reducing carbon part 1

So I knew as soon as I got this montht's wired that i was going to feel strongly about it. It's neon orange cover blared, "Attention Environmentalists: Keep your SUV. Forget organics. Go nuclear. Screw the spotted owl." and then in smaller print, "if you're serious about global warming, only one thing matters: Cutting Carbon. That means facing some inconvienient truths."

I of course started arguing immediately, "the spotted owl has nothing to do with global warming. Protecting endangered species is something different all together!" and of course, no one could convince me that keeping an SUV was EVER a good idea. But now i've read the article, and i'm staying up past my bedtime to let you know what i think about it, because i found it very conversation inspiring.

1.Live in cities. HORRAY! i am of course a fan of this one, because I love living in cities. And I feel it makes a huge impact on my personal footprint- living in the city enables me to make all sorts of green changes in my life that i wouldn't be able to otherwise.
2.a/c is ok. AC is NOT ok. it may give off less carbon than heating, but how neccessary is it? America is way too over air conditioned, in my opinion. heat is a requirement. bodies freeze. there are more deaths in chicago from the winter than from the summer. Keep your thermostat as close to the outside tempature as you can, regardless of which way it goes. i think they're just trying to be controversial. and they compare the heating of a new england home with the aircondtioning of a phoenix home, but that's one small part of the whole effect of the environment. nothing is said about how closer things are in new england, so less carbon is released in travel, or, um? water? and how Phoenix wants some from my fucking watershed? i get really upitty about this. if you want to live in the desert, live in the DESERT. if you want water, live in a great lakes state.
3.organics are not the answer. duh. i didn't realize this was still a myth. local is better than organic. even in chicago, where local is in wisconsin or indiana, and you don't have the mennonite farmers of pa. (my mom says she buys local instead of organic because she knows that this chicken was loved and had a name.) Wal-mart sells organics now. isn't that sign enough they aren't that much different than conventional? I am not convinced that all else being equal, it's not better to buy muir glen salsa than safeway select. my tomatoes are being shipped form far away anyway. i'd rather support small companies. maybe i don't want to LIVE in a world without biodiversity. i think choice is important, and that all the wildness and variety and different colors are part of what makes this world a wonderful place, and i think that going carbon neutral isn't worth it if it creates a world of grey.
4.farm the forests. i thought this one was really interesting. i do think there needs to be places in the world that are just LEFT ALONE. but i also think wise agriculture is a good idea. their plan of chopping down old trees, planting new ones, keeping those happy until they've sucked all the CO2 they can out of the air, using the wood only for high quality durable goods, not burning scrap. that really seems ok to me. again, the headline sounds contriversial because it sounds like chopping down trees and planting corn. but treating trees LIKE a farm- that's something i could believe in.
5.China is the solution, not the problem. it seems to be a question of scale. china's just so big. if given a choice, i choose germany over china every time. but if america isn't producing affortable alternative energy solutions, we have to use all that fossil fuel to get them here somehow. I think what china has going for it is acceptance of the problem and that sacrifices will be necessary. i don't think america believes either of those things. We think it's not really a problem, it's just al's bitter cause he lost the election. and just in case it IS a problem, well, we'll buy carbon credits and recycled paper goods.

and that's only half! but i have to open the shop tomorrow! (ch is camping in MI) so you'll get the next 5 tomorrow. (but connie, you can still comment!)

looser

so mom's gone, yet i still can't be bothered to blog. i don't know what's wrong with me. maybe i'll at least update pictures tonight. then again, maybe not.

can you believe

...mom comes tomorrow? for like a week? when am i going to find time to sew? when am i going to find time to blog?

new theory

I've been completely unable to catch up with my life, recently. i work all the time, and any time i have in my house i spend sleeping, instead of, say, sewing for pleasure or petting the cat. or blogging. i've been managing to feed myself with some regularity and keep my house at a maintainable state, but i haven't been able to move forward in anything, and it always seems like i'm trying to cram in everything i have to do in the 15 min before my bedtime alarm goes off. and invarably it takes 45 min and i don't have time to do the yoga part of my bedtime routine. well, today's new theory is that yoga isn't the part to cut. and yoga before bed will prepare my body for rest, so it can make the most of the megre time i'me giving it. this will in turn make it alive, awake and enthusiastic for tomorrow, leading me to acomplish my tasks in record speed so that my evening is filled with patternmaking for pleasure and the swap out of summer and winter clothes.

