Click on the photos in this article (except the first one) to see the lights go off around the world during Earth Hour.
Monthly Archives: March 2009
Sunny day, dark night
Saturday ended up being a rather nice day. It was warm enough that I went out with the kids and the dog, and we immediately came back upstairs to dump our coats because we were going to end up too hot with them on. Pearl was pulling on her leash again and I just don’t have time to deal with that when I also need to keep an eye on my kids, so we left her behind with George when we dropped our coats off, and the three of us went back outside, enjoying the great, fresh spring air for almost an hour and a half.
Somehow, they managed to find one of the last – and also the dirtiest – piles of snow left behind and they played on it for a few minutes. Breanna is pretty disappointed that it’s all disappearing. Me? I’ll live.
After walking a little further, they decided that a lack of snow wasn’t a big deal after they used their imagination and creativity to turn a fallen piece of a tree into a see-saw.
We definitely had a good time outside, and it was good for getting all that excess energy out.
Things got darker at 8:30 that night. In order to participate in Earth Hour 2009, we turned off all the lights, the computers, and the television and lit candles instead.
We had done it last year, but I added a chocolate fondue this time, and let me tell you – THAT went over very well. It took awhile for the chocolate to melt with just a tea light burning below it, but after about 20 minutes we had a nice pot half-full of melted goodness. I had sliced up some bananas, and we also had some fresh fruit salad that included strawberries, grapes, and melon slices so we speared all of those up and dipped them in. It was the first time the kids had ever had fondue, and they loved it.
I know that some people are ambivalent about Earth Hour and how much good it does, but I don’t think that the one hour of darkness is meant to fix anything. I don’t believe any of the participants thought they were making an actual tangible difference. However, what I feel is that Earth Hour is about educating and drawing attention. It gets people talking about climate change and helping the planet by reducing energy use. One hour won’t change anything, but what if people sat around in the dark for an hour and then realized that it’s not so bad? What if those people then decided to light candles every night or at least used one lone lamp instead of three or four? THAT is what makes the difference.
It’s also good for the kids. Hayley is terrible about leaving a stream of lights blazing in her path. She’ll turn on her bedroom light and then walk back out with it still on, only to go into the bathroom and do the exact same thing. George is forever turning the hall light off and telling her it doesn’t need to be on during the day. Earth Hour was a good way to reinforce the concept of saving energy and not using what we don’t actually need.
That education can come at any time, of course. And it should be a lesson that is brought up regularly. But having a specific time when you know everyone in the world is able to participate makes it special. Besides, Earth DAY doesn’t do anything more to help the planet either, but I still like to do something for the occasion then too.
The kids went to bed quickly and easily and then George and I did power up the television and the Wii to play a few games together, but we kept the dark theme going. We turned on the tiny night light in the hall in case one of the kids woke up, but we kept the candles lit in the living room and only turned the kitchen light on when we needed to get something to drink or eat.
Small steps.
I’m glad Saturday was a good day because Sunday was damp and rainy so we didn’t go out at all. It was still raining this morning but it’s stopped for now. I’m trying not to let the rain get me down since I know it will help get rid of the last of the snow (sorry, Breanna), and it will get the grass to be green again instead of that post-winter yellow straw stuff we have now. As long as we don’t get too much rain in one fell swoop, it should be okay!
T-shirt geek
This only reinforces my dorky nature, but holy hell I want this t-shirt so badly. I loved that movie, cheese factor and all.
Counting down to Earth Hour 2009
That photo is from last March, when Hayley, Breanna, and I celebrated Earth Hour together for the first time. George wasn’t here – I think he may have been playing that night. The girls and I sat in the living room with a few candles and we read books by the candlelight. I also told Hayley about how people once had to sit by candlelight all the time because electricity didn’t even exist back then.
This year the four of us will be turning all our lights off from 8:30 until 9:30, along with televisions, Wii consoles, and computers and lighting candles. To add something new to it, we’re going to do a fruit and chocolate fondue as well. When we went to the wedding, the gift that they gave all the guests was a mini fondue set, which I thought was a great unique idea. We’re going to melt up some chocolate and spear some grapes, banana slices, strawberries, and melon chunks and enjoy a little picnic by the glow of candles.
I know that Earth Hour doesn’t change the world but it does help raise awareness and helps remind people – I hope – that just because we have lights in every room doesn’t mean we have to actually USE them all at all times.
Will you be joining us in the dark this year?
A shot right to the heart
You probably already read Amalah anyway, but if you don’t, this entry just about killed me dead when she got to the end.
A bit of proof that I'm a total sap
I used to try, once upon a time, to hide the fact that deep down, I am a complete and utter sap. I’d try to put up the tough exterior as often as I possibly could. Sometimes it was a good thing. No one wants to break down in tears after a poor review at work or after getting yelled at by one of your high school teachers. And when you live most of your teen years through pathetically unrequited love, it was really handy to be able to pull on all those acting desires and hide the tears until you were alone at home.
