Jennifer Edelmeyer's Blog

Writey Crafty Moms

Sorry for the frequent blog postings. I will settle down, I promise! Anyway…

“The quickest way for a parent to get a child’s attention is to sit down and look comfortable.” Lane Olinghouse

How many writers (especially moms) find abundant time and mental energy for writing (or other creative) projects? Hmmm… I’m not seeing many upraised hands out there in cyberland.

When I started writing, it was easier. My days were dedicated to caring for little ones. Then they’d be asleep in the early evening. By then, I was bursting with things to write about, even though I was physically and emotionally drained. While my husband caught up on the news (bleah!) I typed and typed. Getting it all down allowed me to relax and sleep in peace, with the satisfaction that I’d captured vignettes to be kneaded into a novel. Someday.

My children are older. They get needy at night. They want my attention. They like to read themselves to sleep, and want me with them while they read. Just having them attempting to share the couch in my office is a tinder box of trouble.

What’s a mom to do?

I’m taking a risk by posting a “mom dilemma” on the internet. There will be those who say I must provide complete availability. If I pursue a hobby I’m a selfish, bad mom. There will be others who say that my children need to respect my “write time” and I must grow tougher about enforcing boundaries. Or I’ll just be told to get my fat lazy self out of bed in the wee hours before the household is awake.

Yawn. Mommy Wars are so tiresome. Ladies, surely you’ve heard what they say about opinions and how everyone has one?

I do wish moms would stop being so critical of each other. We’re all in the mommy boat together, and I’m wagering other moms struggle with the work / family / creative life balance. Where do we draw the line between our creative wants and the wants of our families? It’s even tougher when needs are involved. I have deep admiration for moms who are juggling more plates than what I’ve currently got spinning near the ceiling. My fifteen minutes of free time is a precious luxury for which I’m thankful.

Another irksome problem is a certain lack of realism about children’s behavior towards moms in many TV shows and stories. Children are often portrayed as supportive of mommy’s dreams, completely unselfish and understanding, never needy, and wise beyond their years. Who writes that stuff, anyway? Certainly, no one who’s a mom!

Some writers need beautiful surroundings and sleek, high speed computers loaded with the latest software. I simply need the mental peace that comes when everyone else doesn’t need anything. This means I have to go slower with my writing than I’d want to, but so be it.

I do think it’s healthy for children to see their moms accomplish things. My own mother taught elementary school for about three decades. She did a great deal of good during her career, and I’m certainly proud of her, even if her professional duties kept her from indulging my every whim. I tell her that, but she just snorts and mutters about bills needing payment.

As I write this on my decade-old dinosaur of a desktop, whose internet surfing days are numbered, my children are in my study with me, each at one end of the ugly sofa my husband had since his bachelor days. I get writing done in little fits and spurts when I’m not otherwise occupied, because I want to give to my family when they need it. My children won’t be young forever. But if it’s a want then it’s a judgment call, right?

For now, they’re quiet, and I’m writing. It’s all good.

p.s. I think a book satirizing the Mommy Wars would be hilarious, don’t you? I sort of have one outlined; it’s a larva wanting out of its cocoon. tee-hee. Wish me luck!. I need to focus on re-writing at the moment. The larva, unlike my children, will keep.

Let your Freak Right to Dry Flag Flap in the Wind and Fly

I love my clothesline.

Maybe I don’t have enough to think about, but when it came to my attention that the neighborhood homeowners association forbade visible clotheslines, I put one up for my family. Maybe that means I’m not a nice person. Maybe not being a nice person will make my fiction extra interesting. It’s all about the fiction, right?

Can drying one’s laundry on a line have a positive impact on the environment? The statistics on the internet were all over the map, so I did my own calculation. You don’t need an engineering degree to do it, but since I do have an engineering degree, a PE license, and I’m handy with a calculator, I can stand behind my own calculations, at least!

Divide the kilowatt hours used for two loads of laundry per day (which is about our average usage) and the total daily kilowatt hour demand our family makes on the power grid, multiply by 100, and there you have it:

(1.9 kWh/day) / ((MYOB) kWh/day) x 100 = our dryer’s daily electric need is a substantial part of our energy bill!

