Things that are Awesome

I've made many changes over the past year or so. Some are hard, some are easy, some are easy to stick with, and others.... well.... others I have flaked out on. Here's what's awesome:

• maple syrup. 'nuff said. I realized that my brother (Gato Negro) has the real deal at his house. I asked him when he started buying it. He told me "when I started buying my own syrup". Take that gradgreen!
• sugar. Why was I using Splenda? I was obviously brainwashed by Weight Watchers.
• weight loss without lots of artificial foods
• giving stuff to Goodwill -- I now have a permanent Goodwill box in the closet.
• crayons (As you know, I have 3 little kids. Crayons are my favorite art supply. Why do markers even exist? Oh... to destroy my house... right...)
• homemade pizza -- I got a bread machine and it has been worth it for the pizza dough alone
• line drying clothes (this is C's department. Thank you!)
• Murphy's oil soap for cleaning wood furniture -- bye bye Pledge.
  
• cloth napkins
• hankies
• Craig's List
  
• cloth diapers (I've been a total failure with nighttime cloth diapers, but I am convinced that cloth diapers made my little one potty train at two years old ... a whole year earlier than my other two children)
• less/no TV -- we still use the TV to watch movies, but now we don't have any cable, which keeps us nice and commercial free :)
• ceiling fans -- since we have moved to a place with fans in every room, we are able to keep the AC set at a higher temperature and be very comfy.
• Wrap-n-mat to wrap sandwiches in for sack lunch. Very cute, creates its own placemat, and quite a conversation starter.
  

What hasn't worked out so well?

• CSA -- It just didn't seem worth it and the food was rotting.
• worm composting -- they freaked me out a little, and we killed them. Sorry wormies!
• going car free/ car light -- very very hard with three little kids. The basic problem here is that I can't spend long periods of time on public transportation because I have to get home and pick up/ take care of my children.
  

Apocalyptic TV

I've been compulsively watching Jericho, a TV series that my dad lent to me. Even on the tiny TV, it's pretty good. As much as I hate TV, when I come back from work, it's nice to just blob out... and then I end up thinking "wow... TV.... genius invention." Not regular programming, so much, because I hate the commercials. But DVD series are really addictive.

Jericho depicts a small town in Kansas after a series of nuclear bombs wipes out most of the major cities in the US. I like the characters, and I pretty much like the story line, but it makes you think... The citizens of Jericho are forced to live, with no prior warning, with no power (after a while), a very limited supply of gas (limited to what they had at the time the bombs went off, so far), and a limited food supply. Pretty soon they come to rely almost completely on food from the farms surrounding the city. (This does present a logical problem because of the fallout, but it is explained in the case of the corn, which was in the husks, making it safe (hmmmm...)).

As far-fetched as parts of the plot-line seem, it does make me think about our preparedness for disaster. Many consider peak oil to be a coming disaster. Are you preparing? Are you prepared? Have you even thought about it?

Watching this show, I see that their being in a rural area is a help because 1) there are fewer people to feed and 2) they have livestock and farmland to provide food.

When I think about my own life, I see that living in a city is a great and sustainable choice as long as everything is functioning smoothly. If, for some reason, supplies were to stop coming in, there would be a big problem. I used to live in Houston and the stores would totally empty out of bottled water if a hurricane was anywhere near the Gulf of Mexico. And that was in Houston! We lived an hour from the coast.

It also makes me think about what I would be willing to do. For example, there is a scene in the show in which a man stumbles into town dying of radiation poisoning. One man refuses to help him without protective clothing. Two others pick him up and carry him to the hospital. Unless the person was a member of my own family, I think that I'd at least put on some gloves or something. Then, I started feeling selfish for thinking that... How far are you willing to go to help someone that you don't know? (The scene took place in a pharmacy, so I'm pretty sure there were some gloves on the shelf. It seems pretty dumb not to have at least put SOMETHING on). Will you do more for a family member than you would for a stranger?

Wear it Out!

In our society, we rarely wear things out anymore. When something has a problem, we tend to throw it away and get a new one. Or we upgrade. My parents got me a television during my first year of college and it's been my tv ever since. It was fine. It wasn't too big. It wasn't too small. It was made before there were DVDs, so I had to run the cable for the DVD player through the VCR. No need to upgrade. Maybe there was a resolution difference... I'm not sure. I don't really care about fine resolution or high definition or whatever....

A couple of years ago, my daughter smashed in the power button. To turn the TV on, we had to stick our finger inside the little hole and press.... something. It worked fine. I got really used to it. A few months ago, the TV started shorting out. We could hit it on the side and it would work again. My 2 yo daughter got pretty good at this (a little Fonz... remember how he would hit the jukebox on Happy Days?) Finally, it stopped working. We actually wore the TV out.

I wasn't too sad about this. We don't really watch that much TV and I've noticed that it makes my kids grumpy. They fight about TV and they seem to get in a bad mood when they watch. Yep... even when they watch movies. I also noticed that when the semester's out, I tend to veg out in front of the TV, even though I think it's pretty evil. So, when the TV died, we decided to just let it die. A couple days later, the kids stopped asking about it.

Since the TV died, several people offered us spare TVs they had laying around. We finally took someone up on the offer, and got a small Sharp TV. It's the exact same model that I had before, but even smaller. I am going to put it on a little cart in the closet. It's nice not to have to watch everything on the computer, but I don't want a TV-centric life.

Pretty soon, with the HD thing, my TV will only work for movies anyways, so we might as well get used to it.

If you have kids, do you have a TV policy? Do you think that it makes them act differently when they watch a certain amount of TV? What about when they go over to friends' houses?

So.... what else have I worn out?

My sneakers. I'm so proud. I've now downgraded them to water shoes (for when I go tubing).

Speaking of TV and movies....
I have some burning questions about the Disney Princesses:

• Why does Cinderella lose everything at midnight except the glass slippers?
• Why do Sleeping Beauty's parents bring her back for a party on her 16th birthday? Didn't the curse say she would prick her finger on a spinning wheel on her birthday? Couldn't they have waited one more day? And shouldn't someone have been watching her more carefully on that day?

My daughter's favorite princess (gag!) is the Little Mermaid. She has a series of books about the princesses with little "lessons" about kindness. I don't understand how the Little Mermaid can be part of this series. She is totally disobedient and decides to ditch EVERYTHING for a guy she's met one time. She leaves her family, her home, and her whole species (genus?). Bad role model.