The songs of my youth

Everyone knows how great it is to hear a song on the radio and have memories rushing back that you that you can almost feel. Yesterday I heard Disarm by Smashing Pumpkins and I saw rooms filled with friends from almost 15 years ago. I could picture and feel almost everything. It was crazy since I probably couldn't have hummed it 1 minute before. Of course I could go on for hours about every song I've ever known and the memory with it but how exciting would that be? Maybe later.

Mr. Rogers

"In order to express our sense of reality, we must use some kind of symbol: words or notes or shades of paint or television pictures or sculpted forms. None of these symbols or images can ever completely satisfy us because they can never be any more than what they are - a fragment of a reflection of what we feel reality to be."

-Mr. Rogers
from the book, The World According to Mr. Rogers

T-Shirts

There is a sad day coming. It is very likely that by the end of the year I will have to throw away almost every t-shirt that means something to me. Between working at a plywood mill, having babies and the fact that most of them are at least 10 years old, my precious t-shirts, filled with holes and spit up stains are at the end of their journeys. No more Cascade College Soccer (which I never played,btw), no more Lambda, no more Sierra Bible Camp. It's not that these shirts are cool looking it's what they represent. It's the shirts that reminded me when I was plugging away at sheets of wood that I had some diverse experiences that many people in that mill never had. When I was covered in spit up they reminded me that at one point in my life I was sort of cool and that I was capable of doing other things than changing diapers and nursing babies (not that those things aren't important). And now that I am about to be 31 they are reminding me that it's been a while since I was a college student and a camp counselor. I know that anyone seeing me in these shirts are taking up a fund to replace them but they probably don't know how special they are. I know that there are other shirts waiting to become special to me in the future and I am looking forward to that but no shirts will replace these memories. Maybe I will keep them in a special box and one day they will be vintage.

The things that stick in your head

Someone at a church we worked with a few years ago asked me if I would eat a brownie knowing that there was poop in one of the corners of the pan. He wanted to know if I could honestly say, "the brownies were good except that there was some poop in a couple of squares." The idea being that could we honestly say that a movie was good except that it had the f-word a few times, or it was good except for the nude scene. Could we say that a love song was good except for the part about promiscuity.....Can we? I have been saying that a lot lately with especially the movies I have watched. I have watched some really moving and thought provoking movies in the past couple of months but they have all had a few "excepts" in them. Are they still good movies? hmmmmm.


UPDATE: I reread my post after several comments (most not written here) and decided that the brownie theory is relative. It depends on the movie and it depends on who you are recommending it to. Some of these movies are not for my grandma but that doesn't mean that they aren't worth watching. I think that a lot of these movies, mostly dramas, have given me insight and compassion to worlds that I don't see very often. It gives me a little wake up call that I am in a bubble and there are things going on in the world that are kind of poopy.

Method products

So in my latest attempt to go greener (I'll probably never be totally green), I have started using Method products from Target. Let me just say that eco-friendly or not, the mop is the best mop I've ever used. And when you're done you just toss the mopping pad in the washer and use it over and over. It also has swiffer-type cloths. With two kids that will eat off any surface, it makes me feel better to know that my floor is chemical-free enough to eat off. I also like the shower/tub cleaner in hopes that it helps with Lucy's sensitivity issues. I just bought the dryer sheets so it's too soon to rate them.
I was at a point where convenience was trumping safety and the importance of our earth. I am far from reaching environmentalist awards but I will try to at least start going halvsies. I'll try to recycle half of my plastics and glass, getting my groceries bagged in plastic as few times as possible, repurpose things that I would normally throw away so I at least get a little more use and don't have to buy or use something new.
Here are some of my examples...when I do get plastic grocery bags, use them for trash bags in the bathroom. Use egg cartons for holding finger paints. Cover cans with scrapping paper and use them for vases. Don't throw electronics in the trash. Any other good ones?