Let There Be Light...

Recipe for a refuse lamp:

• Get you a lamp. Preferably one found sitting in the communal trash area of an apartment complex you lived at 4 years ago and you've been using as a plain jane boring lamp since then. (We lived at the apartment complex, not in the communal trash area, though from the amount of furniture discarded there every week you could make yourself right comfortable amongst the trash bins if need be. I swear that trash area had nicer furniture than most people's houses I've been in)
• Gather your guilt and accumulated pile of stuff you can't bare to throw in the trash and decide if you're gonna have it take up space in your house it might as well be as something useful. Things like aluminum coffee pots that got funky inside and are no longer being used since you've upgraded to the stainless steel model of them, a broken coffee cup, a sweet looking steel cut oats can and some corks are all good.
• Ask your Mother-in-law to keep her eyes peeled for a colander for a lamp shade for your kitchen-esque themed refuse lamp creation and then have her actually go one better and score a .25 cent fryer basket from a yard sale and be kind enough to give it to you.
• Don some swank looking safety goggles and then drill holes in everything so the rod of the lamp can fit through and stack it all up on the lamp rod as you see fit. Please note you can do a nice messy job of cracking out the bottom of the coffee mug because a neat and tidy hole won't make any difference, since it's pressed down against oats can lid. Holding your breath while slamming a screw driver down through the bottom of the coffee cup may or may not have been what kept the entire thing from shattering...but don't rule it out. Never rule out the power of holding your breath.
• Bat your eyelashes at your blue eyed husband and call upon his expert handy man skills and assistance in wiring the lamp back together, bending bits of metal and also encouraging you not to run around like a mad woman drilling holes in everything until you're sure they'll all fit on the lamp rod. Thanks to him I don't have half a dozen items with holes in them that don't need em.......
• Get a cute little fluorescent bulb and screw in to your wicked awesome refuse lamp and turn it on with a few soft spoken words and whispered bits of flattery...or you can just hit the switch.
• Bask in the soft light of your creation that cost...well what ever the price of the bulb and two bits of wire cost.

(Place of honor on top of the fridge for my kitchen-esque themed lamp!)

(The cat was exhausted and couldn't stay awake any longer waiting for us to finish our lamping. Either that or she was bored senseless.)

Biting the bullet about dust eaters biting the dust...just bites.

