You haven't seen what?

When I was growing up we didn't watch a lot of movies or even tv either. We didn't have cable tv until I was a senior in high school. MTV really mean nothing to me, I never really knew it showed actual music videos, by the time I had access to it I was more into metal which got next to no play on MTV so I never watched it. That may sound all well and good but I have disgusted a few people with the fact that I haven't seen a lot of movies from the late 80's and the 90's and before and beyond, but mostly from that time. My husband has dealt with this and I have watched a few of the movies but he was having a conversation with his cousin the other day and they started listing all these great movies and asking if I had seen them. Usually I would just hang my head and not answer. I am not oblivious to these movies and I know I would like them and a lot of them I have seen most parts but I have never actually watched them from start to finish. So here is a list of movies I have not seen that they can't believe:

Caddyshack

The Burbs

Three Amigos

The Jerk

Airplane

Space Balls

Spy's Like Us

Police Academy

Karate Kid

Godfather (all of them)

Coming to America

Mostly comedies which I love so it is a crime that I haven't seen them apparently. I completely agree with some of them, I know I would love Caddyshack and I have seen most of it but in bits here and there, same with The Burbs. I have also never seen most horror movies from the 80's and 90's, Nightmare on Elm street, Halloween, and even things like Alien and Terminator. I am quite a fragile girl and scare very easily. I deal with it a lot better now that I am older and I do want to watch some of those movies but just like the comedies I just haven't gotten to them. I love B horror movies, the discovery of the SciFi (now SyFy) channel when I was in college was one I was happy to find. I love those B monster movies new and old and ones with lots of camp even if they aren't trying to be campy. There really is no excuse for the lack of movies I have seen and I plan on remedying that, The Burbs should be waiting for me in my mailbox right now from Netflix.

Slacking and computer crash

So I have obviously been slacking on posting, which is something I always do but wanted to change. I have been dealing with some unusual headaches. I have never been plagued by headaches until a few months ago. Now I get them pretty regularly and it is a pain in the, well head actually. It starts as a sore neck for usually a few days and if I can remember to I can keep it at just an annoying sore neck for a few days with occasionally applying an ice pack to the back of my neck base of my skull area. Sometimes I feel it creep up into the back of my head and those headaches aren't debilitating just annoying. Last month though that did NOTHING and it quickly developed into a real headache, pounding front of head/whole head type of headache. Every day I would wake up with a sore neck and by the time early evening rolled around the head would start aching, days I worked, days I didn't work, days I kept busy, and days I spent curled up on the couch, nothing would change the progression. That lasted about a week and then poof all gone. They started again mid last week. This time with a sore back and then sore back and neck and yesterday came the headache. I feel the neck right now and I can feel it starting in my head.

This headache however could be totally caused by stress because my computer crashed on Friday. Vista just crashed for no reason at all and so I had to re-install it and all my drivers and basically start with a fresh new computer, not physically but I lost everything that was on my computer. It is just a personal computer and when my last laptop crashed we bought a VERY large external hard drive and I pretty regularly back up my files onto it so I didn't lose all that much. I have most of my bookmarks, which in reality I don't use that much, but they are a great reference for when I am looking for gifts since I have a million and one eco-friendly sites bookmarked and they have some REALLY cool stuff. I also have a TON of articles and other sites I never got around to reading.

I did lose some photos, nothing too important or anything that makes me that sad but I did lose pictures that I had been meaning to use in a blog post or two, I don't even remember what some of them were and that is why I take pictures, so I can have something to at least remind me of what I wanted to blog about. Gee you think I am a visual learner.

So here is to hoping I can be headache free and that I can get into a mood to post more on my blog, even if it is just non-sense, it feels good to write ones feelings and thoughts and ideas down in a semi-lucid way and just have it there for you to read. (By you I mean myself, I really could careless if someone reads this but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate those who might actually be reading this, it just isn't really the reason I do it. If other enjoy then great, if they don't that's fine too.)

Aw how sweet

I come home from work and small talk between myself and my husband leads to him telling me about a conversation he had with his friend/coworker who we hang out with more than anyone else, but we are home bodies so we don't actually spend that much time with him. His friend is determined to get him out of the house without me because we always go everywhere together and that is no exaggeration. My husband responds, Why do I need to go out without her? His friend, I don't know you are just always together. Husband, because I like being with her. That's kinda why I married her.

