nice day for a green diamond

I've had "White Wedding" by Billy Idol running through my head for a couple of days -- maybe 'cuz I'm officially engaged as of Saturday night?!



But as my dad reminded me last week, I'm used goods. Mostly he was trying to talk my dowry down to two goats instead of a camel. The fact that he doesn't have either goats or a camel to give, and the fact that Will isn't really expecting a dowry didn't figure into this conversation at any point, but the fact that I've been around the block was apparently relevant.

At any rate, "white wedding" didn't seem like an appropriate title for this blog entry, especially since our plan is to have a green wedding. We're still figuring out exactly what that entails, but it all started last fall when we first talked about getting married...

We went to the jewelry store to look at rings and it was soooo fun and they were soooo pretty. Then I did some research, and realized that those beautiful, sparkly stones hide a really brutal reality. Apparently, things have gotten better in the diamond industry than they used to be, but there still isn't any guarantee that a diamond that is purported to be conflict-free really is. So I decided that maybe the best idea was to get a Canadian diamond. No blood involved, right? Well, sort of. Plus, even Canadian diamonds have to be mined.

I can tell you from experience that it's a bummer to get excited about celebrating your love for someone only to find out that you'll be leaving a trail of blood and tears and ravaged earth behind. But I wasn't willing to give up on the whole diamond thing. Maybe this is one of the few ways that I'm a typical "I've dreamed of this since I was a little girl" shallow, materialistic traditionalist. I know that there are other gems, and that deBeers is like the mafia, and that synthetic diamonds are pretty good these days. But {insert whiny voice here} I didn't WAAAANT another gem, and I didn't WAAAAANT a synthetic diamond.

Then we moved into our new house and life got so hectic that we didn't even have time to think about rings, let alone figure out a solution to the dilemma. In the last month or so, things calmed down a bit, and we started talking about getting engaged again. I decided that the only way I could have the diamond ring I wanted was to get a used diamond (just like the only way I can buy sweatshop clothes is from the ARC).

On a whim, I checked the jewelry section of craigslist, and found what turned out to be the perfect diamond for us. The lady wanted much much more than we had planned to spend, and it had appraised even higher than that, but she liked us and our story and accepted our offer. Because we don't know enough about diamonds to take her word for anything, we shopped around a bit and found a custom jeweler who was willing to meet with us and check out the diamond. He confirmed that everything was on the up-and-up, facilitated the transaction, and set the stone in the ring I wanted (he's also designing my wedding band, using estate diamonds and recycled gold).

Oh, and in case you were worried, it's not a bad karma diamond either -- no acrimonious divorce or dead husband or someone selling her jewels to avoid the poorhouse -- just a simple story of an engagement that didn't work out. He's happily married now, and she's happily single. They are still friends, but she decided it was time to let go of the jewelry from that relationship.

Will was worried that getting engaged would be anti-climactic, since we've talked so much about it and it wasn't a surprise. He's been married before, but I never have, and he wanted to make the proposal special for me. He also knew that I really wanted to be wearing the ring for our housewarming party last weekend.

Far from being anti-climactic, the proposal turned out to be like our lives -- hectic and thrown in with everything else we had to do, but totally perfect and full of love. He did get down on his knees, and we both got tears in our eyes while he talked about how he feels about me, and then he asked me and I said yes and we kissed and hugged, and then we rushed off to separate rooms to finish getting ready for our party (this was at 6:40, the party started at 7:00, we were still not done cleaning the house, and neither one of us had showered yet!)

For more info (probably the most unbiased summary I found) on diamonds and alternatives, click here.

yet another goal

(Pretend like I wrote this one on July 2 lol)

My sissy posted about her gas goal on her blog, and one of my friends has set a goal for herself of 25 miles of driving a week. I was really trying to be conscious of my driving through May, when I was biking to work a couple of days a week, but I couldn't seem to get below about 150 miles/week.