If you're anything like me you've spent many an hour agonizing over your dust buster. You haven't? Umm......well this is awkward.
Let me restart the beginning of my blab-fest with this then....I have this friend...um..yeah...and SHE (who is NOT me) has spent many an hour agonizing over her dust buster. Because that's the kind of person she is.
The kind of person who'd always thought a dust buster was a frivolous, extravagant purchase but none the less eyed them with something akin to lust in the department stores. Never daring to let her gaze linger too long, lest her husband suspect her desires. She had a vacuum cleaner did she not? She reasoned with herself, why would she need a second apparatus that sucked?
Was she enamored by the delicate pastel hued plastic body?
Was she tickled over the idea of a teeny weeny cleaning machine she could keep in her kitchen? Was she just sick?
Yes, yes and no. She was in love, and afraid to admit it...until......
I'm sure you know where this is headed.
An "until" so heavily laden with passion and intrigue can only lead to one thing.....an explosion of gasping, girlish delight in the middle of a Linens n' Things as she was brought to her knees by a display of dust busters for only 14.99.
Ignoring one's secret desire is easy...until....you're faced with your secret desire only costing 14.99. Also, stuttering and stammering and clutching the unit they had on display in a childish "mine, mine, mine" sort of attitude goes a long way towards shattering the illusions that you're a cool, sophisticated woman who doesn't swoon over dust busters. My....HER husband was surprised.
"You really want one?"
And he asked it in such a casual way that implied he wasn't shocked, or disgusted by her needs, just surprised that she was hyperventilating over the 14.99 price tag, and manically searching for crumbs on the store floor so she could play with the demo unit. Lifting her husband's feet and knocking dirt onto the floor so she could feed her little beast.... crooning "There's a good plastic baby, mama's gonna fix you up good."
They bought one.
She cried the first night. Not realizing the new addition to the household had to charge first for 24 hours. It sat there happily suckling electricity from the plug whilst she eyed the little piles of crumbs that seemed to have miraculously appeared on every surface, as if sensing the arrival of the chosen one. Crumbs she could not, in good conscience, clean in any other way but with her new dust buster.
Finally, the next day....the day that took for-fricking-ever to arrive, she and her dust buster were united in the full glory that is a woman and her little sucking device coming together in holy house cleaning union.
She buzzed about the living room and kitchen, sucking up crumbs. Where there weren't crumbs she MADE crumbs, so as to test the little sucker on every surface available. Her husband was delighted by her strange and baffling joy that a little tool could bring.
When it's battery wound down she didn't howl. She just bit her lip and held the dark cloud of despair at bay by screeching, "WHY DID IT STOP?"
"It's not meant for cleaning an entire house." Her husband rationally explains. "5 minutes is a pretty good run time for picking up crumbs, if you think about it. If you have more than 5 minutes worth of crumbs to clean up maybe you need to use the big vacuum right?"
He made a lot of sense. And eventually the cloud of despair would retreat far enough that she could see this logic and not just stand and stare at her little plastic baby slurping electricity from the plug, belly full of coffee grounds, bits of tortilla chips and scraps of paper she'd ripped and scattered across the carpet for testing purposes.
Life was rainbows, sunbeams and lollypops for a while. Until......
Damn them "untils"........everything life changing happens after an until, have you ever noticed?
Well...all was perfect...UNTIL......she noticed she couldn't suck all the crumbs under the edge of the counter PLUS the coffee grounds around the stove all in one go......how odd.....it was as if the little plastic baby was growing weaker......she couldn't admit it until one day her husband innocently said, "It sounds like that thing is dying."
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Why would you say that? Why? WHY?????? You don't like my dust buster do you? You've never wanted me to have a dust buster, you'd let coffee grounds just pile up till we lived on nothing but coffee grounds, and wore nothing but coffee grounds, I suppose you think I ought to just quit spilling coffee grounds huh? HUH?????????????? "
He forgave her. As he understood the depth of love she had for the dust buster, having had such a relationship with a harmonica himself.
He suggested she time it. Cleverly realizing lets not have HIM destroy her dreams but lets have MATH do it. Numbers never lie, they may scar your soul with mind numbing cruelty, revealing truths that are too big for some minds to grasp....like the number of pints of ice cream left in the freezer, the number of poisonous snakes in the world or that your dust buster that used to run for 5 minutes at a time and now runs for only 40 seconds....but they never lie. Math will break your heart time and time again but it never lies.
40 seconds.
And every day she unites in cleaning joy with her plastic companion the time is less......Death hovers over the plastic dust buster with every hairball it consumes.
So fine, what ever, death is the inevitable conclusion to life, well that's just FRICKING PEACHY.
Is there a funeral service for the dust buster?
A final resting place?
Is there reincarnation for the dust buster?
Are batteries, life giving batteries, easily and readily available for the poor wee duster buster whose clock is running out?
*sigh*
The funeral services for most people's dust busters involve a complicated and scary process of smothering the plastic tool in yet more plastic, having it carted off by strangers in a loud rumbly truck and buried amongst everything our society considers too disgusting to keep. No loving embrace of sweet mother earth should ever be given to the dust buster, I feel very certain it goes against it's religious beliefs.
It's like a mummy, but instead of put in a museum on display where we put all the other old timey mummys that refuse to deteriorate, it's discarded. Hidden deep in our garages....IF it's lucky....and if it's not, it's sent along to the garbage heap. And a shiny NEW dust buster comes in to take it's place but like a pet...you know...you just KNOW you're going to outlive it......that some day, a hell of a lot sooner than you'd like, you will be faced with the same situation all over again....
Poor little dust buster, and poor she who longs to keep using her little cleaning aid and yet knows the time is drawing near. A decision will have to be made.
Which is more important to her? Hearing the gentle purr of a NEW Mr. Sucker-upper as he happily gobbles up the day's mess under the edge of the counter....or the environment? Will she start a collection of dead dust busters to join the blenders in the garage? Or will she realize that by keeping her kitchen counters garbage free by mechanical means she might actually be contributing to a larger garbage problem on the earth.....
Crap.
Seriously, why do I.........of course, just a slip of the fingers, why does SHE even have to think of these things?
Why care about the future generations? Why give a rat's ass about her legacy to the earth?
Why think about what she'll have to do with the old, dead dust buster when it finally bites the dust? Why can't she just throw it out and never think about it?
WHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHY?
Is this cause her Mother was talking about goats whilst in labour with her? It all goes back to that doesn't it? She's a fricking hippy wanna-be because her Mother had to be running her mouth off about goats whilst giving birth. Something like that's gotta scar a child ya know?
So......she thinks about her dust buster, but enjoys the time they have together in the here and now.
Maybe by some miracle of miracles it won't die. Maybe it will forever run for 40 seconds at a time, just enough time to whizz through the kitchen chasing dust bunnies.
I hear too that she wonders how people cleaned up crumbs before dust busters? There's this thing called a whisk broom, like a regular broom only tiny........tiny is cute......though she doesn't dare speak of such things as whisk brooms around her Mr. Sucker-upper, lest he hear and ask uncomfortable questions she can't answer. Like what happens if some day....there's not even 40 seconds?
What if there's not even 2?
Will Mr.Sucker-upper be given a place of honor as art amongst all the prized possessions that are jammed in every corner, crowding every surface of the house? How valuable is he to the household when he can't work any more?
She might steal side long glances at him as he sleeps, recharging for the next hopefully 40 second cleaning spree and acknowledge.....he's beautiful as a dust buster....but as art? Hmmmmmm.....
Hope stirs, I know this for a fact. She has hope. One can't spend endless hours worrying, and agonizing over their dust buster and not have some hope.....a new battery? A new life? A new purpose?
She can't predict what the future holds but I damn well know this....he won't be garbage. He will NEVER be garbage.
He might become the world's funkiest flower vase, or secret compartment to hide valuables, weirdly shaped doll, strange little planter or the world's clunkiest cat toy that never gets played with....but he'll never be garbage.

