I asked my dad for a bite of his egg sandwich this afternoon, and he grudgingly handed it over.  Just as I had it to my mouth he said, “It has meat in it.”  I pulled it back, looked at the sandwich and saw the ham slice.  I handed it back to him.

Nicely played.

Ok Peeps, we have a new challenge to do!  This one is called the Responsible Consumption Month, and it will start tomorrow, April 11, and run until May 9th.  May 9th is the magical day of my half marathon.  I am not eating meat until that day, so this seems like something good to add on. Plus, it is exactly four weeks.

Here are the guidelines from their site.  My comments are in pink.

1. Daily mindfulness meditation session of whatever length feels available and good to do.

You can end your practice with a few minutes of contemplative meditation practice, using the words “There is enough.” If you are not familiar with contemplative (ie directed thinking) meditation practice, there are good simple instructions in the book “Turning the Mind into an Ally” by Sakyong Mipham. Yeah, I’m not going to do this.  I will “meditate” while I run.

2. Limiting Waste in the following areas:

-plastic bags
-coffee cups I don’t drink coffee, but I won’t take any throw-away cups of any kind
-napkins
-energy, lights, air conditioning, cell phone charging, computers Uh, I’m still going to charge my cell phone. But I’ll be better at unplugging things while I’m not using them.  At Home Depot, do they sell those on/off switches like they have in England?
-Exploring Composting - resources available on the waste resources page We already compost, but I’ll be sure to try harder.

3. Travel

-utilizing public transportation, ride shares I can look into the  bus in Fitchburg, but I’ve heard it isn’t that reliable.
-walking, biking whenever possible I already do this.  If it’s in walking distance, and it’s not raining, I’m most definitely walking there.
-planning ahead to make less trips in the car (if you have one) I really want to get rid of my car.  I think my mom and I could share a car, because neither of us works full time.  Plus, I can walk to class.

4. Food

-buy local as much as possible  I’m not sure how reasonable this is, because it’s April and nothing is growing in Mass.  But I promise I will STOP buying things that aren’t from the USA.
-buy food with as little excess packaging as possible
-try to eat less meat This is already part of my plan.

5. General

-limiting general purchasing and consumption of new products Already doing this to save money.
-trying to use second hand stores, library, Craig’s list, freecycle.com, downloading music and movies… Libraries are awesome.  I also use Bit Torrents.

6. Personal

-find something personal that you would like to add to your month. This could be working with the mental states that arise around a particular vice or low-level addiction that you would like to practice freeing yourself from. For example, in NYC, one community member is giving up cigarettes, one is giving up coffee, and one is giving up sugar all together!!! I know that I said I would give up diet soda, but I haven’t yet.  Blah. I will.  I have one more Diet Pepsi Max left, and I will drink that, and be done with it.

7. Keeping a Journal and Sharing Your Experience

Share your experience with our community online! You can go to our 24-hour diary page and share everything you have consumed in a 24 hour period, Post photos to our Flickr group, and discuss general topics in our general discussion thread. This will create an amazing resource of shared experience that everyone can benefit from. I have a blog.

***

Need help with having less waste?  Look into these:

Drink bottle : mason jar, canteen, what have you, but try to avoid plastic since they are suspected of leaching chemicals and are generally less environmentally friendly
- Container for food/left-overs: tiffin box, tupperware, fabric wrappers
- Shopping bag: nylon, canvas, string bags I already use these.  My Chico Bags are awesome.
- Chopsticks, silverware: bamboo and eco-plastics I need to get good silverware to carry with me, and to have a cool carrying case for them.
- Cloth napkin I already bring these with me for lunch and in my purse.  Cloth napkins are awesome.  I would love to have a big awesome purse, and also carry around a hand towel.

***

Does anyone have any more tips that I can use?

Who’s in?

I had wanted to do a meat cleanse for the month of April, and in fact, I started it a few days early!  The last meat I’ve had has been on Saturday, so I figured Sunday was a good day to start because it’s the beginning of the week.

I have decided that fish will be allowed, because people are concerned about my not getting enough protein.  I thought this was an actual concern, but then I realized that I have TVP (texturized vegetable protein).  I did a google search, and according to this site, 1/4 cup TVP (which makes about 1/2 cup wet and is the perfect amount for me) is 59 calories, and has 11g of protein.  I did some research, and I need between 70 and 90g of protein because I am an “athlete”.  That’s a big difference, but I keep finding different numbers on different sites.

