Tag Archives: recycling

I refuse to use the term ‘no poo’

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So I haven’t shampooed my hair in over a week.

For several reasons. One being that I am a lazy ass. I openly admit that.

The other reasons are a bit more grown up and noble.

A while back I was doing some Twittercreeping. You do that, right? Someone responds to someone and you have no clue what they’re talking about, but it sounds like it might be good times so you go try and see the conversation? Then you end up, thirty minutes later, on some random person’s Twitter reading things they said 457 days ago, with no idea how you got there?

No? Just me? Ok.

Anyway, that happened, and I ended up following a link to a blog called Crunchy Betty. I read through some of the posts and found this one.

I was intrigued.

Now, I have always liked the idea of being all peace love recycle dirty hippie earth mother. But the fact is it’s a lot of work, and as we have established, I am a lazy ass. So while I like the idea of cooking organic and home grown and recycling and compost, let’s just say I’ve picked up some litter and called it a day. Except one time, in sixth grade I was inspired by an episode of Saved By the Bell and I circulated a petition to get recycling bins for soda cans. I did not realize that petitions are only necessary if you’ve asked and been denied, so it was kind of pointless, but I GOT THOSE BINS BY DAMN.

I did order some herb seeds recently, though. I genuinely hope I can get them in the ground. And I even looked at Diva cups on Amazon. PROGRESS.

This, though. For some reason this appealed to me. Fewer chemicals and less plastic, and if it doesn’t work my hair has never been that great anyway.

It was a no lose situation, people.

So, I stopped. I have “washed” my hair twice with baking soda, and the second time I put/spilled some tea tree oil into the powder.

At this point I’m kind of ambivalent. My hair is not nasty like I’d expected, but it’s nothing special. HOWEVER, the fact that it’s not terribly nasty after a whole week gives me hope that it will soon be Pantene commercial glamorous.

A girl can dream.

UPDATE: I just showered/baking sodaed and this time put some lavender oil in.

I. Smell. Delicious.

A machine for everything

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My mother in law bought me a sewing machine for Christmas. 

 

This was an excellent gift, given my penchant for fancying myself a creator of cool things. 

I left it in the box for at least three or four days after Christmas, because to be honest….I was terrified. I didn’t know what to do or how to do it.

I got over that. I am my father’s daughter, after all, and no machine was getting the better of me. 

So I have pieced together a few squares for a quilt, and perhaps one day I’ll finish it – I would love to be able to sleep without being accused of stealing covers (Steen, I’m looking at you).

 

 

 

My first two-part series. Thanks, Netflix

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This has been a weekend full of eating. It’s a good thing I didn’t make any resolutions to eat less or lose weight, because I would pretty much have already sabotaged myself.
We’ve been doing a good bit of Netflix-watching over the past couple of weeks. Saturday night we went to see our friends Marty and Erin in Tennessee, because Josh has this kickass beef that he’s started making and they had yet to eat any. So we went.

Whenever we go to Adamsville for dinner, Josh and Marty wait until we arrive to buy any of the preparations. We get there, we unload into the house, and the boys immediately leave to go get groceries for the meal.

And go to GameStop. And Taco Bell. And buy pies at the nearby gas station.

So Saturday night while the guys were gone, Erin and I decided to watch a movie (much to Lucy’s chagrin – she would be happy to watch the Birthday episode of Yo Gabba Gabba for the rest of her life).

Erin chose a documentary called Dive! which, in a nutshell, is about a bunch of people (and their families) in California who live primarily off the food they retrieve from dumpsters behind grocery stores.

I know, right? I think Erin chose it because she thought they were going to talk about dumpster diving for furniture or clothes or whatever – I know that’s what I thought.

But yea and verily, I was wrong. It was TOTALLY about food.

Initially I was grossed out. But then they showed the food they were retrieving…bread, meat, produce. All tossed out because of a cracked egg or a looming sell-by date. Stuff that was top-of-the-line shit…and perfectly fine. It just happened to have come out of the store by the back door, instead of a reusable shopping bag.

My snobbery started to wane when I realized that these people were eating organic, free-range, antibiotic free meats and veggies and most of the time I don’t even look at that stuff because it’s so expensive.

Then they started talking about the amount of waste the US produces and I felt like a greedy asshole.

Did you know that the US wastes 96 billion pounds of food a year? One year of our waste could feed the entire population of Haiti for like five years.

Yet, because we don’t share, and because everyone is so focused on profit, we still have hungry people in our country. That’s so bizarrely wrong on so many levels.

It’s sobering to be told things like that. Stuff we all know in the back of our mind and don’t really think about.

