Conservation

I am extremely tight…
and very selective about what enters my personal space.

I like warmth with a soft breeze, simplicity and a life of ease. I prefer quietude with splashes of exuberance, a neutral tone accented by color and plant life.
Predictability helps to structure my life. Friends call at special times each year, or on a particular day and time, and some come over on a certain day of the week. My daughter usually begins and ends school at the same time, and she stays at her father’s two days a week, though she vacillates on which days.

Like a menstrual cycle, lovely bills come due on their reliable, selfish, monthly schedules, and every week my generous friend shares her garbage service with me. (Together, four of us fill one small can weekly. We are avid recyclers from the Midwest. I was conserving things in Minnesota at age seven, which my parents couldn’t comprehend. My environmental efforts irritated them. Dad was poor, but not that poor, he probably thought. Mom, on the other hand, was raised with money and permitted pieces of my precocity.)

When winter comes in Colorado, which doesn’t match the snow levels nor frequent blizzards of Minnesota or Wisconsin in July, I survey my home prior to cold’s unwelcome and much-too-long visit looking for ways to keep the warmth in, the chill out.

First I assess my home’s primary occupant. I wear more clothes, layering them, so I can peel as I thaw. Being a household naturist, wearing clothing is against my religion, but I refuse to turn the heat up past 66 during the day, except Fridays when I punch it up to 72 and chip the ice clinging to my windows with a corkscrew.

Some of my ideas may seem crazy, but I’m eccentric and the characteristic will not, by choice, change. Here are three thoughts.

I slide the range hood fan screen out, toss it in the dishwasher, and cover the fan hole with cardboard, which I secure with masking tape. Only once each year do I forget and turn on the fan for a sec, gasping. For freshening, circulating, and removing particulates from the air, I use Clarity, my Honeywell Enviracaire air purifier, and mist with peppermint water (see auntieeartha.blogspot.com/2008/11/sniff-sniff.html).

Cracks and holes are discreetly plugged with old clothes or remnants if caulking doesn’t apply, so the ol’ ranch wears a tighter sweater. Guys like that. And though I’m a friendly person who welcomes a smiling face and lots of light, I keep my drapes drawn and blinds blocking the drafts drifting through my windy windows.

There may not be any more ways I can reduce expenses, as I did when I decided to work part time and be a full-time den mother in 1996, but I can be tight by conserving.

copyright © 2009 by Auntie Eartha. All rights reserved.

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Green Abundance

I just filled up my cute little 1994 gas guzzler. The pump showed a cost of $75, and I felt fumingly faint. Commiserating on the way home to my daughter about that charge on top of the huge increase in grocery prices, I decided to go on a driving diet, set the pets free, and quit eating.

After the groceries were cleaned and put into the freezer for the day I decided to start eating again, I walked to my file cabinet to record info on my fuel purchase, including mileage: 15 miles per gallon.

When I looked at my last entry, I turned green. It had been seven weeks since my last fueling! In seven weeks, I’d driven 305 miles! I used to drive more than that each week when I was in sales. Last year I drove 4,000 miles. This year it may be even less.

You may translate that into: Auntie Eartha sure has a boring life, but it isn’t true! My life is as rich as a hot fudge sundae…with nuts. I’ve hung around with more nuts and had more fun in the last seven weeks than most college kids do in Boulder. To balance the play, I’ve worked hard in my yard and home.

Daily hikes begin and end at my home—no driving.

My gorgeous, vivacious, overambitious girlfriend in Grand Junction called and said, “With the economy as it is, people are going to have to start living like you!”

Me? That’ll be the day hitchhiking becomes popular again. We’ll start with a green thumb.

copyright © 2008 by Auntie Eartha. All rights reserved.


If you like it, link it!
http://auntieeartha.blogspot.com/2008/07/green-abundance.html

Hear My Plea

I know you’re going to think I’m a children’s health fanatic.

Well, I am. I believe that’s where it all begins. You teach your kids to say no to sugar. You guide them through foods, teaching them the vitamins and minerals contained in each, and in the long run, you both reap the benefits.

I live in Colorado Springs, and on page 1 of The Gazette (June 24, 2008) are two little kids covering their ears, indicating their pain from hearing stock cars racing. First, I find this a ridiculous sport. Second, it’s a waste of energy. Third, racing pollutes an otherwise quiet environment. Fourth, even adults should use ear protection in the presence of excessively loud continuous noise. Fifth, and most important, children should not be allowed to attend these events!

Stock car racing, or motorcycle contests, or any gathering of way-too-loud PA systems should be a clear sign to parents: Don’t include your children on such deafening circumstances. Dear God, why would a parent want to ruin their child’s health? I shot trap for years and have regretted the decision to not wear muffs or earplugs.

I was at a beer fest downtown many years ago where a music group had the volume on their speakers unnecessarily boosted. I stress unnecessarily, because people from several blocks away could have heard the sound. Up close and personal, it was unreasonably distorted.

A young attendee with his toddler son were standing in front of the band, the young boy covering his ears. I looked at my friend and said, “That’s it!” I walked up to the dad and furiously shared a child-care tip with him, to which he replied, “Man, it’s okay. I take him to a lot of groups, and they’re a lot louder than these guys.”

I told him I was contacting the police. He left.

When I first moved here and saw blue smoke emitting from vehicles, my first thought was, That person obviously has no kids, or he’d fix his car. How would that guy like inhaling his exhaust for a few hours?

Irritated is a mild word to use on the way it affects me.

If a parent must take his child to an overbearingly loud event, give the kid shooting muffs. Please?

And please turn off your car when you’re not moving it.

copyright © 2008 by Auntie Eartha. All rights reserved.

If you like it, link it!
http://auntieeartha.blogspot.com/2008/06/hear-my-plea.html