I don't do well in hot weather. I am a Washingtonian, born and bred, and when it gets above 75 I am not a happy camper. Don't let this picture fool you - it was taken on a sunny day in FEBRUARY out on Alki Beach, a lot more to my liking, temperature-wise. My Swedish ancestry means I burn in about 5 minutes. I've been avoiding chemical sunscreens (see a previous post about that), and I don't like the ghost-like sheen of mineral sunscreens (they just aren't quite there yet for me). So I started using a physical sunscreen - a lacy white poncho - to cut some of the sun exposure since I was scaring the kids at the tutoring center during the
summer reading program. I would be so red that they were scared for me because they have never seen skin that color before. Most of them are from Somalia, and a few from Cambodia or Vietnam, and they just do not have the same sun reaction us Euro mutts do.
So I started covering up better, and on Saturday I even used an umbrella when attending the
groundbreaking ceremony (hope stone ceremony, really) of the LEED Gold designed
Neighborhood House planned for my neighborhood of High Point. I felt like a dork but I had not even arrived at the amphitheater before people were telling me how smart I was to bring an umbrella. I gave a silent thanks to the older Asian ladies in my neighborhood who do this all the time and just didn't happen to be around at the time to take the credit.
So in these weeks of hot weather I have spent my days dreading walking my dog but having to do it anyway since my husband and I moved into a High Point townhouse a year ago this week and we chose a place without a yard. I adopted a dog as a walking partner but when you have a house and a yard, you let yourself get lazy. I knew what moving to a townhouse entailed - 3 walks a day, 365 days a year, come rain, sleet, snow or hail - just like the old US Postal Service credo. Somehow they missed SUN in that credo - they must all love sun and that's why they got those cute blue shorts to wear. I would never make as a postal worker, unless trapped at the air-conditioned counter all day.
Sophia, an Italian greyhound, LOVES the sun. So I sometimes use a very long leash and bring a book and I sit in the shade of a tree and she stretches out in the sun and gets toasty. But even she gets too hot after awhile and we head home to recover and cool down. I am always wearing my lacy cover-up since I don't want to scare any more neighbor kids.
So the cooler weather and rain the last couple of days has perked me up immensely and I feel motivated to sit down and bring you up-to-date with what I've been up to. I've not been blogging a lot, but I have been working a lot. Still I took a few days off last week when a friend from out of state came for a visit, so I had to cram a lot of work into the days leading up to it. I got my hair done at
Mode Organic Salon.
I finally got to visit the
Chocolate Flower Farm on Whidbey Island, and having had a relatively mellow ferry trip, but still having to wait an hour on each end, am glad I don't live there and have a regular ferry commute. Altho I would probably get a lot more reading done.
Speaking of,
What I've Been Reading:
My husband bought me an online subscription to the Green Guide magazine for Christmas, which I never read because I already spend too much time in front of a computer. But when they came out with their conscious consumerism reference guide, I
ordered a copy right away - a book I can hold in my hands and more likely to read. I consider myself pretty green educated, but there's something new I have learned on nearly every page. Well worth the investment. I am considering giving it as Xmas gifts this year.
Plenty MagazineA free subscription to this magazine came along with the cost of admission to this year's first ever Seattle
green festival, a repeat of which is already scheduled for March 28-29, 2009. As someone who suffers from environmental guilt just as an every day thing by existing on this planet, I feel like this magazine has saved my life. This magazine has a positive outlook and dazzles with all of the innovation being created in this world right now that you just don't hear on the evening news. Good things aren't news, tragedy is. I prefer to have a little positive in my life, thank you very much, and I have really enjoyed this magazine. You can get a
digital subscription if you want, but I have found I need something portable and in print. I read so fast that digital readers drive me crazy, so until something better comes along, I will trade a little recycled paper for green learning and a positive outlook on the future of our planet.
What I've Been Watching:
"Living With Ed" My husband actually ordered up Season One on our Netflix account and we really enjoyed it. I can't wait to watch Season Two when it becomes available on DVD. Yeah, I still watch DVDs - we have an environmentally unfriendly although technically superior plasma screen and frankly my couch is a lot more comfortable than my desk chair. And besides, this way I get to spend quality time with my husband.
What I've Been Doing:Earlier this month I participated in a market basket survey event called "Food for Thought" as part of the King County Food and Fitness Initiative. The King County Food and Fitness Initiative (KCFFI) is a community coalition formed in 2006, funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to begin planning for a ten plus year initiative, called Food and Fitness, launched in 2007 nationally in 9 regions around the country. The vision for the Food and Fitness Initiative is “Creating vibrant communities that support access to locally grown, healthy, affordable food and safe and inviting places for physical activity and play—for everyone.”
The results recently published seem to be somewhat controversial by way of the comments by readers after the article came out in a local paper.
Seattle PI article:
Location plays role in how groceries are pricedThe Big Blog is talking about it. Both the
West Seattle Blog and the
White Center Blog are talking about it.
I was one of the adult volunteers who participated in this experiment. The reason I did was I wanted to meet some teenagers and see what makes kids tick these days. I was impressed. I ended up with 3 girls who refused to be separated and they got a fun ride in my Mini and we went to Burien to go to TJs and Fred Meyers since I was curious and willing to drive that far. Trader Joe’s took so long to get thru we could not complete the entire shopping list at Freddies which is why you don’t see it on the list. TJs sells produce by the item, not by the pound, and they do not even have a scale in the store where a shopper could weigh a pepper or apple or whatever and get a per pound price to be able to make an intelligent decision about shopping there. Also the store does not carry basic staples such as bags of flour and sugar and a bunch of other things which is why there were so many items “missing”. Walking into Freddie’s was a relief and I thought we might almost get thru the list before we ran out of time because everything is grouped together in a logical format with large signs so it is easy to price easily and pick out the cheapest thing.
We consistently sought the cheapest thing in the right size - sometimes this is hard to do. But any family on a budget - SERIOUS BUDGET - would shop the same way and consistently shop for the cheapest loaf of bread or can of spaghetti sauce, so this was realistic (quality would not be a factor, other than if the lettuce looked bad this week maybe they wouldn’t buy any). The point, also, is to not learn just where the cheapest frozen food is or the cheapest milk - what one store could you go and spend the least amount of money at the bottom line?
The girls I was with learned a lot from me in the process, too. I shop at the farmers market and PCC and QFC and TJs depending on what I am looking for. I used to serve on the board for P-Patch Trust and have worked on other environmental projects and I was able to dazzle them with lots of little tidbits that are no big deal to you and me but a 17 year old may not know how hummus is made. When they were starving and wanted to buy a snack at TJs and wanted to buy chips I told them absolutely not on my watch and we went and priced out fruit, organic vs. non-organic, and for 20 cents more they bought and shared a 1 lb container of organic strawberries from California. We talked about farm-to-table, how far food has to travel, organic vs. conventional and which fruits and vegetables are safe to eat conventionally grown. They discovered I watched American Idol and liked
David Cook (I gave them the bootleg CD I had of his 2006 album “Analog” out of my car) and I learned they liked all kinds of music, including opera, and had them half asleep by the time we got back from listening to
Il Divo.
These girls could be on their own and trying to feed themselves or a family within a year or two and it is important for them to learn to think critically about what they put into their mouths. I am glad I was able to share a little bit with them, and I appreciate what they shared with me, too. It was well-worth the 3 hours that I donated to the project.
Nat Geo's "Green Guide To Go" newsletter - to which my husband bought me an online subscription to for Xmas last year and I finally had time to read one because of some time off from work - arrived yesterday and I was glad to see a link to a comprehensive plastics Q&A article.
