FeeFiFoto Blog

The Main Reason We Don't Use A Lot Of Ice In Our House

I'm always cold.  Always, ALWAYS A L W A Y S cold. Except in July, when I droop from the heat and humidity unless I'm at a movie or a grocery store or a mall in which case I'm shlepping a jacket and I look stupid because I'm carrying a farkatke jacket in brain damage weather because it's probably going to be freezing inside. I'm one of those people who begs restaurants to turn down (up?) the air conditioning because it's blowing right on me and I'm freezing and then I make them move my table at least three times, not because I'm finally comfortable but because I'm embarrassed at being such a complainer but I'm still cold so I'm swiping napkins from neighboring tables to cover my lap and the waiters are wondering where the napkins keep disappearing to and at the same time, since I'm a gifted multitasker, I'm complaining that the music is too loud but that's another post for another time. So.  I'm almost always cold and always complaining about it. And then.  I got myself a couple of these: It's called a Kandle Heeter.  I have two of them, one for the left hand and one for the right. Here's some information:

              1) Heat rising from a burning candle (or electric lamp) is first trapped in the steel inner core and surrounding ceramic inner module. 2) The inner cores get very hot and radiate heat to the ceramic middle core. 3) This entire inner region gets VERY VERY HOT!! Heat synergistically builds up and “boils out” of the ceramic inner core into the ceramic middle core. The middle core heats up and begins to radiate heat. Heated air “boils out” into the ceramic outer core. 4) The large surface area of the outer core begins receiving heat. The inner wall surfaces become very HOT! Heat travels through the wall to the outer surface. 5) The outer surface gets VERY WARM to HOT and gently begins to radiate heat into your home or office.

I light a candle and within half an hour the little darlings are radiating heat all over the place. You know how forced air heating blows for a while and then doesn't blow for a while and then blows again for a while, and your eyes get dry and your mouth gets dry and your nose gets dry and your head gets hot while your feet are cold and you're warm while it's blowing and then cold when it stops and your hair stands on end and you get shocked when you reach for the lightswitch or the dog? Radiator heat isn't like that.  It radiates.  It glows.  It fills the room with warmth from your head to your feet. It's remarkable.  It's also very expensive, which is why they don't build homes with radiators any more and the homes that have radiators switch to forced air and see above: dry dry dry. These little radiators don't heat my home.  We have vaulted ceilings so it would take an awful lot of radiating to heat our home.  But they do radiate sufficient warmth to heat my general vicinity and keep my hands warm, which, in combination with a pair of Uggs (don't judge me) on my feet (not on my hands since that would make typing difficult) keeps me warmish and not complainingish. We use soy candles since they're not petroleum-based and we're all about the environment here, even though I have to drive all over creation to find the darn things. I suspect these little babies could warm a dorm room, so long as the occupants kept track of the candles and didn't allow the building to catch fire, which incidentally would make the room quite warm but not exactly in the way you might hope.  For that matter, the manufacturer offers the option of an infrared lamp to use instead of a candle for those of us who tend to fall asleep or leave the room or wave scarves around. I love these little critters.  In fact, if the house caught fire they'd be near the top of my list of things to save. Wait a minute...

Find me HERE.

Drive carefully.

How Much Soda (Or Pop, If You're From Chicago) Do You Drink Every Day? (GIVEAWAY)

I write about environmental issues often.  I think about them every day.  We try to buy fresh foods and avoid unnecessary packaging.  We use canvas shopping bags.  We clean and freshen our home and laundry with diluted vinegar.  We recycle.  We compost.  We plant trees and beneficial plants and shun herbicides (although a touch of Roundup can be helpful in maintaining a safe distance from poison ivy).  I receive and pay bills online.  I turn lights off, air conditioners up and furnaces down, and we supplement with fans and blankets.

I'm always on the lookout for loopholes to close in the environmental protection category.  For instance, I tried to get a beekeeper to install hives on our property but we have too much shade, which would have caused the bees to leave the scene of the hive and relocate. 

 
The only bees we can accommodate are Spelling Bees

I next explored solar panels but again with the shade already; the installer said he might be able to put them in if I took down some trees but that suggestion generated a sandstorm of flabbergasted cognitive dissonance in my mind, so we'll have no solar panels unless the specific trees blocking the sun's rays fall down on their own.

In my continuing crusade to cut costs and waste, I bought a SodaStream Soda Maker.  Seriously.

Here's a baby photo of the little darling

As a kid I was an Extreme Soda Drinker.  I sipped Pepsi through a hollow stick of chocolate licorice and sampled root beer as if it were wine.  I made cream soda ice cubes so my drink wouldn't get watered down.  I lived a perpetually sugared and caffeinated life, and had little trouble staying awake.

Once I grew up, though, I couldn't get past the 12 teaspoons of sugar thing, and artificial sweeteners give me a headache.  As an adult I've learned to love sparkly water, and so do my kids.  While our favorites are Pellegrino (expensive) and Voss (SERIOUSLY expensive), we mostly buy Mendota because the cans fit neatly in the drawers of our refrigerator and normally don't shatter if you drop them.  Still -- gee whiz -- we went through the stuff like it was... water.  Every day we'd open at least six cans, which adds up to buying several twelve packs at a time, schlepping them home, and crushing and recycling the empties.  At $4.39 a twelve pack, not including tax, we spent about $800 a year to have our noses tickled by CO₂ bubbles.

Eight. hundred. dollars. on. water. I'm hyperventilating as I write this. I need some water.

So when I saw a SodaStream Soda Maker online I said to myself: "Who was that masked man?  I didn't even get to thank him."  "Hey!  If we make our own sparkly water -- why, we might even save a few pennies!  And carry less home from the supermarket!  And not have to retrieve escaped cans from beneath the accelerator and brake pedals.  And have more room in the refrigerator for leftovers, cold cuts and batteries!  And produce less trash!  And have something new to be supercilious about!"

