Fine balances

Life is full of balance.

You have to keep the bacteria balance in check in your gut or you either wind up constipated or with the runs. (Isn't it like the mother of boys to start out the second paragraph of her blog entry with both the words "constipated" and "the runs" in it? Ha!)

You have to keep your finances in balance or you wind up with checks bouncing like rubber balls.

If you're a fashionista wearing those ridiculously high heels, you have to keep YOURSELF in balance or you'll look like Lady Gaga who LOST her balance HERE (if you must see what I'm referring to, check it out... I'll be here all day!)

Back? Good. That was rather ridiculous to even try to balance on those, wasn't it?

Now, where was I again? Oh yeah... balance.

As a mom, you learn about balance in your children's lives as well. You must balance their screen time, their social life, their school work, their extra-curricular activities, their food intake, their sun exposure, their awake/asleep time, their lives.... and you must learn to balance this along with your own life.

Nature has a way of needing balance. From what I gather, hunting is necessary so that the herds don't become over-populated which would lead to starvation during the winter months. I say (from what I gather because, I don't know and I don't care enough to research it so I'm just going by what I've been told and it does make sense.)

And while we're on the topic, and since it's my blog, I get to go off on a tangent, and here I go.... I am not a hunter. Frankly, I'm not into the whole "killing for sport" idea of hunting. I feel that you should kill what you intend to eat or what you intend to donate to be processed. I don't feel that sitting on your butt in a blind having target practice at your PET DEER that come to the FEEDER that you set up to entice them... does THAT makes you a hunter? Why not just go hunting at a petting zoo? Seriously. That's not hunting. And, while I understand these hogs here in Texas that are wreaking havoc on everything... while they are basically telling anyone and everyone to shoot them because they breed like cockroaches, I still think it's wrong to just shoot them and then just leave them there to rot. I just find it odd that people find pleasure in killing anything. (I'm not a vegetarian. I didn't say I didn't find pleasure in eating meat... just not in killing it.) If it came down to it, I would kill whatever I needed to in order to provide for my family but lucky me... they have people to do that for me. BUT, just to go kill stuff TO KILL STUFF, I just find that... really scary.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand...balance. I started thinking about balance in a lot of areas of the world.

Balance with war and peace.

With the religious and the not so religious.

With the use of natural resources.

With everything, really. Therein lies a balance that must be understood and embraced.

I started thinking how we explain to the boys, every time you flip a switch on in this house, it's money. (Drew leaves EVERY SINGLE SOLITARY LIGHT on upstairs when he's up there. It's insane!) And then it's like, they can't seem to process that our electrical plants run on coal. So every time you use electricity that you don't need, we're burning a natural resource that we can't replace so it IS waste.

Does anyone ever think about running OUT of those natural resources? I mean, coal was made ... eons ago. I just find it amazing that the government isn't being more ... forceful to mandate things like solar power. It's clean energy. My next house... I will have solar power. I can sit in my bedroom right now and just see all the ridiculous waste ever single second going on here with all the electronic components we have in here.

1. the alarm
2. the digital thermostat
3. the air conditioner
4. the lamps --two of them
5. the ceiling fan
6. the oscillating fan
7. the telephone
8. the alarm clock
9. the cell phone charger
10. the monitor
11. the computer
12. the television
13. the Verizon box that never shuts off even when the TV is off
14. the smoke detector (they're electric)

it's crazy....

And even if I do MY part and reduce all our power/electrical consumption... think of all the skyscrapers that light up their entire buildings (think VEGAS) just for show.... all using that NEVERENDING power that really DOES have an end. Does anyone else besides me think of this stuff?

I also think about the balance as far as the introduction of things into our bodies.... plastics, for example. Cancers are on the rise. Our plastics use is on the rise. There are so many particles IN plastics that are hazardous and or carcinogenic that I can't help but wonder IF PLASTIC is responsible for the rise in cancers? I actually have read up on this quite a bit. And if you wanted to try to limit your family's exposure to plastics by becoming a granola then you're not only a freak but it'd be darn near impossible. Think about your typical day...

