It's not present season yet, buuuuut.... [86]

Happy first day of Fall! 

Although I hate cold weather, I love most of what comes with it: 

apple picking adventures, warm cuddly sweaters, mug after mug of tea, and most importantly... the holidays.  

Though it may surprise you that it's not because of the presents...

 

This whole project started because of my resolution to not get presents for my 21st birthday. Back then it was called "21 for 21" and was a list of 21 different things people could do to celebrate my life instead of giving me presents. Then it morphed into 365. Now it's exploding into: I DON'T WANT STUFF! Alright, enough with the dramatic-ness. Here's what I'm thinking:

If you want to give me something for Christmas or my birthday (it's in June so you've got plenty of time to brainstorm), call me up and schedule a coffee date. Get a bunch of people together (including me) and start a book club. Plant a garden (for me or really in your own backyard because I already have one). Knowing that you're doing good in honor of my birthday is a much better present than any material thing (believe me, my love for whatever you buy will decrease 10 fold the next time I move halfway across the country....) If you really want to contribute materially to my life, I'll give you a list of things I recently bought and you can contribute money to the thing of your choice. Case in point: I just recently bought "The Hunger Games" and a pair of hiking boots --> Hello Christmas presents in August (I thought when Christmas came early it came in July....)

I've actually been trying to incorporate this kind of gift giving into my own life, and not just for unselfish, change-the-world kind of reasons. You see, I'm really bad at picking out presents for people. It might be because I hate shopping or because when I give someone something I want it to really mean something and to find anything to buy that fits that category is difficult. So instead, my presents are often homemade crafts or baked goods. Crafts tend to be labors of love, not just the monetary value of your friendship, and banana bread is the easiest go-to present of all time. Baked goods are my absolute favorite presents because I love baking, what I bake is actually pretty yummy, and it isn't just a material object that may or may not end up on the highest shelf of the hall closet to collect dust after a couple months.

So as the weather gets colder, stores put out first Thanksgiving and then Christmas decorations WAY too far in advance, and people start nagging you about wish lists, think about going to the grocery store for gift-making supplies. A nice little bonus to this approach: you'll never again have to fight with Black Friday crowds. You could probably still go shopping on Black Friday and avoid the crowds, at least if you stick to smaller, exclusively food grocery stores and avoid ones that have everything (like Fred Meyer, Meijer, Kroger, Stop 'n Shop)

Disclaimer: This is a post about being a girl and that thing that comes once a month. So boys, beware, we're talking about periods today! [85]

There's no good way to lead into this blog post. I could lean towards cheesy or funny or maybe even super awkward. Instead I'm just going to come out and say it: being a girl means getting your period once a month, which means using pads and/or tampons, which means creating lots of trash. One of the most common-sense approaches to becoming environmentally friendlier (aka one way to change the world) is to create less trash. The slogan "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" ring any bells? I'm a fan of less trash for so many reasons. There's the environmental impact, the fact that I have to carry less bags to the side of the road, I have to spend less money buying the trash bags into which I throw the trash, and generally it means I'm buying less stuff in general but also less packaged food and more food from the farmers market. It really sucks when all of that work gets thrown out the window as soon as the cramps start and the pads come out. Cue: cloth pads. It's quite simple: use, rinse, dry, repeat and then throw them in the washer for a thorough cleaning once your period has left the building, at least until the next month. I'll leave out the pictures, just in case some innocent boy wishes to scroll down past this post to the next one, after all, we can't gross them out by flaunting pictures of such girly things such as pads.... But, if you're sick of creating trash and don't want to wear plastic-y diaper-like pads anymore, aka are interested in joining the movement back to cloth, check out the cloth pads (and also the DivaCup) on the Lunapads website. Honestly, I think my favorite part is the little slogan at the top: "eco positive periods" though I'm also a huge fan of Lunapads Pads4Girls campaign supporting education for girls in Malawi (educating girls in Africa is a wonderful cause, the fact that it's Malawi, a country I've wanted to go to for a while for unknown reasons, makes it even more wonderful). There's also the Party in My Pants company. Alright, I'm done with the awkward post. Get excited for next time, present season in September (or October, depending on how slow I am about uploading)!

11 Years Later [84]

Never forget and pray that it never happens again

photo credit

photo credit

So much respect for man's best friend:

http://picklyman.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/the-twelve-911-search-dogs-who-are-still-alive/#

The Temple Grandin Fest [81, 82, 83]

The things I learned this week in grad school:

-Nonslip flooring is ESSENTIAL!

-Animals think visually

-Everyone should think about the woman who works at Wal-Mart whenever getting gas. And I mean every. time.

