Farland has a great thread going about her idea of a throw nothing away day, and she had a lovely inspiration elsewhere about making bags to take to the store for bulk item purchases out of old silk skarves from the thrift shop. I'm stealing her idea about the bags right away. I already take containers to the store for some bulk items and take containers to restaurants for takeouts and obviously take my own shopping bags wherever I go.  I compost everything possible and we throw very little away. The compost has to share with the dogs who get all the veggie trimmings ground up really fine and put in with their food (dogs can't break down the cellulose walls in veggies on their own but ground up they get all the nutrients just fine.) I belong to Freecycle but find it exhausting - too many emails and people often don't actually show up for the stuff they say they want and I end up just donating to Goodwill, which is fine. I buy used when I can. I buy bulk, unpackaged almost only - I only shop the edges of the store, the produce section and bulk bins mostly. I refill my Dr. Bronner's bottles, I buy organic, I try really hard. But there are such huge areas screaming for attention. For just one example, we ate at a restaurant this past weekend and the food left on plates being cleared and thrown away would have fed our four dogs for a week, just from this tiny little restaurant on one morning, nice organic food - why don't restaurants offer bagged up discards, real "doggie bags"? And this is a nice little place, but I'm positive they don't compost this stuff. Okay, more than one example. Why aren't all trashbags biodegradable? (Oh, by the way, Target sells biodegradable trash bags, for those of us who live in cities and have to contain whatever trash we do discard). Why are the deli containers at my natural food store not made of plastic that's even recyclable here? I would pay extra for a biodegradable container if I didn't bring my own. Why don't they expect you to bring your own? All it would take is zeroing the scale with the empty container on it before filling it with stuff, no problem. Why does Amazon insist I have to pay nearly 400 dollars for a kindle when I could use the same service to download books directly to my computer? (Amazon keeps the material available to readers from their server anyway, so that you can always go back and re-read - so if I don't need to read while I'm waiting in line, why can't I just have that at home?) Why aren't all server farms greened by now? (and what is Gaia's server like? Did you know there's someone putting a server farm on a boat and using ocean water to cool it? That doesn't seem like something the ocean will enjoy...) It's easy to think that using a computer uses less resources than other things but that isn't true. Every single time we access all this lovely information we go through servers which are enormous heat-generating, energy-sucking physical locations. Some of them have been "greened" but there isn't any way around the fact that this is a huge energy demand. I'm sad that gas prices are lower at the moment. I don't care for how much money the oil companies make, but I think a nonrenewable, polluting resource should cost enough to be used carefully. Why is there any toilet paper or paper towels that AREN'T made of post consumer recycled paper? It can't be that we don't produce enough trash. What in hell are they doing with all that stuff we recycle? I always secretly suspect it ends in a landfill, which actually, a lot of glass does. Did you know that? There aren't enough smelters and glass is heavy, breakable, expensive to transport. The last number I saw in this area was 15%. 85% of that stuff we conscientiously recycle goes to a landfill. As much as I dislike plastic, it has a better recycling record - provided it's coded 1 or 2. Otherwise it goes into a landfill and lasts forever and ever. I find all of this exhausting and some days I really, really want to drive through a fast food place and eat crap food horribly produced and then throw a bunch of packaging away when I'm done. Luckily, I can't eat that food - it makes me sick in a more immediate and obvious way than it does most people. But I do understand the people who pretty much stick their fingers in their ears and chant la-la-la-la-la when they hear all this stuff. It's overwhelming.

So here's what I think I can handle. Moment to moment, I can just do the best I can. I can't fix everything, I can't know everything (not even with the internet, although I keep trying), and I won't be perfect. But one moment to the next I can look at my choices and actions and the sheer amount of stuff that sticks to my life like I'm magnetized, and just do the best I can. And if everyone does that we might just start digging our way out of this mess we've made, and it might turn out to be a more rewarding way to live. Even better than shopping at the mall and eating fast food.

Today I'm hoping to learn another thing I had no idea I needed to know, at least one and if possible dozens of them. Because I'm sure there's a long list out there, just waiting for me.  Maybe today my toaster will speak to me. I mean, it's a hello kitty toaster, I'm sure it's got stuff to say.