Hmmmmmmmm...do you see what I see...would that make him..Dirty Smurf?

New Year's Resolutions: Or how I can not fail!

(Writing my resolutions, bet I can keep mine up more then you can keep yours)

• I resolve to swear more often and use the Z%$#^ word in creative ways at least 3 times a week. (and one of those times will be in front of the baggers at the grocery store, is there anything more fun then making teenagers cringe?)

• I resolve to buy more ice cream. Piling carton upon carton into my super market basket. Especially when skinny minny women and big eyed children are present, so that they may weep with envy at my icy cold gluttony. So they shall turn green with jealousy over my wild ice cream ways. Store clerks will raise an eyebrow, just one, as they ring through my purchases and ask if we're having a party, and I shall pertly answer with just the right amount of acid on my tongue (as in tone not drug) that no, we're not having a party we're having ice cream.

• I resolve to drink more port and solve every one's problems whilst tipping back a few. Is there any issue in the world that couldn't be solved whilst in the hazy glow of a port warmed brain muddle?

• I resolve to buy newly released Nora Roberts books so soon off the store shelves that the covers are still warm from the stock boy's hands.

• I resolve to talk loudly in public about our secret rendezvous with the french embassy and that we have the goods hidden in a cracker box at the grocery store. Just so some house wife can have a little thrill....and possibly some crackers.

• I resolve to learn more words in Spanish because even though I can apply "caliente" to a lot of things it would be cooler if I could say "mucho caliente". Like I would like a mucho caliente new hat, or wow that baby has the cutest mucho caliente dimples I've ever seen. For you Canadians mucho caliente= tres chaud (approximately I think)

• I resolve to reduce the amount of trash we throw out every week to even smaller amounts then last year, so that I can prance my tiny can down to the corner and throw my hands up in a gesture of "TAKE THAT!" attitude as our neighbors put their overflowing trash bins next to ours. Then I will dance a little "ha ha I'm hurting the environment less then you" kind of dance whilst they slink away, possibly even in tears.

• I resolve to watch Talladega Nights at least once a month, or at least this scene which is the BEST movie scene EVER. I dare you to defy me. Saying Grace
  

My Little bit....

