live from sublurbia

My friend Cal recently spied a tree that helped him really put together the thought that it takes energy to shed leaves. He’d observed a branch that had broken and lodged in the tree, noted the leaves browned, but were not shed though other branches, still alive, had shed their leaves in preparation for Winter. (They get seasons up there.)

These unseasonably mild winters are affecting us, and have for a while. There is no denying changes are going on, but if the changes are irreversible in a way, or something we shouldn’t be reversing, or part of a cycle that won’t be stopped even if we all do shrink our carbon/waste/unsustainability footprints.

Here I have a lovely day around me. The wind is blowing, we’ll have a mild shower to parch the drought of our still unseasonably dry dry season, I hear birds and am attacked by the tree pollen, and my feet crush through fresh fallen dry leaves. It’s Sprawl. Spring and Fall. Things are blooming and the trees are independently giving up on waiting for the Autumn signals to drop their leaves and take a sleep. It’s Sprawl in South Florida.

Then again, so is this:

But, in between the piles of sprawl, my little garden is coming back through it all. Yay!

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[Think Of A Something Thursday!]

I had a plan when it came to breast feeding and traveling for business. Don’t.

It didn’t quite work out that way, though, as an unexpected trip came my way before my youngest was on cow milk in any substantial amount.

My supply has always been sporadic at best, and she wasn’t helping the situation by refusing formula. I kept up as best I could for as long as I could, but was relieved when she finally took to solid foods. Even then, I pumped at work and home, and slowly built a little freezer stash.

Once I found out I’d be traveling in the middle of the transition to more cow milk, I burned through my stash as quickly as possible and started up a new one. Continue Reading »

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PS, happy Earth Day.

But when did it turn into earth week? Are we going to see countdown signs for Earth Day and Arbor Day? Mixing it with Mother’s Day? “Tell mom you love her with the gift of planting 100 seedlings in former Amazon rainforest.” Or fashion? “Get this years hot new reusable bag and repurposed shoes!”

On the one hand = spreading the radical idea of buying less crap, keeping it for longer than a millibleen, and recycling our reduced consumption is good. On the other hand, the first “R” is reduce, too. We don’t need to go buy six million new things. And some of the ideas are better than others: ending the distribution and use of plastic shopping bags at some stores, or the suspect advice to “sweep fertilizer off of the driveway”.

Maybe I’m biased, but that advice from Scott’s smells more of greenwashing to me. “Hey, look, we have an environmental campaign!” Or you could use fertilizers (not from Scott) that are more environmentally friendly in the first place.

Then again, maybe we need a little ammonium phosphate in the water supply to offset all the prozac in the water.

But whether you celebrate Earth Day, Week, Month, or life, Happy Earth Day! I’ve been swamped at work and home lately and haven’t had a change to give my diapers a good line dry in ages, so I snapped a shot of a couple that needed a little sun the other day. I’m a bit wistful about it, as this is probably the last diaper line I’ll post on Earth Day. This time next year I expect we’ll be diaper-free. Ah well, more room on my line for other things!

We’ll be spending/celebrating tonight eating some green spinach tortilla wraps I prepared last night, along with snacky foods, out back on a picnic blanket. Should keep the kids happy while I tend the weeds without Monsanto’s help.

How did you/ will you celebrate this year?

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_{Author’s Note: I wrote this out a long time ago, before I came up with the original TOAST (Think of a Something Thursday) format. We’ve come a long way, baybee!}

TOAST: Think of a Something Thursday

Long before I acquired my stable of shopping bags, and when I bothered to remember, I’d tell a store clerk trying to bag one or two items: “No thank you”. A habit borne of managing to accumulate too much junk (which I still do, adventure-girl/packrat that I am) but a habit that also fit in nicely with the Reduce part of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

When I was a kid, the grocery stores in my area were dominated by paper sacks. And that was it for a long time. They were great, useful - book covers, art papers, shipping paper, patterns, “canvas”. When plastic bags started coming around along with the advent of “bag your own” stores in my neck of the woods, the bags were your typical two handled affair seen today. Us kids adapted and used them to make simple box kites. Tie a string, find a gust of wind, and go. No sticks, no tails, no tape and paper and glue … But no sharks teeth or dragons, either. Nothing to paint or enhance. I think after one or two gos we were done and bored.