I get 18g from my 3/4 cup egg whites.  My protein burgers have 13g.  I have Kashi Go Lean cereal that has 11g!  I’m looking for a yogurt that has high protein, such as Better Whey which has 15-17 grams of protein!  However, they only sell it at Whole Foods near here, and that’s about an hour away.  Perhaps if I do get a chance to go, I’ll try to stock up!

Anyway, I’m giving up meat until May 9th - the day of my half marathon.  Should be an interested experiment.

*

Yesterday was a 3 mile run, and it was raining all day so I had to do it on the treadmill.  I did the whole 3 miles without stopping once.  It was great!  But really, it was very hard, and the gym was very hot, and I was sweating, and I was tired and wanted to stop.  It wasn’t really that I was tired or sore, but I just wanted to stop because I was bored.  Today is a rest day, and I forgot to wear my pedometer when I went to my practicum, and also when I went to pick up trash.  So today will be a stepless day on my exercise calendar.

*

Jeanne called me and joined Niles and I in our trash pick up afternoon.  Niles also brought along his friend Jackie.  On our way up the street, we found Chris (who hangs with us for Lost).  We got to the house we really wanted to clean (it’s vacant, and a mess), and a girl across the street yelled out her window, “You guys are doing a great job.  Thank you!”  And I yelled “Come and help!!”  And she did.  Then, a friend of Niles’ or Chris’ drove by, then called Niles to find out if we needed help.  Yes.  His name was John, and he came back, and even helped us after Niles and Chris had both left.  It was a good day for picking up trash, and I think we filled about 12 bags.  At the busiest time, there were seven of us!

I should mention that Olivia, the baby in the picture from yesterday, is not my daughter.  I just nanny for her and her brothers every week.  I call her “my baby” cause she is my baby that I watch.  I also call her “the cutest baby in the whole world”  because she is!

*

I’m thinking that since my half marathon is on May 9th, and I was planning on making April “Eat No Meat” month, that I would just extend it to May 9th.  I will try to do a whole body cleanse of all bad things, so I will also be removing diet soda.  I was thinking that I would also not drink any alcohol, but I don’t drink a lot of alcohol, so I don’t really think that is a problem.  And if I want to drink the occasional half glass of red wine at Niles’ house for Lost, then I think that’s ok.

April 1 through May 9th   - No meat (fish is ok, I’ll be a pescetarian), and no diet soda or other diet drinks.

The only thing I’m concerned about is my weekly Monday night class, where I have to bring my dinner.  I’ve been bringing a ham sandwich because it’s easy to transport, and doesn’t need to be heated up.  What could I bring instead?  I like peanut butter and jelly, but I’m not sure if I’d want that.  Megan, I also don’t want any suggestions for “a cheese sandwich.”  I know they may be delicious, but I think I would like more substance than that.  For a usual night in class I bring:  a ham sandwich loaded with lettuce, yogurt with fresh fruit, a spinach salad, carrots and other vegetables to snack on, and an apple and an orange.  I eat a lot of food, yes.  I love to eat.  I was thinking a eggplant parmesan sandwich… but it’d be best warm.  Any thoughts?  I guess I could have tuna, because that’s fish.

*

I got a blister on my hip yesterday from running with my iPhone holster.  Today I’ll have to switch what side it’s on while I run.  I run with lots of gadgets: my iPhone, my pedometer, and my iPod shuffle.  Larry says that at least it makes me look important!

(the green at the top is my sweatshirt, and the grey is my pajama pants. )

*

Niles is helping me pick up trash today at 2pm!  I am going to drag along with me a trash can on wheels for all of the material that can be recycled.

Let’s say I want to do a point system to keep track of good and bad things that I do. Walk 10,000 steps a day, read for at least 30 minutes, drink diet soda (bad) or take my vitamins. It’ll be a way to not only keep track, but remnd me to do certain things (I never remember my vitamins anymore). Certain things will be worth more points than others, and the bad things will deduct points.
But what will happen with the points? What could I “buy” with them that doesn’t cost money or is some kind of food item? I’m trying to save money and accumulate less crap, so shopping or buying a good book wouldn’t be good. Neither would a $60 massage (too expensive). Something online suggested a bubblebath, but I don’t know if I’d really enjoy that all that much.
I’d like to keep track if things better, it will work as good motivation to remind me that I should be doing these things every day (reading!).
Is a point system silly? Should I just check off the things i’ve done, and turn the negatives into positives like “didn’t have any diet soda” (which uses a negative in the sentence, but the action is positive)?

Thoughts?