My Nod To Blog Action Day: The Environment........
You know how sometimes you throw a piece of trash in the garbage can and then have to go weep in the corner, curled up in the fetal position sucking your thumb and cradling bits of number 1 and number 2 plastic?
The days when you drag yourself back and lift the lid of the garbage and stare into it's nasty abyss wondering "WHY oh WHY? What sense does this make?" The days you glare down at the things that you've accumulated in your daily life that can't be recycled.
And oh sure you're on the right path, gleefully recycling all the bits of plastic with the proper numbers (which you memorized 1 and 2, yay me!), the tin cans the glass bottles. Chuckling merrily to yourself at your own genius in setting a little basket in the middle of the kitchen to collect the recycling before taking it down to the big can in the garage. Where it sleeps until it's weekly trip to Trash Heaven. You've even developed an eagle eye that can turn menacing in a wink if some one should so much as look like they're going to throw that soda can in to the *gasp* non-recyclable trash.
Your relatives think you're a kook because on Christmas morning whilst they all roll around under the tree playing with plastic dinosaurs you're diving across the room grabbing crumpled wrapping paper from people's hands doing an excellent impression of a Hobbit gone wrong by snarling and cooing t2 And even with the rug burn from the slide to save the paper you're as bursting with joy at saving it as any one person could be.
So you have those days, when despite all your best efforts at not contributing needlessly to the waste and horror of a landfill site you end up cuddling your garbage, sprawled across the kitchen floor whispering to it that you're sorry. Damn sorry that tasty fresh sprouts have to come in a container with a number five, NUMBER FIVE. Goll dang it, why can't my disposal service take number five? WHY didn't I LOOK at the bottom of the container before I bought the sprouts? WHY why why why........ Days like this not even ice cream can fix. (well I mean I'm not saying don't go for the ice cream, you should always go for the ice cream I'm just saying in some rare instances the ice cream can't actually make the problem go away. I know, I'm as shocked as you.)
Ohhhhhh those days, those dark days of depression over being born in to a world where they already had a silly trash system in place, where it's the norm to just tie things up in a non biodegradable plastic bag and cart it away to be forgotten about. The world doesn't have a reset button...that I've found. It's not under any rock in the yard.
I can't stand garbage. The kind that has a life span of sometimes literally minutes. There are cups and containers and straws and all kinds of icky things out there that are meant to exist only as long as it takes for us to shovel the fast food in to our mouths. Is that not insane? Easy solution is to cut down on stuff like that. If you can't.....then tell me where you live so I can smack you over the head with my environmental stick, guaranteed to make you think twice about a piece of Styrofoam or plastic that will be buried lovingly in a hole for a zillion years. Ewwwwwwww.
You don't have to be a waste disposal environmental genius with pink tights and a sequined cape like me...er..hypothetically speaking.... to realize that some things are just wrong. That the world sped along a track so fast it can't get off it with out major reconstruction and rethinking.......
The only thing to do on a day like that, besides sucking down some primo tequila from a lovely (and recyclable) glass bottle is to remind oneself that being AWARE of a problem is better then nothing. And if some one should see me passed out on the kitchen mat, spooning the garbage can maybe it'll make them aware too. One that tequila lasts longer...so to speak....if you mix it with lime juice and TWO (and more importantly) that it might make THEM aware of garbage as well. Just a little bit, and if you add up all the little bits of the world you wind up with one hell of a BIG bit. And a BIG BIT of awareness could and does lead to all sorts of life changing discoveries.
If we all just cried a little bit more when reluctantly resigning the empty chip bag to the trash can then maybe some day chip bags would be recyclable, or maybe we wouldn't buy chips that weren't in recyclable bags OR maybe we'd at least find ways for garbage to have a longer life span. Why use it once if you can use it twice. It's just a little bit but remember...your little bit and my little bit can get together and have a little bit party and soon the world will heave a sigh of relief that we're no longer jamming our nasties in to holes.
Like imagine that YOU are the earth, and you have a population of little critters living on you. (Gross right off the bat right?) Well imagine if the little critters managed to start producing horrific amounts of non-biodegradable, poisonous trash from your very own natural resources and THEN they dig a HOLE IN YOU AND BURY IT! Wouldn't that suck? It would.
I rest my case.
So to reiterate:

• Recycling.... GOOD
• Non-Recyclable things..... BAD
• One time use thingies that have a life span for as long as it takes to eat a bag of chips...BAD
• Giving the bag away to some one by using it as innovative wrapping paper.... DAMN GOOD.
• Avoiding buying non-recyclable chip bags in the future GOOD but not completely possible until somebody starts selling organic chips in a recyclable bag.....OR I learn to make my own.......stay tuned!