Our kit came with bottles specially designed to fit the soda maker, the soda maker itself, flavorings, and a refillable canister of CO₂.  It's so preposterously simple: attach the filled water bottle to the spout and press the button.  The more gas you give it, the larger and more abundant the bubbles.  When the carbon dioxide bottle is empty, you send it back to the company, at their cost, for a replacement.  We keep two bottles on hand so we're never without one because, seriously, we use the SodaStream every. single. day.  Now that I've convinced the kids that eleventy pumps of CO₂ will just cause your eyeballs to bug out distressingly when you drink the water, we actually are saving money.

I've seen the SodaStream at various housewares stores and I think every home should have one, but you needn't pull out the checkbook quite yet because I'M GIVING ONE AWAY.  The set contains one SodaStream soda maker (the Fizz Starter Kit, which, according to SodaStream, features "Patented Fizz Chip^TM Technology to monitor gas and fizz levels"), and one bottle of carbon dioxide gas, all of which costs $149.99 on the SodaStream site.  

But wait!  There's more!  

SodaStream has also provided ten bottles of soda flavorings:

• Cranberry-raspberry, enough to make 12 liters
• Green Tea Pomegranate Peach, 12 liters
• Cola, 6 liters
• Black Currant and Pear, 6 liters
• Root Beer, 12 liters
• Ginger Ale, 12 liters
• Diet Lemon-Lime, 12 liters
• Diet Cola, 12 liters
• Diet Pink Grapefruit, 12 liters, and
• Energy Drink, 12 liters

The combined cost of all these flavorings, if you bought them from SodaStream, would be $70.

So there you are.  A free soda maker.  Free flavorings.  Save money.  Generate less trash.  See?  Everybody wins!

Here are the rules:

You may enter this giveaway until midnight on July 13.  I will draw a name at random the morning of July 14.

You may enter your name in the pool up to four times by doing any or all of the following (no duplicates, please):

• Leave a comment on this post and make sure you supply a valid email address.  Any entries lacking an email address will be discarded.
• Tweet this giveaway and provide the URL to that tweet in another comment on this post.
• Blog about this giveaway and leave the URL to your blog post in yet another comment here.
• Become a follower of my blog (please please) and leave me a comment to that effect.
• That's it: four comments equal four entries 
• The winner will be selected at random, and I will notify you by e-mail. You'll have 72 hours to get in touch with me, or I'll have to draw a new winner. 

Disclosure: This post was not sponsored by SodaStream.  I am not being compensated for writing about their product.  I merely got in touch with them to let them know I was preparing to write about the soda maker we've enjoyed for two years, and they graciously sent me a new machine and a full kit of accessories, which I am passing along to one of my readers.

Approaching Halfway There: Waiting To Hit The Tipping Point

Leaving the yard to its own devices doesn't equal not having to perform any yard maintenance.  Someday if all the stars align and the moles retreat, resulting in no more mole tunnels and the added bonus (redundant, I know) of the absence of any temptation for Miss Puppy to dig holes for moles although she'd still have the chipmunks to keep her busy...

Was I saying something?

Ah.  If the stars align and the weather is good and absent any other interference (Go cicadas, go!) (If you're like me you now have the theme to Speed Racer running through your brain.  Sorry.) the yard will someday be covered with more moss rather than less, with clover in the sunny spots and liriope and hostas filling the very large and shaded center island.

But we're not there yet.  I'm outside every day (weather permitting; I don't do cold) with a weed-lever-puller-upper thingy displacing dandelions, plantain weeds and violets that encroach on the liriope.  I've filled buckets and buckets and more buckets with weeds; I'm convinced that once the moss takes over no other weeds will be able to set up housekeeping but until that happens I'm weeding my fingers to the bone.

In addition, I'm taking down leggy rhododendrons a few at a time and replacing them with bamboo (don't panic; it's the clumping kind), which will be self-sustaining, easier to contain, half the height of the fence and particularly beneficial for the environment.

I feel like I'm about halfway there, although I'm not sure yet which side of "about halfway there" I'm on right now.

So I've been thinking: how do you identify a tipping point?  How do you know when you've reached the apex and it's all downhill from here?

I have the same question when it comes to measuring progress inside the house.

I used to binge and binge on clothes and decorative objects and kitchenware and scissors and when the closets and basement and garage got full I bought a bigger house.  When the kids came along I had to get more and bigger stuff for them: cribs, toys, sports equipment, more furniture, more books, more dishes.  We got a fish tank, a microscope, a video game, a basketball hoop, sleeping bags, themed bedspreads, themed sheets, baseball hats, Legos and clip-together toys similar to Legos but with different names to distinguish them from Legos.  We had fleece blankets and woven blankets and king-sized blankets and throw blankets and Dora the Explorer blankets.  We had stand up vacuums, handheld vacuums, rechargeable vacuums and robot vacuums.  We accumulated hammers, wrenches, screwdrivers, nails, screws, shovels, spades, rakes, brooms, cutters, clippers and loppers.

Oh, and lots and lots of shoes.

Sometime in the past few years I quit buying everything that didn't buy me first and started trying to get rid of more stuff than we brought in.  And it was HARD.

Replace old, beat-up luggage, but what to do with it?  Nobody wants tired old luggage with no wheels, so it just sat in the basement for a couple of years until I gave it to the Salvation Army.

Get rid of clothes that don't fit or are out of style or have holes or haven't been worn in at least two years.  But I might wear that holey tee shirt under something so maybe I should keep it.

The fish poacher?  I used to use it but the kids don't want to eat poached salmon and if they did I could use a vegetable steamer anyway.  The mortar and pestle?  I used it once for a cookie recipe and we didn't even like the cookies.

I've been going through closets, cabinets and pantries for a couple of years now.  It helps to do it when I'm in a foul mood because I show no mercy: extra sheets that the kids might need for camp or college?  Out.  Shoes that I like but the dog chewed them?  Out.  The second and third string hand vacs, blowdryers and blankets?  Out.

Have I reached the halfway point?  How do I know?  Will I be able to tell when I open cabinets and drawers and they're empty?  Will I know when there are no more dandelions in the yard and all the rhododendrons have been replaced with bamboo?

How do you know when you're halfway there?  Are you ever halfway there, or is "halfway there" a myth like parallel lines that never meet even though they appear to?

I Am Mossier

Almost two years ago I embraced my inner lazy struck a blow for the environment and proclaimed that moss would henceforth take over our yard. 

