Thursday, May 31, 2007

Low Impact Week starts tomorrow, cornucopia of produce bought today, & the bird that reminds me of BO.

MUST send smoke signals to friends: Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket Did our town's Farmer's Market this morning. It's already too late for lettuce, so I had to get that at Sack'n'Save. Don't you think that's proof that there's no god? The lettuce gets done before the tomatoes and cucumbers. :-) Got some other produce there at the same time. Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket A few days ago Em decided to do laundry and threw in some of my things along with his own. I don't put my outer clothes in the dryer, so I nearly broke the washing machine dial turning it off in time to fish out the softener ball. It would be much easier if he didn't throw my stuff in with his if he's going to ignore how the ball needs to be filled with softener. After the load was done, a pair of my shorts looked like the soap hadn't rinsed from them enough. Rain was scheduled and imminent, so I threw them over the back of an outside chair to get a second rinse on nature's dime after hanging the rest of the stuff in the laundry room. Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket I looked out the window and saw a (maybe) adolescent Morning Dove using the cushion of my shorts to make his "perch" more comfortable. I saw him again this morning pecking around where I have my latest compost container. He(she) was picking at bits & pieces that had washed over the container with the rain, I suspect. It's rained every day the past almost 2 weeks, so I haven't been able to weed those grasses from the garden area. Anyway, reminded me of BO (Big One)... the survivor of two baby Morning Doves who were abandoned by their mom when a neighbor removed her air-conditioning unit. BO lived inside with us, being force-fed for several months until he(she) grew strong enough to be left outside on his(her) own. Dizzy (the sibling) didn't make it. RIP.

Do you remember BO, No. 2, thyungin? Memories...oh the memories.

We have two new CFL bulbs, but we haven't put them in anything yet. It's SUMMER; we barely even use any lights. I DID give away the Halogen Torchieres to the Disabled Veterans who came this week, though. Em's still complaining about that in a "just teasin' ya" way because we don't have lamps yet to replace them. We like torchieres and we like being able to adjust the amount of light emitted by lamps, so we'll replace those $20.00 lamps which use something like 200 kwh with $40.00 Energy Star torchieres which use more like 15 kwh. Hey...it all adds up.

No. 1 has remarked on this experiment more than once: "You're a crazy woman, Mama!", however...she's only flushing every 3rd time she pees! :-)

'snew with y'all?

4 comments:

Oldnovice said...

Probably should have a thread about the subject, but I just started THIS thread!

Slowing Down is an interesting article, IMO, put out by Whole Foods that fits in quite well when we think of Low Impact Week.

Skulleigh said...

Hi :) I found you on the Crunchy Chicken blog - when you mentioned you live in N Texas, I came over to your blog. Lo and behold, I live in Grand Prairie too! :)

It's nice to "meet" you :)

Anonymous said...

Hi. I'm doing the Low Impact Week too. My nearly adult children decided it would have been much easier to learn not to flush than to try to unlearn the flushing habit.
I can still hear myself yelling (years ago), "Who forgot to flush?" Sigh.
KMH

Oldnovice said...

Welcome, Leigh and KMH. Someone else online lives in Grand Prairie?
I enjoy Crunchy Chicken's blog. She's (I think, from what I've read) about where I'm at on this whole impact thing. I'm sure you're aware that some are attempting a 90% reduction in impact. I might have considered that if I lived alone and/or we were younger, but I already know that I won't ask Em to change his life any more than he already has just to be married to someone like me. In fact, I noticed it getting steamy in here last night before he was due home from work so turned the AC back to 80 for an hour. That was all it took to cool the house and get the humidity out of the air. We just left the windows closed after that until this morning.

I'm also not making a list of things I'm going to do differently because I've been doing most of the things other people are going to do most of my adult life. The "granny cart" is new, although something I've thought about for a long time, but one of my two cloth shopping bags says "Jewel Foods" and there are no Jewel Food Stores in Texas. So, they're 15 years old at least.

I'm still undecided about flushing. If I'm home alone (which I'll be this evening while No. 1 and Em are at work) I feel comfortable not flushing. No. 1 refrains at night so she doesn't wake us. She just mentioned it to let me know that she was doing her share in water conservation. Actually, she's been a real champ about the whole water saving thing. It helps that we recently got a dishwasher because she once ran water a long time to get it hot enough to wash the dishes by hand and I'd be yelling "Turn off the water!". Back to flushing: I fear the toilet area will have a urine odor and any woman knows that a urine odor in the toilet area is caused by guys who missed. So, when I can I refrain and when I don't feel comfortable refraining I don't, which is how I think we should handle not just our impact (this week and forever more), but every avenue of life.