Earth Day 2012

Last year I vowed that someday I would throw rocking Earth Day parties. I thought about it this year but decided I wasn't ready for multiple reasons: 1) It was a really busy weekend. 2) I couldn't think of any fun Earth Day activities (drinking gin doesn't really help the Earth at all). 3) I didn't think any of my friends would really be into it, therefore, no one would actually come to my party. 4) I couldn't turn another "party" at my house into help-me-weed-my-garden day.

So, I actually forgot about Earth Day. *gasp*

Luckily some friends came to my rescue and invited us over for an Earth Day celebration not unlike our "party" last year. We would bike over to our friends' house and eat a local feast. Nothing fancy. So, I made my menu plan: carrot salad, buffalo burgers from the buffalo farm up the street, and tofu shishkabobs for me. My friend was taking care of the dessert and side dish.

Mr Pepperworth and I packed everything up nicely in my panniers and pumped up the bike tires...but...my tire blew out. Apparently not riding it in 3+ months and pumping it up to 120psi isn't advised. So, then we decided to take the scooter. It needs oil so we couldn't take it. Fail!

So, we took the car over to our friends' house. Urgh. It was bad. I am bad. Earth Day was not celebrated properly. That probably means I will have a year of bad luck or something now. (Not to mention, our Earth flag that used to fly freely from our flag stand is down to one strand of fabric left...apparently the Earth flag can't withstand Ferndale windstorms.)

Hopefully next year I will be better and celebrate in true hippy fashion.

Notice the damn subbie in the background

Stairway to Hell

I grew up in a house with two sets of indoor stairs. I work in a place with stairs. Cleaning stairs is possibly one of the worst jobs. Picking up dog crap is better than cleaning stairs, in my opinion.

Mother and Father came up to my homestead last weekend and cleaned (Father - fixed) all the things that I don't like to clean. This included the car, the house windows, the garden bed (that's right, she weeded!), and some other tasks that I don't even like to think about. It is so nice that Mother comes up and does some spring cleaning for me! But, this got me thinking about those stairs. If I had stairs in my home, they would have been really dirty and Mother would have had to vacuum all the hair, dust balls, dead flies, etc from the stairs.

When I was little, I pretended the vacuum the stairs. Sissy and I would have to take turns cleaning the stairs and more often than not, I just turned on the vacuum (but didn't actually move it) and I picked up the pieces of tree needles out of the corner with my fingers and called it good. That's probably why Mother and I got in screaming matches over chores. I pretended to do them, she noticed, and I hated that. "Housework when done correctly can kill you" was my childhood mantra.

So, this morning, while I was admiring my clean house, I thought, man, I am so glad I bought a house with no stairs. I may regret it later in life when I want a bigger house but I will always know that a cleaning a smaller house is easier than a big one. (Or at least fake cleaning a smaller house is easier than fake cleaning a big one...although big ones usually come with more closet space. Damn, oh well.)

March Christmas

Maybe I did just take my white Christmas lights off the porch last weekend. So what? Yes, they never actually worked after I put them up. So what? They did stay there from December to March. Don't judge me, I live in the county and shoot deer from my porch. And...there has been an evergreen tree sitting in the front yard still bound in it's burlap. It once thought it might be a tannenbaum.

Mr Pepperworth bought me a Christmas tree in December. Although, I don't really know why since I said I wasn't going to decorate one. Granted, I think he just wanted an excuse to spend more money on trees (he bought a live one that could be planted). But because I wasn't going to decorate the tree, it sat in the front yard and still sits there to this day.

Someday soon it will find a permanent home. But that won't happen until the hubs finishes all his other projects, which I am not complaining about, that boy is on a roll (deck chairs, driveway drain, fixed driveway plant beds....).

This tree will someday live to it's full potential as a yard tree. It didn't really want to be a Christmas tree anyway. It is an atheist.