Like how I managed that part back there?  The part about making it look like letting moss take over was entirely my idea?  I'm clever that way.

And it's worked out better, and quicker, than I'd expected.  Here is some evidence:

 
See?  Isn't it pretty?  It's... why, it's Moss Green!  With purple captions!  How about that?  Now, imagine this stuff all over the yard, except where there are trees or shrubs or holes dug by the dog while prospecting for moles or volunteer oak treelets misplaced by absentminded squirrels, and except for the purple parts.

And the best part is (turns out the New York Times was exactly right) that the "...its density repels weeds" part actually works.  In the past week I've dug up four buckets of dandelions from the perimeter of the moss territory, and some that have survived amongst the mosses since the Clintons were the bosses.  Once they're gone, the moss closes in and seals the holes.  Nothing's getting in there.  Nothing!

Except... maybe I should consider training Miss Puppy to tree squirrels.

Naah.

Guess What? It's International Polar Bear Day.

Let's learn a little bit about polar bears.

What do you mean you don't want to learn about polar bears?  It's always good to learn stuff.  Now sit down and shut up.

• Male adult polar bears can grow up to 12 feet long; the females can reach 9 feet.  This disparity in size enables the males to change the highest light bulbs while the females look up and kibitz.
• Polar bear fur isn't actually white -- it's colorless and the long hairs are hollow.  The hollow hairs trap infrared light to help keep the bear warm.
• On a scale of 1 to 10, polar bears cubs are just about the cutest things on the planet:

Cute picture, huh?

• Polar bears are kept warm by thick fat, two layers of fur and compact ears and tails that help reduce heat loss.  They're made for snow just like Tibetan Terriers, although I can hardly imagine Miss Puppy supporting herself by hunting seals at the North Pole but I can picture her eating her fill of moles if there are in fact moles at the Pole.
• You can adopt a polar bear here, at Polar Bear International.

A Modest Proposal For Limiting Our Plastic Bag Use

And no, it doesn't involve eating them.

It seems I can make major, life-altering decisions, but I can't decide if I want paper or plastic.

FUNNY STORY GOES HERE:
A friend's husband (bright guy but easily the village idiot when it came to anything besides the Chicago Bulls or the practice of law) once made a trip to a grocery store while his wife was in the hospital having a baby or something.  When the checker asked if he preferred paper or plastic he looked at her like she was mental and replied: "Cash."

I bring canvas bags to grocery stores so I don't get stuck with an armload of plastic bags to recycle (I'm not convinced those recycling people really recycle anyway) or to make clothing or housewares out of. 

If you think I'm holy, you can begin applauding now.

But when I buy a trunkload of stuff at one of those superstores I come home with bags I don't need or want, which I conscientiously store in a basket and then conscientiously tote to a recycling bin at the grocery store, conscientiously trying not to worry that the grocery stores not so conscientiously just throw everything in the dumpster after closing time.

I worry about what's going to become of all those unwanted plastic bags.  Will they be adopted and treasured, like Windy, their every flutter monitored and birthday cakes consumed in their honor?  Sadly, not likely.

Take a look at these stats from Reuseit.com:

• 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used every year, worldwide.
• A single plastic bag can take between 20 and 1000 years to degrade.
• More than 3.5 million tons of plastic bags, sacks and wraps were discarded in 2008.
• Plastic bags remain toxic even after they break down.
• Every square mile of ocean has about 46,000 pieces of plastic floating in it.
• The average family accumulates 60 plastic bags in only four trips to the grocery store.

Feeling tormented yet?

See also: EPA.GOV

Oh sure, you can make stuff from discarded plastic bags.  There's the purse:

And the belt:

I think we can all agree that these are Uncommon Goods.

Then there's these:

This is pretty but its usefulness is a bit limited:

By artist Laura Marsden

But making things out of discarded plastic bags isn't my bag.  I prefer knitting.  I want to bring home fewer plastic bags from the get go, so I don't have to find ways to dispose of them.

When I'm feeling sufficiently impulse-controlled not to buy 17 bags of sweat socks and a decade's supply of pizza bagels I shop at Sam's Club, where they load my stuff directly into a cart without bagging or boxing. Sam's seems to understand that if I'm buying a mattress-size bag of oranges, I don't need a bag to put my bag in -- it's already in a bag. 

You might say that Sam's gets me.

Sometimes if I'm feeling particularly virtuous and lucky, I'll ask a supermarket bagger not to bag bigger items.  I don't need a bag to carry a jug of laundry detergent or a gallon of white vinegar or a jumbo bag of frozen blueberries.  I have to sense a lucky streak to make this request, though, since it usually throws baggers into a tailspin: 

You don't want big stuff in bags? 

No, thanks, I can carry the big stuff without a bag. 

How about the soda? 

No, that's fine. 

What about the potatoes? 

No, they're already in a bag. 

The bag of charcoal?  The dog food?  This gigantic watermelon?  The five pounds of bird seed?

Nope, no bags.

With each perplexed challenge my ambition to be holy and noble withers and doesn't regenerate until, no less than a month later, I'll forget the pain of the experience as women forget the details of labor and my sister and I block out memories of family vacations gone wrong.

So I've been thinking.

• At the supermarket, they ask if I want paper or plastic.
• At most other stores they never ask; I just get plastic.
• At Sam's I get nothing, but I'm fine with that because most of the stuff I buy there is large or not fragile.
• Whenever I try to explain that I don't need bags for the large things, the bagger at the supermarket blows a gasket trying to wrap his habit-ridden brain around my outside-the-box (bag?) demand.

Remember when stores used only paper bags?  And then they added plastic bags and the baggers had to be trained (perhaps with electric collars) to inquire: "Paper or Plastic?"  And their heads didn't explode?

Why can't there be one more option at the checkout counter?  Why can't they ask me if I want, for instance, "full packing" or "partial packing"?  Why can't I tell them I want partial packing and have them already know that that means I don't want bags for the big stuff so I don't have to explain how it works every time I shop?

