the lady had potential...

i have never been known to be, or have really striven to be, environmentally friendly. really, the environment and i could hardly even be called acquaintances. we're more like those people who see each other a couple times a year at a mutual friend's house where we make polite small talk before the awkward silence drives us to opposite sides of the room until the next party. i guess that makes me...what?...environmentally social? i use tons of plastic bags. i refuse to spend the extra money on locally grown or organic veggies or fruits. i use the environmentally friendly light bulbs only if they happen to be on sale when i need them. i am too lazy to recycle (lets be honest, i have the girls throwing the trash away for me half the time). i go through a forest of paper towels in a month, i'm sure. i don't even know what else i'm doing that hurts my "acquaintance", but i'm sure there is more. no wonder it doesn't seek me out at the party!

however, i have, in the past year, made a friend who (at least by the standards here) is (and i didn't coin the term, but here it is) "granola" or "crunchy". as a sort of nod to her, i have made some feeble attempts to improve my relationship with the environment. i have cut down on my paper towel usage (mostly because i'm either at her house where they are scarce, or she's at mine and i care not to draw her wrath). instead, i have been using more towels to clean up messes. then i even spent the money to buy those reusable grocery bags. the other day, i even made sure to give my kids the few pieces of recycled paper i had (i don't even know where i got it) to draw on.

but, alas, i fear that my relationship with the environment will be unimproved by the next party. unfortunately, it does not feel the intentions, but merely the results, and here i have been somewhat lacking. you see, while i do try to use more towels than paper towels, i find that this increases the amount of laundry i have, and that is the chore that i hate most in my SAHM world. so i tend to cheat (really, does it help that much, since increasing the laundry load takes more precious energy to run the machines, which is a precious commodity, is it not?). i haven't remembered to use my reusable grocery bags in several months...and that's about how long ago i bought them, and i have to say that i sometimes leave them at home on purpose in favor of getting more plastic bags to use in my trash cans. and worse, ever since i started potty training my two year old, i have been flushing quite a few "unflushable" wipes down my toilets. all in all, i think the best i can say of my relationship with the environment is that i don't litter. in fact, my kids tend to pick things up off the ground on a regular basis. then they are forced to throw it in the nearest trash bin...where the non-degradable wipe i use to hastily clean their hands afterward soon follows.