What's going on??

So people, . . . it has been a long long LONG month and a half. Time moves very differently when you are faced with intense emotional "stuff". I have been feeling a few articles brewing in my head, especially since the BP oil spill (my god, don't get me started just yet!). I can tell I'm finding some sort of equilibrium amidst the hardship of dealing with the loss of my sweet mom. I just wanted to give an update.

For all those that are wondering, I am doing ok. It's amazing the amount of support and love that has been pouring out from friends and family. Thank you all. Losing my mom has definitely been one, if not THE, hardest thing I've had to face. I am just in the beginning of comprehending what life will be like without her. The shock has worn off. She is not here. I have moments where I just want to sit down and bawl. Then other moments where I relish in the beauty of life's cycles. I recognize that in my moments of pain, that this too shall pass, and that there is also beauty in feeling and accepting that pain. Life is beautiful. It's amazing how I really do feel my mom's essence all around me.

Serafin has been a little speed demon! In a good way of course. She is crawling all over the place, climbing steps, figuring out how to charm us all, as well as yell and scream to get what she wants. It has been a completely new phase and needless to say, I am EXHAUSTED! In fact, I don't think I have EVER been this tired. But we are getting through it one day at a time and when my little munchkin looks at me and smiles my heart warms and I forget how tired I am.

Once this month is over there will be less on my mind and also a little less to do--after my mom's memorial on May 30th. We are expecting somewhere between 150 and 200 people at the party. We don't really know actually. My mom had a lot of people that loved her. I am looking forward to seeing people that I haven't seen in ages. The food is all planned out. We are going to have some good wine and just have a lovely day. On a side note, of course I bought all biodegradable plates, cups and utensils! Gotta keep with the green! I also ordered 150 lavender saches to give away as a little gift in memory of her. She would have loved that.

Three weeks after my mom's memorial is Serafin's first birthday. It makes me feel so alive to really celebrate birth and death so close to each other. In fact, this lesson has showed me that birth and death, should, in fact, be celebrated every day! To truly live, we must be in the moment!

On the home front, despite the fact that this has been an exhausting time, we have been quite productive. Weeded the entire garden. Planted some Echinacea, sage, purple and orange plants. Cleaned out our hot tub. Got a new tattoo (in honor of my ma)! Cooked, cleaned, laundry, bla bla bla. One of these days I will get to writing a bit more, when I'm ready.

Love you all and that's all for now!

PS
I picked the picture above because I really loved being surrounded by all those flowers, they were in my mom's garden in Napa. I felt I wanted to share the love with you!

In Memory of my Loving Mother

8/23/1948-4/6/2010


Rest in Peace my sweet mother, you are forever in my heart.
You taught me so much and now I take with me all the wisdom and strength you gave me.
You were the head of my woman clan!
The stronghold of the triple Goddess!
Our sweet Serafin will know you through me, I promise that.

Thank you for your strength and courage.
Thank you for holding my hand.
Thank you for taking care of me when I was sick.
Thank you for taking care of me when I was not sick!
Thank you for being here.
Thank you for your love and kindness.
Thank you for understanding!

I will miss the calls.
I will miss the hugs.
I will miss the dinners.

The shared looks of understanding.
The laughs.
The stupid baby voices.
The beeps, the snarls, the funny faces.

Now, I speak out loud to you, . . .
or I write to you in my journal, . . .
I pull a medicine card, . . .
or I talk to the pendulum and ask you questions, . . .

I know you are still here.

You are all around me, . . .
inside and out.
You are not here, . . .
but you are everywhere!

My beautiful mother!

Thank you for giving me this precious life!
Thank you for teaching me the most valuable lesson, . . .
to LIVE!
You will always be in my heart.
Love and light.

Craigslist = BFF

Want to get rid of a door? Or maybe some old pillow stuffing? How about a kitchenaid mixer that's been around since the 40s? I may be exaggerating just a bit with the above title, but I do think Craigslist can be handy. In the past year I have made close to $700 just trying to get rid of stuff that's been sitting around our house for ages. Not bad eh? I've posted everything from books, to cloth diapers, to much larger items such as a stroller and the kitchenaid mixer mentioned above. It's amazing what people will take. While I'm mentioning craigslist, I may as well plug my latest item "for sale", . . . does anybody want this stinky baby butt? It poops and smells a whole lot!



Just kidding Serafin, Mommy loves you no matter how much aroma comes from that big old diaper butt of yours!

"Bye bye VHS tapes, I hope you become something new and exciting!"

