Author Archives: Melissa | Growing Green Nutrition

If you’re not dead when you enter . . .

We recently attended a visitation at a funeral home in FAR AWAY (in this case, St. Charles).  My smoke alarm sounded immediately upon entering the funeral home.  My first reaction?  Denial: certainly they don’t allow smoking INSIDE this funeral home.

Sadly, I was dead wrong.  This particular establishment, did, indeed include a “lounge” area that allowed smoking.  I guess allowing smoking is a good business model for a funeral home.

Hello, people!  Last time I checked this was the 21st century.  We’ve received repeated warnings about the dangers of tobacco smoke for A LONG TIME.  Even the masterful marketing spin doctors have given up arguing that tobacco is not harmful and have moved on to creating doubt and skepticism about other things, like, oh, global warming/climate change/global weirding (whatever term floats your boat).  Not that I should be too shocked to find this here, as the St. Louis Airport still has indoor smoking lounges.  Ah, life in the Dark Ages.

Like so many other human behaviors and inventions, tobacco is not only bad for human health, it’s also bad for the environment. Chemicals used to grow tobacco poison the land and the tobacco workers; trees are destroyed to make and package cigarettes; butt litter pollutes land and waterways and kills animals.  Click here for more details about the environmental impacts of tobacco production and use.

Carbon fast – Day 12

Run your washing machine only with full loads.  Turn the knob on your washing machine to “cold/cold,” and leave it there.  Washing your clothes in cold water gets them just as clean as washing in hot water, but uses half the energy.

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Daily action from http://www.lcwr.org/lcwrsocialjustice/eoclentcalendar2010.pdf

Carbon fast – Day 11

Plan ahead to bring reusable grocery bags with you to get groceries today.  If you already use reusable grocery bags, purchase a set of reusable produce bags for fruits and veggies (ecobags.com).

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Daily action from http://www.lcwr.org/lcwrsocialjustice/eoclentcalendar2010.pdf

Worms and a haircut

After the car-bound work week, I strive to make my weekends as car-free as possible.  I made an exception today for worms!  And a haircut.  I found a worm source just outside of St. Louis — Trinity Ranch.  The owner graciously agreed to meet me in Eureka! with the worms.  We met in a Quik Trip parking lot — it may or may not have looked like a drug deal.

Side note: Eureka! When I was a kid and my family visited St. Louis, Six Flags was always the highlight of the trip.  When I moved here, I quickly realized that Six Flags is not in St. Louis at all — it is Far Away.

Still, Eureka! is closer than House Springs, and I combined the worm pick-up with a haircut, located in a different Far Away.

The last time I paid to have someone cut my hair was over two years ago.  Since then, I’ve trimmed it a few times, and my husband cut it twice.  I was apprehensive about having a professional haircut, worried that they would criticize my no-poo routine.  After much fence-sitting, I reluctantly called a stylist who specializes in curly hair (recommended by my curly-haired cousin).

So, how’d it go, you ask?  Well, in just over an hour, she subjected my hair to shampoo, hair gel, and a blow dryer (I can’t remember the last time I used a blow dryer on my hair . . . or gel).  Granted, it was some kind of “better” shampoo, as far as shampoos go, but she shampooed the heck out of my hair.  I’m talking lather, rinse, repeat — three or four times!

To be fair, the cut looks and feels good; she knew her stuff in that regard.  She also didn’t try to push super-frequent shampooing, recommending once every one to two weeks for my hair.  However, I have no plans to jump back on the shampoo/hair product bandwagon again.  I’m rather annoyed that I was not more assertive in declining the whole shampoo procedure in the first place, and I hope this doesn’t disrupt my no-poo routine too much.

After the haircut, I experienced the terror of being LOST in the suburbs.  I quickly rectified the situation by pulling over, turning the car off (no idling!), and grabbing my map.  I arrived home, super hungry, after a longer-than-planned detour into the worlds of Whole Foods (sadly lacking in the food samples I desperately wanted) and Trader Joe’s.

I quickly addressed my own need for food, then turned to my wiggly little friends.  They found their new home ready and waiting (as it had been since my worm-attaining fiasco a few weeks ago).  I planned to post a picture of my hand overflowing with my cute little pets, but someone else has the camera (ahem).  My little wigglers are currently burrowing and settling in to their plush accommodations, but I’ll try to wrangle up a few for a photo shoot later.