I am guilty!!

I am so guilty! This is an addiction that I am trying to conquer! I just love lattes! I hate to admit it, but, I get a soy vanilla latte about 4 times a week!!!! UGH!! I know thats not as bad as some do, but I once vowed to never get this bad! Some weeks I get more than 4!! The first time I knew I had a problem, was when I walked into a Starbucks, and they knew my order before I opened my mouth. I also knew it was a problem when I order a different flavor and they saaid..."Whoa Rita, switching it up today!"

This is a habit that I have broken before, and am striving to gain control of! I actually liked the way I felt when I was caffeine-free! And who knew it took 50 gallons to make one latte!!??

My plan of changing this non-green habit is to make coffee at work until I decided to go caffeine free. I will save money, calories, and wasted water and cups. But, I think will allow myself a friday treat!!

Pest control.

I'm going to make this quick, because it's not a topic I like to dwell on these past few days... it causes me nightmares!  I'm actually just pretending I live in a dreamworld filled with bubble baths and organic gummy candies & chocolates, and a personal organic farmer/chef.  A world with no uninvited "guests" in my home.

Alas, the true story, much as I hate to confess it, is that I WANT ALL THE RODENTS IN A 5 MILE RADIUS OF MY APARTMENT TO DIE.  Yes, I said it.  Ok, long story short, we've had a mice problem in our apartment in the past month or 2.  And, I regret to inform the blogosphere, that's not the worst part.  We knew there was a small (we thought) problem and kept telling the landlord and he didn't do anything.  I think every time I called he thought I was some helpless and hapless wimpy girly girl who was afraid of one little mouse being in the storage unit behind (and attached to) our  rented townhouse.  I don't like them, but I wouldn't have cried wolf (or "MOUSE!") at just one, trust me.  I mean, is there ever just one anyway?  We'd  been trying to handle the issue ourselves as he suggested, keeping all food put away, setting traps.  We'd seen a few out in the storage unit, heard them inside our walls, seen evidence that they'd been in the kitchen and bathroom (who knows why).  Apparently they were nesting, as they stole corners of my kitchen rug and pieces of a box from the closet and insulation from in the walls.  Wonderful.

Then I saw one the other night 3 times.  Evidently getting brave, one just darted across the kitchen floor NEXT TO ME while I cooked, then under me while I sit on the couch! I'm like crying myself to sleep and having nightmares at this point.  I told the Hub that the next day HE was calling the landlord and threatening to call the health dept. or whoever will listen to us if the problem is not addressed ASAP.  Finally last Wednesday a pest control guy comes and I tell him the sordid tales of invasion, and start trying to show him where we've seen them and believe they are entering, and I go to show him behind the washer, and I see a huge one, just laying there!  NOT in a trap.  I scream and tell him and run and jump up on the couch like the wimpy girl I admittedly am!  And he says.........wait for it.............. "that's not a mouse it's a RAT!"  So I start losing it, screaming and crying and having a panic attack and not breathing!  I call my hub at work (yes I was there ALONE!) and exclaim,  "WE ARE MOVING TODAY!  I CAN'T LIVE LIKE THIS!  I FEEL LIKE MY LIFE IS OVER!  EVERYTHING HERE IS TAINTED NOW!".  He tried to calm me down, but honestly he was as disgusted as I was, minus the fact that he DIDN'T SEE THE RAT WITH HIS OWN EYES!  Now, lest you think less of me and my home, let me assure you all, it's not like I live in the dirty city ghetto amongst trash cans and open sewers.  We inhabit nice townhouses in a nice small town.  I vacuum everyday, sometimes more than once.  I mop the floors, sanitize the counters, never leave a mess.  Both myself and the Hub are germaphobes for crying out loud!


So immediately we packed up and moved into his parent's house for the time being.  The landlord and pest control are supposedly exterminating and patching up holes or wherever they are coming in.  Upon further investigation of my complaints (which started at least a month ago), the landlord found that the mice had chewed a huge hole in the drywall between the storage unit and our apartment.  And I swear that had better been the only rat.  But when do they ever travel alone, like I said of mice?  Not likely.  We are NOT going back until I am assured in every possible way that no corner has been left unchecked, no doorframe has an extra quarter inch of space inviting a rodent to slip through, and they are completely gone from my home.  And that the entire place is sanitized from top to bottom.  Even then, I'm not sure I can ever feel safe there again.  We may be moving sooner than we wanted to.

At least my in-laws have a comfy big house and we've made ourselves at home in the whole second floor of their home.  But all of our furniture and stuff is back at our apartment with the mice and other...  

UGH!!  Who needs a(nother) drink?? 