In college I developed a fondness for iced coffee.  When I moved back home I tried to order it in restaurants and usually had to teach servers how to make it.  Do you have coffee?  Do you have ice?  Do you have glasses?  Do you know how to make iced tea?  Well, iced coffee is just like that, only with coffee.  It's okay if the ice melts -- you can add more ice.  I promise I won't be mad.  More than once I received a mug of coffee garnished with floating ice cubes.  Eventually servers learned how to make iced coffee (I credit Starbucks) and I no longer had to draw diagrams on the tablecloth.

Why can't checkout baggers be trained to ask customers to follow up "Paper or Plastic" with "Full Packing or Partial Packing"?

I know!  Let's start a campaign.  Why not Stumble this post, or mention it on your own blog, or on your Facebook page or Twitter feed?  Why not forward it to news organizations?  Why not ask the bagger not to bag the big stuff the next time you shop?  We can make blog badges, bumper stickers, tee shirts with the slogan: "Ask for Partial Packing!"  If we all pull together we can teach them, yes we can!

Otherwise we might all be doomed to wearing hand-crocheted plastic bag sandals.

Bamboozled: The Advantages Of Planting The Right Sort Of Bamboo In The Yard

Last week we did it.  Planted bamboo, I mean.  Here are a couple pictures of the little tykes:

Why bamboo?  First, personal reasons. 

We live on a very wooded property, which means we have lots of volunteer moss, weeds and miscellaneous plants, along with thousands and millions of leaves every fall.  What we don't have a lot of is grass, or, as some might put it, lawn. 

 

Photo originated here.

I tried planting sod and grass seed, which would enthusiastically flourish the first summer, and never return.  It took me a couple years to catch on but catch on I finally did, that while the grass seemed to enjoy summering with us, for some reason we weren't the best of year-round grass hosts, and after a winter slumbering in the shade, the grass moved to greener pastures every spring.

So I planted ivy, in anticipation of a thick, lush yard of dark green springy vines.  Every year I planted a little more ivy.  And every year... I planted a little more ivy.  Yet there never seemed to be any more ivy than when I'd started.  Finally the guy who cuts my weeds (since I have no grass) summoned the courage to suggest that maybe ivy doesn't like the acid from the oak leaves. 

So I crossed ivy off my list.

And then I read an article in the New York Times about bamboo that suggested using it as a ground cover.  And I thought, Hey!  I have ground!  And it needs covering!  Bamboo might do.

Second, environmental reasons.

According to the Times:

"Bamboo is a workhorse at sequestering carbon dioxide and pumping out oxygen. It is a tough plant that manufactures its own antibacterial compounds and can thrive without pesticides."

 

Additionally:

"As a natural and renewable resource bamboo offers an opportunity to turn away from the destruction of native forests towards managed commercial plantations that can be selectively harvested annually without the destruction of the grove or stand. Tree plantations obviously have to be chopped down and their nutrient arrest terminated at harvest. Bamboo keeps on keeping on, with edible shoots capable of extraction after less than five years. ...  bamboo can be harvested without the destruction of the grove or stand.

Bamboo minimizes CO₂ gases and generates up to 35% more oxygen than equivalent stand of trees."

That sequestering carbon dioxide thing made so much sense I felt quite stupid for not figuring it out myself without having to be told so by the New York Times.  Here's how it works:

• Bamboo, like all plants, sucks in carbon dioxide and emits oxygen.
• The carbon  dioxide becomes part of the plant, making it a carbon-based life form (a characteristic it shares with Paris Hilton).
• The carbon remains locked in the plant instead of being released into the atmosphere.
• The angels sing, the ozone layer is repaired and global warming is stopped in its tracks, although, sadly, Paris Hilton is still at large.

But bamboo grows like... a weed, I suppose.  And the last thing I need is the burden of maintaining my property with a machete in an attempt to subdue a plant:

Image from Movie Dearest

Thank goodness Nature thinks of everything.  Who knew?  There are TWO kinds of bamboo: 

"One can divide bamboos into “Runners” and “Clumpers”. The Clumpers don’t invade. To remove a clumper, just dig it out (and transplant it.) Runners can be well-behaved in cold climates, but some kinds when in a warm climate, and given plenty of water, can become a serious problem. Don’t plant a runner in a small yard in a warm climate, unless you put a barrier around it.

Homer running

If new shoots of bamboo are coming up all over your yard, it is a running bamboo. To get rid of it, there are four steps:

1. Cut it off.

2. Cut it down.

3. Water and fertilize the area, to cause new growth.

4. Cut it down again. And again."

And again and again and again.

See, it's that "again and again and again" part I can live without.

But there are many varieties of Clumping bamboo.  Clumping bamboo, unlike horizontally spreading bamboo, sends out individual rhizomes, allowing the plant to spread only a few inches a year and maintain its original shape.

And... GOOOOOOOOAL!  We have a slow-growing ground cover that helps renew the environment and can stand up to shade and leaves and acid and Miss Puppy.

Take that, weeds.

Fedex Breaks Guitars

Remember this video from this cute guy, Dave Carroll?

Well, United isn't the only carrier that breaks guitars. Fedex breaks them too! Just look:

A little background:

My kids (and everyone else's) come home from Bar and Bat Mitzvah parties schlepping armloads of deplorable plastic rubbish that inevitably winds up in landfills, causing me to cringe with guilt when I trash it while the kids are at school so they won't notice it's gone, which they never do, which proves how meaningless all this debris is to them in the first place.

I swore not to commit the same environmental sin in connection with Robespierre's Bar Mitzvah party, much to Robey's annoyance.  Despite his protests I held firm and advocated for more useful giveaways than Kanye West glasses or pimp hats or glow sticks. 

Such as lollipops.

Handmade lollipops, to be precise (from Vintage Confections, via Etsy) in the shape of sports balls, Robey's initials, and electric guitars.  

Vintage Confections offers barley sugar lollipops and candies in 49 flavors,

(really -- 49?  You couldn't spring for one more to make it an even 50?)

including (ready?): Amaretto Apple Blackberry Blueberry Blue Raspberry Bubble Gum Caramel Champagne Cheesecake Cherry Cinnamon Cinnamon Roll (with or without "icing") Clove Coconut Coffee Cotton Candy Cranberry Creme de Menthe Eggnog Fleur de Sel Grape Grapefruit Honey Horchata Irish Creme Juicy Pear Keoke Coffee Key Lime Lemon Lemonade Mango Maple Marshmallow Orange Peppermint Pineapple Pomegranate Prickly Pear Raspberry Root Beer Salt Water Taffy Strawberry/Kiwi Strawberry Tangerine Teaberry Tropical Punch Tutti Frutti Vanilla AND Watermelon.