Ok, so I'm really starting to see the difference between certain recycling facilities. In an attempt to get rid of two boxes of old VHS tapes I made a bunch of calls and was referred to this place by Waste Management. This facility, which shall remain nameless, was in East Oakland, and although they seemed to be doing their job, I wasn't very impressed-- I should have taken the hint when their web-link popped up a warning for Malware on my computer.

That morning, I was all excited to learn about a new place. I packed the car full with the VHS tapes and some other items that hadn't made it out of the house during the first round of E-cycling. First of all, to put a damper on the experience, I got totally lost going down there, and for all of you Bay Area natives, you know East Oakland isn't the best place to get lost in. I ended up parking the car at International and 92nd and calling the hubby to map it out for me and give me directions. Finally, after 45 minutes of driving around, I made it, but admittedly, was kind of cranky at that point, nothing to do with them, but more due to the fact that my butt was sore from all that driving.

Anyway, back to the story, this was another lot, but 10 times bigger than the last, and for good reason, they recycle so much more; plastics, cardboard, metals, . . . I found myself wondering if maybe this is where my recycled goods went to when they get thrown in the bin at our house. There was a huge fork driving around the lot, lifting pallets around, I'm sure there was a method to the madness, but it all looked like a big mess to me, which made me kind of uncomfortable at the thought of leaving my stuff there. There did appear to be some organization of cardboard and plastics, however most of it appeared to look like one huge junk yard, almost like a landfill, everything mixed in with eachother! Do they really go through and organize all that stuff? Unfortunately, although I brought my camera, it was a bit drizzly out and the guy that I spoke to didn't speak very good English, so I felt kind of awkward making too much conversation with him, plus, I had Serafin in the car and didn't want to subject her to the rain by wandering around and taking photos.

After a brief interaction with him, however, I did learn that the "goods" do get organized and then get shipped over-seas, probably to somewhere in Asia, an assumption I am making considering the company has Chinese characters all over there website, again, that's just an assumption. So that was about all I managed to get out of the guy. He did help me unload the car which was nice because one of the boxes must have weighed about 50 pounds. Although I gave them the VHS tapes, I kept the other stuff. I will be going back to the ACCRC for that, I would prefer to do my best to keep my trash in California.

E-Cyling Bonanza!

So Gary and I have been trying to de-clutter our house (a long and slow process!). We finally managed to gather our e-waste together for our first trip to the Alameda County Computer Resource Center (ACCRC). Wooo whoo! The ACCRC is an organization that recycles most e-waste, if it can be plugged in, then there is a good chance that they will take it. Their fees are minimal, and they pride themselves on recycling all of the material locally. If they can't fix it, they take it apart and send bits and pieces to local refineries or recycling centers. They even take care to recycle any precious metals such as copper, which is sent to a copper smelter. So cool!

It's so exciting when you find a place that will take your "junk" and not just throw it in the landfill, but instead, find a way to re-use it! I had been looking for a place that recycled more than just computers and TVs, we had stuff like speakers, phones, wires, a fax machine, and computer printer. There is still more, but this was a start! It's amazing how much stuff you accumulate over the years.




When I got there, there were two men sitting in a cluttered shipping crate, which seemed to be a make-shift office. They appeared to be hard at work, when one man got up and came to help me unload.



As he took things out of my car he began to put sort them into piles.



Items are then further sorted and placed on pallets to be taken elsewhere. Check out all the TVs and Printers waiting to go, . . . and NOT to be dumped in our landfills!




So for all of that, I payed a total of $11, that's really not a lot, and I really hope people see the worth in this type of thing. In my research, I did not find one place that recycled for free, which is unfortunate, because I'm sure this would be a deterrent for some--"Why spend spend time and money to take my trash somewhere when I can just throw it in my garbage for free?" To all those that feel that way, and probably none of you are reading my blog, it IS worth the time and money! We need to do what we can to help sustain our world instead of deplete it! Do it for your grandchildren! Ok, sorry, rant over!

To learn more about the ACCRC check out their website at www.accrc.org/

Peace, . .

The Footprint Experiment; Part I

I AM a lover of the earth, but am I REALLY? Do I live in a way that would sustain our planet and it's population? Lately I've been really interested in learning what my impact is this planet and how I can contribute to the overall health of our world. The first step in the process is to become aware of how much damage I personally am doing.


After doing some digging, I found a few carbon footprint calculator's that I liked, and yes, I tried MANY . . .

