Do You Realize?

More Green Reviews: Water Conservation Stuff, Part 1

Those of you who spend any time here probably remember that we've recently been having some renovations done to our upstairs. I had reached the point at which I refused to walk barefoot on our carpets, which I was afraid harbored MRSA or possibly a hantavirus (even though I've never seen a rodent upstairs... that's why they're called irrational phobias, people). We'd also been sharing one shower (the five of us) off and on for two three years because we were too  lazy  indecisive  overwhelmed with daily crazy  busy with other things to repair the master shower's multitude of leaky problems. And so, we ripped up the carpet, tore out both showers and bathtubs and toilets and realeased West Nile Virus and black mold spores and replaced it all with new shit (and shitters). Kohler's brand-spanking-new Persuade toilets with Dual-Flush technology, to be precise. These were purchased, along with their also-brand-spanking-new Forte 1.75 gpm handheld shower heads, as part of our attempt to reduce our water usage a little (since we're kind of stuck with that damned money-and-water-sucking pool for now). Oh, and I got a new energy-and-water-efficient washer and dryer, since our old ones were older than our youngest teenager and were randomly and unpredictably leaving holes and rust spots in our clothing and using approximately 300 gallons of water per washload. Even so, we found someone at hubby's work who took them off our hands, so they didn't go to the landfill.

With all of this water conserving doody in our house, I reckon that damned cement pond in our backyard is now truly justified, right?  </sarcasm>

The toilets and showers we had in the upstairs bathrooms were water hogs. In the second bath upstairs, the one we had to share for a couple of a few years, the water diverter on the faucet didn't fully function, and so water poured from both the shower head and the faucet for the duration of one's shower. This would have been ideal if we'd had a small leprechaun needing to bathe each time we stepped in the shower or a sailor bailing water out of the tub as if we were a sinking ship. Alas, we had neither, and so we wasted copious amounts of water in the shower. For a good while, I kept a 3-gallon bucket under the faucet to catch water & then used it to mop floors or water gardens. Unfortunately, I was the only one who would remember to use it, and I already take the shortest showers in the household (except for Youngest, who simply doesn't shower more than once a week, brave water conservationist that he is). As for the toilets, I don't know how to tell how many gallons they used per flush, but if I had to guess, it would be in the neighborhood of thirty-four. Seriously, after seeing these new ones, it seems quite ridiculous.

Since I've blathered on incessantly and not ever gotten to the point here, and this post is already exceeding my pissant-sized attention span, I will cover each of our new water-savvy appliances separately, in separate posts, on separate days.

Dual-flush toilets, it seems, are nothing new in Australia and Europe, where they seem to understand the whole conservation issue a little more intuitively than we wasteful Americans. Here, stateside, however, dual-flush toilets are still "new-fangled." There are two flush options: 1.6 gallons for sizable solids, and 0.8 gallons for liquid or smaller loads. (Or, for those who prefer more directive, one button for pee and one button for poop.) The toilet looks differently, mounts differently, and flushes differently than traditional toilets. I most love that there are no screws and caps on the base around which boy piss accumulates and requires toothbrush scrubbing to clean. It's amazing.

One would think that, given the tiny amount of water in the bowl, that there would be more clogs or would be harder to keep clean than other toilets. I was skeptical myself. However, we've tested both flushing options multiple times by now, and I haven't had any complaints. Apparently, the flushing mechanism for this type of toilet lends itself to less clogs than traditional American toilets.

As a related aside, here's an interesting fact that I found on several plumbing websites. Because of the differences in plumbing technologies in various countries, a European or Asian toilet often has a brush next to it as a matter of course, to take care of "skid marks," which Europeans and Asians find normal and acceptable, but which we North Americans find disgusting. However, North American toilets often have a plunger next to it, which Europeans and Asians find distasteful. When I think about it in those terms, I most definitely would rather take care of a skid mark or two than a toilet boiling over with shit and toilet paper, yo.

Some people have mentioned that the bowls are harder to keep clean, but... how can I put this delicately... this one must be designed by geniuses who conducted many embarrassing experiments based on anatomy, because somehow, even though there are only about three teaspoonfuls of water in the bowl, the poop seems to be attracted to it like a tranny to a shoe sale. When flushed, the water pressure has almost always been enough to wash away any stuck bits. And, if you have to flush a second time, it still doesn't waste as much water as a typical American 3.5 gallon flush. (Admittedly, we haven't gone to eat all-you-can-eat Chinese or the local greaseburgers-with-a-side-of-greasefries joint in a while, so I might change my review a little then.)

