stupidhippy.com

Day 3 of migraine. I have to actually leave the house today and I’m thinking of how I can possibly walk around outside without sunshine touching my eyes. Wear a black bag over my head and have Becca lead me around, maybe? At this point, the pain of the migraine is almost secondary to just how exhausting it’s been. The bird went on a screeching fit a little while ago when he heard Becca laughing outside and I very nearly fed him to the cats.

I’m sure I’m going to regret the following, but we’re having a very unusually… cold… summer. May and June are usually mild months for us, and then things start heating up in July. August and September are the really hot months, but we have plenty of warm weather earlier in the summer. It’s not that we haven’t had a bunch of days in the 90s, it’s that we’ve barely had any days out of the low 70s. It’s supposed to be in the mid 60s most of this week and with the breeze off the Bay, it feels pretty cool. In the evening, it’s like early spring, very cool, not quite cold.

Now, me, I am not a fan of the hottest of the hot summer days, but Ed loves warm weather and this continuing cold is bugging the crap out of him, especially on days he’s riding his bike to work at 4:30 in the morning, or home from work at midnight or 3:00 a.m. Also, my daughter will spend every available moment in the pool, except the weather isn’t warm enough to heat the pool and the water is too cold for swimming. She’s gone swimming a handful of times, some of them when it wasn’t really warm enough. This week, though, forget it. I don’t really want it to turn HOT, truthfully, but I’d be happy for some days in the 80s so the rest of the family could be more comfortable and happy.

Now that I’ve said this, it will be 110 tomorrow and every day after that for a year.

What I don’t understand is how corporations were granted their immunity. How it is axiomatically understood that their interests come before those of people or even their governments? Why must they be defended against reform? How do they recruit their friends in politics and reward them? How do politicians win support from voters whose own wages and safety are threatened?

Via Roger Ebert’s Journal.

You know how when you’re reading auctions at ebay or listings at etsy or whatever and the description includes something like, “comes from a smoke-free, pet-free home.” My home is not one of those. Well, smoke-free. But god, the cat hair.

I say this as I’ve just been gathering some things to send to some friends and I’m picking off cat hairs and then I look away for half a second and there’s more cat hair! Gaaah! I’m always worried I’m going to send something to someone who is deathly allergic to cats and my stuff is gonna send them to the hospital unable to breathe.

My new favorite thing is a stamp I got from Vozamer’s Etsy Shop. I wanted to buy all of the stamps, but this is the one I got (for now):

First thing I stamped it on was my kid’s forehead.

I just haven’t had much to say this week. Today is Monday in our family, Ed has gone back to work after his Thursday-Friday weekend.

Someone asked me the other day how we “survive” without paper towels. Heh. It’s honestly not a hardship and I know of lot of my regular readers are also either fully or mostly paper-free in the kitchen (or, well, paper towels aren’t just for the kitchen, are they?).

I only use paper towels for pet messes. I use about one roll every 3-5 weeks-ish (since Handy is getting old, she throws up more, one roll used to last me two months, easily).

On top of my microwave I have two baskets, one filled with hand-knitted wash cloths. The other is filled with larger cloths, a combination of small towels, cloth diapers and a couple of old receiving blankets. Most of these things have been in use in my home, in one way or another, for at least five years and some of them as much as ten. I have a couple of wash cloths that I knitted when I was first learning to knit, when Becca was a tiny infant. I have two little kitchen towels that I bought when I was married to my ex-husband and that was… a really long time ago. I use these towels for all the things you would use paper towels for, all my household cleaning, everything (except cat barf). I have a small plastic trash can in the kitchen where I toss them when they’re dirty (I hang them over the side or over the edge of the sink if they’re wet, I need to get a little towel rack or something). And then I throw them in the wash when I’m doing laundry.

It isn’t hard. It doesn’t add any time or effort to my week except perhaps a few extra minutes in folding time when I’m already folding the rest of the laundry, but really, sometimes I don’t even fold them, I just cram them in the baskets all messy-like. When I look at my baskets of colorful rags and towels, I like to think of all the paper towels they replaced. Sweet.

I sometimes read on blogs or forums that a woman’s husband has been reluctant or flat-out refused to switch to cloth from paper. Wtf kind of crazy is that?

The point is that it’s easy to be paper towel-free, better for the world, better for your wallet. Whee.

/psa

One reason local governments have not been more successful in instituting carryout plastic bag bans is the threat of lawsuits by the plastics industry. In many cases, municipalities have moved forward with trying to pass an ordinance without obtaining an environmental impact report (EIR). Under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), a public agency undertaking a project that may cause a significant change in the environment must prepare an EIR.

Industry’s general argument is that by banning the distribution of plastic carryout bags from some stores, the locality is undertaking a project that will increase the manufacture and distribution of paper bags. Since this may result in a significant adverse change in the environment, the locality should be required to prepare an EIR before adopting the ordinance or else be in violation of CEQA.

via California plastic carryout bag ban movement gaining ground.

