My ambitious Christmas goal

I, like No Impact Man, consider buying used to be the superior green shopping choice over buying organic or something like that. He and I think so (as if we sat down together to come to this conclusion) because a) buying an unwanted item keeps it out of the landfill, b) buying an already made item keeps resources from being used to produce new items, c) buying used items greatly reduces or eliminates all pollution production, emissions, and energy usage associated with manufacturing and shipping new products, and d) buying used contributes directly to your local economy (unless you’re buying over a long distance through ebay or something, in which case you’re contributing directly to another local economy) by putting money in the pocket of one of your community members or a local non profit organization. Buying used is an even better green option for single moms, because it also happens to be the cheapest green shopping option.

In order to green my holiday season as much as possible, and also to save money for more important things (like paying down debt), I am going to attempt to do all my Christmas shopping in the following locations (in order of preference)

• Freecycle
• Craigslist
• Thrift stores (Goodwill, Arc, Savers, The KGNU second hand shop, etc.)
• The Flea Market
• Higher end second hand and antique stores
• Local craft shows/stores
• Etsy
• Ebay
• Local organic product stores
• Online organic product stores

Okay, craft shows and Etsy isn’t used, but handmade is a good thing too. I put Ebay under Etsy because half the crap on Ebay is new anyhow, and I don’t want to have to ship things. I did put places to buy new, organic stuff on the list, but I highly doubt I’ll use them. In fact, I intend to stick primarily to my first two options on the list.

Thats right. I’m going to try and do all my Christmas shopping on Freecycle and Craigslist. If this turns out to be a success, I am going to make this a holiday tradition.

I should add, however, that there are two over all stores I might have to make a stop or two at to make my Christmas shopping goal really work. The craft store (stops there should be fairly minimal, I’m pretty sure I have all the craft supplies I could possibly need) and the grocery store (stops there will be somewhat more frequent, I do love to bake during the holidays).

I will keep you guys posted.

Buy Nothing Day 2008

I discovered Buy Nothing Day when I was 17 or 18, when I realized that reading Adbusters was about more than looking like a hipster.  I don’t buy Adbusters anymore, because I can’t afford them (its a freaking expensive magazine for being an anti consumerism publication!) and I don’t have time to read them (and their consistent use of little, messy fonts – a personal pet peeve of mine), but I’m still a loyal supporter of Buy Nothing Day, an event they sponsor every year.

Buy Nothing Day is the anti consumerism movement’s response to Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving, the biggest shopping day of the year).  In some places, people actually hold demonstrations in shopping malls and other shopping hubs, but it seems like everyone in Denver is just as lazy as I am and no one ever wants to actually organize an event, they just want to show up and participate in one.  The idea is to educate people about how massive consumerism is harmful to the environment, society and our personal physical and emotional health.

I think you’d have to be crazy to go out on Black Friday anyhow.  I don’t like going into crowded stores, and those who do are practically rabid on the day after Thanksgiving.  I am fond of my eyes, personally, and have no desire to risk getting them scratched out by an angry super shopper who’s been camping out on the side walk since she finished cleaning up Thanksgiving dinner the night before in a battle over the last 9.99 sweatshop manufactured sweater at Old Navy.  No thank you! But apparently the majority of the population is crazy, because if not, then the day after Thanksgiving would not be the biggest shopping day of the year.

Obviously, participating in Buy Nothing Day was not a big change in my lifestyle.  I pretty much have participated in it all my life, I just didn’t realize there was a name for it.  I try to take it to the farthest extreme I can.  I make sure that my gas tank is filled and that I’m stocked up on any personal care items I might need (diapers, toilet paper, etc.) the day before Thanksgiving.  If I forget something, I do without that day.  If at all possible, I try not to leave the house at all, although this year I am going to visit my grandmother in Boulder with my sister and our kids, and last year I was in the hospital delivering my son (which unfortunately resulted in my family members going out and buying things; flowers, It’s a Boy balloons, some fresh fruit for me to eat). 

Maybe one day, if enough people participated in Buy Nothing Day, it might actually be safe to go out on Black Friday, but since I am now such a big supporter of Buy Nothing Day, I still won’t go out.  To learn more about Buy Nothing Day, visit their website or look them up on Facebook (there’s a Buy Nothing Day group there, I am a member).  I encourage all single moms, and everyone else, to participate in Buy Nothing Day by staying home and spending some quality time with your kids, or going out and participating in a demonstration.  You can bring your kids along, an opportunity to both spend time with them, teach them about the anti consumerism movement, and about civil action.  Its also an opportunity to meet new people.  You can find an event in your area on the Adbusters Buy Nothing Day website.

Have fun, and Happy Buy Nothing Day!