Stay tuned for my review of LG's Tromm Steamwasher and matching dryer, as well as Kohler's brand-spanking-new Forte 1.75 gpm handheld shower heads.

Should I stay or should I go?

"If I go there will be trouble, and if I go it will be double." Boy, The Clash hit it right on the head. I'll get to my major indecision momentarily.

In the meantime, I interrupt this regular blog post to report that the remodel is lumbering slowly and painfully forward. The carpet is gone; the hardwood is in place everywhere except the stairs, which will happen tomorrow. Both bathtubs, both toilets, and varying useless accessories are here, but not installed yet. Useless, you ask? Let's see. The supply elbow and the mounting bracket and the shower hoses have all come in, but the actual low-flow handheld showerheads? No. The temperature-adjusting-on-off-handle-thingy for the kids' bath has arrived, but the faucet itself? Nope. The temperature-adjusting-on-off-handle-thingy for the master shower? Uh-uh. All of this is a long way of reporting that we have no bathing facilities for at least two days, possibly until late Monday. Today I showered at a friend's house; thanks, Kelly! Other days, we'll snag one at Anytime Fitness, but because if I did that, I would feel obligated to, you know, work out first, I'm almost glad I'm about to drive to Memphis to pick up the teenagers. Hotel rooms have showers, yo.

Now. About that prophetic Clash song. My husband has been strongly encouraging (read: nagging) me to take a week and go somewhere, anywhere, just for myself, to reset my sanity. He knows that, between spending all day every with Youngest, physically moving all of our belongings from room to room in a seemingly endless circle, and dealing with the noise and anxious decisions accompanying this remodel, I am physically and mentally spent. He said that it was probably the best birthday and anniversary gift he could give me. Time away from everyone and everything. I've been resisting, both because we're hemorrhaging money for this remodel, and because sometimes I'm uncomfortable being alone, with just myself for company.

He told me last night that I could even go back to Italy if I wanted. Italy. That's playing dirty. Hardball. You see, ever since we went to Italy for our anniversary in 2002, I've had a restless, barely containable urge to go back, particularly to the tiny, medieval town of Varenna, on Lake Como. It's an ache: visceral, almost gut-wrenching. Have you ever felt that way about a place? It's the perfect place to go and do nothing for a week. Just me and my writing and my camera. And yet.

And yet, there's that nagging unrest and doubt in my head. Will I enjoy my own company, or will I collapse with loneliness?  Should I go back to Italy, which I really think of as our place, at the risk of it becoming my place? Or should I go back to Hawaii, which I also loved, just not as deeply and irresistibly? Can I leave my responsibilities to everyone else here and fulfill my obligations to myself for a change?

Home renovation and insomnia...

... do NOT go together like peanut butter & jelly. I should know. I'm currently experiencing both, enjoying neither.

Recently, the time finally presented itself that we had enough money to tackle some of the renovations we've been so desperately needing. Tops on the list were both upstairs bathrooms & carpeting.

Our carpeting, throughout the upstairs and on the stairs themselves, had reached a state of such squalor I was afraid to walk on it barefoot for fear of catching some rare and exotic bacterial infection. With 4 vomiting cats, 3 food-and-beverage-spilling kids, and 2 occasionally incontinent dogs, beige carpet was quite possibly the worst of all possible floor coverings for this family. It had to go. Somewhere but here. Unfortunately, that somewhere is a landfill.

