Category Archives: Green Ideas

A slow return to active transportation

Thursday, at six-and-a-half weeks post-op, I rode my bike for the first time since the surgery.  I’d been itching to get back to biking and probably would have taken a little spin around the block a couple of weeks ago, but between finding the time and finding the energy, it just didn’t happen.

Those weeks of limited mobility gave me time to think about the limits of active transportation.  Sure, I’d always been fully aware that there is a certain segment of the population that physically cannot walk or bike for transportation, but actually being in that segment, albeit for a short time, was a different story.

In the first weeks, even walking a block was difficult.  Unless you live somewhere very dense, with great public transportation (which is hard to have in cities that are not dense), you won’t get far if you can’t walk more than a block.  Since St. Louis is not very dense, my only option, if I wanted or needed to leave the apartment, was a car.

As someone for whom the car is the least preferred transportation method, I quickly grew frustrated.  This frustration came to a head a couple of weeks ago, when I needed to visit the AT&T store to replace my poor dead phone.  Matthew and the car were out at our commuter garden.  There was such a store less than two miles away, near my dentist’s office, a library branch, and a grocery store, destinations to which I almost always bike, and heck, would not even be out of the question for walking.  However, with my activity limitations, and without a car, that two miles may as well have been two hundred.

The thing is, for all the people out there, for whom, either permanently or temporarily, active transportation is really not an option, there are hundreds more who choose, either passively or actively, to snub their active transportation options and all the benefits and freedom it would offer.

I still need to make some purchases to make these modes of transportation possible with baby in tow.  For now, I will be working to build my strength and endurance, gradually increasing the range I can travel on two feet and two wheels.

Green blogging at Green Drinks

If you’re in the St. Louis area, come on out to Green Drinks tomorrow night for a chance to network and learn.  The topic this month is “Green Blogging,” and I’ll be part of the informal panel of local green bloggers (see website for location and time).

In case you need any extra incentive, Little Dude will be making an appearance at the event, unless he’s feeling shy 😉

Calling all writers

Today I finally finished and published my post on cloth diapers.  The post ONLY took about three weeks from conception to completion.  Better than nine months, I guess, but really pretty pathetic.  Obviously I need a little help here.

If you would like to write a guest post for Her Green Life, get out your pen keyboard and start writing.  It would be great if the content has a “green” bent, but other than that, the sky’s the limit.

A few prompts if you have writer’s block: your green tips or tricks, garden stories, local food stories, energy saving ideas for the house . . . .

Send your posts to me at hergreenlife[at]gmail[dot]com.  If you have a blog  of your own, please include a link for me to share (but you don’t have to be a blogger to contribute here).  Happy writing!

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Image courtesy of Daily Tech Post.

Blowing in the wind

Confession: Gabriel spent his first week-and-a-half or so in disposable diapers.  The idea of bringing our cloth diapers into the hospital crossed my mind briefly  while we were there, but there was too much going on for it to be a very serious thought.  Then, though it went against my green judgment, I brought the remaining package-and-a-half of disposables home with me, rather than leave them at the hospital for the next baby.

We used the disposables for the first few days at home, because it was easier to keep them away from the healing umbilical stump.  The disposables ran out before the stump fell off, but I was ready to call it quits, so we made the switch.

Right now,  we have a somewhat random assortment of second-hand diapers from a friend and some new organic cotton prefolds that we received as gifts.  We’re mostly using the old-school plastic pull-up covers (which my family called pack-a-leaks) right now, but I am interested in some of the new fancy covers because I think they’re more breathable.

Washing the Diapers
For the first few weeks, this task fell entirely to Matthew, given my recovery restrictions on stair climbing and lifting.  Now I’m helping out a bit.   We wash a small load (which is almost all of our diapers) every two days, warm wash, cold rinse.  At the moment we’re using a liquid detergent called Planet.

Washed, but stained . . .

After washing, we hang the diapers outside to dry, and the sun does its thing.

The sun worked its magic!

I’d read that the sun was great for naturally bleaching poop stains out of diapers, but I really had to see it to believe it.  I need to do a little research to figure out how this works, but the results are quite impressive.

The line drying does leave the diapers a bit crunchy compared to the dryer, but Gabriel doesn’t seem to mind too much 😉

Radio silence

We’re still alive here, despite Gabriel’s best efforts.  Turns out that taking care of a baby is HARD work.  We naively thought that our weeks of maternity/paternity leave together would be a lovely little vacation, some nice family bonding time for the three of us.  Ha!

Now we know what all those cryptic, “Your life will never be the same,” comments were about.  We reacted with annoyance and denial at the time, but perhaps it was unwarranted.

On the green front, we switched over to cloth diapers about four days after we got home, which was when the disposables from the hospital ran out.  I’m very glad I took all the disposable diapers that were in our hospital room, despite the nagging green voice in my head saying, “Oh, just leave them for the next person, you have all those cloth diapers at home.”   Anyway, more about the diapers in another post.

The continuing heat wave means A/C 24/7 (not green), and I’m so thankful we have it, not gonna lie.  We’re keeping it set right around 80° F, which means our little guy is pretty happy just in a diaper, or a diaper with a light swaddle for sleeping.  I’m a bit scared to see our electric bill, since we normally benefit from cranking the thermostat up to 90° F or so when we’re at work during the day.

Matthew’s been getting in some garden time, and we continue to eat extraordinarily well (though sometimes finding the TIME to eat is tricky).  I’ll try to post more regularly, but that’s definitely not taking precedence right now.  They say it gets easier . . . .