Mittens and Gloves

Day 271: Mittens and Gloves

Sam's forum at Community High is collecting warm clothing for the St. Andrew's breakfast Thursday. I don't know what the St. Andrew's breakfast is, but I know that Sam's forum has given him many opportunities to serve and give.

"Christmas is at our throats again." This is how Arthur C. Brooks begins his OpEd piece in the New York Times this weekend about the commercialization of Christmas. I'm not sure that all our buying is in the spirit of generosity, either. As one of my friends joked on Facebook: "Almost done with my Christmas shopping! Now I just have to buy presents."

Giving Tuesday may be a partial antidote. What if we all resolved to give an equal amount outside our immediate circle of family and friends? For every dollar on stocking stuffers, what if I contributed a dollar to Food Gatherers? We might be ripe for broadening our definition of holiday giving: the University of Michigan set a Giving Tuesday goal of $1M and raised $3.2M in that one day.

Sam's forum did in fact collect money for Food Gatherers, a charity after my own heart. How can you not support Food Gatherers when one in seven people in Washtenaw County are hungry? I'm happy for him to take these mittens and gloves, and the down vest and coat I set aside a few weeks ago, for the warm clothes drive on Thursday. Tomorrow, he's staying after school to help the homeless, something a kid in his forum organized. Hoping we are on the right track.

Pepper Grinder, Two Salt Shakers and No-Salt

Day 257: Pepper Grinder, Two Salt Shakers and No-Salt

More surprises in the cupboard, where I was rooting around looking for molasses to add to the slow-cooker beef ribs this morning. I would have said that our was not overstuffed with stuff 256 days ago. It's amazing how wealth plus space plus time equals lots of forgotten things tucked away in drawers, cubbies and shelves.

Two more of Barbara's items. If you'll recall, I promised Barbara when she moved - five years ago? six? - that I would take anything she couldn't quite part with, and either use it or give it away. Instead, I just shoved the items behind other similar items and forgot about them.

The No-Salt is a by-product of synchronized swimming. Emma drank so much Gatorade, I decided to try to make my own. Big mistake. Here are the ingredients:

Potassium Chloride , Potassium Bitartrate , Adipic Acid , Silicon Dioxide , Mineral Oil and Fumaric Acid

These ingredients taste absolutely nothing like salt. Their flavor most closely resembles the bitter aftertaste of saccharin. I wouldn't inflict No-Salt on anyone, so it's going in the garbage.

I can smell the ribs and soup bones in the CrockPot now, flavored with a little orange juice, molasses, onions, garlic, salt and pepper.

Casserole DIsh

Day 251: Casserole Dish

Sometimes when you let something go, it comes back. Today Emma Jane is coming back, at least for Thanksgiving. I'm leaving in a half an hour.

And so we kick off the holidays. It seems an apropos time to get rid of a casserole dish. I got this one as a free gift with a Bank of America savings account I opened in San Francisco in 1987. I've used it very little ever since my sister handed down a set of retro Corningware to us a few years ago. Getting rid of this will open up a little space in our cupboard.

Food is the theme for the coming days. The holidays certainly provide much food for thought. If anyone would like to guest blog during this time, I would welcome hearing your voices about stuff and the holidays!

Picture and Mat

Day 213: Picture and Mat

My housekeeper folded this
lithograph of an attic, which
my high school art teacher made

I always liked this picture
but it had water damage.

Often, repurposing old stuff costs more than buying new stuff. Cost in dollars, of course, not environmental costs. This unfortunate truth is perhaps one reason we keep buying more and more.

Case in point. Today, I decided to solve two problems at once, by getting rid of an old water damaged lithograph and putting some lithographs by my high school art teacher into the frame. The mat completely disintegrated when I took the picture out, so I had to make a run to Michael's to get a new mat cut. As long as I was going to Michael's, I decided to purchase a frame for a second litho (also by my high school art teacher).

You've probably already guessed the end of the story: the new frame - double matted - cost $10 less than having a mat cut for the frame I already owned.

I thought about just buying two new frames, but the old one is pleasantly aged. I like it. It has some sentimental value, too. It belonged to my Uncle Sherlock, a hoarder who, now that I think of it, is worthy of at least one blog post.