It's possibly been two years since we've had two fully functioning upstairs bathrooms. First, the kids' bath developed an enormous leak which rather quickly led to a hole in the downstairs ceiling just below. We discontinued shower use in there and shared the master shower with the kids. We did this for a couple of months half a year while life generally got in the way of calling a plumber to check it out. Then our shower developed a leak which rather quickly led to a ginormous water stain on the downstairs ceiling just below. We finally called a plumber (since the kids' toilet had also begun to clog rather quickly and easily), whom we paid generously to tell us there was nothing wrong with the plumbing that would cause these leaks and for whom the toilet refused to clog. Another month or two passed of self-plumbing and sharing a shower amongst five people. A different plumber was summoned, who diagnosed and fixed the toilet problem. (Who, by the way, flushes a damn Popsicle stick, people? Really. Only in this family.) Unfortunately, he confirmed (after enlargening the hole in the downstairs ceiling) that the pipes seemed to be in working order, and that he believed the leaks to be water leaking through holes in the shower grout. So we bought some grout and effectively slapped a band-aid on an arterial bleed. Two showers again. For a very short while. Until the shower head broke behind our shower wall. Needless to say, the bathroom situation has been screaming to be rectified for a little while. Since the house was built in the eighties, when carpet and wallpaper in a bathroom and "garden/jacuzzi tubs" (deep, oval, and ugly with built-in steps) were all considered good ideas, new "stuff" was required of this remodel.

Since we wanted to leave as little environmental impact as possible, we I did a lot of research, which yielded mixed results.

Reclaimed hardwood floors offered neither the look nor the price we desired. Bamboo flooring wasn't sturdy enough for pet toenails and general furniture scraping. Eventually I came up with FSC-certified Brazilian cherry from EcoTimber. Our flooring guy was very helpful in getting this for us. We decided to use the engineered version, as it uses less overall wood. The usual worry with engineered hardwood flooring is that there is such a thin layer of finished hardwood, the floors cannot be refinished. This particular wood, however, has the thickest "working layer" he'd ever seen, though, and should take at least one refinishing, if necessary.

We wanted recycled glass tile to re-tile the showers. Until we discovered it was about $100 per square foot, installed. Even just the tile itself from another distributor was $75-$95. Instead we chose to use tile of non-recycled glass from a company that at least has some good environmental practices, like recycling of its rejected tile, its fly ash, and its water. I think I remember (at 5:14 a.m., after being up since 2:00) it also uses renewable resources for its plant's electricity. This tile was $14 per square foot.

We paid extra for Kohler fixtures, including their brand-newest handheld 1.75 gpm showerheads and sleek European dual-flush toilets. Bowing to the possible demands of any future buyers of the house, we got the BubbleMassage option on the bathtub, though we eschewed ugly jacuzzi-type whirlpool jets. I don't want my bathtub to look like a damn space ship.

That's everything going into this phase (I hope I get to squeeze a painter out of this, too, for walls & cabinets). Next we tackle countertops and sinks. We I want renewable resources used: Paperstone for the kids' bath, Vetrazzo recycled glass countertops in ours. Unfortunately, they, too, are ridiculously expensive. ($2000 freaking dollars for a not-even-five-foot countertop in the kids' bath? Between $2500 & $4000 for ours?) I'm debating waiting until we have the money for that, or going for US-sourced granite (since granite sourced from third world countries is quarried with abominable worker conditions). I know. It's non-renewable. It is one reason I agonize. It's what I do.

In two-and-a-half hours, the contractors are returning to make copious amounts of hideous noise, so that I won't be able to take a nap. I tossed and turned from 2:00-4:00, then got up to take an Ativan and write this. I'm just now getting a little sleepy, I think. Perfect timing, since I need to be up an hour before the contractors get here, don't you think?

Me, Me, Me, Meme

I was tagged for this meme by Byrning Bunny, one of my favorite bloggers. She has a blog where she participates in many memes, from Green Thumb Sunday to Unconscious Mutterings. She is intelligent, an animal-lover and gardenre like me, and she has the cutest little boy ever. Go see for yourself. Anyway, here are the rules:

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning of the post.
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves in their post.
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.
4. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

The Questions:

1. What was I doing ten years ago?
   I was filling in for Youngest's Pre-K teacher, who was on maternity leave.
2. What are five things on my to do list for today?
   Just five? Grocery shopping, mopping, mowing the lawn, planning a menu for fifteen for the next almost-a-week, picking Poogan up from the veterinary hospital.
3. Snacks I enjoy?
   Devil's food cupcakes with Duncan Hines fluffy white frosting.... mmmm.... Lucky Layla drinkable yogurts (especially pina colada, with its chunks of coconut and pineapple), peanut butter and apples.
   
