How I saved the planet yesterday

I made a new friend at the refillable ink cartridge store this afternoon. All these years I’ve been buying my Epson ink at Office Max and they’ve been telling me I can’t use generic brand or get them refilled. In a pithy word, nonsense! My new friend at the RICS sold me refilled cartridges for about a third less, and that means nothing goes to landfill — except the shrink wrap around the cartridge. I asked if I could have it w/o the plastic, and he said it’s necessary to keep the ink from drying out. He’s a local guy who runs a very green business. The store is very eco w/ recycled carpet, a cool eco-mural, etc.

This was next door to Long’s where I went to buy bus passes for my daughters. Compacty Success — I did not buy ANY of the plants for sale in front. That was a tough one because it is a balmy day here in Cali — I know you chilly Easterners will hate this but thanks to global climate change, it is suddenly 70 degrees here in mid-January. Feels like spring so I feel like gardening. But I succeeded in NOT BUYING anything. Because that would be wrong. Must …not… buy…

Recent scores on Freecycle that I’ve been picking up this week: bender board for my garden, saved from landfill (they wanted to put it in the Dumpster), a sturdy plastic cat carrier (my cardboard one was destroyed by Miss Fifi last trip to the vet), a plastic-bag dryer (in use now in the kitchen), and a sackful of double-pointed knitting needles and sock yarn, plus a promise of sock-mentoring. And who doesn’t need a sock mentor? Knitters (and purlers, for those of you who knit the other way) are a very generous lot.

Coffee with a friend at local coffeehouse this morning, with my own mug — she wants to start a garden and live more frugally, etc, so we yakked for an hour about that. Gonna share my extra veggies with her that FD brings home from farmers’ market.

I’m knitting a sock. A real adult-sized sock. Woo hoo! One stitch at a time.

I made cat food out of the leftover-leftover chicken, after we had leftover chicken soup last night. Did that this morning while making lunches and getting ready for work. Cats are licking whiskers as I type. (Miss Fifi in particular. Norma Jean usually just licks her…tail.)

I just posted a boatload of “misc stuff” on Freecycle. Out with the old, and out with the new.

Am drying cilantro (lots of extra from farmers’ mkt) on the laundry line while it’s sunny, and making a couple of gallons of sun tea — we’ve switched off juice/soda completely, and I cut back on adding sugar to the tea — it’s all plain fruit or herbal flavored tea with 0 sugar, 0 calories. And that means zero sugar meltdowns. I tell the Boy that I’m making “Arizona,” his favorite canned ice tea.

Veggies for dinner — local, farmers’ market stuff tossed together in a stir fry. And it was very good.

And that’s life in my little world.

Facebook Conversations

comments