The problem is not short trips -- there are definitely days that I don't drive at all, since the grocery store, pharmacy, dairy queen, park, pool, etc. are all within biking or walking distance. I'm not driving at all around the neighborhood, and I'm trying to double up trips and not drive to either end of town more than absolutely necessary.

But my sweetie lives about 20 miles away, at least for the next couple of weeks (before he moves in with us!!!! ACK!!! whole 'nother post on a whole 'nother topic!!!) and even though I make him do most of the driving back and forth, I still end up doing some. Also, any time the whole family goes out of town, I end up driving because my car seats 7 peeps, so it totally makes sense for me to be the one to drive. Otherwise we'd end up taking two or three cars, which would be way worse in terms of carbon footprint. Two boys, a mom and a snake don't need a minivan, but two boys, a mom, a grandma, a grandpa, an aunty, an aunty's boyfriend, a sweetie and his two kids sure do! And my brother and his wife are moving here this month!! So, yeah. Minivan.

And I guess we go out of town more than I thought? It's a trip to the zoo, or a trip to see relatives in the mountains, or a camping trip, or going fishing in the next town over or...none of them are super long trips, but 50 or 100 or 120 miles on the weekend really bumps up the amount of gas I'm using and the volume of emissions I'm spewing.

So 25 miles/week definitely doesn't seem like a reasonable goal for me. On the other hand, 150 miles/week seems outrageous, not to mention expensive.

During the school year, 5 days/week X 5 miles each way to work is 50 miles. I can and will definitely bike often in the spring and fall, but honestly I feel a little wimpy about it in the winter. I want the goal to be something that's actually attainable. Oh, and if I'm taking classes toward my master's, that's like 60 miles round trip. So one class a week plus driving to work puts me over 100 miles/week even if I never drove anywhere else. Crap. Maybe I need to transfer to the university in my town? I really don't want to because of the fact that the program is much better where I'm going now, and I can do it at my own pace. The university here in town has a cohort program, so I think you have to take classes with the cohort. On the other hand, I could probably get done faster without the commute, which would be a very good thing, and maybe the degree is what really matters, and even if the program isn't as good, I would still have the piece of paper that lets me be a principal, which is the ultimate goal of the whole endeavor...

Sorry, getting a little off track there. But if you've got comments on this whole university dilemma, I'd love to hear them.

Ok, back to gas and mileage...When my sweetie lives in town, that will probably be 40 miles a week that will fall off automatically. Maybe I should try for an average of 90 miles/week over the course of a month -- that way if I end up driving out of town one weekend, I could be really frugal with driving the next week, and still come out ok. I just filled up my tank yesterday, and I've already driven 23 miles, so this will definitely be a challenge...

say, say oh playmate

come out and play with me
and bring your dollies three
climb up my apple tree
holler down my rain barrel...

Rain barrel? What the heck is a rain barrel? Now that I've gone all diy with the worm bin, this seems like a cool project. But did you notice that barrel is one of those words that looks like it's spelled wrong and stops making sense the more you write it or see it?

stuff we were already doing

I realized that we already do some things that qualify me for environmental geek status, so thought I'd throw a quick list here, since they don't really fit on the list of changes.

Stuff we were already doing:
Walk to the grocery store with our wagon and a bunch of cloth bags. We got this wagon for $7 at a yard sale. The trailer definitely makes grocery shopping more doable.

• Use cloth napkins instead of paper, and washcloths instead of paper towels.
• Buy lots of stuff at thrift stores and rummage sales instead of buying it new.
• Program our thermostat so we're not heating an empty house (and it goes down to 55 degrees at night, while we cuddle up under blankets.)
• Turn off lights when we leave a room.
• Buy as much organic food as possible.
• Buy in bulk to reduce packaging.
• Reuse and recycle.
• Leave produce loose when buying it, instead of putting it in a plastic bag.
• I'm sure there's more...I'll add to the list as I think of stuff.

