Three thoughts on . . . water usage

Thought 1.

Back in December, I paid my usual quarterly water bill.  In 2020, over the course of that crazy year, our household used about 22,000 gallons of water.  That translates to 60 gallons/day, or 30 gallons per person per day.  We don't take conscious, drastic steps to reduce our water usage ("conscious drastic" is mostly aimed at plastic and landfill-bound garbage in the Chez Miser), and yet we're way lower than the 300-gallon-per-household estimates of the EPA, or the 100-gallon-per-person-per day estimates I've seen elsewhere for US water usage.   I'm not really sure what we do (or don't do) to make this big a difference.

Thought 2.  

About the time that I was paying that bill, we got a letter from Zimbabwe, from the father of one of the children we sponsor through World Vision.  He says, in part

We live in a village which is about 420 km away from the capital city of Harare.  Our homestead comprises of four huts of bricks and thatched with local grass. Cattle, sheep, and goats. We also keep maize, ground nuts, sorghum and cotton.

Our school is 5 km away from our home. We fetch water from a borehole which is 2 km away from our home. Our area is partly hilly and mountainous. It is infested with mosquitoes and tsetse flies.

Whatever I think about our 60 gallons/day water habit here in our own home, I'm darned sure we'd be using a heck of a lot less if I had to haul it over the hills from a hole in the ground a mile or more away while flies were biting me.   I have so, so many reasons to be glad for faucets and water treatment plants.  So, so many.

Thought 3.  
My Christmas gifts this year were basically soap and water.  I bought soap for my family from a friend of mine who runs her own soap-making company out of a shed behind her house.  And I sent money to DigDeep, a project to get running water and sinks in the homes of Navajo families.   (Thanks, Revanche, for pointing me to that!).  Because, really, what the frigg is up with people in our country not having access to clean water?  Sheesh!  

I was a bit worried that my dad's wife would be a bit tetchy about that being my "gift" to her, but I got a really lovely thank you note back.   She loved the soap, and she talked about how when she and my dad combined households, she gave one of her extra desks to "Waterboys for Jesus" (who had posted an ad, requesting items for a yard sale).  They sold it for $150, and used that money with other yard sale proceeds to help build a well in India.  She concluded, "A different location than our American Indians, but just as in need of clean water".  So, yay for that, too.

Miser family update: we are artists; behold!

 Life continues to be rich and full in the Miser Family household.  This week, we are particularly full of art, and artistic-ness, and general art-i-tude.  Behold!

The theme ("I am an artist; behold!") was suggested by I-daughter to me so long ago, that she forgot she'd been the one to come up with it.  But the name of the theme was barely off my lips before my husband, the pun artist, shot back, "I know exactly what I'm going to do".  Hence, bee holding art. supplies.  Yes.

My sister-in-law was only milliseconds slower in responding; she says, "One of my best friends turned 65 a couple of years ago and rented a house out in the Berkshires for all the girlfriends. On Thursday night she had a woman who owned the local “Sip and Paint” make a house call. It was so much fun."   

This kicked us into a spate of wall art; a painting of a fish that L1 gifted to N-son, a painting of bottles that L1 painted long ago and gifted to me, a scenic painting that L1's father-in-law did, a commissioned painting of a tiger that K-daughter did a few years ago.  They are artists!  Behold!

The grandkids get in on the action; A-child has a blown-glass ornament she made (with a little help), and B-child artistically arranges a "rock formation mess".  I-daughter is a sock artist; behold!  K-daughter carved a wooden cow that likes to sit under its favorite tree in the living room, smelling the flowers just quietly . . . (just like Ferdinand!).  N-son is a much louder artist, but in a rockin' good way.  Y creates edible art; she says, "Mostly doing food art this past week- a surprisingly good first attempt at yakisoba!".  As for me, admitted to scrambling to contribute, and I-daughter chipped in a familiar photo with pies and the pair of us:  "You made me, and I'm a work of art!".  'K.  I'll take that!