Aw isn't that just the sweetest thing. He finds himself in conversations like that a lot, he is the only married guy so his friends just totally don't get the lifestyle, most of them don't even have girlfriends. I find it funny that they can't even comprehend being in a relationship and how we actually want and like to spend all our time together. It's not like I stop him from going places or an a drag when we do go places, although I have been guilty of that before sometimes a girl just feels crappy and needs to go home. Just a little something I thought I'd share.

Jean Insulation

In my inbox today is Low Impact Livings newsletter. In it they discuss greening your jeans. The one part I'd like to share specifically is about denim insulation. It is suppose to be great stuff, better rated than fiberglass, no nasty chemicals, and reuse perhaps at its best. If I ever have the opportunity to build a house or re-model or things of that nature I will definitely look into denim insulation, but I live in an apartment right now and am living the wonderful life style of pay check to pay check and barely making it by so that is something that is not in the foreseeable future.

I always wondered where they got the denim for denim insulation and figured a lot of it was probably virgin denim, which I am sure it is, I have not done any research or read much on what it is actually made from in that regards. I have a lot of pairs of old jeans that no longer fit or are just busted, mostly because I am still the same size I was in MIDDLE SCHOOL and actually wear some of the same exact clothes I was then.

I was glad to see in this article a link to donate your jeans to be made into denim insulation, I don't think I have ever seen that before, mystery solved on where they do get some of the old jeans for insulation. Oh wait what's that I literally just now visited and read the page and they are NO LONGER TAKING DONATIONS! Ok well guess I can't turn my old jeans into insulation just yet. They will have to sit in a pile in the closet for a few more years maybe. Maybe I should just hang them as faux art on my poorly insulated bedroom walls and maybe they will do a bit of insulating that way.

Oh well I guess I could just go and delete this post since I was all excited about actually finding a place to donate my jeans for use in insulation but still check out the Greening Your Jeans post, it has some other info, although as I did look through that earlier, it says Gap has organic cotton jeans and I haven't been able to actually find them anywhere, maybe they made one pair once and so they get put on the list. Well this post is ending in a bit of a downer, coffee is ready time to drink it out of my nice and shiny mug.

Cleaning stainless steel coffee mug

Dirty coffee stained stainless steel mug

Add a bit of automatic dishwasher powder detergent (I currently have Planet brand so even your green detergents should work) and fill, all the way to the top, with hot water, water straight from the tap will work too but it may need to sit a little longer.

Let sit overnight or for a few hours depending on severity of stains, covered might help a bit too. A little light scrubbing, sometimes just a bit of swishing of water gets it all off, and you have a bright and shiny coffee mug again.

I've also had success cleaning ceramics mugs this way but can't find any other way to easily clean my stainless steel mug.

I get creative sometimes

Thursday I took a dozen old t-shirts that I never wear because they are a bit too big and I grabbed a pair of scissors and made a few halter tops and racerback tanks with the rest. They all look pretty good too if you ask me. They definitely aren't "tailored" but they work for me and my often relaxed style, I say often because every once in a while I do dress up but only so I can wear a pair of killer shoes. I LOVE SHOES!

To turn a t-shirt into a racerback tank check out this video.

To turn a t-shirt into a halter check out this how to guide.

The how to guide on the halter was a bit confusing to me but I figured it out, it helped that I have a halter that is exactly like the one I made. Basically it ties at the neck and lower back. The racerbacks turned out just like the ones in the video for the most part. Here is a pic of one of the halters I made:

Today, well actually tonight I got a bit bored and decided to re-decorate my bedroom. I moved around a lot of the pictures in the apartment the other day, basically re did the pictures hanging in the living room and hadn't put anything back up in the bedroom yet so I got the urge and this is what happened.

I used an old piece of cloth I had as a mock headboard, centered an Erte poster that use to be my granddad's, hung the shell lei's we got on our honeymoon in Maui, and made the bed all pretty, which wasn't so easy because Harley Quinn thinks she is helping but she is really hindering. If only that god awful heater wasn't there. It is useless, if you aren't within six inches of it you feel no heat at all. Worthless piece of crap and so so so ugly.

I can't stand bare walls, the other walls in the bedroom still need to have stuff re-hung, all my Bettie Page art is going up on one wall and then there is still one more wall that I can't figure out what to do with.

Recyling batteries and cfl's

I got this in March, it takes me that long to get things posted, heck my last post was about something I did at Christmas time, hehe.

I come home from work one day and there is a flyer thing hanging on my door knob. As I was walking up the stairs I was thinking great more Domino's or some other pizza joint, or some stupid warning letter from management.

