I must confess that I stole that title from an article in our electric coop newsletter. There is something very appealing about the idea of doing "green" in an old, as opposed to new, fashion. If pressed to describe that appeal in words I think the best I could do is to say that sometimes there was a lot of wisdom in the way things were done. Take for example drying clothes on a line. It saves energy (clothes dryers are so intrinsically inefficient that there is no Energy Star rating for them!), gives one a chance to be outdoors and get some exercise, and produces whiter clothes (sun bleaches out some stains), naturally fresh-smelling clothes.
Maria's mobility I think is ultimately what prompted me to start reconsidering some of the products we have around the house. I bought a book entitled Green Housekeeping which I like in part because many of the suggestions seem to be grandma-style green. Some immediate changes were getting rid of the kitchen sponge out of sheer terror (read the kitchen chapter!), ditching the fabric softener for similar reasons and buying some vinegar, hydrogen peroxide and spray bottles for making cleaners. I boxed up all my old cleaners and gave them away on Craig's list and was happily surprised to have freed up almost an entire cupboard of extra space! I went on Amazon and found some greener dish, dishwasher and laundry detergents that are economical (in large quantities) and work well (an important criteria!). Other suggestions like healthier types of flooring are good to know in case we ever do renovations.
The initial time and energy investment in making the change seem to be paying off. Now I'm not so worried that Maria will accidentally ingest some terrible poison. And I can actually clean the bathroom while Maria is running around upstairs because I'm not concerned she'll be breathing in something harmful. I don't worry I'm going to kill all the good bacteria in the septic system. Every once in a while I'll discover some other habit or product I could change (like anti-bacterial handsoap, see below), but continuing in the new habits doesn't take extra time or effort.
Recently I read an article on the proliferation on antibiotic-resistant bacteria, a problem which is due in part to overuse of antibiotics and might be exacerbated by antibacterial soaps. Mark loves our foaming hand soap dispensers but all I could find to fill them with was antibacterial soap... quite a quandary... domestic bliss with mutant-killer bacteria or domestic discord with a safer soap?!? Then (probably from the Green Housekeeping book) the idea came to put some Dr. Bonner's liquid soap (highly concentrated) and water in the hand soap dispensers. Happily it foams perfectly, sadly Mark doesn't like the pine scent. But hopefully he'll be able to live with it until this bottle runs out.
Another grandma-green sort of idea is to buy used... used clothes, used furniture, used whatever. The idea is that by buying used items you're not contributing (as much) to the demand for the production of these items, thereby saving resouces and energy. How perfectly this works, I don't know. It can take more time and effort to buy used, and that's the challenge for me. Here's an interesting take on the whole production/consumption cycle called The Story of Stuff.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Pregnancy: the Aftermath
I've been mulling over this post for a while, but wasn't quite ready to write it until now. Maria is 18 months old and I think I've (mostly!) gotten back to my old self, but it's taken a long while.
All sorts of strange things happen to one's body while it is growing a baby. The weight gain is a given, but what about gaining a shoe size? Crazy, but true! My shoes got pretty tight toward the end of pregnancy, but I figured I was just retaining water. Yet as the summer wore on, I was wearing holes in my poor feet by wearing my old shoes. In the end I gave away all my closed-toed shoes in one fell swoop so I'd stop thinking that maybe today they'd fit. I sometimes still miss them! I guess carrying all that extra weight around for 9 months did something permanent to my feet. I just hope I don't gain a shoe size with every pregnancy or I'll be having to special order shoes!
I think the worst after-effect of pregnancy was losing my hair. Yes, about 4 months after Maria was born my hair started coming out by the handful. I think in the end I lost 1/3 to 1/2 of my hair. People normally shed a certain number of hairs every day, but apparently when a woman is expecting she just doesn't shed any hair. Then after the baby is born she starts losing hair at a rapid clip to make up for not losing any for 9 months. The hair loss rate returns to normal and usually no one is any the wiser (as long as she cleans up the drain after a shower!). Alas, for some women (like me!) the hair loss is pretty severe. I chopped my hair short and wore scarves for months. It was a very depressing time. I don't know how men feel about hair loss, but at least it seems somewhat normal for it to happen to some men depending on their genes. But for a woman to lose her hair, that' s just not expected, not perceived as beautiful, and very, very hard to accept. Thankfully it has grown back.