We haven't had any exciting glucose monitor adventures this week, and my guy returned his trial hearing aids, so that wipes out any fun medical stories I might have had.  Teaching J-term is eating up pretty much all of my days, so I don't have any personally fun stories to tell you (oooh . . . except . . . I just signed a contract for a something-something-something, which will be officially announced Monday.  So I guess next week, I'll have a story to share then.  Cliff hanger, anyone?)

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our art-ventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.  

Talking Trash, 2020

So, the bad news for the 2020 Trash Tally in Maison du Miser is that we forked over $80 per trash can this year.  Our next door neighbors, in contrast, paid a much more reasonable $2-$3 per can.  

Which leads to the braggy part of the post: the reason we paid so much per can is because we pay a flat rate ($240/year) and because we put out exactly three trash cans at the curb this year.  That's "three" like magic wishes or Goldilocks's bears or like Dale Earnhadrt Sr.'s car number.   Or like our trashcan count this year!  This is our lowest volume of landfill-bound garbage ever, and I am happy to sit and bask in the accomplishment for a few moments.   Indeed, I'll offer up a graph just to show how far we've come, or just how low we'll go, as you will.

{here's me basking . . .  contented sighs of accomplishment . . . okay, I'm done.}

Most of my trash avoidance is passive: I just don't buy a lot of stuff that comes wrapped in garbage.  It gets easier and easier to figure out how to do this the more I do it, and I honestly don't spend a bunch of time or effort in this passive avoidance; nowadays it just happens.

But trash still does come into the house, and so every once in a while I have to get off my duff and do stuff to avoid stuffing the garbage can.   This past weekend, for example, I snapped photos and dusted off my Freecycle password, and posted the offer of about 6 months or so of padded mailing bags.  (And they were snapped up within 24 hours.  yay!)  A couple of other things went out via Freecycle this weekend, while I was on a roll.

In order to be able to do this Freecycle offer, we'd done the work when we moved into the house of setting up a sorting station for outbound materials.   The "Packing Materials" box is one bin.   We also have bins for things that are headed for so-called Thrift shops, construction stuff that will go to Habitat Restore, a HazMat box, several boxes for stuff that's recyclable at a nearby drop-off center but not accepted in our curbside bins, a bag of rags for a nearby thrift shop that recycles fabric scraps, a scrap-metal bin, etc.  So, that was a once-and-done chunk of time, and also a permanent chunk of sizable floor/shelf space in our basement  (our basement has an external door; it's kind of like other people's garages). 

I scored another win through sheer persistence.   First at my old house, and then at my new house, I made a point of asking our newspaper carriers to deliver the paper naked, with no plastic bag, and every Christmas I make a point of giving them a big tip and a thank you note for the naked delivery.  Today my carrier (and the carrier's dog) stopped by while walking past my house so that our dogs could say hello.  And my carrier told me that he's planning to write notes to his other customers asking if they, too would like a plastic-free delivery.  He says he's had a couple more already start returning their plastic bags to him, and he'd love to just reduce the number of bags he delivers.  So maybe I'm part of a small neighborhood movement heading in the less-waste direction.  That'd be really nice.  

Three thoughts on . . . Sudoku puzzles

Thought 1. 
In general, I prefer Crossword puzzles, mostly because crossword puzzles can go meta and have themes and be puzzles-within-puzzles.  And because, if I make a mistake in a crossword puzzle, I can figure it out from surrounding clues, but if I make a Sudoku mistake, I basically have to scrap the puzzle and start over, which seems . . . like bad management, I guess?

Thought 2. 
Which might explain why I'm fond of BrainFreeze puzzles (and am a huge Laura Taalman fan, in general) -- because she and other mathematicians create funky variations on Sudoku that make me think hard.  Like this puzzle by David Nacin I started yesterday.  The pink squares have no clues at all, and the white squares have clues between squares iff the sum of adjoining squares is prime.  Ouch, brain hurts in a good way.

