Take a Peek Inside

You know how it is when you are in an appliance showroom, you open the classy refrigerators and admire their gleaming pristine interiors?  You can’t help it right? Well, I can’t.

I looked at my refrigerator that same way this morning—clean white interior—all surfaces scrubbed. But then the kitchen behind me looked as though a tornado had dropped its payload on the counter tops.

Oh yes, I’m embarrassed to tell you I threw away a great amount of plastic—I didn’t know what else to do with it. Eugene is not taking recyclable plastic right now. Threw it AWAY?  There is NO AWAY, there is only out of my house and into landfills, and the oceans. CRAP.

When we lived in Hawaii, I thought all garbage should go into the volcano. Wouldn’t that take care of plastic? Turn it into rocks?

I have refrigerators on the brain, and right now, plastics too. I’ve written about refrigerators before, please forgive me for writing about them again, but living without one for six-months made me sensitive to having one or not having one.

 (I love having one.)

And they represent commitment.

When you have refrigerator stuffins’ spread all over the kitchen, you must clean it up. 

You are committed.

Although we didn’t have a refrigerator in Hawaii for a time, we did have an ice chest. Six months into our stay we bought a refrigerator, but then, we didn’t have enough solar power to run it.

We used the freezer compartment of the refrigerator, though, by buying ice and using that small space for essentials—like half and half for coffee, and butter for eggs and bread, and burrito makins’. (Fruit was out there on the trees, waiting to be picked.) The larger, main compartment of the refrigerator held our bottled water.

Fascinating how we can made-do when push comes to shove.

When I was a kid, we had an ice-box. And—just like the movies—an ice-man carried an enormous block of ice on his shoulder into the house and placed it into the ice-box. During the week the ice slowly melted, with the water flowing into a pan at the bottom of the box.  Grandma would take out the pan on a regular basis and throw away the collected water.

And then years later those old wooden refrigerators became a design item.

But back then we kids on the street would follow the ice truck, and the ice-man would give us shards of ice to suck on.

Simple pleasures, and memorable ones.

I’m not suggesting we go back to earlier times, but I am suggesting we appreciate what we’re got, and to know that we are resourceful people.

And all those sandwiches I carried to school were wrapped in waxed paper, not plastic. (Have you ever had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich cratered in the center by the apple that molded itself into it?)

Of late I have been using plastic bags instead of paper bags—you know to save the trees, but a day ago my Grandson reminded me that paper bags are recyclable, and if we throw the paper onto the ground it will be gone in a day or so. (Especially in wet Eugene.) "If a fish eats the paper," smart Grandson continued. "He would probably spit it out for it tastes bad, or if he swallowed it, it wouldn't kill him."

Now, since we, especially in the US, use plastic bags on a regular basis, great amounts end up in the ocean choking sea life either with them getting tangled in it or by eating it. I don’t know why they eat it—some bags resemble jellyfish when floating in the water, and some sea-life eat jellyfish. Other plastic strips must look like worms or kelp, and even sand-sized particles of plastic get scooped up by scavengers. Unbeknown to a Momma albatross, and other sea birds, she feeds these particles to her babies.

Gone babies.

Oh dear, I didn’t mean for this to be a muck-raker—maybe an awareness-upper, for I am suffering over the plastic issue.  I began with refrigerators which being made largely of plastic, are a good use for it.

But bags? That’s another story.

Twenty years ago when two friends and I traveled in Germany we saw that no grocery stores provided bags. We even placed produce on a scale, weighted it, and the scale spit out the price on a stamp. We stuck the stamp to the produce, but did not bag the apples oranges, lettuce or whatever.

Customers either brought their own bags, or wheeled their groceries out to the car in their grocery cart and transferred them into a box in the car’s trunk. At home, they carried in the box, emptied the groceries , and replaced the box back into the car.

Simple. Easy.

I came home from Germany championing the cause of no paper or plastic bags. “Carry your own twine, cloth, or paper bag,” I said. Then what did I do? I fell into the lazy zone, and let the grocers bag my groceries.

And even in Eugene Oregon, who this past year created a ban on plastic bags, I would forget my bags and buy paper ones. We live just outside Eugene, in Junction City, and the Grocery here uses plastic bags.

I fell into the trap.

But I have climbed out. Yesterday I filled the car with my cloth bags. (And, of course, we can reuse paper bags if we have them.)

Thanks for reading. Hey, I think I should begin selling reusable bags. I need to come up with a clever design though—maybe quotes, I love quotes. When I came back from Germany, I tried giving away reusable bags and nobody wanted them.

I was ahead of the time.

Now reusable bags are being sold all over the place. People are even making grocery bags out of kitty litter bags and chicken food bags.

 Many thanks for being here,

Jo

Where Would I be Happy?

I love springtime

Long ago, well, in July of 2009, to be exact, during a personal crisis and financial crunch, I stood in amid an Oregon forest, in my horse paddock and lamented this question: “Where would I be happy?’

The answer was immediate. Talk about a thump on the head. And this was after we traveled to numerous places searching for our little spot on the planet. (Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, California). I don’t know if it was the Universe speaking, my intuition, God, or wishful thinking, it doesn’t matter, I  listen to all of those voices.

The answer?

“Check out Hawaii on the Internet!”

After I found a beautiful piece of property for half of what we owed in Oregon, my daughter said, “Let’s do it.” (Meaning let’s move there.)

We cleared our house of ten million years of accumulation—well, maybe 20, and packed up a 12 x 24-foot shipping container with stuff we felt we had to have. After our two vehicles left on a big flatbed transport vehicle, aiming for the Seattle Port, one husband, one daughter, one seven-month-old grandson, two dogs and two cats, plus me, flew away to live off the grid in Hawaii.

The story fits into a book called The  Frog’s Song. I think the frog is me. However, frog’s do figure predominately in the story.

A publisher has picked it the story, and the most stupendous editor in the world is editing it. She says The Frog’s Song will be out within two years. TWO YEARS!  Yipes, well it ought to be shorter now, for we are about six months into the process.

The editor gives her input in chapters, I rearrange them, and eventually, we will put all those flayed chapters back together again. I am grieving for I wanted to quote Mark Twain, from the book Mark Twain in Hawaii, Roughing it in the Sandwich Islands. (Hawaii in the 1860’s) He had only shortly before leaving on assignment for the most prominent newspaper on the Pacific Coast, “The Sacramento Union,” adopted the name, Mark Twain. He spoke so eloquently about the islands it made my mouth water, and I bet it would be yours too. The publisher, however, is worried about copyright. We’ll see what happens. It is nice, though, to have a gatekeeper.

Of course, I am wondering if anyone will want to read The Frog’s Song.

I‘m having fun, though, reliving the experience without the nervous expectations, and trauma of the first time around.

Aloha,

Joyce

(Aloha is hello, goodbye, I love you. Aloha is doing good without expecting anything in return. It is a way of life.)