New Charges and Old Beef

Okay so today I'm still feeling not so hot.  Or perhaps I should say not so cool as the temps, including my own body temp are rising.  I'm coughing up thick yellow crap and blowing out green.  Breathing is fun at times.  I need to ride this out, been there, done that crap before.  Yes this blog is about crap since I'm feeling like crap.

Today's mail yielded up more crap.  Two credit card offers for my spouse, a postcard reminder for my one kill a tree pleasure magazine subscription and a notice from our landlord.  Our landlord is Equity.  Yes the ones that purchased our housing from the military years ago.  I detest our landlord.  We now pay for any overages of the average neighborhood usage per month for gas and electric.  Thankfully I've been getting refunds most months.  Now the latest beef of mine...trash.

We are now going to be charged for our trash pick up if its over the limit.  I put out the cans every two weeks on the recycling days.  My recycling can is usually half full and the trash can about a quarter full which isn't too bad considering there are only two of us and this is me putting it out every two weeks. 

"The only charge you may incur is if you choose to go over your average consumption for trash services.  WE are really striving for everyone to recycle as much as possible and help Lewis-McChord Communities and JBLM achieve "net zero" waste."

So does this mean they are going to weigh my trash?  Does this mean they are finally going to allow us to put glass into the recycling bins rather than truck it down to the recycling center ourselves?  Probably not.  I'm guessing it will be a can count and I doubt I'll be getting a refund check for my less trash consumption.

We compost.  We shred our mailing.  We recycle what we can into upcycled projects.

I'm going to most likely, after my spouse reads the letter, recycle the letter into scrap paper which will then become something else including possible compost last.  Or maybe I'll use it to light the copper kettle fire pit to roast marshmallows when its use as scrap paper is finished.

I'm wondering if this is part of the budget cuts.  I think the government has cut back on the benefits to the soldiers enough already.  

Enough of this crap already.  I'm tired of giving until I've given up what I should be entitled to in order to cut corners.  No pay raises, cut benefits, PCM that cut corners making it so that I can't get proper medical care, rising food costs and gas prices.  Someone needs to be voted out of office before I have to cut holes in my pockets to replace the fiber I used to be able to afford in my diet.

Recycling Through Smart Shopping

I have found a great way to recycle.  I like to go antique shopping.  Maybe a few thousand other folks have also come up with the same idea as antique shops are really busy on the weekends.

If you haven't really given a thought to antique shopping or are just afraid of being a bull in a china shop I'll give you a few tips.  First off the better places for a novice to antique shoping are located in what they call malls or in towns where they are lined up quite efficiently.  Do these places really exist or am I full of fluff?  I came from a small rural town in the Northeast part of New York State.  For us antique shopping was the flea market or someone's yard sales.  Over here in Washington they are a tad bit more organized.  All the better I think, though you do pay more for some items since these sellers aren't they yard sale nickel table type.

Leave your bulky winter outerwear in your vehicle.  Unless of course you don't mind being that bull in the china shop and have plenty of money to just give away on broken items.

Leave  your children at home.  This might sound a bit harsh but like the above first tip unless you have plenty of money to just give away on broken items then don't bring them.

Ladies, that large hobo bag you like to call a purse has to be stored away too.  Go in with a slim as possible a purse.  Do you really want to turn about in a small space and break all that Nippon china?  I think not.  Invariably there are always those small, tight spaces that you have to side walk into just to see what hidden treasures awaits.

Antique shopping can be a joy.  Bring your husband, boyfriend, or other male friends when you go shopping.  You might need them to help carry out your large furniture or other heavy purchase to your vehicle.  I drag along my husband.  He immediately seeks out the tools, knives, guns, swords and books.  See there are things that guys would be interested in at those antique malls.  He might have to fain interest in your bone china teacup that you just have to have but he will most likely enjoy the more manly items that await his treasure hunt.  If you guy is into toys, action figures, trains and marbles those are usually also found at the antique malls.