(by the way, all the links in this post go to different blogs and pages about Buy Nothing Day)

Repower America

This is copy and pasted directly from an email I got.  Please sign!

Friday is the last day to voice your opinion on whether the EPA — the Environmental Protection Agency — should regulate carbon dioxide pollution, the primary cause of the climate crisis. This is a big deal.

The EPA is taking public comment, before making a ruling.

Of course, special interests — like the oil and coal lobbies — are working overtime to defeat a positive ruling and have already gotten thousands of comments submitted in opposition.

Most people don’t know about this opportunity for public comment, so your voice can make a real difference. And with a new president in the White House, it’s likely that someone will actually be listening. Submit your public comment to the EPA here:

http://www.RepowerAmerica.org/EPA

In April 2007 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide if it is harming our health and welfare. After more than a year of delay, the EPA is finally now requesting public comments on whether carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping pollutants are endangering our health and our climate.

Join us, and send a message about how crucial it is to reduce harmful carbon dioxide pollution. That you expect the EPA to use its powers to protect our health and welfare. That we can “Repower America” by using energy sources that don’t emit carbon dioxide, and make the switch to 100% clean electricity. And that the solutions to the climate crisis are the same ones needed to address our economic and security challenges.

This is our chance to go on the public record — all the comments will be posted on the EPA’s website. To post your public comment, just go here.

For nearly eight years, the Bush administration has done nothing to address the growing threats we face from global warming. Hurricanes are getting stronger, the North polar icecap is melting, and we’ve suffered through intense droughts, floods and killer heat waves.

The deadline is November 28th. Let’s help end the era of delay.

Thanks,

Cathy Zoi
CEO
www.RepowerAmerica.org

Making Thanksgiving more meaningful

I used to hate Thanksgiving.  To me, it was a time when the whole family got together, all the women would slave in the kitchen all day and get irritable, all the kids would get yelled at all day, and all the men would watch football.

Somehow, as I’ve gotten older, my perception of the holiday has changed.  I love Thanksgiving now.  The shift happened when I was about 17 years old.  My whole extended family no longer gets together.  These days its just me, my mom, Elijah and my sister and niece, if they make it out from Missouri.  Although I miss the large gathering (not so much the sexism of who cooks and cleans, but I do miss the rest of it), I do like the opportunity to forge new traditions and to re focus on the true meaning of Thanksgiving. 

With that in mind, I read this wonderful article on MindfulMama.com about Thanksgiving I thought I would share with you.  As Elijah grows, I would like to incorporate all of this into our holiday tradition.  What are your Thanksgiving traditions?

Also, here is an articlefrom The Green Parent that talks about greening Thanksgiving traditions.  It has some good ideas in there, if you can incorporate them.

Hopefully one day I will get married and have lots more babies (not very green, I know, but I love babies so much!) and then I will have my big family Thanksgiving again.

And for the record, I do have one uncle who helped out in the kitchen quite a bit.  He actually kicks a lot of ass in the kitchen.  I think he missed his calling.  He should have been a celebrity chef.

Tag, you’re it!

I just got tagged by Verda Vivo, and it gave me a bump in my readers yesterday.  Yay!  I hope some of those readers were fellow single moms. 

Now I’m going to tag some other people.

Here are the rules for ’social-networking’ tag:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Share seven things about yourself – some random, some weird.
4. Tag seven people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog and/or Twitter.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is posted.

So…seven things about me:

1. I can touch my tounge to the tip of my nose.
2. I got an A on the first term paper I ever wrote, on peak oil, and I wrote it the night before it was due.  I did spend months researching it, though, and its still one of my favorite subjects to read about.
3. I was actually in love with the guy I lost my virginity to, and he actually loved me.  We were both virgins, and were out of high school when we started dating.  I don’t know anyone else with a story like that.
4. Before I had Elijah, my plan was to get out of the Army next year and join the Peace Corps.
5. I don’t like green beans.
6. After I got back from my deployment, I was terrified of men.  I didn’t want to speak to one unless he was a family member or a coworker.  If I hadn’t had to work with males, I wouldn’t have.
7. If I ever get married, I am going to wear my mothers wedding dress.  The problem is that I will never be as thin as she was when she wore it (and she was four months pregnant with me!) because my mom was uber thin.  I’m going to have to have it altered significantly.  It will probably cost the same as buying a new dress, but its better for the environment to alter and reuse.

Who I’m tagging:

Ok here you go, 7 blogs and people you may or may not know, but I hope you’ll check them out. If I tagged you, I hope that you have a moment to share. If not, know that you’re blog is one I read regularly so I know you’re all busy people!

