Last day of school/blog

Today is Big Bro's last day of preschool. He could not be happier. He's grown so much this year and I'm so proud of him for going to school even though I know many mornings he would have rather stayed home.

9/4/13 First day of preschool, 3 yo

6/18/14 Last day of preschool until fall, 4 yo

I have been writing this Mama of Ma'at blog five days a week since last August. Similar to Big Bro, today is going to be my last official blogging day for the summer. Over Christmas vacation I took a break from writing this blog because I wanted to be on vacation with my family without any extra distractions. I have decided I am also going to take the summer off to focus on family fun. Plus who wants to be chained to their computer in a non-air-conditioned house during summer if it's not required?

Over the summer I will still be blogging for the Burlington Mom's Blog twice a month. I will also do the occasional entry on Mama of Ma'at if something really strikes me and I feel I just have to write about it. I may re-share posts from my archives too.

I hope you all have a great summer! Thanks for reading!

Walking the Talk: My Report Card

Yesterday the Huffington Post posted an article called You Can Help Save The Planet With These 15 (Somewhat) Easy Steps. As a Green who is trying to get better at walking the talk, I thought it would be fun to share with you all how I am doing in each of these categories. I'd love to hear how you are doing in these categories as well.

1. Not Driving A Big Car All By Over The Place By Yourself

I do drive a big car, a Honda Odyssey to be exact. If I could afford an all-electric family car I would, alas I cannot. My kids are almost always with me in the van, and sometimes my husband and dog, or the grandparents are too. I love it when the van completely full, though that can be hard to do. Although the mpg isn't great, it is good for a minivan (18/25 city/highway). I also try to limit my driving trips overall, which is more possible since I am a stay at home mom.
 

2. Not Having Lots Of Kids

I have two kids, that was planned because I was trying to fill my maternal wants AND "Plan It for the Planet." I also don't have energy for more kids even if I thought the planet could handle it.

3. Don't Idle Your Car

This is a serious pet peeve of mine. There have been SO MANY times that I want to walk up to a stranger and tell them to turn off their car as they wait in a parking lot to whatever establishment we are both at. I restrain myself, but it's difficult. Once I did try to gently say something, but it didn't result in the guy turning off his engine. So, no, I personally don't idle. I even turn off my engine at the rare times I'm at a drive-thru or if I'm waiting at a particularly long red light.

4. Don't Eat Lots Of Meat

I was a vegetarian for five years during adolescence, but redeveloped a taste for meat. For a while, after receiving a blood transfusion I developed a serious appetite for red meat. My desire for meat has waned, and I would love to cut back even more. Currently, I sometimes try to stretch a package for a couple meals. I'd love to do more vegetarian meals, I just need to take the time to look up recipes.

5. Don't Vote for Climate Change-Denying And Pro-Oil Representatives 

I definitely don't vote for climate deniers or oil puppets. Fortunately, this is made easier by living in liberal, green, Vermont.

6. Don't Take A Really Long Shower

I'm a stay at home mom. If I shower twice a week I'm doing well. (TMI? Sorry.) Sometimes I do linger in those precious showers a little even though my brain guilts me about how much oil I'm burning to heat the water.

7. Avoid Buying Things From China

This is hard to do, but yes, I try. Good thing is that we rarely go shopping except for food so that helps a lot. I've also embraced hand-me-downs and garage sales for getting kid stuff in particular.
 

8. Stop Wasting Paper

Whenever there is a paperless billing option I do it. We do not subscribe to a printed newspaper. Our biggest source of paper waste by far is from junk mail and companies who do not have a paperless billing/statement option.

9. Avoid Flying Across The Country Multiple Times A Year

This past summer I flew for the first time in 6 years to attend the Climate Leadership Training in Chicago (yes, I see the contradiction in this). 

10. Don't Waste Food

I do my best to make sure my family eats everything we buy, but we do have a backyard composting operation. We don't put food waste in the trash.

11. Quit Eating Out Of Season

This makes sense, but it's hard because in VT there is no fresh fruit and my kids love bananas, clementines, grapes, pears, you name it. I do too. Canned and dried doesn't quite cut it for me. I am looking forward to cracking open a jar of my own canned peaches during our first big snowstorm.

12. Stop Using As Much Electricity And Unplug When Possible

We are conscious about turning off lights and not leaving our Christmas tree lights on unless we are home to enjoy them. Our biggest downfall is probably our tv. If I was more disciplined I would only watch it when specific shows are on, but sometimes we do zone out in front of the tv, or multitask with other devices. We have solar panels for our house which helps. We also live in a region that gets a lot of hydropower which helps. We also have advanced power strips that cut down on phantom electricity demand.