4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire?
   Oh, geez. Let's see. First, we would pay off our debts and the debts of our parents and siblings. We would set aside enough money for all the kids' college educations.  I would go back to college myself. We would finish the repairs on our house, sell it, and move to a little plot of land large enough for my animals to run around on, preferably in Vermont. I would open at least one non-profit, no-kill animal shelter. I would travel to New Guinea to study their indigenous birds. I would go back to Italy. I would travel around the world volunteering and photographing natural disasters to raise awareness and support for relief. It's too early to really think about this one yet. Show me the money first, bitches!
5. Three of my bad habits?
   Are you kidding? I don't have any bad habits! LOL! Okay, maybe a couple... Let's see... I can be an incredible pig; my husband hates to ride in my car. I curse like a sailor. I sometimes hold grudges.
6. Five places I have lived?
   I'm quite boring. I've only lived in two cities my entire life. How about houses? The houses in which I've lived were never boring. They all have stories.
   
   1. I've lived in the place where I grew up, Booger Hollow, on 200+ acres of beautiful forested land in the middle of nowhere.
   2. The first house where hubby, the kids & I lived was a little gingerbread house on a corner of a neighborhood called Saddle Mountain. We loved that house, but we never took the option to buy it, mainly because of needed updating and plans to widen the highway in front of it. Eight years later, that highway is exactly the same as it was when we lived there. Damn.
   3. The first house we owned had some great features, like floor-to-12-foot-ceiling windows, which I adored. The walls of the living room were buttery yellow, which is my favorite color. But it took us over a year to sell it because it was synthetic stucco, and people had heard horror stories of real stucco houses in the south rotting from the inside when termites got behind it. That house, by the way, is still standing; no termites have eaten it to the foundation.
   4. When we moved out to Texas, we moved into a house we'd never seen before. The weekend hubby & I were supposed to have found a house, he had a terrible car accident on his way to work the day before leaving.
   5. This is our third house in eight years. We hate it. More specifically, we hate the people from whom we bought it. I guess the guy was a friend of an inspector, because we've since found so many fucking problems an inspector should have found. We currently only use one shower, as water drips liberally through to the downstairs when we use it. I just took down some of our plantation shutters only to discover that the door had once had double-paned glass, one of which had been broken out, with shards left around the edges. To make matters worse, they had painted the trim since breaking the glass and just left the glass shards there, painting over them. Un-freaking-believable.
7. Five jobs I have had?
   My first job was opening a Dress Barn; I worked as a cashier at Kroger; I worked as an assistant to the marketing director of our mall; I worked as a server in many restaurants; and as a dining room manager in two of them; and I managed and taught classes at a scrapbook supply store.
8. How did you name your blog? I adore the premise of this Flaming Lips song about life and death and the impermanence of it all, and that's where I got it. If you haven't heard it, I'd highly suggest listening to it.

Okay. Tagging. Does it say how many we have to tag? Here goes: Blue Like the Sky, RedMolly, Tenuous at Best, and while I totally don't expect anything to come of it, I'd love to see Crystal's answers, over at Boobs, Injuries, and Dr. Pepper. I occasionally stalk her blog for hours at a time. She makes me laugh. A lot. I'll go tell them I tagged them when I get back from my 100-mile-round-trip to Youngest's school & Whole Foods. Or, if you make it here before then, don't make me do all the work... get posting! Heh.

Update

Busy, busy, busy as a bee. That's me.

A few things that I have had going on:

• We're getting ready to start graduation invitations for Eldest. It took a week of online digging to find a company that offers grad invites made from recycled content paper. Although they could have stepped up with recycled content in the envelopes, I'm rather pleased that I even found these. I'd love to see a printing company step up with all-recycled-content invites and envies, printed with vegetable dyes.
• A thunderstorm night before last annihilated the gazebo we had just installed in the back yard (I am white girl extraordinaire, and sunscreen alone will NOT cut it); we hadn't yet put the bolts into the ground, and our famed North Texas wind turned the damned thing into a parachute; it flipped over our fence into our neighbor's driveway. AAAAAARRRRRRGH!
• We've finally hired someone to come take care of the rest of the digging, stump removal, and pea gravel installation around the pool. (We'd officially run out of places (legal or otherwise) to dump wheelbarrows full of dirt.) And cleaning out an irrigation pipe we've found while digging and the broken sprinkler pipes. And the sprinkler wires I may or may not have accidentally sliced with the Mantis last spring.
• I've been scrubbing grout in my tile floors. Completely gross job, with four cats and three dogs and humans traipsing on it (and if one of the dogs decides to "mark" something, those grout lines become perfect little river beds. UGH.
• I've planted our elephant ears and caladiums. Now the wait begins for weather hot enough to coax them out of the ground.