Ok, now in all seriousness. This week was the first week of grad school classes and to put it simply, the things I learned were baby stats and Temple Grandin. That's because the only course that was actually normal was Quantitative Methods and my classmates and I spent six hours straight with Temple Grandin on Thursday. If you don't know who Temple Grandin is, shame on you! No, not really. She's just one of the most influential people in the field of Animal Welfare, specifically on the agriculture side. So influential in fact that she was listed in the 2010 edition of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people. She has been working for 40 years to improve the welfare and treatment of farm animals. Her biggest contributions are the livestock handling facilities that she designed and the objective scoring system she developed for meat packing plant auditors. Her facilities are used all around the world, including the US, Europe, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand. She is also a Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University. What sets her apart from other well-known advocates, and what she attributes her success to, is the fact that she is autistic. She believes that she is better able to understand the way animals think and act because autism makes her think and act in a similar way. 

Honesty, I must admit that I'm not the biggest fan of Temple Grandin. I respect her work, I applaud her efforts, but I have never been enamored by her success or placed her on the list of personal heroes who I would love to meet, talk to, and/or work with. In part I find her abrasive, even in her books, which might be due in part to her autism. Another reason is that I disagree with her on some fundamental beliefs. For example (not surprisingly), we disagree strongly on dietary practices. In the lectures and small group discussions on Thursday, she had nothing good to say about vegan diets and even placed vegetarian diets below meat-eating ones. Also, she believes the practice of consuming local foods rather than purchasing food from the large commercialized system is only possible for the upper classes. I definitely got the feeling that her support for urban farming and a return to local was very, very weak. A local, diverse, balanced vegetarian diet is what I would say I'm most passionate about and to have her belittle that was disappointing. Instead of arguing with her and trying to make her see my point, I sat back and swallowed my pride. Why? First of all, she's been working in her field for 40 years, simply put: there's not a great chance of her changing her ways now. But, more importantly: the work she does is not work I would be able to do but it has improved animal welfare. Everyone in the field contributes their own little bit to the process and for me, meeting Temple Grandin was a real-world illustration of how changing the world can best be accomplished by us accepting everyone else's role in the process and doing our part rather than bickering about what view is "right". Maybe there really is a "bickering" role but it definitely isn't mine. I like to make a difference through actions rather than words. So, how I see it is that now that Temple Grandin's filled the position of improving the welfare of animals heading to slaughter, the next generation can step in and maybe take it one, or two, or even three steps further. Thanks to Temple Grandin we have a foot in the door with the agricultural giants, not something that the extreme animal rights activists who attack all meat-eaters can say. The activists have their work to do, Temple Grandin has hers, and I have mine.

Speaking of we all have our work to do, here's a little example of mine. As I said, most important for me is to live a local, diverse, balanced, and vegetarian lifestyle and I'm proud to report that after the Temple Grandin fest I went out and did exactly that. First up was the Grafton Public Library. I got a library card last week and immediately checked out a movie and four books. On Thursday I went back to return the movie and get two more. So, local? Check. Also, I could probably add "not wasteful" to my list, because instead of buying books and movies that I may only read/watch once and will then have to drag willy-nilly with me when I move, I am utilizing a community service that allows me to be more selective about the materials I buy, choosing from experience only the ones that I'll read/watch over and over and over again. Case in point: The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. I haven't even finished the book yet and I'm already hooked. The second stop of the afternoon was the local farmer's market which happens every Thursday from 2-6:30 pm on the Grafton Common, which is this wonderful circle of green in the middle of the tiny "downtown" of Grafton. So, I went there with the goal of buying a little bit of fruit and just to investigate, see what the farmer's market here was all about. Half an hour later, I had an entire bag of fruits, veggies, and a locally-made, vegan version of nutella (yum yum yum!) AND I had struck up conversations with multiple people as I perused their wares. Yes, yes, all of you can pick your jaws off the ground now. I struck up conversations. I didn't just respond in monosyllables and run for cover the first chance I got. For example, I talked to one guy about his farm, the mass amount of tomatoes everyone is harvesting, and how our dogs keep stealing our vegetables (mine eats tomatoes, his eats corn) among other things. Needless to say I'm in love (with the farmer's market, not the guy...), and I will be going back as often as possible. Just look at the yumminess I collected. Joy, I tell you, pure joy!