But really, it’s good to be emotional, it’s good to feel things and for years now I have shrugged off most attempts to be tough and untouchable. There may still be times when it comes in handy to have a mask but overall I am who I am (“I yam who I yam”?) and who I am is a ball of emotion.
I cry at the drop of a hat. George likes to tease me about it because I will cry while watching movies – even if they’re not necessarily meant to be sad, they just need something really touching to set me off. I cry over children’s movies (yes, I’m looking at YOU Wall-E!).
I cry over television shows – “Criminal Minds” is my favorite show but it makes me cry from time to time because of the crimes and the victims. Same goes for “Law & Order SVU”. And don’t even get me started on “Grey’s Anatomy”. While I haven’t done any formal research, I’m quite sure that I have never ever gotten through a full episode without crying at least once. Sometimes that show has made me cry so hard I worry about having an aneurysm (shaking my fist at the writers behind Denny, damn you!).
I cry over books. I’m reading Slumdog Millionaire since I loved the movie so much and as recently as today I found myself in tears during one chapter. And let me just say that while A Thousand Splendid Suns is my favorite book ever, I am so glad I was not trying to read that book in public anywhere because I was a total mess throughout, oh, 85% of it at least.
So yeah. I cry. I cry easily and I get embarrassed when I’m caught all teary-eyed and blowing my nose, but that’s the way I am. So it didn’t surprise me when I caught this commercial on TV for the first time tonight and was immediately dissolved into a puddle of tears.
Seriously. COME ON. To make it worse, that commercial aired during Grey’s Anatomy and, well, see above for how I fare during THAT show.
Please tell me I’m not the only sap around and that you get all emotional too!
Funny, but not
This is one of those things that is utterly hilarious, as long as it’s a) not your kid and b) not your home. Kid paints a giant penis on family home’s rooftop!
Shredding – Or why I am a lemming
It seemed like everywhere I turned on the internet, people were talking about some kind of hardcore workout and loving it. Or at least having a love-hate relationship with it. It seemed everyone was talking about the “30 Day Shred” with Jillian Michaels.
At first I paid no mind to it because I’m not an exercise fan. Fitness, sure, but if you can actually call it exercise I lose interest. About ten years ago I was in the best shape of my life. Every muscle in my body was rock hard, I had excellent balance and flexibility, and I was super fit. I was doing Kung Fu back then, going at least 5 days out of 7, and usually it was 6 days. On most of the days I was doing two back-to-back hour-long sessions. I was seriously into my martial arts. But it worked for me because it was fun. It made me strong and I felt like I could kick someone’s ass (though I was never stupid enough to put myself in dangerous situations to test that!), so to me it wasn’t exercise. It was just something I loved that happened to have the added benefit of turning me into a well-toned machine.
Now the gym, on the other hand, was one of the lamest ways I have ever wasted money because I signed up for a year, went about five or six times, and then decided I hated it, never to return. I’m just not a gym person. MAYBE if I worked in an office building with a gym downstairs, it might work. But I just hated the whole commitment of having to go TO the gym, work out for an hour or so, and then come BACK from the gym. I didn’t feel engaged or motivated.
On top of that, I have several workout videos that have been collecting dust for YEARS. I have both Cindy Crawford workouts, one that (god is this embarrassing) Jennie Garth put out in the height of the original 90210 years (that girl had great legs!), and two yoga videos. Yeah, like I said, collecting dust.
And yet something compelled me to try the 30 Day Shred. People were so enthused about it. Everyone said that they hated Jillian with a passion and yet they loved her too because it was working. So I got it and tried it out.
Today was day 3 of 30 so I’m being cautiously optimistic – I know myself and my boredom levels (plus laziness) well enough to realize I may just shrug and say “ehh” in a few days. Working out every damn day is not necessarily appealing.
However! The workout is only 20 minutes (a bit longer with the warm-up and cool-down). Even I can’t find a good reason to be unable to find 20 minutes during the day. I can easily spend 20 minutes poking around Flickr or watching bad TV, why not this?
The good thing is that even though I woke up today with incredible muscle pain in my calves, I was actually eager to do my workout. I could barely wait for Breanna’s nap time so I could get busy shredding, pain and all. And then when I came out to find George watching a movie, I simply shrugged, grabbed my laptop, put the DVD in, and did my workout in the other room. That’s motivation.
I like the way she circuits through the 3-minute strength, 2-minute cardio, and 1-minute abs workouts through the 20 minutes. It keeps me hopping enough that I’m not bored yet, and after ten days you jump up to the next level (there are three). Right now I’m doing the modified version because damn, I am not able to keep up with the advanced moves yet, but that means that after my 30 days, I can start over and try those.
