On the quest to zero

It has been a bit of a quest for us as a family for a few years to approach zero – zero carbon footprint. Each year, we target one aspect of our life, and see how we can change it to reduce our negative impact on the world around us.
This year, we have joined the war on plastic waste and our aim is to reduce the number of single-use plastics in our life.

I think it is important to make the distinction. There are good uses for plastics, such as longer-term storage (Tupperware, etc), plastic toys (Lego, figurines) and so on. It would be impossible to live in 2019 and not have plastic in your life at all - unless you are lucky enough to live on an island paradise where you can construct everything yourself from the materials around you and grow all your own foods.
Unfortunately, we live an urban life and need to have jobs to sustain those lives, so some sacrifices have to be made. And while we sort our waste and put things into the recycling bin, the big issue with plastic is the overwhelming amount of single-use plastics that do not get recycled (even if you sort your waste) and then end up in all the wrong places.
We realised the bulk of our single-use plastics come from food packaging, and so this is the first thing we are targeting this year.
We found a lovely service that delivers milk and fresh fruit juice in glass bottles right to your front door. They also happen to deliver to one of our neighbours, so it is a single stop for the delivery vehicle, we get farm-fresh milk in glass bottles, and they also have lovely fresh produce that they deliver in card board boxes. This has already made a huge dent in our weekly plastic disposal.
We’ve also realised that a part of this is reducing the number of chemicals we use around the house, especially ones that enter the water system, so we are phasing out store-bought cleaning products for both the home and the body, and replacing them with more natural product – home made as much as possible, but we will also be supporting brands like Lush for the products we cannot make ourselves.
This will be a big focus this year, so I will try and keep track of our progress here. I kind of wish I took a ‘before’ picture of our week’s trash pile of plastic, or at least some way to know what our start state was, but we will keep track of it nonetheless and find ways to measure our progress as we go long.

On empty nesting and spring madness in autumn

My child, my one and only offspring, fruit of my body, is twenty one years old. Twenty one. I have produced and managed to aid a full human to grow to this ripe age and everything. And, strangely, one gets rather attached to a human living in your space like this. So it is with some dismay that I have recently realised that this human will not remain in our space forever.

It has been even more pronounced recently as they have been travelling to Norway fairly frequently to visit their partner. The last trip was the one that really drove home this realisation. And so I have started preparing myself for the empty nest syndrome.

The husband and I luckily enjoy each others company, and have spent a fair bit of time together so we won’t find ourselves suddenly living with a stranger as so many do, but our house always feels a little emptier when the young one is away and the emptiness will take some time to get used to. I am sure it, as all other feelings, will eventually fade.

I will just need to plan my travels carefully, to ensure we can continue the one real tradition we have, which is me waking them up at 5:45am on the morning of their birthday with pancakes (or crepes as the rest of the world apparently calls them).

Growing up in South Africa, September was always the month of spring. It may not always be warm, but the signs of spring would be everywhere – sun rising earlier, trees in full bloom, air full of promise. September also meant I had a lot more energy and a head full of ideas, which I later realised was a cyclical bout of hypomania.

When we moved to the northern hemisphere, I believed this would end, as September is the beginning of autumn, and I expected I would see a slight downturn in mood.

And last year, my first September here, I didn’t really notice a mood swing either way.

But, this year, the mood I associate with September is back. Less sleep, more excitement, more exuberance, more energy. And thanks to my lovely friend Mandy’s research skills, I have now learnt that this is expected behaviour. And with some additional research, it turns out this is expected two weeks on either side of both the Autumn and Spring equinox. I must be honest, I have not really tracked my mood that actively for the last few years, and I have become a little complacent. I can feel the hypo coming on, and try and manage as much as possible with diet, sleep, exercise and sheer stubborness, but this means I am probably overdue a full episode and should keep track of things slightly better again.

Forty Four

My favourite cat in the whole wide world is himself again, which means he has been snuggling with me in the mornings and just generally being cute. It is unfortunate that it has taken some severe dental work to get him back to normal, but all that matters is that he is back and happy once more.

Fourteen

The husband and I celebrated our twentieth anniversary this week. Twenty years is a very, very long time, and yet, it doesn’t feel like it has been such a long time, really. We’ve been through so much in this time, and yet, here we are, twenty years later, still happy together and still best friends.

Of course, such a milestone always makes one think about relationships. It seems to be a rare things, these days, for a relationship to last this long. I feel so blessed.

Here’s to the next twenty  

The picture was taken in our front garden, at sunset, while waiting for our cab on our way to our anniversary dinner.

Eight

The daughter has recently started baking muffins on a Sunday for her school lunches during the week. This week, she baked beautiful vanilla muffins with chocolate centres. Quite impressive, considering the state of our house currently.

Seven

The daughter’s art prep work.

I love her style. One of her teachers recently suggested thinking about book illustrations as one career option, which I think would be lovely.

Six

Our daughter turned 18 today. I have too many thoughts and feelings around this moment that I am unable to articulate.

2013: A year in pictures

January

January is made up, always, of my birthday. This year we also hit the open road to see some long lost friends, and really put some focus on selling our house.

February

February belongs to my daughter, who celebrated her 16th year of existence this year. We also accepted an offer on our house.

March

In March, we packed. And packed some more. And then went on holiday to Cape Town.

April

Apparently, all we did in April was pack and pack and pack some more, and then we went to see Metallica live at Soccer City.

May

In May, we packed and packed and packed some more. And finally found a new home.

June

We moved! It took a little while to unpack and settle in, but we got there in the end. June also saw the first real cold of Winter kick in (Winter is Coming). We celebrated my dad and his twin sister’s 60 birthdays and I ended the month off with a bang and then a whimper, as I threw myself down some stairs.

July

We went to the local ‘Con, and my daughter did an awesome Homestuck cosplay. Also aquired a Rasberri Pi. And then this happened:

And we spent some time with some of our favourite people in the world, pictured above.

August

And when we got home, we got some new couches and renovated our study.

September

We bought a stove – super sparkly new one – my daughter made good art, I got my new Nokia Lumia, we started walking in the park regularly, our pool cleared up and we had an amazing time at a company function.

 

October

We hopped on a plane again, this time to George airport to visit my mother for her 60th birthday. What a great week-end.

November

I decided that I needed some non-screen related hobbies, and bought a bunch of art stuff, including glass stain. I will really start using this in the new year in the evenings while I sit with my daughter when she’s doing homework. I also took some really cool photos, and we had a lovely team-building outing to Gold Reef City.

 

December

December is one of my favourite months. Summer in Jozi is really glorious, and in December we see big skies, big storms and beautiful greenery. We now live close to Delta Park, and really make use of this by trying to walk in the park on a daily basis.

2013 has been one of the busiest years we have had in a long time, with lots of milestone birthdays and other activities. Househunting was tremendously stressful, but it worked out beautifully in the end.

Here’s to 2014. May it be a year of peace and happiness for all.