Water, Water, Everywhere?

No, I don’t always remember my ugly lime green bag when I go shopping. Blame it on my age or blame it on the alignment of the stars from day to day, but sometimes I just forget.

Other times I don’t, though. The impact of my efforts to cut down on the number of plastic bags that come into my house can’t be quantified, of course. However, it illustrates one of the maxim’s I live by: All you can do is all you can do…just do something.

My efforts plus yours and his and hers and then theirs slowly become significant, and that’s all we can ask of each other. Our children and their children will be the beneficiaries, and they may some day thank us a great deal. We just don’t know at this point.

So, what else can we do to pool our efforts? Let’s talk about water:

• Buy a low-flow showerhead. (They feel great, too…like showering in a soft rainstorm.)

• Turn off running water when brushing teeth.

• Run the dishwasher only when it’s full.

• If you take baths, eliminate one a month in lieu of a shower (with your nifty new showerhead!).

• Use a commercial car wash instead of washing your vehicle in the driveway with a running hose.

• Eat less meat. The amount of water that goes into producing grains, meat, and other commodities is called “virtual water.” For one pound of meat, virtual water used is 30 times higher than that needed to grow wheat, for example.

Remember: All you can do…….

Which of these will YOU do?


Source: You Are Here: Exposing the Vital Link Between What We Do and What That Does to Our Planet, by Thomas M. Kostigan.

Evoking Pizza

The air was rendolent with the smell of yeast as we entered the restaurant on the corner, its windows fogged and streaked with moisture from the heat of the ovens in the back. What it is about the smell of bread that makes us feel loved, comforted, like we’re back at home with mom’s fresh baked loaves cooling on the sideboard, even if we didn’t have a mother who baked?


Joe passed me a menu, but I knew what I wanted. It was always the same. I wasn’t one to tamper with something I liked after I finally found it. I closed my eyes, tasting it already, the thick chewy crust filling my mouth, a sprinkling of mushrooms adding an earthy undertone. Light on the tomato sauce, just enough to tease my taste buds into action, with a layer of mozzarella cheese that would string in loops from every bite. Green peppers added a crunch, tiny bits only please, no large chucks to overpower the delicate balance. I sighed in anticipation as I opened my eyes, my mouth watering already.


“Well, are ya ready to order your pizza or not, Bud?”

Ballerinas don't wear glasses

My new blue plastic glasses had tiny white stones embedded in each corner of the frame, sparkles that caught the light when I turned my head just right. They were "cat's eyes" glasses, my sister said, their edges slanting up to a sharp point near my temples. She had chosen plain black frames, boring and clunky, while mine changed the world I saw through them. And that was a very good thing for me.

I became the Queen of England with those glasses, or a ballerina creating magic on the stage. Life took on the gentleness I longed for, its hard edges sanded down as I put them on every morning that summer. I didn't even notice their weight, heavy on my nose, the thick lenses forcing their way through the back of the frame. All I knew was that my world had been transformed. I was someone else, maybe a girl everyone liked.

But when autumn was a mere hint in the air and school started again, I found out that ballerinas don't wear glasses. Even ones with tiny flashing stones.

Oil changes and a crisis of confidence

Saturday was oil-change day.

Well, it was actually due about 1000 miles ago, but I couldn’t bring myself to drive my car to the nearest….or any…..service facility to get the job done.

I just didn’t have the energy to face the clipboard held in the grimy hand of the technician (he is NOT a mechanic!) who wanted to sell me the “service of the month.” (Shortly after my daughter got her driver’s license as a teenager, I “allowed” her to undertake this task for me every 3000 miles. She was thrilled and I was off the hook.)

But, my daughter is now off living the life of a twenty-something, getting her own oil changed in between working three jobs, partying and surfing, and I was already 1000 miles overdue. It was on my “absolutely, positively have to do” list for the week, and the week had no more days left.

So, I took a deep breath, shored up my courage, and did the dirty deed.

What transpired over the next 30 minutes or so defines the crisis of confidence we have in our society. A woman alone in one of these places simply must practice saying the word “NO!” in the mirror before leaving the house and then lock up her wallet. Over the years, I’ve sat in the waiting rooms of these businesses and watched as, magically, every car that enters a bay at the business has the same problem that simply MUST be fixed! I’m not very mechanically inclined but I also don’t have an “S” on my forehead for “stupid.” I can't help but think men face this, too. I'm not sure.

I waited patiently for my car to be finished with its oil change, and VOILA! The technician approached me with a clipboard and a look of utter despair on his face. In years past, I panicked. WHAT WAS WRONG WITH MY CAR? As a single mother with a perpetually slim bank account balance, there was never any money for car repairs. Often there wasn’t enough money for food, so my car had to limp along as best it could.

But I’m wiser now, (notice I didn’t mention the OLDER part), and I’ve practiced the NO word enough that it just slips out easily. Sometimes I even smile when I say it. As a matter of fact, I laughed out loud when the tech told me my radiator water was brown instead of clear, and it would cost $74.99 to flush it out and replace that brown water, but wait…it would only cost $54.99 TODAY ONLY! (Laughing probably wasn’t in my own best interest since they did still have my car “un-done” there in the bay area, and who knows what they could have done to it if I hadn’t been watching every move at this point. Oh, hold on…that was the subject of a TV exposé once, wasn’t it?)

The point is that we have gotten so we don’t trust anyone, haven’t we? I don’t trust oil change technicians to tell me the truth about my car, or politicians to be straight with me about their platforms or just about anything else, or dentists to clean my teeth without finding cracked molars in the back where no one else can see them (the cracks, not the molars), or city government to disclose who they’re talking to about what in the shadows created by the sun. And our society grinds to a halt because none of us believe each other anymore.

So, what's the solution?

I can't help but think that telling the truth might be a step in the right direction.

How about oil change businesses just changing my oil like their sign says they will do and let me, as an intelligent person, take my car to a mechanic when it sounds funny or my service book tells me it's time for that radiator to be flushed? Is it possible for an elected official to tell his cronies that they have to follow the rules of engagement in obtaining contracts just like everyone else? Maybe the dental office that signed up to be part of a nationwide chain could just perform the services needed instead of finding all kinds of issues to pad their bill? How about a business that admits it has not used shareholders' money wisely, so instead of asking for a bailout, they work smarter and more efficiently? You get the picture.

All I know is that I have about 3 months to steel myself before my next oil change.