Yesterday a good friend came over to plant some herbs together. This sounds like a good idea if all you read is that sentence. But I will add the details. She has a 9 month old and a 2 year old. I’ve got a 5, 2, and 1 year old. It was also 29 degrees outside yesterday morning when they got here. The original idea was to dig in the dirt on a bright Spring day. The reality was a bag of potting soil spread out on an old comforter in the basement. It was still a good time for the kids but this point largely escaped me until that evening. Perhaps it was the overwhelming flurry of activity that it took to get a few seeds into a box. Or maybe I am just tired of it being Spring Break. Back to school time yet?

My constant attempt to green up my life led my friend and I to take a serious look at everything from organic gardening to eating local. We’ve become Barbara Kingsolver junkies. If you want to freak out about everything you eat just pick yourself up a copy of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. It will make you healthy but will also force you to run screaming like a madwoman from all things processed as well as random things like strawberries trucked in from a million miles away. But I digress.

So we scooped up all 5 kids and headed down to the basement to scoop dirt and seeds into these little wooden boxes. The plan was to plant our own herbs, place them in the window sill, water them, watch them grow, eventually eat them, and feel all one with the earth, or something like that. The reality is that my kids loved the shovels more than the idea of the plants. They scooped up dirt and haphazardly threw a few scoops into the boxes and then ADD kicked in and they were in the corner playing with the other toys in the basement. We called them back several times and finally had dirt in all the boxes. Then we noticed that my friend’s baby was laying on the floor sucking on the paper envelope that the oregano seeds came in. Dang. 

We got the envelope from the baby and opening it up. YIKES! Did you know that oregano seeds are pretty much the size of a grain of sand? Black sand is what they look like . They are super small and the directions on the back say that you are to place them 1/8 of an inch into the soil and then plant them 10 inches apart. Well, we had herb boxes that were about 8 inches long, a handful of teensey weensey seeds, and a pile of kids who have not really mastered the pincer grasp yet. So my two-year old grabbed a pile of seeds and plunged them into the dirt.

I tried to show him how to make a little hole with his finger and gingerly place the seed into the soil. But when he saw that it was okay to poke holes in the dirt, he started randomly plunging his pointer finger in the dirt. So whatever seeds  did make it in there were now buried a good four inches in the soil. So much for the 1/8 rule from the back of the package.

We then dragged all the kids and the boxes up to the kitchen to be watered. While we tended to the 9 month old and the 1 year old, the boys took it upon themselves to fill up a bunch of cups with water from the filtered water dispenser in the refrigerator door. You see the problem with this is that they were all too short to lift the cup of water to the counter and pour it into the box. So they made their most educated guess as to where the water would land and then tipped their hand. Their hypotheses led to puddles on the floor.

So I came back to the kitchen and mopped up the H2O and then poured water into the boxes. Guess what, I bought some dumb planter boxes that leaked. I could have bought some plastic piece of junk ones, made in China that did not leak. But noooo, Green Mama had to buy wooden, untreated ones that were earth friendly. So now there is water oozing from my counter onto the floor. The kids have moved on to snacks. My friend and I are just laughing at how gosh darn hard it is to parent without an activity let alone monitor 5 kids and parent with an eco-friendly activity. It was chaos. We were laughing but were exhausted.

By the time they left there were Cheddar Bunny Snacks and dirt and water everywhere. The oregano were drowning and I am doubtful we will ever see a sprig of green from those boxes. But here’s the thing. Last night when we were doing the bedtime bath routine I took the time to ask them the question I try to always ask “What is the best thing that happened to you today?” My 5 year old paused dramatically, thought deeply, and then said “planting those seeds mommy.” The two year old echoed this (of course he echos everything his brother says, but I’ll take it). The rest of the day included hide-n-seek, a lightsabre duel with daddy, snacks and treats, hop scotch, and legos. And of all this stuff and all the games and other fun, it was sticking his hands in the dirt and trying to make something grow that appealed to him the most.

Thank GOD for oregano. If it never grows at least I know that the idea is growing in my son’s little head.

