This is a tale of carpet, shoes, and lack of sleep.
Let's start with a Tuesday, because really, that's a good place to start. I mean, I could start with Monday, but I don't think the fact that I couldn't get to sleep until after midnight had anything to do with this story and I would have to go back and change the title of this post. Plus, who likes Mondays anyway?
So Tuesday morning, I decided to "dress up" for work and by dress up I mean wear an outfit with shoes that are not associated with hippies, California surfers, or the Dutch. By the end of the day, with sores on both my Achilles, I remembered why it is that Birkenstocks are a fashion statement I'm more than happy to make.
Wow, this is getting boring. Let's skip ahead. Battered and Bandaided, went the gym, came home in the evening. Decided that I would return to my sandaled ways, but before bed why not touch up the nail polish on my toes. Tiredness + nail polish = disaster.
That's right. Just when I was done and setting the bottle back on the night stand I fumbled and the bottle went with gravity and fell to the carpet. The carpet that I had installed when I moved in nearly 2 years ago. Shit. SHIT. Shitshitshitshitshit. Did I mention this was bright green nail polish?
As quick as I could with wet nail polish on, slipped out of bed, moved the night stand, and grabbed for the bottle before it poured out into a large green blob. Acting fast I tried dabbing the green swoops with nail polish remover. It helped a bit, but not much. With workout weak legs I wobbled down two flights of stairs to grab the Little Green Machine. I would get plenty of use out of it over the next hour and a half.
Armed with the knowledge of a couple of Google searches, I proceeded to try the following: rubbing alcohol, hairspray, hydrogen peroxide, Windex, and Goo Gone. Having exhausted my options at hand I went to bed after 1am.
At the suggestion of a coworker, the next night I gave Oxyclean a try but the result is the same as you see above (maybe slightly lighter). In the end I moved the night stand over just a tad more and was resigned to the fact that I'll have to have it replaced/patched when I move.
Here's what I've done this year to become a little more eco-friendly:
I ask for no bag when buying only a few things at a store and use my own canvas grocery bags (you'd be amazed at how much more then can fit in one of those as compared to a flimsy plastic bag). I will admit to still getting the plastic bags at Target, but I reuse them as garbage bags in the bathrooms and office at home.
I switched to using a Sigg bottle both at work and at home. I also use a small Nalgene every morning for my "breakfast" drink. Nalgene recently announced that they are phasing out the use of BPA, but I'm not sure if I'm going to switch out those yet.
I've offered plastic recycling to my coworkers since it won't be available at our office until later this year. That fact is a big disappointment, in that it has taken this long for them to figure things out, but at least they are getting there.
The photo in the previous post was taken in the Pacific Northwest on one of my many visits there. The title alluded to the fact that I would be making yet another trip up there to see some friends that had moved up to Bellingham.
Any time I visit that part of the world - Eugene, Seattle, Portland, and now Bellingham - I wonder why I don't live up there. There's the mountains, moss, rocky beaches, beer, coffee, and people that wear fleece and ugly shoes by choice. Then I remember the paycheck and why I'm here for now. It's not that I dislike Houston, it's just not where I want to spend the rest of my life.
It was really great to spend time with my friends and see how much their kids have grown. It's such a contrast to my lifestyle being single and sharing my house only with plants and gnomes. The days were filled with adventures, games, snacks, Dora and the Little Einsteins. Oh and let's not forget Monsters, Inc with a constant stream of questions being asked and all you can do is laugh (Erin, your patience is amazing). It wasn't all fun in games though as I had to perform reattachment surgery on a sockmonkey (it was a success and Sockmonkey should regain full use of his arm).
As for our adventures, they included driving in a minivan (A MINIVAN! oh the excitement) to see the blooming fields of daffodils and tulips (our timing was perfect) as well as mountains, rocky beaches. There were walks to the park, lunch at Taco Time (at my request), and Erin running a very hilly 1/2 marathon that ended with rain.
