I need your advice. It's true I'm into inheriting friends' and strangers' discarded items and thereby:
- saving a buck
- adding to our home's retrofabulous "design plan"
- preserving the planet's rapidly dwindling resources
- freeing up space in the landfills (which, I know, my Hummer-driving, consumer-crazy neighbors in the burbs will thank me for)
And this is what he said: Hi MaGreen. We're done. We've loaded all of our friends' stuff into the moving van.
I said, Good!
He said: Do you want a rug?
Me (thinking, how thoughtful it is that GreenDaddy remembers I was just saying how it would be easier on my knees if I could play with BabyG on a rug instead of the hardwood floors): Ooooh, a rug?!
GreenDaddy: Yeah. It has a sort of oriental pattern.
Me: Oooooh...
GreenDaddy: But it has diarrhea on it. (Being funny) Not Rube or Angel's. It's the puppy's.
Me: (Confused) Do YOU want the rug?
GreenDaddy: It's fresh diarrhea from last night.
Me: But you want it?
GreenDaddy: (Pauses) Well, it has dog hair all over it. It's covered in it.
Me (thinking that we're lucky he didn't become a salesman, but that he surely wouldn't call about a rug unless it was easily transformable and/or he really wanted it...): Ummm...Well, I guess I could rent a RugDoctor. We could clean it.
GreenDaddy: But it's wool. And it's not a really nice rug.
Me: But do you want it?
GreenDaddy: Well, it really stinks.
Me: Okay. Well, then. No, *I* don't want the rug.
GreenDaddy: Yeah. It's not a very nice rug. And it's got sort of an ugly pattern.
So my questions are: Just who does your partner think you are when he calls you up to ask if you want an ugly, stinky, puppy-diarrhea-stained wool rug? Is he the one who is addled? Is it a sign he needs a vacation? Or could it be that he thinks you'd be angry if you discovered a perfectly wretched rug had passed from out of your mutal grasp, on his watch? Or is there some other explanation I'm not thinking of?
Signed, MaGreen
Doubled over in laughter,
yet bemused
Why was she staring at my wife, my baby, and me? I wondered. Was it that Miah and I are an ethnically-mixed couple? That our baby is a mongrel? Was it that Miah breastfed at the table in a fine restaurant? Was it that we even dared to bring a three-month-old baby at all? Did the woman stare because it was I, the man, who picked up our baby, assumed the role of caregiver, and headed to the bathroom? Or could it be that our baby is so tremendously beautiful, she could not help but stare out of love or jealousy or astonishment? I took our baby into the Men's room, took off her diaper, held her over the toilet, and made a psssss sound. I wish the grandmother could have seen my baby then. Does breastfeeding in public surprise you? Behold elimination communication!
The invention of modern composting is attributed to Sir Albert Howard, an Englishman who lived in colonial India from 1903 to 1931. He promulgated the Indore Method, named after the state where he carried out his research, in a book called The Waste Products of Agriculture. The hallmarks of the Indore Method, and its many derivatives, are 1) the layering of nitrogen and carbon rich materials and 2) the turning or aeration of the pile. Hot backyard piles and industrial composting are largely derivatives of the Indore Method.
She’s on the cover, he’s on page twenty-six with his hands in the garden. They have two pure-bred Afghans named Ahab and Ishmael. They feed "the boys" one pound of raw, organically-raised beef every Sunday. Their home and backyard are perpetually in renovation – a little bit greener each time – most recently on a Budhist theme. Two SUVs are parked in the garage and for this they are embarrassed; they have a Prius on backorder. Their compost bins were custom built by an artist who needed the money. God’s compost bins, fit for clippings from the Elysian Fields. They had their lawn replaced with drought-resistant native plants. They have nine garden plots. The fennel leaves and carrots are almost ready. If they don’t grow their ingredients, they buy them from the farmer’s market. Keep the change, she says to the local farmer, dropping a twenty for a basket of squash. They eat chocolate made from cacao grown on a cooperative farm in Guatemala. Their dining table was fashioned from salvaged wood. They replaced their year-old bed with an Amish mattress made from tree-tapped rubber. They wear hemp shoes sewn by Portuguese unionists. They buy soaps made without petroleum-based perfumes, toothpaste without lauryl sulfates, and deodorant without aluminum chlorhydrate. They are white. He’s forty-nine and she’s been in her late twenties for fifteen years. They do not have children. The earth is their child. They live within two miles of a Whole Foods. They have tickets to the Oxfam famine banquet next Saturday. They donate to the Wilderness Preservation fund and cook portabello mushrooms while camping outside of Joshua Tree. When they visit the Galapogos islands, they do not step off the path. It’s a delicate ecosystem, he says. He’s a lawyer who specializes in corporate bankruptcy and she’s a green interior designer. Her signature move is to place an abstract, organic cotton couch in the middle of antiques – ottomans, chests of drawers, and floral rugs. They put their savings in Socially Responsible Investing mutual funds. 
And you! Let’s just say you’re not quite poor enough to get food stamps. Whenever someone mentions Whole Foods, you smirk and say, “Whole Paycheck.” You would wear Blackspot Shoes, but they’re twice as expensive as your regular sneakers and your feet are extra wide. You’d like to garden and compost, but you live in an apartment that doesn’t have a backyard. If you put a plastic compost bin in the parking lot, your neighbors would complain about the smell even if it doesn’t smell. They would claim that there are more cockroaches since you moved in. You sleep on your grandmother’s old bed. The only thing that’s green about your mattress is that it caves in like a river valley when you lay down. You have about as much chance of living a green lifestyle as you do of becoming a Baywatch star. Come to think of it, the woman on the cover of that issue of Organic Style sort of looks like a Baywatch star. If you tried to live green, you’d look like some kind of worthless hippie. Not to mention you have a colicky baby and you’re a single mom. No, you have two babies and both you and your partner work full time at desk jobs. That’s not it, you have three boys – ages two, three, and five – who just might shake the house off its foundation before bedtime. It takes about all you’ve got to heat up some Hamburger Helper and open a can of fruit cocktail for dinner. Anyhow, you were raised on preservatives and you turned out fine…mostly. Face it. You’re too damn poor, ugly, and busy to live green.
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