The decline of Mama

My decline has begun. I finished my shampoo this week. I use Moo Goo shampoo and conditioner. I trialled lots of other natural or organic shampoos before I lucked onto Moo Goo at my local health food store. It’s the first natural shampoo I’ve found that doesn’t either dry out my hair or leave it too oily. As terrible as Sodium Lauryl Sulfate is for our skin and hair, it makes hair look sensational (for about 12 hours).  Shampoos that have more natural ingredients may be better for us, but they don’t always hit the mark for helping our hair look good.

Although I could find some wily way to get around this situation and continue to buy Moo Goo, I have decided to use this opportunity to work our way through the many bottles of ‘bad’ shampoo we have filling our bathroom cupboards. I see twelve bottles at a glance. There are also several half-finished ‘natural’ shampoos from the aforementioned trials.

Michelle Conlin, the long suffering (and I think very good natured, really) wife of No Impact Man.

So, a bit like in No Impact Man when Colin started taking away his wife’s make up, you might notice I start to look a bit lank and a bit oily. My skin might flare up with a rash again, too. I think if it hits that point I might implement a loop hole. Health?

Fortunately I have not been entirely rash. When BP’s Mum asked what I wanted for my birthday I told her all I wanted was a bottle of Moo Goo shampoo. I only have to wait a month and a half.

I will hastily locate all my hair ties and put off that hair cut for a while.

Mama xo

To market, to market…

I really love doing the fruit and vegetable shopping at the market on a Sunday. I’m not 100% sure if it’s cheaper, but I do know the food lasts longer. It isn’t all grown locally, though we do go to a few different stalls to pick up local stuff when possible. They are small businesses, though, and that makes me happier than buying from the big two. Australia’s supermarket duopoly troubles me greatly. Avoiding these two chain stores is one of our ‘side’ projects this year. So far the results have been dubious, but we have not bought fruit and vege from the supermarkets for at least the last 8 months.

Inspired by the No Impact Man (I should probably try and remember his actual name if I’m going to mention him so often) we thought about how we can reduce our waste at the market. We already take reusable bags, but we do collect things like seconds fruit and eggs which come in packaging. Today we decided we were going to work on reducing the packaging. We bought 2 kilos of apricots and 2 kilos of nectarines (both seconds, which makes me really happy) and had them taken out of their boxes and poured into our reusable bags. I figure it’s better for the vendor (they get to keep and re-use their containers) and also for us, as it reduces our recycling. The seller was bemused but didn’t quite understand why we didn’t want the boxes. We then returned our egg carton to the egg seller. He was actually quite stoked. He gave us the eggs for $1 less. I’m pretty sure he did that last week, too, so I’m not going to claim some kind of karma here.

We also have the option of buying $1 bags of random fruit and vege from the stall we buy the bulk of our stuff from. We almost always grab a bag of really ripe pears (usually 2 – 3kg) because pears are one of Little Fearse’s favourite snacks. This week we got a huge bag of bananas, a bulk lot of onions and a punnet of strawberries (most of which are fine). The bananas are still firm, the skins are just damaged.

I guess we’re benefiting from the fact that people care about what their fruit and vege looks like. It seems insane to me, but I did grow up on a property with a large orchard. We’d eat fruit with scars, fruit that grew in strange shapes, fruit with holes in it from the birds… If it vaguely resembled fruit, we ate it.

Really, to become a sustainable society, we have to stop caring about that kind of thing. I mean, this is the smallest of first steps that we can take. Fresh food is so valuable. When did we become a society that would happily eat a McDonald’s thick shake (who knows what they put in that?!) but not a slightly brown banana?

Anyway, I’m looking forward to using some of the “on special” vege I bought to make my own vegetable stock. I use so much of it, and it seems silly to keep buying it from the supermarket. Yay for cheap onions.

Well, we didn’t buy a fat pig. Maybe next time.

Cheers,

Mama xoxox

The Meat Line

After watching “No Impact Man” last night with Momma Fearse, we had a really interesting conversation about the impact that we have on our environment and what difference that actually makes.  Like No Impact Man, we agreed the best you can really do is be an optimist and hope that your optimism rubs off on some people.

During the film the family ate food that was grown within a 250 mile radius and the mother in the family felt like she was missing out on meat. This gave Momma Fearse an idea, she suggested that maybe sometime in the future I attempt not eating meat (which Vegetarian Momma doesn’t eat anyway), to lower my impact on the environment. I was less than impressed. I am on board for most of Mommas schemes and master plans, I even took to eating vegan meals two to three times a week in support. The notion that I cut meat out of my diet all together though caused me to draw a line, a meat line.

I don’t put my foot down often but in the case I stomped a hole in the floor.  BNN is one thing, buying our fruit and vegetables at the local market I’m behind 110%, but the not eating meat for a year, month or week is where I draw the line as far as sustainability or making an impact on the environment goes.  I don’t have a environmental or sustainability theory to back this up, I don’t even really have a way to explain my reasoning for drawing the line there. The point I am trying to make is that I think everyone has a line or a specific thing that they draw the line at when they are enacting change in their life.

Sometimes that line is drawn out of convenience, maybe ignorance, but most often fear, the fear of going without, fear of the unknown, fear of withdrawal or maybe the just the good old fear of change.  Sometimes this fear will lead to people cheating themselves at what they are trying to accomplish, be it eating healthy, quitting smoking or making a positive impact on the environment.

We have seen this first hand with people giving us advice on how to beat the system as far as BNN goes, but that’s not our goal, we really want to do this is properly and get to the Jan 1 2014 having genuinely not purchased anything new. We can’t let our fear, personal limitations or desire get the better of us and try really hard to not be influenced by other people’s fears for us.

This was supposed to be about meat or something and now I’ve gotten all preachy and righteous about our mission for the year and that’s more Momma’s domain.

The meat line has been drawn in the Fearse household in a medium rare line around myself and Lil Fearse.

Go Forth and Eat Steak

Big Poppa Fearse

The ‘No Impact’ Man (trailer)

This guy made a documentary of his journey to attempt to reduce his impact on Earth to zero – or at least his trash to nothing. Wow. I would love to get a hold of this documentary. It’s a whole new perspective on what we’re doing – so much more committed. I’m impressed and a little intimidated.
Mama xo