By no means are these places run like Pawn Stars or American Pickers but if you are into that then go sight-seeing and find yourself those pawn shops and old barns to pick through for the day.  Bargaining with the owners over a price on an item can be done at the pawn shops, yard sales and antique malls.  I've seen first hand the antique mall owners call up the sellers of the item and ask if they'd come down, sometimes they do especially in this economy.

I hope that all of you have some joy in this fun part of recycling.  What some once considered junk might just be your treasure.

Recycling, Doing Our Part To Save The Planet

Each Sunday this year I'm going to try to make a post about environmental impact issues, saving our Earth, and how we can help out.  Today's post is about recycling.

Recycling is just a small step that we should take daily in helping out our planet.  Before you go shopping plan your purchases carefully.  Do you really need the item that's on sale that has packaging that can't be recycled?

Take a good look at your bulk store purchases you currently have in your home.  Are you saving money only to have more trash piling up?  Try to make purchases of reusable products not disposables, ie: disposable batteries, non-cloth diapers, paper plates and plastic utensils.

Remember to recycle your newspapers, plastic, glass, aluminum cans, and paper.  Recycling, done properly can save about 2, 400 pounds of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere yearly per household.

If you are unsure of what you can actually recycle, hey even I wonder at some of the codes on the bottom of plastic containers,  go to The EPA website.  Or you can take a look at this particular link on  recycling plastics.  Did you know that PETE plastics, labeled with a 1, are recycled into common day objects like the fiber filling in your winter coats, furniture, car bumpers, rope and bean bag chairs?  Of course they are also remade into plastic bottles again.  So don't forget to take your #1 PETE medicine bottles, water bottles, and soda bottles to the recycling center.  I don't want to find out that my readers are just throwing them into the main trash.

For my beer drinking friends I have a recycling website for you that you can bank recycling points.   Miller Coors  is offering up points that you can cash in for rewards later on.  Now you can get a bit more out of your aluminum beer cans.

Don't forget to recycle your newspapers and other paper products.  Just make sure there is no food residue on the paper when you put it into the recycling bin.  Try to buy products that say that they are made from paper not trees.

Did your computer die and you had to buy a new one?  Now you have no clue what to do with the old one?  Don't just put it to the curb, check with your state laws on computer recycling first.

From: Do The Benefits Of Recycling Outweigh The Costs:
Here is a list of some of the recycling programs and information from various manufacturers:

• Acer Recycling Program
• Apple Recycling Program
• ASUS Recycling
• CyberPower Recycling
• Dell Recycling
• Electronics Industries Assocation Recycling Information
• Fujitsu Recycling of Electronic Waste
• Gateway Trade In or Recycle
• HP Product Return and Recycling
• Lenovo Product Recycling
• MSI Recycling Program
• Redemtech Enterprise Recycling
• Shuttle Recycling
• Sony Recycling Program
• Systemax Recycling Require Form
• Toshiba Trade-In and Recycling Program
• Velocity Micro Recycling Program

If you can't recycle try upcycling.  Okay a few of you are probably scratching your heads on the term upcycling.   Upcycling is basically taking an item that can no longer function in its intended purpose and ripping it apart to use as parts for another creation.  Remember WALLE?  Walle's job was to recycle and compact trash from the landfill.  He would find parts from broken items and re-purpose them which is called upcycling. Then of course there are a few of my craftier friends who have told me that they are going to take old computer monitors, those big ones that had tubes in them, gut the monitors, put rug in them and make them outside habitats for feral cats.  I think its a great idea. 


Take a look around your house and go through your "trash", you might find something that can be upcycled.  ETSY.com was the first place that clued me into upcycling.  Maybe you could start an account on their site and earn some money for your new creations.  Who wouldn't want to earn money from their trash?

Rose Water

Today I was inspired to make my own rose water.  I used two of my red roses but not the white one and the recipe from Patricia Telesco's Kitchen Witch's Cookbook.  It came out great.  It was by no means an over powering scent.

