Eco-Geeking part 1

This will begin an occasional series of tips, rants and things that run through my addled brain regarding the environment.

*********

I can't think too much about the state of the world before my stomach starts to knot up and I begin feeling a little woogy.

Despite my general good cheer, when I think about the fisheries collapse,the ice caps melting, the loss of topsoil - it's all pretty hellish and alarming and it is easier to just go along singing "Tra la, tra la, I can't hear you! Everything is fine in my little brain." But I can only escape for so long, then reality creeps back in. Awareness stinks sometimes, doesn't it? If I only didn't have a brain I could be like Pres. Bush and live in ignorant bliss.

As one of my favorite all-time movie characters, Billy Kwan in "The Year of Living Dangerously," "What then must we do?" Better to light one candle than to curse the darkness, right?


So along those lines, when Goldie and I go to the beach, I collect plastic trash. I just take a plastic shopping bag and fill it up while she searches for small furry animals to kill (please note: she is not a very efficient hunter. I estimate her walk to kill ratio to be about 450:1).

Filling one bag takes about 5 minutes, usually, and I always find weird stuff, not just items you would expect to wash up with the driftwood. My oddest all-time find was a printer paper tray, almost intact. On our last outing it was an almost-full bottle of Mr. Clean. It didn't seem like it would float. Do people BRING bathroom cleanser to the beach for some nefarious purpose that I am too naive to think of?

The Category of Crap^TM I find most, though, is styrofoam bits. I can lean down and there will be 20 bits within the reach of my hand.

It is a plague. It feels more soul-satisfying to pick up something fairly large like an empty water bottle, but I know that animals feed on styrofoam because I have seen them do it. The nasty stuff clogs their digestive systems and they die a slow, painful death. So I figure that every styrofoam bit I pick up is one less for a bird or turtle to eat.

It is a bad, bad problem because the bits don't ever go away. They just get smaller and smaller and finally break into little styro-balls that look like tiny fish eggs to sea creatures, many of which, incidentally, LOVE to eat fish eggs.

Have you heard of The Northern Pacific Gyre? It is a mass of plastic trash estimated to be twice the size of Texas (and as someone who has driven across northern Texas - which is the small part - I can safely say that is HUGE) swirling around the ocean, caught where 4 currents meet.

*********

Here's my plea - please consider banning styrofoam products from your life. If you go to restaurants or delis that use styrofoam packaging, ask them to make a change or go somewhere else.

Think of an alternative. I carry my groovy insulated stainless steel coffee cup with me everywhere I go, so I figure I save a couple hundred to-go cups a year (considering the amount of java I consume). It has the added benefit of keeping iced coffee cold overnight and hot coffee warm for hours.

And while I am nagging you, fergoodnesssake, get a refillable water bottle . Is there some good reason every family should produce its weight in plastic disposable water bottles every year?


If you're truly afraid of bad-quality water (and if you live in the US or developed world you probably shouldn't be), get a filtration system. You can save hundreds of dollars a year and all of the packaging, labeling, labor, energy and fuel costs that go into manufacturing little disposables.



I kind of lust after these sexxay (ok, I'm weird about what is sexxay)Sigg Aluminum Bottles but I just can't justify buying one, considering the number of Nalgenes I have kicking around. My thrifty gene outweighs my need to be cool.

**********

Ok, enough assvice for one week. Go. Do. Baby steps. Make Suebob proud.

I want to tell a story

You KNEW there was more to the spider-bitten butt story than a simple paean to blogging, didn't you? Couldn't you just FEEL it? If you couldn't, dear reader, I'm disappointed in your Sueblog intuition skillz.

Yes. So. I got this spot on my butt. No big deal, everyone gets them, right? Wrong. This thing kept getting bigger and uglier and oh, the horror, the horror.

When I emailed Angela, my sister in all things bitey, it was about the size of a quarter. A big quarter. A big, ugly, red quarter. Which is really rather large for something you sit on all day, n'est pas?

She said her bite (that I forgot she had nicknamed Silas - oh, I love that woman) had gone away on its own.

Part of my issue with my own particular assbiteification was that I couldn't see it really well. It was on a part of my butt that sort of defied examination, being right back there and right down there, so if I twisted about in a yoga pretzel while looking in the mirror, I could get kind of a look but not the close exam I needed to see if I was to observe fang marks.

(Angela claimed you could not see fang marks, at which point I knew I had to make sure of that fact.)

One of the main hazards of being a single woman, besides having an alarming amount of space for lotions in the bathroom cabinet, is that you have no one to say "Hey, come look at this ugly thing on my butt for me!" to. Dang. I knew I was missing out on something.

So in a stroke of Suebobian genius, I decided that I could photograph my butt at high resolution and examine the photo at 300 percent to see the extent of the frightfest.