My findings are probably typical for most households. I bet if I shut off the TV the household electric use number would plummet. Anyway, during the months when we aren’t running our air conditioner (which is most of the year), the dryer accounts for 6% to 7% of our daily electrical needs. It took a bit of digging for power usage for our dryer and a hunt through old electric bills, but there you have it.

If clotheslines reduce power usage by 6% for nine months out of the year, how would that help make a positive contribution? I don’t have numbers for how much power residences use per day, but I admit I’m curious.

I’m not advocating that people not use dryers. What parent isn’t thankful for a washer and dryer whenever small children have the stomach flu? (Surely I need not explain why!)

With all the tacky and noisy things people do, why do clotheslines get hung out to dry?

Articles I’ve read, which seem plausible, make the guess that hating on clotheslines is a throwback to when dryer ownership was a status symbol. Perhaps home owner associations, in their zeal to keep a neighborhood looking tidy, made a unilateral decision to ban what they thought would decrease property values.

if you don’t like looking at my sheet, be thankful I don’t post pictures of the family underwear. For someone who likes broadcasting her opinions online, I can be discreet when the need arises!

I just wish I had a charming and persuasive personality, so that I could approach the homeowners association and tell them to grow some clothesline love in their hearts. But I’m afraid to broach the subject or they will give me doo-doo about my own foray into lawlessness. Best let sleeping dogs lie.

If any HOA jockeys are reading this, I challenge them to open their minds. Any chemical engineer knows that power generation takes a toll on the environment. I’m thankful for our modern way of life, but why waste power? If you care for the environment, then why obey a silly HOA rule like this one?

One time I did a calculation to see if my dietary success would make any difference in my gasoline usage. Like your typical mom I’m always driving my snowflakes to sports practices and clubs. The difference was minuscule, but imagine how much less gasoline we’d use if we were faithful to our diets! But that’s a posting for another time. And I hate to talk about THAT issue, as it’ll just make people mad. And I’m not above a little noshing on unnecessary nibbles myself.

Let me dust the donut crumbs off my fingers long enough to type out that I’m a firm believer that small things can add up to make a big difference. And it’s within our power to make small changes.

My husband works hard maintaining our postage stamp sized yard. Hanging laundry is a much needed excuse for me to go outside, even if only for a moment, and appreciate what he does. I especially appreciate that he’s training our little snowflakes in household maintenance skills. What’s not to love? Besides, the great outdoors, even without his diligent manicuring, is beautiful and restorative.

One winter, after changing the sheets, I found a pillow case at the bottom of the stack when my matched set was in the laundry basket. That night, it was a pleasant surprise to lay my weary head upon a pillow whose case had been line dried the previous summer. It was nice to dream of warm sunshine, green grass, and butterflies when it was single digits outside.

What does this beautiful flower have to do with clotheslines? Not much. I just thought it was pretty. I’m not a green thumb, but I do plant flowers in pots. When I’m on my way to and from my clothesline, I enjoy these little beauties of nature.

*Dianthus barbatus* or Pink Sweet William

For further reading:

If you’d like a more recent take on the subject, here’s one, except I couldn’t get around the paywall.

And now for some words of wisdom from spiritual people:

An ordered love for creation, therefore, is ecological without being ecocentric. We can and must care for the earth without mistaking it for the ultimate object of our devotion. A Christian love of the natural world, as St. Francis showed us, can restrain grasping and wanton human behavior and help mightily to preserve and nurture all that God has made. We believe that faith in a good and loving God is a compelling source of passionate and enduring care for all creation.

A Pastoral Statement of the United States Catholic Conference November 14, 1991, Part IV-A

Happy hanging dear friends, happy hanging!

Morning Pages, Morning Meditations, and the Hullabaloo in My Head

Who out there has read Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way? Who out there has done the entire assignment set? For those unfamiliar, her first assignment is what she calls “Morning Pages.” Aspiring artists (not just writers) are to fill three pages daily with the thoughts in their heads. Anything, anything at all, is fodder for Morning Pages.

One wonders if J.K. Rowling had a similar idea when Harry discovered Dumbledore removing his thoughts and dropping them into a Pensieve. If Dumbledore had to organize his mind with a Pensieve then maybe the rest of us can benefit from Morning Pages.

