If you haven’t been following this blog long (and a lot of you are new, thanks to Green Sisterhood, CottonBabies, and Dallas Moms Blog – hi! welcome!), you might not have noticed that since my last BlogHer, I’ve really been trying to focus the intention of this blog to be less random stream-of-consciousness, Jenny’s-personal-thoughts-about-today and more eco-friendly and green. More Pin-able and less philosophical. Which is a smart and noble endeavor, I believe, especially since I really want to grow my blog to something more than 50 people that I’ve met IRL at some point in my life and who think I am weird enough to be amusing.
But then, things like last week happen. Where I have a lot of random thoughts in my head but none of them are relevant to my green living endeavors or long enough to be an entire blog post. In fact, a lot of them are probably bemoaning the ways I’m failing and can’t seem to gain traction. So I just don’t post at all. How is THAT helping my blog? To not post? Probably not much.
Yet, I have a lot of random things to share, which I often do on my blog’s Facebook page (make sure you’ve “Like”ed me!).
- The defeat of Proposition 37 in California and what does that mean for our ability to be conscientious consumers? I think I am too unhappy that this failed to see a way out right now. The truth is, Prop 37 failed because a lot of big corporations have a lot of money and they had the advertising and lobby power to convince people in a tight economy that their overall health and ability to be informed is going to cost them too much. When the opposite is true. It’s another case of Big Corp and Big Money winning and I am just so dang sick of being optimistic about that battle when it seems unrealistic.
- What is going on with my garden: it is actually currently producing a fairly good crop of tiny but healthy bell peppers! I think I will collect the entire crop, chop them up and freeze them, and make a stir fry. For one person. I already made these cute bell pepper eggs once. Only the pepper was so small that I made a little flower with all the rings instead…it’s hard to describe and I didn’t take a picture. Sorry.
- Free shipping with Shaklee. I buy some of my green cleaning products from my friend Jessica’s Shaklee business, as you will find out if I ever finish my “Green My Routine: Cleaning” post. That’s going to be a long one.
- Going dairy and soy free, in addition to already being vegetarian. OK, it’s not me that’s dairy and soy free, it’s my son. Since we’ve taken him off dairy and soy his potty training poop issues have suddenly improved. It’s been almost 5 days since he’s had a poop accident. But, since he already refuses to eat meat of any kind or beans of any kind, removing dairy and soy presents seemingly insurmountable obstacles when it comes to his nutrition. He’s already in the 40th percentile for weight. Shoot me now. I have no idea.
- Giving my children salmonella by mistake. It wasn’t actually me, but our stupid backyard chickens. I swear, sometimes I consider cooking those chickens for dinner and I don’t even eat meat. I believe what happened is that my children’s sippy cups came into contact with the chicken poop that is EVERYWHERE in our backyard because those stupid birds are aggressive poopers. As in, you leave something out there for 5 minutes and when you come back there will most definitely be poop on it. Aggressive pooping. So we have confined them to an area of the yard. Pictures to come. And maybe I should blog about the salmonella you can get from backyard as a cautionary measure for other potential chicken owners? It’s just all so embarassing.
- Operation Christmas Child. It’s a worthy cause, we are excited about it. I took an emergency trip to Target and Whole Foods to get a ton of suitable and conscientious items and then we left our stupid box at home so we might have missed the deadline. Nice.
So maybe some of those bullet points deserve their own post but I’m feeling overwhelmed. Help me out. Which would you like to hear more about? And thanks for hanging in there with me!
I like your randomness. It’s real life, not dictated by sponsor posts/reviews. Not that there’s anything wrong with those, but…do you know what I mean?
You blog about what’s going on in your life, how challenging it can be to lead a green life, and you throw in your everyday adventures with 2 kids and chickens. That’s a recipe for a great blog!
PS, thanks for the Shaklee mention! 🙂
On Prop 37, all you need is a small win, some firm to realize that they’ll be first and have the market cornered once they start making you happy. McD screamed and clawed over NYC making them post calories, but now they’re leading the pack nationally as if it were there idea in the first place. Smith’s guiding hand will fix this sooner than you think.
Hard question: who the hell doesn’t know that having lots of animals in the yard leads to disease?
Considering that agrarian societies lived alongside their livestock for centuries, I don’t feel like it was unreasonable to assume that we could co-exist in around 1/4 of an acre backyard with two chickens, who are our only animals aside from an indoor cat. We were very consistent with handwashing and had shoes that were only worn in the backyard and not allowed inside the house. Obviously, that wasn’t enough and we have made appropriate changes which I will blog about shortly. However, I would not consider 2 chickens “lots of animals” nor are they typically disease-ridden.
Howdy! (try to read this as if delivered with Jed Clampett practicality, innocence, and humor…Mark Twain if you prefer) A fair reading of your reply is: gee, you’re right, we’d better cordon off the chickens.
I like your pluck (pun intended) and think it’s grand you’re finding your own way, but it’s amusing for those of us who grew up in simpler places to read full-speed-ahead blogs from the oracle of Big D….almost a sport at this point. Agrarian, did you say? Sub-Appalachia in my case, where this guy well remembers when his last relatives finally got indoor water and sewer connections; yes, I know chickens.
You’re not remotely the first to step in it; communes had the same problems in California forty years ago: let’s put the cistern and outhouse 20 feet apart….what could go wrong? Their Boomer nihilism was a conversion reaction to the greatest generation’s conservatism (fine, of course; knock yourself out), but, in their zeal to show daddy, they threw away basics handed down since Rome and gave each other typhoid fever, a high price for a few orgies and some weed.
Nothing wrong with free-range chickens: you just need your yard to sit in the middle of 40 acres or back up to a wooded creek bottom. Otherwise you need coops just like all us evil, backward rednecks. BTW: Mom’s mom’s mom kept her yard scraped with a hoe, utterly grassless, precisely to keep chickens out of the yard….wish you could sit and listen to her wisdom…wish I still could, too.
You’re not too late for Operation Christmas Child, there are several collection locations in the metroplex. I too forgot my box, and when I asked at church they said they will be collecting them for the next two weeks. Have no fear, your good dead can still be done.
Ps. I’ve also been in a scattered blogging funk this past month. Fragments of ideas and not a full post…
Oh good! We are going to try to drop off at the church when we’re there on Wednesday. So glad we are not too late!
Post what you want! People should come because they like you and what you want to post. I can always tell when a write is writing to sell something (nicholas sparks – GAG) and when a writer is writing from the heart. You might not get the most followers that way – but at least you were true to yourself and the people who liked you from the beginning!
Just my 2 cents! 🙂
I never knew you could distinguish traditional, organic, and GM produce by the PLU code.
http://www.seriouseats.com/2008/04/how-to-decode-plu-stickers-on-produce.html