I cooked it down on my stove at a simmer according to instructions.  The petals once filtered out will now go into the compost.

This is a finished picture of the rose water amongst the drying white rose petals.

Now many of you are probably wondering what the heck I'm going to do with rose water, well I'll tell you. 

Rose water can be used in cooking, stop and see this new blogger's site, Why I'll Never Again Stop To Smell Roses to find out what she created with rose water, I find it an absolutely gorgeous creation.

Roses can be used in skin care.  See these articles: Beauty Secrets and Things You Can Do With Rose Water.

So now I have to decide if I want to cook with it or use it on my skin.  I have really dry skin so I'm going to probably opt to use it for a cosmetic purpose though Rachel's Cake does look divine.

Because I also practice Wicca there are numerous things that I can also use my rose water for with the craft.  Maybe I'll use it for cooking, craft, and beauty.

Tearing Down The Tree

The un-decorating of the Winter Season has begun, well at least at my house.  We don't have a real tree.  I'm not sure why we've never bought a live tree that has been cut down.  Are we too ashamed of what it does to the environment?  I'm not sure.  The one year I did have a live tree it was a small potted pine that I purchased because I was living in the hotel for five months and it was over the holiday season.  But I gave the little tree away in the hopes that someone would be able to plant it and it would grow.

The above photo is what often happens to cut Christmas trees.  Sure some of us could burn them in our backyards but then we'd have to get burning permits.  I recently found out that wood smoke is really bad for the humans.  All those chemicals we've let leach into the ground with our carelessness have been absorbed by the trees we now are burning for our fuel in the winter.  I developed asthma symptoms as a child and was diagnosed as an adult.  My parents had a wood stove installed in their house when I was eight years old.  I wonder if that was the cause of my lung problems.  I love the smell of burning wood and I love camp fires but I think I love to breathe a bit more so I doubt I'll ever be having a wood burning fuel source in my home.  Read this article Burning Issues, which is about the hazards of wood burning.

The last of our decorations are now down as of a few minutes ago.  The boxes are taped shut and will again be stored until needed at the end of the year.  We have a four foot artificial tree.  I didn't pay much for it but it suits its purpose as our house is small.  Enlisted Army housing is always small.  I've seen some families packed in like sardines in a can.  But all is good as long as there are rules.  Now I'm getting away from my post again.

I'd like to know what my readers have for trees, that is if you have a tree at all for Winter holidays.  Do you go with a live tree, and if so do you feel guilt at having contributed to the decline of our oxygen supply, or do you feel no guilt at all?  If you have an artificial tree do you feel guilt at the chemicals used in creating your fake tree and the fumes that were expelled into the environment to create the fake tree, or is there no guilt factor at all? 

Yes I know with either option there is no winning.  Maybe we could all opt to just decorate a live potted tree and later plant it in the spring of the year when the soil is ready.

I used recycled paper in the making of my paper chains and snowflakes again this year.  Easy to tear down decorations and easy to recycle again.  All of the paper decorations are now in the recycling bin.  Still I feel some guilt as again some machinery will have to fire up causing more toxins to be expelled into the environment just to make that paper I used into a pulp fiber to be used once again. 

I'm beginning to believe that there is no guilt-free Winter holiday season.  I doubt its even possible.  Think of all the paper wrappings used and wasted.  The bows, boxes, packing materials and not to forget the gas used in getting the gifts to their destinations from the point of purchase.  Why do we do it?  Is it the guilt of not giving or is it blind love with no concern to the environment?

I just read aloud the above to my spouse and he answered back, "its tradition and you can't argue with tradition as its insensitive."  So said the guy with the B.S. in Environmental Science.

However, if you are feeling any guilt about your "traditions" then possibly you should visit the Arbor Day Foundation.   Or check out your National Parks Service.  Make a donation to them or find out how you can give back.