Pretentiousness

I had a family member ask why I’ve been posting so much, so I thought I’d explain. It’s National Blog Posting Month, aka NaBloPoMo, and I’m participating. You write a post a day for November.

BTW, I did this walking page on my site the other day since I’ve started walking to work and other places. I am upping my activity level in general with a goal of walking 20 miles a week. I was interested to see how far I would have gotten if I were walking in one direction rather than just around the neighborhood, so I started tracking it. I’ll update it every week or so.

So. Pretentiousness.

A few people told me recently they were impressed the way I’d really cut down on my “carbon footprint” by being vegetarian, living in a small house and not commuting by vehicle. I suppose. Look at me! I’m an environmental hero! Ha.

Although I’ve learned a lot from my brother (who has a degree in environmental management), my response to comments like that is to chuckle uncomfortably. I have no actual intentions toward my carbon footprint. I’m terrible about recycling, I don’t save scraps of unused fabric, I use acrylic yarn, I wear leather shoes, and don’t turn off the water when I’m brushing my teeth.

I don’t care whether anyone else makes the particular choices I’ve made. People ought to make their own choices. Many more people than I expected believe my choices indicate I’m rather militant about certain things or expect me to launch into a tirade or guilt trip about something.  It’s odd, but the first thing 90% of people say to me when they learn I’m vegetarian is, “Don’t expect me to be, I LOOOVE meat” or they deliver some other sort of justification for not being so themselves. I was unprepared for this apparent widespread guilt complex. All I can say is well, that’s nice, but I don’t care.

I don’t eat meat because I think it’s gross in the same way I scream and run out of the room when there’s a giant cockroach. It’s slimy and has tendons and veins. Entrails. Shrimp looks like bugs. Ewwww! Vegetables simply don’t gross me out.

I walk because I like to walk and hate driving. Driving makes me yell and swear. Plus, my job is sedentary so any exercise to counter my love of food is good. Besides, the thought of sacrificing an hour or more of my life every day to commuting makes me angry – I have too much to do!

I live in a small house for practical reasons and expect no one to justify their large homes to me. I am used to small because I’ve lived in lots of small places. In those situations, you either shut up and learn to like it or you end up miserable. Plus it’s nice not to have to clean a lot of stuff.

My point is that I don’t mind being friendly to the planet I live on, but I dislike being stereotyped. Even more than that, I dislike people being put off by me or feeling defensive because they assume I fall into a stereotype. There’s so much weird unnecessary guilt about it!! It’s been a weird position to be in. I like my choices, but I keep saying, “No, that’s not the reason” or facing defensiveness.

In the end I’ll just do whatever I do for my own reasons, like always, but it’s a good lesson to me to never assume I know why people live their lives the way they do.

Taking Time to Look

I want to post about crafty things, and in fact I have been pursuing handiwork like mad, but I just don’t have enough for a respectable new post.  These things I’m doing, they take time, oodles of time to get things accomplished on them.  I’m making hundreds of tiny handstitches a day, but when I step back from the project after all those stitches, it seems like so very little has actually been completed.  And so it goes, another day, and other few hundred stitches.  Today I feel lucky I have very little feeling in three of my fingers, because otherwise I think they’d really hurt from getting poked with needles.

Apart from stitching, one thing I really wanted to start doing was wandering around Austin on foot to see what I could see.  Places look a lot different when you’re walking instead of driving, you know?  So I’ve walked around my neighborhood, around the University of Texas, around downtown and the capitol area, through parks, over rivers, up hills … you get the idea.

One Sunday, I think it was two weeks ago, I went to Waterloo Park, a place I drive by quite frequently but had never been to.  What I found was that this park suffers from a lot of that – thousands must drive by on a weekly basis, but only a handful probably ever stop.  Waller Creek runs through the park, and these pictures are from a pathway that has been built along the creek. I don’t think it was built recently, given the style, but I don’t know.

Thing is, this park and the waterway are falling apart and weed-choked.  It’s sad. It could be a beautiful place, that pathway, but no one seems to care that much that it’s so run down.  It’s a little surprising, honestly.  It’s in the middle of the city, mostly built already, just a few blocks from the University of Texas and the Capitol, in a well-traveled part of the city.  I can only think someone shows up to take care of it better in summer, but somehow I doubt it.

