Tight Wad Meets Eco-Friendly Citizen

Me, a tightwad?

Recently the AP ran an article about how “tight wad” behavior is catching on. These are the people who cut the shampoo bottles in half so they can get every last drop. That person is me – as an eco-friendly citizen. I cut the bottles in half, get out every last drop so that I can wash them out and put them in the recycling container. I reuse Ziploc bags. I even use the plastic bags with reusable seals that once contained salt, nuts, etc. Same concept. Not very helpful though if you own stock in Ziploc. Oh well! And it takes a lot – A LOT, for me to actually purchase saran wrap. Why? Because I can’t for the life of me figure out if it’s recyclable. Somehow I think it isn’t. Instead, I use a plastic food bag that I secure on top of a container with some type of recycled string. Although it just dawned on me I can use those extra shower caps that I got for a buck… (ala, the wrap with the elastic on top which I think Glad makes) Now, if they started making a saran wrap type product out of bamboo, I might consider using it. Ooh – what a great idea. I wonder if that is actually available… Yeah, this is the kind of stuff that gets me excited.

For me, calling using all that we have as "tight wad" behavior shows me just how off path a society we have become. Every thing is easy to use and easy to throw away. Yet, what's left over is mounds and mounds of trash clogging our landfills. And plastic, for anyone who doesn't know this, doesn't break down in the landfill. It's forever with us, like a badly coded gene.

Now we are in this state of “financial collapse,” using what we have before we buy more has caught on. That also includes making things before buying them. Like laundry soap. Why spend 5 dollars when you can make it at home, and control what goes in it. So I tried to get to the site that the AP article mentioned where you could learn how to make it. No go. I, like others, who read the AP article tried to click on the site where you could learn to make your own laundry soap. The woman who ran it apologized to viewers trying to get on. She had thousands of hits and her site crashed. Wow. Does a phenomenon like that make Johnson & Johnson nervous? (I have nothing against them or Ziploc for that matter… it’s just something to think about).

One helpful motivator helping me pare down has been moving into a smaller space. In particular the bathroom where I have less cabinet space and a shower, only. Bath products are my weakness. I see lotion on sale and think – how can I pass up coco shea butter. It’s such a great deal. And a good product. And look, it’s made environmentally friendly, and, and. And, no. I simply don’t have the room. I don’t have the long cabinet anymore where lost, forgotten products sit in the shadows. I uncovered all of those in the move. And with less space I have to use all, I MEAN ALL (I’m talking to myself now) before I buy more lotion. Sigh. There was some nifty, eco-friendly hand soap on sale at Target… down to 7 bucks rather than its original price of 15. Sadly, I did consider this and had to catch myself… So what if it’s on sale and might smell good. Liquid soap for 7 bucks? I have a recipe somewhere for making your own liquid soap out of soap scraps. And I have the soap scraps saved in a container…. For the day I really need it.

Danny Boy - a cow with a few other names

In the spirit of St. Patty’s day, I wanted to share the story of “Danny Boy,” the no kill cow. My neighbors run a kennel next to highway 121. On their field near the kennel, you’ll find the beloved cow Danny Boy, chewing his cud, his great brown eyes staring out. Whether he knows he escaped an early death, it’s hard to tell by his peaceful and content smile.

Danny Boy’s original owner named him Chuck – pun intended. Raised by a member of the local 4H club, his massive size put him out of the show competitions. The next step would have been to sell him for slaughter. The only problem was he was too sweet to eat. His nature too gentle, too endearing, his owner needed to find him a home. So he came into the care of Mary Beth and Dave – a wonderful couple who run a kennel next to their home. “No killing here”, Mary Beth assured his owner.

Mary Beth changed Chuck’s name to Danny Boy but her kids call him Norbert. He’ll answer to either. If you stand by the fence and call to him, he’ll come running, anxious for a friendly pat. Maybe he thinks he’s part dog, but no matter. He stares out onto the fields near the grapevines, soaking in the beautiful sanctuary of Sonoma. I love that I live near such a cow and such neighbors and I like Danny Boy take refuge in the beautiful Sonoma Valley.

Maybe the lesson we can learn from Danny Boy is that we can change our fate when we act with pure love and guilelessness. With nothing to fear, there's no reason to act in any other way - like Saint Patrick just chased all the snakes out of Ireland... We can act, as Lincoln called it, with our better angels....