(As an aside, some religious persons consider Harry Potter spiritually dangerous, and other religious persons get furious at the merest whiff of a suggestion of such a possibility. It would appear that religious people love nothing better than a good brawl among themselves. I will concede that we struggle with speaking the truth in love. Try it yourself before criticizing religious people, thank you very much.)

Morning Pages seem like freewriting made into a daily commitment.

I started freewriting when my youngest child left for kindergarten. I was alone during the day. In the silence, my head whirled with thoughts, images, grudges, whims, concerns, resentments, grocery lists, grocery lists of grievances, anecdotes, prayers, simple pleasures and joys, undone tasks, ideas, and opinions.

My number-crunching enginerd cubicle days, which required focused attention, had not prepared me for silence. My mind, like a loose cannon on the deck of a ship caught in a typhoon, plainly needed bolting down.

Capturing my mental chaos in pixels took the wind out of that ship’s sails. The cannon was secured. Peace and calm returned. And what person doesn’t need peace and calm to make a home… or a life?

I hope I’m not taking the following verse out of context, but could one suggest that the writing down of one’s thoughts is in any way similar to the biblical idea of “taking them captive?”

For though we live in the world we are not carrying on a worldly war, for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, 2 Corinthians 10:3-5

One problem religious people typically encounter when they wish to deepen their prayer life is the aforementioned loose cannon on the deck of a ship caught in a typhoon. What one does when one isn’t praying definitely has a bearing on what one does when one attempts to pray. By blogging perhaps I’m not practicing silence. Ah well, it’s writing practice!

Will Morning Pages help or hinder my prayer life? Should Morning Pages be done before or after my attempts at meditation? While the time table of meditation and writing seem subject to what’s going on in my household (especially now with the shelter in place still in effect), I can say that personally, I’ve found that “securing the cannon” has been very helpful for mental prayer.

If writing down ones’ thoughts is a means of taking them captive, then for religious persons who want to be spiritual, there is a purpose to taking captive one’s thoughts. After all, Morning Pages are a means to an end in creativity, in prayer, and in life. One takes captive one’s thoughts to bend them “to obey Christ.”

Enquiring minds, which are now secured on a ship sailing peacefully into the sunset, want to know. Fair winds and following seas, and I hope my Morning Pages don’t get blown all over the deck of the ship and beyond!

Happy Mother’s Day from Mother Nature to Mom

Mother’s Day means my ever-accommodating husband stood ready to make the day special, so Mom requested a family walk. My children had their own plans… one wanted scooters, one wanted bicycles, then they didn’t want wheels but to follow the footpaths through the woods. Eventually we found a solution and off we went.

Instead of posting my children’s faces, I’ll share the amazing splendors generously provided by Mother Nature:

ornithogalum umbellatum

phlox divaricata

packera aurea

couldn’t find… what is this?

delphinium tricorne?

“Science” means different things to different people, but (one of) the first orders of scientific business is labeling, classifying, and organizing what is found in nature. For plants, this includes everything from the most commonplace weeds bordering walking trails to the rarest and most exotic of specimens. How can you work with something if it doesn’t have a name and you don’t know where it fits in the grand scheme of plants?

How many plants are there out there, anyway? It must have taken armies of geeks multiple hundreds of hours to sort them all out. Fortunate are we, the recipients of all that hard work.

Literary genres, like fantasy, typically feature a village green woman who uses medicinal plants. Either she’s a sweet old lady who heals, a witch who poisons, or anything in between!

The pictured yellow flowers, which I think are golden ragwort, is one such plant, though I think I’d consult with a trusted physician first! The ragwort is much prettier than a modern pharmaceutical, right? Humanity has used medicinal plants as long as humanity has existed. We might not classify that as “science” but to me it’s a stepping stone into science. Wouldn’t a green woman of yesteryear employ some primitive scientific method when passing on her arts to her acolytes?

Thank you for sharing in the random musings of an erstwhile chemical engineer. Now I’ll throw in some religion for good measure:

If even the smallest things are beyond your control, why are you anxious about the rest? Notice how the flowers grow. They do not toil or spin. But I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of them. If God so clothes the grass in the field that grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith? (Luke 12:26-28)

Hope for Amateur Novelists

So you want to be a novelist, do you?