I have a new handbag. Or purse I guess you would call it. Somehow typing “I have a new purse” sounded more like something my late grandmother would say, great as she was. “I have a new handbag” sounds very Soho to me. So, I have a new handbag. It’s made from cotton and jute. Now, if you are like me, this is where you ask “well, what in the world is jute?” Apparently it is a highly renewable fiber that does not need pesticides to grow. It sprouts up quick and then finds itself blended with other fibers to become trendy little handbags that suburban green moms like me just gobble up. It seems a little bamboo-esque to me in that it grows rapidly and green minded folks have taken a fancy to it.

A Haiku Handbag is what I snatched up. http://www.haikubags.com/about.html. It is sort of ironic to be blogging about this because part of my green journey is to become less of a consumer. But I like handbags. Since I normally wear the same black faded yoga pants with a hoodie and running shoes, I decided long ago that a girl has to have style somewhere. And since my clothing will not reveal that I have even an ounce of chic residing in my little heart, handbags are it for me. I always have a cute one. I owe my mom the credit for that. She buys me a sassy little tote every year for my birthday. It’s this sort of thing we have going. She finds the most obnoxious looking bag she can and I gobble it up every year. I don it proudly alongside my baseball cap and faded clothing. 

But the other day I was on vacation with my sister and we sauntered into the Cloudveil Store in downtown Jackson, Wyoming. Staring at me from the shelf was a little Haiku Handbag. At first I scoffed at it. This green mama was not about to fall prey to that cute little purple bag, trimmed in green with a little daisy on the front. Not me. I am curbing my consumerism. But I still had to look. I slid it over my shoulder. It matched the horrible lime green fleece I have been wearing for the better part of 8 years. Nothing matches that jacket. I pulled the bag off my shoulder and read the tag. This is what it said “The fabric utilized in the body of these bags is 50% jute which is considered a sustainable fabric due to its rapid growth rate and the fact that no pesticides or fertilizers are used in its production. It’s just one little step in the right direction.” 

I was weak in my green knees. I am such a sucker for marketing.

I grabbed that little tote and raced for the counter. Ring me up Sir! 

Now of course I did not need a new handbag but this was a green handbag in more than just color. It was from a small, unique little company, a mom actually who runs this company. Haiku is all about eco-responsibility. I was on vacation. I was wearing a lime green coat. What else could I do? I wanted to be the green mama with the cool jute handbag, not the green mama with the lame coat and the lame old handbag. I had visions of myself running through the grocery store telling everyone about sustainable fibers and pesticide free living, all the while flinging my new handbag into everyone’s faces.

Again. I am a sucker for marketing. Aren’t we all? 

When we start living a greener life we suddenly become aware of all the not-so-green items that surround us. I am haunted by Old Navy t-shirts and Coach purses. Leather coats silently moo at me from the hall closet. My cowboy boots do the same thing. It sounds like Texas in my head. There is a very green part of me that wants to purge my closet and start over. A part of me that wants to wear organic cotton from Patagonia and jute handbags from Haiku. But is replacing everything that is not-so-green with a brand new green item the best way to go? Should I trade in my non-organic cotton sheets for a brand new bamboo set? Or should I simply be happy with what I have? Clearly the latter is the answer. But I struggle here as a girl that likes to shop.

Green living can twist itself into an excuse to consume as quickly as a coupon can lure you into a store. Just because it is jute does not mean I should buy it.

As I saunter through my closet I look for ways to replace the items I no longer find fashionable with greener upgrades. I am looking for a reason to say adios to my 1990’s interview suit and an excuse to buy that handbag. But sometimes the greenest choice is not to buy anything at all. The items I already own, as un-green as they may be, are already here in my home. The price has been paid, the gas to ship them has been guzzled, the stores who sold them have already made their profit. In other words, the damage has been done. To dash out and replace them with greener fabrics and fibers is to submit to the consumer culture that surrounds me and incur further damage, no matter how green the product. Jute or not, that little bag still had to be shipped to the Cloudveil store. It still had to be harvested to make me happy.

So as I look at my little bag I find myself sitting with two emotions. One comes with a smug little smile that says “hey, I am a green mama with a jute handbag. I bet you don’t even know what jute is.” The other comes with a bit more angst. It says “ugh, I just spent money and resources on one more thing I do not need. Who cares if it is jute. I do not need it.”

