No Impact: Days 1 and 2

This week is my week to follow along with the No Impact Project. Remember how I collected my bag of trash last week? My main take-away from that was to try to reduce food packaging. This will be tough for us because of our need for convenience, but I think we can start to make small changes.

The No Impact Project guidelines for yesterday encouraged reducing waste by doing things like packing your own cutlery and coffee mug (do that); choosing to use a Diva cup instead of tampons (sorry for the extra details, but do that); reducing use of paper good like kleenex and paper towels (do that). I've followed the No Impact Man blog for a while, so I'm realizing a lot of these changes we've already institutionalized in the house.

Our Costco days are big days of waste, of course--we're able to recycle a lot of the cardboard but a lot of the other stuff can't be recycle. But buying in bulk is probably less waste over time, so it's a tough call. Other than that, I think a lot of our stuff ends up in recycling or compost. From now on out it's either making very small changes (like making our own granola instead of buying it? Making mascara out of charcoal from the garbage? Using old newspaper instead of toilet paper? Puh-lease).

Day 2 is about transportation. I had to drive to Addie's school this morning (a lot of good that did me) and also drive to the doctor's office. I might have tried biking to the second appt. but had sick Addie with me, so what can you do? But I'm thinking a lot about the transportation thing. One thing E and I have talked about is getting a used scooter for local trips; another possibility is to start doing some biking to work, maybe once a week. But there are major disincentives for doing both. This continues to be our biggest problem, living in the suburbs, but look for some changes on this coming in the next few months, especially once it warms up.

Hey! On the cooking front: I tried an excellent braised tofu recipe tonight. Add that to the list. 2 recipes down; 50 to go.

When in Rome

Well, if you're at home for a sick day, you might as well make the most of it. I'll work tonight when E gets home, but between doctor appointments today, I finished up this little project--my first knitting project without dropped stitches!

This little thing took forever to make, but it was good to lose myself in something difficult. It's from a pattern in Knitting Little Luxuries. The stitch is herringbone. I knit the bulk of it when we were in San Diego, just after finding out my dad had a stroke on Christmas morning. So, the last purse was worked while my grandfather was dying, and this one while fretting over my father. Sometimes I think both things would have been a lot worse had my hands not been busy. You know?

Opposite of Chillaxing

I hate crying in the morning, don't you? It makes me so sleepy for the rest of the day, plus there is a sadness residual that hangs around even when the sadness itself is gone. It's a haunting.

Addie's home with strep throat again today. She's on the mend, but had a rough night last night so we're keeping her home for one extra day just to be on the safe side. We sent her to school yesterday morning but the school nurse called us right back to come get her. Lesson learned.

Anyway, we found out last week that Addie was accepted to the gifted and talented program for first grade, which is great, right? We were told in the acceptance letter to register her at her new school by March 1st or she would lose her place. Being the eager beaver that I am, I called right away to find out how to register, and was told there would be a GT parents' tour and registration this morning. Great! I thought. But also, weird, that I had to call and wasn't really contacted about it by them. Good for me for being proactive, right?

So, Eric agreed to stay home with sick Addie this morning, and I took Nolie to school and then headed to the new school for Addie. Which is about a million miles out of the way, you should know, and will require another huge shift in schedule and routine and add a bunch of driving to my life every day starting next fall. But it's a great school and a great program, so we're strongly considering it, because that's what you do as a parent, right? You try to make good things happen for your kids.

But I get to the school's office this morning (after going to the wrong school first, mind you, which made me late, and I'm always a little stressed when I'm late) and tell the secretary why I'm there and she goes, "Oh! You didn't get the memo! That's been canceled."

Right. I didn't get the memo. Beeeee-yoooootch.

I cried the whole way home, banging on my steering wheel occasionally for emphasis. I can't do this, I can't do this, I can't do this. How am I supposed to finish everything I need to finish at work AND deal with signing my kids up at different schools, with their different closure days and different spring breaks and different drop-offs and pick-ups and meetings that get canceled? How am I supposed to have sick kids and finish a book? How am I supposed to prepare for a major career review and also make good home-cooked meals? How am I supposed to finish the journal and also make sure my kids flush their poops down the toilet? How? How? How?

Well. There you go. Total meltdown. Tears in the morning. They're the worst.

Chillaxing

I had to post this, because Nolie is so completely scrumptious right now (that belly! that booty!) and is just such a big girl and also my baby all at once. A fleeting moment, I know.

And check out those tie-dyed socks, courtesy of the groovy Auntie Teeny.

Items

Remember when I blogged about making a felted purse from scratch, way back when? Well, I finished it when I had to fly back to my grandpa's deathbed in October and never got around to posting it. E and I went out to dinner with some old friends Friday night and it seemed a good night to give the little wool purse a try, what with it being freezing-ass cold (still), so I had E shoot a quick picture. I don't know whose veiny, bony hands those are in the picture, though. Maybe a raptor's?

