Ma and Pa's Blog

While Larry & I were shopping at The Evil Retail Empire Walmart yesterday, I mentioned an article I’d read that stated  the toilet paper most Americans use in a year is worse for the environment than driving a Hummer.   Americans are toilet paper hogs, y’all: we use like 3 times as much TP as our European and Asian brethren.    Do we use the loo more often?  Sport dryer tushies?  I dunno.  Plus, we insist on planet-polluting, soft, fluffy stuff.  Not cool.   The article  listed the eco-friendly brands (the only one of which I recalled was Trader Joe’s) and the planet-ravaging brands (the only one of which I remembered was my fave, Charmin).  And toilet paper was on our shopping  list.  Because dry tushies are a priority around here.

Well, all Larry had to hear was “…worse than driving a Hummer”.  If there’s one thing that gets his liberal heart a-bleeding, it’s seeing a big honkin’ Hummer (ALWAYS with only one person inside–what’s up with that?) driving along the street or taking up two parking places.  He reasoned that if  the fluffy, foo-foo stuff was a no-no, then HIS fave, Scott’s, should be the solution.  (Some of you may recall Larry’s Scott Toilet Paper Philosophy: “When you use Scott’s, you KNOW you’ve been wiped”).  So into the cart goes a king-sized pack of  Scotts.

When we got home, I checked the article.  Damned if Scott’s isn’t  just as bad as my Charmin!  So I figure that third-world toilet paper is the way the environmentalists want us to go.  But if scratchy-butt Scott’s is too decadent, the other stuff must leave splinters.  This ecology stuff hurts.

Over the years, we have perfected our own workable method of traveling to unfamiliar areas: clueless-ly driving around in ever-decreasing circles until we stumble upon either a) our destination or b) a familiar landmark. The driving is sometimes, but not always, accompanied by grim silence and seething irritation, depending on the urgency of finding the destination (or making a flight). Maps? Google search? We got ‘em–but sometimes traffic or maybe just our a.d.d. seem to get in the way and, ta-da! we veer off left–to adventure. Generally, though, we manage to remain fairly congenial and philosophical, because–hey, it’s what we do. No matter that we never can find anything a second time, since we found it the FIRST time by pure accident, and we had no earthly idea where the hell we were or how the hell we got there. It has been a comfortable means of travel, which we have perfected over our nearly 40 years together.

This summer, though, we are going to be visiting two remote forest-y areas: Shenandoah in VA and Hocking Hills in OH. And I got to thinking that it’s less appealing to be wandering around aimlessly in the woods than it was a few years ago. So we decided to spring for a tom-tom gps. I am looking forward to punching in “restaurant” and having our menu of options appear on the tiny screen, instead of driving down any random street in the hopes of finding somewhere to go to dinner. Or asking our new best friend how to get back to the cottage. Or home.

We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of our new purchase, and, with it, our new, focused mode of travel. Dad is looking forward to having yet another woman telling him where to go, sans the shrill, irritated tones that are apparently my style. And I’m sure we’ll still veer off the plotted course, as the whim takes us–it will be fun to confuse the electronic mapster!

I have tried many times to start plants from seeds. Flowers, vegetables–the seedlings all die. This year I tried mightily to grow some basil from seed and, once again, I had to toss the damned tray of dead/dying seedlings into the trash and buy a couple pots of healthy, happy basil. Now, it’s not a big deal, obviously. But as I was grubbing around in the flower beds I got to thinking about Peak Oil and the coming famine. If these guys are correct, we’ll have to grow our own produce in a few years and man, we are totally screwed. The only way I’ll be able to keep my family fed is if I volunteer to go to the Soylent Green factory.

 In my opinion, a grand insult to our troops –

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