But it is a cute bag. So tomorrow I will prop it up on my shoulder and go about my day with a mixture of joy and guilt. This seems to be a recurring theme in my life. A little green move there. A not-so green move here. And an overwhelming desire to keep proving to the world that indeed, I am somebody. Perhaps this is the greatest green obstacle to overcome. If we were all simply a little bit happier with who we were, we would not need so many things to prove to the world that we are somebody indeed. We could stop shopping and striving and could sit back on the deck with an iced-tea in an Adirondack chair and just let it all go. “Jute have got to be kidding,” we would say, “you went shopping?” “Now why would you bother to do that, we love you just the way you are.”

I was watching the news today. Not exactly my first choice for television but I was in my basement riding my bike and there is a TV down there that only gets the normal channels. The once magnificent but now completely vanilla, old school channels that I grew up with before cable. The basic network stuff that now seems so boring. How in the world did I make it through adolescence without VH-1 or TLC? So I was on my bike and told myself I would ride for half an hour. This quickly got whittled down to 15 minutes because I was so bored. It is amazing how the mind can just knock minutes off exercise like a grocery list. 30, 25, 20, heck, 15 has to burn at least the real cream from my coffee this morning or the handful of jelly bellies after dinner (and after lunch).

So I am riding along, counting down my big 15 minute exercise and the news reporter starts yammering away about how a new study out revealed that the average american spends 5 hours in front of the television each day. FIVE hours! And then, because of course we are watching this on TV, the reporter has the bubbly audacity to say that this was not necessarily a bad thing. A few giggles and a flip of the over-styled head and she goes on to say that she is “like so thankful that we are all spending some of our 5 hour allotment watching her news channel.” seriously. This almost forced me to cut my exercise down to 10 minutes but I was getting antsy so I started to pedal faster and the endorphins kicked in. So I kept going, I had at least another 4 hours and 50 minutes of TV to fit in.

The next story was a reminder that tonight was Earth Hour (ahh, yes, you knew a Green Mama could not let this one pass without a blog posting). Earth Hour is a project launched in Sydney in 2007. The goal then was to get 2 million-ish people to shut off their power for an hour. In 2008 the movement grew of course. Sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund this movement in 2009 had places like the Sydney Opera House shutting off lights. The Welcome To Las Vegas sign was shut off. In my home city of Chicago over 200 buildings shut off their exterior lights (including the lighting on the spires of the Sears Tower and the exterior lighting of the famed Tribune Building). So it is kind of a big thing. http://www.earthhour.org/home/ 

The whole point is to make a statement about what is possible when people put their minds together and flip a few switches. Millions of pounds of carbon emissions were saved in just one hour. It was also a message to the political powers that hold the key to policy decisions that we want change. 74 countries participated at some level. ANYWAY, so my house joined the effort of course. All the lights in the house were off. But there was a snag. You see I have a friend in from out of town and last night we rented a movie off the DVR. You know the ones that you get only 24 hours to view before they expire. I’m new to the DVR world but the fact that I can just push three buttons and I can watch “Burn After Reading” without going to the video store or even waiting for the Netflix Fairy is quite possibly the best thing that has happened to my “after the kids go to bed” time. 

So we were too tired to finish the movie last night. It expired at 9:53 PM. We had 40 minutes left. Earth Hour was from 8:30-9:30 PM. Can you see the dilemma? What does a Green Mama who wants to finish up her movie do? God forbid an american woman miss her 5 hours of television! So I am an Earth Hour cheater. I almost did not blog that but let’s be honest, I cheated. We had every light and appliance off. I even unplugged stuff so that electricity was not being pulled into the toaster. But of course the tube was on. How can we live without it?