And then there's the weight gain. Friends told me it takes about x months to lose the baby weight where x = 6 or 9 or some other number around there. When Maria was about 8 months old I realized I had a long way to go and that I hadn't been losing any weight for the last 6 months. It didn't matter that the holidays were coming up, it was time to face reality and do something about it. I joined Weight Watchers. It took about 10 more months of going to meetings, writing down what I ate, learning all about realistic potion sizes, well-balanced meals, strategies for dealing with cravings and how to get back on the wagon after failures. A few weeks ago it all paid off. I reached my goal weight (several pounds BELOW what I weighed before I had Maria) and became a Lifetime Member of Weight Watchers! Yeah! It was a very happy moment and though I suppose I could have lost the weight a lot faster, I'm really glad I stuck with it, learned some valuable lessons and reached my goal in the end.
My assessment in the end is that this was all worth it to have a sweetie like Maria in my life. She's been getting more into "pretend play" as the books call it. She found a (clean!) kleenex on the floor today and went over to the cat to wipe his nose! She put her stuffed gorilla in her high chair and proceeded to try to feed him goldfish. Her aim was a bit off because some of them were going more up his nose and in his eyes. Poor gorilla!
All sorts of strange things happen to one's body while it is growing a baby. The weight gain is a given, but what about gaining a shoe size? Crazy, but true! My shoes got pretty tight toward the end of pregnancy, but I figured I was just retaining water. Yet as the summer wore on, I was wearing holes in my poor feet by wearing my old shoes. In the end I gave away all my closed-toed shoes in one fell swoop so I'd stop thinking that maybe today they'd fit. I sometimes still miss them! I guess carrying all that extra weight around for 9 months did something permanent to my feet. I just hope I don't gain a shoe size with every pregnancy or I'll be having to special order shoes!
I think the worst after-effect of pregnancy was losing my hair. Yes, about 4 months after Maria was born my hair started coming out by the handful. I think in the end I lost 1/3 to 1/2 of my hair. People normally shed a certain number of hairs every day, but apparently when a woman is expecting she just doesn't shed any hair. Then after the baby is born she starts losing hair at a rapid clip to make up for not losing any for 9 months. The hair loss rate returns to normal and usually no one is any the wiser (as long as she cleans up the drain after a shower!). Alas, for some women (like me!) the hair loss is pretty severe. I chopped my hair short and wore scarves for months. It was a very depressing time. I don't know how men feel about hair loss, but at least it seems somewhat normal for it to happen to some men depending on their genes. But for a woman to lose her hair, that' s just not expected, not perceived as beautiful, and very, very hard to accept. Thankfully it has grown back.
And then there's the weight gain. Friends told me it takes about x months to lose the baby weight where x = 6 or 9 or some other number around there. When Maria was about 8 months old I realized I had a long way to go and that I hadn't been losing any weight for the last 6 months. It didn't matter that the holidays were coming up, it was time to face reality and do something about it. I joined Weight Watchers. It took about 10 more months of going to meetings, writing down what I ate, learning all about realistic potion sizes, well-balanced meals, strategies for dealing with cravings and how to get back on the wagon after failures. A few weeks ago it all paid off. I reached my goal weight (several pounds BELOW what I weighed before I had Maria) and became a Lifetime Member of Weight Watchers! Yeah! It was a very happy moment and though I suppose I could have lost the weight a lot faster, I'm really glad I stuck with it, learned some valuable lessons and reached my goal in the end.
My assessment in the end is that this was all worth it to have a sweetie like Maria in my life. She's been getting more into "pretend play" as the books call it. She found a (clean!) kleenex on the floor today and went over to the cat to wipe his nose! She put her stuffed gorilla in her high chair and proceeded to try to feed him goldfish. Her aim was a bit off because some of them were going more up his nose and in his eyes. Poor gorilla!