Real quickly must rant on this, I had to have a maintenance guy come and NOT fix my lock the other day, that's a whole different issue. On our personal patio, not shared with anyone else or in view unless you are on it, we have 2 decorative milk carton type boxes that we put our recyclables in and when they are near full we then take those down to the curbside bins when they aren't full. So when he comes to NOT fix my lock he says I need to take the stuff out it can't be on the patio. I say yeah they are full I can't, he looks at me and says yeah take them out. Again I say I CAN'T. He just looks at me like I am speaking a foreign language and says they need to be emptied, again I say I can't empty them the bins are full there is no where to put them. He pauses looking at me for a few minutes doing nothing and I just stare back waiting for the synapses in his brain to finally start working and he finally says oh you mean the dumpster. At that point I just roll my eyes and turn and walk farther into the apartment waiting for him to NOT fix my lock. I'm not sure if he ever really got it but I was so tempted to go and toss the recycles onto the street. I'm just waiting for management to tell me I can't leave the recycles on my patio. They tell me so many things that are so out of left field I can't even mount a defense against it and try and educate them.

Ok back to what I actually had on my door. A flyer for recycling batteries and clf light bulbs. It included a bit of info and had a little pocket on the back side with a sealable bag for you to drop off or send in batteries to be recycled. It had info on recycling bulbs and a web address to where you can properly do that. I was presently surprised. I know management had nothing to do with it because I have seen them put blown tube fluorescent bulbs in the recycle bins. Here are a few pics of the flyer and bag:

This was before the tighter regulations were imposed on batteries being sent in the mail. Read about that HERE. I haven't read anything more on it and not sure what is going on with it. I think it may have stopped my husbands work from recycling batteries because they had a bin at his work and he says they don't have it anymore and I would assume it was because of this regulation, but that is just a complete guess. He works in an area known as business park and there is a company there, E-World Recycler, that is an e-recycler and they have drop off events quite often. Of course I have not participated in any of them, I just have a corner of the apartment stacked with boxes full of old cfl's, batteries, old computer parts, old cd's, old floppy disks, you name it I probably have it in they boxes, teehee, I'm such a hoarder. I really should get off my ass and take the stuff in, it is so close to where we live I can just put all the stuff in my car and if they don't take some of the things I have I can just take it back home and do more research on what to do with it or perhaps they can point me in the right direction.

Quick useless facts about me, I can't spell maintenance correctly for the life of me, I have to correct it with spell checker every time. I also write me instead of my A LOT, I read my post before posting it and I had to change me to my a few times, as I was reading it I was thinking, what am I a pirate! Haha. That is me booty there hands off, argh! I entertain me self so much.

Magazine Christmas Tree

I know it isn't the season for this but while cleaning up my spare closet I came across my magazine Christmas trees. It is beyond simple and if I can do it so can you. I don't remember how I came across the instructions I found but here they are, Magazine Christmas Tree at Just Like Martha.

Only thing I'd like to add is that magazines without a large spine work best for getting an all around Christmas tree, I used an old Interview magazine and two old Reptiles magazine. Here are the two I still have, my mom liked them so much she took one home with her after Christmas at my place.

As for the ball on top you will have to find someone who does origami as good as my mom. I found this ball lying around and un-curled a paper clip and stuck it in the top of the tree and then stuck the ball on top of that.

Confession I took a 26 min shower

Yes I confess I took a 26 minute shower. It is not a daily thing, I washed my hair and shaved and exfoliated my face. I only wash my hair once maybe twice a week depending on how my scalp is feeling. On top of that there are more days I don't shower at all than I do. I don't go by mudnessa just because it's cute. Thankfully I'm not a stinky person and I generally don't look dirty either. I am not an assault on ones senses, well except for maybe taste, I probably don't taste so good if you were to lick me and I guess if you have a 6th sense that probably isn't something you would want to use around me....but that's not for this post.

I have a low flow shower head and it also has a shut off valve that I use when I am lathering or not in need of water on me. It doesn't actually shut off the water it reduces it to a trickle to keep the temperature of the water constant. I love it, makes me feel better about taking the occasional long shower. I also collect my warm up water and use it to water my plants. I wish I could take shorter showers but having hair almost past my butt now it just takes quite a while to even get it wet not to mention rinse it out.

Phone Books and general recycling issues

Oh great look what landed on my doorstop and on the doorstop of all my neighbors!