Thought 3. 
That all being said, Sudoku is a lot easier to do communally on a chalkboard than a crossword puzzle, because it's so self-contained, so it's more fun to do with other people --- provided you happen to have a chalkboard in your dining room, of course..   I've been getting N-son hooked on the Monday & Tuesday newspaper Sudokus, and having them up on the board makes it easier for us all to work together.  I'll suggest hints, or warn him off of errors, or what-have-you.   It usually takes him a few days, but it's some good back-and-forth entertainment for us.  

The Mountains of Instead

I kinda have a love-hate relationship with the poetry of W.H. Auden.  I almost wrote that I have a love-hate relationship with Auden himself, but I actually have no idea what he was like as a human being, so I'll zoom on to his poetry . . . which I think is beautiful, or pretentious, or obscure, or maybe all three.  

This is the little blurb I'm mulling over right now:

Clear, unscalable, ahead

Rise the Mountains of Instead

From whose cold cascading streams

None may drink except in dreams.

It's toward the end of a poem about beloved people who aren't here anymore, but also about trolls in the forest, and it hints at being deep and . . . mostly, I really don't like this poem.  But I keep coming back to the Mountains of Instead.  

For some reason, this keeps reminding me of airports.   So many times in my life, I've gotten to experience the dubious blessing of delayed flights -- bad weather, aircraft maintenance, unspecified snags.  And every time I get grounded, I play the game of trying to be the most cheerful person in the airport, which let me tell you, is way too easy to win.  

Part of the way that I play is to imagine in my head that I am in an alternative universe.  There was the other universe, the one where we passengers all got to board the plane, which took off on time---but then the storm hit, or the loose bolt came unfastened, or the over-tired crew made crucial mistakes, and as our plane plummeted toward the earth we all screamed and prayed and wished that the airline had decided not to let the danged plane take off in the first place . . . and now here I am, safely on the ground, in the universe where all those screaming passengers got their wish and the plane was delayed, and we grumbled about it but survived.

It's not like this is a perfect universe, the one that I screamed/prayed/wished my way into.  The pandemic is horrendous, and racism eats away at our society like acid, and my kid has diabetes, and my students are cheating on my exams more than ever.  But in that other universe --- the Universe of Instead --- my kids and my husband would still be facing pandemic-racism-diabetes, and my students would be cheating on someone else's tests, but they'd be doing it without me.  And I'm so glad, when I think back to the airports that have given me so much danged practice at the danged cheerful game, that I'm here to be a bit of a touchstone for my family in these crazy times.

There are so many other Mountains/Universes of Instead.  In 2014, I got two miles into the bike leg of my IronMan Triathlon when my tire popped.  I'd never successfully changed my own tire before, and I'd even thought about not bringing along a spare . . . but a good Samaritan ran over to me to help, and we got my new tire on and (mostly) pumped up, and about 3 miles later I found someone with a pump who got the tire fully inflated.   In the Universe of Instead, my tire popped and I'd spent months and months training just to stall out 4 miles into a 140-mile event.   But in the Universe I get to wake up into now, kind people fixed my tire for me and I get to think, wow, I did an IronMan Triathlon.  I did it.  I really did.  It's something I'm so grateful for.

And yet other Universes of Instead:  My husband crashed his bike in 2007 and broke his neck in three places (plus a few other bones to make a matched set), but somehow we both made it into the Universe where he didn't become a paraplegic, and so we have a house with stairs and we go for walks holding hands, and I think about how I could have been in the Instead Universe where stairs and walks don't happen; but I'm not, I'm here.  There's the Universe where I was too busy to join the book group on "an academic reading of the Old Testament", and my life would have been just fine in that Instead Universe; but actually I'm in the universe where I joined the book group, in which I met a person who introduced me to volunteering for Hospice, where I met a gravely ill patient who had a young child, and then that young child eventually became my own daughter; and it's so much better than "just fine" having her in my life.  

So, Wystan Hugh Auden: thanks for the poem.  And also for the one about How well they knew suffering, those old masters, that tragedy hits in one place while others keep toddling along doin' what they be doin'.  The poems are kind of depressing as all-get-out, but they do, in their own obscure, beautiful way, remind me about the many, many reasons I have to be content in the midst of gloom and hardship.  

