Life List: I Don't Know Why I Keep Agreeing to This Stuff

Note: I added a new section to my Life List, of things we want to do and see while we're living in Virginia. Check it out! Anything I should add that's a must-see or do or eat? :)

This weekend, we went hiking. I'd been looking forward to trying to hike McAfee Knob on Catawba Mountain, which is a really popular hiking spot around here, and Matt had a friend from grad school that was going to be in town with a church group, so we decided to meet at the base of the mountain and spend the afternoon walking up it together. I was informed that it was a relatively easy hike, about three miles each way, and I thought that it would be okay since I was fine on the four-mile-round-trip hike up the Cascades last summer.

I had a goal: to finally break 10,000 steps. Because I've been wearing this pedometer for two months and still only maxed out around 6,000 steps on a good day. I figured six miles would put me around 12,000 steps or so, and that seemed good. I was excited to start.

We started walking. It was a beautiful day, if not a little muddy from all the rain we'd gotten the week before, but the trail was well-kept and it was quite nice. I was only moderately out of breath.

And we walked and walked and walked, and I thought that surely we should have reached the top by now. Things were getting steeper, and we'd been hiking for a very long time. And then we saw a sign that said "McAfee Knob - 1.9 miles" — which, by the way, was the first trail marker we'd seen other than the ones for shelters and campsites.

That's about the time I realized that this a) was not an easy-for-novices hike, and b) it was not the advertised three miles. It was about four and a half miles each way, which I know because a) my pedometer was tracking the distance, and b) I broke 11,000 steps on the way to the top. And I was in pain. I am not a great hiker. This was my third-ever time hiking. I started asking the people walking down how much further as we passed them. And they'd say, still a ways to go, or you're so close! At one point, someone said that it was only about four minutes to the top.

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Now, I have to interject a quick story from earlier in the week here. About a week ago, I went to the doctor because my allergies were driving me crazy. I wasn't allergic to anything in Texas, but apparently I am allergic to all the plants in Virginia. The doctor told me to take an over-the-counter non-D allergy pill, and told me to call her in two weeks if they weren't working. Well, they worked great and I could breathe fine, but they were keeping me awake at night. So after a week of only getting two hours of sleep per night, I ended up sobbing on Matt about something entirely stupid, and he was like, maybe you shouldn't take those anymore. So the night before this hike was the first decent night of sleep I'd gotten in a week, because I'd chosen to skip the allergy pill.

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So we're "four minutes" from the top, and at that point I was breathing hard and my sinuses were driving me nuts, and I was tired and way behind the rest of the group, and I didn't believe we were actually near the top because I had been LIED TO about many things on this trip, so I started crying and I sat down on a rock while the gnats tried to eat my face until Matt said he could literally see the crest from the place he was standing 50 feet away from me.

So I dragged myself up the last fifty feet, and then sat in the shade and refused to talk to Matt.

These people look happy.

After I was done crying, and done wishing I could pitch myself off the cliff instead of walking down, and done debating whether I should eat my banana or throw it at Matt, we wandered around the top of the rock face for a bit. The views were spectacular; I could see why it was so popular. If only I had been prepared for how long and difficult it actually was!

We took an "easier" route on the way down, aka the fire-escape route, but it was still a long way back to the parking lot. By the time we got to the truck, I had gotten to 23,000 steps, but my legs and knees and ankles and the arches of my feet were in so much pain that I wasn't even excited to have broken my record so spectacularly.

And I told Matt — again — that I never want to go hiking again. I think I've given it a legitimate chance, but I think hiking just isn't for me. There are plenty of other kinds of exercise I enjoy, and I'd rather spend my time on those. (I mean, I love walking! How can hiking be so terrible?!)

Do you enjoy hiking? Have you found yourself utterly unprepared for anything lately?

Here, Let Me Show You Some Pictures of Dirt

Beets on the left, carrots on the right.

Look here at this tub-o'-dirt. This thing is going to feed us. For like, at least a couple days. If all goes as planned.

Zucchini in the flower bed.

This dirt too.

Basil on the left, tomatoes on the right. Attempting to grow starts.

What's that? Not everyone keeps dirt in their guest bedroom? Well that's too bad. Because it's the only room we can reasonably keep Elliott out of, and she likes to destroy every project I try to do. Like remember how we're composting? We keep a container on the counter of scraps and we empty it into the big composter/can every few days. But she keeps eating scraps out of the counter container and then throwing them up, so we covered it with a rag and that didn't stop her. We covered it with a piece of cardboard and put a three-pound dumbbell on the top of it and THAT DIDN'T STOP HER. This cat is way smarter than we are, I'm pretty sure. Now we've got it wrapped in a plastic bag with the cardboard and the dumbbell on top. I fully expect her to figure out a way to get to it anyway.

