little life lesson

 

I’m finding it a little harder than I thought to completely stop using the dryer. It’s been sunny, there is no snow, and yet the dryer is RIGHT THERE next to the washer. So instead of just reaching over, I have to lug a wet, heavy basket outside, spend the time hanging this stuff out, shaking it, etc. Then I have to wait several hours and then bring it back in. What a pain in the *ss.

The difference is in attitude. If I look at it as a chore, as a pain in the tuchus, then it will be. If I look at hanging the clothes dry as a mitzvah (gift) I can give to the earth and to our budget, it’s a lot easier to do. I try to feel gratitude for being outside in fresh air, for the good smell of line-dried clothes, and for the opportunity to hang clothes when many people can’t (snow, or HOA rules, or whatever).

And, even bigger picture, I am grateful for having this many clothes to wash, a clean place to wash and hang them, for not having to wash them in a place where other people bathe, poop and drink, and competing with fish and crocodiles for the water. Many things about the process make me grateful.

And last, as local writer Adair Lara used to say, hanging out my clothes, and my family’s clothes, gives me a chance to think about each of them in turn. About The Boy’s kung fu accomplishments as I hang up his practice clothes. About Mr. Husband’s job as I hang up his shirts and socks. About our German student as I hang her things. About the family dinner, as I hang up napkins and placemats. About the party I went to when I wore this dress. Good times and hard times. It’s all good in its way.

Attitude of gratitude.

such a weirdo

This is my life. In pictures.

These are the sunflowers that went wild in the garden, then squirrels went nuts (heh heh) and tore them to shreds. I rescued these beauties because they look like something right out of Van Gogh’s studio. And…they shed pollen everywhere. And are a pain in the a** to clean up. And now their vase water stinks. Here I am, simultaneously appreciating their beauty and going wah wah wah [insert whining noises here]. Oy vey.

Here is what a tree-hugging urban-farmer hippy chick eats for breakfast:  homemade granola (crunchy!), homemade whole milk (from a local dairy) yogurt, local honey and farmers’ market peaches and plums plus backyard blackberries. It’s what’s for breakfast. The yogurt, by the way, is absolutely awesome — creamy, no weird gelatin crap or preservatives in it, not too tangy, and I think it cost me like $1 to make a quart of it. Absofreakinlutely fabu.
Ah, the familia!  Here’s everyone! Eating roasted veggies and melon and bread-site baguettes and drinking local wine — I think the white is a Kunde chardonnay (thanks, Robin!) and the red is one of Colin’s tasty homemade cabs (thanks, doc!). Look at these goofs! And they’re all mine.

OK, the squirrels are starting to p*ss me off. This is the trash can with a tight-fitting lid where we keep the chicken and bird food. Somebody got hungry and ate through the heavy plastic lid. How annoying, not to mention destructive, and plastic can’t really be fixed. I love the squirrels, but they are very, very naughty. I would spank them if I could just catch one. I suspect they are not my friends but are just using me to get to the peanuts.

OK, I just had to make these even more fabulous. We stopped in the Alameda Bicycle shop today and my daughter bought me some crocheted bicycle gloves. My other ones are black and The Boy has been admiring them but has not yet stolen them. Now he can have them, and I will wear these cream-colored crocheted gloves. But that’s not all!

…I improved them by embroidering some Lazy Daisy stitches on the backs. Now no one will take my gloves by mistake. How cute is that?
Know what? That’s all I’ve got for today.
Peace out, my friends.

the future’s so bright

Yep. Spent the weekend off the computer, mostly. Didn’t go away. Just rested, ate, slept, had a date with Mr. Husband, and puttered. Now I’m looking at the garden (bountiful!), my week (stuff to do!), and my future (exciting!) and thinking about what to do first.
First thing — thank you for the many comments and to people who wrote to me about the June Food Stamp Challenge. I’m working on a couple of plans to further this project. I’ve been asked to write a long article about it this week, which is on my to-do, and am fiddling with a query on a longer project. I’ll let you know what happens with that. And I’ll continue to watch what happens locally and on a larger scale with hunger issues. So you’ve got that to look forward to, my pretties.

