05.20.07
Organic Linens at Target
In the newspaper circular this week, Target is advertising their new line of organic bedding and towels! They have great prices on organic cotton sheets, cotton/bamboo blends, and organic cotton bath towels.
Now, if they would only do comforters so I don’t have to spend $385 on this beautiful duvet.
04.23.07
Choices
There’s an interesting interview with money guru Suzie Orman on the Weight Watchers website (of all places) about the connection between poor money choices and poor food choices.
From the article:
But you’ve got to decide: Are you going to have potato chips or the orange, apple or carrot? Are you going to put the money in the savings account or are you going to spend it? They’re identical. So when you don’t have money in your life, you’re the reason why. When you have weight on your body—in most cases, not always if there’s medical reasons—you are not a victim of circumstances, you have chosen to do that to yourself. They are absolutely identical in nature. Identical.
It took me a long time to figure that out, and a lot of days, I’m still figuring it out. I never consciously realized that I was blaming my weight –– or anything else –– on anyone but me, but I was. I used to think up all the reasons I was fat, and a lot had to do with the way my family ate when I was a kid. But that was still my choice. I could have chosen to eat differently, even as a kid. It wasn’t that we didn’t have healthy options at my house, or that my parents wouldn’t have bought me just about anything I asked for; it was that I liked eating the high-fat, high-calorie foods and I chose to eat them.
I really think the parallels between being in debt and being overweight –– two major problems in American society –– are fascinating and teribly apt. We live in a society where taking responsibility (not blame) for our own actions is frequently the last thing on someone’s mind, and if we want to change the size of our waist lines and our wallets (hopefully in opposite directions), we have to learn to take personal responsibility for the problems we have created.
04.18.07
“The Fats”
Had my picture made today at work. And not just a simple passport-photo-type picture, either. No no. They told us to “get our sexy on” for the cute cube signs that everybody has.
Naturally, this led to a case of the fats.
Yup! Suddenly, nothing I own fit correctly or looked good on my body. Suddenly I had lumps where no lumps had previously been evident. Suddenly — I was staring in the mirror at the almost-200-pound girl I was eight years ago.
It’s so easy for me to slip back into that mindset. When I have a case of the fats, I can look into the mirror and see a twisted, distorted, exaggerated view of myself that would put a funhouse mirror to shame.
When I sit down and separate out the distortions from the true underlying feelings, I realize that, although I have made enormous progress toward never ever seeing that fat girl in the mirror for real again, I am still not entirely comfortable with the way I’m taking care of my body. I’ve regained some of the weight it took me so long to take off, and that’s not being fair to myself.
So, as of today, I have recommitted myself toward a mindfulness toward my body, my eating habits, and my physical activity that I have been sorely lacking of late. I have come to terms (mostly) with the fact that I will never be one of those girls who can eat whatever, whenever, and still be slim. To reach a balance with myself, I will have to pay attention every step of the way.
And really, is that such a bad thing?
04.17.07
Share the Love
Lulu.com, the digital self-publisher, is calling for submissions to their Earth Day open source e-book. You’ve got 200 characters to share your own green resolutions and goals and if you do, you’ll be entitled to one free download of the book when it is released on Earth Day, April 22nd.
The Sierra Club’s 2% Solutions Site is looking for photos of what you’re doing to curb your carbon emissions. The goal of the site is to cut carbon emissions by 80% by the year 2050 — that’s only 2% per year. Totally doable.
04.08.07
A Little Happy
This is a neat article from Time.com about the study of happiness and how to make more of it in your life.
And everyone could use a little more happy, right?
04.03.07
The Wheels on the Bus
As I was driving to work today, I thought to myself, “Self, I bet I could save money AND the planet by taking the bus to work, and although it would take a little longer, I would have time to read or write while I commute. How cool would that be?!?”
So, when I got to work this morning, I promptly looked up the Denver rapid transit service.
A monthly pass costs $99.
Now, we put all of our gasoline purchases on one specific credit card that we don’t use for anything else (because it gets us 2% discounts on gas), and I paid that bill on Sunday night. If I recall correctly, I paid less than $100 for my gas for the entire month of commuting in March. Even at the current ridiculous prices.
So, the bus costs about the same, and takes twice as long. Where’s the incentive to do the green thing here?
I know some people at my office are lobbying to get the company to sign up for eco-passes, however, which we could each purchase for $50 for an entire YEAR. That would be incentive, but not this $100 a month crap.
(
04.01.07
Windsource
I just signed up to have 100% of our electricity come from wind energy! It costs less than $1 more per 100 kilowatt hours to get 100% clean, renewable energy to power my home. That’s pretty damned awesome.
And? It took about 30 seconds to sign up online.
03.26.07
Green Thumb
What an amazing day yesterday! Have I mentioned how much I love Colorado? After rain all day Saturday, yesterday was bright and shiny and clean and deliciously warm.
The husband and I spent the whole morning poking around local nurseries. We have exciting plans for a container vegetable garden out on our patio. We were hoping to buy seedlings, but realized that it’s still pretty early for vegetables here; one lady told us that the last freeze isn’t predicted until Mother’s Day weekend. Yikes! But she did give us some good ideas for crops we could start now, like lettuce, spinach, broccoli, and kale.
