Haven't written in awhile.
Could be because this is one of the only times that our little one has gone to sleep before us, on her own, and stayed asleep. It feels strange and liberating. As I sit here absorbing Harold Arlen tunes endlessly repeating on itunes, I am reflecting on how our way of life has changed since we left the road documentary that was YERT (www.YERT.com) and landed in KY, to start our own sustainable family.
We're good about some things: We're very active in the environmental movement here - well, Ben is - We don't use paper towels! Ben tries never to leave leftovers on his plate to avoid generating garbage. We compost. We recycle. We don't buy new plastic toys for Bailey - or much of anything new for any of us, really. Ben takes the bus pretty regularly now, and rides his bike to work when he can. We constantly turn off lights after everyone in our house and fight over the thermostat to use less energy. We even took our first Cob-building workshop this year!
We eat local often, and organic mostly. We have a garden and are learning to grow things, but to be honest we have definitely not grown enough to sustain ourselves past a nice salad of tomatoes and green beans.
We try to be as active as we can in our city and have found many wonderful people on board doing whatever they can to help make Louisville a more sustainable place to live, but we do find the current climate of climate skepticism stupefying and sometimes difficult to combat with optimism and hope.
As we no longer live in a town with great public transportation or with many walkable neighborhoods, we drive a car that unfortunately gets sub-optimal (Ben's euphemism - I prefer "crappy") gas mileage, and is overdue for both an oil change and a tuneup, with a tire that seems to be constantly losing air. These are things that should be tended to but Ben spends all his time editing the YERT film and I spend all my time being Mommy, and some important things just don't ever seem to get done.
The YERT garbage experiment has not really been tried at home, since the early days of sleepless parenting. The stress of having a newborn almost made me lose it. We gave that up. We make garbage. Sometimes I've let Bailey have a straw just to make her happy. We buy frozen food that has traveled miles and miles. We try not to buy things that come packaged in plastic but we sometimes do. And although we use cloth diapers mostly, there are times that we slap a 7th Generation disposable dipe on our little one for convenience. And she knows the difference - the "posable dipe" is the "comftable dipe."
I usually remember to bring reusable grocery bags, but when i don't, i rationalize that paper bags are great for compost and to hold the recyclable paper. I THINK about bringing tupperware/utensils with me in case we ever stop somewhere for food but these things have never actually made their way into the diaperbag. And our daughter is now 2, singing, speaking in full sentences and using the potty. When do I think i'm going to start making the simple changes that we made for the YERT trip? Tomorrow? Wake up; it IS tomorrow. Convenience and comfort are not character-building, I tell myself, in her or in us.
What this boils down to is that our little family cares deeply about the environment and living sustainably on this planet, but we can do more. I really like the idea that writing this encourage me to leave even lighter footprints - get out the bus schedules, the tupperware, the hankies, the chicobags, the LED headlamps for nighttime light. Some of these intentions may not be fully realized while we are living under my dear mother's roof (she tends to bang into things at night with no lights) but I know we can renew our efforts to reduce our impact. I think I'll start with finding a place of honor in the diaperbag for the tupperware and the utensils. And the bus schedules. (And then actually take the bus.)