The manufacturer was delightful to deal with -- prompt and helpful, and the candies look almost too pretty to eat.

Don't they look yummy?

 

And aren't they pretty?

Two hundred lollipops arrived yesterday in a cardboard box snugly packed with shredded paper. 

But four of the guitars arrived BROKEN!  Their necks were cleanly shattered and we had no choice but to end their misery by eating them.

They were delicious.

Alas Fedex -- I blame you.  How could you fail me so severely?

If I had any musical talent to speak of, I'd write a song.

Pluses And Minuses: Things We Like And Dislike About Our Neighbors

Advantages and disadvantages to living behind a high school:

• We have a gigantic field at our fingertips (foottips?) for walking the dog, flying a kite or kicking a soccer ball -- a distinct plus when your genuine yard comprises moss, moles and mud.
• The school staff objects when we use their grass -- something about the dog making a mess, I don't know, but really -- if they didn't want us to use their grass then they shouldn't have grass, right?  If we owned a cow we'd definitely be setting it out to graze there.
• Miss Puppy thinks that every time students are yelling in the playing field, they're summoning her to come out, race up and down the fence perimeter and woof at them.

• Sooner or later Miss Puppy overexerts herself chasing her imaginary friends, plunks down and sleeps it off.  This makes me look like a good and attentive parent who actually walks her dog.
• Students, teachers, lawn maintenance individuals frequently throw their trash over the fence into our yard since, apparently, even though the yard contains a house that from time to time has lights on, as well as a clamorous dog, no one actually lives here so no one will mind if you throw your Capri Sun pouch over the fence.
• We can throw our own trash onto their side of the fence and leave it for them to collect.

RELAX -- we don't.  We're composters -- we don't litter.  Geesh.

Anyone have anything else to add?  What are the advantages to your neighborhood?

I Am Mossy: Replacing Grass That Won't Grow, With Moss, Which Might

With sincerest apologies to Bossy, who is one of my blogging idols.  In fact, I might or might not have a shrine to Bossy in my home, replete with life size graven images of her and her Great Dane, Stella (I wanted to name our dog Stella, or Taxi, because, how funny would it be to chase a fleeing dog yelling either name? but my kids wouldn't buy it).  Y'all go read Bossy's blog and then come back to my paltry post.  Better bookmark me, because once you've met Bossy, you might not be interested in me any more, kind of like when Jan's boyfriend met Marcia and all of a sudden he was like: "Jan who?" and Jan was like: "Marcia Marcia Marcia!!"

Was I talking about something?

Ah.  Moss.

Since reading about moss in the New York Times more than a year ago, I've been contemplating letting moss take over the yard, since I'm abundantly lazy nothing else will grow there anyway:

"Moss, which grows fast and hugs the ground, prevents soil erosion. Its density repels weeds. Deer do not snack on it. It can be walked on. Even when it looks dead, a splash of water can restore it to emerald health within minutes. It doesn’t need fertilizer (lacking a root system, it takes nutrients from water and air). All it needs, in fact, are shade, moisture — though not large amounts of water — and what most gardeners would regard as poor-quality soil."

Hey!  I have all that stuff: shade (that's why I can't grow grass), moisture, Moss-Disdaining-Deer (thank goodness we have no moose around here), and poor quality soil.  And I have lots of moss growing in lush patches ringed by poison ivy and patrolled by mosquitoes.

Transplanting is ridiculously easy:

• Employing a motion similar to scraping frosting from a cake, gather moss chunks:

• Transport moss to a bare quadrant of the yard:

• Place moss on bare spots:

• Water:

Image here

• Wait

More Power To Me: Choosing Green Power

I received a flier in the mail today from our electricity provider, titled "Choose Green Power."  Here's the gist:

"When you enroll in Pure Power, AmerenUE buys 100% renewable energy credits on your behalf.  Most households can reduce the same amount of CO2 emissions in a year as they could by not driving one car for 19 months (emphasis in the original.  Gee, sometimes it's just a little too obvious that I'm a former lawyer, isn't it?).  And they do this for about 50 cents a day."

What are Renewable Energy Credits?  According to wiseGEEK:

"While a consumer would ideally... purchase renewable energy for his or her home, this is not always possible. Renewable Energy Credits allow companies and individuals to support alternative power in areas which do not offer it directly...

Along with carbon offsets and other incentive programs, Renewable Energy Credits are part of a growing movement which acknowledges that even small changes make a big difference. By supporting green energy, consumers show that there is a demand for it, and companies can build more plants or accelerate production with the funds raised through the sale of Renewable Energy Credits. Organizations which promote programs like this hope to eventually see everyone's ecological footprint, meaning the amount of resources and space needed to support a particular lifestyle, greatly reduced."

This is exactly the sort of thing I've been looking for.  We compost.  We (try) to employ compact fluorescent light bulbs, although not without a certain level of drama.  We reduce, reuse and recycle, sometimes to the point of rediculousness (why didn't my SpellCheck catch that word?)  We I constantly prowl around the house switching off lights and appliances.  I make soup or chili out of turkey and chicken carcasses. 

But short of planting a wind farm or bringing in my own team of hamsters, so far I've been unable to reduce the impact of our actual energy usage, and it's been bothering me.  I can reduce my use of energy by turning down (or is it up?) the air conditioning and boosting its output with fans; driving less; turning off lights and taking the stairs, but I'm still using carbon that I wish I weren't. 

The estimated cost of this program for me will probably be about $15 a month; that's about four visits to Starbucks that I'm not making right now anyway.  I figure that people like me, who have $15 a month to spare (as long as I can keep it away from my son) must make the first move and set an example for our peers as well as our kids.

Next week we're planting bamboo.

Environment: Do you care?  What are you doing about it?

Doing Our Part For The Environment: Composting

Remember to enter FeeFiFoto's Fall Fame Contest. The winner's name will be drawn on September 15. Good luck!