My Diet

I have been trying so hard to eliminate dairy from my diet. I don't like what I have read on the dairy industries and their treatment to the animals and the earth. My confession this week, is...................... I eat CHEESE!!!!! AND EGGS! I once went an entire year milk-product free. I felt great! I lost weight, had great skin, and rarely felt sick. But sometime in the past year I don't even think twice about eating it. I don't drink milk, but I do eat cheese! Why? I don't know. Maybe exposing my lack of self-control will motivate me to do what makes me feel great!

I will probably always eat eggs that come from a chicken I know. A family friend gives me a dozen every so often. I know that those eggs come from a chicken that was fed a vegetarian diet, and given fresh air and natural light.

So I am going to give up milk products!! Starting tomorrow.... and I will update occasionally on my confessions.

I confess....

...I just love Dar!

And I love her suggestion to try growing your own food, but start with one thing that's hard to kill and go from there. I confess, if it weren't for Bix, we wouldn't have home grown food all summer long. I must have the blackest of black thumbs. I'm a good weeder though...I'll just stick with that!

living with Ed...I mean Bix.

Did you ever watch Living With Ed on Planet Green? That show cracks me up...kind of. The premise (in case you haven't seen it) is that eco-man Ed is full of ideas on how to implement green living into his life while his wife tries to run a normal-ish house. He would be happy as a clam installing a 50-gallon fluorescent chartreuse rain barrel at the entrance to their house, while she would rather find something that complements the decor.

I feel like i'm living with Ed sometimes.

Bix just installed a water saving something or other on our upstairs toilet. I had no problems with our toilet before, but he felt we could be saving more water. I'm all for saving resources, so...our toilet now saves water. Did I mention I had no problems with our toilet before?? Now, when I need to flush the toilet, I have to stand by the toilet, holding down the handle for a few minutes while it gathers the momentum to actually flush. If you take your hand off of the handle (because who has time to stand by the toilet waiting for it to flush?!) it stops the flushing process and you have to start all over again.

Oh, Bix, what have you done to me?!

the bounty of fall...in my kitchen

So back in the day, before our little man arrived, we were members of a local CSA. For those of you who don't know, a CSA (community supported agriculture) is a farm that members buy into and in exchange receive an allotment of (usually) organic and local produce. We enjoyed our membership, but we wanted more of a variety of the vegetables we really liked. For me, that meant tomatoes, corn, peppers, onions and sqush. For Bix it was kale, spinach and lettuce. So we decided for the next year we would support local produce stands. We found two great stands nearby and rarely had to buy produce at the store throughout the summer. Now that fall is here, I have been buying butternut squash like nobody's business! It is definitely a favorite in our house.

For the little man, we roast the squash with nutmeg until tender. Then we either puree with water until smooth or cube it and mix with tiny whole wheat pasta stars and organic tomato sauce.

For Bix and I, I like to add a bit of a kick to the squash. I roast it with nutmeg for about 35 minutes. I then add diced jalapenos and roast for another 10 minutes. I love pureed squash, so I put it in the blender with a little bit of water until it's creamy. Last night I made a vegetarian lasagna with thinly sliced carrots layered between spinach sauteed with garlic and onions, organic tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and, of course, my butternut squash and jalapenos. Yum.

I have another squash sitting on the counter for dinner this weekend....any other good squash recipes out there?

Out with the Old and Fruit Fly Don't Bother Me!

Now, I know that this confession sounds EXACTLY like Nichole's confession last week, but I am a food waster and and a bug killer!

There is a cabinet at work filled with junk. I hate that cabinet! You open the doors and fruit snacks, chips, and sugary cereals come falling out. In the 4 years I have worked here it has been like that. Well, I have a goal of greening things up in this house! Last night I asked the parents if I can throw things away. They told me that they would do it themselves, but they don't know what to keep or toss. Well, I took care of it. Except I feel both invigorated and disgusted! The amount of food (money) that I threw away is embarrassing, and it isn't even my fault. A very large kitchen garbage bag didn't even hold the contents of past date, unappealing food. And the oldest thing in the cabinet...... a bag of dried pineapple, expiration date..... December 26, 2006!!!! Ugh!!!

I did, however, empty past due fruit cups to recycle the plastic. I recycled all the cardboard packaging, and anything else i could sort out.

Even though I felt horrible tossing so much out, it needed to be done! Now that I have a lot more control over the grocery shopping, I'm so excited about healthier choices being in the now half empty cabinets.

Now for the bugs. I have been in an on and off battle with fruit flies.Here, at work, we have our own tomatoes and compost pile. My theory on how the flies infested the house is.... compost-pile "natives" left little eggs on the tomatoes and while the tomatoes sat on the counter, they hatched out and took root here in the house. ALWAYS wash your vegetables as soon as you bring them in!