sounds good, right?

i was GOING to blog...

but then it was past my bedtime so instead i read all my comics and ate half a can of pringles.

oops.

but no, it's ok, because i got to read this little gem from mimi smartypants:

"Speaking of books, I want to french-kiss the Chicago Public Library for FINALLY implementing an online reservation system. You are only allowed to put five books on hold at a time, but still: I sit in front of my screen and say I want to read this, this, and this (and this and this), and then THEY run around town picking it up from all the various branches? HOT DAMN. I feel like the Queen of Literature and the stack grows ever taller. In fact, I had better go read right now."

i could talk about how cool it is to live in a big city, or how it rocks my world that someone as hip and famous as mimi smartypants has a paralell experience with me... but i think i'll just say that this passage spoke to my soul in a deeply profound way, and makes me wish i had written it myself.

on vegetables

I planted the mother's day idea in jr's head a couple of weeks ago, so he could be mulling it to appropriately celebrate. Somehow he came into the posession of $42 and decided he wanted to spend it on taking his mom and I out to lunch, at his favorite restaurant, this terrible diner called the hollywood grill. after that, we did the very mother's day appropriate task of going garden shopping! Deb had seen some good deals at the jewel (4" terracotta pots for .69!) so she took me there and I bought most everything. I picked up a couple of trailing things at gethsemane, but they didn't have my tomatoes yet. I'll go back in two weeks.

I'll be posting pictures soon, i promise. sometime this week. for my round planters, i have one in cool colors with a tall purple delphinium thing, aggeratum, purple petunias, and blue moon lobellia. the other one is warm colors, celosia, maragolds, sweet potato vine and collus. I bought a hanging basket of wave petunias, my fave lantana and some little red flower. and i made a hanging herb garden with chammomile, sage, pineapple mint, oregano and lavender. In the long boxes i have 2 basils, peppermint, cauliflower, broccoli and brusselssprouts. I have room for tomatoes. Last year I was so happy with my windowbox variety i want to get them again this year, but they aren't out yet. so I'll get them when my mom's in town next week.

After calling my mom, & grandma, i made dinner. I had parsnips to use from the veggie share, and so i got inspired. D has this delightful habit of making breakfast on the weekends, but she has a slightly frustrating habit of making enough for a family of five. i've had these biscuts in my freezer for a while, and didn't really know when to eat them. SO, i made a root vegetable pot pie with the biscuts on top, and it was the yummiest thing ever! i'm so proud of inventing the recipie myself, so i posted it on allrecipes.com. i'll post a link as soon as it's up after being aproved!

at the same moment

It's so frustrating. i write these long insightful entries in my head, and i have no time to type them out for ages, until it's too late and there are too many and it all becomes just this little summary of my week. or whatever.

but i'm not worrying about that right now, because i'm exhausted. it's been such a long week, with mother's day upon us at the flowershop. and me staying up too late as well. i did feel like i lost a very valuble weekend going to st. louis. not that i was sad to go, i just wanted more! d came over tuesday night to help with the bags, then i got the rest of them glued last night. she picked them up today.

wednesday night i went to hear robyn at park west! i'll probably never hear a big electronic show at the allstate arena, no petshop boys or madonna for me, so it feel like it was that totally different experience in my own small way. you know, i'm used to chatty little folk singers who are a band with just them and their guitar, and they tell stories while tuning. i kept saying, wait, where are the backup singers? i hear them, but i don't see them.... but i did enjoy the concert, and i'm still in love with robin. i didn't bake her cookies, but i did almost take her roses.

at the same time i was at robyn, g was getting proposed to. she'll be marrying the boyfriend i don't like much in texas this october. so i better not return the gold shoes, cause i'll need to wear the blue dress at her wedding. i felt so vindicated by her telling me how she and all of her sisters think steve maddens are too uncomfortable to wear for more than an hour at a time. but mostly we talked about robyn (i mean, an engagement, what's to tell? a concert is where the stories are at. plus, i think she likes robyn more than i like joe)

fuck. i forgot to go to the library again. forgot= knew it was part of the plan after the bag lady was here, but when she left i just curled back up in front of the computer for a few more hours. i'm so unable to move. i'll have to drag them all to work tomorrow as penance. that and the stack of dimes i'll owe them for being overdue. and sadly, one can't renew overdue items online, so i can't even stop the dime hemmorage until tomorrow.

