It is cruel and unusual punishment that I told all my family and friends about writing a blog and then I got sick and haven’t touched it for a week or two. I have so much to chat about too. Birthdays, gardens, and a thousand thank yous to my friends and family for their birthday wishes and survey answers. Not to mention that I have several new gadgets — most importantly a Wii.

I will start at the beginning and try to make up for it over the next week or two. So let’s start with Earth Day.

First and foremost, I have never considered myself very good at being “environmental”. Don’t know why since my dearest friends are all green in work and lifestyle. Lapster has always been better in this area. He is great at recycling, buys products with the least amount of packaging, etc. I, on the other hand, am a lazy environmentalist. If it is easy — if it is trendy — I’m much more likely to do it. I’m embarrassed by that, and hopefully looking to make a change.

So I decided that I would do my best with the easy lazy side of saving the planet. Lapster is a great motivator. So here are the new things we are doing:

• We will use cloth napkins at meals instead of paper ones.

And you get to go buy pretty cloth napkins — so I like that!

• We will buy only recycled toilet paper and paper towels.

I like doing this, but honestly, they cost more and I go for the super cheap, but it is important — I’m going to bite the bullet. I seem to find plenty of room in my budget for cookies, ice cream, and diet coke — I can spend an extra 60 cents for recycled paper supplies.

• Turn down the thermostat by 2 degrees.

This is also easy for me because I am in a constant state of boiling. Very rarely cold — of course, poor Lapster is so skinny and tall he’ll need to wear an extra sweater. Spring comes soon — so I don’t know if I’m being a hero to not use the heat in the summer — but hey, I’ll take credit anywhere that I can get it.

• Use cloth groceries bags.

This is my biggest change for two reasons — One, I just always forget to bring them in. We have several cloth bags in the car. They are right in the back seat for goodness sake, but I never grab them. I forget until I’m watching some high school kid double bagging my box of sandwich bags.

Second, it was hard to do at first. I know that sounds silly — I mean I live in Seattle — green capitol of the world. But I was a little nervous. I was worried they thought I was “trying” to be cool. Maybe I wouldn’t have enough bags, but once I got over my own silly nerves — no one said a word — except the bagger said, “it’s great that you use your own bags, and these are really cute.” So no excuse. Gotta make the change.

• Change to energy light bulbs.

We’ve replaced most of the light bulbs in the house and as they burn out — we use energy saving bulbs. Then I make sure to turn off lights we aren’t using. My dad would be so proud.

So I haven’t adopted baby seals. I’m not drinking my own bath water or anything, but I decided I will do the easy stuff and be consistent. That’s my small gift that will make a difference in the long run.

The other thing that inspired me about Earth Day — was watching the Planet Earth series on the Discovery Channel. It is an understatement to say that Lapster and I are obsessed. Every Sunday night for the past few weeks we have been glued to the television. The nature coverage was collected on HD cameras for several years and the footage is like nothing I have ever seen. They are going to show the re-runs through May — find your local listing and check it out or you can buy the dvd it at the Discovery Store.

So hopefully this is just the beginning for me. Baby steps. It takes the earth thousands of years to change — and I seem to change at a similar pace.

Earth Day Resources

• Earth911.org
• Earthday.net
  
• Earthsite.org