So while I won’t be scaling the dumpsters behind Kroger anytime soon (I totally would, by the way – but Josh said it was too close to the sheriff’s department and so he refuses to drive the getaway car), I am now actively searching for ways I can help do my part and reduce this terrible deficit between what we have and what we use – and what we need.

You can sign the online petition to Trader Joe’s here. It’s a start.

Tomorrow, I’m talking about catfish…kind of.

Birthday manifesto

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Tomorrow is Josh’s birthday.

Sometimes I’m great with special days like that. Like the year we had everyone over to the apartment and drank girl beer and talked into the wee hours. Or even the year I conned him into a surprise dinner out (at Ruby Tuesday, cause we’re classy round here, folks).

But this year I’m at a loss.

We’re pretty strapped for finances right now (turns out disposable diapers CAN’T be reused, who knew?) so spoiler alert: I haven’t been able to buy a gift at all.

A couple of times I’ve made him a gift.

But now I realize that homemade gifts are something that are usually not loved, they’re tolerated like bad smells in WalMart. And I love him too much for that, so I guess he’s not getting a crocheted market bag. You’re welcome, asshole. I mean what, you’re too much of a man for a pretty bag?

I thought about lots of things I could do. Back rubs. Video game time alone. Things I can’t tell you about (sorry mom!).

And maybe I’ll do all that.

But yesterday we found out that due to a few glitches in our qualifications, we may not be getting the federal money we’d expected to allow us to go to school. I cried for a while. He was agitated. We filed our appeals and now we wait.

We wait. All weekend and into next week.

It’s going to suck.

And it’ll suck even more if it doesn’t work out and we don’t get to go, especially since we’d both gotten incredibly excited about going back to school.

So I’ve decided to say this for all the globe to see: Joshua Steen, if I have to dig ditches and scrub toilets for the rest of my life to pay for it, you’re going to finish school.

We’ve settled for a lot of things over the past years.
We’ve overspent.
We’ve laughed.
We’ve undersaved.
We’ve cried.
We’ve won.
We’ve admitted defeat.
We’ve fallen short.
We’ve gone further than we thought we could.

And only with you can I have the ultimate faith that this will all turn out better than we’ve ever dreamed, so you deserve to know that I will not let you give up, and I will never give up on you.

I love you. I hope you have a wonderful birthday and just know that one day you’ll get spectacular presents.

Also, you’re getting old.

Maybe you shouldn’t read this at all.

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*Disclaimer: this post turned out kind of gross. I didn’t mean for it to be that way, it just happened. The muse overcame me, or something. Proceed with caution.*

Last night, I watched the Seinfeld episode where Jerry spits mutton into Elaine’s cousin’s cloth napkins. They were heirlooms or something.

Anyway, whatever, I don’t want to talk about Seinfeld.

What I started thinking, though, was does anyone use stuff like that anymore? I mean, people without servants?

Not just napkins. Hankies, etc.

While I’m all for being green and reusing whatever you can – grocery bags and the like – I believe there are some lines that don’t need to be crossed. One of the message boards I used to frequent would often delight in discussing the latest and weirdest eco-friendly reusables.

Let’s see, there were Moon Cups that collected menstrual blood. The collected fluids were used as fertilizer, I think, and other things. It was RUMORED that one photo depicted a lady using it as lipstick, but I refuse to believe that. I have to maintain SOME sort of innocence. Moving on.

On that same line of thought, there were reusable menstrual pads and such. Tampons, too. YES, TAMPONS FOR REAL.

I forget what it was technically called, but basically one discussion was about people who had potty cloths or something…like, they’d do their business and then clean up with a piece of material which would later be laundered and reused. I think in the meantime the dirty cloths were kept in a jar beside the john. Yum.

Then, of course, there were the always admirable cloth diapering folks. I suppose if you think about it, the cloth diapers are pretty much the same as the aforementioned potty cloths, but they’re just not the same. Babies smell like powder and milk and have sweet little booties. Adults have hair and oldness. Just gross.

This is not what I intended to write about at all.

At a funeral years ago, I was given a hankie. Not as a special gift or anything, just because I was snotting all over everything and I didn’t have a Kleenex.

Ever since then, I’ve loved the idea of a handkerchief. It just seems so feminine and quaint, like corsets and headbands.

I’ve even tried to carry a handkerchief regularly, but I always lose them. Always.

When it comes to things like hankies and napkins, I like the idea of reusing. Even passing them down, making them into something special.

As for menstrual pads and bathroom business and whatever else those placenta eaters do, I am a fan of throwing that shit away.

Do you use real napkins? Hankies? Moon Cups?