live from sublurbia

I’ve got some things around that are quite trashy. I’m pretty pack ratty, as I’ve admitted before, but I think I am and can stay a far pace away from hoarding … but you never know.

I’ve got tea bag wrappers. No reason to save them, but they smell so nice. And I came up with a use for them. But not the time to use them in.

I’ve got old mailing envelopes. Some can be reused, some can’t. The “can’ts” can be reused in other ways, but I want to do more research on Tyvek before I get into it. I had hoped to have a nice long piece about Tyvek tonight, but I was thwarted by bad javascript. :( I understand DuPont wants to capture information about their users, but should I really have to fill out tons of personal information to read a PDF about the Tyvek life cycle? Continue Reading »

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I had grand plans as the internet started becoming more mainstream in the mid to late nineties. I’d revive and update the small business my mother ran on a mail-order basis in the 70s and 80s. My little site would be a store with home made stuff, some sewing tips, and patterns; studded with little stories about each (back before there were “blogs”). Which is pretty much what everyone is doing now, lol.

Then I met the hub, and we started our little family; I’d have time while on maternity leave! Nope.

I’d have time on the next maternity leave! (Insert laughter here.)

Maybe when they were all in school! (Well …)

Even launching this blog a few years later than even my most optimistic projections was part of the plan. But life and my own schooling have slowed my time table a bit.

And now I’m hearing that legislation to provide safer toys, clothes, and child care materials is coming on line. Great! I’ve been looking at joining various trade groups to make sure anything I produce is safe. They are voluntarily or self-regulated; we can see by the results of importing some voluntarily regulated toys.

However, as I and others read, this pretty much puts small toy makers, home craft industries out of business. I’d love to sell you a cute little doll I designed, or a lunch bag, or a diaper, but I have to test each item for lead and certify it because I’m not allowed to rely on third party certifications or allow you to sign a waiver.

And no matter how cute and fancy it is, I don’t think you’ll want to pay $4,013.95 for it. Plus shipping. And you know what’s gone on with shipping prices these days. Yeesh.

Various people have claimed that nothing specifically states diapers, clothes, toys, either hand made or resold new goods (so much for reselling overstock toys for profit later in the year after you clean out the local Target Dec 26th). Others claim this does cover diapers, clothes, toys, both hand-made in small-scale production and re-sale of other’s manufactured goods. Half the problem is the ambiguity and lack of plain-text language and decoding. But I’ve seen more that points toward shutting down a huge cottage industry than away from it.

Fire up your favorite search engine, find out more about CPSIA and how as thrown together it may to kill your favorite etsy store or eBay seller. Then DO something. Pick out a couple of the things that matter – this retroactive legislation is meant to protect, but it also effectively over-burdens small businesses. Pick out some solutions – third party manufacture certifications okay, help in the costs of testing for small businesses. Put them in a short letter to your representative and get your voice heard.

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Anyone read this? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7392072.stm

One of the concerns I’ve heard about over the years regarding water problems in the US West has been these invasive zebra mussels. It costs a lot of money to build new barriers and new pipes that bring water hundreds of miles to desert wastelands overpopulated with invasive subdivisions to have a fail over system while you clean the first set of pipes, but redundancy can’t hurt in the case of an emergency.

Even without that redundancy, I like how it is a non-chemical way to clear out this and other live animal/plant problems. It would have to be tuned and deployed to not hurt people (don’t leave an unattended “automatic” setup at any site people or wildlife that normally wouldn’t be a problem could get into) and larger animals, but the reduced costs of cleaning out these invasive, exotic mussels and other problems might make it worth it.

Of course they still need to study the effects and the ecosystems this is used on and near. You don’t want to kill everything in the area. There are good organisms as well as these invasive ones. But I hope that “nuking” them with microwaves rather than other longer-lasting radiation.

And we could stop invading the desert and live more locally, too. In the interim, at least this seems to be a less disruptive way of fitting in the spaces we’ve carved out. It’s hard to find a balance for myself to live within – much less the entire world. Sustainable and sensible economically. It’s a high cost we pay for convenience some times. And hard to measure the impact down the road.

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I know that retail is hurting. Small boutique shops closing around my neighborhoods, incredible sales online with discounts, free shipping, anything to get us into (or mostly back into) the stores and buying again. I do shop locally when I can or it makes sense – the local shoe store didn’t have anything wide enough for me the last three times I’ve checked. They’re still around, but a few other stores aren’t.

But when it comes to other things, it’s easier and more economical for me to click it and ship it. And continue doing so as I get online offers and reminders. Some of the offers are very targeted: they’re collecting data on me, and using it. My habits, my desires, my window shopping.

Amazon makes recommendations to me (Usually pretty dumb ones – if I bought a microfiber gym towel for a super duper discount, why am I going to care about a 5% discount on a smaller, similar one? I have a towel now, thanks!) and adjust what they offer based on what I’ve bought or looked at. They do this for all of their users, and I’ve found it useful enough that I don’t mind this creepy minimal spying anymore. The small privacy I’ve given up there has paid for itself in both discounts and time saved not driving out to a big store to get a case of wipes and then getting sucked into the “as long as I’m here” trap.

