Sparkling Ginger

Well friends, I was unexpectedly thrown off my game here for a couple of weeks as our family lost our beloved canine member, Ginger. She was such a sweetheart and a wonderful presence in our house (as those who knew her would know), and it's been quite a shock to the system to no longer have her around, providing endless unconditional love, support and friendship to us all on a daily basis. But they say "don't cry because its over, smile because it happened", and when I think about it I guess that's the right attitude to take, because it's only our inability to acknowledge death as a necessary part of life that makes these moments so hard to bear. Maybe if we really face the fact that nothing lasts forever, we'll enjoy things more while they're here and not feel quite so angry and bitter when they inevitably disappear.

Anyway, as a memorial to my favourite little friend for over 10 years, I did what I always do when things come to an end...wrote her a poem. Here's to you, Gingy. Living Green blog will resume next week.

Ginger
2002-2012

"SPARKLING GINGER"

It was a special day in April, in the year 2002

When the Farragher family first laid our eyes on you

It was true love at first sight, I think we’d all agree

The little smudge upon your face suited us perfectly

And so began the story of your life at 52

We took you home, and showed you around, and named you Ginger, too

And from that day on, you became the dog we knew

With so many things about you that made you so uniquely you

You were a cavalier with personality to spare

And a happy little face framed by flowing Ginger hair

You’d greet us every morning with an unabashed delight 

And cuddle up to watch TV beside us every night

You loved to walk on through the park and greet the passers-by

(Though you preferred the human breed to your fellow canines)

You’d set out with excitement and energetic glee

But by the final hill you’d always pant exhaustedly

You understood our language, and made sure we knew yours

You knew that “bed”, “cookie” and “walk” were all things you adored

And when you wanted dinner, or a late-night snack or two

You stomped and sniffed emphatically ‘til we gave into you

A lover of life’s yummiest culinary delights

You’d stare at us intently when we ate our snacks at night

Pizza, peanut butter, and McDonald’s French fries, too

You had a way of knowing when they were on our menu

On days of celebration, you could never quite hold back

(Self-restraint was a quality you sort of seemed to lack)

You’d dive into the presents, whether they were yours or not

And gleefully pull out the tissue paper, while we laughed ourselves in knots

Yes, you had a special innocence and sweetness about you

Everyone that walked through the door was a best friend to you

You’d greet them with enthusiastic curiousity

And make them feel like they were meant to join the family

But to our family of four, you were loyal through and through

Your touching dedication was so clear with every move

The first to greet us at the door, the last to say goodbye

So full of love and gentleness, with such a zest for life

And now we’ve watched you peacefully drift away to sleep

And for all the memories we’ve shared, our hearts longingly weep

But we thank you for those ten good years of joy, laughter and love

And know you’re resting peacefully on an angel’s lap above

xo Janine

Sparkling Ginger

Well friends, I was unexpectedly thrown off my game here for a couple of weeks as our family lost our beloved canine member, Ginger. She was such a sweetheart and a wonderful presence in our house (as those who knew her would know), and it's been quite a shock to the system to no longer have her around, providing endless unconditional love, support and friendship to us all on a daily basis. But they say "don't cry because its over, smile because it happened", and when I think about it I guess that's the right attitude to take, because it's only our inability to acknowledge death as a necessary part of life that makes these moments so hard to bear. Maybe if we really face the fact that nothing lasts forever, we'll enjoy things more while they're here and not feel quite so angry and bitter when they inevitably disappear.

Anyway, as a memorial to my favourite little friend for over 10 years, I did what I always do when things come to an end...wrote her a poem. Here's to you, Gingy. Living Green blog will resume next week.

Ginger
2002-2012

"SPARKLING GINGER"

It was a special day in April, in the year 2002

When the Farragher family first laid our eyes on you

It was true love at first sight, I think we’d all agree

The little smudge upon your face suited us perfectly

And so began the story of your life at 52

We took you home, and showed you around, and named you Ginger, too

And from that day on, you became the dog we knew

With so many things about you that made you so uniquely you

You were a cavalier with personality to spare

And a happy little face framed by flowing Ginger hair

You’d greet us every morning with an unabashed delight 

And cuddle up to watch TV beside us every night

You loved to walk on through the park and greet the passers-by

(Though you preferred the human breed to your fellow canines)

You’d set out with excitement and energetic glee

But by the final hill you’d always pant exhaustedly

You understood our language, and made sure we knew yours

You knew that “bed”, “cookie” and “walk” were all things you adored

And when you wanted dinner, or a late-night snack or two

You stomped and sniffed emphatically ‘til we gave into you

A lover of life’s yummiest culinary delights

You’d stare at us intently when we ate our snacks at night

Pizza, peanut butter, and McDonald’s French fries, too

You had a way of knowing when they were on our menu

On days of celebration, you could never quite hold back

(Self-restraint was a quality you sort of seemed to lack)

You’d dive into the presents, whether they were yours or not

And gleefully pull out the tissue paper, while we laughed ourselves in knots

Yes, you had a special innocence and sweetness about you

Everyone that walked through the door was a best friend to you

You’d greet them with enthusiastic curiousity

And make them feel like they were meant to join the family

But to our family of four, you were loyal through and through

Your touching dedication was so clear with every move

The first to greet us at the door, the last to say goodbye

So full of love and gentleness, with such a zest for life

And now we’ve watched you peacefully drift away to sleep

And for all the memories we’ve shared, our hearts longingly weep

But we thank you for those ten good years of joy, laughter and love

And know you’re resting peacefully on an angel’s lap above

xo Janine

My Carbon Footprint is....