My sister has decided to take Buy Nothing Month one giant leap forward - she is pledging to not buy anything new for the year.  She has some rules, here they are from her website:

1. I cannot buy any new durable goods.
2. I cannot buy any clothes. Period. This does not include shoes. (Why shouldn’t it include shoes? That’s bullcrap. They are still something new! I guess if I run out of ALL my shoes in a year and can’t wear any of them and need something to protect my feet, then I can buy a new pair. But I’m unlikely to get to that point.)
3. I can continue to use non-durable products I already own, but once I run out, I need to find the most environmentally friendly replacement. (Unless she’s talking about cleaning products and shampoo, I’m not buying it.)
4. I can spend money on experiences- concerts, plays, museums, etc.
5. Presents are exempted from my ban on new goods, but I try and make a good faith effort to buy something either from a small independent artist or producer, or to buy my friends experiences.

She goes on with “I will not buy anything new, unless it’s food, cleaning products, etc. I am NOT doing this to save money, so my shampoo and soaps will continue to be made from natural products with very little packaging—if that means spending £5 for a shampoo bar from Lush, I think that’s a good option.”

Now, I think that this is a really, really good idea.  And if I plan on living in a little house, then I certainly could use some practice on not accumulating any junk.  I think that I could do it… I don’t buy any CDs, get all my books from the library, and I can’t really see  that I would need to purchase anything else.  The only thing I would be worried about is clothes.  I’m going to go on my internship soon, and I would just be worried about not having enough work clothes.  I could go to a consignment shop, or GoodWill, or something like that.  That’d be cool.  The other problem will be in September, when I need a new school planner.  That can’t be bought used.  I could forego, but I’m worried that with my internship, I’m going to have a lot of stuff to write down.

So far this year, I bought a 2009 Harry Potter Calendar, and last night I purchased my two books for class, totaling $95 (I bought them from Amazon.com Marketplace).  Do I see any other purchases I have to make in the coming future?  Not really.  Oohh… yarn from Michael’s, to knit my blanket.  I have a gift card from Dylan that will cover some of it, but probably not all of the purchase.  I have knitting needles, so I wouldn’t need those, but that is something that I’ve wanted to buy.

Do I think I can join Megan in her Buy Nothing New year long quest? Yes.  Do I want to? I’m not sure.

It is 54.3 degrees in the house! There’s something wrong with our stupid boiler and we have no heat. It blows. Luckily, I have a heated blanket. I plan to stay in bed tomorrow until it’s fixed. And I’m going to bed with a hat on.

We were able to stay out of the house most of the day. We went to Worcester to see Milk, and then we went out to dinner at the 99, because we had a gift card we got for Christmas. I’m trying to get my family to have a new year’s resolution to only eat out at local places. My mom is trying to tell me that there aren’t enough options. I tell her that’s bull crap. There’s a great Mexican restaurant in Lunenburg, and several Italian places, and good Thai and Vietnamese places, too. There’s also an OK regular American place that my mom doesn’t really like, but it’s not terrible. I think we have plenty of options, and if not, then we shouldn’t go out to eat!

I finished the fourth and final Twilight book tonight. The author started to write a fifth book, but it got leaked to the Internet. She stopped writing it, but allowed her fans to read it on her website. I checked it out not long ago, and it’s 264 pages! I’m pretty excited to read it, but haven’t started it yet. I guess it’s the same story as the first book, but from Edward Cullen’s perspective.

On my to do list for tomorrow is to clean out the basement and organize things. I have my whole “apartment area” of pots and pans and dishes and stuff like that, and it needs to be organized. There’s also a lot of other crap in the basement that just needs to be tossed or freecycled. That’s one of the things I told my parents I’d do with my free time.

Knitting a blanket would give me something to do with my spare time. Afghan yarn is 50% off at Micheal’s this week (what is afghan yarn?? It sounds appropriate at least). My brother got me a gift card there, because I told him I want to knit a blanket. (I actually haven’t received the gift card yet, because he’s a dead beat.) But I love blankets so much that I think it’d be great to be able to use a blanket that I made. Every night when we eat dinner, I wrap a blanket around my lower body. Here I am in December of 2007 after my first surgery, with my blanket at the dinner table.

My dad took this with his iPhone as the picture that would show up when I call him. This was the time I was wearing turtlenecks all the time, because I had bandages on my neck.* I can also tell because I look really tired and worn out in this picture. I’m smiling, but I can see the tiredness in my eyes.

I just rearranged the posts that I’ve written today.

I’ve written three four today (Jan. 1, 2009).  I moved 2008 A Review to look like it was written first, even though I wrote it last.  Then there is the one about me having to clean my room, and then is the post about my plans for 2009. (In real life, I started the Plans for 2009 several days ago, and started the 2008 Review tonight at 4pm).