A guy walking through a cemetery comes upon an open grave.  He's astonished to see Beethoven sitting at the bottom of the hole with an enormous musical score on his lap and a huge pink eraser in his hand.  Beethoven is busily erasing and erasing and erasing.  The guy calls down into the grave: "Hey, Beethoven!  What are you doing down there?"  And Beethoven, who evidently enjoys perfect hearing in death, looks up and replies: "Decomposing."

Let's talk about composting.

According to Wikipedia:

"Composting is the aerobic decomposition of biodegradable organic matter, producing compost. (Or in a simpler form: Composting is the decaying of food, mostly vegetables or manure.)"

Some information on why you should compost, from Grist.org:

"Q: I don't compost, instead I just throw the banana peel or apple core into the bushes. I like the thought that maybe one day my apple core will become an apple, or that my banana peel will help nourish that piece of ground/animals in the area over ending up in a landfill... But I've heard that this eco-littering isn't terribly good... Should I start to properly compost my food?

A:  Almost none of the produce you discard will sprout new life...  Any animals that eat the fruit will be scavengers who have other food sources, because no animal could build a life on waiting for banana peels...True, one alternative is to throw them in the garbage, where they will be interred for centuries... [But]if you were to compost your pits and peels, they would transform themselves into nourishing plant nutrients. Composted material isn't just more aesthetically pleasing than rotting banana peels, it has a chemical and structural difference that is beneficial to plants..."

In case you don't know anything about composting, some materials are not recommended to put in your compost pile:

From University of Maine Cooperative Extension:

"Although almost all natural, organic material will compost, you shouldn't put everything in your pile. Some wastes, such as fish scraps, bones, butter and meat, will attract pests and may smell. Other items, such as dog or cat manure, contain disease organisms that can survive the compost process and may attract other animals. Plants that are diseased or are infested with insects should not be added to your compost pile because they can cause future problems. ...

Easy to compost: seaweed, bread, coffee grounds, egg shells, pine needles, fruit peels and rinds, garden waste, grass clippings, leaves, paper, sawdust, straw, sod, tea bags, vegetables, wood ash, wood, shavings

Hard to Compost: butter, bones, cheese, chicken, fish scraps, lard, mayonnaise, meat, milk, cooking oils, peanut butter, salad dressing, sour cream, vegetable oil, wood chips

Meat scraps or fats can attract pest / scavengers like rats or raccoons"

When I lived in a house with a relatively treeless yard, I tried composting kitchen scraps and waste from the vegetable garden.  I saved food scraps in a bucket under the sink; every few days I'd take the bucket outside and empty it into the compost box.

I felt saintly.  I patted myself on the back.  I boasted.

But it was hard.  The stuff in the box had to be turned regularly with a pitchfork, and not only am I a small and delicate hothouse flower who swoons in the heat and prefers air conditioned hotels, I'm lazy and whiny, so it didn't take long before I gave up on turning the composter and concluded that the vegetable material inside could darn well break down on its own, which can take more than a year if the pile isn't turned every few days. 

I still felt sort of holy but now also frustrated that something described as being easy required manual labor.

When I moved into our current home there was no place to put a vegetable garden, but I still wanted to be smart about food waste, so I picked up a green cone composter. 

The green cone composter is made of two parts: the basket and the cone.  The basket is sunk into the ground and the cone, attached to the top of the basket, rises about three feet above ground level.   When composting above ground, either in an open compost pile or a structured composter, you can put in only vegetable waste but no meat, fat, bones or dairy.  Eggshells are okay; eggs aren't.  But with the green cone you can put in any type of decomposable waste.  Chicken bones are okay; in fact any bones are okay, except perhaps the skeletons in your closet.  Since all the waste is contained by the basket below ground level, pests and scavengers can't get to it.  The cone concentrates the sun's heat to cook down the waste into mush; liquid leaches off into the surrounding earth and insects consume the rest. 

Voila: no turning, no mixing, no emptying, no mess, lots of saintliness.

I set the cone outside the fence where it wouldn't show and every few days I'd take the bucket outside and dump food waste in the cone. 

After a couple years, however, frustrated that anyone who entered our yard through the back gate left it open, forcing me to play tag with my dogs once a week, I locked the gate and said oh well to my ambitions for saintliness because it was too much trouble to reach the cone from the other side of the yard (see above, the part about lazy and whiny).

Then Robespierre and Cleopatra became interested in recycling and one day I said: "Hey kids!  Let's put on a show!"  Or something to that effect.

Cleo's kindergarten maintained a worm composting box.  The worms lived in the dirt and the kids fed the worms banana peels.

From Offsprung.com:

"Kids love worms, and Recycleworks has found an expensive way to tap into that desire: the Educational Waste Buster, or what we know and love as a worm bin.

Why worms?
Worms break down more food garbage than can be accomplished with passive composting, and according to City Farmer, can be done inside or outside. Yeah. I suppose that’s less disgusting, than say, owning a ferret."

I briefly considered installing a worm bin in our kitchen but:  Worms.  Eew.

I announced that we were going to compost outside, after we dug up the green cone and re-situated it inside the yard for easier access (see above: lazy and whiny).

So we dislodged the cone from the basket and dug.  We dug up clean dirt with no evidence that it had ever contained anything besides dirt, except for the styrofoam tray I'd once accidentally dropped into the cone.  Then we dug a corresponding hole inside the yard in a place where the cone would get enough sunshine to facilitate the saintly composting process.  The kids dug eagerly as they argued over who'd get to dump in the first bucket and how they'd divide dumping responsibilities thereafter.  There was much negotiation over who'd carry the bucket, who'd open the cone, and who'd execute the actual dumpage.

For the first week composting went quite smoothly.  Responsibilities were divided equitably and arguing was at a minimum.

The first fissures appeared when the bucket we kept under the sink started developing an aura, shall we say.  Immediately it became my job to open it, close it, dump it and wash it.  Soon after that the green cone also began to become more, um, interesting, as fruit flies and maggots and all kinds of other little buggies took up residence to aid in the composting process.  Bingo: composting is now 100% my responsibility.  I fill the bucket, empty the bucket, wash the bucket, contend with the fruit flies, while the kids keep their distance since, apparently, they're whiny too.