Of course we can and I often do. And heck, I’ll shut my lights off for a whole hour every night this week to make up for my Earth Hour cheat because I am just that neurotic and guilty. But that darn woman on the network news tonight was so right. As I watched her I scoffed at her. I mocked all the fools who could not go a few silly hours without their TV. I pedaled all smug and confident like some dignitary at a cocktail party in DC. I did not need the stupid TV and was ready to rock the world with Earth Hour. But then there was the fact that I paid $4 to pull that movie off the DVR. Dang it. Network Bimbo was right. And then you would think that after the movie I would shut it off as a sort of penance, but that Kenneth dude from 30 Rock was on SNL with Alec Baldwin so there goes another hour.

At the end of the day, despite my railings against reality TV and television in general, it can rule my life. The TV is very stealthy that way. It can trump something as marvelous as Earth Hour. It can trump things more beautiful than Earth Hour. Things like conversation, exercise, eye-contact with a real human being. The sorts of things that make us real people. Down with the network news I say, except when I need an exercise distraction. I am such a hypocrite.

I think that the recycling bin is rolling around on the deck. It is very windy outside and I hear an occasional thud followed by a roll and then a thump. Then all is quiet until another gust of wind picks up and then the whole sequence starts again. Of course I am way to lazy to get up and determine if indeed this is what is happening. Especially since if the bin is actually rolling around on the deck it requires something of me that I am not willing to give at the moment. Getting up, going outside, and putting the bin back. I am currently under two blankets in my pajamas and am quite happy about that fact. There will be no bin fetching here.

The bummer is that this thud, roll, thump cadence will continue on and off until 4:00 AM when I have had it and then I will find myself outside in my bare feet on the deck grumbling and dragging that bin back into place. I’ll curse myself for being so lazy. And then I will probably walk through the house with my wet feet and leave footprints on the floor that will send me into a tizzie come morning. But right now I am warm and complacent and 4:00 AM is several hours away. That and maybe my husband will hear it when he comes to bed. He’s the smart type that will get up and take care of it right away. Handy to have around those logical engineer types.

Recycling bins aside, it is raining out and I LOVE that. I love Spring storms. Love the sound of thunder cracking across the clouds. Love the way the western sky looks when heavy gray clouds start to stack up on top of one another. I love when they swallow up the sun and start rumbling. Love the way everything smells like humidity and dirt and earth just before it rains. My heart soared the first time my oldest son looked at me and said “mommy, it smells like rain.”

In general, I actually prefer a rainy day to a sunny one (unless I have plans for the pool or something all sunshiny and classy like that). I love that rainy days do not ask much of me. They do not demand that my hair function well or that my wardrobe look all fresh and spring-like. Rainy days don’t care if I put my contacts in either. And they let me have at least one, and sometimes two, extra cups of coffee. It is spring in the midwest. So I am happy to hear the rain. It rarely thunders in January. Of course I am happy to have some warmth and hopscotch on the driveway again too. But I am especially happy to have thunder back.

I think what I love most about storms is what so many people love about them. The sheer magnitude of them. The absolute strength and might and awesomeness that comes from wind whipping itself up into a frenzy and unleashing everything from rain to hail down on the earth. And storms we cannot control (unless of course you are Bejing preparing for the olympics). We can chop down trees and clear cut forests, we can dig holes in the earth and redirect rivers. But we cannot control thunder, we cannot tame lightening. There is something marvelous yet horrifying about a thunder storm. And I love it. Makes me shudder.

My kids love them too. Oooooh, thunder mommy they say. They get all jumpy and antsy when it rains and we run to the window and we look outside like total geeks and it is simply mesmerizing. Of course at night it gets a little tricky because every clap of thunder is followed by a pregnant pause, one that is waiting for any number of footsteps to come toddling down the hall to say “I scared.” This typically ends up with one and then two of my three kids in bed with us. The baby, she’s on her own, sleeps through storms like a champ. The boys wiggle and elbow and bump and drive me nuts. For all of 30 seconds the thunder/jump into mom and dad’s bed thing is fun. I sigh and think “I will miss this someday, this is what motherhood is all about.” And then I get an elbow in the face or someone passes gas and then everyone is squirming and I am all cranky and want to sleep so I put them back to bed. Until another storm front passes through and the whole debacle starts again.

