A tribute to Earth Day

Whoever planned the first Earth Day was right on in picking a mid-spring date, because at least around here everyone is enjoying the earth (and sun) to its fullest after being cooped up for 5 months. Coincidentally, all the factors aligned perfectly for me to bike to (and from - that's kind of necessary) work on Wednesday. Those factors include: no rain in the forecast, not too cold or hot, and no reason that I have to be anywhere at a certain time or look my best. I do carry a change of clothes, but there's no place to take a shower except the gym across campus, and if I'm going there for a shower, I might as well take advantage of the facilities and not bother with the bike ride. As you can imagine, I only end up doing this a handful of times in a year.

One of the reasons biking works for me is that it's mostly downhill on the way there, so I get excited for the trip and fell exhilarated after it, and then I'm stuck there and am forced to do the reverse route in order to get home. If it were the other way around, I'm not sure I'd ever get up the gumption to start the process. Just so you know what I'm talking about, here are the elevations of my almost 6 mile route thanks to gmaps pedometer:

I couldn't get it all in one picture, but you get the idea. That's a 320ft difference in elevation, which is only slightly shorter than a football field stood on its end. And that first hill really is a doozy. If I make it up that without having to stop or nearly passing out, then I know I'll be OK the rest of the way home.

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I turned on the TV Wednesday evening hoping to find something entertaining to watch while folding clothes and ended up catching the documentary, Food, Inc., on PBS and being alternately mesmerized and horrified.  I think I need to watch it every time I get ready to go to the grocery store or a restaurant. I've already seen Super Size Me and now limit myself and the kids to very few fast food items on the infrequent visits we make to those restaurants. We also have been paying much better attention to the corn syrup-related ingredients in processed foods along with the trans fats issue, and we had already switched to mostly grass-fed meat products. However, thanks to watching Food, Inc., I've decided we're going cold turkey (so to speak) and switching totally to free-range, grass-fed, local, etc. meats. Luckily, we live somewhere where it is relatively easy to do this, even if it's more expensive. And I expect a positive result to be that we end up eating less meat anyway because it will cost more and be a little harder to obtain. We'll see how this all goes, and I'll try to post occasionally about our progress. I am seriously thinking of posting recipes/menus that are successes at our house, just so that I can have a good reference for the healthy meals the kids also enjoy, so maybe I'll tie those in together. And post pictures.

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Greyson's 10th birthday is Monday, which means that 10 years ago today I was just coming up on 34 weeks of an uneventful pregnancy and 10 years ago tomorrow evening everything went a little crazy and changed my life pretty thoroughly. I'll post about all that and with current pictures next week.