Not only is it a phone book, it's two phone books in a plastic bag! Ugh there is nothing redeemable about this at all. I have even signed up at YellowPageGoesGreen.org to take myself off the distribution list but of course they still deliver them because they could care less. Especially since I live in an apartment complex, the person that gets paid to deliver them isn't going to try and figure out which apartment may or may not want them. The problem starts way before that though the company isn't going to take the time to make a list in the first place or even bother to listen to an organization that wants to stop unsolicited books. They are just going to keep giving them.

If everyone who doesn't actually want the phone book was to come home and find them and then promptly put them in the recycle bin the bins would be overflowing by days end just with phone books. There are three large bins curbside next to the dumpster and they are always over flowing. We have our own boxes on our patio to put our stuff in because you never know when you are going to be able to actually get stuff in the curbside bins. Most people take their recycles out and if the bins are full they just trash the stuff. The bins are usually pretty much all recyclable stuff but every once in a while you will find bags of trash in the recycle bins. I guess some people are just too lazy to try and figure out what goes where.

It is not so bad here, the first apartment I lived in was horrible. The dumpster and recycle bins were right next to each other and the dumpster was wide open, no lid on it, you could just toss your bag into the open dumpster. For some reason people would still put their trash bags in the COVERED recycle bins. I don't understand that at all, you can just toss your trash in the open dumpster or take the time to open the lid of a dirty recycle bin and put trash in it, how does that make any sense. I am so baffled by the things people do.

Here there isn't that much trash in the recycle bin all that often but the items that people put in the recycle bins are quite often not recyclable. Like a kids plastic toy ride on bike, yes it is plastic but not recyclable plastic, hey at least they are trying. What bugs me the most is what the employees of the complex put in there and do with the recycle bins. When the bins are overflowing and the lids don't close all the way quite often a maintenance guy will go over take out stuff until it does close and put that stuff in the trash. He won't even see if one of the other bins has room or pick out the stuff that isn't actually recyclable first he just takes it all right over to the dumpster. When a kitchen light blows, the long fluorescent tube lights, the maintenance guys put them in the recycle bin. That makes even less sense than the plastic kids bike. I get so angry at what I see in the recycle bins that I have stopped taking our stuff out and make my husband do it and tell him not to tell me what he saw. That doesn't keep me blissfully unaware because the dumpster and recycle bins are right below our apartment so if I look out our bedroom window I can see them and our parking spot is right in front of that area so every time I get into my car and I back out I see the bins spewing with non recyclables.

We have single stream recycling so all items go in the same bins. A few years ago it use to be one bin for plastic and aluminum, one for paper, and one for glass. When they switched to single stream single households got new large blue cans the same size as the large grey trash cans, previously they had three small different colored boxes one for each type. Apartments and condos at the time had three large different colored bins one for each type of recyclable. They didn't replace those with blue bins for apartments and condos until the ones they had needed replacing due to wear and tear. The trash area we use has two blue bins and one red, red was for glass. People don't understand that and still put everything in the blue, including glass, but very few put anything, even glass, in the red so there are basically only two bins being used regularly. I understand the confusion but it really shouldn't be that hard to figure out and why do they pay attention to only glass in that one but continue to fill the others with non recyclables and even straight trash sometimes.

Direction

I am posting this so I will feel more need to actually do it than just think about it.

I want to post more and perhaps take a bit of a different direction with some of the posts.

First I have a bunch of reuse projects I have done that I want to post about. I never realized how much I actually did until I was cleaning up my "animal room" the other day and I kept coming across different things I have done and seeing them again made me think, "Hey those things are pretty cool I should share them with more than just my animals." Who in reality probably can't even see across the room clear enough to really see them.

That thought right there brings me to the other direction I will go with some posts. Basically it will be me blabbing away, and possibly quite often not making sense, about the odd things I contemplate. I often have these thoughts over dinner, apparently the only time my mind lets go of everything else and I think about the most random things. Well then and sometimes when I am trying to fall asleep. When they happen while I'm in bed I don't say them out loud so my mind tends to let go of them, eventually, and I don't remember them as clearly . When I do think of them at dinner, I share these odd thoughts, realizations, and/or questions that are often quite scientific with my husband and when I finally finish my rambling my food is cold and he shakes his head at me and usually says one of these things, "You are such a nerd", or "You think too much", and sometimes when they make absolutely no sense and just turn into complete gibberish as I try and put my thoughts into actual words other people can understand he says "It's a good think you are hot!"