More Office Supplies

Day 201: More Office Supplies

Office supplies come out of the woodwork like bedsheets. Every box, every drawer, every shelf has unused or unnecessary supplies. When put together in one place, the number of binders, folders, notebooks, pens, pencils, compasses, highlighters, erasers, index cards, post-it's, bookmarks, calculators, separators, thumb tacks, envelopes, scotch tapes, Wite-Out, glue sticks, labels, stickers and Magic Markers is stunning. 

In my heavy box of musty files, for example, I found a big fat black padded binder with gold-embossed script on the cover ("Homeowner's Records"), filled with separately labelled envelopes that said things like, "Mortgage," "Inspections," "Title Insurance," and "Closing Documents." The envelopes were empty and the fancy Real Estate One pen, never used, was completely dried out. The binder was full of Tom the Realtor's Real Estate One business cards, Tom of the upswept blond locks, sincere smile and anxious solicitousness, evident even in the tiny 1"X1" photos on the cards. Tom would fit right in on the set of "Best in Show." In fact, I think Christopher Guest's next mockumentary should be titled "Recently Sold!"

Is this preponderance of papers etc. particular to us - a manifestation of Emma's love for office supplies - or is it a common side effect of being a dual career, dual student family?

Floor Lamp

Day 192: Floor Lamp

We tried to keep the IKEA floor lamp. It's gooseneck would have been perfect to allow Rich to sit in his Archie Bunker chair and read. He would have had more seating options, instead of just the well-illuminated sofa where he is lying, reading, even now. But even the Home Depot illumination specialist was stumped. What kind of bulb does it require? Another woman, overhearing, got involved in the question. She had a picture of her IKEA lamp and its light bulb requirements pulled up on her phone. I had the actual lamp in my shopping cart. 

After long minutes of peering and measuring, we both concluded that the needed bulb is only available at IKEA. But I refuse to be controlled! Let some other poor fool make the long trip to Canton. 

After the number of entries in this blog involving IKEA issues, I have resolved to stop shopping there. On the surface, they've got it all: uber PC backstory, low prices and hip merchandise. It's not safe to shop there, however. You end up with problematic stuff. 

That's the problem with low prices. They encourage you to buy stuff you don't really need, because the price point is too low to offset the temptation. It's like the free drinks in Vegas. Heady. Next thing you know, you've got a new kitchen or a pressboard bureau or a giant stuffed snake. On the way out, you can buy yourself a hot dog and some cinnamon rolls to complete the decadence. 

From now on, it's Kings Chosen or the Reuse Center for me. I swear. 

Wool Coat

Day 174: Wool Coat

This wool coat belonged to my sister's much-loved mother-in-law. Suzanne was an artist, and I am the beneficiary (in the purist sense of the word) of her extensive collection of needlepoint wool as well. And no, I will never get rid of the needlepoint wool. Perish the thought. 

This coat is wool of a different sort, less useful to me, though perhaps more useful in a general sense. It came to me by way of a naked ladies party I had a couple years ago. It is a very high quality coat, Calvin Klein navy wool with leather patches at the elbow and big wooden buttons shaped like little barrels. It is a little outdated, but not quite outdated enough to be retro. I wore it once. The pockets are shallow, and my cell phone fell out in the parking lot as I was getting out of the shuttle at Dunning Toyota. (That's another heartwarming story that ends with some random person going to great lengths to return the phone to me by way of my mother.) I never wore it again.

A high-quality warm coat like this is one of those things that makes me muse about stuff and poverty and distribution of wealth. Like, is there a homeless person in this county who is at risk of dying of exposure, who might benefit from having this coat? A coat which has been hanging unused in my basement for at least a couple of years? And if so, how can we match up people who need stuff with people who have too much? Especially given that a person without a coat also probably doesn't have a cell phone, or access to a computer, or access to any kind of communication network that might start the needed stuff flowing in their direction.

Or is that not what poverty looks like here in Michigan? Maybe the homeless have coats, but the coats are a little outdated (like this one). And if you're poor, does that mean it doesn't matter if your clothes don't make you feel cute? I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that if you're poor and fifteen years old, you still want to look cute. And if you're 50, hey, maybe you can be a little more philosophical. But. 

