The weather was nice for a short time today so I went for a walk around the duck pond at work today.  There were no ducks, but the turtles have been populating.  I saw at least 30 turtles sunbathing peacefully, except for two who were in the mud among trash.  There were so many bottles and pieces of trash strewn on the water's edge, in the surrounding bushes, and even up in the grass past the sidewalk.  It's so disgusting, I don't know how people can just throw their trash on the ground and not walk the extra ten steps to a trash can.  What's worse is that this place is home to so  much wildlife, and these idiots have put those animals in danger.

My family is too lazy to trek to our old suburb on the weekend, and my hometown friends don't live out there anymore, but I am going to start asking around for someone to help me with a clean-up project.  One, because it will look a lot weirder if it's just me out there in my rain boots, kitchen gloves, and a trash bag.  Second, I want to sort it into recyclables and garbage and I don't want to get stuck carrying both garbage bags.

When I see stuff like that, garbage on the side of the road, bottles overflowing trash cans with no recycling bins in sight, it just doesn't make sense.  It is so easy to fix those situations.  Sometimes I get compulsive about it, mostly recycling, because I can do it at home.  I have access to recycling bins in so many places.  So I don't see why it's so hard to hold on to a recyclable item until you get to a recycling bin.   I wish more people thought this way.  I even bought a book about recycling for my niece when she gets older.  Books are the best.

Labels: be the good, recycling

I won't lie or pretend, this is going to be highly personal, and also probably highly emotional.


I'm still up thanks to the nausea, lovely side effect of a combination of my medication. The pain killers haven't done much to keep me asleep this time through. Typing with one hand to avoid stretching out my fingers and feeling anything move inside my cast.

Listening to the beauty in Rosebud again, what better way to let your feelings wash over you?

The cancer has spread in my grandmother.  We don't know for sure if that's how it got there, spreading out from her head or if a new breed appeared on it's own. A cancerous tumor the size of a cantaloupe in her hip.

So fuck the pain killers, the nausea, the minor flaws in my plans.  A woman I love is dying sooner than we all thought.

There's this feeling when I first wake up, when I don't recall it right away, and then I think of her and feel guilty for forgetting.  I worry, is she still alive?  Have I lost her?

But I pick my head up and try not to show it.  And I had a good day.  Someone totally cool wants to be on my team.  She shared our passions with our main boss and he wants us to expand those ideas and create an eco conscious, green program not just for the office but the company.  And the crazy thing is, they don't think my ideas are crazy.  Going beyond recycling to composting, beyond bringing living plants into the office to planting trees yearly, beyond energy efficient to conserving energy and reducing waste.

I finished my book, The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker, a "soft sci-fi/YA dystopia" about drastic environmental changes that occurred when the narrator was a pre-teen.  Sophisticated and well written, I often forgot the main character was also just a young girl at times. Finishing the book, seeing what persistency and innovation can lead you towards, I am so excited to walk down this road.

Labels: books, going green, Karen Thompson Walker, personal writing, recovery, recycling, Rosebud, Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, The Age of Miracles, Vera

I don't even know where to start.  Tonight, for the first time in years, I pumped my legs towards the sky.  It gets darker here at night, but the natural night lights shine bright enough for even a novice like myself to discern multiple constellations. At nightfall this weather feels more like fall and between the light chills and the stars and the nature all around, I feel so...me.

I saw twelve deer, all at once, grazing between neighborhoods, frolicking together.  They were all fairly young, small and still without antlers.  I've never seen that many together at once.  Their smell was strong near the swing set, I almost suspected it had wafted over from the horses down the road, but maybe that's the effect of a small herd like that.  It is very familiar to the smell of being on a horse farm though.  Not quite the same pungent bomb of excrement baking in the sun, but strong like the smell of sweat still thick in their fur.

The neighborhood isn't finished being built yet, so the days are filled with construction noises - trucks, hammers, cement mixers, the upbeat swell of Spanish pop music.  Noise pollution isn't the only type they're filling the streets with.  Despite the massive dumpsters in the streets, they throw recyclable plastic and aluminum from roofs, across yards, and there is trash accumulating three lots away from any current construction.  I can't stand the idea of what damage can be done if those plastics are left to mingle in the still ever present nature.  I used to walk at night or on Sundays with Tess to clean up the streets.  Now it's just me.  I wish I could get more people motivated to prevent the pollution, but I also enjoy the time spent alone out here.  

Labels: night time, recycling, wilderness