Leavings

Wow, winter is really coming. Standard time is here, and look at all those leaves! We have this industrial-sized dual-tired wheelbarrow, and I have filled it up at least seven times so far with maple leaves from the front yard and apple leaves from the back yard. Apple leaves are poisonous, did you know that? Especially when they are wilting. So don't eat them. But it's okay to let your kid roll around in them. That's the Dead Cat safety lesson for today. And here's another one: kidney beans are EVIL. Look at this! I just found it while I was looking for a link to how bad wilting apple tree leaves are for your kids or dogs. Isn't that TERRIFYING?? I swear, you can't eat anything these days. I thought kidney beans were HEALTHY, and until today I made chilis and soups with them all the time. GEEZ. Now I'm going to have to donate them all to the food bank so the poor people get poisoned instead of me. I'll take a big fat tax deduction, too. Just call me BP! Or maybe I could just chef them up for the big chili cook-off at work. No deduction, but there's something to be said for job satisfaction, too.

Normally I'm not super concerned about leaves piling up in the yard. In fact, I like them, because they cover up all those broken toys, rotting jack-o-lanterns and wine bottles out there, just like a cozy orange and yellow quilt would. If it was big enough. That's just a little idea I'm going to keep in my back pocket in case I ever live in a place with no deciduous trees. Feel free to help yourself to it, especially if you're crafty that way. Today, though, I found myself inexplicably compelled to rake them up and do some other chores around the house and yard. Now, I know correlation does not always equal causation, but I think it might be because I just bought myself a pair of the most fabulous, but possibly unnecessary, black boots from a non-thrift store, and the guilt is getting to me. I resisted, though, because Lloyd wasn't even home to see me busting my ass, so what's the point?? Sure, the lawn would be clean, but not for long, because there's still at least a dump truck worth of leaves still on the tree. Gravity, she's a relentless bitch, ain't she?

Because I'm introspective, and also lazy*, I started thinking about this whole boots=chores thing instead of actually raking up more leaves or cleaning up the toys, pumpkins and wine bottles. I got to thinking about my Berenstain Bear-inspired shopping chore chart idea, in which penalties are assessed for inappropriate purchases. Perhaps, I thought, the chore chart could be more proactive, where you earn shopping trips by doing chores. So, for example, raking leaves and thinking about cleaning the yard gets you a fantastic pair of boots with cunning little buckles on them. To get a new treestand, you would have to steam clean the carpet, scrub the grout, clean the gutters, bleach the toilets, sweep the chimney and wash the windows. That sounds fair, right? I see a trip to Cabela's in Lloyd's future. You can thank me later, honey!

*Or, yes, only lazy. Have it your way. Just call me BK!

The Blame Game

I used to live in Pensacola, and there is no more beautiful place than the Gulf Coast. Weston was born there, and this picture was taken in our house there on his first Christmas. We really liked it there- the beaches were gorgeous- white sands, turquoise waters and pale green sea grasses. The oil spill makes me sick, but what makes me sicker is the disingenuous placement of blame solely on BP.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending them; they are a bunch of greedy bastards for sure. This morning, though, I heard someone say that the executives should be lined up and shot, as if they exist in a vacuum created by their own selfishness, and sadly that's just not true. If it was true, we COULD prevent future spills by shooting them. But the truth is, we ALL did this. BP is just the middleman. A dirty, slimy one, obviously, but still just a middleman. BP is only drilling risky wells because there is an insatiable market for cheap oil. They're just going after the money. Gotta keep the shareholders happy, right? What's good for business is good for America, after all. And what's good for business is fast profits. And BP's not the only one: the other companies aren't any better, they just haven't been caught yet.

Yep, we all did this. Every time you take a plastic bag home from the grocery store, you might as well toss a few tar balls on the sand. When you order takeout and end up with a bag of styrofoam leftovers big enough to choke a T-Rex, it's just the same as dipping a pelican in a barrel of crude. Driving alone to work instead of carpooling or taking the bus equals hucking a few water balloons full of diesel at a sea turtle nest.

Now, if we were willing to acknowledge the obvious truth that drilling for oil is environmentally risky, and unsafe (don't forget that eleven workers died on the Deepwater Horizon), and were willing to pay the true cost of our lifestyle up front, say around $10 a gallon for gas, maybe we would have a leg to stand on when an oil conglomerate bungles and/or underfunds a cleanup, because we would have a legitimate right to expect that safety and cleanup costs had been accounted for in the pricing of the product. But to keep sucking up oil at the going rate and demanding Government subsidies to keep the prices down, then heaping blame on oil companies after the inevitable catastrophe is hypocritical in the extreme.

This kind of mess is just going to happen again and again, if we don't change our ways. And we probably won't, but that's okay too. Eventually the oil reserves will be depleted, the oceans will be wastelands and most of the people will be dead, because much of our food supply and almost all of our oxygen depends on healthy oceans. Then the survivors will have to devise alternate energy sources. Maybe they can capture the methane from all those decomposing corpses.