Well, I spent the first week of "living green" just consciously trying to turn off any house lights, computers and extraneous unused appliances that have some sort of green light or low hum coming from them. That's all I did, because that's about all I CAN do with what I currently know, which can only mean one thing: it's time to get educated.

I hear environmentally conscious people talking about reducing their carbon footprints all the time, so I decide to start from there. I know the goal is to use less carbon.... (hold your applause, please...) but how exactly to achieve that and what it all means in the grand scheme of things eludes me. So I do what I do to find out the answer to all of life's conundrums: google it.

I click on the most trusty-looking search result that comes up (how can www.carbonfootprint.com be wrong?) The first thing I notice is that they offer a calculator to determine what your carbon footprint is. Score! This will be like the fitness assessment for the living healthy phase... I can use it as an outcome measure! (Sorry...can you tell I work in research?)

So I start to fill out the form. After asking me about where I live and such, the first tab probes for home electricity usage information. Specifically, it asks me how much electricity, natural gas, heating oil, coal, LPG, propane, and wooden pellets are used in my house in the last year. This is problematic for several reasons. First of all, I know so little about it that I barely even know what applies to me. What is LPG? How on earth am I supposed to know how much coal we burned last year? And who knew wooden pellets are actually used as a home energy source? Good god. This tab is hopeless. I'll have to bother the electricity guru in the house (aka my father) for this information later.

I move onto the next tab feeling even more enviro-ignorant, hoping I'll fare a bit better here. Ah, flight information. I can do that! The next one, car mileage, is also fairly easy - aside from learning how to drive last year, I can count on both hands the number of trips I've actually made in the car, so I'll give it a guess and say 500km worth. The next tab doesn't apply (don't ride a motorbike), so I move to the bus and transport one. It proceeds to ask me the number of kilometres I've traveled on the subway or bus in the past year. SERIOUSLY?? Who actually keeps track of this stuff??  Hmmm. I haven't really got the slightest idea, but I decide to assume I go an average of 10km a day...which equates to about 3600/year. *Shrugs* at least it's an answer.

Finally, I move to the last tab: "Secondary". This asks me about lifestyle habits. Nope, not a vegan. No, I don't purposely buy organic or in-season food. I also don't grow all of my own food or purposely buy local. (This is starting to make me feel guilty...) Next it asks me about my fashion and technology purchasing habits. It asks me if I recycle and if I engage in carbon-usage activities (apparently going to the movies, restaurants or bars fall into this category...) It asks me how many cars I own. (YES! I'm good for this one - zero!)

And finally...done! I click calculate (despite knowing the result will be inaccurately low since I skipped that home usage part, which probably accounts for a lot of it).

Regardless, it tells me I use 8.58 tons of carbon per year, and that the average Canadian uses 20. This makes me feel less bad about some of those last questions, although I'm sure my actual total is a lot closer to that average number. Then it tells me that the world target per individual is 2 tons per year. WOW. This means the average Canadian uses 10 TIMES the amount of energy they should. Poor environment! Well, this is certainly going to be an uphill climb. Apparently it's going to take a lot more than just me turning off my VCR at night to save the earth.

Which brings me to what I'll be exploring in my next post: How to reduce a carbon footprint! Stay tuned, friends...

xo Janine

Day 1 of "Living Green" - Bicycles, blue bins and David Suzuki

The first thing I did before I started typing this was turn off the lights in the room. “Ha ha!” I thought to myself rather smugly. How hard can this “living green" thing be?

The second thing I did was try to generate more ways than just “turning off the lights” of becoming environmentally friendly in day to day life. Hmmm. What do environmentally conscious people do? I try to conjure up an image in my head. I see bike riding. I see blue bins. I see David Suzuki. The vision ends there.

All right. Never mind. This is going to be hard.

Truth be told, I must shamefully admit that I’m one of those walking hypocrites when it comes to preserving our Mother Earth. I could preach for days about the need for society to stop ruining our planet, start finding sustainable energy sources, and learn to live in harmony with the natural world…and the next minute you’ll find me walking out of my house with every light, appliance and plug-in-able thing still powered on. I have never truly thought about how to actually reduce my own impact on the environment in practical day-to-day terms – despite believing in the cause, I’ve never actually taken action to do anything about it.

But they say there’s no time like the present for a reason…so for the next 13 weeks, I’ll be looking into learning about and trying out a variety of green-friendly initiatives.

Now, I have learned something from my last rather flat 3-month project. Working 2 jobs and doing this blog requires a good, realistic plan… more structured than I had for the “Living Healthy” project, where I had the luxury of copious amounts of free time to dedicate to grocery shopping, cooking, exercising, and blogging about it all. The “Living Spiritually” segment demonstrated that without a plan, things get away from me pretty quickly. So this time, I’m going to approach it a little differently – one blog every week, each with a slightly different theme or spin on the green living thing. If there’s a reason in particular to do an extra blog or two I most certainly will, but at the minimum there will be a weekly post.

Hang onto your hats, kids (before my windmill of green enthusiasm blows you away! Ha...ha...)...oh, this should get interesting.

xo Janine