Friday, September 26, 2008
On Joining Facebook
Yeah, I know... I resisted for a long time. Even when Mark joined, I held out. I've got better things to do than waste even MORE time on the computer.
But then Jenn, one of our adopt-a-students from church, told me about an 80s party and sent me a link to the pictures. And I couldn't see them without joining Facebook, so I caved. I had to see that 80s party. After being in junior high and high school for a large part of that decade full of fashion mistakes, I was curious to see how people not even born in the 80s would interpret it. And they were right on, for the most part... big hair, ponytails off the the sides, legwarmers, and even sweatshirts with the necks cut out.
Anyway, since I'm now on Facebook I feel the need to report back to the non-Facebook world and say that it's been VERY wierd. A couple of days after I joined Mark mentioned offhand in an almost apologetic maner about having sent me a "relationship request" on Facebook and that I had to OK it. I was curious so I logged on and sure enough, there was a relationship request from Mark. Apparently in addition to being "friends" with someone, you can state how you know each other or even be in a "relationship"! I clicked to accept the married setting and got the oddest message, "You are now in a relationship with Mark Dewing". Now?!?! What the heck?!?! We've been married for 4 years and have a child together for crying out loud!
And that's not the end of the wierdness. Once you start becoming "friends" with people and writing on their walls, people know you are on Facebook (FB) and the friend requests start rolling in. I'm now FB friends with two of the pastors at my church. And all sorts of old high school and college friends. The crazy part is getting friend requests from people and for the life of me I can't remember who they are! I've just been saying yes and then looking at their walls and pictures to try and figure it out. I became "friends" with someone I went to high school with and then got really stressed out about it! Basically I realized we couldn't have been more than aquaintances when we were in high school because she was one of the popular people and I was a social misfit (in high school, hopefully not now!) who hardly talked to people. All those feelings of being a huge nerd came flooding back when I thought about her looking at my profile. Mark informed me that I can "unfriend" someone, but of course then she'd know and how would that look? Anyway, this person wrote on my wall about how much she appreciated me tutoring her in chemistry (I'd completely forgotted about that!) and so the whole thing morphed into something good. And I'm so thankful I'm no longer the person I was in high school!
But then Jenn, one of our adopt-a-students from church, told me about an 80s party and sent me a link to the pictures. And I couldn't see them without joining Facebook, so I caved. I had to see that 80s party. After being in junior high and high school for a large part of that decade full of fashion mistakes, I was curious to see how people not even born in the 80s would interpret it. And they were right on, for the most part... big hair, ponytails off the the sides, legwarmers, and even sweatshirts with the necks cut out.
Anyway, since I'm now on Facebook I feel the need to report back to the non-Facebook world and say that it's been VERY wierd. A couple of days after I joined Mark mentioned offhand in an almost apologetic maner about having sent me a "relationship request" on Facebook and that I had to OK it. I was curious so I logged on and sure enough, there was a relationship request from Mark. Apparently in addition to being "friends" with someone, you can state how you know each other or even be in a "relationship"! I clicked to accept the married setting and got the oddest message, "You are now in a relationship with Mark Dewing". Now?!?! What the heck?!?! We've been married for 4 years and have a child together for crying out loud!
And that's not the end of the wierdness. Once you start becoming "friends" with people and writing on their walls, people know you are on Facebook (FB) and the friend requests start rolling in. I'm now FB friends with two of the pastors at my church. And all sorts of old high school and college friends. The crazy part is getting friend requests from people and for the life of me I can't remember who they are! I've just been saying yes and then looking at their walls and pictures to try and figure it out. I became "friends" with someone I went to high school with and then got really stressed out about it! Basically I realized we couldn't have been more than aquaintances when we were in high school because she was one of the popular people and I was a social misfit (in high school, hopefully not now!) who hardly talked to people. All those feelings of being a huge nerd came flooding back when I thought about her looking at my profile. Mark informed me that I can "unfriend" someone, but of course then she'd know and how would that look? Anyway, this person wrote on my wall about how much she appreciated me tutoring her in chemistry (I'd completely forgotted about that!) and so the whole thing morphed into something good. And I'm so thankful I'm no longer the person I was in high school!
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