We had to stop for lunch, having become overwhelmed with our options, and once we had some food in us, we decided on a plan of action. We purchased two beautiful wooden window box-style planters on sale, some lettuce seedlings, a raspberry bush, a bunch of seeds, and those cute little pop up soil thingies for starting seeds. Oh, and some soil.
Our plan is to start a bunch of seeds indoors and wait out the 4-8 weeks for them to mature and for the weather to warm up some more. By then, we should be able to transplant them outside easily, and we should also be enjoying our first lettuce crop!
I can’t even tell you how excited I am to try my hand at vegetable gardening, even if it is only in pots on our patio. The last time I grew vegetables, I was probably about eight years old, and my parents did most of the work! But I still remember the pleasure of eating fresh peas and carrots straight from our back yard.
There’s something so satisfying about growing things. Gardens have a lot to teach us, like patience and responsibility. Nothing happens on an artificial time table with a garden; things grow in their own way, in their own time, and they depend on you for food and water and care.
We plan to grow lettuce (as I mentioned), spinach, eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, green onions, basil, oregano, thyme, cilantro, nasturtiums, zinnias, and sweet peas.
And then, today, You Grow Girl posted a review of seed-starting techniques! Must be that time of year.
03.23.07
New Blog – The Organic Beauty Expert
First, let me point you over to Delight.com –– kind of like woot, this site offers a deal of the day, but the stuff on the offing is much prettier and seriously luxe. (I’m actually REALLY tempted by this bath caddy; I love my baths, but can I really justify $35 for a bath caddy? On the other hand, I do a lot of my best thinking in the bath… Decisions, decisions.)
Second, delight.com has a sister site, DelightfulBlogs.com, which rates, reviews, and recommends “blogs of interest to creative Generation X and Baby Boomer women.” (I missed gen X by a few years, but I don’t think they’ve come up with a cute name for my generation, so I’ll take it.)
Following this winding path of my stream of consciousness, the new blog of which I speak, The Organic Beauty Expert, popped up as one of the featured blogs at delightfulblogs.com, and of course I was intrigued. I don’t know much of anything about organic beauty products (or why I should choose them over traditional beauty products other than, you know, the toxic chemicals which I now assume to be in just about everything), but I reckon this site might teach me a few things.
I was especially interested in this post on some wallet-friendly alternatives to Origins’ Plantidote products. I recently bought some of the Plantidote Serum thanks to a generous subsidy by my organic enabler, but I simply don’t have the Benjamins to shell out for the whole line of products.
So check it out! I’ve added The Organic Beauty Expert to the blogroll for your convenience.
03.12.07
little bits of green
Hi all – I’m Lacy’s friend, Cate, the minx who sent her a copy of The Omnivore’s Dilemma in order to have some company, raging at the world. A couple of weeks ago, Lacy and I had the following conversation:
Lacy: You should guest blog!
Cate: . . . about what?
Lacy: I dunno! . . . stuff!
Cate: . . . uh . . . .
And here I am!
Since I, like Lacy, am trying to go green(er) and to think more constructively about what I eat, I thought I’d keep a photo log of little things I’ve been doing to be more green:
Green Thing #1: Supplies! I bought green supplies at the store this morning – washable dishcloths so that I can stop using paper towels, and clothes pegs so that I can hang my laundry outside. Today was the first warm day we’ve had in forever in my corner of the midwest, so I was crazy excited to hang laundry. I know, I know, the things that amuse . . .
Green Thing #2: Biodegradable laundry detergent. Not only are there fewer bad chemicals in Method products, the detergent is concentrated, so this one bottle has lasted me three months. It’s still going strong. (Please ignore the fact that my washer is in the basement and apparently quite mucky when exposed to the light of my camera’s flash. *scrubs with all new dishcloth*)
Green Thing #3: Air-dried laundry! As a kid I loved the smell of sheets dried in the open air, but then I grew up and discovered dryers and thought they were the greatest invention known to humankind. Now I’ve come full circle, with my washing line, my cooperative midwestern spring, and my brand new clothes pegs.
Green Thing #4: Organic, unprocessed food, like this tasty pear and handful of walnuts . . .
. . . eaten with plain, unsweetened yogurt. By eating organic I avoid supporting the pollution of the environment with fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, and by eating unprocessed food, I avoid supporting industry that uses massive amounts of fossil fuel to make my snack food of choice.
For the same reasons, I’ve taken to making a lot more of my own food. These are the raw ingredients for the muffin of the day – apple raisin. I’m slowly replacing my old groceries with organic versions, and I’m nearly all the way there – only the butter and raisins aren’t organic in this set up. Wanna see me make muffins?
Here are all my ingredients, ready to be mixed up into:
. . . this. Yeah, it looks a little suspect, huh? But! . . .
. . . in the muffin cups it looks far tastier.
And they’re tastier still when they come out of the oven. These whole twelve muffins only use 1 cup of sugar and 1 stick of butter. Compare that to how much fat and sugar you’ll find in the muffins at a chain coffeeshop – these are WAY better.
And the last Green Thing of the Day: refilling water bottles. I used to buy water bottles by the crate (quite literally) but then realized I was being horrible wasteful, even when I recycled. So now, I refill one of my old bottles with water that’s gone through my Brita filter. Less wasteful, and a lot cheaper than buying bottles at the store.