Let me just say it.

I'm in favor of a living minimum wage.

Miscellaneous Junk

Day 160: Miscellaneous Junk
This is a box of miscellaneous junk that I collected in a cardboard box while making the room switch. It includes:

• A very small shelf with pegs for hanging things on, which came free with some garden store merchandise years ago, and which I picked up off the free table at work. It used to hang on Emma's wall but it's been years since it was hanging
• A faded green damask comforter cover which I believe my brother bought and used in Africa
• A Vera Bradley handbag, never used (by us, anyway), which a co-worker brought to a naked ladies party I threw last year and which we thought we might use someday
• A tiny Tibetan peace flag which came in the mail with a fundraising pitch
• A little blue locker shelf that I bought in an effort to help keep a middle school locker organized, which did not actually fit in the locker but which I could not bear to get rid of because I'd paid good money for it

I planned to get rid of this box on Sunday, the same day Sam and I made a grocery run to Meijer's. Ten years ago, both kids went to the grocery store each and every time I shopped, because they were too little (six and seven) to be left home alone. Sam constantly complains that there is "no food in the house" when there is clearly enough food to feed a Masai village for a month. I've been trying to lure Sam to the store for several years with the promise that he would be allowed to buy anything he wants, thereby solving for himself the "no food in the house" problem. I'm not sure why he finally agreed to make the trip, but off we went together, late Sunday afternoon.

This is what he chose:

• Cherry frosted Pop Tarts
• Apple Jacks and Cinnamon Toast cereal
• Frozen shrimp for stir fry
• Barbecue potato chips and salt & vinegar potato chips
• Rye bread
• Beef jerky
• Cheddar cheese so sharp it squeaks in your teeth
• Freezer pops
• A twelve pack of A&W root beer
• Bananas, basque pears, raspberries and blueberries ("I might eat a peach if you cut it up for me")
• Chicken sausage
• Frosted animal cookies
• Suave shampoo, rainwater scent

All this, in addition to our regular fare, cost about $150.

As we were driving out of the Meijer parking lot, we drove past a family of four standing by a stop sign. The man was holding up a big hand-lettered cardboard sign which said, "HOMELESS! Lost my job! Family of four! Jesus loves you!" He was smiling and waving pleasantly at each vehicle that stopped at the sign. His wife held one child on her hip, and the other, about waist-high, huddled up against her. She looked tired.

As we passed, I asked Sam, "What do you think of that?"

"I think it's sad."

"Do you think we should give them some money?"

"Yes." 

So I pulled over, saying "I'm not sure I have any money." (See previous references to how having teenagers at home cleans you out.) I was thinking about the $150 in junk food groceries, and the box of miscellaneous useless stuff about to go to the PTO Thrift Shop. Sam took his wallet out of his back pocket and took out five ones, all the money he has in the world, at least until I pay him for his next set of chores. I pulled my wallet out of my purse and handed him what little cash was in it.

"Eleven dollars," he said. "That ought to at least buy them a meal."

In the car on the way home, he asked whether I thought we were giving that family money so we wouldn't feel like shit heels, or if we were giving them money because we wanted to help them. After some conversation, we decided it really didn't matter why were giving them the money. Whatever our motivation, the end result was the same.

Proud.

Hot Curlers

Day 159: Hot Curlers

Thank you, Elizabeth Arden, for transforming women's beauty rituals. Where once we merely pinched our cheeks and bit our lips to add a little color and bathed weekly with scented soap, we presently spend 55 minutes a day and $2.3 trillion (yes, TRILLION) per year on beauty rituals and products. Did you know that political science professor Sheila Jeffreys has published an entire book on the topic of whether western women's beauty rituals - ranging from labiaplasty to liposection to lipstick - should be included in the United Nations' definition of harmful traditional/cultural beauty practices? 

