Earth Hour

During Earth Hour, I made soup. I had prepared the ingredients beforehand and had put most of them in the pot when I turned off the lights. The pot simmered in the dark until the soup aroma filled the house, then I turned off the stove. I took the lid off the pot to let the soup cool. When I turned the lights back on, I pureed the soup. This was a chicken-corn soup. I am now dubbing it the Earth Hour soup.

In my hour of darkness, I went outside to see what was going on. I was glad to see the overhead street lights turned off. Good on the City for taking part. But I was surprised that on our street, most of the houses were dark. Even my Clampett neighbours next door had no lights on. Our street was the darkest I have ever seen it, darker than when I come home at 3 am.

In some houses, candles flickered inside, so I knew the lights out was intentional.

I sent The Man an e-mail, because last year during Earth Hour, we were in Bali.

This morning, the newspaper reported that electricity use in Toronto during Earth Hour was down 15% from normal use at that hour, saving the City 2,545 megawatts of power, almost doubling last year's energy savings. The mayor announced that Toronto "gets it."

Even though Earth Hour is a symbolic call for climate change, it is a voluntary response. I am sure some businesses turn out their lights due to social pressure. But I am most surprised by the participation on our rough and tumble street of clashing political bents, sweeping spectrum of ethno-cultural origins, and wide socio-economic array of lifestyle choices. Who knew concern for the environment would be common to us?

So today, I am serving my Earth Hour soup for lunch to the directors of our environmental fund. We are reviewing applications to determine which environmental groups to fund.

Here We Go Again

Really, I think I have walked into the sunset. But I didn't plan to. Yet I can't bring myself to blog. I live in relative peace and resignation, blindly getting into a groove that passes time, annoyed that I am merely passing time instead of honing in on something more constructive, because the constructive thing for me to do right now is to be in Sudan with The Man.

The Man was home for six weeks this time. I loved many minutes of it. Let's face it, living with The Man is stressful. We approach life with different rhythms. His fast one drives me crazy, makes me physically buckle. My even demeanor and big picture approach yanks at his chain. He feels like I put a brake on his life.

It's not that we are oil and vinegar and don't mix. It's more that we are like fire and water - there is a delicate balance that keeps us each strong. In the past, there's always been time for us to unwind and relax into this balance. But this round, we spent most of our time getting ready for his next gig in a hurried rush. We court danger in each other - too much of one could extinguish the other so tread carefully. Beats me how two people so different should want to be together.

So now that he's gone, I try to get back into my activities. I try to steer The Boy the right way. I give him what for when he pushes me too far. The Boy wanted me to lend him my car this weekend so he could go to a party in London. He doesn't drive. He meant I should lend his friend my car so they can drive there. They wanted to be there Friday night to put in maximum party time. A third friend has a car but she couldn't go until Saturday and they didn't want to wait.

No, I don't want to lend my car no matter how responsible Butterfly Boy is. Then he wanted me to drive them to London with their band equipment so they can play at the party. No, he will never live it down dragging his mother to a frat party. And besides, it's a great inconvenience to me. I wanted him to figure out a solution without involving my car. I offered to pay his share of a car rental. But being under 25, the boys could not rent a car.

He said they had exhausted all options. I was their last hope. If I didn't help them, their band wouldn't be able to play, and it wasn't like I had anything important to do with my time, besides, Dad would have driven them. Boy, boy, boy, you don't get your mother to help by insulting her.

I said, Your wanting to get to a party is not my problem so don't make it so. I don't want to lend you my car, I don't want to drive you to London. I was one of the possible solutions to your problem. Now that you have exhausted this possibility, move on to the next.

In the end, he did come up with a solution. He would take a bus to London Friday night so he could spend time with his friends. Saturday, Butterfly Boy and their friend would pick up the band equipment and drive to London in the friend's car.

I knew he would solve this. I shook his hand and gave him bus fare.

Poconos

When I told Kid1 we're going to the Poconos for March break, he looked puzzled and asked, Why are we going to poke a nose? Whose nose are we poking?

So that's where we are now, in the little town of Tamiment, Pennsylvania in the Pocono Mountains. This morning, I met a family of deer in the parking lot. We are 1.5 hours from New York City and 2 hours from Philadelphia. We will spend time in both cities.

Where this blog is concerned, I feel like I had walked into the sunset without knowing it. Lots of interesting things have been happening. But I have been censored. Sooner or later, this seems to happen to many writers, whether they are creative, journal, or news writers. How do they deal with it? I have decided to respect my censor, mostly, because my relationship with my censor is more important than my ramblings in a blog. But here's where I have to poke a nose.

Somewhere in New York state yesterday, we stopped for food and Walmart. One of the things a doctor put my beloved on is a special mouth rinse, which you can buy from the doctor or order online and pay an exorbitant price, or you can buy it over the counter in the States at half the cost. So we went into the first Walmart we saw and bought all the mouth wash of that brand they had on the shelf. Only, beloved didn't want to be seen carrying thke boxes, so I walked around the store with my arms full of mouth wash. It was funny, you had to be there.

But not as funny as when a man I worked with told me about how he bought tampons for his wife. He liked deals and he looked and acted gay. There was a tampon special at Cosco when he went shopping there. He couldn't resist. So while his wife lined up with the cart to pay, he went back to get the tampons. He bought many boxes of them. So many that the boxes were spilling over his arms as he ran with them from the aisle toward his wife and the waiting cart, the whole time shouting, Excuse me, excuse me, because he could see his wife had made it to the cashier.

I just have a feeling this is going to be that kind of week. I mean it took us 12 hours to get here when I thought it would take 8.