I can not keep up with them! They find their way into the trash, into the garbage disposal, and into the guinea pig cage (poor Lady Jane). I can even see them perched on the window sill. So I made little "humane" traps.... i would take a bowl, put mashed banana inside and cover it with plastic wrap, making a very small opening. When the bowl was full I would cover it and release them outside. That didn't work. They are laying eggs somewhere! So this week I changed the guinea pig cage numerous times, tried not to throw anything they consider yummy in the trash, and made a death trap! I used an old salsa jar, put some apple cider vinegar in it, and the poison....... dish detergent! They went in for the snack but the sticky soap caught them and they drowned! I also sprinkled borax in the trash cans and down the garbage disposal. Today.... is a better day!! Hopefully this method will work. I have looked up other ways.... like plants they don't like... so, I am going to try that next week if they are still here Monday!

Just so you know... I actually do feel bad killing bugs! But I feel no remorse about killing the fruit flies.

I despise leftovers.

Well, after Nichole's amazing life-story post, this seems silly and menial, but alas it's my Friday confession.  I throw away food.  "People are starving in Africa," and I THROW AWAY FOOD!  Ok, that Africa thing is a bit old school, something your parents told you when you wouldn't eat your broccoli as a child.  Which, frankly, to this day I don't understand how my eating something that I don't want helps a starving child in Africa (or anywhere in America for that matter).  Food drive donations or helping at a soup kitchen may, but eating leftover tuna casserole that has seen it's day will not.  One of the problems is cooking for two.  When it's just the Hub & I for dinner, we don't eat an entire casserole or dish I prepare.  With false hope I think, "Oh good, we'll eat that another night this week and I won't have to cook!!!", but it just never turns out that way because we're not in the mood for the same thing twice.  And other than Italian, food doesn't generally taste as good the second, third, or fourth day.  Sometimes the Hub will take some leftovers to work with him for lunch, which makes me feel like a good wife.  And I hope as his male co-workers warm their Lean Cuisines up in the microwave, he shows off a good home cooked meal and they wish their wives could be more like me! ...  But more often than not, even if he does take some for lunch one day, we end up throwing away a good portion of a perfectly tasty meal, and I do feel badly about wasting food.

Maybe we need a dog.

I should have written this 8 months ago.

My confession today isn't as much a confession as it is something I've been putting off doing for 8 months now.

Our little man is 8 months old as of this week...wow! He had his first almost crawl last night! Anyway, when I was pregnant almost this exact time last year, we found out that he had a 2 vessel umbilical cord. I had never heard of this, and we soon came to find out that it happens in about 2% of pregnancies. Bix and I soon began to drive ourselves crazy reading information online about 2 vessel cords. From personal blogs to medical websites....he had to ban me from researching it because I couldn't stop thinking and worrying about it. We went through extensive ultrasounds, and although we decided against any genetic testing, we were told that there was a strong likelihood that our little man would have Down Syndrome. As you can imagine, the worry we had as first time parents was beyond belief. We knew we would have incredible love for our baby, no matter what, but the fear of the unknown was what we thought about on a daily basis. We spent the next few months preparing a nursery, taking natural childbirth classes and trying to stay off of medical websites!

Just months after that first appointment with the midwife, our healthy little man was born (via emergency c-section, but that's another story!) Weighing in at 6lbs, 12 oz, we thought we were in the clear as far as his health was concerned. When we left the hospital, his weight was below 6lbs, but we were told it was normal for a baby to lose weight shortly after being born. When the nurse came to our house a few days later, he had lost more weight. We didn't see it then, but looking back at pictures, he was just skinny arms, legs and ribs. After another 2 months of struggling to keep weight on him, I learned that he didn't have the breastfeeding skills that I had so hoped he would have. His cries were cries for food and it broke my heart that I couldn't give that to him. Again, reading blogs and message boards helped at times and other times it was just too discouraging.

I sit here now, watching my little man shovel in whole grain toast, avocados and bananas for breakfast and the first few months seem like forever ago. Around 4 months old, he got breastfeeding. It was like a switch turned on one day and he discovered he could get food from me! Nothing can stop him now...he will eat anything that I send his way. He's still a skinny little guy, but the day we noticed he had a tiny little belly, was one of the greatest days!

So back to my confession....when this was going on, there were a number of blogs that chronicled the story of people who had been in the same boat that we were. We were able to extract glimmers of hope that all would turn out alright. When our little man was born, we wanted to add our story to those that had comfort for us. So here it is. Yes, it was a struggle in the beginning, to keep a positive attitude both when we were first given this medical news and when we were struggling to feed our little guy, but things turned out okay. More than okay, actually. Take from this story Hope. If you are going through the same thing, I learned firsthand that doctors can be wrong...ultrasounds can be misleading...and things can turn out good in the end.

There...it feels good to have that off of my chest and out there where it will hopefully help someone else.