Saturday, January 5, 2008

Happy 2008!

Happy 2008!

The new year has brought Global Warming concerns to our nation. We're so worried about oil and the price of gas right that we've failed to see the damages we've done to our own planet. Women usually blame men for having little minds, but when you think of how many people live in cities and towns it's so large to us, our homes are small, but we never stop to realize how HUGE the earth is and how we are destorying it. Or at least I didn't till I finally moved to a town where I could get a channel on TV that wasn't so snow laiden I could hear and see the anchor man giving the news report. That within it's self to me was a Christmas Miracle to be thankful for this year and last.

I couldn't help thinking, while I rocked my small infant daughter to sleep one night, how when human kind is on the extinct list, those few of us still alive will still probably be trying to decide how best to conquer china or lead the Iraqians to giving up their old ways and adapting more peaceful ones. Wouldn't that be funny, a couple of survivors trying to bicker the prices of oil with a few others when they should really just be worried about the essentials, oh, like, say, air, water, food for instance. Nope, not our country we're complaining about the price of gas.

We're so busy upgrading things in our lives, no one stops to think about be conservative. Just this past year we pushed aside our Ford Tauras for a Honda Odessey mini van, being our family was increasing once again and the family car was already cramped. Instead of downsizeing to compact cars and fuel effecient vehicles, more and more people have been on the rising of those wonderful things called "gas hogs", oops, I mean SUV's. Every real man's dream of picking up chicks is in a SUV or big wheel truck right? Who wants someone with a tiny little car? Hello!! Men with little cars, have bigger wallets ladies, they don't have to spend $100 - $200 a fill up at the pumps just to pick you up for a date!

*Sigh*

I really never realized how much resources we waste a day in our ordinary lives. My husband's grandmotehr used to save everything from empty milk jugs to rewashing her maxi pads. Yeah, gross I know. Talk about a personal hygene issue. The sad part is I'm starting to adapt a few of her habits, oh no, not the maxi pad by far!, but a few days ago I took a tin can and made a horse back with my oldest daughter. Yesterday I dropped off my empty plastic containers after saving them up for a few weeks to the local recycle center. We've been sorting out our trash for the last month. We burn paper in our wood furnance. We seperate tin cans, soda cans, glass, plastics, and put them in seperate trash cans in our laundry room. We've even been rolling around the idea of starting a compost pile to be put in a garden this spring. Not that I'm big on gardening, but when you have to pay $3.oo for a tomato - a gallon of gas seems so unimportat.

Feeding my family is.

I live in town, and say there are at least thirty houses down my street, probably more, just think if each of those houses did what I was doing how much more we would save by recycling and saving the natural resources we are using to make all new again? Would that gallon of milk cost more if it were in a recycled jug compared to a newly made jug? Probably, the cost of milk is always rising, but not because of the packaging, somebody's got to feed and milk those cows to produce the milk we consume.

My trash bill this month - a big fat ZERO. My trash bill next month - a big fat ZERO. My trash bill the month after that - $10 to dispose of the few bags accumulated and taken to the local transit site. A total savings of $35 for three months if I would have paid the trash man to carry it away. Some of you may be sniffing at $35, but to me that is half the price of one month school meals for my oldest child, or the way you may look at it - a month of cable TV.

If you had to predict what 2008 is going to hold for your future what would it be? I look at my children and I know excately what to expect: the unexpected, the blessed, and the hatchet with "expenses" written across the blade. If the Artic is going to melt by 2012, that means my youngest will be only 12 yrs old when we have completed the cycle into a new hotter climate. What will the future hold for my children? For yours? I don't know, let's just see where it leads us.

Right now it's leading me back to my rocking chair to nurse my baby and watch TV.

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