I started out my latest foray into self-bagging and non-plastic bagging like I do most things. In fits and spurts. (The hub asked me the other day how long my to-do list was. I asked in return, “which volume?”.) But I rounded up a sampling of totes I had anyway (I prefer simple totes instead of most diaper bags) along with the inexpensive reusable bags I mentioned the other day.

Surely there was one perfect bag to hold my ‘fancy’ cheeses, wines, crusty loafs of bread, and swirly pops for the kids, right? Be it a quick trip for a parents-only dinner or the restocking of the hurricane pantry, just grab a cloth bag and go, yes? No, not so much. Continue Reading »

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Hope you and yours welcomed in the season with lots of fun, whether you had rain, sleet, snow, or flowers.

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I had lunch with a co-worker recently; we traded kid stories and product stories (and books! Oooh! A BIG box of books!). She was a bit grossed out by a new product she saw, “Bottled Mom Spit”.

I suppose if you really take it apart, it is kind of a gross name. But it is accurate enough: though my mom didn’t (usually) spit, it was part of my awareness growing up from reading. That and hankies tucked into sleeves, pinched cheeks…

I’ve come up with a few names now and then, for different ideas, different products. But I’m more dreamer than designer, so most of these stay on the drawing board. But I’ll run across a name once in a while that makes me wonder - what were they thinking? Do clever names work for a product or against it?

Then again, with all the noise online and offline, you need a catchy name or some kind of gimmick to rise above the noise, if only for a moment. Then you need a good product to stay there, I guess. My kids won’t know what a Pet Rock or a Furby is, but Chia Pets may make a come back if they time it right. Cha-cha-cha-chia!

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I looked for leaves. Really. But there are more (fake) leaves in my front hall than on my lawn. Sorry, children, fall is a magical time of year that happens in other parts of the world. You’re deprived, get used to it.

We managed a leaf pile anyway … five or six whole ‘leaves’! Continue Reading »

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As you can see by the attached photo, I spent my Saturday afternoon at a local house of commercial worship - IKEA of South Florida. The billboards have popped up along the highways like jarring dandelions in our usual garden of glittery billboards with bizarre sayings such as “IKEA is to South Florida as sunburn is to tourists” (and that one almost makes sense). The media frenzy is building - people can line up starting tomorrow, but … they can’t camp out until the store opens … two days later.

If I hadn’t gotten an early preview shopping pass, though, I considered taking a personal day and swarming in with the rest of them. It’s not just a mob, it’s an adventure. It’s been years since I’ve set foot in an IKEA, and I’ve certainly never been to an opening. I even had my shopping list in mind - a little something to decorate my office, an easel for the kid, and to take loads of pictures.

I got the easel. Pictures … not so much. Even with a plan I was busy experiencing it and ignoring my complaining back and feet for much of three hours. But that was at the end, thinking it all through as I scarfed down a pizza pocket in the cafe beyond the finish like (cash wrap, register line, whatever). Continue Reading »

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And in theory, was it ever? Current threat levels are Orange and Yellow, which I’ll get into later. But I wonder if Blue is a state of mind. And if we can keep our kids blue a little longer.

Meantime, I have one answer for her. Post-it^tm notes. I always lose mine, but a headband or diaper cover works, too.

Insanely busy, back to normal (whatever that will be) eventually.

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Today was a really really long day. Crazy busy at work, crazy busy in life, still tired kicking off the last of this marthon cold/bronchitis. By the end of the day I was sniffling along my drive home, just trying to get us all there and get to the point of my day when I could lay my head on a pillow and rest. But a bit of an earlier harvest than I expected cleared my tears and got me the rest of the way home dry-eyed.

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