This whole thing pisses me right off.  I mean, I support the ban, but I don’t get why it doesn’t just happen.  Wtf is the hold-up here, people?  Sometimes, I swear, I don’t get …. anything that happens in this country.  At Trader Joe’s the other day I saw a woman loading her reusable bags into the back of a fucking enormous vehicle.  Like the largest Suburban you’ve ever seen or something.  I’m not necessarily interested in criticizing what people drive, there’s always some excuse for driving some huge gas-guzzling monstrosity, so whatever.  But why even bother with your stupid reusable bags, they can’t possibly cancel out your vehicle.  It’s like people don’t even think twice about their waste. I see people doing the most wasteful crap. At our apartment complex, we have three dumpsters, two for trash and one for recycling. But people are too stupid or just don’t care and there’s always trash in the recycling dumpster and OMFG, probably half the stuff in the “trash” dumpsters could be recycled. Seriously, we should have two recycling dumpsters and one trash. People would probably just pile the trash on the ground or something, such is the state of things.  Here’s an inspiration: A Year Without Garbage. A couple from Oregon reused, recycled and reduced until the only actual trash they had, for an entire year, fit in a shoe box. If they can do that, I’m sure everyone else in the damn country could make a few changes, yes? *fuming*

Believe me when I say that I don’t normally like scented products. At all. I go for the unscented version of everything I possibly can. For some reason I can’t fathom, I bought a bottle of
J R Watkins Lemon Cream Hand & Body Lotion at the store one day. Now I adore it, I want to eat it, it smells so much like buttery lemon cookies. It’s not a very strong scent and it doesn’t linger. Most of all, it doesn’t make me sneeze or itch or give me a rash. It’s also free of most of the worst crap in most lotions. I’m sure it isn’t for everyone, but I really do love this stuff.

Maybe the makers will see my awesome blog post and send me a free case! Hahahahaha!

Zoe was here for a couple of days, then Rebecca left to go spend a couple of days at Zoe’s, so it’s quiet here. Goldy still hasn’t shown up. I don’t want to give up hope, but he’s never been away this long and I just feel sick when I think about him. I’m trying not to beat myself up for not trying harder to keep him in, I know he really wanted to be out, he’d been outside so long, being cooped up made him insane. Still, I wish he were here, curled up on his spot on the couch, where he would purr while I read a book or something.

I got a new mouse. There was all this drama over the mouse situation. I had this old cordless optical mouse that I’d had for ages and loved. One day I took it all apart and blew a bunch of dust and cat hair out of it, put it back together and within a couple of days it had all but stopped working. So I used another optical cordless mouse that we had and it looked almost the same, same brand, same size, just a different finish. Thing was a piece of crap and drove me insane, so I ordered a new one and it’s great, just like the old one except hot hot red. You’re thrilled, I know.

And I’ve been reading a lot lately! I’m always reading, but sometimes I get in a book-crazy mood and it’s like I’m 12 again, finishing books super fast and diving right into the next. I finished The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick and loved it all the way through. I also read Walt Whitman: Words For America, a children’s book written by Barbara Kerley and illustrated by Brian Selznick. Whitman has been one of my favorite poets for a long time and this was a sweet book about him, concentrating mostly on his work with wounded soldiers during the Civil War. Curently I’m reading The Lamplighter by D.M. Cornish, sequel to The Monster Blood Tattoo. I also started another book by Charles Bukowski, Portions From a Wine-stained Notebook (check me out reading a book written for ADULTS!). I’ve read three stories so far and they are great Bukowski pieces, all at once sad, or angry, funny, fierce, beautiful. I think I’ve reached my limit, though, and have too many books going at once.

Today I went grocery shopping and hung out with Ed. I was going to go to Target and the pet store tomorrow, but I think I might put it off a day and just completely vegetate tomorrow, alone all day (it’s Ed’s Monday).

Access to nutrient-rich food is a class issue even in the best of times, and these are not the best of times.

The “war on obesity” is largely a class war, and the more we uncritically repeat narratives about laziness and lifestyle and pretend the primary solution to all childhood obesity in particular is increased activity, the more profoundly obscured is this simple fact: They’re hungry.

via Shakesville: They’re Hungry.

Thanks to Dawn for the share. We’ve been there. I always think, people who say “oh vegetables are cheap!” have never really been that poor, never really had to struggle when they had a family to feed.

Well, San Francisco was too cold for my family last night and they actually came home before seeing fireworks. All was not in vain, though, because they went to the aquarium and they bought THIS BIT OF WONDERFULNESS:

I have a good-lookin’ family! They’re currently on a boat, going to San Francisco to see fireworks!

I am home alone where it is quiet!