Do a quick web search on "beauty industry" and "feminism" and you'll find a hord of twentysomething women bloggers proclaiming that they are feminists who have been (fill in the blank) ... wearing lipstick, or depilitating, or bleaching their hair, or botoxing, or, or, or... How convenient for Elizabeth Arden: where 75 years ago, women would have been shocked and repulsed by the idea of shaving their armpits, nowadays we can go down to the Wax Loft in Ann Arbor and spend anywhere from $13 (upper lip) to $140 (full leg/Brazilian) to "avoid mishaps and minimize the pain associated with hair removal."

Not surprisingly, my daughter and I - and my mother and I in years long past - are not in perfect accord with regard to how much time and money should be spent on personal beauty. Happily, in the PTO Thrift Shop, we can sometimes set aside these disagreements. How exciting to find these hot curlers nestled on the shelf during one of our thrift crawls. Only $2, and with that all-important word, "Works," penned in black Sharpie on a piece of masking tape, stuck to the bottom.

Emma left these behind when she packed for college. I would have kept them for her - no self-mutilation necessary! - but when I tested them, sadly, they no longer worked.

When she comes home, she'll be stuck with the lovely, shiny, ever-so slightly waved tresses God gave her. And 100 strokes each night with a hairbrush.

Backpack

Day 155: Backpack

I had an all-day meeting at the Law School today, a scant mile from my house. After a day of sitting, the walk home felt good. Along the way I noticed a couple of college-aged girls unloading stuff directly from the bed of a Ford F-150 into a dumpster. I've walked past that dumpster a million times, and insofar as I've thought about it at all, I assumed it was part of a major construction project. It's huge - eight feet tall and fifteen feet long, one of three dumpsters that together take up almost an entire block.

I looked twice because I thought the girls were doing illegal dumping. And they were dumping some really good stuff. Like sturdy metal shelves - seemingly brand new - such as the ones we have in our basement for cleaning supplies and tools. Or a chrome floor lamp, light bulb and all. Or a 50-gallon garbage bag bulging with textiles. Or an 8x10 oriental rug, hardly worn.

Then I realized that there were workers right there next to the dumpsters. One was writing on a clipboard, another driving a small loader. And I noticed another car parked in front of the F-150, with a young man taking stuff out of the vehicle and tossing it up and over the edge of the middle dumpster. I thought about our neighbors, the football players moving out this weekend and the big dumpster of stuff they left behind in their driveway. And I realized that it's summer move-out, when the kids who've graduated but stayed on through the end of their leases finally clean everything out and head off for the next phase of their lives. And these dumpsters must be there for the college students to throw away all their old stuff, so it can be carted off directly to the landfill.

The rest of the way home, I noticed garbage bins and dumpsters filled with perfectly good stuff. Sturdy wastepaper baskets. A pair of worn but servicable blue easy chairs. A plastic lawn chair. A half-dead potted plant. Picture frames, plastic cups, bed pillows, lampshades. Glassware.

I was feeling an impulse to pull this stuff out of the garbage and take it home with me, not because I need or want it but because I can't stand the thought of it all going to waste. I was thinking of all the brand new stuff we bought for Emma for her new dorm room. I was so pleased to think of her starting her new life with fresh new things. But now, here are all these perfectly servicable not very old things that must be gotten rid of. Like this backpack, which she'd been carrying for two or three years in high school. I realized a day or so ago that it isn't the slightest bit worn, and yet we bought a new one, from the North Face. Starting fresh.

And here are all these 40,000 University of Michigan students, a large portion of whose parents had the same impulse when they headed off to college, the impulse to send the kids off with a fresh start. And at the other end, all these dumpsters full of four-year old fresh starts.

When I first graduated from college, I lived for 18 months in an apartment in Jamaica Plain with a couple of kibbutzniks. Tlalit would cook our entire weeks' worth of meals every Sunday, delicious, complicated food like spinach pies with filo dough. Tzvika would dumpster-dive with the 1979 Datsun B210 that he'd picked up somewhere for a song and restored to working order. He'd go around to college neighborhoods and come home with broken t.v.s, stereos and lamps, repair them, and sell them through classified ads or garage sales. The two of them couldn't get over the waste in the United States, and the wealth, and the poverty. It was their lark year after college, before they went back home to Israel and got on with their real lives, and they funded it on the flotsam and detritus of the Boston elite.