(note I don't say I'll just give up chips, it's important to be a realist)

(this beautifully gift wrapped bottle is housed in not one but TWO empty corn chip bags, a little slicing and dicing for that sassy fringe at the top. Tied together with a savedtwist tie that boasts the word *organic* from some produce we'd bought and all topped off with the gorgeous sour cream container flowers. Just cut our flower shapes and stack on a pin for that lovely layered flower look. Not only is it cute, the wrapping was FREE and best part gave a second chance to items normally thrown straight in to the trash.)

Recycling: "or how people suck"

Some of my trash takes a trip to heaven every week. It's a known fact (at least in my own head) that trash yearns to be reincarnated. Wouldn't you? I much prefer the idea of coming back in a new form after I pass on rather then just lying like a lump some where. The other can of trash, though I'm pleased to say is a lot less then the recyclables, is sent off to much less enjoyable afterlife. Poor trash. In fact it's afterlife pretty much sucks, buried in a lined hole for eternity or at least till the futuristic generations dig it up to marvel at how stupid every one was in the past.
"Look at that, straws! You use them once for a short period of time with the full intention of throwing them in the garbage to be buried. Can you believe we came from those imbecilic idiots?"
*insert rant about stupid human race producing non recyclable everything and burying all our waste in big holes here*
It's too exhausting to write how frustrating it all is but on the positive side I'm recycling more now then I used to. I buy products more often based on their packaging. Spices in containers I can recycle, same with milk. There's a lot of things that can be done with a little effort and thought so that makes me feel good. Plus how much good karma am I building up by being less responsible for the pollution of the planet then every one else? Sweeeeet. hahaha Nothing like doing a good deed for the glory of it. I'm gonna get tshirts made:
"My trash kicks your trash's ass"

RANT!RANT!RANT!