Those are the main things that have been occupying my time the last few days. What have you been up to, gardening or otherwise?

Edited to Add: The birdie who made this nest is a robin, and she has three eggs!

A Tuesday Ten--How Does Your Garden Grow? Edition

Spring has most definitely sprung here in USDA Zone Seven. We've been working diligently outdoors sporadically for a week or so and for the last two days straight outdoors, planting beds, trimming branches, shoveling dirt and rocks, getting the pool ready to open for the year. Here are ten things we've been busy doing:

1. I finished splitting and planting my hostas in the mostly-shade bed, along with new companion plants for texture and color variation. We now have 7-10 different varieties of hostas, and I'm pleased to announce that all of them have begun to grow vigorously. For companion plants we chose 2 different ferns, one tall and traditional, the other lacy and low and clump-forming. We also added some beautiful coleus. (The jasmine in the photo below is the one that was pronounced dead a couple of years ago.)

2. We've trimmed and thinned the bushes and trees out by the pool. The crepe myrtles were out of control.

3. We've arranged an electrician to come out this morning to fix two of our outdoor outlets, the poolside lights, and figure out what damage Marshmallow did here (I'm surprised the fool did not electrocute herself):

4. Hubby's trying to grow tomatoes again this year, a Brandywine plant. The first year he tried was a miserable failure. When we didn't really know for sure which was the "up" end of the tomato cage, we should have called it quits.

5. I've finished planting my new bed full of perennials. This is the first time we've planted so many; we've planted one here and one there, mixing them with annuals, but it inevitably leads to neglected perennials, so I wanted to try a bed of all perennials. There's columbine, salvia, flax, candytuft, bee balm, and a patch of transplanted speedwell groundcover, to see how it will react to being moved (before I pull it all up willy-nilly and killy-killy it all). I've added a bird feeder and birdbath, (and look at the size of the birds we've attracted! Heh.) and I will hang a matching hummingbird feeder soon.

Along the wall (in the photo), you can barely make out the foxglove and Turk's cap. (If anyone knows what the low-growing bushes are, please let me know... we've forgotten, though we love them.) I love the foxglove, but I have to admit to an odd combination of a queasy, uneasy feeling knowing they are so poisonous to humans and a slight thrill knowing I'm totally prepared if I'm sent on any spy mission that calls for poison. I know I'll be suspicious of any herbal teas hubby presents me, unbidden, for awhile. Heh. Here's a closer view of the lovely, deadly foxglove.

6. Hubby has been diligently scrubbing and vacuuming, unclogging the pool filter, scrubbing and vacuuming, unclogging the pool filter, scrubbing and vacuuming the pool. I'm glad he's got the patience. I would have drained the pool and dropped some C4 in the hole long ago.

7. We've picked out new patio furniture and patio dining sets, all in metal, so as to deter Marshmallow from making a snack of them, as she has our wicker (and our electrical cords... see #3).

8. Middle and I prepared these:

There are two of them along the same wall as the chewed electrical cord. Any ideas for filling them? This took an insanely long amount of time to prepare, and we were insanely proud of them when we were finished. We dug a foot down into the clay soil, Middle pushing the wheelbarrow out to a vacant lot for dumping*, and then we filled the cavity with pea gravel. Let me see you grow there NOW, weed bastards! MUAAAAAHAHAHA! (That's the honest-to-Pete correct spelling, according to the Genius that is RedMolly.)

9. I just purchased some pretty lemon-zesty petunias and some fuchsia bougainvilleas for hanging. I will put them in my coconut-fiber-lined hanging baskets, once I trim the damn things down to size (I trimmed one... ONE... last night, and I considered it a great fucking victory half an hour later. Just three more to go.)

10. We've arranged a sprinkler man to come out to fix our broken sprinkler heads (and the wires that I might have accidentally sliced last year with the Mantis).

So, tell me how spring has sprung in your corner of the world. Are you planting, weeding, readying a cursed (in this case, pronounced KER-sed, two syllables) swimming pool? How are you spending your spring days out-of-doors?

