The New American Dream

Whilst looking for ideas for an alternative baby shower I stumbled across this website that is SO awesome: www.newdream.org

I have struggled lately in my quest to "go green" and still do it afford ably without having to change everything about my life around. This site is packed full of advice on how the typical middle class American can make a difference without joining a commune in Arizona. Another plus is that a lot of it is very in-line with gospel principles. I have barely scratched the surface of all the stuff there but here are some highlights:

-Information about buying wisely (with lots of tips and links)
-Loads of articles about being a responsible consumer, including info on ethical investing
-Information on how to "green" your baby care
-The Alternative gift registry

Ok, this last one is possibly the most awesome thing I have stumbled on related to baby stuff. I registered at Babies R Us because it just seemed like "the thing to do" when you have a baby but I was so frustrated by their over commercialized emphasis on buying tons of stuff for your baby rather than actually focusing on taking care of your child. The Alternative gift registry is different in that you can register for secondhand and non-tangible items. For example, I registered for 7 freezer meals. How useful is that compared to a bunch of clothes that the baby won't wear for more than a month? Don't get me wrong, clothes are necessary and needful but I already have tons of clothes, mostly secondhand I might add. I also registered for my natural baby care items that you can't buy at Babies R Us, like g-diapers. This way people know what I REALLY need. The site is www.alternativegiftregistry.org and you just type in my name and away you go. You can also do it for weddings, and if you are really into saving the planet you can even register for guests to donate to a charity of your choice. Now that is truly a step in the right direction.

McDonalds and the Epidemic

This is Andrew at one of his better moments today.

So Andrew is really super sick. I have never seen him this sick before...ever. I mean, I was seriously beginning to think he had some awesome superpower that protected him from illness and I was contemplating a way to steal it.

Anyway, today being Sunday we were both supposed to speak in Sacrament meeting about hope. Andrew could not make it of course (which stinks because I almost had the entire talk written for him; it was going to be great), so I went alone, another first in our marriage. After the meeting block was over I called Andrew to check on him and he was so out of it that I could not understand anything that he was saying. All I got was: "McDonalds, epidemic, wierd...uhhhrrgghh." What can all of this mean? Did McDonalds create a super virus that is attacking our Ward on epidemic proportions? It sure felt like that today, but it did make giving my talk on hope easier as it was rather entertaining to focus on the individual sleepers rather than a sea of faces.

When I finally got home from Church Andrew explained to me that those three words and grunt/moan pertained to a dream he had (no worries, you can still eat at McDonalds). A good thing that came of this "epidemic" is that the Elder's quorum president stopped by to give Andrew a really beautiful blessing and now he is sleeping peacefully. It makes me really grateful to live in such a tight-knit community here at Wymount and I will really miss it when we are forced out at the end of July. I will not miss using a laundromat, however. Nope, not one bit.

And for my first post: Just another reason why Walmart is going to Hell

What does one write on a blog... well I want to write about stuff I am passionate about and since I have been pregnant that happens to be saving the world, one green step at a time. So in one of these small steps Andrew and I decided to buy reusable grocery bags. I was inspired by an article I read about Ireland and how much less pollution they have thanks to a national "bag tax" which makes the free plastic grocery bags that we take for granted very not free in Ireland. So basically everyone in Ireland now has their own reusable grocery bags and everyone is happy. For more on this: http://www.reusablebags.com/facts.php?id=20

Now to why Walmart is going to Hell. Shopping at Walmart is already an irritating experience but it always drove me nuts how they would just give you a ton of plastic bags because the cashiers are not well trained in bagging groceries. Such waste! Well, today we tried out our handy bags and met with a near disaster. The cashier was VERY unwilling to accomodate us even though we bagged our own groceries! What on earth?! Basically she rung up our groceries so fast she made it impossible for us to bag the groceries so we ended up just throwing everything back into the cart and bagging it when we got to the car. Apparently we are not the only people Walmarts employees have done this to as other reusable baggers have told us. So why the rudeness? Does Walmart train its employees to shun the reusable bagger? Well, in any case I believe we shall keep trying to be reusable baggers at Walmart until we have the money to shun Walmart entirely. I look forward to that day.