And they wonder why I refuse to get them a guinea pig.

Making The Transition From Incandescent To Fluorescent

When we last saw our hero she was explaining the fundamental differences between incandescent lighting and fluorescent lighting.  Let's continue our discussion, already in progress.

I started buying compact fluorescent bulbs about a year ago.  When I first saw compact fluorescents in the 1990s they were tall and square and didn't fit most lamps or fixtures; now you can even get floodlights with the twisty stuff inside the globe, as well as chandelier flame bulbs.  They take a moment to warm up after they're switched on; as soon as they're running at full force they give off as much light as incandescent bulbs but with much less generation of heat and usage of electricity.  They're way more expensive than comparable incandescent bulbs but they're supposed to last up to seven years, as opposed to the approximately 1000 hours alloted to typical incandescent bulbs, except for the Centennial Light.

As incandescent bulbs would burn out in the kitchen or family room or entry hall I'd replace them with fluorescents, but something strange happened: after a couple of months one of the bulbs burned out.  Defective, I figured, so I unscrewed it and took it back to where I'd bought it, where it was cheerfully replaced.  A month later another bulb burned out, and I exchanged that one too.  Every few months another bulb would go out and I began to wonder if maybe the combination of fluorescents and incandescents in the same fixture might be causing a problem, so I started replacing more bulbs.  No change, and the house was growing darker due to my reluctance to bring out the ladder just for one or two or six bulbs.

Eventually I saw the light (pun intended -- sorry): maybe the rate of bulb-burning-outage had something to do with the way the Lutron system works.

A little background on Lutron: it's a programmable system that allows you to set a variety of lighting schemes for whichever rooms in your home are connected to it.  We have four settings: one turns on all our kitchen lights, another turns on all our family room lights, the third operates the kitchen and the family room together and the fourth works the kitchen, family room, dining room and front entry all with one press of a button.  The bedrooms, bathrooms and basement are all independent of the Lutron system.  Anywhere in the house you find a Lutron control you can press the bottom button and the kitchen lights will go on while all the other lights connected to the system will fade out.  To turn on all the lights connected to the system you press the top button on any control.

The advantage to the Lutron system for me is that, as a scared-of-the-dark person I can press the control in my bedroom and half the lights in the house will switch on.  There are other advantages to the system also, which I've never used.  For example, you can devote one button to a "romantic" setting, which will dim the lights in your chosen location.

And here's the problem: compact fluorescent bulbs burn out if they're repeatedly dimmed.  Don't ask me why because I don't really care why; all I care about is that Lutron has the ability to dim the lights, and even if I don't choose to dim the lights and make the house romantic for me and the kids, the lights eeease on oh-so-imperceptibly when we press the button. 

This means that every time we turned on the lights the fluorescents said to themselves: "Whoa!  Dimming going on here!  Not liking this one bit!" and within a few months handed in their resignations without even the courtesy of two weeks' notice.

So here I am with all the arm-and-a-leg light bulbs capriciously burning out and I'm returning them to Home Depot stores throughout the county so they won't peg me as a serial-returner, and now I have to remove all the non-dimmable fluorescents and replace them with dimmable compact fluorescents, which do exist but aren't usually (yet) available in your neighborhood supermarket.  This requires me to drag a ten foot ladder through the house, trying not to drop it on my foot or slam it into walls, because I want my kids to see me using tools, although sometimes I wonder if it defeats the purpose when they see me using tools clumsily or inappropriately.  Then I have to climb the ladder, whimpering all the way since, in addition to fearing the dark, I'm afraid of heights.  Then I must exile Cleo to her bedroom until I learn whether the gases released from the fluorescent bulb I've just dropped from a great height will stunt her growth.  Meanwhile, the compact fluorescent bulbs are all slightly different sizes from comparable incandescents, so many of them don't quite fit into some of the more than 24,001 different light fixtures in our house.

Check back in a few days for tales of the joys of shopping for light bulbs online.

I Was Going To Write About The History Of Light Bulbs But This Is Way More Interesting

Guess how many years this light bulb has been burning.  Go on -- take a guess.

No.

Nope -- way longer than that.

Nuh uh -- not even close.

Find this clip at MSNBC.com

The Livermore, CA Fire Department's Centennial Light is a four watt hand blown light bulb with a carbon filament that has been burning almost continuously as a firehouse night light since 1901. 

Read the above line again and catch your breath -- it wasn't a typo: the bulb has been burning more than 107 years, which makes it slightly older than Hugh Hefner, and considerably brighter and more useful.

Although quite bright, the bulb is very shy: it doesn't give interviews.  Still, the bulb's press has included recognitions from the Guinness Book of World Records, Ripley's Believe It Or Not, CNN, NBC, NPR, and newspapers across the country and around the world, as far away as New Zealand. 

The bulb is monitored by the Livermore Pleasanton Fire Department "Bulb Cam", which refreshes every ten seconds.

Why this sudden fixation on lighting?  Because lately, in self defense, I've had to take a crash course in the qualities of different types of light bulbs lately.

Would you believe the light fixtures in my house require a minimum of 13 different KINDS of light bulbs?  This would include two sizes of fluorescent tubes; tiny (and costly) plug-in halogens for a six bulb imported-from-Italy-and-thus-not-returnable chandelier on which only five bulbs have worked since it was installed (but it's pretty, and isn't that what really matters?); then there are the flood lights, the spotlights, the small and medium makeup lights (when I wear makeup, which is rare, I usually put it on in the car in order to have a reason why it looks so bad), the track lights and the domed ceiling fixtures. 

Clearly the people who designed my home were crazy.  Hi Tricia.  Hi Tom.  Big kisses!

Half the lights in our house are controlled by a Lutron lighting system (this is not a plug -- no pun intended), which allows us to light entire areas of our home with the press of a single button anywhere in the house.

As a guilt-ridden conscientious consumer, I've gradually been making the transition to compact fluorescent bulbs which, as everyone surely knows (sorry -- didn't mean to call you Shirley) have been mandated by the 2007 Energy Bill to replace incandescent bulbs in the next four to 12 years.

