1m2aSandbox

So I had my Green Night the other night
(it was fabulous, by the way) and for a couple days leading up to
it the girls and I were baking yummy treats to set out for my
guests. We made banana bread and zucchini bread and chocolate chip
cookies and creamsicle cookies (yes they’re as good as they
sound) and it was a feast for the eyes.


I’d warned the girls that we were baking for Mommy’s
friends and I’d allow them to have one of everything, but the
rest would be for that night. Our final bit of baking was the
zucchini bread; it dries out quickly, so we were putting it in the
oven about two hours before my “party” was supposed to
begin, and Cora helped me every step of the way.


I closed the oven door and Cora stood there contemplatively,
staring into the oven from which yummy smells were already
beginning to emerge.

Every summer my church organizes several
fun nights for the women at my church; different people are asked
to “host” an event that they’re interested in. So
one woman might offer a one-night class about how to get the most
out of clipping coupons, while another one might host an ongoing
weekly early-morning walking club.


I was asked to host a night about living green.

Friday afternoon we stopped in at our
local Borders Bookstore, where we’ve spent many happy hours
hanging out and sampling books and generally wasting the morning
away. Maddie wanted to know what all the big signs in the windows
were for, and I explained that the store was going out of business.


Maddie was heartbroken.


“But where will I buy my Junie B. Jones books?” she
wailed, looking around the store in desolation. “I need to
buy all the rest of them NOW!”

I try to feed my family in a pretty
healthy way while not making them feel like the weird hippie kids,
and one of the hardest areas for me to make health merge with taste
(and what’s in fashion at friends’ houses) has been
cheese. We generally buy Tillamook cheese out of Vermont;
it’s a great company that, while not certified organic, does
not use bovine growth hormones on its cows. This turns out a
relatively cost-friendly yet delicious and nutritious cheese.


Unfortunately, it can’t hold a candle to Velveeta.

Last week Maddie and Cora participated in
a theatre camp with a Princesses and Pirates theme, and they
learned most of the “theme songs” for the Disney
princesses. Yesterday they were lustily belting out Snow
White’s “Some Day My Prince Will Come” when they
stopped to ponder the storyline.


“Mommy, how did the stepmother in Snow White die
again?” Maddie asked.


“I’m not sure – I haven’t seen it for a
long time,” I answered. I should say here that Snow White,
with her passive approach to life and her
I’ll-sit-around-and-wait-for-a-man-to-help-me attitude, has
never been my favorite princess, and the girls have never actually
seen the movie.


Speaking of –


“Mommy, when are we going to get to see Snow White, anyway?
Is it really that scary?” Maddie asked, assuming I was
keeping her from the movie to avoid nightmares. I realized the time
had come for “the talk” and I took a deep breath.

I’m hosting a night soon for some
friends from my church; a group of about thirty people are coming
over to talk about small steps you can take to “green”
your life and move towards more sustainable living. Being the OCD
person I am, I’m writing up a small(ish) handout about the
whole thing, and am including links to lots of helpful sites.


One of the sites I’m referencing is the Story of Stuff, a
website revolving around a twenty-minute documentary about, well,
all our stuff – how it’s made, where it goes, and so
on. I just sat down and watched it again and even though it’s
been out for a while and even though I’ve seen it before,
it’s impacted me. Again.


So target="_blank">here’s the link – seriously, if
you’ve never watched this, now’s the time. It’s
only twenty minutes.

Yesterday afternoon Cora came out of her
room after quiet time begging to play with her rock collection. She
and Maddie both have a jar of polished rocks they’ve bought
at various museums and tourist sites, and their glass jars are a
rainbow of smooth polished rocks.


I laid down some ground rules – keep the rocks in the living
room, don’t feed them to the cat, etc. – and opened the
jar. Then I made my big mistake – I disappeared into the
office to catch up on some emails.


Ten minutes later, I heard an ear-splitting crash followed by an
even more ear-splitting “NOOOOOOOOO!” from Cora.
Rushing out, I saw Cora and Maddie standing in our wood-floored
kitchen, Cora wailing and Maddie looking shocked. At their bare
feet was the shattered glass jar, splintered all over the kitchen,
rocks scattered everywhere.