Disclaimer: i love and adore all things about all libraries. with the exception of the ocassional too-pungent homeless and LOC catologing. which i'm starting to get used to. so overdue books are more an embarrassment to me, the library is such a wonderful gift, how dare i take advantage of it like this? it's not, greedy bastards, if i wanted to pay i'd go to a bookstore. first, it's literally pocket change. second, they deserve every penny. i am glad to pay to keep things like libraries going. i'm just that glad i don't have to.

schedule

last night i cooked dinner (pasta primavera, with spinach, asparagus and ramps) and cleaned my house. tonight i cut and sewed bags (with d's help!) tomorrow i'm going to hear ROBYN at park west, and then thursday it's gluing the bags in = done by the weekend.

so you can see how there's no time to blog in there.

but a, i really want to know what your mom said.

return from st. louis

home again. had a good time in st. louis, the wedding was nice, didn't think too much about being in philly or miami. but now i'm home, and there's so much to do, and i'm overwhelmed. lots of lists and no internet for me!

epic

So, I woke up this morning, as I always do (being alive, and all.) I plugged in my iPod, tried to decide what kind of yoga I wanted to do. I picked hip opening #3, one i haven't done before, since I'm desperate for new yoga (i thought last month's "yoga for runners" was too specific. and then this month it's PRENATAL YOGA! come ON! even people who WOULD be interested in this will only do it a few times. don't they think shoulder opener #2 would be more useful?). but my pearl's being fussy and not letting me play it. so i restart, skip to it, yada yada yada. i'm bending along, through my poses, and i think i hear it stick- but maybe it's just the music getting quiet. then i'm in cobbler's pose, and my feet are smelly and my hips are opening, and she stops talking, and i'm holding, and holding, and i finally realize, it's not the world's most intense yoga, pearl has quit. so i restart... and she clicks and whirrs and makes the most atrocious sounds before giving me.... the sad ipod face. wah wah.

so after work today I go to the genius lab. like a FOOL, i don't make my apointment first. when i get there at 6, the first slot they have is 8. EIGHT! it's not QUITE enough time to go home. so i have two hours to kill on the mag mile. d had ice cream with lunch which sounds really good on this delightful day, so i go to ghardellis and eat ice cream outside and finish my book. then i wander through borders for a while, looking at all the things i would buy if i shopped at borders and wasn't boycotting them and shopping exclusively at small independently owned local bookstores. (this is ignoring the fact that yesterday i bought Robyn and the new Weepies albums at borders, because i had to have them NOW and the small independently owned local record stores did not thave them. at least, not the one i stopped by.) finally i head back to the apple store.

I'm like, 7th on the list, so i get out my crochet, but then the three people ahead of me aren't there, and i'm suddenly next. so i quickly stuff my crochet back in my bag and pull out pearl and take off her little creamsavers bodysuit, because i know they'll want it off, and i bump the buttons, and the apple appears, and she whirrs and ... shows me menus. like nothing was wrong. like there was no sad ipod this morning. grrr. i kept my appointment anyway, and he said i need to reset and that will fix software problems, and hardware problems they can't do anything but replace, anyway. so. i'm back to where i started. it's obviously hardware, with the clicks and all. but now it's just waiting for death. i'm doing, like, ipod hospice here.

so i walk back to the train, calll my mom to give her the ipod update, and hang up to go under the subway and realize i have no wallet in my pocket. !!! i walk all the way back to the apple store. have them walky talky all over. no wallet. walk back to borders. have them walky talky. no wallet. call deb and ask her to come pick me up. look under all the shelves i browsed. wait in line and leave my name and number and a disription. go to ghardellis. ask there. the concierge asks the girl who sweeps, and she asks me, is it gold? IT IS! SHE HAD IT! HORRAY! HUZZAH! such relief. called d, told her she could turn around. took the train home.

didn't make it home till 9:30. my vegetable delivery had come, but they didn't take the old bins away. now i have three vegetable bins. they are huge. there is NO room for them in my kitchen. i couldn't deal with it and left the two without veggies inside in my vestibule. inside are beautiful slender spears of asparagus, thick leafy ramps and spinach and watercress. i am so sad i have to go to st. louis this weekend and cannot cook them up. i am really glad i don't have to spend my weekend replacing everything in my wallet, though!