The weather can really affect my mood. I stayed in my not-quite-pjs all day yesterday and ran errands like going to the bank, so that I could stay in the car and not see anyone. More to the point, no one would see me in my lazy-day state of being. Hat head, no make-up, schlumpy clothes. If the "what not to wear" crew were following me they'd have had a field day. Anyway, today is going to be different.
The sun is shining and the stormy weather moved through last night. I felt energized this morning. Then it starts. I begin looking at email and checking on a few things online before I start the day for real. All of a sudden I'm watching this, The Story of Stuff, which triggers a slew of other clicks and eventually I am back at the Breast Cancer Fund! While we know it's all connected, it's really all connected people! Pthalates??? they are a chemical in our "health and beauty" products that are a known carcinogen and adversely impact male reproductive systems. Mostly, these are used in baby products, YES! Baby bath soaps, shampoos and they are not listed on the labels, either.
So I am all up-in-arms today. I've been struggling a lot over the last few weeks/months because I feel like I always go to cancer. I worry that it'll be this chip on my shoulder and that I'll be wearing everyone out with my "extreme" reaction to things. Then I click 3 clicks before 10am on a random Wednesday and I'm about to march to the capital, I'm talking about how we need a revolution in this country and that I must buy from Whole Foods and pay 3times as much for safe cosmetics. It's all because everything we buy, use, eat, it's all subjected to things that we would never feed to our families if we knew they were there. Breast milk - it's increasingly contaminated by toxins, because Mom used or ingested some chemicals and they get passed along. It's all connected. So you think that a little of this and a little of that aren't going to kill you… what about the bits you aren't even aware of? If you watch that Story of Stuff, you'll be buying organic, locally made pillows among other things.
Just watch out for yourselves. Be aware, be safe & smart. I want us to be here for a very long time. If we have to start drinking organic gin&tonics, so be it.
1 comment:
jenn --
the following seems timely after your post today. it is from an email i just received from a friend who lived through the great depression and WWII today:
Black and White
You could hardly see for all the snow, spread the rabbit ears as far as they go.Pull a chair up to the TV set,'Good Night, David. Good Night, Chet.'
My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.
My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes, too.
Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice-pack coolers, but I can't remember getting e.coli.
Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.
The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.
We all took gym, not P.E. and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries, but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.
Flunking gym was not an option, even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.
We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.
I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.
I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, intendo, X-box or 570 digital TV cable stations.
Oh yeah ... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!
We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked. Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.
We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked there and then we got butt spanked again when we got home.
I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front step, just before he fell off.
Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.
To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that?
We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills that we didn't even notice that
the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive?
LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA, AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T, SORRY FOR
WHAT YOU MISSED. I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
please know that i am so excited you will be marching with me at the capital in dc. OMG! the fluming!
love and kisses from the rabble rouser,
~ c
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