I realized that moving them around like that might be confusing for people, and they might miss the 2008 Review!  Which would be awful, because I spent hours on it.  So make sure you read all three of them.

That is all.

Oh, and I’m still kind of interested in that whole “go to sleep with the sun” thing.  Where I’d go to bed around 9, and wake up at 6, just so I’d have more time with the sun.  Now especially that I’m done with Destare, I could do it every day!

This is me, wishing you a Happy New Year!  (this is the first photo I’ve ever taken with my built in web cam! It’s pretty poor quality!)

I don’t know if I want to call them resolutions, or challenges, or what.  Maybe “things I will try harder at.”  That might be good.  Let’s see….  I think there’s a lot that I’m thinking about.

• Drink more water (three of my camel backs a day…. 68 ounces or so)
• Carry water with me everywhere. I almost broke down and bought a Diet Coke the other day when I was out running errands because I was so thirsty.  I did not.  I haven’t had Diet Coke (or anything else with fake sugar) since Sunday when Megan was here.  12 days.
• Eat less crap! I’ve been eating cookies and stuff like they’re grapes!  I know that it’s because of the holidays, but still, it’s awful.
• Eat more good stuff.  Eat more vegetables (I eat enough fruit).  I’ve recently found that I love butternut squash, and Megan made those awesome baked vegetables that were fantastic!
• Keep exercising every day.  I’ve been kicking butt at exercising, and when I can’t go to the gym, I run outside (except for when it’s too damn cold - like today we’re at 12′F!!).  I want to get up to maybe 5 miles a day, that’d be cool.  I need to map out a course.  I should do at least one hour at the gym.  I need to do more with strength training, but I want Eric to make me up a plan that I can do at home with the stuff I have.  I have a Pilates VHS that I want to start using, now that we have a new VCR (my dad had to buy a new DVD-VCR combo after taking apart our old one - there was a BattleStar Galactica DVD stuck in it). Oh, and Megan has The Firm in her room on VHS I can do!  She made this great little schedule for it and everything, and never used it.  I’ll one up her and actually use it.
• If I’m going to be out and about, I should carry good food with me.  I can keep a bag of apples in the car, and because it’s winter, they’ll stay fine for weeks!  That way, when I get hungry,  I’ll have something good to snack on.
• Continue to cook dinner for my parents. Do more interesting things, not the same old over and over.
• Start keeping a medical journal! I have had soooo many medical problems in the last 7 years, that I won’t even list them.  Of course, I have no records of my own.  Nothing that lists how I feel, my symptoms, my medicine.  Nothing.  That’s stupid of me.  I need to start.  I do have a great day by day journal of how I felt going off of my medicine in May when I had my radiation.  I kept track of how I felt, what I was doing to keep my spirits up, and how much I weighed (cause going off the medicine can cause weight gain).  I also noted how I felt on a scale between poor, good, very good, and excellent (or some such scale).  In the new one, I’ll have it be a number scale from 1-100.  You have more options with a 1-100 scale than a 1-10, because no one would ever choose 6.7, but they would choose 67.
• Read more.  Read both for fun, and books that relate to Mental Health. I could read books about family therapy, or working with couples, or working with kids who have ADHD.  Books that I will learn from, not just escape reality from.
• Be more attentive to my wasting of energy. This morning, it was sunny in the living room, but I reached to turn on the light.  There was no need; I could see perfectly (I stopped myself, and didn’t turn it on).  I should focus on things like that, and not waste energy when I don’t need to.
• Keep it up with the 10,000 steps. If I can’t do 10,000 every day (because sometimes it’s just impossible), I would like to average 10,000 steps a day in a given week (so at least 70,000 a week).  There are some days when I’m at 20,000 for one day, and the next I don’t go over 5,000.  I’m okay with that, because the two average out to be 12,500.  That’s pretty good!
• Continue with keeping lists on my calendar of what I do for steps, and what I do for exercise. It’s great to keep track of things.  (If only I could find a Twilight calendar… they’re sold out everywhere, and they cost $60 on eBay and Amazon.com.  Seriously.  I’ll have to settle on Harry Potter.  I don’t think they make X-Files ones anymore).

I can’t really think of anything else.  There’s probably more I’d like to work on, but I can’t think of anything right now.  I’m too tired to think.

I think I’m going to do January as another Buy Nothing Month.  Soon I’m going to be sans employment, and I’m worried about spending money.  We’ll see, I guess.

My sister is doing Buy Nothing New Year.  She can buy used stuff, but nothing new.  That doesn’t include food.  Hopefully, she’ll blog about it, but she hasn’t posted since December 8th.  She’s a deadbeat.