I have decided that people, I mean all people, are stupid. No really, think about it. We exist on this beautiful planet and are clever enough to advance from dirt and sticks to huge skyscrapers, cars, computers and oodles and oodles of mass produced things. It's insane, I can't even imagine how we got from rocks and sticks and plants to this keyboard I'm typing at, the screen I'm looking at. It's almost like magic. I won't deny I enjoy all the wonders of new technology and living a bit above the rocks and sticks level....
But the thing that's so stupid about humans isn't that we can create all these amazing things from literally nothing it's that we think it's o.k. to just bury all the old stuff. Or thought it was o.k. to go ahead and create things that we didn't know what to do with when they were past their purpose. Who's idea was that?? Maybe in the *old* days it made sense because everything you buried was a lot closer to it's original "dirt and sticks" incarnation. Like if you buried your left over meal scraps, and old wood bits it actually helped your land be richer. But then we clever humans figured out how to make things that were stronger and last better and don't disappear as easily into the ground as the bones and plants and wood. But the habit was there, bury the trash, If we don't see it and it's not in my yard it doesn't exist. I think I can understand how after an entire human history of just carting your old stuff off to be buried that it would become something we're all used to.
But I don't like it. It hurts to put stuff in the trash can and know it's going to be buried in a hole some where. I looked it up, it's a *lined* hole so it doesn't mess up water systems...so..o.k....then what?? What happens when that hole fills up. And say by some miracle of miracle the whole thing manages to compost itself in like a zillion years? Do you want your great great great great grand babies digging in dirt made from diapers and and old radios and icky Band-Aids? Uggh and that's just some of the lesser nasty stuff that gets buried every day!!
It just seems so wrong that all the world is TRYING to start recycling programs etc AFTER the fact. AFTER every one is already used to just throwing stuff away and not thinking about it any more.
I'm one of the people who enjoys all these new things that come from human advancement in modern technology. I buy clay made from plastic, I buy glue and sparkles and all these things to make MORE things and I wonder if they'll be trash themselves in a hundred years. I try to balance my life though, I try to be aware of the choices I make. So besides the hot glue and paint and ribbon I use old bottle caps and wrapping paper and lightbulbs etc.
My garage fills up with blender motors and old office chairs and assorted doodads that I don't really want......BUT......I can not bear to throw them in the trash. It's frustrating because I don't necessarily NEED 2 working blender motors and an old food processor but how can you donate 2 working blender motors to a thrift store? They're sort of useless unless you have 2 good blender jars and no motor. The bizarre thing is if you want to buy JUST a new blender jar it costs as much or more then a WHOLE NEW blender........what????????
I kind of think that lugging these items around is a sort of penance for the way our society lives. At least if I do have to throw something in the trash I don't do it with out thought. I've had these blender motors for months and in one case years now and if someday (I hope not) we have to finally throw them out it will be with as much seriousness and forethought as deciding to get a pet or have a kid. I bet I give MORE thought about my blender motors then half the world does about making new people. Life is strange isn't it???
In a way I wish I was the type of person strong enough to just say *screw it* and go live off the land in the middle of nowhere and try existing with a zero trash producing lifestyle. Does that sound crazy? Is it crazier than an entire planet of people using NON-RECYCLABLE products every day with the sole intention of literally digging a hole and burying it??? How about if we all had to bury our own trash in our backyards. That seems fair to me. How long do you think it would take for the world to switch over to a more eco-friendly lifestyle if you had to wade through your used tissues, diapers, soured up milk cartons and razor blades and Band-Aids every day? How long would it take to quit buying stuff like that so you didn't have to keep digging deeper every night when you got home from work so you'd have more space to bury the day's trash. I think it's brilliant...oh...but that's right....that would be inconvenient.....oh well then we wouldn't want to inconvenience an entire world of stupid people. hahaha I know every one isn't really stupid, it's more like the whole human race has a bad habit. And lots and lots of people are aware of it and are even trying to fix it.
A gal's gotta blow off some earth friendly steam some times ya know? I'm by no means a fanatic about this stuff I just try to be aware.
Things I hate:

• straws
• take out food containers, sometimes you can't avoid them but doesn't mean you gotta like them.
• containers that have number 5 plastic for the container and a number 2 for the lid...why?? WHY?? Why make the lid something I can recycle and the container not??????
• styrofoam, this stuff might be evil. It too can be quite handy and is a marvelous invention I suppose, but what the hell do I do with the huge pieces that come in practically every thing you mail order. On a side note I have a lovely Styrofoam collection if any one would care to see it. Useful for mailing my own packages and potential crafting use but I'd feel better if they announce styrofoam recycling some day

So you don't think I'm a complete negative Nelly here's things I LOVE:

• packing peanuts that are made from starch! They're biodegradable. BRILLIANT!
• Edco Disposal services, they let me put all my recyclables in ONE bin, this makes it less complicated and therefore more likely a person will recycle. If you don't need to sort cans from plastic and paper life is much easier!
• Number 1 and 2 plastic, cause it's recyclable where I live.
• wrapping paper, a few years back it wasn't on the list of recyclables, at least where I used to live it wasn't, then I discovered that my beloved EDCO accepts it in their recyclables, Oh man that was a happy day. I use old wrapping paper in crafts but now I don't have to be the freaky relative who makes every one save every scrap of it at christmas for fear it will be dumped straight in the trash cause now I know it can go in the recycling, oh yeaaaaaaahhhhh.

Now for a final note I have a general world wide suggestion, why can't take out containers be made out of waffle bowls? SEE why ice cream is the MOST brilliant food, it comes in edible containers, damn....I just realized I didn't get a waffle bowl the other day when I had the chance.
Maybe next time I get take-out I can bring my own waffle bowl and just say fill er up! Mmmmmmm tasty!

UPDATE:
I just found out my Mother gets to recycle plastic 1 through 7 where she is....I am so unbelievably jealous......I wonder if it would be appropriate for me to mail her my plastics 3 through 7 so she could recycle them for me......