1. Susan at Cheap Like Me - Verda Vivo tagged her first too, and I too love Susan’s blog.  Denver bloggers rule! Twitter Cheaplikeme
2. Allie at Allie’s Green Answers
3. Maggie and Will at Green Couple
4. Miranda at La Pieuvre
5. I don’t know the author’s first name at Mindful Home
6. Bjorn at Variable Interest
7. Some silly dude at White Stuff People Like (this blog is really only funny if you’ve ever read Stuff White People Like)

Birthday party meyhem

Elijah celebrated his first birthday on Sunday.

I’ve learned a lot during my first year of motherhood, but yesterday, I learned a lot about birthdays.

I didn’t want to have a big, spendy, consumeristic birthday party for Elijah, but my mom wanted to do a theme.  We picked a cowboy theme, so I figured we’d get some sort of cowboy cake and say howdy instead of hi to our guests.  My mom figured she’d buy a dozen cowboy hats and cowboy themed gifts for goodie bags for all the kids who would come.  She bought cowboy themed decorations and suggested we get catering from Qdoba to feed everyone (I was on board for Qdoba, because I love it).  She searched for cowboy costumes for Elijah and his baby cousin online, and then requested that my grandma make them costumes (which turned out adorable!).

The party was all set up, it looked amazing in our house.  We had all sorts of fun decorations and yummy food.  It cost a small fortune.

And no one came.

Okay, no one is an over statement.  My sister and my neice flew in from Missouri to knock out his birthday and Thanksgiving with us (she also wanted to get her daughter baptized in our church, the church we both grew up in).  My aunt, cousin, and cousin’s baby came.  And my best friend swung by for an hour or so, but then had to leave to take care of a work emergency.  But besides that, no one.

Qdoba catering for 20 sat, getting cold.  10 cowboy hats filled with western themed goodies sat waiting for children who never came.  At first I was pretty depressed (none of my friends showed for my baby shower either) but then I remembered that most of my friends are single and childless, and a 1 year old’s birthday party surely didn’t sound like a fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon.  Many of them also work on weekends, so they couldn’t have come even if they wanted to.  And my son was born smack dab in the middle of hunting season, so that meant most of my family was busy off in the mountains.

To top it all off, Elijah decided to take a mega nap half an hour before the party began, and slept through most of his party.

What lesson did I learn?  That birthdays are cheaper, less stressful, less wasteful and less disappointing if I keep them low key, small and intimate.  Elijah still had a ton of fun.  His cousin and second cousin were there to play with.  He got some toy cars, a boat and a toy that plays music when you press buttons.  He ate a mini banana cream pie and some Goldfish crackers.  He had the time of his life. 

He could have cared less about the western scene my mom and sister hung up on the wall.  He could have cared less if we had dropped a couple of hundred bucks on Qdoba catering.  He would have been just as happy, maybe more happy, with mac and cheese and fish sticks.  And I would have $200 more in my pocket than I do right now.

Of course when Elijah gets older, he might expect a little more from birthdays, but for now, all he needs is close family and his favorite foods.  When he’s in school, I’m sure I can expect more guests for birthday parties, but for the next few years, if I spend more than $100 on a birthday (including gifts) I’m doing something wrong.

One thing I did do this birthday that I want to make a lifetime tradition for Elijah and any other children I might have, is I wrote him a letter.  I wrote him a letter telling him about the first year of his life and what my hopes and dreams are for him.  I wrote the letter and I sealed it in an envelope and tucked it away, never to be seen by anyone but him and me.  I got this idea because there is a large part of me that is afraid I will die before he is old enough to remember me (I’m in the military, after all) and I want him to have some sort of token of my love for him if I am not around to show him.  Hopefully, I won’t be dieing until he has children, maybe even grandchildren, of his own, but no matter when he gets these letters, I’m sure they will be meaningful for him.  I don’t know when I will give them to him.  Maybe when he graduates from high school?  College?  When he gets married?  Has his first child?  When I die (obviously I won’t be “giving” them to him then, but it would be part of his inheritance, I suppose)?  I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Speaking of green gifts

Check out this article and this article on Grist!  Pretty awesome!

Confessions of a Christmas dork

I love Christmas time.

Actually, I’m just in love with life starting the beginning of October, which is the build up to Halloween, which I feel is the kickoff party to the best time of the year, the holiday season!

I love Halloween!  I love Thanksgiving!  And I love Christmas!

Part of loving the Holiday season is loving the thing about Christmas that most people loathe … Christmas music!  Oh my god, I love Christmas music.  I used to have a rule that I couldn’t listen to Christmas music until Thanksgiving day, but I have found that its just not enough to satisfy my LUST for Christmas music, so this year I changed my rule to no Christmas music until the day after Halloween.