What's the difference between incandescent bulbs and fluorescent bulbs?  For a complete explanation take a look at How Stuff Works.com:

"[I]ncandescent light bulbs ... have a very thin tungsten filament that is housed inside a glass sphere... Electricity runs through the filament. Because the filament is so thin, it offers a good bit of resistance to the electricity, and this resistance turns electrical energy into heat. The heat is enough to make the filament white hot, and the "white" part is light. The filament glows because of the heat -- it incandesces.

The problem with incandescent light bulbs is ... [h]eat is not light ... so all of the energy spent creating heat is a waste...

A fluorescent bulb uses a completely different method to produce light. There are electrodes at both ends of a fluorescent tube, and a gas containing argon and mercury vapor is inside the tube. A stream of electrons flows through the gas from one electrode to the other... These electrons bump into the mercury atoms and excite them. As the mercury atoms move from the excited state back to the unexcited state, they give off ultraviolet photons. These photons hit the phosphor coating the inside of the fluorescent tube, and this phosphor creates visible light...

A fluorescent bulb produces less heat, so it is ... four to six times more efficient than incandescent bulbs. That's why you can buy a 15-watt fluorescent bulb that produces the same amount of light as a 60-watt incandescent bulb."

So what's my problem?  Why all this research and twaddle about the irreconcilable differences between incandescents and fluorescents?  Check back tomorrow.

If you're still curious about the history of light bulbs click here and knock yourself out.

They Might Just Make It After All

Kids really do want to make a difference.

A month ago I posted about my concern that Americans' environmentalism will fizzle as soon as we find something easier or more appealing, like American Idol or something -- naah, that could never happen.  Maybe space travel...

Anyway, today Robespierre told me that one of his friends is circulating a petition around the fifth grade suggesting that the school install solar panels to cut down on electricity use.  He signed the petition and wants to organize a fund drive to raise money for solar panels.

Way to go friend!  Way to go Robey!  Way to go fifth grade!  Looks like at least some of my preaching encouragement has gotten through.

See also:   Kids and Politics, Kids and Giving

What are you doing to reduce your environmental impact?

Carry FeeFiFoto personalized canvas tote bags to the supermarket to cut down on landfill use.

Teaching Our Children To Clean Up Our Act

The "Green" movement: does it have staying power?

Amy, at Mums The Wurd, showcases the "Dream Green" collection of children's and toddler tees from a boutique in Nashville called Peas on Earth (cute name -- you know how I love puns).  These simple cotton tees have cute graphics and captions like "Aspiring Environmentalist" and "Aspiring Humanitarian":

"I'm thrilled that there are boutiques like Peas on Earth out there. I believe they will play a part in making a difference in our children's future. It's all about raising awareness and they're on the right track."

I worry about movements like this one.  I worry that protecting and restoring our environment may turn out to be the flavor of the month (or decade), and that we'll move on once we tire of environmentalism.  I hope I'm wrong.  I hope that by teaching our children habits of sensible conservation we'll foster and perpetuate in them an attitude of respectful and thoughtful use of resources.

What do you think?

Oops -- Must Have Gotten The Zip Code Wrong

Enough with the catalogs already!  Enough with the real estate agents dying to sell my house and help me buy a new one.  Enough with the offers to trim my trees, resurface my driveway, clean my teeth or find me a date for Saturday night.  Check out Not Always Right.  I thought I was the only person who did this:

"Why Asking Why Is A Bad Idea ...

Me: “Okay, and if you could just sign the top line of this receipt copy for the return, you’ll be all set.”

Customer: “Wait, this isn’t my correct address. This address printed on this receipt is not mine.”

Me: “Yes ma’am, I realize that. However, our cash registers make us enter address and telephone information whenever anyone does a return or exchange. It’s for fraud prevention, etc. However, whenever I request a customer’s address, they panic, clutch their purse to their chest and hiss, ‘Why would you need to know that?’ Or they shout, ‘I’m not getting on any more [g** d***] mailing lists!’ or they are conspiracy theorists who are convinced that I’m an agent of the government monitoring their spending habits through my DOS-based cash register. Or they think I want to come and hang out with them after I get off work. And it really doesn’t matter how many times I try to explain that it’s a fraud prevention requirement and that I’m neither immediately passing it on to Big Brother nor to my drug dealer named Tito. So I make up addresses because I don’t particularly want to have these conversations anymore.”

Customer, after a long pause: “Yes, that’s a very good plan you’ve come up with.” *scampers away from me*"

I have a fake address, based on my sister's former house, my father's office, and a nearby zip code.  It rolls off my tongue and pen so fluently that nobody ever doubts me; in fact, as a preposterously honest person who couldn't lie if I were paid or threatened, which is why my destiny is not to be a professional poker player or used car salesperson, this is one of the few untruths I can tell with eye contact and a straight face.

Seriously, though, last year I happened on 41pounds.org (hat tip to Carolyn, at their brand new blog):

"Does anyone actually like junk mail? When I open my mailbox, I’m hoping to find some personal mail or a glossy magazine I like — not piles of ads and catalogs. Is everyone on this planet trying to sell me something? And then there’s the vast waste involved — 100 million trees, 28 billion gallons of water, more greenhouse gas emissions than 2.8 million cars… I started my own personal fight to keep my junk mail out of my mailbox a long time ago. I called the 800 number of every catalog as it came in the door. I tried sending “take me off your list” notes in those postage-paid envelopes that come with credit card offers. I contacted the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). I was a dedicated warrior against the deluge…but it kept coming.

And then I found 41pounds.org. I signed up for their service, and they actually stopped my junk mail.

I became a true believer, and then I signed up to work for them to let more people know how easy it is to stop their junk mail. How does 41pounds.org do it? By contacting more than 20 direct mail kingpins to get your name off their lists (including any catalogs you don’t want). This virtually eliminates your junk mail within a couple of months ...

I also like that 41pounds.org donates more than 1/3 of the $41 fee to the environmental or community organization you choose when you sign up, like American Forests, Laurie David’s StopGlobalWarming campaign, Carbonfund.org and Green Yoga Association ..."

Does it work?  I only wish they could eliminate my bills as easily.  After the three month startup period, I now receive less than one quarter of the mail I used to before joining.