Of course.

This involved learning to use the timer feature on my camera, finding an appropriate spot, and taking about 40 photos that looked like something from the "casual encounters" section of Craigslist. Or a cellulite cream ad, more likely.

Yes, people of the Internet, this is how a lonely old spinster spends her evenings - photographing spider bites on her butt. You can stop envying my swinging single lifestyle now. The Love Boat...exciting and new...

I finally got a good enough shot to reassure me that I did not need to make a trip to the emergency room. Because you know if I did, the same place that usually has a staff that looks like a bunch of laid-off carnival workers would turn out to have the doctors from Gery's Anatomy on duty, just to all look at my nasty butt sore.

And you know, internets, YOU KNOW it took all my strength not to post it on my blog. I finally decided not to, because, as you can tell, I am trying to cultivate an aura of romance and mystery. How's that working?

Blogging makes you lose your mind

It starts innocently enough. You think you'd like to share some photos and daily musings with family and friends.

Soon, you find other bloggers who make you howl with laughter. And they make you laugh hardest when they are spilling their darkest secrets. Stuff about boobs and getting happy on a treadmill and farts, so many farts and OMG suddenly it seems as if the world is one big hilarious truth-telling place.

So you tell a few of your own and you aren't hated and reviled. Instead, people love you more.

These people who comment stop being just friends in a box on your desk. You meet some of them in person, twitter others, correspond, call - and care.

Which is how, several years later, you find yourself feeling completely comfortable emailing someone you have never met because she blogged about having a spider bite and now you think you may have a spider bite gone bad. On your butt. And she is totally cool about it.

And then you think "Maybe I have lost my damn mind." But maybe you aren't losing. Maybe you are finding.

Men weigh in? Please?

I wonder how many male readers I have. I certainly have very few male commenters.

Suzanne wrote a column on sexism and misogyny over at BlogHer and that, on top of last night's viewing of SuperBad, started me thinking about what it is to be a man.

When we talk about sexism, it is usually from a female perspective, but my belief is that a sexist system oppresses all people, not just women. Men aren't free to act how they want because to not "be a man" at all times garners them just as much scorn and consequence as a woman who doesn't know her place.

We were joking the other day at work and offered Matt $250 to walk into his gym wearing a headband á la Jane Fonda, midriff top and Daisy Dukes. We were all laughing and I know Matt could use the money, but he refused and I don't even have to tell you why because you already know.

I have 5 questions for the men out there. If you aren't male, perhaps you could ask a man in your life or weigh in with your own opinion on how sexism affects men.

1. What do you like about being a man?
2. What don't you like?
3. How do you feel about being a man in our culture?
4. If you could magically make one thing better for men, what would it be?
5. What would you like women to know about being a man that you think they might be unaware of?

Thanks in advance for participating.

Happy 62nd Anniversary Mom and Dad

My parents got married in 1946 when my mom was a 19-year-old Western Union teletype operator and my dad was a 28-year-old veteran who had returned from WWII just a few months earlier.

They met when Dad was a park ranger in Santa Maria, California. Mom lived with her family in a house on the park property because her father worked there. One day she was out stealing waterlilies from the pond (don't try this at home - waterlilies have extra-strong stems and are not easily stolen) when Dad caught her. She didn't like him but that didn't dissuade him. She was supposed to be dating another guy, but when he failed to show one evening, Dad snuck in and one kiss was all it took. Way to go, Dad.

They wrote back and forth when he went off to Europe as an Army Master Sergeant, fighting the Germans in France and Belgium, including the Battle of the Bulge. After V-E (Victory in Europe) Day, he was returned to the U.S. and was on his way to fight in the Pacific when the atom bomb was dropped and the war was suddenly over.

She still has the telegraph he sent when he returned; "You can call me mister now," a reference to not being called by his Army rank anymore.

They decided almost immediately to marry. Short courtships were the rule rather than the exception back then. It was to be a small ceremony in her parents' home, attended by family, including Mom's only brother, who had received special leave from the Navy to be there.

Several days in advance of the wedding, Mom and Dad went to get their marriage license. They were under the impression that they had to wait a few days after they got it to get married. When the clerk told them that they could be married immediately, they weighed their options: a small family wedding in 3 days' time, or that very evening in each others' arms as man and wife? Romance won out over practicality.

They eloped and their disappearance caused a bit of consternation that the wedding plans were ruined, but married was married. My eldest sister was born 10 months later, in November, and five other children followed.

62 years later they are still very much a team. Mom washes and Dad dries. He tells stories and she fact-checks them. She drives and he still navigates, despite being legally blind.

That I can see them every day is something I count among my greatest blessings. That they found each other and stuck by each other so long is another. I am so glad they are my folks. Happy anniversary, you nutty kids.