13. Cut Back On Air Conditioner Use

We don't have one, so this isn't an issue. I would love to finish a room in the basement. That's where I hid out on hot summer days while growing up, unless I was in the pool. If we fix the holes in our screened-in porch we could also use that more on hot days as a sleeping porch, or hang out area after the sun goes down.

14. Don't Worsen America's Dog Obsession

We have a dog, but just one. She's here to stay.

15. Seal Up Your House

We did an energy audit this past summer and had insulation and air sealing done. It should cut down on our heating energy use and emissions by about 30%.

Surprise Contact From My Grad School Professor

On Friday evening I got an email from one of the Town Selectmen. He was forwarding an email that was received via the Town's website contact form. The email was from one of my graduate school professors. He had Googled me and found that I serve on my Town Planning Commission. The professor was looking for me because he had "some questions about our past work." He included his email and phone number and requested I contact him.

I was surprised, and a bit flattered. But then I started to panic a bit. What did he want to ask me about? Would I remember anything about it? Could I sound intelligent on the phone even though it's been 6 years since I graduated, and 5 since I worked in transportation planning? I would have to fess up that I, a former "transportation scholar" who received funding from my university to study transportation, was now a stay at home mom in a tiny town and not doing anything transportation related.

"Did he find you on LinkedIn?" my husband asked. LinkedIn is another thing that makes me panic a little. Yes, I joined years ago when I had a professional job, but LinkedIn doesn't serve much purpose for people who don't work for an income. It's a point of embarrassment to think that old colleagues might find me on there and see that I have become irrelevant in my field. Or so my panicked brain told me.

So I emailed him, the phone would be too nerve-wracking, plus it was dinner time here on the East Coast and not far from the kids bedtime either. It was a very congenial email exchange. Turns out my old professor just was looking for a file from that project I had helped him with. Thanks to the never ending storage provided by my gmail account, I still had our original correspondence on the project which included the original database he was desperately seeking. He was grateful to find the database file, and told me about how much his kids had grown and made the usual "it goes by so fast!" kind of remarks. He was glad to see I was still involved in planning. He also mentioned that thanks to a generous donation my school had been renovated from a dumpy little building into something quite nice, and they had a full time staff person to help students and alumni find internships and jobs.

Thanks for the tip, Professor! I just may do that sometime in the next few years. But for now I'm good where I am, despite any insecurities I may have about not having a position in our economic system at this point in time.

 

Me in grad school, wrapping up a conference I organized.

Me in my current job

Happy Birthday to Me!

The day that I share this on Facebook is my real birthday. Happy Birthday to me! 

Here is My Birthday Wish:

I want a world full of solar and other renewable energy because:

and I think that windmills are beautiful:

 

Especially when considering the alternative:

Canadian Tar Sands: boreal forests stripped then mined, no life remains, water is irreparably fouled

And lastly, because:

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From City Mice to Country Mice

Having the background of an environmentalist, a city planner and a transportation planner who thoroughly supports the theory of New Urbanism, I knew I wanted to live in the city when we moved back to Vermont from Los Angeles. That meant moving to Burlington. The lovely little house we renovated was located in the Old North End of Burlington was it was perfect. It was in a mostly residential area right next to downtown. I spent many days when Big Bro was an infant just walking around the neighborhood, to the waterfront, and to downtown with him in the Baby Bjorn and our dog Pepper happily trotting along with us. We walked anywhere we wanted to go, laughed at traffic during rush hour, and at the traffic trying to leave after events like the July 4th fireworks. We ate out constantly, we met so many young, friendly people. It was a diverse neighborhood with people from all over the world who had settled in Burlington through the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program. It was all cute, historic, human-scale streets. We had more than one park within easy walking distance. We even had our own little grassy backyard that we mowed with a mechanical pushmower, barbequed, threw parties and played games. Our own slice of paradise.

Meanwhile, my husband's parents still lived in his childhood home in the Champlain Islands and the house next door to them had come up for sale. At first I resisted. Our little city house was perfect, and we had spent so much sweat equity making it so, and the LOCATION, how could we leave the location! But then again, this house in the Islands had almost 4 acres of land and an attached apartment.

One hot July day it all started to change. Our neighborhood that I loved so much was considered sketchy by many of our friends. To be fair, the Old North End does have a lot of poverty, plus issues with crime and drugs, but there are plenty of "good" people there that it was ok. That summer the apartment house across the street from us started having a lot of undesirable activity: people shouting obscenities in the streets and Police responses to the premises on more than one occassion, and a biker gang who liked to park out front and rev their engines. "What if we do just go look at that house?" I asked my husband. "Really??" was his response. "Yeah, but could my mom live in the apartment if she wanted to?" That was my stipulation and he agreed.