.

Are we talking about love, which is easy peasy, or relationships, which can get a bit complicated? Sometimes those two things overlap, which is fabulous. Sometimes they diverge a bit. Not so fabulous.

I don't ever unlove people. I get mad at people sometimes, but the people I love always hold that beloved space. Yes, I realize we're all super enlightened around here and getting mad is such a low brow thing, but it does happen to me. For example, my ex cleaning out my bank account, stealing my tax refund and fighting child support because he "couldn't afford it" got on my nerves and I was quite a bit grumpy about all that. But I've always loved the funny, smart, creative person who is under all that other nonsense stuff. I always hope he's doing okay and learning things and having a good life.

I've never tried to have relationships that are "the one", permanent and safe. I would start into a relationship making sure we'd both be comfortable when it ended, warning people that it would end and that I'd be the one who left.  I had lots of open relationships, that was my default choice.  Being with Krissy is the first time I've been absolutely certain that the relationship I have with a partner is just a given, that no matter what, neither of us is going to leave.  It isn't even a commitment, it's just a fact, something I know about us both.  It's a little ironic that this is a person I CAN'T marry (unless we go visit Lil up there in Massachusetts...) when this is the first time I've assumed that yes, I'll be with this person from now on. Very funny joke, universe. But that doesn't really matter and I'm not a wildly enthusiastic fan of marrying in general. (Although I do think everyone should have an equal opportunity to have at it if they're so inclined.)  I feel really fortunate to have that overlap of relationship and love going on, and it's interesting to have a partnership that goes unquestioned.  Because, since I'm way not enlightened quite yet, we do sometimes fuss, not often, but it happens - but underneath those moments it's always still us in it together and it's fine.  Much more like a little weather system passing through and we both stay inside the house than like blowing the house up, burning the rubble and burying it with a landfill, which I've experienced in the past now and then. I mean, metaphorically.  I haven't actually blown up houses, I swear. Really.

But I think the difficulties are when love gets connected to relationship and then the relationship part gets disconnected - for me the love parts hang around unchanged but not everyone feels that way, not even the everyones I've loved and had relationships with. 

Sheesh, I could have answered with just that last paragraph, couldn't I?  Spewing words everywhere...

I mostly default to happy and every day find places to put that. Sometimes they're odd places. One odd happiness moment from today:

I think the reason I can work well with her is that although I care very much about her and about seeing her be able to control her own behaviors, I don't care about the behaviors in themselves. I've never gotten worked up about her getting worked up. When I first started working with her she hurled herself down on her back on the floor of a store, hand palm up on forehead wailing "leave me alone!" and honestly, it almost cracked me up it was so melodramatic. And I just sat down and made sure she didn't flail herself into anyone and told her to let me know when she was done. She never did that with me again although she continued to use the technique with others for quite a while. She responds really well to my particular streak of selective apathy.

I love that this work is the perfect place for me to put my odd combination of caring a lot while being somewhat disconnected and separate, and the also odd quality of getting more calm when people around me get upset.  I love figuring out how this little girl thinks about things, how that filter of autism changes how she sees the world, and I love love love getting paid to play with her. I've helped to decide what her goals are and what we work on, so we have a good framework for what we do together - I've worked with people who had absurd goals obviously written by someone who just had to come up with something and couldn't really think of anything and the plan was due next week and oh hell, let's just throw this in...never a delightful situation. But we work on nice goals that give us reasons to go hiking and walking and playing and drawing and painting and jumping rope and trying out games and reading books and blowing bubbles when it's raining and oh my god, I get paid for this. I'm the luckiest person in the world. And sometimes, on a really good day, I get to demonstrate why I'm good at this and that it actually is a job and I love that, even while I'm sorry to see this little person that I adore acting out.  

And tomorrow she and I will be having some negotiations...