Next challenge? I’m not sure it will be a huge challenge, which is OK right now (I’m still recovering from the JFSC and its many reverberations) — but I’m on the lookout for a sustainable white shirt for my husband. I’ll blog more about this soon, but I want to get him a couple of new shirts that are made with fabric that doesn’t poison the planet, made by consenting adults who choose to work there and sew happily with lunch breaks and no chains attached, and in a manner that doesn’t pillage the Earth whilst en route to my closet. That shirt may be hanging in a Goodwill somewhere right now or may be still in a cotton field. I may have to sew it myself. Dunno yet. But we’ll find out, won’t we?

What else?

  • I’m following a friend’s directive to push some other literary projects. Research, editing, proofing, blurbing, freelancing. Stuff. You know, stuff.
  • My garden is blowing up — I made 6 half-pints of blueberry jam today, plus froze zucchini/squash and green beans. Couldn’t hold on to the raspberries long enough to make jam, so I’ll maybe buy some tomorrow at teh farmers’ market. I. Love. Raspberries.
  • We cleaned out the chicken coop (which, coincidentally, rhymes with chicken poop, which makes a lot of flies feel welcome to our yard, and my house, if they can get in. Big black nasty flies. Ugh.)
  • We let the chickies run free on the lawn during the coop-cleanout.
  • Mr. Husband grilled whole ears of local corn and strips of (home-grown) zucchini, along with Saag’s chicken-apple sausages (originally from Oakland, CA), for dinner. Had California-grown watermelon with this festive meal and a nice California pinot grigio, and enjoyed it with the aforementioned fellow and daughter Simone. Happy 4th, on the 5th.
  • Tomorrow is my foraging (shopping/errand) day and I look forward to fresh bread, fruit and veggies, and also ironing. Yes. Because that’s part of making a sustainable household — semi-drudgeful housework and such, instead of convenience foods (like bagged salad — who wants salmonella?)and dry cleaning (cancer, anyone?).
  • And, speaking of JFSC, I did not go and purchase a coffee milkshake, but I did buy a pint of coffee ice cream and ate the whole thing myself (hey — it took two sittings). That’s the kind of glutton I am. I did compost the carton, though.

Yeah. That’s all I have, my peeps. I was thinking about knitting and planting radishes instead of buying them, and going to the beach and flossing more often and collecting empty bottles and buying recycled paper in bulk/on sale for my printer (which was Freecycled) and if I’ll babysit this week and how cool it is that the Western oriole has decided my yard is the place to hang out and how in the world to use my ginormous pressure cooker-canner thing that kind of scares me (I shall call her Chitty Chitty Bang Bang).

Other than that, same as it ever was.

Saving the planet, and my soul

OK, just kidding about the soul. I know just where it is, and it’s doing fine. But the planet…In other words, how I Compacted this weekend —-

Picked up CSA box. Supporting local farmers, local produce stand, yeah! 100-mile diet, yeah! Vegetarianism, yeah!

Made cat food in the Crockpot. Cats eat healthy product, yeah!

Cooked pinto beans in another Crockpot (a broken one that I got from Freecycle — the crock handle is broken at the edge but it works just fine, no leaks, just hard to grab when it’s very hot).Beans for Monday’s dinner, and to take to work. Yeah!

Boiled CSA potatoes for vegetarian daughter to eat. She uses potatoes or rice or tortillas as a base and adds a strange assortment of cheeses, peppers, veggies, sauces, etc. on top. No two meals are the same. But she loved the potatoes I cooked last week. Pre-cooked meals — yeah!

Found 4 black bananas in the freezer (the best kind for baking) and made a double batch of banana muffins. Half went into the freezer, 1/4 got eaten Saturday night by voracious cloud of locust-like teens, and the rest are for breakfast this week.