I began my “serious” writing journey in late 2014. Back then, the path was exciting. Exhilarating, even. Imagining the scenes in my novel, and then typing them out at night after my tykes had gone to bed, brought a satisfaction that few other things had. What I didn’t know was that instead of flying, I was limping. Instead of effortlessly producing a great masterpiece, I’d written a right good train wreck. Tens of thousands of words, a real pile-up. Learning I had done this was a shock.

As a “retired” chemical engineer, I’ve had no training as a writer. I was deficient in everything from grammar to story structure. What an Achilles Heel. No wonder I limped. Besides, I’d created the first draft of a first novel. For most novelists, professional or otherwise, the first draft of a first novel is unreadable word soup. I was wondering (and I still wonder, sometimes) if it was unthinkable to write something readable without the education to do so.

So do you still want to be a novelist?

The beauty of Scribophile, or if you’re fortunate enough to have real live, long-term writing buddies, is that you’ll learn a few important points.

First, amateurs write like amateurs. When you realize you’re just as awful as your fellow amateurs, you gain the humility that leads to real learning. Humility is the foundation upon which your writing factory is built. Without it, your writing will continue to be train wreck.

Second, amateurs who work at it can achieve a mastery of writing despite a lack of formal education.

Don’t get me wrong. The professionalism of “real” writers, be they English, journalism, creative writing, screenwriting, whatever majors: their training shines through. They’ll produce better, more readable works with efficiently. C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were professors in liberal arts fields. No wonder their writing continues to be a gold standard.

But hope springs eternal for us, my fellow amateurs. One plus of a long term writing relationships is that you’ll see your writing buddies grow over the years. I’m not just saying this because they’re my buddies, but because they’ve grown. They really REALLY have grown.

This gentleman, Mr. Michael O’Brien, is an artist. He didn’t receive a university education. He began writing novels in the late 1970s.** After years of rejections (something both amateurs and professionals know all too well), his first novel was published almost twenty years later. Today, he’s got more than a dozen novels and a few works of non-fiction under his belt.

Not only do I enjoy his fiction, but his writing journey gives me hope for mine. I don’t claim to be as intelligent, insightful, or religious as he is, but if he can do it, then other amateurs who have stories to share can do it, too.

** Wikipedia says he began writing in 1994, but according to his biography he really started writing in the 1970s. Maybe he started on his first published novel in 1994. He must have had quite a pile of material ready after his first publication!

FTR I don’t know Michael O’Brien, nor do I know Prof. Clemens Cavallin. I don’t get a commission from Justin Press for putting their book on my blog. Scribophile isn’t giving me any freebies. I’m just holding O’Brien up as an example.

If writing is your calling, then put on your hiking boots and step out on the journey!

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” ~ Bilbo Baggins, The Fellowship of the Ring

I ought to quit messing around on this blog and get to work. I’ve received some encouraging feedback on the third draft of the aforementioned first novel, which I posted to Scribophile earlier this year, and I’m almost done with the first draft of another one. 🙂

Flying Colors in a Flutter

Color me simple, but my family and I are easily pleased. All it takes is a nature hike. As our feet grow tired, our spirits lift and relax.

Last June, Husband and I took our lil rascals on some local nature trails. The trails wandered near a small river. The river wound through the countryside and through charming small towns that inspire eye rolls when people call them home. Finally, the river met its terminus in the Ohio River. But back to our hike. A flash of color caught our eyes. Whatever hue this is, it can’t be called simple.

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Would anybody like a bug lesson? In these difficult days, I want to provide something innocuous that provokes neither controversy nor anxiety. If you don’t like bugs, mud, and humidity, though, then my apologies.

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These creatures are called ebony jewelwings.

Step right up and take your front row seat at nature’s reality show! The one with the white dots on the wings is female. She’s being courted by the brilliantly colored male of the species. For more detailed information, I’ve provided a link from a more “official” source:

https://bugguide.net/node/view/601

Science is a wonderful thing. By science, in this context, I mean that we’re the beneficiaries of the work of countless others. I wonder who it was who thought up the animal (and plant!) classification system. A lot of science involves mere bookkeeping, and what a book! And it’s all available at one’s fingertips on the aforementioned website.