Kiva is a wonderful MFI and donating money to them allows you to follow the story of a small business person that you chooose, anywhere in the world. You can donate as little as twenty five dollars US.  Almost all the loans are repaid in full.  But currently, although they're doing alright overall, most of their financing is coming from relending - as the loans are repaid people leave the money with Kiva and choose another recipient.  Fewer people are jumping in with new money, not surprising with the economy as it is.  But I wanted to put in a good word - if any of you are looking for a last minute holiday gift, you can join Kiva and give a gift certificate.  The person you gift this to will get to choose and follow the progress of someone who will benefit directly from that investment - and ultimately the investor can re-invest it if they choose once the loan is repaid. 

I think it's tempting right now to see our economic situation as being just bleak. And to someone who faces losing a home or a job or having their car repossessed or has lost all the money they've invested, it's a little glib to say "yeah, but look how much abundance we have compared to this person in Cambodia who spends ten hours a day weaving on a loom" but it's also true that we pretend a lot that those other people aren't quite real, at least not as real as us. The abject poverty of a lot of the world while we as a nation buy into diet after diet as we stuff ourselves into obesity and disease is very real.  The fact that those very real people that we could reach out to are more than arm's length away can't really be an excuse. The world's gotten too small for that, hasn't it? 

Then same co-worker invited me to a holiday party at same sister's house and the sister turned out to be much friendlier in that setting.  A little while later we both worked at FringeFest and she called me and said "I'm here in town and I have my dog with me and we were going to stay with so-and-so but so-and-so's cat is sick and Maggie would be too much for her I don't want to drive all the way back and..." and I said "are you asking if you can  sleep at my house?" and she said yes and they did.  And that was January 27 almost 4 years ago and we've been together ever since. 

It was the absolute best awful job ever.

Our fur family. We have a new kitten. We didn't know we wanted a new kitten, but it turned out we did. We found out after someone brought us the kitten.

Music, all kinds of music.

Books. I'm re-reading Laurie Colwin right now. I always have half a dozen going.

Food and cooking and feeding the people I love.

Public radio.

The internet. Oh my, yes. For seconds on end, it makes me believe I really can know everything...

This site in particular, and my wonder-full friends here. One of my very favorite people lives all the way on the other side of this planet, in India, and I get to know him and talk with him because of this place. I think that's amazing, and having friends I haven't even seen in person yet is such a gift. I want to send Gaia a thank you note every day.

I know this one is controversial, but television. Good television. Yes, there is such a thing. It's the least expensive, most accessible entertainment and artform in my life and I do appreciate it. 

Yoga.

Dancing.

Gardens and plants. Our plants came in for the winter and I like having them in the house. I like having them outside too. And growing food - it seems almost magical to pick tomatoes off a plant and eat them with basil pinched out of the pot on the stairs. I want to put up a greenhouse.

Artwork. Mine, other people's, making it, looking at it, playing with paper and paint, having paint all over my hands and clothes. Love that.

Photos. I love taking pictures and take pictures of the most ridiculously ordinary parts of my life. I stuck them all together in a web album and I think it's very entertaining.

Drumming and rhythm instruments. I don't play any other instruments or I'm sure I would love them too.

Clothes and costumes and playing dress up. I don't play dress up in the usual ways and I'm sure most people believe I got dressed accidentally and in the dark, but I do entertain myself. 

Fire circles/drum circles/festivals/people who come out to play.

Games. I love all kinds of games, video games, card games, darts, pool, word games, board games, chess, jax, games with balls and bats and rackets, all kinds of games. I love games I'm terrible at and games I'm good at pretty equally. We play this crazy rummy game that Krissy learned from a prison client and it often involves 4 jokers and has a complicated set of rules that make very little sense but it's one of my favorite games.

Color. I tend to shy away from color and I don't know why because it does make me happy. Maybe my new year's re-solution will be to embrace more color this year. Yes, I like that.

All of you. Everyone who bothers to leave a comment now and then, everyone who bothers to read my words at all, every friend I've found here, all of you who write your thoughts out on blogs and in groups and put yourselves out there and let me see your photographs and link me to brilliant things and great music, all of you lift my spirits every single day.

I have such a great life.