I used to have the worlds biggest collection of Christmas music downloaded (illegally, cough cough, erm) on my computer, and I was happy as a clam during the Holiday season.  Unfortunately, all of that (illegally) downloaded music led to a (MASSIVE) virus on my computer, and I lost everything!  Lesson learned (I suppose its not exactly in the holiday spirit to go around stealing Christmas music anyhow) and now I buy CDs.  Also, there is a radio station here in Denver that plays continuous Christmas music, and I can get down with that (even though most of what they play is the “classic” and “soft rock” variety, and I really love the more alternative and rock varieties).

There’s been a lot of talk in my Holistic Moms Group about how to simplify Christmas.  We all pretty much agree that we’d like more traditional, family focused, less consumerist holiday seasons.  I want these things for Elijah.  I want him to feel, like I do, that Christmas is about much more than gifts.  But I’m not ready to give up gifts entirely.  I like gifts.  I actually like shopping for Christmas gifts (its the only time of the year I enjoy shopping, in fact).  I could give up wrapping paper – in fact, I wish we would, but my mom loves it – and I can certainly get down with less gifts, but I can’t part with them entirely.

This year, Elijah is going to get pretty much just stuff I would have to buy him anyhow.  New clothes, new bath products, and a few new toys and books (because toys and books are good for growing babies).  Because his birthday is so close to Christmas (bummer!) I’ll be spreading his need gifts out.  I’m just doing one gift for my mom from Elijah and one gift from me.  Actually, I can’t make that promise either.  She might get a few from each of us.  But its not going to be a ton.

I want to focus on doing more holiday activities.  I’m thinking about signing up for the Turkey Trot and the Jingle Bell walk, two holiday 5ks.   Also, we like seeing the lights at the Botanic Garden, and this year the Botanic Garden is also doing a lighted nature walk down at Chatfield Reservoir we want to check out.  I might take Elijah to Zoo Lights at the Denver Zoo too.  There’s a candle light walk in downtown Golden on the 5th I think I want to go to, and my mom and I like to go up for the Georgetown festival.  I think getting out and participating in stuff like this also contributes to my goal of getting more deeply immersed in my local community.

I hope to craft more gifts this year too.  I’m working on making a digital cookbook for my friends (its just a Word document, shhhhh), and I found a number of really cool crafts on Make Baby Stuff that I’m wanting to try out.  What I do buy, I hope to buy green.  Here is a cool article with some great green gift ideas!

What do you do for the holidays?  How do you make things simpler and greener?  What’s your stance on presents?  Any fun activities you’re doing?  Do you know of any in Denver that I’m missing?  Let me know!

Oh, and whats your favorite Christmas song/music/album?  Let me, the Christmas music expert, recommend a few.

Maybe This Christmas

Maybe This Christmas Too

Maybe This Christmas Tree

Sufjan Stevens’ Christmas Album

A Santa Cause

Any of the Very Special Christmas Albums

Doula Workshop

I had the most fabulous time at my doula workshop the weekend before last.  I am very confident that I have found my calling in life.

After having shadowed a doula on one birth and taking this workshop, I feel I am ready to strike out and try my hand at attending births on my own.  So, if anyone is pregnant and in the Denver Metro area, feel free to message me if you’d like a free doula.  All you have to do is fill out an evaluation of my performance as a doula after the birth (your doctor and nurse does too).  I need to collect three evaluations to complete my DONA certification, but it sometimes takes a lot more than three births to actually get three evals from doctors and nurses, so don’t be shy about asking me to be your doula!  From now until I complete my certification, I will accept everyone free!  Yay! 

Now, that little bit of shameless advertising aside, I learned a lot during the workshop.  It was awesome.  And a little disturbing at parts (especially the part where we had to watch a video of a c-section being performed, icky!).

I learned that March of Dimes offers grants to people studying to become nurses, doulas, childbirth educators and lactation consultants.  Especially to those who will provide their services free of or for minimal charge to low income mothers (exactly what I’m getting into the doula profession to do!)

I learned about becoming a certified massage therapist, and how that could get me more business as a doula and allow me to charge more (for those who can afford to pay for a doula, that is).

I learned about a bunch of cool resources which I plan to share with you all over time.  Today, I am sharing with you the Lamaze Institute for Normal Birth.  Enjoy!

And I met a bunch of really awesome women.  I really feel great about this path I have chosen.  I am going to take it even further by becoming a childbirth educator and a breastfeeding expert (I learned about a course that makes you one during my doual workshop).  One day, maybe, I’ll move a step beyond and become a midwife, but for now, that day is still a ways away.

Help fight prematurity!

Visit the March of Dimes website and sign their Prematurity Awareness Petition.  Over all, the United States gets a D on the 2008 Premature Birth Report Card.  Premature births are on the rise, and its the #1 cause of death for new born babies.  You can check the grade of your state on the site and learn the statistics that caused your state to get the grade it did.  Colorado gets a D, only one state got above a C, Vermont.