For those who don’t want to follow the link, check out this awesome taximony:

Kingdom Animalia (Animals)
Phylum Arthropoda (Arthropods)
Subphylum Hexapoda (Hexapods)
Class Insecta (Insects)
Order Odonata (Dragonflies and Damselflies)
Suborder Zygoptera (Damselflies)
Family Calopterygidae (Broad-winged Damselflies)
Genus Calopteryx (Jewelwings)
Species maculata (Ebony Jewelwing)

Two weeks later, we sought another nature trail, as the original hike was so delightful. Our colorful winged friends presented themselves again:

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https://www.nps.gov/miss/learn/nature/ebonyjewelwing.htm

Before I go, I suppose I can’t resist injecting a bit of religious talk into my blog:

“…God likes variety. How do we know this? All you have to do is look at the number of bugs He’s created and you know He likes variety,” Fr. Chad Ripperger

https://youtu.be/TMc (space put here so the whole blasted window won’t pop up) vZaiBwe4

at about the five minute mark, give or take a few seconds.

Until later, your humble blogeress, JE

When I realized motherhood was for real.

What defines motherhood or any true calling from God, or vocation, is that once a commitment is made, your life is no longer about you. More experienced vocationeers surely remember that burst of astonished horror at finding themselves clutching the cliff’s edge with scrabbling fingers, feet dangling over a bottomless pit where spoiled brats free-fall, in that ever so fun process known as “dying to oneself.”

A few summers back, Husband and one of his long time friends rented a vacation cabin. This particular friend and his wife had a child between the ages of our two children so we figured we’d be a good fit together.

FTR, this isn’t a rant about a close, week-long confinement with boorish, unwashed barbarians. Husband’s friends were / are wonderful people. When we were dating, it was a point in Husband’s favor that he had / has nice friends.

If I must complain it was that the management was pressure washing the other cabins in the development. What a relaxing noise THAT was. Shall I rat out this particular campground? And again, FTR, it wasn’t a high end campground. Last time I wrote about vacationing with children, I was told to shaddup since we were on a vacation. Come, come, rather than criticize, how about sharing the story of when you realized that your life was no longer about you? Enquiring minds want to know.

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Anyway, we woke while it was still dark and loaded our sleepy selves and children into the car. We’d hoped that they’d sleep, but of course they didn’t. After hours driving with the summer sun overpowering the air conditioning with a preschooler and a toddler “singing a chorus” in the backseat (when they weren’t hitting each other), we arrived at our cabin in the woods and found the other family waiting.

I remember that feeling that came with the realization that I couldn’t put up my feet and relax with a glass of merlot, like any traveler after a difficult journey. Instead, we set about unpacking the suitcases, unloading a toddler bed, and corralling two cranky lil ones who wanted to run all over the the place. In two different directions, of course.

We didn’t have to buy dinner and breakfast supplies in our state of glassy eyed drooling exhaustion, as Husband brought a gigantic ice chest full of eats. (This revelation should forestall any critics who think I’m a princess complaining that the soup was cold in a five star restaurant with linen tablecloths and a string quartet. See? We rough it; we bring and cook our own food!)

It was a good vacation, despite having kids away from home, kids with two different nap schedules and fuss schedules, and one with food allergies, and having to do what I do at home but without home’s conveniences. I have fond memories of family vacations from my own childhood, but now vacations are more about showing my own children a good time than having one myself.

I’m not advocating making a martyr of oneself. Young parents or any committed person still needs downtime. Lucky them if they can get it, though. Many of us don’t have obliging grandparents nearby. I know worse troubles exist in the world than mine. This blog documents the moment when I had not choice but to let go of the cliff and free-fall into adulthood.

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If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory. (Col 3:1-4)

Do you have a memory you care to share?

Little Golden Lizard

Meet Apollo, who lives at a Children’s Museum we used to patronize before my kids got too big.

What would you say he is? I’m thinking a Common Leopard Gecko.

Avoiding Food Waste and Austerity Traps

So I read an email from an environmental listserv about the quantities of food wasted in the U.S.. My first response? “Not me! I don’t waste food!”

Here’s an official information source on food waste:

https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs

Whatever way you count it, it’s a lot of wasted food.

People who shop for groceries know that food is expensive and is getting more so every day. We try to be thrifty and eat what we buy. Also, there are those who, like me, don’t often meet food items they don’t like. Food, glorious food!