So if you read a post that is crazy ramblings, kinda like the paragraph above, and you are totally confused, feel free to not read it or you may hurt your brain trying to understand how my mind works. I get told quite often by friends that I make no sense and usually my family can understand my ramblings, because they HAD to learn to be able to communicate with me, even they sometimes are lost, confused, and pained trying to understand me. I don't quite know what it is that I do that confuses people so much but it is part of me and instead of trying to fix it I just let it be and friends and family just live with it as well.

Ha that makes me sound like such a freak, but alas I am so I am just trying to warn anyone who does read any future postings. You have been warned! Read at your own risk!

A bit about me

Well since Cruchy posted it (who stole it from Ruchi, who stole it from Beany who stole it fromMeadowlark...) and I love doing things like this and I have not done one in quite a while because doing something like this everyday or multiple times a day is annoying to other and because I have never done one here I thought I would, oh and also because I am postponing doing important things....

A - Age: 29, until Monday that is

B - Bed size: Queen

C - Chore you hate: dishes and laundry, only laundry because we don't have one in apartment so it takes on a whole aspect of having to carry heavy clothes a lot farther than I am comfortable with.

D - Dog's name: we had a dog named silhouette, we called her silly, she was epileptic and had many head issues, we found her a better home.

E - Essential start your day item: coffee

F - Favorite color: purple

G - Gold or Silver or Platinum: silver

H - Height: 5' even

I - Instruments you play: nada

J - Job title: i don't really have a title, i guess i'm an assistant or keeper. basically i'm a animal shit cleaner upper, that's what HAS to get done everyday, also feeding, if i'm lucky i do some fun stuff, some playing, even some cuddling of cute furry things if the opportunity presents itself. all in the name of work though.

K - Kid(s): just my pets

L - Living arrangements: 2 bed 2 bath apartment

M - Mom's name: leslie or Spanish Bandanna is her nickname now, it's a inside joke basically calling her a 4 letter word, all in good fun though, that spanish bandanna

N - Nicknames: mudnessa, nessa, all sorts of adjectives that can describe me are put in front of nessa, actual name is Vanessa if you didn't know

O - Overnight hospital stay other than birth: None

P - Pet Peeve: selfishness, ignorance, and closed mindedness

Q - Quote from a movie: "Why don't you just light your tampon, and blow your box apart? Because it's the only bang you're ever gonna get, sweetheart!" -Bernadette (Priscilla, Queen of the Dessert)

R - Right handed or left handed: Right

S - Siblings: younger brother

T - Time you wake up: this week its been about 8, usually its 10, I love sleep and hate mornings.

U- Underwear: Yes

V - Vegetable you dislike: Eggplant and peas

W - Ways you run late: every way possible, i usually blame the cats or the husband

X - X-rays you've had: Dental only, I think

Y - Yummy food you make: mac and cheese, tortilla soup, chili, mostly dinner foods, not good at baking

Z - Zoo favorite: hmmm, at an actual zoo as a "tourist" i like looking at the dogs/cats the most oh and the ring tailed lemurs, which i actually got to work with, a childhood dream of mine, but then he got feisty and I couldn't sit and cuddle with him anymore :( working wise i've loved working with a few specific binturongs, coati mundis, and monitor lizards. least favorite to work with definitely kinkajous in general, but just because they all hate/fear me and honestly i'm scared of them. I think it's because my hair is similar in color to their coats and they must think I'm a big funny smelling kink out to get them. i also don't love working with monkeys all that much just cause they are too damn smart test you and make you really think all the time and I have (controllable) fears of parrots and rodents, those beaks and teeth scare the crap out of me. been bitten by both too, not fun.

Cooking with Chopsticks

My preferred cooking utensil is a pair of chopsticks. In recent years I have started using a silicone spatula more than chopsticks because I have been making more one pot meals and the spatula is better at getting things moving around. I have found another use for my chopsticks while cooking, to keep the lid off the pot so it doesn't boil over as easily but still holds a lot of the heat in. When I cook I like to keep the lid on as much as I can to conserve all the heat I can but I quickly learned somethings just can't be cooked covered because they will boil over too easily. Pasta, quinoa, couscous, those types of things. I can't tell you how many messes I made before I gave up and just cooked those things uncovered, as you are instructed to, gee I guess I should listen to what "real" cooks have to say. With some other things I want to half cover the pot or leave it just a bit off so heat and steam can escape but also hold in a bit of the heat still. This is where the chopsticks come in, I lay them across the pot and the edges and then put the lid on top of them, it works great. Here are some pictures of this at work.

Plastic Packaging

Here is an item that is just totally over done in plastic and there is no alternative.

