Moving is a pain

OK, I know I have harped on the moving thing a bit, but really, it was not my fault.  The apartment I lived in went condo and I had to buy or leave.  It wasn't that great of an apartment and an even less great condo so...I left.  Besides the empty lot next door, full of feral cats, was plowed under and turned into a subdivision of asphalt and concrete.  Really sad for the cats and I lost a great view of the natural world.  

Well, I am in the new place now and it is very quiet and rather peaceful. Boxes still strew the floor but it is getting there.  We sit back in the trees and lots of plant life. I love it.  It took a lot of looking to find the right place and being green topped the list.  Here are just a few of the green advantages of the new place.

1. We have gas...the natural kind. I mean for heat and water, not the umm other kind of um...natural gas. 

2. We are walking distance  to the store (1.3 miles), library (1 mile), bus (.3 mile), light rail (1 mile), and lots of other stuff. 

3. We have a backyard big enough for some raised beds and a compost bin.  Zero garbage, fresh peppers and winter greens, here we come.  (One advantage of the Northwest, you can grow lettuce and other greens year round. (sssshhh...keep that quiet though.)

I have been making good use of Freecycle and CraigsList to rid myself of stuff and so this move is taking a little longer as I carefully sift out what I really need.  If you live in Portland area and read my blog watch FreeCycle because I plan to make it very busy real soon with stuff large and small.

I do have a personal confession though and I will make it short.  No Impact Man had a blog recently about reality and optimism. I find his blog posts, and the comments that follow, fascinating and am usually inspired to write my own comment or two or three, plus the occasional diatribe. However after going back and reading my own comments and then comparing  it with others views I was forced to look in the mirror a bit. Staring back at me was (gasp)...a pessimist.  That was a little odd to me because I always considered myself an optimist.  How strange to find the real me.  It woke me up a bit though and I have pledged now to become a realistic optimist, if that is actually possible.   I am realistic in  knowing I will never change the world alone but I can certainly hold out hope and be positive about changing me and hopefully inspire another to change. After all I was a plastic devouring, can loving, junk food eating, electronic gadget junkie who loved to just get out and drive to nowhere for no reason and threw everything into the same garbage can and dump it into the dumpster with absolutely no thought for where it would end up and I saw the light.  I did draw the line at littering though before, there were fines for that after all. See my first confession.  In short though, I was a pig.

Well, I am sure I will still be compelled to yell a bit about this and that in my posts because I do still hate what is happening to the earth and it does upset me I can do nothing about it but, for my own sake,  I plan now to end each blog with a quote or a positive statement plus a green tip of the day.  So here is today's positive statement about mindless consumerism. Oops, was that a pessimistic statement?

Until you make peace with who you are, you will never be content with what you have.

      Doris Mortman (No idea who Doris is, but I love her quote)

Here is the green tip for the day.  Want to get rid of junk mail?  Move...it doesn't follow you! Sure, that is drastic but it works.