Fabulous Miss S.

Oasis

One of the best things we did when we moved into this house over three years ago was to fence in the backyard.  It's small, very small, but it still creates a sense of outdoor space that is a little private and all my own. 

Peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, rosemary...

 

Topsy turvy squash....

Coming soon....

Wordless Wednesday: Shopping Cart

Before I journeyed into motherhood I longed for this to be my situation.  Something about the togetherness, the camaraderie, the whole family shopping together experience gave me wistful, longing thoughts of family. 

You can imagine my disbelief when this was my reality last weekend when I found myself at Costco with two kids on a rainy Saturday afternoon. 

Juice!

NOAH: *Grunts loudly with arm outstretched in the direction of the cups*

ME: Time for bath, lets go upstairs.

NOAH: Uurgh!  UuhhHH!

ME: *frustrated* WHAT DO YOU WANT?

NOAH: Juice (D-uce)

ME: *Collapsed in tears* OK!  Here is juice!  

NOAH:  Dasgudduce

ME:   ...

Confessions of a Counterfeit Recycler

On this past Earth Day I vowed to make some changes in the way my family lives to keep the earth and our home cleaner and healthier for our children.  I am not really a counterfeit recycler ... in fact, I take full advantage of our county's weekly recyclables pick-up.  However, I can do better. I can make a better effort to be GREEN. 

Sometimes I throw my aluminum cans into the regular trash can.  I don't always do full loads of laundry.  I use paper towels and extra soft toilet paper and bleach!  ...and Drano!  And, disposable diapers, but I refuse to apologize for those. I am a mom of a toddler and a newborn and I totally get the time crunch and necessity of convenience.  I balk at the expense of many free-range foods and eco-conscious products but as I learned in the documentary, Food, Inc., a lot of big business, agri-business and food industries are subsidized, making unhealthy choices cheaper than healthy ones. 

I'm going to give you a minute to let that sink in.

What?

Our government subsidizes the corn industry, for example, thereby allowing processed foods to be cheaper than say, an organic apple. 

Food, Inc. is an awesome documentary if you want to be completely turned off your food.  I loved it! No, really, if you want to get a glimpse of the harsh realities of the way chicken, cows and pigs are raised in this country, watch this documentary. In an effort to get my family on a healthier path I needed a big wake up call about where my food comes from.  It motivated me to pay a little extra attention to how far my food travels to my table, is it an agribusiness product, and what it is made from.

I am resigning myself to paying a little extra money for quality and authenticity.  I joined a CSA for this summer.  I am in the process of arranging for home-delivered milk from a local dairy, and locating local beef and chicken farmers.  It doesn't have to be certified organic, but it must be local.  That's my new mantra for food.  

I'm going to make small changes: make recycling more accessible in my house by putting a bin upstairs so I am not tempted to toss cans into the regular trash.  I will cut back on unnecessary use of electricity, turn off lights more often, clean with vinegar , baking soda, and bleach instead of Lysol.  I can buy a gallon and a half of white vinegar at Costco for $3.99, a big savings over environmentally-harsh name-brand cleaners. Even mainstream labels are now making phosphate-free dishwasher detergent. 

Did I mention that I'm composting too? The worm composter deserves it's own posting though, more on that soon.

Powering Down

The following was originally posted at DC Metro Moms on November 3, 2008. 

On a recent autumn afternoon there was an isolated local power outage due to the untimely and unfortunate blowing up of an electrical transformer in my Pepco grid.  Okay, I thought, accidents happen, no big deal.  The house was warm and the sunlight filtered in through the windows softly enough to provide calming light and I didn't have to be anywhere soon.

Having just arrived home from some errands I plotted out the remaining afternoon time in my head.  Feed baby a light snack ... give baby a nap ... write ... clean-up ... exercise... It seemed like the perfect afternoon in the absence of that migraine-inducing hum of all the household electronics.  The quiet was intoxicating and I was anxious to accomplish a few tasks with natural energy rather than the twitching buzz I often get when I have the television on all day long and move from the vicinity of one compact-fluorescent bulb to that of another.

Just as I was taking the baby to his room for a nap I realized I couldn't play his sleep music. Well, ...Huh. That sure throws a wrench into a peaceable nap-time. Then, it occurred to me that working out during nap-time wouldn't be too possible either; I certainly couldn't do a workout-DVD and the treadmill wouldn't even work.  My next vice of time is my writing, of course, but DOH! The computer uses power too. Forget catching up on TiVo'd shows from the week or even starting dinner. Laundry and vacuuming were off the table too.

And then the baby had trouble sleeping because of all that lusciously delectable quiet that was ringing in our ears.  Just as I got the baby settled and decided to pick up a .... BOOK, and lay down and ... RELAX, the power came back on with a muffled Bpfof sound and I hurried over to my computer to check my email and send a Twitter message. 

I didn't realize mothering depended so much on electricity.