You wake up and roll over to press the PLASTIC alarm button on your clock off. You roll out of bed and put on your slippers. You walk to the bathroom and twist the PLASTIC lid on your toothpaste onto your PLASTIC toothbrush and brush your teeth. You get in the shower and squeeze the PLASTIC bottle to get your shampoo out. You squeeze the PLASTIC bottle to get your conditioner out. You realize you're running out of conditioner so as you exit the shower you toss the bottle into the PLASTIC trash can that is lined with a PLASTIC grocery bag. You take your favorite t-shirt off of the PLASTIC hangar and put it on and finish getting dressed. You can't see so you grab your PLASTIC contact lens case and your PLASTIC bottle of saline to insert your PLASTIC contacts into your eyes. You grab your make-up bag and dump it on the counter. Every item inside is either housed in or covered by PLASTIC. You shut off the light as you exit the bathroom realizing that the PLASTIC light switch cover is smudged with dirt so you grab a washcloth to wipe it down. You go into the kitchen to make breakfast for everyone. You grab a roll of sausage out of the PLASTIC fridge drawer and put it on the PLASTIC cutting board and proceed to cut the PLASTIC away from the outside so you can slice the sausage into patties. You crack some eggs into your PLASTIC bowl and whisk away with your PLASTIC utensil. The kids are still young so you put their breakfast in PLASTIC bowls so that if they're sent flying across the room, they won't break. Their sippy cups and eating utensils? Yep, you guessed it -- PLASTIC. You get into the car... the interior of the door? PLASTIC. You go through the drive-thru to get a drink... the cup? Paper. The straw? PLASTIC. The lunch you packed for your kid is in PLASTIC bags in a PLASTIC lunch box. You go to the grocery store and every other item is packaged in plastic. Your lunch meat is in plastic. Your cheese is in plastic. Your milk is in plastic. Your cereal is in a box which contains a bag that is plastic. Your brown sugar, spices, ketchup, mustard, salad dressing.... EVERYTHING IS IN PLASTIC!!!

Are you seeing the over-abundance of plastic in our lives? It's scary, isn't it? There has to be some correlation.... some how.

I'm trying to go back to using more natural products in my kitchen. I'm buying items that are packaged in glass containers. Not only can I then reuse those containers for myself, but I also can use them for gifts. I can also repackage things that were in plastic into something NOT plastic.

Now, I'm not going to go all granola like Sheryl Crow that said that people should use just one square of toilet tissue -- that's stupid. But I've read blogs where people are tired of paying all the extra money for paper waste in their homes. Some people have gone to utilizing reusable toilet tissue! Don't gasp -- it's along the same lines as those who may use cloth diapers. Some people use glass straws. There are all kinds of extreme and in-between but I just feel anything I can do is a little better than doing nothing at all. (For the record, as long as we are able to, I will always have toilet paper.) I can, however, stand the idea of getting rid of paper towels and paper napkins and even paper plates. I like the feel of cloth napkins so much more anyway. Paper plates are a time saver but... at what point are we not okay with all the waste?

Just because you throw something away doesn't mean it's GONE. I don't think people realize this. I say it time and time again... just because it's trashed doesn't mean it's gone. Do a Google search to see how long it takes things to decompose? It's CRAZY!!!! 50 years for a tin can to decompose... a cigarette takes from one to 12 years to decompose... ONE cigarette! Think of the people that smoke a pack a day... how much that contributes over time. Think about how much you haul to the curb twice a week. Burying that doesn't make it go away. Isn't that scary? Does anyone else worry about this?

So, when it comes to fine balances... where is the balance in what you need and what you don't? Where is the balance for you between convenience and waste? Where is your balance in preserving the natural resources and ... not giving a damn? When will someone else besides me act... without regard to what people think... but do it because you care about the fine balance of things in YOUR OWN life... hmmm...

just something to ponder.