Banana pepper on the left, tomato plant on the right.

All that to say, I planted my spring garden last weekend. This year, I am attempting to grow various things from seeds, including basil, sweet-100 tomatoes, beets, baby carrots and zucchini. I also have two starter plants of hot banana peppers and cherry tomatoes. I will be ridiculously happy if any of the seeds grow at all. I have very low expectations for my ability to grow things, but I figure I've got to learn somehow, so might as well start now.

(I originally wrote this post on Sunday night. Since then, my starter seeds in the guest bedroom looked like they were starting to grow a fuzzy white mold, but then last night I saw some teeny tiny green saplings sprouting up out of the basil pods! PLEASE STAY ALIVE, LITTLE BASILS.)

Are you planting a spring garden? What's in yours? What's your favorite spring/summer fruit/veggie?

No More Produce Bags!

A few years ago, I started taking reusable bags to the grocery store. I figured reducing the amount of plastic bags I used could only be a good thing.

But I was still bothered, because even though I was no longer using plastic to haul my load home, I was still bringing home several plastic bags a week in the form of produce bags. Those things are sneaky, and made me feel guilty.

I slowly started phasing them out. I stopped putting things like onions and avocadoes in plastic, figuring that the outer layer always gets removed before prepping and eating them. Then I stopped putting fruit in produce bags, letting the apples and lemons roll around my cart footloose and fancy free.

A few weeks ago, I stopped putting lettuce and cilantro in plastic bags. And things got messy. If I'm paying for a head of lettuce, I don't want the leaves to start falling off on the checkout conveyor belt. Plus, I have a thing about other people touching my food. (I once told a cashier at HEB to do something about her hands after she sneezed on them and then grabbed my loaf of bread to scan. Eeeugh.)

But I've finally found a solution to keep other people's hands off my food (for the most part) and avoid using plastic bags. I made my own mesh produce bags.

I made a few larger ones for things like lettuce and lunch fruit, and some smaller bags for things like cilantro or shallots. It was pretty easy. I just got some mesh from JoAnn's in my favorite colors (NOT tulle mesh, but a heavier kind), and I sewed some quick straight lines around the top edging and sides.

I haven't tried washing them yet, but they should hold up under the gentle cycle. I'm not sure if the dryer will shrink them, so they'll probably just air dry.

And of course, if you like the idea of avoiding plastic produce bags but don't want to deal with sewing, you can purchase pre-made produce bags here.

What craft projects have you been working on lately? Have you taken any steps recently to reduce your share of trash?

Scrap Veggies

I feel like everyone has something they're super passionate about, right? Well, (one of) mine is the environment. I'm really thankful that our new city has really awesome recycling facilities, because back in College Station we could basically only recycle white paper, plastic, and certain colors of glass, and it made my soul die a little every time I had to throw away something that could have totally been recycled in any other city.

But even with the better recycling options, I'm always looking for ways to reduce the amount of trash we produce, because it bothers me a lot how wasteful we are as a society. How wasteful we are as a household, and there's only the two of us! We are far from perfect, and send an awful lot of trash to the landfill every week, and my goal is to be more aware of it and reduce our refuse when possible.

A long time ago, I decided I wanted to try my hand at composting our food scraps, and it didn't go over that well. I ended up with a tiny bucket full of sludge because I didn't know the first thing about helping stuff decompose. But, live and learn: I did some more research this time, and about a month ago, I built my own large bin composter for the backyard. (I used this tutorial.)

And by "built" I mean "drilled some holes in this trash can I got from Lowe's."

Thankfully, Matt has been really on board with all my efforts to throw away less stuff. We hardly use paper towels anymore, thanks to having clean rags within easy reach all the time. And now we throw away significantly fewer food scraps. He's gotten even more into composting than I have!

We keep a little flower pot in the kitchen to collect egg shells and veggie peelings, and then every day (or every other day), we'll toss it out into the compost bin. Every week, when I get the newspaper and circulars in the mail, I'll shred them and toss them in as well, along with a handfull of potting soil. And then one of us (most likely Matt) shakes the bin up to keep it all mixed and working.

And despite the fact we've been throwing food in here for more than a month, it doesn't really even smell.

It hasn't been that long, and we use the 32-gallon bin an awful lot, but I'm excited to get to a place where we can turn all our compostable food waste into soil. My goal is to eventually have a small garden in our backyard, so we can grow a few types of veggies. (Our basil plant didn't survive the drive to Virginia, and our pepper plant gave us two marble-sized Mexibells before the weather got cold and it freaked out.) At some point, I may have to make a second bin, so we can keep throwing scraps in while the first bin decomposes, but we're not to that point yet.

What is it that you're really passionate about? Do you compost?