I have a feeling there aren't enough enterprising and competent kibbutzniks in Ann Arbor to empty all those dumpsters. But wouldn't it be nice if at least a little bit of that stuff could find its way to those poorer neighborhoods - or even those poorer schools - right down the road in Detroit and Flint? 

It seems like there ought to be a way to make it happen.

Pens and Pencils

Day 76: Pens and Pencils

One bag for recycling, one bag to donate
to the office supply pile at the Arb & Gardens

What if you lived in a home where every pen had ink? Where every wooden pencil was sharp, and every mechanical pencil had lead? What if you took it one step further, and decided that every writing implement should be a pleasure to use? No more mingy ballpoints or chewed stubs. Every pen has flowing ink that glides across the paper. Every pencil has a soft eraser.

For me, such a goal would involve recycling this many pens, giving away this many ballpoints, and sharpening this many pencils.

The endeavor - testing every pen in the house - is one I made every three years since the kids were born. Each time I do it, I remember half-naked Turkana children, children who were grateful for a single Bic pen, which we tourists tossed over the truck rails like coins in a wishing well. 

In my part of the world, cheap washable art supplies begin to flow into your home as soon as your children can hold a pen. Scented markers, fabric markers, erasable markers, white board markers, teeny wee markers, big thick markers, sharpies, sparkle pens, gel pens, click pens, crayons, pastels, watercolors, colored pencils, highlighters. We've got them all in spades.

Emma loves office supplies and hates school. Every August, we have a ritual. We head down to Office Max for an infusion of binders, spiral bound notebooks, date books, WhiteOut, graph paper and rulers. Somehow, the crisp newness of these things makes the end of summer easier to bear. I guess we won't do that again. One last marker that passed by, without my realizing.

Usually, I'm not as ruthless getting rid of markers and ballpoint pens. But the days of posters and collages are done. These days, it's all memorization and multiple choice, book reports and research projects double-spaced and neatly printed. The half-dried markers will be dead before anyone uses them again. Might as well put the Bics and #2's to good use somewhere else.

Makes me sad just thinking about it.

Point-and-Shoot Camera

Day 54: Point-and-Shoot Camera

My children, nieces and nephew are privileged to be invited to cruise the world with their grandparents during their 13th summer. Sam visited Anne Frank's house, climbed Hadrian's wall with a new friend, and shot goals at the Scottish Football Museum. He also took pictures with a little red Sony one-shot that we gave him for his 12th birthday.

Already taking pictures!

The exponential increase in cruising most likely isn't doing the oceans any good. Air pollution, sewage, and vessel discharges are all getting activists activated. If you're thinking of taking a cruise and you're interested in minimizing your eco-footprint, check out this cruise report card and choose accordingly.

Sam hasn't used the one-shot since the big trip, almost four years ago. Once again, his iPhone is the wonder-device that does it all, including instant posts to Vimeo or Twitter. The Sony has been sitting forgotten in a drawer. Now it's my niece Kaeli's turn to travel, and we've handed it down. She thinks it's pink and she loves it.

Computer, Printer & Other Electronics

Day 38: Computer, Printer, VHS Tapes, ADATs and More

Fight!

I left the house for less than an hour, and when I came back, I found this:

Rich was moving old electronics out of the studio in a wheelbarrow! His plan was to take it directly to the drop-off center ... without even telling me! 

How will I ever get through an entire year of giving something away every day if my own family sneaks stuff to the dump when I'm not looking?

And all this only a few days before the Ann Arbor Public Schools and the University of Michigan team  up for their e-recycling event. eWaste has those all-too-familiar stats associated with it: Americans are the biggest waste generators, annually we discard an average of 65 pounds of it per person, almost 10 million tons of it end up in U.S. landfills per year, blah blah blah.

Okay, okay, hurt me daddy I'm bad.

On the plus side, if you recycle, a lot of the raw materials can be reused. If you can resist the temptation of the latest shiny object, computers and other electronics have a much longer lifespan than they once had.

The e-recycling event reminded me a bit of a rock concert, what with the orange traffic cones, young men in reflector vests and baseball caps, long lines of cars and semis in the parking lot. They took everything.

More Bedsheets

Day 37: More Bedsheets

Enough said.

