Sparks and Butterflies...

This was sent to me as an (yet another) email forward from my 77 year old dad. Something to think about 🙂

Being Green

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.

The woman apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days.”

The young clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.”

She was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled.

But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we reused for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks. This was to ensure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags.

But too bad we didn’t do the green thing back then.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But that young lady is right; we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana . In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she’s right; we didn’t have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smartass young person…

We don’t like being old in the first place, so it doesn’t take much to piss us off.

I haven’t been updating and writing here for one good reason. A lot of my “downtime” or “me-time” has been spent in spiritual pursuits. I’ve been digging in on a lot of issues, and I’m just not comfortable writing about them on a public forum, so I’ve been paper-journaling. It’s a good thing – just not exactly good for my blogging. So, here’s an all-around update:

Joseph just turned 12. He’s doing great in school. School’s starting to wind down (Yay!) and then he informed me that he wants to attend summer school. Which means that not only do I not get to sleep in this summer, but I get to get up even earlier. Why does he want to? “All my friends are.” I suppose if you’re going to follow the pack, go ahead and follow the pack to school, but was sleeping in too much to ask? All his “issues” are still there, but he’s made a great deal of academic progress, and he’s certainly not backsliding, so I’m happy. He’s also turning into quite the artist.

Logan is about to turn 10. He’s not doing great in school to the point that I have started/requested the IEP process to start. He needs the help. Behaviorally/mentally, he’s an incredibly happy child in the throes of being a kid. He’s entirely too fascinated with bodily functions. The louder and smellier the better which just encourages the rest of the men/boys in the household. Sometimes I stare in wonder and try to figure out how I landed in a frat house.

Both boys are slobs, fascinated with torturing each other, stubbornly refuse to eat anything that might remotely be healthy (except that Logan loves fruit), are growing like weeds, aspire to burp the alphabet, hate for me to have them weed the garden, hero-worship their dad, and have a particular case of pre-teen blindness when it comes to their rooms being clean. In other words, all’s normal on the kid front.

As for Poe, I think he’s doing well. He has a potential career opportunity on the horizon, but it’s early in the process so I’ve not said much here or on Facebook about it. It would be a great thing for the family financially speaking, and practically miraculous for his spirit should it go through. Prayers and positive energy/thoughts please. It’s important to him.

We just celebrated our 14th anniversary. That kind of amazes me. That seems forever, and yet like not a wink has gone by. So much has changed, we’ve been through so much, and yet so much stays the same.

As for me… Things are difficult on the business front. Solvate, a contractor/freelancer portal, went out of business. They constituted 99% of my clientele, and those clients mostly decided not to continue with me without corporate backing. So, with less than two week’s notice, I lost most of my business/income. That’s been a struggle for me. I worked through it, I’m OK, but it was a hard blow for me professionally, and for us financially. So, I’ve been delving ever-deeper into my spiritual life. I’m growing in a lot of ways I’ve never tried before. It’s a good thing, but a solitary thing. I’m keeping it to myself.

My parents continue to drive me stark raving bonkers. My mother has been recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s on top of everything else. My father has decided not to start her on the medication to slow it, as he doesn’t want to potential side-effects to complicate all her other myriad of medical conditions. I’m actually okay with his decision, because I made sure that he was educated on the pros and cons of that decision. As long as it’s an educated decision, I’ll back him 100%. He continues to ask me for advice. He continues to ignore most of it, but the asking seems to help him figure stuff out. The Alzheimer’s seems to make my mom even meaner (and she was already a tough broad), so that’s been a bit difficult for me to reconcile. Loves my kids, adores my husband, but I cannot do or say anything right. Sigh. The more things change, the more things stay the same. I continue to keep my promise to help them out, and be there for my dad in the course of this process going on 7 years I think. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say it wears on me.

So there’s the grand update. We’re OK. We’re hanging on. It’ll all work out.