*No, this is probably not even close to legal, so can anyone tell me what else to do with 20 wheelbarrow-loads full of dirt? We spread about 10 loads in the 3-foot "alley" between our privacy fence and the next-door-neighbors'. It's better than the cigarette butts they throw back there.

Green in the Bathroom

Now that my temper tantrum is over (although I'm still irritated), let's get to the green stuff.

This weekend, we took a trip down to Austin, which is sort of the San Fran of Texas. (It's truly ironic that the most liberal city in Texas is the state capital, but that the rest of this freakin' state is as conservative and Republican as it gets!) After doing some Internet research on some of the products we are considering for our bathroom overhauls, we found that there is a store in Austin called Ecowise that carries a lot of it, so we planned a roadtrip. Madison's boyfriend is a freshman at UTAustin, too, so we thought we'd visit him while we were there as well.

When we found Ecowise, I must admit our first thought was, "Oh, crap... this is going to be a waste of time." It was a little hole-in-the-wall on a side street with hand painted store signs. I am ashamed to admit that we have been so conditioned to expect the slick, shiny, well-lit corporate traps that we'd forgotten what a real Mom-n-Pop place would look like. (I mean, even our tiny Green Market in town uses barcoded inventory.) Once inside, though, we were in nirvana! Hippy products of all sort, from bed linens to No Sweat sneakers, from low-VOC paint to hemp baby teethers, lined every available wall and shelf.

For our countertops, we're probably going to use Icestone, made of recycled glass and sold in slabs, like granite. It's beautiful stuff. We were hoping to see some Paperstone up close and personal, but the only dealer in Texas (who happens to be located in Austin) was closed on Saturdays except for appointments, and they never returned my call (assholes).

Our tiles will come from three different companies:  Eco-Friendly Flooring, Bedrock Industries, and Sandhill Industries. All three companies specialize in tiles made from recycled glass. We love the look and feel of them (not the flawless slick of virgin glass tiles you find elsewhere). Floors will be recycled-content ceramic tiles.

We are undecided on a color scheme for the master bath... we have two, actually.  One is very "forest-y," true greens & browns, with the Jade Snow countertop. The other is more "spa-like": more mints, sages, icy greens, with the Arctic Sage countertop. Any votes would be appreciated, as right now I am outvoted.

We thought we had more time to spare, but yesterday the pipe that's attached to the shower head broke. (Ever see The Money Pit? Totally true story, based on our house.) So, unless we want to share the kids' bathroom (we don't), we have to bust a move. (My husband is such a grand procrastinator, I've threatened to start writing random shit on the current shower tiles in Sharpie.)

P.S. Amidst all the "business" we went for, we managed to squeeze in henna tattoos on Sixth Street, an iPhone and Gap (red) purchase, and watching the Congress Street Bridge bat colony emerge for their nightly feast.

Going to Pool School

One of the most environmentally UNfriendly things we own is our swimming pool. It was here when we bought the house, and we've just used it and cleaned it without really thinking about it too much. To clarify, we've thought about it a lot, but mostly about the inconvenience of it and what the hell we were thinking when we bought a house with a pool.

When the sand filter broke sometime this winter, we thought about filling in the pool and sodding the yard instead. But, not knowing what kind of laws prevailed here regarding permits or what types of disclosures would be required from now on when selling the house, we started thinking that maybe we should keep the damned thing. Additionally, we are right around the middle of the Swimming Pool Belt (kind of like the Bible Belt, but where the swimming pool is King); one friend kindly pointed out that anyone looking in a neighborhood like ours would be looking specifically for a small yard and a pool (again, what the hell were we thinking?!?). Fine. Fix the freaking sand filter; I'll try not to pout.

Now that we are trying to be more mindful of our lifestyle, environmentally, I was trying to analyze what I know about our pool habits. If we're stuck with it, we might as well try to minimize its impact, right?

First, our pool is NOT chlorinated. We changed over to and have used a system called Baquacil both summers we've lived here. It's hydrogen peroxide-based, as opposed to chlorine. In that respect, it's safer for the environment. It also doesn't make my skin itchy, my hair brittle or dry, or smell like I've  been soaking in a big vat of Clorox.