This bridge, for example, is one that I know lots of commuters, goverment officials and the like pass over daily.  I wonder – do people notice this older, pretty bridge?  Do they ever look over the edge?  Do they see this pathway below?  Do they know where it goes in either direction?  Does anyone think – why does this look so rundown here in the middle of everything?

A number of small beasties live down there – I believe we saw squirrls and a rabbit, even, and there are probably possums.  I saw a few turtles peeping up and sunning themselves.  Turtles are lovely creatures, in my opinion, even though they do tend to bite.  I’ve always thought I might like a small turtle pond.  This fine specimen was peering at me suspiciously as I wandered around him taking pictures from various angles.

Part of the pathway ends under a place called Symphony Square, which looks as though it was once used for concerts.  It would be awesome for the window scene in Romeo & Juliet.  The stage is set on one side of the Creek, and the seating is on the other side.  Above the seating, there is a restaurant.  If you stand on the walkway next to the creek you are several feet down from diners and they can’t see you and don’t even know that you are there!

So we stopped to note the details for a minute, and look at the rocks, and think about what could be.  And of course, there was enough time for me to wonder how you can make a quilt look like individual rocks, because that’s how I seem to be seeing the world lately … “can I quilt that?”

I hope one day someone decides that restoring the area is a good use of funds and time, and that they go back to using Symphony Square for concerts in the warmer months, though of course it would help to clean up the water some first, maybe a coat of paint or so would be good, and a gardening team for those weeds … ?  I hope the old byways and buildings in Austin are not forgotten amidst this city’s seemingly unquenchable thirst for new thirty-story buildings and condo developments.

Off to contemplate another few hundred tiny stitches! TTFN, Miriam.

May’s Challenge

Although I come up with a lot of adventures (”I’m going to rent an RV and drive to Alaska!”) during the course of a normal day, most are not enacted.  However, my recent idea about shopping locally for a month, well, that’s going to happen.  In May.  Austin stores only. Althought I’m sure that some things will prove to be a challenge, Austin has that whole buy-local-Keep-Austin-Weird thing going on. There’s also the Austin Independent Business Alliance.  In general, Austin’s pretty independent-business friendly, and the southern part of Austin I live in has that attitude in spades.

Hey look, it’s where I am right now (Austin Java)!  I’ll still be able to come here in May.

Not that there aren’t some spoilsports around here.  College Station (home of Texas A&M) has an anti-Austin program called “Keep College Station Normal” and there are plenty of unweird pro-corporate types right here.  Boo.

Overall, I think it will be an interesting experiment, and my brother (who, in addition to his other pursuits, is something of an economist!) has offered to explain to me some of why shopping locally makes a material difference, as opposed to just being a fruity hippie pointless exercise in anti-corporate bitching.  I think it might also be a very tasty experiment, regardless of the potential economic and ecological benefits.I can definitely shop at the Sunset Valley farmer’s market!

Wild onions and garlic from the farmer’s market waiting to be sauteed with mushrooms and chicken. I love wild onions.  I particularly love onion flowers.

So, we shall see what happens.  I shall also see what sorts of rules to apply as far as what’s local.  I wonder if I’m going to be able to buy shoes…

Meanwhiles, from yesterday some of my favorite Earth Day posts: (and other stuff I found as a result)

From Curbly, we have Bonnie’s Plants in biodegradable pots.  This is wonderful.  I tend to kill plants while transplanting them.  Perhaps this will help my black thumb.  Did I mention I came up with an idea for an indoor greenhouse for herbs & small veggies yesterday?

Scrap Organic Cotton Fabric from Natural America’s manufacturing.  Sometimes they have left over batting, too.

Revisiting the Worsted Witch’s post on cleaning supplies and the cute bottles you can put them in.

Soaps Gone Buy some great classic cleaning products. Not that I like cleaning, but c’mon, it’s Fels Naptha and about 20 different kinds of borax products!  Oh, what, you never made soap?  Well, I can’t help you.  This is exciting.

Re-Nest had a post on a Billion ideas for Using Lemons for Household Cleaning.  Got to try these.  Good excuse to have a lemon tree in my nonexistent backyard!

A billion alternatives to commercial cleaning products at the Ecology Center, clean your whole home with baking soda, and a lot of suggestions for using tea tree oil (I love this stuff, but it’s an acquired smell) from Treehugger.

Interested in the book Clean House, Clean Planet for alternatives to chemical cleaners from a pro.