We went to see the house on another hot July day. The house was musty from being closed up for a long time. It was still full of lots of the seller's stuff, and nothing had been updated since the 1970s when it was built. There was orange shag carpet, turquoise shag carpet, and an old red carpet that was more like a blanket on the floor because all the glue had long ago dissolved. Nevertheless, it was large and had lake views. There was a fireplace, a big kitchen, and then what really drove it home was the big screened-in porch on the back. "Uh oh." I told my husband. "I really like it."

We made an offer, it was accepted. We put our cute, little city house on the market. We closed on the country house on October 1st. We closed on the sale of our city house on October 31st. While in negotiations to sell our city house there was a murder just a few houses down the street. It helped me feel like leaving our perfect little city house was the right move after all.

Now we have egg laying chickens, a garden, and goats. We tap our own trees to make maple syrup. Maybe my next career will be farming. Our dog loves roaming the almost 5 acres of "the compound" as my mother-in-law affectionately calls our living arrangement. She (Grandma) and Grandpa live next door and adore playing with their grandchildren. My mom, known as Nini to the grandkids, lives in the attached apartment and we love sharing meals with her. My kids have an amazing (and rare) experience to grow up knowing all of their living grandparents extremely well. Life is good.

Below: Pictures from the backyard of our city house






Below:  At our country house with the chicks and our first garden in the background.

 

Below: Putting taps in the maple trees

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On Becoming a Stay at Home Mom

If you had asked me as a teenager what would I be doing with my life by my late 20s/early 30s, stay-at-home motherhood would not have come up. Discussions in my household growing up included things like becoming a flight attendant as a way to travel and see the world. My parents lived an international life between Germany and the US for their first several years together. We traveled to Germany and other places as a family when I was a kid. As a teen I grabbed every chance to travel more independently: a high school exchange to Germany, an environmental education trip to Kenya, and a semester traveling and camping throughout the Southeastern US with the Audubon Expedition Institute. I imagined this pattern would likely continue into adulthood.

Then a funny thing happened. I fell in love with a local boy. I really got to know and fell in love with the region that as a teen I only imagined leaving and trading it for bigger and better, more worldly places. Even so, my local boy and I started traveling together (St. Croix, Ireland, Paris). We moved cross country together, to Los Angeles, to pursue a masters degree and a law degree. These adventures, though great fun, only made us appreciate our little corner of Vermont more and we knew we wanted to come back.

Upon moving back, with a fresh masters degree (in urban planning) in hand, I married my local boy. We got jobs with steady incomes. Jobs that allowed us a new adventure of buying a ramshackle house and totally renovating it. We worked all day at our jobs, ate a quick takeout dinner in the conference room of my office, then went to work on our house in the dark, and freezing cold winter temperatures for a few hours each night and every weekend. It was quite romantic actually.

When the house was done we decided we wanted a baby. But by then it was fall of 2008 and the Great Recession started. I lost my job. I  looked for new work but was conflicted. Conflicted about interviewing for jobs I didn't know if I would keep because I didn't know what kind of mother I wanted to be. My mother was a stay at home mom, and so were many of my friends' mothers growing up, so it was a familiar path. Yet, I had just recently gotten my degree and felt like I had better use it. The economic crisis wasn't making finding work easy so I found a part time, temporary job while I was pregnant. When my son was born it just felt right to be home with him. I didn't want anyone else raising him. I didn't want to miss all his firsts. The decision was made.

I have been a stay at home mom for 3 years now and it has been so rewarding to watch my son and daughter grow. Difficult and grueling at times too, but worth it. I have tried to always keep one foot in the professional world. I did some consulting for a former employer, and I also serve on my town's planning commission and zoning board. There are times that I worry about re-entering the workforce, will my skills still be relevant, who will hire me after so many years of "not working." There have been times when I'm the only stay at home parent in the room and I do feel less valued because I don't have my own paycheck and any office stories I have to add to the conversation are 4 years old. Still, I wouldn't trade this time with my kids. The memories we are making are absolutely priceless. A free-spirited friend of mine from college told me "We are more than what we do to earn our daily bread." I think this is true. I have a very fulfilling life raising my children, and a very important job guiding them to be conscientious, intelligent, and caring individuals. There will still time for another professional career someday, and time for family travel adventures.

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