The story:

The product is basically a gift card. It is a pre-paid 60 day game card for the video game World of Warcraft. The game requires a monthly subscription to play. The game card is available at stores and instead of a gift card it come in a dvd case, a rather large dvd case, it is thicker than normal cases, not thicker plastic but it has a wider spine. So here is the breakdown of all the plastic for this little card. Shrink wrap, dvd case, and then the actual credit card sized card. A bit much, I don't see why they can't just sell cards that need to be activated like so many other services.

This game has a lot of things like this associated with it. When a new expansion come out if you want to be able to play the expansion right away you HAVE to buy a "real world product" full of multiple discs, play books, many inserts, a big dvd case, all wrapped in plastic of course. After the expansion has been out for a while you can just download the necessary files for the same price from the website. Also for each account you have to purchase separate expansion packs. Me and my husband play and we each have an account and we had to go to the store and buy two separate expansion packs. We contacted them about it and they said that there had to be a "real world product" blah blah blah.

Why the NEED for a "real world product" only though. The game would not be any less successful if us nerds who play got to sit down at our computer and NEVER have to get up or leave. When a new expansion is coming out so many people struggle with how to buy it, do I pre-order it online and possibly have to wait a week before I have the actual product arrive in the mail or do I go and stand in line all night so I get get the actual product and get home and play as soon as possible. If they could pre-order it online in digital format and have it at midnight believe me they would, so many of them would.

I'm not saying they need to get rid of the real world product because there would be those that want the booklets that come with the game and there would be those who would wander across the game at the store and purchase it there. But why do they really need a "real world product" only that is what I do not understand.

Week 5 of plastic

Week 5 of my plastic consumption

June 8th to June 14th

6 cup lids

6 straws

3 plastic fast food cups

3 2-litre soda bottles recyclable

2 20 oz soda bottles recyclable

7-11 grocery bag reused for kitty litter or taken to grocery store and put in the bag recycling

plastic freezer bag

The freezer bag is from frozen mice, food for my snakes, so it is regular thing that I don't have an alternative to. Everything else was completely avoidable. I had a craving for cream soda and my husband replaced the soda's from last week. I also had a craving for a shake and that is what one of the plastic fast food cups is from. When we do eat fast food I have been trying to get the smaller sizes that come in the waxed paper cups, they have to be a bit better than #6 plastic cups right, that's what I tell myself. I was going to try turning the larger soda bottles into upside down planters but all I have are peppers and apparently peppers don't like the upside down as much as tomatoes so I think I will just be recycling them. I so wish my tally for this week was just a freezer bag.

Week 4 of plastic

Week 4

June 1st thru June 7th

-3 produce/bulk bags will be reused for kitty litter

-cracker bag old saltines that had a hole in it and were disgustingly stale

-carrot bag

-chip bag

-bread bag

-ice bag

-2 cereal bags

-2 envelopes with plastic windows

-sour cream container

-2 fast food dipping sauce containers

-spoon

-wrapper from spoon

-drink lid

-bread bag tab

-lid to soy milk I realize now that every time I have a soy milk lid I also should include the soy milk spout since it is plastic but it is not easily removable from the "paper" carton. I put paper in " " because it is paper but coated in plastic...

-seal from soy milk

-chicken broth lid the spout on this is plastic too and the same with the "paper" carton...

-3 2 liter soda bottles we went to the store for ice cream and next think I know hubby bought three 2 liter's of soda (will be recycled)

-gatorade bottle, I was beyond thirsty one day on my way to work and had to buy something, I love gatorade but resist buying with all my might. (will be recycled lid is reused at work as a food dish for baby geckos)

-mouthwash bottle I went to the dentist for the first time in at least 7 years and while the poor hygienist really worked for her pay that day scraping years of tartar build up off my teeth I got the all's good (my husband says I am a cheater because I have no cavities, ever, and I haven't been in so long and he has 5 new ones) but you may want to think about purchasing some mouthwash, not because I have horrible breath, well they didn't say that at least ha ha, they said since I have my wisdom teeth still bacteria will tend to build up back there and mouthwash is a good idea.

-mouthwash safety seal

I got ambitious at some point in this week and cleaned out my cupboards of old food, a lot of the stuff was easily over a year old, like the crackers, the chips, the cereal, and the stuff out of two of the bulk bin bags. We don't purchase items like that any more and if we do we do it in MUCH smaller quantities so we don't get "sick" of it and still have a large amount.

I also cured my problem with ice by putting the ice I can make with one good ice tray I have into a paper bag so they don't stick together. So no more ice bags for us.