Time out :)

After living in Israel where all services and business take an actual full day off, otherwise known as Sabbath Saturday (or for the Muslims - Friday, Christians - Sunday) I wondered what the impact would be if we turned back the clocks, here in the U.S. and took one full day off. Was it that long ago when stores and businesses were completely shut down on Sundays?

Now we go 24/7. No reprieve. No stopping. City office buildings stay lit all weekend, regardless of the amount of people coming and going. Everything stays at the ready, printers, computers, fax machines – in a constant state of alert. How much energy do we consume, without taking a moment to consider what is truly necessary to stay on? How much energy are we wasting, needlessly?

I reveled in glee when I heard the Post Office is considering cutting back on one day of mail delivery. Why? Because with one less day of mail trucks driving, I imagined the energy saved. I would never want to cost anyone their job but with email and other competing mail delivery services, business is down and the need isn’t necessary. Tuesday, the least busy mail day is being considered as the day to discontinue service. Will people protest this because we’ve become so accustomed to having six day mail delivery? I don’t know. When we get used to having something, how hard is it to adjust to when it’s gone? How will other businesses and services adapt to the changing times?

Maybe it’s the little steps that count to get us used to cutting back and rethinking what is necessary. If we can’t spend a day, how about an hour, just one hour cutting back on all that we use? How about we do it around the globe? Sound good? It’s already on the way, thanks to WWF organizing Earth Hour. They’ve asked for participants to take a time out on March 28th, 2009, 8:30 pm. You can check out the action at: http://www.earthhour.org/ I've already been strategizing how I'm going to get behind the fridge to unplug the microwave. I like to plan ahead...

Daffodils

Ugh – the financial news! I keep watching. And becoming more depressed, as it seems everyone is listening to the news. Seeing more stores closing down. Watching things fall before our eyes.

It had been raining all week last week. Maybe that’s why I didn’t notice them but at the corner of the small fish pond near the entry of my in-law apartment were three open daffodils. I love daffodils! A little weather beaten, only one turned towards the sky. I ran inside to get the clippers. I clipped the severely bent one first, then another, and decided on the last one. It would rain again soon and they didn’t seem strong enough to last outdoors.

I put them in my antique silver vase and set them on my kitchen table. Clipping the bent stems seemed to have completely revived them. So pretty. So happy. I couldn’t help but feel joyful looking at them. How swiftly my mood changed. How lucky I felt to have moved to a place where daffodils were right outside my door.

Invigorated, I decided to take a walk down the road, despite having to pass by the pollen, riddled trees. Rather than scowling I choose to pass by nicely, even welcoming the yellowing flowers that fueled my allergies. It might have been over a month since I had taken a walk down the road. The grapevines still lay in winter hibernation but between the vines, wild mustard had grown knee tall. You couldn’t miss the bright yellow spots of the mustard that spread all over the valley. But less conspicuous were the daffodils that bloomed in front of the vineyard fences. And I spotted more wildflowers coming up – some yellow, some white and purple.

These flowers probably sprout every year. Nothing in their path to stop them coming. No bad economic news to stall them. Spreading beauty for all who choose to look. Now more daffodils are blooming outside my apartment. When I was a kid in upstate New York, after a long winter, I would look expectantly at the place where the daffodils grew on our property. One day they would finally appear and that meant spring, and the warm weather would be just around the corner. Maybe beyond their happy, trumpet shape, that’s why they bring me such happiness. They remind me of good things to come. Or maybe, more to the point, that good things are already here.

Fair Play

Back in the summer, at a friend’s birthday party at a club, I sat next to an interesting person, another writer, who had grown up in Canada but was originally from somewhere in South America. I don’t recall exactly where. What I remembered mostly about her was her agitation. She couldn’t sit still in her seat. Why? Because the Lakers were playing. Was it a playoff game? Possibly. I don’t remember because I don’t follow sports, most likely for the reason that she does. She’s so invested in the outcome of the game that she couldn’t be present and enjoy the evening. Her partner went into bar to check the score. She’d look expectantly, almost fearfully at her partner’s face. She couldn’t take if the Lakers messed up and didn’t score. Knowing would ruin her whole evening. Wasn’t it already ruined because she spent the night ruminating over the outcome? I say ruminating but really she squawked and squeaked, “Lakers” when cheers belted from the bar. More interesting to me was the fact that she and her fellow writing staff of the Soap Opera she worked for was up for an Emmy. She had a real potential to win but she seemed almost blasé about it in comparison to her consternation over the Lakers. I can see where I’m projecting my priorities but winning an Emmy is a far higher stake than what your favorite sports team is doing. It’s just your career and future as a TV writer. But maybe that reality was too much to bear… and focusing on your sports team is far easier.