I bought cute new sheets for our third floor guest room after my beloved
mother-in-law had to sleep in a bed with a bottom sheet that had little
cars on it, a top sheet with ladybugs, and two mismatched pillowcases.
I bought a cute green polkadot sheet set and a yellow feather comforter for Jane,
put the old sheets in this pine trunk, and forgot all about them. Three years ago.

Shoes

Day 36: Shoes

I "needed" a pair of black slip-ons.
I wanted some Birky rip-offs.
Cork = good (reusable)
Chinese leather = bad (unregulated effluvia)
Synthetic rubber = mixed reviews

I don't do drugs. I don't gamble. I don't drink (much). But I found myself sneaking the two new pairs of shoes from DSW into the house when no one was looking. I hid them in plain view, on the shoe rack. I made a futile attempt to exculpate myself by putting six other pairs of shoes into the growing Goodwill pile.

The effort was futile because, just like everything else I'm learning about during this stuff project, it turns out shoes have a big environmental, economic and social cost. My new shoes were made in China. Most likely, so were yours. 84% of our shoes are. As usual, we are the gluttons at the table: Americans buy an average of almost seven pairs of shoes a year compared with a world-wide average of about two and a half. Worst of all, some shoe factories still use child labor.

Sigh. 

I just can't stop buying shoes. Not an option. No way.

On the plus side, these trashed, ill-fitting,
outgrown shoes will have a useful afterlife.

Furthermore, I'm not going to limit myself to those few companies - Timberland, Simple, Keen and (surprisingly!) Nike, for example - that are working to minimize their impact. But there are some things I can do. First, instead of mucking the chickens, pulling weeds or shooting hoops in whatever shoes I happen to have on, I'm keeping a pair of rain boots by the back door. (I even bought them used!) That ought to prolong the life of the shoes I already have.

Second, I'm firm in my resolve not to buy any shoes that do not fit perfectly, no matter how cute, or how cheap the clearance price. At least two of the shoes in the Goodwill bag were cheap, cheap, cheap - but not quite right. I should have skipped it.

Third, I'm going to check out the used shoes on eBay. 

After all, you can never have too many shoes.

Air Pop Popcorn Popper

Day 33: Air Pop Popcorn Popper

Good riddance,
air pop popcorn popper

I'm feeling disappointed because, after 33 days, I figured I'd be in the sweet spot: less troubled by annoying extra stuff, but not yet digging deep. Instead, I've barely noticed any change. To keep up my momentum, I've decided to target annoyances.

First on my list: this air pop popcorn popper. Why in the world would anyone (read: we) purchase an appliance that actually makes worse food than a pot on the stove? To add to the humiliation, we bought this a month after my parents offered to give us their old one for free. The only reason anyone buys air poppers is because they're on a diet, like Rich and I were after Emma was born. (Yes, she's 17 now.) A cup of air popped popcorn has 30 calories; stove top, 60. But just as I would rather not eat styrofoam packing material, I prefer to eat less and better popcorn. This air pop popcorn popper is especially annoying because it takes up a lot of space; we have a 1920s-size kitchen, long before the era of single-use appliances.

Curse you, Joe Mooney, for putting this
cheesecake pan on the free table at work!
Cheesecake! Mmm!

Unfortunately, old single-use appliances don't appear to have the happy afterlife of textiles. Air pop popcorn poppers do not get shipped to impoverished countries. Who needs an air pop popcorn popper when you don't have electricity or unpopped popcorn? Air pop popcorn poppers do not get shredded for household insulation. The best you can say about air pop popcorn poppers is that some other sucker on a diet might buy yours from the PTO Thrift Shop.

My sister pointed out that donating stuff doesn't do anything to remove it from the vast river of stuff that's out there. Tracy Artley, the University's recycling guru, pointed out that sustainability isn't just about throwing stuff in a different bin. It's about fundamentally changing how we operate in the world. So I'm resolved: no more single-use appliances.

In the meantime, though, this one goes into the donation box.