Next up is maintenance and care. Here's the not-so-fantastic part. Thus far, we've always vacuumed "to waste," which is what the people who sold us the house suggested, meaning that all the water that gets sucked up with dirt & pebbles & stuff gets spat out into the street to go into the municipal water system. Perfectly legal, but not so nice for water conservation, since we have to run the hose into the pool to replace the water sucked out; I would estimate 50-100 gallons go at a time. So, from now on, we will be vacuuming through the filter system only. This will be an enormous improvement over our previous practices.

Last, but not least, I will address something you may not associate with a pool, but those who have a pool certainly will: our grill. We've always maintained that we like the taste of food on a good old-fashioned, standard charcoal grill best; no blasphemous gas for us. Turns out that charcoal grilling is anathema to all the green living we want to be doing; it's worse for common air pollution, not to mention that charcoal is made of... WOOD! (Gasp! You mean it doesn't grow in those bags?) Yep, sorry to disappoint, folks, but it's true... charcoal is made from the desiccated corpses of trees.

Now, here's a big dilemma. Do we put the grill on Freecycle and save the landfill space? Or, do we do our part for the trees & the atmosphere by putting it in the landfill, thereby insuring that no one else is simply replacing our pollution with their own? Does anybody have any suggestions? Discussion is encouraged here, you know...

Monday Meanderings

Howdy, folks! It is Monday, and I am, indeed, back in the blogging saddle again, after taking a week off to coincide with a week off that my husband took last week. No, we didn't do anything outstandingly fun, but we got some big house chores taken care of and got on each other's nerves, so it was at least productive, right?

Just to prove that I was actually thinking this week, there will probably be a couple of posts today. This one is just tidbits here and there, little "green" nuggets I wanted to share.

First, this month I am trying Instead Softcups (No strings! No wings! Just freedom!) during my menstrual cycle. Yes, I know, all of you are almost as excited as I am that I am a breed-worthy female with a working uterus. Yes, I know Colin is probably sick with envy that he can't try these out for his No Impact Man experience (but, hey, I wasn't handing out reproductive parts that day, Colin, sorry!). Yes, I know that 99.9985% of everyone who thinks about this switch is a little repulsed, wary, or both; include me in that percentage. But, I am willing to try it out, based on rave reviews from body-aware women everywhere (and I do mean everywhere, as I've seen all ages from late teens to pre-menopausal, and all walks of life, from triathletes to treehuggers to nudists to... well, you get the picture). If I like them, I will graduate to the Diva Cup (or another similar product) to reduce my personal waste.

Second, we decided to go ahead with carpet removal & replacement with either bamboo flooring or reclaimed hardwood flooring upstairs. We are also overhauling both of our upstairs bathrooms, and we are doing it with as many green materials as possible. They've been in need of plumbing overhauls, carpet removal (what moron decided carpet in bathrooms was cool?!?!), leak fixes, and much more for a year or more, and since we are patricians of procrastination, we've simply put quick fixes into play and ignored the water stains (oh, and that one hole, too) in the ceilings downstairs. There are some really interesting and attractive options out there now. There's Paperstone, paper-composite countertops that are equivalent to Corian; recycled glass tiles from several different companies, including one who recycled the glass light covers from all of Berkeley's traffic lights; and recycled aluminum or copper vessels. We're heading to Austin in two weeks to visit a showroom that carries a good many green options for homes.

Lastly, I must confess a probably-not-so-green decision we made this week. We signed up at Anytime Fitness, where we can go to torture our bodies... err, I mean, exercise... any time of the day or night. I know, I should get out and run (like Vanessa) or bicycle or whatever, but I don't. I don't like exercise, I don't like sweating, I don't like hurting. But, if I can plug some headphones into my own personal TV screen and watch Survivor or The Amazing Race while I do, at least I won't be so bored stiff as to render the experience completely worthless. And so, we've made one of those trade-offs I was talking about; I've traded some green points for possible motivation for personal health. That's it and that's all.

MIA?

Just popping in to let everyone know that I am NOT dead, I just feel like it! LOL!

Mark has been off work this week, and we've been working diligently to get house & yard issues in order and get on each other's nerves at the same time!

I'll try to post today or tomorrow, but don't hold me to it; it will probably be Sunday or Monday.

Don't give up on me, fair readers; I shall return (hopefully with renewed vigor, and not just exhausted)!