But at least they get to hear the rain. At least they get to know that they are small and this world is big. And that the Big God with the big thunder sends little drops of rain down to water this fragile little planet. And if I take the time to think about it, even the rain is marvelous. And even the rain needs protecting. Even the rain is tarnished with our activity. Call it acid rain or call it pollution, call it desertification where there once was rain and it no longer falls. Call it wild weather where tsunamis and tornadoes pop up where they should not. Call it flash floods. Call it climate change. Whatever it is, even the pure majestic awe struck moment of thunder ripping across the sky is tarnished by our earthly activities. 

I know this. And as I watch the lightening blink and flicker I sense that my laziness over the recycling bin is probably representative of more than just that bin. I’m a little lazy with my life. A little lazy with my decisions. A little lazy with my consumption. And the planet pays. The thunder pays. My kids pay. And so you would think as I make this conclusion that I would jump up and go get that bin, but I am going to bed now. I honestly am. I’m just that lazy.

I’m sitting on the couch in my sister’s house at the moment. Which may seem completely insiginificant to most people but let me start by saying that my sister lives in Jackson, Wyoming. To be more precise, she lives on Colter Bay, on Jackson Lake, right inside the heart of Grand Teton National Park. So now you see why that is so significant. Her cool husband is a park ranger here, so they call a national park home. Not too shabby I must say.

It’s about 30 degrees outside and my sister and her husband have hopped down the street to the neighbors for a little work gig. I could have gone with but the raging extrovert in me needed a break so I am enjoying some silence that is so quiet it actually does almost hurt my ears. I love it. Love, love, love it. The sun is setting and I am sitting here looking out the window at Mt. Moran. Tomorrow we will ski our brains out. Every muscle I have, and lots that I don’t have, will be whipped and beaten into a frenzy tomorrow. My sister is a phenomenal skier so I am in trouble. Big trouble. So tomorrow these mountains will give me a whoopin’, but now, they are simply staring back at me, asking me why I live in the strip mall haven of the suburbs. I have some really good excuses for that but the mountains don’t want to hear them.

Nothing particularly humorous is coming to my mind right now, but I have lots to say. Maybe it is because my kids are not right in front of me doing stupid things, or maybe it is because I am alone for like two hours and that never happens, or maybe it is the sheer weight of the silence, but nothing about me feels witty at the moment, just majestic. And my guess is that anyone reading this random post is not in a majestic place,which makes this all the more odd to read I suppose. We don’t normally catch up on blogs from the mountains, just from the desk or the train. And that can feel quite the opposite of majestic.

The airport in Jackson is the only airport in the country located inside of a national park. You hover over the midsection of the country at 30,000 feet and then all of a sudden the nose of the plane drops over the Tetons and skids to a stop at the feet of the Grand Teton itself. at 13,000+ feet it makes the airplane feel like a middle school kid who just got in trouble. small, insignificant, and wanting to disappear. From the moment you land your soul sort of feels like it has come home. I feel this same way anytime I am in the mountains. Even when I lived in Denver and had the mountians as my beckon call, it always took my breath away when the view opened up on I-70 and you could see all of Summit County unfold before you.

So as I sit here in this bizarre sort of introspective silence I have no idea what it really means that my soul begins to soar when I am in a place like this. I’d like to think it means more than I’m on vacation. I’d like to think that it’s more than the fact that I am hyper giddy about skiing tomorrow. I’d like to think that it is because there are few places on this earth that completely rip open your eyes and throw them fully into the grandeur of God and the beauty of this planet. When a 747 feels like a scooter, you know you’ve landed at the feet of something big.

Perhaps it is because I am surrounded by thousands of acres of untouched wilderness where moose and bear wander, largely unaware that their habitats are endangered. Maybe it is because the air here still seems clean and fresh, the snow white, and the Snake River could give a rip about the economy. Either way, I am here and my heart is at rest and my soul is steady. Where would we be without these mountains, or the access to them? Makes me want to preserve the snot out of every inch of wild space I can get my hands on. Makes me want to give every penny to protect these places. Makes me want to be sure my kids can see them. Because while I sit here and type, they are at home, walking around on their scrawny legs that are to young to ski just yet. And someday I want their souls to sigh when they come here to ski and hike and fish this place. But I’m afraid we may ruin all the places like this before then. sigh.