Other retailers do it, too, but less subtly than Amazon. I’ve been trying out backpacks and diaper bags and wallets and purses as I shift towards carrying a lighter load on the train riding with the kid every day. I may only work a few miles from the ocean, but I am slowly coming to the realization that I don’t need to carry a tsunami-ready jump pack at all times. I could use a smaller purse, too. The purse that replaced the evil bag (it killed my camera and ate my wallet last fall) is just too big for light, daily, commuter train use.

So imagine my surprise when this showed up in my inbox:

Dear [aunt mommy],

We noticed that you left items like the Travelon RFID Blocking Passport Case in your shopping cart at eBags. Come back and order this great product and we will take 15% off your eBags purchase*. Now that you’ve had a chance to think about it, why not buy it today!

See the items left in my cart now

If you’re still not sure, please take some time to browse eBags customer reviews for the Travelon RFID Blocking Passport Case or one of our other 30,000 products onsite.

Kind of funny that I’m shopping for privacy equipment and the shopping cart wants to know why I hesitated pulling the trigger on the purchase. I’m sure the NSA will be happy to know I went with a less secure plain leather wallet instead.

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I do not like to check the box,
I do not think they’ve had the pox.

I will not bus them here or there,
I will walk them everywhere.

I do not like green forms and spam,
I do not like them, Sam-I-Am.

One school year is winding down, another is spinning up. Tis the season of application packets. And we aren’t even applying for colleges yet. Old school exit forms. New school entrance forms. Allergy lists. Pink sheets, blue sheets, yellow sheets, food sheets. Continue Reading »

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Normally, I am a huge fan of gift cards. This is teacher appreciation week, and I’m racking my brain looking for a little something to contribute. I hadn’t planned on gift cards, but I’ve not yet come up with something. Probably baked goods and/or a veggie/fruit plate for them to nosh on.

However, considering the way things are kind of going a bit off of the deep end economy wise, that gift card in your wallet may just turn to dust:

Brian Riley, senior analyst at research firm The TowerGroup, estimates [Linens'n'Things filing for bankruptcy protection] will freeze about $42 million in consumer gift cards, affecting about 400,000 customers. Gift cards become valueless when a company files for bankruptcy protection.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20080502-1211-linensnthings-bankruptcy.html

Go find something you need, need to replace, or need a backup for. And don’t buy gift cards off of people that they “aren’t going to use” unless you’re sure the store is still accepting cards.

I know this is saturday, but I may repeat it for WFMW. It qualifies as something I probably will learn the hard way. I’m sure I’ve gotten short changed on these cards before … I’ll just link this.

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So I had a night out with the girls recently. Partying down on Miami Beach, us mild-aged gals looking for some variety of food and scenery. Despite getting a little lost a couple of times in downtown Miami (putting my love of public transportation in perspective when I realized I work banker’s hours and normally wouldn’t have to stand around at 11pm at night waiting for the last bus), it was a blast.

We were looking for Cuban food but ended up at a great little restaurant named Tap Tap. Sat out on the porch, and tried a little bit of everything: A goat stew, a roasted chicken, and some grilled conch. Yumm. One of the reviews for the restaurant calls it great and cheap but I must have a skewed view of cheap; it was still decent pricing for a delicious meal.

Got a few pictures walking around looking for food, too: a great fishy building, and a lot of for sale signs. The buildings are being kept up well, despite the economic downturn and property bubble implosion. Nice to get out and about with the ladies, too. I’ll have to remember Tap Tap next time we’re in the area (and keep looking for Cuban @ Miami Beach, too). The next day’s activity plan included hitting up the Maurice Gibb Memorial; if I’d realized at the time we were so close I would have joined them for that outing as well. Maybe next time.

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Think of a Something Thursday!

I have never had to label things so much as since I’ve had kids.

My last year of junior high, I needed a new coat and I found a lovely hot pink one (ah … the hot colored eighties; quite a change from the autumnal seventies). It included a zip-out black and pink fleece check-pattern inner jacket/mini jacket/liner. Mom told me to put my name on it, but I didn’t want to. I assured her I would be careful, and keep track of it; putting my name it in was so grade schoool.

I see you nodding along there on the other side of the computer. And the answer is, I’d be surprised if I had it all for even two weeks. The outer coat was “too hot” one Friday afternoon so I hung it up on the rack at my after school hangout. Sure enough, by the next Monday it was gone.

I think I still have the inner jacket – stashed somewhere in the Garage of Doom^TM.

My first trick of labeling things as a mobile pumper was the use of Post It flags. I had a TON of them from a previous co-worker who stuck them on every page to mark every change. I labeled the bottles simply, with numbers. The day-mommies fed the bottles to the kid in the order they were labeled. This was important because I’d send some fresh milk and some frozen milk, and I wanted the frozen milk to be served first. These durable, reusable labels were also great for home use and babysitters. Continue Reading »

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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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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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