Stuff we used to do but don't need to anymore:

• Cloth diapers -- did this for both kids from the time they were about 2 weeks old. I was so committed that I used cloth even when we didn't have a washer and I had to haul the dirty diapers to the laundromat. I'm convinced that cloth also made potty training much easier and earlier than if we had used what my mom calls artificial diapers.
• Breastfeed. I didn't do it for the environmental benefit, but that was a nice side effect!

Stuff we used to do and somehow got out of the habit that I really need to start again:

• Hang wet clothes on the line.
• Use non-disposable menstrual products.
• More home cooking, less eating out or eating convenience food.

environmental geek

This is what Dante calls me, based on the following little changes I've made in the past couple of weeks.

• Switched from buying organic milk at the grocery store to buying organic, local milk that's delivered in glass bottles.
• Moved our garbage out from under the kitchen sink to make room for a worm bin (more on that later).
• Stopped having a disposable cup of yogurt for breakfast every morning. I found some yogurt that comes in glass jars, since the plastic containers aren't recyclable. I've been using that for smoothies and to substitute for sour cream.
• Rode my bike to work 5 out of the last 14 days. It's not great, but it's a start! Four of those days I never got in the car at all.
• Opted out of junk mail (more on that later, too).
• Switched out the boys' plastic water bottles for stainless steel ones. I tried to do this years ago and they resisted, but this time the water bottles are smaller and have sport tops, and the change has been taken with grace.
• Took the food canisters that sit on my kitchen counter to Whole Foods and filled them directly with bulk foods, to avoid the plastic bag middle-man.
• Called my landlord about the leaky bathtub.
• Switched one of our lightbulbs to compact fluorescent. This was actually not entirely successful -- I think it deserves it's own post, too (see how I keep promising more info -- that's not really for you, it's to motivate my procrastinator virgo self to keep posting!)

Happy Earth Week!

For awhile now, we've been taking these lovely containers (as far as I can tell, they are #5 plastic) to restaurants with us, so that we've got something to bring our leftovers home in instead of a styrofoam container. Last week (or maybe it was the week before?) I took the concept a step farther, and we went to the local sub shop down the street. I asked if they could make our sandwiches in these, to eliminate the carry-out trash. They thought I was weird, but agreed. So here they are -- fast food with no trash! Yay! PS We took out the removable dividers to make room for the sandwiches, but the dividers are great when we go to the Rio (beans or rice on one side, chile relleno on the other, so the only thing I leave behind is the leftover margarita. Oh, wait, there never is any leftover margarita!)

the problem with changing your life

A couple of days after I made my threat to the boys about starting an awfulbrothers blog, I stumbled across a link to a sustainable living blog written by a woman in our area. I was super excited at first, because I read her intro and profile and thought, "Hey, it's true that this lady has a husband, but she's got three kids and I've only got two. And she's got a full-time job that might even be more exhausting than mine is! So if she can make a serious commitment to reducing her family's carbon footprint and eating only local organic food, I can do the same thing!"

Then I read on. Oh. Well. Never mind. She quit her job. So now not only does she have a husband, which I don't, she can devote all of her time to creating an environmentally sustainable family life. I'm not bitter! Really! I just wish that I could find a role model who is enough like me that her example would seem doable given the constraints on my life.

So then I decided that maybe I can just do it anyway and be the role model for other single moms who are trying live in a way that won't accelerate global warming and give migrant workers cancer and increase the disparity between haves and have-nots. Maybe interspersed with the videos of my kids fighting with eachother (still haven't figured out how to download those off my phone, but I will soon, I promise -- I know you can't wait!) I can post inspiring stuff about our sweeping life changes! Yeah, that's the ticket!

Except, the problem with changing your life is that you have to change your life. Or, as my dad always says, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." So all week I've intended to start riding my bike to work. But I've been running late, or had plans after work that would make biking complicated, or...this morning I woke up and they said on the radio that we were going to have 20-30mph winds all day, with a good chance of rain turning to snow. Yeah, I wimped out. And I shouldn't have, because the rain didn't start until after I was home.