I still find it hard to understand why people get so worked up about sports. It is just a game, is it not? There’s always another season… And is not the fun in it in the playing and not just the winning? Oh, if only I could do statistical analysis as to the potential for one person to always win what they play. In the way the game is structured, there is a winner and a loser; or is that just a perception? Isn’t the true essence of game play about how well we participate?

I asked the writer why she got so worked up about a “game”. I believe I threw her because perhaps she hadn’t thought about it. She’d played basketball ih high school and she thought maybe she put herself in the other sportsmen’s shoes. Something about missing a shot. Isn’t there always another shot to be made? I remembered this exchange because of a news item I first saw on the Rachel Maddow show.

http://highschool.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=914609

A high school basketball player who technically was bared from the game wanted to play because his mom had just died that day and he really needed to play. In order to let him play, the rival team would have to take a penalty shot. They wanted to forgo this but rules were rules so they had to take the shot. What happened? The player missed it on purpose. I cried when I saw this because compassion won over competition. I saw the true essence of game play. They forewent the rigid rules to play what they felt to be a fair game. Perhaps in light of the high-paid ball player admitting to steroid use this past few week, he and his fellow players can relearn their own game, that true sportsmanship truly is about how you play the game… and that fair game always wins, no matter the score...

Words Matter

"It's all good.." Is it? When I hear a phrase like that, my proverbial panties get all twisted up. I have a pet peeve about using expressions that I deem as vapid speak. What does that expression really mean and what are you trying to convey? Or is it just a sound noise used to fill in the gap of a sentence or response. Here are a few more examples: “You know”; “riiight”; “I’m all about that." The latest ‘in phrase’, “I know riiiiiiight,” bugs the literal crap out of me. It’s been around for awhile and normally in the realm of use of the Y generation but it’s infiltrated into a more global usage. Well perhaps saying global is stretching it. I heard it on E! News, afterall.I had to switch off the station after hearing the hosts exchange tidbits ending with “I know riiiiiiiiight?” What is so “riiiiiiiiiiight” about it? Isn’t it all rather wrong?

I’ve been pondering my peeve as to exactly why it bugs me. I thought it was because using a vacuous phrase spoke to the level you are relating to someone. If you are just filling in the gaps in the sentence, are you “phoning” your conversation in? How are you really relating to the other person? Are you finding meaningful words to convey your thoughts or just using what is convenient? Not all conversations warrant a deep response. And “I know riiiiiiiiiight” is a confirmation of what the other person is saying. I wonder though, because I tend to ponder things deeply, whether we know exactly what we are agreeing to.

How many times have we all used a phrase that is a popular expression without any understanding of the power of words? Words create everything here. They put thoughts into action. I have a phrase, “if people knew what they were really doing, they would just stop it.” If we all truly understood how our pervasive thoughts and words create our own reality, we wouldn’t use words so flippantly. We would use care and say what we really mean and want. Today I realized that what truly bugs me about “vapid speak.” Words do having meaning and we need to pay attention to what we are saying, how we are saying it, and who we are speaking to. I have the bad habit of using, "ok" to move along a conversation with someone I don't agree with. Then when I hear someone say ok to me, I wonder if they are saying ok, if they are truly saying, ok, I agree or rather the opposite. I wonder this because I myself am not using the expression properly. I need to stop and find a different way to handle that situation.

How often do you say yes to something when you really mean no? But saying yes, means yes, and people and the world respond to it. Mean what you say and say what you do. Words lose their meaning when we don't value what they mean or act upon them accordingly. I've lost faith in what a person says if that person hasn't remained true to his or her's own words. The world might be more quiet if everyone headed their words... But those words spoken would be worth listening to...

My New Blog

I've begun a new blog called, My Year of Living Manifest-fully. It's detailing my manifesting experiences that I hope will inspire all. It's still at the beginnings stages but please check it out when you can.


http://myyearoflivingmanifest-fully.blogspot.com/