Update on Living Green

I am still working hard to maintain my low-impact changes from last year.

This winter, we kept the thermostat set below 70 most of the time. The main thermostat is an old-fashioned dial kind, so it’s not very precise. It was set to about 68F, which meant it was probably several degrees colder in other parts of the house. We installed a programmable thermostat upstairs by the bedrooms, which controls the second furnace (yes, we have 2 furnaces!). It is set to go down to 16 degrees Celsius most of the time. It warms up to 19 degrees for 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours at bedtime.

The only problem with having the upstairs so cold is that cold air sinks, and we were getting a terrible draft coming down the stairs. I was turning up the heat on the main floor all the time just to feel comfortable. Well, before Christmas, I went to IKEA and purchased a curtain and rod and got my hubby to install it across the stairway. It works GREAT! No more draft, no more turning up the heat, energy saved. I was so proud of myself. If I wanted to be really, really eco-conscious, I would have found fabric and curtain rods at a second-hand store or on freecycle, and made the curtains myself. If I held myself to that standard, however, I never would have gotten around to it, and I would have broken my resolve and turned the heat up. I don’t feel too badly about the curtains and rod because I will use them for a long, long time. Even when I’m done with them, they will still be useful somewhere else.

I got a book about composting out of the library a little while ago. I can’t remember the name of it, because it was one of about 20 books on gardening that I got all at once. I like to go on these reading binges. I learned that I can compost lots and lots of things I didn’t know about. For instance, you can put your dryer lint, your floor sweepings, your vacuum bag dust, bits of paper, cardboard (like egg cartons), used tissues, paper towels, coffee grounds, tea bags, and most of your supper leftovers. I went out and bought one of those stainless steel garbage cans with a bucket inside it, and I am composting like crazy. Between recycling and composting, there isn’t much left going into the garbage.

Again, if I really wanted to be super-environmentally-conscious, I probably didn’t need to buy a new garbage can. I could have waited until I found one second-hand. However, I was getting really tired of having a bucket of scraps on my kitchen counter, and now I am composting almost everything instead of just a few things.

I have also been trying to purchase gifts that aren’t made entirely of plastic, or don’t come encased in that horrible plastic bubble stuff. I would say my results are hit and miss. I wanted to get the kids a treat for Valentine’s Day. I managed to find a heart-shaped tin of chocolates for each of them. I didn’t realize until after they opened them that the chocolates were individually wrapped in that plastic-foil stuff. I bought my son a cardboard puzzle as a little surprise, and I was very disappointed that inside the cardboard box was a plastic bag holding all the cardboard puzzle pieces. What is the point of that? Totally unnecessary, not to mention frustrating.

I went shopping with the kids for a gift for a 3-year-old girl. My daughter is starting to really understand about the plastic issue, so we found a very nice tea set with real porcelain dishes that came in a wicker picnic basket. We were thrilled! It did have a bit of plastic on the inside, in the shape of a frame to hold all the dishes in place, but we were pleased with what we found.

Again, though, I think of the truly environmental viewpoint, which is that I could simply skip Valentine’s Day, or bake cookies at home instead, and that I don’t need to buy all this stuff for my kids or other kids. Have I mentioned that I am a bit of a perfectionist? It doesn’t really matter how well I do, there is always that voice in my head reminding me of the higher standard. Mind you, with environmentalism, it can be hard to decide sometimes what the truly lowest-impact decision would be. If I think about it too hard, I figure that lowest-impact thing to do would be to just kill myself (see my previous post about death and crazy thoughts). Since I don’t really want to go there, I have to find some compromise.

Maybe someone will see that I’m far from perfect, so they might feel more comfortable trying to make a few changes themselves.

Sadness

My father-in-law passed away a month ago. This is my husband’s father, my children’s grandfather. It was totally unexpected, and very sudden. One minute he was alive, and then he wasn’t. No one even had a chance to say good-bye. I tried to write in my diary about it, but I couldn’t manage more than one sentence. I haven’t been able to post here, either.

In a way, I feel like it’s not really my loss to mourn. My sadness pales in comparison to my husband’s and his mother’s. I’m surprised, actually, by my response. I didn’t know how much I valued him. (Isn’t there a song about that, you don’t know what you had ‘til it’s gone? Joni Mitchell comes to mind.)

I have had a lot of crazy, strange thoughts lately. Seeing my mother-in-law suffering, it has occurred to me that it would probably be better not to get too attached to my husband, because he’ll probably die first. I feel like I don’t want to rely on him too much, because I’ll end up alone eventually, so why bother?

My husband went away on a conference for a few days, and I found myself playing a little game in my head, pretending that he was actually gone forever, and what would I do now. I went grocery shopping and thought about whether I would prepare different meals if I wasn’t cooking for him. I bought a new garbage can, and I chose one that didn’t have to be assembled or installed, because I didn’t want to have to rely on him to help me with it.

I have also spent some time wondering what is the point of living. What is the point of doing anything? I’m just going to die. What is the point of trying to live more sustainably and using fewer resources? Wouldn’t it be better for the environment if I just died now? What is the point of working on my marriage? We’re both just going to die. I have wondered at what point I am supposed to seek professional help. Is this type of thinking totally normal, or should I really talk to someone?

My poor, long-suffering husband. Not only does he have to deal with the loss of his father and try to comfort his grieving mother, he has to try to understand his slightly psychotic wife.

No matter how much I ask myself about the purpose of life and question what I am doing here, I wake up every morning and find that I am in fact still alive. It’s like a surprise every morning: “Oh look, I’m still here. Why am I still here?” It is a good thing I have children, because they have needs that must be met, so I get out of bed and feed them, and read to them, and play with them, and take them places.

Fortunately, the weather has warmed up considerably lately, and I am making an effort to get out into the sunshine and walk and feel alive instead of going through the motions. We are going skiing next week, and when I come back I will be starting all my seeds for my garden, which certainly represents spring, life, and renewal. Somehow, I suppose, life marches on, and after experiencing this death in my family, life is more of a mystery to me than it ever was before.