Category Archives: My Life

Entropy in the Kitchen

As a child, I was slightly obsessive about having a perfectly neat and clean bedroom.  I somehow grew into an adult with much lower standards.  The normal state of our kitchen:

Not bad, but not great.  And it moves rather quickly from the in-between state pictured above to really bad.  Behold the horror:

I took these pictures last Friday morning, after a very frustrating time cooking dinner amidst this mess on Thursday night.

With dirty dishes covering the already limited counter space, we didn’t have much to work with.  A relatively simple meal prep turned stressful.

Fittingly, I forgot to snap a photo immediately after I cleaned last Friday, and by the time I thought to pull out the camera, things had devolved into the middle state depicted at the beginning of this post.

Cooking vs. Cleaning

The time from clean to messy is frustratingly short.  Here’s the thing: we like to cook and eat good food.  We’re often exhausted when we arrive home in the evening, but looking forward to a good meal usually provides motivation to cook.

However, by the time we cook the meal and eat, we’re ready for some down time — returning to the kitchen to clean up is the last thing on our list.  We USE our kitchen, and there are only so many hours in the day.

Green vs. Clean

Part of the problem is my own doing.  In an effort to reduce the amount of dishes we use, and therefore the amount of water and energy required to wash said dishes, I like to use dishes and utensils that are relatively clean a few times before washing them.  In this state between clean and dirty, there’s not much to do with the dishes other than leave them sitting out on the counter or table.

Between the cooking and the conservation attempts, the kitchen rarely looks like this . . .

. . . and the time it requires to go from clean to messy is distressingly short, but I am hoping that with a little more effort, we can maintain something a bit more sane, livable, and sanitary.

Aw, hail!

So, we turned the A/C on yesterday.  It’s only May — ugh!  As usual, we’re keeping our thermostat set pretty conservatively (around 80° F), but still!  May.

In other confessions/not-green news, we walked at the Botanical Garden this morning, but we drove there 😦  I felt pretty tired and blah, and a little light-headed, not really up to the biking, so I conceded to using the car.  It was that or not going, and I am glad we went, if disgusted at the use of a car for an easy 2 mile or less trip.

Finally, a huge chunk of ice to help you think cool thoughts during the hot weather: this baby, which fell at our apartment during the storms last Wednesday, was almost 4 inches in diameter:

Matthew saved a few of these in our freezer, and I’ll be using them for practice contractions this week.  (For our childbirth prep homework, we do practice contractions, squeezing ice in our hands to simulate pain.)

33 Weeks

33 weeks down, ??? to go.  If we’re not already there, we’re soon to be at the “baby gaining 1/2 a pound a week stage.”  I can’t speak for baby, but I’m gaining AT LEAST 1/2 a pound a DAY, all in my feet.

Help -- my baby ate my ankle bone!

That’s really my only complaint right now, though.  I’m enjoying our childbirth prep classes and feeling more confident that we’ll be ready when baby joins us.  We’re taking Naturally Prepared childbirth classes, which focus on home births.

In two weeks, we have our in-home prenatal appointment with our midwives at River City Birth.  All of the other visits have been in their office, which is conveniently located a short bike-ride away!

Working with media to correct bicycling misperceptions

At the end of April, our local NBC affiliate station ran a short segment answering the viewer question, “Can cyclists ride in the middle of the road*?”

Unfortunately, the answer, provided by a local bike shop owner and the reporter, Heidi, did nothing but create more confusion for ALL road users and perpetuate the myth that bicyclists are somehow second class road users by reinforcing the wrong and dangerous belief held by most road users, motorists and bicyclists alike, that the driver of a motor vehicle somehow has more right to the road than the driver of a bicycle**.

Matthew and I, along with some other local bicyclists, wrote to Heidi asking for a correction.  She responded, inviting us to be part of the new segment.  On Tuesday morning, we met Heidi and the cameraman, and taped some footage.

The segment, which aired this morning, includes Matthew explaining the door zone, and both of us giving an on-bike demonstration.

Click here to watch!

*As Matthew pointed out, the question, as phrased, is a bit ambiguous.  In many cases, a bicyclist can and should be operating his/her vehicle in the middle of the LANE, which paints a much different mental picture than a cyclist riding down the middle of the ROAD.

** Click here if you want to see the cringe-inducing original.