Crumbled a bunch of leftover stale cookies and toasted the crumbs, saved in the freezer for making parfait, sprinkling onto ice cream, etc. No food waste: yeah!

Made a couple of gallons of sun tea in various gallon jars, various flavors. Two teabags per gallon costs, hmm, hardly nothing, and no sugar added means this is a healthful drink at very low cost per gallon or per glass. Yeah!

And outside of the kitchen, I…

Did cold-water wash and hung out 4 loads to dry. Yeah!

Changed 3 more lightbulbs to CFLs. (Thought I had done them all, but nope!) Yeah!

Sent out some PR info for an upcoming event via Facebook: no paper waste, no trees died, no cost: yeah!

Did some yardwork to prep for early spring planting in the garden: free veggies? yeah!

Smashed a bunch of cans that I’m saving to get me to my $10K savings challenge. I think I have almost $1 worth. And cleaned up the street! Yeah!

Found 21 cents: Yeah!

Printed out The Boy’s birthday invites for next Saturday’s 11th bday party: 11 pieces of paper, very little per-page cost, and no money spent on printed invites. The party will include a bunch of young boys shooting each other with Nerf guns for 5 hours, so I am going to visit my mom and talk about quilts for the day next Saturday. Quality time with Mom, no Nerf headaches = no ibuprofin, simple fun at party and NO goodie bags either. Yeah!

Grocery shopping today with own bags (yeah), didn’t buy any crap (yeah), bought several bulk foods, got prepped for the week, and got bacon made from happy pigs for the carnivores of the family, from the butcher, wrapped in paper, no plastic. Yeah!

Worked on my knitting projects while Mr Husband entertained a dozen of his close friends with the Superbowl… All of this Compacting maybe possibly makes up for the fact that Mr Husband put a TV in every room, including the bathroom and on top of the stove, so that his friends wouldn’t miss a single second of the game. A friend brought a leftover-keg of beer that we enjoyed (reusable cups! No bottle waste! No cans! returnable keg! No beer waste! Yeah!) but the food was generally not-good-4-U. Like, pass the KFC and no thanks on your homemade pickles. Oh, well.

As Scarlett O’Hara said, tomorrow is another day.

Coolio

Barack is da bomb. How cool is he? Super cool.

I couldn’t be happier. I’m sure not everyone feels this way. But as for me and my house, we will celebrate.

I ate one of the persimmon muffins for breakfast. What did it taste like? Pumpkin, sort of. A fruity spice cake. It was good. It was fine. Yum.

I’ve been bringing my lunch almost every day since the star of the new year. I was doing that before, but not on days we have trade-lunches at work. We used to have a trade for Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. We still have Tuesday and Thursday but I’m not eating the Thursday lunch which is pizza. I’m not even that thrilled with the Tuesday lunch which is a deli whose staff have surly attitudes. They always forget part of someone’s meal, and are snotty about it when we try to double-check. But I digress. My point is that I’m enjoying leftovers, eating more veggies, eating a healthful meal with no food waste, am able to take home the peels and cores for the compost, use my own cloth napkin, silverware, etc. One trouble spot: my lunch bag is wearing out. These vinyl affairs are just not made to last. One of these days I’m going to make some new reusable lunchbags. I have some cute fabric that would make for fun lunches. Just have to put it into the queue.

It’s raining today. Praise Jah — we need the rain. I don’t want to walk or drive in it (have to drive to Livermore tomorrow) but we need it so I can just deal. *It’s not about me.*

Life is good. Busy, overwhelming, stressful, but good. I’m finishing up my poetry manuscript for publication later this year — end of Feb or begining of March, I hope. That means PR, a release party, a couple of signings and readings, and I hope some returns. I’m ordering more copies of the novel to have available for sale at the events. Call that another dream come true — I’ve been waiting and pushing to publish poetry for 20+ years.

Can’t wait to see it — Amaryllis: Collected Poems is coming soon.