I knit it first, following the instructions in the beautiful book Alterknits Felt, using yarn sent to me by E's mom. Then I felted it in the washer and cut out the holes for the handles (the design is asymmetrical, in case you're wondering. Sometimes my stuff is asymmetrical because I screw up, but not in this case). Cute, huh? The colors are really beautiful, and remind me of a summer river.

I also recently ordered the Pioneer Woman's Cookbook, on Dandelion Bones's recommendation (whose taste I trust implicitly) and because, as I stated earlier, I am on a mission to learn how to cook better. Of course, every recipe in the book is chock-full of meat. But my goal is to figure out how to adapt great recipes with meat into vegan recipes (the vegan cookbook is also on its way). So, I'm pleased to announce that Pioneer Woman's chili recipe can easily be made vegetarian by substituting Morning Star's ground fakey-fake "beef" for the real thing. The chili's good. I told Eric that if I could learn one good recipe every week for a year (which gives me lots of margin for error if I try a few every week), then by the end of the year I'll be able to make 52 new things.

We'll see. And yes, I realize Chili's not exactly the most challenging thing in the world to make. But you gotta start somewhere.

So, I got to make chili and my monthly batch of homemade bread while E watched the playoffs and played Candy Land with the girls. Addie has a little fever today, poor thing, so we're all just hunkering down and waiting for the snow to melt. What a perfect Sunday.

The List of Happiness

Just when you thought this blog couldn't get any more inane, I feel compelled to pronounce that a few simple things are making me very happy these days.

First, the new NBC sitcom Community, starring The Soup's Joel McHale (snarky hotness) and set on a community college campus. It fills me with glee, unlike Glee, which sucks donkeys.

Second, charcoal gray wool pants. When it's 5 degrees below zero outside and you have to go to work in something other than your flannel jammies, nothing beats a pair of Banana Republic wool trousers. Especially if you have a big ass and a prominent lumbar lordosis, like yours truly. Ba-DONK!

Third, I've almost finished my knitting project (and a sewing one, too) and I really will post pictures this time. I swear. Cuz they look good, for once. Noooo dropped stitches.

Fourth, I have almost finished the three major projects that have been chomping my ass for the past few months: the book, the journal, and my 3rd year review. Those will be done just in time to get chomped at by a chapter, some encyclopedia entries, and a new grant project, all due soon. But who's thinking about that? This is a list of happiness!

Fifth, the new PBS series The Emotional Life. It's so good. Especially when you're wickedly neurotic and prone to all sorts of self-diagnoses, like moi. You should check it out and diagnose yourself, too. It's fun.

Hells yeah!

Pretend I'm Your Puppy

As I'm sitting in bed on this below-zero morning, drinking a cup of the glorious elixir of life, I'm reflecting on two things:

1) Ways to loosen up things at work so that I experience more joy and more flow. I have some ideas that aren't suitable for sharing here, but I'm excited about them.

2) What a typical play period with Nolie is like right now. It goes something like this, with her delivering a monologue along these lines:

Pretend that I'm your puppy.

Pretend that I'm your sad puppy.

Pretend that I'm your sad puppy who knows how to do cartwheels.

Pretend that you're the puppy's mommy.

Pretend that I'm the kitty.

Pretend that I'm the kitty who has jumped into a pan of bluing [Editor's note: we don't use "bluing" in our house, nor does anyone in this country anymore, I'm sure. This is a detail from an old book from my childhood called Peppermint. So it's hilarious to hear Nolie say this].

Pretend that I'm your kitty-baby and you're my mommy.

Pretend that you're the mommy and you save me from the coyote.

Pretend that there's a bear.

Pretend that there's a shark.

Pretend that I'm a kitty that loves to dance but there's a coyote who's coming to eat me and you're the mommy who has to save me and rock me to sleep.

Pretend that I'm your puppy [aaaaand...repeat!].

Time with Addie is different. Though she still likes the pretend games, she's much more interested in putting on dance performances, or in playing board games, or reading, or making art. Not much has changed there. But she has changed. A lot. She's very much a kid now, and her feelings are easily hurt. She wants to be treated with kindness and respect, like an adult. She hates being interrupted. She wants things carefully explained to her. Being misunderstood drives her absolutely ape-shit. She has very strong convictions.

I don't know. I don't mean to imply that all children shouldn't be treated with kindness and respect--they should. But the tenor of my interactions with Nolie--which is still very much about modeling behaviors and setting boundaries--is very different from that with Addie, which is more about patience and reciprocity.

The problem is, I mess these up sometimes, and forget, and treat Addie like a preschooler, or expect Nolie to act like a kindergartner, which is very upsetting for us all, or I get control-freaky and just throw my will around, which is good for nobody.

The busier pace of everyone being back at work and school only increases the likelihood of this happening, so it pays to be extra mindful. But I miss target a lot.

It's an interesting time to be a parent.