Miser Family update: the weekend of Christmas

Life continues to be rich and full in the Miser Family Household. We had a very chilly (meeting out on the front porch in spite of the brrrrrrisk weather) passing-of-the-gifts, and it was good to see each other, even if we didn't get hugs.   K-daughter has been especially full of crafting lately, as you can see by this stocking she made herself, and texted to the family a few days before the holiday, . . . 

. . . which started this thread.  Below.  You might recognize the poem a little bit.

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a dog;



The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;



The children were nestled all snug in their new mermaid blankets;

While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;

And mamma in her face mask, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap,


When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.



Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.



The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snowman made of TP,
Gave a lustre of baby Yoda to objects below,

When what to my wondering eyes did appear,
But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny rein-deer,
With a little old driver so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment he must be St. Nick.


More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:
"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donner and Blitzen!
 . . .


And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.




As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,

And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;


A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.

His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!



. . .

Except for reading "Ferdinand" via Zoom, he spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;



He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight—
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

Three thoughts on . . . dog ears

The backdrop for these thoughts:  Prewash's ears are soft and floppy and I love them them.   

Thought 1.   

Back in 1986, a dude named Robert Wayne published a paper in Evolution about dogs, wolves, and foxes that I've used in a couple of my classes.  One funky takeaway from this paper:  you can only alter so much about the shape of a dog through selective breeding, even when you've got Chihuahuas and St. Bernards somehow cohabiting the same branch-let of the vast and branch-y species tree.   One of the things you can't alter is the snout-to-skull ratio; pugs and Bulldogs don't have short noses; they have wide faces. 

Another takeway?  "In dogs and other domestic animals, morphologic diversity among adults seems to depend on that expressed during development."  Said more simply, we've bred dogs to be more like puppies than like adult wolves or foxes.  Dogs have big, dote-on-you eyes.  They behave more like young wolves than like "Fang".  Annnnd . . . they often have big, floppy ears.  (Which are soft, so soft.  Adorbs).

Thought 2.

And yet, some people crop dog ears (shudder).  I grew up with Great Danes lumbering about my home; my dad said he liked to have a dog "that you don't have to bend over to pet".  Great Danes naturally have big, floppy ears, but for some reason that I do not understand (and do not want to understand) the powers that be decided that Great Danes should have pointy ears, like the Dane on the left, below.

To get the ears pointy like this, the owners first have to do what you might gently call "surgery", but which really is "mutilation".  And then, to get the ears to do the BatMan thing, you have to bandage and bind the ears with a rack for a bunch of months; and let me tell you, puppies do not like having racks on their heads.

One of the Great Danes I grew up with was named Otello (after Verdi, not after Shakespeare; I grew up thinking Shakespeare had stolen his play ideas from opera instead of the other way around, but that's a different thread of conversation).  Otello was a black Dane, like the ones above, and his breeders cropped his ears before my parents could convince them not to, which left us to try to deal with the bandage/rack apparatus.  The sticks that hold the ears upright dug into Otello's head and created wounds which festered, and we eventually took pity on the beast and stopped using the racks early.  This meant that one of his pointy ears stood mostly straight up, and the other one flopped off to one side, and he looked ridiculously lopsided for all his life.  

But also, y'know, he'd had his ears chopped off.  Which is just many kinds of awful.  Because dog ears are wonderful.
 

Thought 3. 
It is not just that dog ears are soft and so much fun to pet, it's also that they point in so many directions.  Here is Prewash, asleep last night, imitating Ferdinand the Bull. 

Yes?  Look at those horns!

When she chases a ball, she is so happy running that her ears flap up and down like they're wings; she's Dumbo flying through the air with her favorite tennis ball in her mouth instead of Dumbo's feather.  In fact, I look at her ears to tell when she's had enough exercise:  when her running slows down enough that her ears aren't beating the air anymore but instead are kind of jiggling along for the ride, we'll do another good throw or two, but then I can put the leash on her and lead her happily home.  

Where I can pet her ears to my heart's content.  Because they're so soft.  And floppy.  ahhh.