I Declare a National Holiday!

I am about to declare a national holiday.  Oh, I know, the last thing we need is another national holiday in the middle of winter.  Hell, starting from Halloween aaaaall the way through Valentine’s Day, it seems like one, long, endless holiday.  Call it Hallowthankskwanznukahmasyeartine’s Day, if you will.  Still, I think there is room for one more–especially one of this importance.

Before I tell you about that, though, I want to start a countdown to Valentine’s Day.  In my effort to expand the horizons of this day, I am going to name one thing I love each day from now until Valentine’s Day.  Let’s kick it off with a classic video from the inimitable, Barry White, Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe.

If you’re not grooving while listening to the master, well, then, you must be Asian!  (Yes, Icy, if you’re reading this, that was a shout-out to you). 

Ok.  What do I love?  Today, I love going outside when it’s below-zero temps and just breathing deeply.  I love how crisp and clean the air is, and how it sears through me.  I love feeling every pore of my body coming to attention, and I love how my eyelids slowly go numb.  Most of all, I love chuckling at my best friend when she demands, incredulously, “Tell me your spine isn’t seriously scrunching up right now!”, and all I have to do is smile in response.

That is what I love today.  Oh, and how the cold clears my sinuses.  Now, on to my national holiday declaration.

Let me preface with a little backstory.  I have been conscious of going green for quite some time.  It is important to me because, well, one earth, limited supplies of resources, etc.  To that end, I keep my heater set at 63° during the day and 60° at night.  Ok, yes, it’s partly because I like the cold, but it’s also to save electricity.  Likewise, in the summer, I set the air at 83° during the day and 89° at night. 

In addition, I take a bath every other day for the most part.  When I shower (to wash my hair), I turn off the faucet between getting wet and putting on the shampoo.  After rinsing off the shampoo, I turn off the water again while putting on conditioner and waiting to rinse it off.

I recycle, try to use as minimal plastic as possible, and I don’t leave lights on in rooms where I am not.  Actually, I don’t use lights much at all even when I’m in a room, but that’s not an environmental thing–it’s a ‘I hate light’ thing.  In the one room where I actually use my light (computer room), I have an LED light bulb instead of a regular one.  It uses a fraction of the electricity a normal bulb uses, and it’s a cool blue–like President Obama.  I don’t constantly upgrade my clothes, furniture, car, electronic gadgets just because I can or because something new and cute has come out.  Hell, I’ve only had my cell phone for nine months, and I keep it turned off and in my purse. 

I don’t use the dishwasher; I do laundry every other week or so; I give away books after reading them so someone else can enjoy them.   I don’t eat fast food or go to chain stores for the most part.  I eat organic food as well, and I drink Fair Trade coffee.  In other words, I am trying my best to do my little part to help out our earth, and I feel guilty because I took a bath two nights in a row. 

That said, I am declaring tomorrow Child-Free to Be Non-Green Day tomorrow.  What?  How can someone as eco-conscious as I declare a non-green day?  Hear me out.

I can only do so much.  The problem is, anything I do is immediately trampled by other people who are proliferating at an alarming rate.  The straw that broke my back was the woman who had the octuplets after already having six children.  She has fourteen kids now.  Fourteen.  Between her and the Duggars family, they have put the earth in a far-deeper hole than I would ever be able to dig. 

A like-minded, likewise child-free friend of mine sent me an e-mail telling me (jokingly, I presume) that she is leaving her lights on all day long in protest of the octuplets being born.  That’s how my idea was born for a National Child-Free to Be Un-Green Day.  Since my contributions to the earth and the contributions of my friend, Marie, can’t make a dent in just one woman’s reproduction decisions alone in affecting our earth, we might as well not even try.

To that end, tomorrow I am going to throw my pop can in the trash.  Well, I would if I drank pop.  Oh, oh, I got it.  I’m going to crank my heat up and let it run all day and night.  Except, then I would be hot.  I don’t like being hot.  I know!  I will turn on all the lights in the morning and not turn them off until I go to bed!  Except, that will give off heat as well.  I could wash my clothes, but that seems like too much work. 

Gee, it’s harder for me to go un-green than I thought it’d be.  Maybe I won’t declare that national holiday quite yet; I still have a few kinks to work out.