(I’ll eventually blog about the virtues of Weight Watchers and the capital vice of gluttony. Right now, I’m brushing crumbs off my keyboard and onto my plate so I’ll avoid wasting them. JK)

Church ladies slurp their way through enormous amounts of (cheap) coffee, but hey, even expensive coffee tastes nasty when prepared in those enormous metal urns. Might as well serve the cheap stuff.

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When a scheduled ladies’ event drew nigh, I noticed to my dismay that the “best if used by” date on my almost full, economy-sized canister of cheap coffee had already passed. I didn’t want to serve “expired” coffee to our guests, so I figured I could spread it out on my yard. After all, aren’t coffee grounds good for the soil?

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Then I remembered the aforementioned article about up to 40% of food being wasted.

Face Palm.

But what was I going to do with all this expired coffee?

I’d heard somewhere (but am not sure about the truthfulness) that many food items are still perfectly fine after the “sell by” or “use by” dates. But I still didn’t want to serve it to our guests. So, in my kitchen, I brewed a pot of the cheap stuff and sipped. It. Was. NNAAAASSSSTTTTYYYY. But it was still potent. That longed-for caffeine buzz lifted my soul almost as much as the words of golden-tongued, preaching showboats who get high on God instead of coffee.

Here was an opportunity for a Lenten penance. I’d use the expired but still potent coffee for my personal consumption, and avoid food waste. It’s only a tiny reduction, but if everybody did small things it would make a big difference. Be faithful in the little things to be faithful in the big ones, right? It isn’t like I can do “big” things!

Religious folk get particular pleasure out of correcting their fellow pewsitters, so I’ll answer two of their objections before they raise them. (That is, if any people, religious or otherwise, are reading this.)

First. Many religions recommend austerity. Admit it; coffee is a luxury. But some religious rule-makers decree that all unnecessary food and drink should be removed from one’s diet so as not to pamper the flesh. Indulging sensual pleasure of any sort = BAD. After all, gluttony is a capital vice, or to put it in ordinary language, gluttony is one of those seven deadly sins.

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My response? If you feel called to a life of austerity then go for it. Knock yourself out. But remember that coffee beans are gifts from God. Like all God’s gifts, we are to use them in moderation and thank Him for them. Don’t go hard-core into austerity unless you have a spiritual calling to do so and a spiritual guide to call you on it if your ego gets bloated while you disdain life’s simple pleasures. Love of austerity can spring the spiritual trap of pride i.e. “I’m better than you gluttonous lowlifes who indulge your sensuality.” Have a coffee or not, but don’t go there!

Heaven is often described as a banquet, and I’m sure whatever coffee is percolating in the heavenly urns won’t be cheap, metallic, nor nasty. Moderate pleasures are harbingers of the infinite happiness of heaven, and should be gratefully enjoyed in seasons of celebration.

Second. Many religious people heap “shame” on those with a “caffeine addiction.”

Well, point taken. I suppose I could give up coffee and power through the withdrawal headaches that are sure to follow. But right now, my family needs me on my feet. When the mom is taken out, the whole family suffers. Now isn’t the time for excessive bodily penances. I won’t make my family (or myself) pay for a pointless act of virtue. In time, I know I’ll have to free myself (with God’s help) from dependence on coffee. But that time isn’t now.

I will point out that any consumption we do involves the environmental footprint from the packaging and the transport. There’s multiple good to come from reducing consumption.

Anyway, I’m working my way through the yucky coffee for Lent. Even though it’s NASTY, it gets me going in the morning. And all the earthly resources that went into making those grounds is not going to waste. And I can still spread the used grounds on my lawn.

It’s easy to waste food. We are finicky and reject what isn’t to our particular taste. Or we buy too much and it spoils. The article suggests that much food waste happens before a consumer puts it in a grocery cart. As an individual there isn’t much I can do about that. All I can do is drink my cheap coffee and be more careful about “sell by” dates in the future.

It’s Lent. Be mindful about what you’re throwing away and not just about what you’re consuming.

I lift my mug of cheap, expired coffee in a toast to all of you fellow green weenies and tree huggers out there. We can all do small things to save resources. Just do something.

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Bottoms up!

What SUP

Ahhh, single use plastics. I’ll call them SUP. Most of us are busy and preoccupied, so we don’t notice how much SUP we use. SUP, which are petroleum based, go to landfills or float in our oceans. I’ve heard they don’t break down for multiple numbers of years. Heck, even getting the petroleum out of the ground makes a mess. It would be better for the planet if there were much, much less SUP made and discarded.

