )
ReplyDeleteI think that horn sounds like such a dirty word.
ReplyDeleteLisa Pie, you are such a steward of the earth. It warms my heart. I try, but I'm not as diligent as you. I promise to try harder.
And here's a story about my grocery bags, which I am HUGE on. I keep them in the back of my car and I have a ton of them because if I forget them, I buy more. They're good for so many purposes.
One day, I took the pups to the vet. They're great car riders. They sit in the back and just watch the world go by. Well, on this day I opened up the trunk and one of them had gone pee all over the place. Luckily, I have a rubber mat back there. I think it was the trauma of the vet, but anyway a 50 lb dog makes a lot of pee. They soaked all my bags. There must have been 20 of them. I couldn't stand it. I know I could have washed them, but it was dog pee. So, they went in the trash and I am slowly rebuilding my bag collection.