I Want to Try an Experiment

We are a major paper-towel-using family. We regularly go to Sam's Club and buy ALL THE PAPER TOWELS.

Or you know, just one package of them. But one package contains a lot of rolls.

And then we use all of them.

And my environment-loving heart dies a little every time we have to buy more.

Unrelated, the other day I was Googling ways to save money, and an idea I hadn't considered before popped up: use cloth towels instead of paper towels for normal household messes, and then when they're dirty, throw them in the washer. (Exception: bodily fluids, because that's just gross. I'm also going to include the cat's bodily fluids, because Elliott likes to revenge-puke and it's revolting.) The author mentioned that they had a roll of paper towels that they hadn't finished off in over a year because of this habit. Color me impressed. We go through like a roll a month!

I know paper towels aren't really that expensive and therefore won't actually save us a whole lot in the short-term, but my greater concern is that I'm tired of throwing stuff in the trash. Our city's recycling programs are extremely limited, I'm not able to compost properly in our little "backyard," and we throw a lot of stuff away that could be prevented under different circumstances. And I'm not one to let my circumstances make decisions for me.

So I whipped up a few "towels" out of some old T-shirts, put them in a basket and set the basket on the kitchen table. And I want to just see if I can go ... say, a month? ... without reverting back to paper waste. I've already caught myself reaching for the paper towels when I need a place to put food scraps while I'm slicing and dicing, or when the counter has schmutz on it and needs to be wiped down. I want to get to a point someday where I don't even think about using paper towels for these things.

How do you reduce waste in your house? What products do you use just way too much?

Plastic Grates on My Nerves

I'm a big ol' treehugger. Recycling makes me super happy. Composting makes me super happy. It pains me greatly when Matt shops at Sam's and they individually package every single item inside the main packaging. (Seriously. He bought a pack of sponges a few weeks ago, and they came wrapped in plastic. Then when the plastic was removed, and each individual sponge was, again, wrapped in plastic. WTF? How is that necessary? This stuff isn't recyclable! Plastic never biodegrades!)

So anyway, I'd been running low on shower gel for like a week, and every time I thought about buying a new bottle, I'd think, "How many of these plastic bottles have I gone through in my lifetime?" It was depressing to think about it. Then I actually ran out of soap and didn't want to be stinky, so I bit the bullet and got some more. But the wheels in my head had already started turning.

I poked around Pinterest until I found a couple of different recipes for making your own body wash, and picked the easier-sounding one. I figured I could make me some soap, and then just put it back in my old body-wash bottle so there wouldn't be any unnecessary bottle tossage.

The only downside I could see to this plan is that our city does not recycle the thin cardboard that bar soap comes in. I just can't win.

But nevertheless, it was worth a shot for the gallons of body wash I figured I could make for a couple of bucks. I bought me a few bars of soap and got down to business.

Grating my bars of soap directly into the pot while watching New Girl.

I added a few drops of red food coloring into the water so my soap would be pink!

Hmm. Perhaps a little too much food coloring. It looks like Pepto Bismol.

Finished soap, cooling off. That's it?

I don't know what I was expecting, but the end result was way less body wash than I thought it was going to be. There's maybe (maybe) a quart's worth in there. It's also a lot more watery than normal shower gel is. All in all, I don't know if it's worth it to do this again, since the finished result isn't as good as normal body wash.

Would you ever make your own body wash? Do you think something like this would even make a dent in my grand scheme of saving the planet? (It's okay if you don't think so. Sometimes I need to be talked off a ledge.)

My New Toy

For Christmas, I asked my mom for a composter. They didn't have them in stock at Lowe's, and she's not very Web-savvy, so she forgot to order it until after Christmas. Now, at the end of January, I finally have it in my hot little hands!

I've always really like the idea of composting items that would otherwise go in the garbage. So much is packed into landfills every day, that even biodegradable items take MUCH longer to decompose than they would under normal circumstances. I just want to do my part to eliminate as much waste as possible! (If you're interested in doing the same, check out the great blog My Zero Waste. It's got a lot of practical information on ways to recycle items you wouldn't think are recyclable and products that are green.)

So far I lurve my composter. In like three days, I've crammed it full of wilted produce, egg shells, coffee grounds and dead flowers. The unfortunate thing is ... in like three days, I've already crammed it full. Because it's small, it's supposed to be used primarily in the kitchen, and then the innards are supposed to be added to a larger, outdoor compost pile once it's full.

Now, I don't really have much of a yard, so I don't have a way of making a larger composting pile. (Even if we had the space, our neighbors take care of a lot of feral cats, and I don't want the kitty-boos hanging out in my trash.) But, I have a friend who gardens and has her own large composting pile, and she has volunteered to let me dump my scraps in their pile. Hooray!

Do you compost?