Cranberry Sauce

Day 24: Cranberry Sauce and Other Forgotten Foods

Many of these have not been
touched in months

I've been trying to figure out just how beneficial it would be to the American economy if everyone in the U.S. bought American cars. We build a lot of "foreign" cars in the auto corridor. It's also not clear how much country-of-origin impacts people's decisions about car purchases.

Food, on the other hand, is a much simpler question. Michigan is the number one U.S. producer of squash, beans, blueberries, tart cherries and a dozen other agricultural crops. You can head down to the farmer's market right this minute and buy milk, honey, meat, fruits and vegetables from the farmer down the road, and you won't need any complicated economic models to determine whether or not you helped the local economy. You did. 

And you won't need a PhD in chemistry to tell you that what you're eating tastes a whole lot better than the unripe food harvested two weeks ago and shipped 5,000 miles to your grocery store.

Of course, almost none of the stuff I got rid of today came from local farmers, except maybe my sister's homemade Thanksgiving cranberry sauce (so delicious, but I took too much!), stovetop popcorn and stale Avalon bread. All of which the chickens greatly enjoyed.

I would have given the chickens the "light" Spartan yogurt, except I'm afraid it might kill them. If I had noticed the "light" label, I never would have bought it. As if plain non-fat yogurt isn't "light" enough, this "light" yogurt actually has chemically-reduced calories. I don't know how they did it, but I can tell you that the texture resembles Jell-o more than yogurt. 

Does this count as food?

Which reminds me. It's probably time to get rid of the plain Knox gelatin we mixed up and applied to Emma's hair once upon a time, in order to create a hard Playskool figure shellac that kept its shape in the water. She hasn't been a synchronized swimmer in over five years.

Note to self: add yogurt to Calder Dairy milk order.

Contents of the Car

Day Eleven: Contents of the Car

Second day in the hotel with only my suitcase, my purse and the contents of my car. The car is a bit of a sore point, because I share it with my daughter, who isn't exactly neat. Again, I thought I had pretty well cleaned out the car in preparation for this trip, and again, I was surprised by the stuff hiding there. A few things stood out.

Pens and Mechanical Pencils; Miscellaneous Clothing Including a Brand New T-Shirt
I took a safari from Nairobi to Lake Turkana twenty years ago, twelve foreigners jostling around in the back of a flatbed truck on roads that we wouldn't call roads in the United States. We drove north through dusty little towns where smiling barefoot kids dressed in raggedy t-shirts and shorts would run along beside the slow-moving truck with their hands out. One of the tourists had brought packs of Bic pens and would pass out pens to these kids as we rode along. He had read that kids in these towns needed pens for school.

Residents would occasionally jump into the truck and ride for a while, using the safari truck as a form of public transportation. At one point, a young slender woman got on with a baby who was naked except for a gray rag wrapped around his bottom. We'd stop in a new town every hour or so, and at each stop, she'd get out, unwrap the cloth from the baby's bottom, and rinse it out at a hand-pump or puddle. Whatever water she could find. Then she'd put the rag back on the baby. Wet.

So in my car, I found about two dozen pens and mechanical pencils, wedged under the seats or in the glove compartment or in the side pockets. I'll bring them into the house, and we might use them someday. Ditto the brand new t-shirt, leather jacket, scarf and single sock.

Swim Goggles, Flashlights and Water Bottles
These are important only because I bought a new pair of swim goggles on Friday and a water bottle yesterday, and two flashlights on our camping trip last December. I thought we needed them. It turns out we had a pair of swim goggles in the side pocket, a flashlight and a headlamp in the glove compartment, and two water bottles under the seats already.

We've got so much stuff, the stuff creates a fog. You can't see the stuff through the fog, and so you have to buy more stuff because there's stuff you need, and you can't see whether you have it or not, so you've got to buy more. And the fog gets thicker.

What I Got Rid Of
I got rid of a glass vase, which came free with a florist's bouquet and which we used to keep the senior flowers fresh last week. Also got rid of a lot of trash, broken stuff (like a leaky water bottle and a plastic hairbrush), some maps (who needs maps any more now that we have portable brains?), and receipts for car repairs.

Also I got rid of the book I Will Teach You to Be Rich, which is actually a text book from Emma's personal finance class. As I understand it, it's basically about saving money, which you can do if you're not always buying stuff.