I have already uttered threats against Jillian at times when I feel like I just might want to keel over and die – they don’t “allow” breaks at all, she even says that if you must, you can stop to catch your breath for “no more than five seconds” but that’s it. It’s HARD. It’s so hard it’s unbelievable.
It’s possibly killing me, but let me tell you something – after three days I can already see results. Not massively huge results, but *I* can see them. That’s something impressive after a short time frame.
I’m not doing it to lose weight. I know that some people who know me or who have seen pictures will tell me I don’t need to lose weight but that’s not my motivation. For one thing, I have an extremely sedentary job, sitting here at my desk. I always have, but working from home means that my daily commute is, you know, down the hall. It’s easy to not move for a long time every day, unless using your fingers to type counts (it doesn’t do much for my heart rate, so I’m guessing no). Doing this workout gets me doing something fitness-oriented for 20 minutes every day. It’s also making me alert. Sure, I’m EXHAUSTED when I’m done, but my brain wakes right up.
Also, while I may have good numbers on the scale, I just want to, er, *tone* some stuff up. I told George that I am challenging myself to buy a bikini this summer. Last year I bought a two-piece suit but it’s a tankini so not much is visible in the middle. I want to buy and wear an honest-to-God bikini (maybe this is my mid-life crisis?) and the only way I will do that is if I have some ab definition. Considering the fact that after today’s workout I saw that there was a faint line at the top and sides of my abs, I can tell you right now that this works. It will kick your ass and when you do the punching routine you just might aim towards the TV so that you can pretend you’re punching Jillian RIGHT IN THE FACE, but it works.
Here’s hoping I can keep it up for the full 30 days. I have shopping to do.
Rapping flight attendant
I can’t tell you how badly I would love to be on one of these flights. That is so cool, and he was pretty good!
One on one time
On Saturday, life started out disappointing for Breanna. George had to leave fairly early in the morning for work and wasn’t expecting to be back until late afternoon. On top of that, Hayley had gone over to her grandparents’ house. Thus it was just the two of us. However, we made the best of it!
We played some Wii bowling, tennis, and golf together (she totally kicked my ass at golf, by the way, and I wasn’t even *trying* to let her win. She came in at 3 over par. I came in at 10 over par. I am ashamed.), then we ate some lunch together. I made tuna salad, turned it into a sandwich for her, and I ate the rest with crackers. What made it special for her was that I threw a sheet down on the floor and we had a picnic in the living room while she chattered my ears off.
When lunch was done, we were both restless and the weather was too beautiful to ignore. Those of you who are further south or perhaps out west may have found it chilly at 5 or 6C but it was positively balmy here. We got our coats and grabbed Pearl and went for a long walk – we were gone for about an hour and a half! Pearl certainly enjoyed that (and slept well that evening).
We walked through a wooded area for awhile, found good “walking sticks” to help us on our way, and strolled along a few streets. We crossed through a church lot that she loves and she spent some time showing me that it’s a shame we’re Anglican/Protestant since she would make such an excellent Catholic girl, what with her massive love of the Virgin Mary.
Of course there was one thing at the church that was even more fun that the statue – a puddle!
It amazes me that we have toys, really, because she was just so overjoyed with nothing more than a puddle full of muddy water, a stick to stir it with, and a few pebbles to occasionally throw into the mix. She spent a good 15 minutes just playing there – and she didn’t even get wet other than her hands, which is amazing.
After I finally pried her away from the puddle, she then moved on to the one thing that’s even more fun than the Virgin Mary statue AND a muddy puddle combined – jumping off the big rock in the church yard.
(Even better viewed larger!)
It was no wonder she fell asleep so quickly and painlessly that night, what with all the walking and then the jumping.
She wasn’t very interested in going back home but I had to get supper started and we were both hungry. Once we got back in, she was pretty happy to be handed a big cup of juice and some cheese and crackers while I got the oven going. She kept telling me the rest of the afternoon and evening that she had had so much fun, and it got even better when she got to clean off after supper with a big bubble bath and bath paints all by herself.
Before Breanna was born, I spent a ton of time with just Hayley – going for walks, letting her take a bath until the water turned cold, and just hanging out. Breanna didn’t get that as often. Now that Hayley’s in school, we do have mornings and the first two hours of the afternoon, but I’m also working at that time, so it’s not quite the same. Dropping all ideas of working on Saturday and spending the entire day just playing with her and seeing her enjoying herself was such a great thing to do and I’m glad Hayley and George were busy with their own fun (George WAS having fun, it was work, but it was music work, so at least he enjoyed it!) so that I could get some of that quiet alone time with Breanna.
We’ll have to make a date to do it again soon!