Not much else to say about this week, I've pretty much made all the major changes I am willing to at this point it is just now a matter of thinking ahead so I don't have to purchase things like the gatorade because I have no other option or will, I don't really need a this or that.

Caterpillar into Butterfly

Well caterpillar into cocoon at this point.  Will update with any real changes but I don't think there will be any more until butterfly is ready to come out.  

So the story goes, my boss grabbed some passion fruit flower leaves out of his yard to put in with a little gecko, a few days go by and I notice a two caterpillars in with the gecko.  I plan on taking them out but forget about it, the next time I go into work one is cocooned so I leave it and I take the other one out and take it home with me.  Over the next few days I give it some fresh leaves and watch it grow.  I doubled in size within a week.  

The caterpillar is a Gulf Fritillary, Agraulis vanillae. 

Then it starts getting REALLY fat and I start tweeting about it and someone asks for pictures. End result I decided to take pics and post a blog about it.  It really is fascinating.  I think I brought the caterpillar home around May 20th.  I took a picture of it when I brought it home but I think I may have deleted it, wait let me check my computers recycle bin.....nope nothing there, maybe I didn't take a picture.  It was probably just under an inch long when I brought it home.  

I apologize for the pictures, I didn't think to clean the sides of the little tank I put it in.  I think I had some crickets in there at some point and while I did wipe down the bottom it was only when I started taking pictures that I realized the sides were all spotted with stuff.  

Here are the pictures I have so far:

Tuesday June 2nd 6pm

I took this picture because he was so fat compared to when I brought it home I was amazed at how much it had eaten and how plump it was getting.  In this picture it is busy eating away at more leaves. 

Wednesday June 3rd 11am

The orange had been getting lighter for the past few days and when I set up the tank I specifically put the stick in like that and kept leaves away from it because I thought it would be the perfect spot for it to cocoon, looks like I was right.  I saw it here in the morning and around the time I took this picture it was putting some white substance on the stick by its mouth, which is on the right.  

This is just a crop of the above picture.  You get a better look at the actual caterpillar and his spines (and of the spots on the sides of the tank).

Wednesday June 3rd 5pm

I came home from work and look what I found.  

View from the other side and a surprise, another little caterpillar (on the leaf to the left of the big guy) that must have hatched since I brought the leaves home because I checked them for other caterpillars, didn't think to look for tiny little eggs.  I am going to take it out and put it into a very clean cage and grow him too and document it.

Thursday June 4th 12pm

Look all cocooned! It shed its caterpillar spines and stuff, big black blob under it and to the right.  All the little dots of black are caterpillar poop, there is A LOT of caterpillar poop in the cage. A LOT!!!!

I will update with more pics if things change and when butterfly comes out. Also will be keeping track of other little caterpillar.  

Week 3 of plastic tally

Week 3 Plastic

May 25th to 31st

-solo cup that I had been using to hold some all purpose ecover cleanser

-little plastic bag from a cleaning pad, don't plan on buying these ever again, they are pretty useless

-plastic container from new toothbrush, my husbands and a toothbrush he got from the dentist

-six pack ring, hubby brought 3 cans home from work, he worked late and the got dinner for him, he brought me some pizza and sodas

-ziploc bag from something finished in the cupboards

-2 grocery bags from takeout

-2 produce bags from using things bought at store, will be reused for kitty litter

-2 ice cream plastic seals, mmmmmm haagen daz and probably another one by the end of the night, have some dark chocolate waiting in the freezer for me

-plastic tape from sweet potato

-2 meat packages

-bag from rolls, will be reused for kitty litter

-2 styrofoam cups with 2 lids and 2 straws from take out

-pasta package, I wish the store I shopped at had bulk pastas, but I use plastic bags for bulk items still so it would only slightly lower the amount of plastic bags

-honey bottle, bottle recyclable lid is not

-bag of sugar, didn't use it up but put it into a glass jar to keep on my counter

-big bag of kitty litter, not pictured because it was used to clean the boxes and promptly taken out

-shoyu (soy sauce) bottle, it is #7 plastic, from now on we will be buying the smaller bottle that is glass so we can reuse it or recycle it

-trash bag from kitchen garbage can, usually only take trash out once every two weeks because our trash can is too big for our current trash making and it started smelling very badly this week

-styrofoam box from take out, place uses plastic whether you eat in or out more if you eat in actually because they serve their burritos on styrofoam trays if you eat there and wrap it in paper if you get it to go and serve everything in the same containter for take out or to go for the most part

I have 3 pictures:

First is one of the meat packages that I used at the beginning of the week and wasn't going to keep around and stinking to get a pic of it with everything else.