Compost, aka rotting veggies, YUM! [80]

Composting is the process of breaking down organic material into usable fertilizer for soil and plants. Or in our case it's a way to throw stuff away without actually throwing it away. With equal parts "green" (fruit and veggie leftovers, tea bags, grass) and "brown" (dead leaves, twigs, egg shells) items you can create a pile that will be munched on by "heaters" (bacteria and fungi) and "chompers" (worms, beetles, woodlice). Can you tell that part was written for children? There's lots of ways you can compost and many different opinions on how to compost most efficiently, etc etc. The EPA has some good info, if you'd like to check it out. Our composting habits consist of dumping random organic stuff into a little blue bin outside of our kitchen door and then periodically carrying it to our compost pile, which hasn't been turned in forever because we're letting some little pumpkins grow (or were? I don't know where the pumpkins went, the huge stalks and leaves at the front were the only evidence of pumpkin-ness when I went out to take pictures). Pretty basic stuff but our trash can fills up only once a week. Actually, we found out by accident that one bag can last us two weeks because we forgot to take the trash out last week and we're still on the same bag one week later. Success! It's a pretty wonderful system.

An account of my recent adventures with food [79]

 The upside of having my own garden is that every week I have fresh veggies that taste wonderful and were brought to my table by foot (my feet to be exact, and well my hands too, and the rest of my body really...) The downside? I'm drowning in tomatoes! Also, the other day I came home from Stop 'n Shop (all you Midwesterners, think Meijer or Kroger, and all of you WAs think Fred Meyer) with a perfectly ripe peach. And I mean perfect (commence French finger kissing imitation, muah!).




My big food adventure this week though was bread baking. The recipe said to let a flour, water, and yeast starter ferment for 2 days before starting the actual baking. That's where I ran into the first hurdle. The tiny bit of starter I'd made succeeded in quadrupling in size in the first two hours, completely outgrowing its container. So, I moved it to another container but then it stopped growing all together and turned watery and gross-looking to boot. The two days elapsed relatively uneventfully, lack of growing and all, and then I was too tired to actually make the bread on the second day because it was the same day as my graduate school orientation (a couple months of lazing and I already forgot how tiring it can be to sit around and listen to people talk all day). I failed at time management on day 3 so I made the actual dough and formed it into bread shape but then had to stick it in the freezer overnight and hope all of my improv hadn't completely ruined the project. Day number 4 rolled around and I finally baked the bread. I'm proud to say that I was relatively successful, it looks like bread and tastes like bread but I was so paranoid about the possibility of having ruined it that I didn't bake it long enough. Turns out the middle tastes less like bread and more like dough...... (what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?). Next step(s): actually bake the bread all the way through and hunt down local(ish) sources of flour.

We're all insecure [78]

With my extra boredom I've been catching up on some books I've been meaning to read for a while and there's this odd theme that's developed over the last two books (can I say it's a theme already? well too late). One has a girly romantic comedy theme and the other is an account of one man's attempt at becoming completely trash-free, there was a surprising amount of time spent on an individual's insecure assumption that he or she is unworthy in some way. The thing is, neither one was just talking about a single character in their respective stories, whether it was the searching-for-love heroine in "Must Love Dogs" or Colin Beavan himself as he fought conventional trash-creating lifestyles in "No Impact Man." Both of them, in their very different genres and styles was talking about how it's a universal attribute, even if some people are better able to hide or deny it. We all, whether consciously or subconsciously, want to look, act, and be like others and we all deal with that want differently. Some openly defy it (hipsters anyone?), others "rise above it" and become the popular people who define what everyone else wants to be like. I'm following a recent trend of change-the-world enthusiasts who've done their changing over the span of a year (or similarly short period of time). Names that come to mind are Colin Beavan (No Impact Man), Gretchen Rubin (The Happiness Project- more to come about her soon), and Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat Pray Love). It may seem so degrading or depressing to think of us all like that, but I like to think of it as leveling the playing field. Personally it's much better than the "imagine them all in their underwear" technique. There's just some people I'd reeeeally not want to see in their underwear. A lot of people actually. Back on topic: basically we're all the same (in this way at least), just another reason why everyone should respect everyone else just a little bit more. Yay for changing the world.

That fun rant was just to provide you with something to puzzle over as you go through your day. But, in other news, I haven't been slacking quite as much on this project as it may seem from the number of posts in the last week (aka 0). First up: trash-collecting, minus the bright orange jumpsuit. I'm still so excited about the "national park"-- as Dan likes to say-- that is my backyard, but what saddens me is the amount of trash that people have dumped back there. Because of all the hiking trails in the area I finally invested in a sturdy pair of hiking boots and the first time I broke them in I went out on a quick trip into the woods behind our house with Bubba. The goal was both to work off some of the excess energy that dog possesses and also to clean up some trash. I took two plastic bags and filled them up in no time. I'm proud that only a tiny bit ended up in the trash. The rest went straight into the recycling bin. This project is far from over, but I already feel better knowing I didn't just take something from the woods, but that I gave back to nature, even in such a teeny-tiny way. Next time I'll take bigger bags and some sturdy gloves because boy can humans be nasty!