The problem is, we’re used to SUP making our lives easier. What would our existence be like without it?

It’s been weeks since my last blog posting (I simply can’t get to the computer), so it frustrates me that I can do so little research on all this. I’m not current on what’s new on the environmental front or in the R&D front with regards to SUP. I’ll just share a few random reflections and of course welcome non-troll comments.

I respectfully ask the troll population to step away from the computer/put down the phone (made of plastic, surprise, surprise) and pick up the SUP floating your way so the fishies don’t eat them. That will justify your hiding under bridges. Kindly throw the SUP into the garbage since I’d wager your local recycler can’t do much with these little bits and pieces.

At the time of this writing, drinking straws are the SUP scapegoat. I’m not a fan of the cardboard substitutes which disintegrate after a few sips, but I’m not a fan of SUP either. Why were straws chosen for such an “honor”? Are they the biggest offenders? I simply don’t know.

Let’s look at some of the conveniences we enjoy because SUP are part of our lives.

The plastic spout on your carton keeps the carton’s opening from disintegrating and looking like this:

Cartons now have spouts, caps, and pull-tabs:

What about all the packaging from whatever it is that you use to feed yourself?

What becomes of all this SUP stuff? It’s like fingerprints, or like email or anything you put online – it’s permanent and you’ll never, ever get rid of it, even if you personally never see that particular bit again.

And what about every day objects upon which we legitimately depend?

I say, I’m not keen on giving up dental floss and toothpaste. But oral hygiene comes at a price. Who is willing to endure gingivitis and tooth loss because the tools upon which we depend are SUP? If you store dental floss in a cardboard box it’ll disintegrate when stored in a steamy bathroom.

I wish I had some words of wisdom. I simply don’t. And the idea of losing my dental supplies makes me cranky.

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That movie The Graduate (1967) with its famous quote about “plastics” sure can take on multiple meanings, right?

SUP must be mating and making babies. They’re simply everywhere. Yes, my kid built that. Isn’t he clever?

So what about this cute little piece of SUP?

I did get a bit of hope after reading what KwikLok has to say about itself. Yeah, I know, a legitimate comparison can be made between what a company posts on its website VS what a loverboy says about himself on a dating app. Assuming you can believe what a supplier has to say for itself, there are two hopeful ideas here.

First, our KwikLok friends in Australia have some arrangement where they are willing to take back via snail mail their used baggie ties. I’m a bit annoyed because I emailed them to ask if they’d ever consider doing here what they do Down Under…. I’d be more than happy to set up a program where our school / parish can collect and mail old baggie ties to their facility. KwikLok didn’t respond. Oh well.

Secondly, KwikLok tells us that they’ll be using a new plant based resin. Am I to assume that this resin will biodegrade harmlessly into the environment? They claim it makes less of a “footprint” to produce. Hope springs eternal, I suppose.

😛

I know of no solutions. I have no words of wisdom. Perhaps blogging about a problem without proposing a new solution is a waste of time. I just don’t like the SUP tsunami so I’ll kvetch from my corner of cyberspace.

Maybe more SUP will get banned, except bans arouse public anger. People dig in their heels when told what they can and can’t have. I can’t blame them. I do like my smart phone, even though I cringe when I read what an environmental devil’s hoofprint this lil ole devil toy made.

Should we appeal to people’s good will before passing bans? What do I know. IRL I’m an introvert and introverts tend not to be influential. I haven’t the foggiest clue how to influence anybody. To this date I’ve been unsuccessful in getting my kids to put dirty laundry in the hamper instead of the floor. And yes, by golly, that hamper is made of plastic.

I hope that, somewhere out there, clever scientists are developing food-grade materials that are biodegradable (without breaking down into a toxic soup) or easily recycled.

We can always tighten our belts and consume less. Temperance is a virtue, right? (Scroll to #1809 for anybody who has bothered to read this blah all the way to the end.)

Other than that I know of no other solutions.

p.s. It can be said that I don’t have enough to think about if I get so worked up about SUP that I write up a blog posting, complete with pictures. But I do think about these things. We’re dependent on SUP. Will this ever catch up to us, and what will happen then?