Then there is the bulk of the plastic that I arranged and took while dinner was cooking.

I thought I had gotten everything then I realized the leftovers were still in the fridge and I wasn't going to finish them and then I needed shoyu for dinner and I had not refilled our table bottle since using it up the other night and refilling that emptied the big bottle.

DIY cat beds

The use of this type of bed totally depends on what your cat likes.  I have 2 beds the cats love and 2 they have never used and a few more that they occasionally use, I think I have way too many beds for them as it is, oh well.  I decided I would no longer buy beds for my cats, I also had to take away the fuzzy ones they loved because my big kitty would pull at the fluff and eat it. I swear sometimes I think her belly is huge because it's full of non food items, but she has had belly x-rays recently so I know that is not the case.  

Whenever there are boxes around my kitties love getting in them and chewing on them, don't know what that is about.  They also love fleece so I put one of our fleece blankets in a flattish box and it is my big kitties new favorite beds.

I then had a regular size box and make a big squishy bed out of it by putting old sweaters and things in it and well they avoided it like the plague.  While I was cleaning today I decided to cut that box in half and use the bottom half as a bed, put some fleece blankets in it and had the big kitty take it for a test sleep.  She loved it and while she was in the bottom half I look over and the little one is in the top half.  So I got two beds for the price of one, well for no price at all actually.  I don't know why we had the box but it was from my husbands work.  I didn't put any blankets in and the top half of the box and the little one seems to love it so now they have their choice of padded or non padded.  

Here they are in their new box beds:

If you are the artistic type you could decorate them and they you wouldn't have cardboard boxes around your house but I am not and anything I did would probably be more of an eye sore than the sight of a box. 

I also found a use for old pants, apparently the little one loves sleeping on old pants. I gathered up a bunch of old pairs and didn't know what to do with them, they were holey in places and ways that can't really be salvaged, since I have ZERO sewing skills I wasn't sure what to do with them. I left them lying around and the kitten just loved lying on them.  I have my childhood toy box next to my bed and it holds my t-shirts and would get pile with things on top to the point I would not longer be able to get into it so I wanted to do something with it that was useful but also let me still get into it.  I ended up putting the pairs of old pants on it and it is where the kitten curls up every night.  Someone with sewing skills could probably make a blanket or something that looks nicer than pairs a pants laid on a toy box but for me it works, it's in a dark corner of my bedroom. In the picture you can see the indent the little one has made on the top left of the picture and the collection of black fur she has left too. 

More Plastic

I didn't track my actual trash this week. I did keep track of my plastic. I think this may become an obsession, and it's not a bad one, but I think my husband might get fed up of the pile of plastic that grows on the counter. It isn't that much though so it shouldn't be too bad. This week was a more eat at home week so there is a lot less convenience food trash. This is the whole households plastic trash not just mine, but it is just me and my hubby and a bunch of animals. It doesn't include any of the plastic he may use at work for personal consumption, i.e. plastic bottle of soda or something from the vending machine. It is literally all the plastic I use for myself. I did track how much plastic I use at work, for work purposes, in a day but I have not decided if I want to go there or not since there isn't a way to cut back or change what we use, it wouldn't be enlightening or anything. It would be more of a look at all this and I would start to feel real guilty and that's not the point.

Here is the list from Monday to Sunday, 18th to 24th:

-2 styrofoam meat trays with plastic film (only one is in the picture because it was thrown out at the beginning of the week)

-sugar bag (I could buy my sugar in bulk but I much prefer the organic and fair trade I can get although it's in a bag, I probably go through one bag a month if that)

-herb box (I bought a living mint plant from the grocery store, I did re-plant it but it's not looking so good)

-styrofoam box from leftovers

-tofu container (#2 plastic that is being recycled)

-2 lids and 2 straws from fast food cups

-cheese wrapper

-1 envelope with a plastic window

-plastic cover from set of hooks

-fig bar tray and wrapper (those things are so addicting)

-cap from box of chicken broth

-package for shoe insoles (been getting really sore feet from working on them all day)

-bubble wrap lined mailer

-safety seal wrap from a bottle top

-1 plastic grocery bag from buying insoles (not in picture but I did put the meat tray in a plastic bag left over from some previous shopping trip so let's pretend it's that bag)

-plastic foam padding from mailing (not pictured, forgot to add it to the pile)