(Apologies for this lame-sauce post, bigger and better ones are coming soon, I promise!)

Need I say more? [77]

This video speaks for itself, though you should definitely still go to http://www.empowermentplan.org/ for more info (thanks to Kiana for sharing it on facebook):

To the point of boredom [76]

I've been in Massachusetts for a week now. I'm an East Coast girl once again. This week I've driven 14 hours across the country, unpacked two cars worth of belongings- one into my new home and one into my sister's- I've met way too many new people (but I guess for me 2 people is too many so that's not saying much), I climbed onto a roof for a wonderful view of Boston, I painted wine glasses with one of my best friends, I survived my first solo drive on the Mass Pike (complete with getting out of a parallel parking job that was much too close for comfort), and I drove through my town in several directions without a map and without getting lost. I have a week before my grad school orientation (eek!) with not much to do, but that just means that I have more time to enjoy the big green field, woods, marshy little lake, and waterfall (yes waterfall) in my backyard. Up until yesterday afternoon I was a little worried that this next week was going to drag by in a mess of bored nervousness but then I took my roommate's dog out into the field behind our house to get some exercise and I was met with one of the best views ever. That is not something I've been able to say very often about my backyard. In Germany we had such a small backyard that the snowmen we made were not only miniscule but covered in sticks and dried leaves because we just couldn't get enough snow rolled together. Our yard in Michigan is plenty big but isn't anything special. You know, no waterfalls or anything. And with the chance of sounding pompous, living in Michigan means that I've had friends who've lived directly on one of the many small lakes but they have nothing on my backyard. Most lakes in residential areas are just surrounded by houses. People will practically build on top of each other to get a corner of the lake. Although we don't live out in the boonies, as in we've got neighbors all around, we live on a major road, bla-bla-bla, our backyard is natural, it's green, it's purely wonderful. How about I just let the pictures do the talking... But really, the point of this post was not to bore you to death with a lengthy sonnet about my wonderfully green yard. The point was actually to sing the praises of taking time out of the contemporary stressful life to the point of boredom. No zen talk, I promise. Just that, if you ever get the opportunity to just chill and take life at turtle speed for just a moment, look around you and see what you've been missing. In the course of the week I have been able to get to bed early enough and leisurely enough that I've been waking up before 7 on my own, without the help of an alarm clock. To others that may sound ungodly early but to me it's wonderful. Also, in just the last day I have been given the time to wander through the woods at my own pace- well, as long as I kept up with Bubba- (I didn't realize how much I missed relatively pure nature until I had it back), finally finish the index of the book of recipes I wrote up before leaving Michigan, finish two blog posts (you're welcome!), and start the ridiculously long process of picking pictures for a scrapbook I'm putting together.

 So here's my backyard. It comes complete with an old shrine and street sign:

Then it's the second star to the right and straight on til morning! 

Or... to the left and down the mini hill to:

At the edge of the woods, looking back towards our house

First glimpses of water

The path into the woods looks a little bit like this:

 And this:

 

Also, this:

WHAM! Waterfall

 

Bubba, my trusty adventuring buddy:

I'll just leave you with this image. If you're ever looking for me in... well probably the next year, 

try the dock first xx

Home again, home again, off to the East Coast [75]

This has been the summer of hurry up and wait. One month traveling Europe followed by a couple weeks of sitting around with nothing to do. A week on Lake Michigan with the family, consisting mostly of reading reading reading. And then waiting waiting and some more waiting until last week's wedding extravaganza. Yay for bridesmaid win. Two days at home and now a move across the country. So here's a guide for you on how to change the world while moving 800 miles from the Midwest to the East Coast. (Note: this list is FAR from exhaustive, it just consists of the three things that jumped out at me the most.)

1. Take reusable water bottles on the trip and fill them up every opportunity you get.

2. When you have to buy water bottles try to pick a company that's making a difference, even if that difference is eensy weensy teeny tiny. Case in point: Ethos water has paired up with Starbucks to create the Ethos Water Fund. Every time someone buys an Ethos water bottle from Starbucks, 5 cents is donated to the Fund, which goes towards supporting water, sanitation, and hygiene education programs in water-stressed nations. 5 cents might not sound like a lot but thanks to elementary school math I learned that can sure add up fast, to more than $6 million so far and 420,000 people to be exact.

Photo credit (and to learn more): Ethos Water Fund

3. Stay the night at hotels that are trying to make an effort to be environmentally friendly. The hotel we stayed at had recycling bins everywhere and gives guests the option to reuse towels by hanging them up or leaving them on the floor to be removed and replaced by clean new towels.