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/calculators/

The Global Footprint Network has a fun little cartoon that creates a virtual story as you answer the questions. They also emphasize the importance of buying local and sustainable foods, which has a huge impact on one's carbon footprinting, and an aspect which not many calculators go into detail over. In the end, when they show you your results, they don't just give you a number, they put it in perspective. You can imagine my surprise when I read that "if everyone lived like you (me), we'd need 3.8 Planet Earths to provide enough resources"! To support my current lifestyle it would take 16.7 global acres of the Earth's land, . . .what's scary is that we thought that we were pretty good about being sustainable! We have a lot of work to do! We aren't major meat eating jet-setters, but there are things around our house that are huge energy eaters and things that we can re-evaluate.

www.coolclimate.berkeley.edu

Has a neat little calculator as well, this one breaks down your footprint very clearly into transportation, housing, and shopping. It also compares your results with the average of others in the same economical status, an interesting little comparison. However my results were still alarmingly high, with a carbon footprint of 60 metric tons of CO2/year, equal to others in my income bracket, and much higher than the world average which they calculate as 10! Holy cow!

http://www.nature.org/initiatives/climatechange/calculator/

Last, the Nature Conservatory, has a simple calculator that also compares your results to a national average and a world average. The quiz is more detailed than others and even asks questions about steps that you taken to conserve which I liked because I felt that it took some of the considerations we've already made towards a greener living into count. As you answer the questions, you can actually see the calculator subtracting C02 figures. With this calculator our results ended up being 41 tons of C02 against a national average of 80 and a world average of 17. Slightly better, but still alarmingly high.

This little experiment has really opened my eyes. Gary and I are conscious about our impact, but apparently not enough. We both want to do what we can to contribute to a sustainable future for us, our daughter, her children and so on and so forth. For now, we have decided to try and make the following changes and see how this will change our carbon footprint, . . .

1. Get our hot tub better insulated. A biggy! Twehe reason we got solar panels is because our hot tub uses tons of electricity, however, our bills are still higher than we want them. We got the solar panels hoping we would balance it at 0 and we are a far cry from that.

2. Change ALL of our light bulbs--we've changed many, but now we will change them all.

3. By locally--period! This will be the hard one. We've given ourselves each one luxery item, for Gary, it'll have to be Marmite, his staple from home, for me, I'm not quite sure yet. We by most produce from local farmers, but now we want to extend that to all corners of our pantry.


So that's what we are starting with. Admittedly, the task of eating only local goods is a bit daunting to me. I was at the grocery store today and when I went to reach for the bag of bagels I thought to myself, "well shit! I don't know where the flour comes from or anything else in that bagel for that matter!" Next I looked at the organic chicken I usually buy and found out it had been shipped from Colorado! So I guess this is where the research begins! Let's see what happens!

Lanolizing wool covers

So in my cloth diapering adventures I got attracted to the wonders of wool. I had been told that a wool diaper cover, when prepped right, is a leak free solution during the day and even at night. Finally after learning how to lanolize my covers correctly, my little babe can sleep through the night in her cloth diaper and wool cover and be completely dry in the morning. It took me a while to figure out how to lanolize though, I actually ruined three diaper covers before I figured out the right combo--not a cheap mistake. I figured I would spread the love and for those of you that are interested in trying it out, you can follow my little tutorial here, . . . .


Here's what you will need:

Wool wash--I use Eucaline
Lanoline: you can use Lansinoh (the same stuff you put on your sore boobs) or any liquid lanoline
Jar with a top
kitchen towel
Big towel
Boiling water
Large pot full of tepid water


1. Put the kettle on to boil
2. Fill a large pot with tepid water
3. First combine a teaspoon of wool wash in with an inch of Lanoline (if using liquid lanoline, use 3/4 teaspoon)






4. Poor boiling water into jar, fill jar up just a little, like an inch above the bottom
5. Put top on, HOLD JAR WITH KITCHEN TOWEL (or else you will burn your hands) and shake to mix wash and lanoline







6. Add mixture to the pot with tepid water



7. Immerse your covers in the water, pulling them inside out and GENTLY massaging them with water. Treat wool like you would your hair, wool is very sensitive and can shrink if it's tampered with too much.




8. Let covers sit for 15 minutes
9. Take covers out and put in the center of a thick towel




10. Roll the towel up and gently squeeze water out of the covers DO NOT ring water out of or directly squeeze wool covers



11. Take wool covers and dry flat or hang dry--many people advise not to hang dry because wool can change shape and become deformed, I have not had a problem with this as the covers I have chosen are pretty sturdy. The covers also dry faster when they hang up.



12. Be sure to pull covers inside out every 4-5 hours to make drying process speed up.

13. Put diaper on baby tush and pull on cover--now your baby is ready for bed!



"Good night!"