Earthday Environmental E’s!
Effect - the area around you in a positive way
Extend - the use of the items you use and buy
Energize - your life in an environmentally positive way
Eat - in a more environmentally sustainable, responsible and healthy manner
One Last Earth Day E - Educate!

The puppy is forcing me to be healthier though. I have to make sure I get to bed by a certain time - because she will wake me up every morning at the same time regardless of when I went to bed or how much sleep I got.

And since I’ve been taking her for long walks - which I need to do to help wear her out so I can get some work done - I’ve been easily getting 10,000 steps a day.

And as I’ve been learning about dog nutrition to make sure I feed her healthy food, I’ve been eating a little better too.

Now, if I just had a few more hours each day I could get some more work done too! Maybe even work on this blog and site!

It was about the idea that schools should stop teaching and having kids read books like “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Of Mice and Men”, etc. since those books use the “N word” and “portray African-Americans as inarticulate and unintelligent”.

I really don’t know what I think about this. I’m white and I don’t know if my opinion should really matter when it comes to issues of race like this or not.

But as a woman I got to thinking about how girls, and both young and adult women, are portrayed in much of the classical literature - even in those books that are aimed at girls.

Unfortunately I can’t think of too many specific examples. I do remember that in “Little Women” (because I re-read it recently since I didn’t finish it when I was younger; I quit after Beth died - it made me too sad) the only options women had were to be good little girls and wives and mothers.

I came to the conclusion that I don’t think I would want my daughter to even read the book. I don’t even want her to get it in her head that women - even at some time in the past - had that limited of opportunities. Maybe when she gets older, but not as a young girl still trying to find her place in the world.

Very few if any of the books I read as a kid had a female character that was strong and educated. And I do believe that even if girls today are not inundated with messages that they are fragile and not as smart, etc. (and that’s debatable - I think they still are on T.V., movies, etc.) - even getting that idea in their heads now and then, in subtle ways, can have an impact on their self esteem and on what they think their future as adult women might be like.

Those subtle messages can be the most insidious of all too. Just a little comment in a book about how proper girls and women should behave gets the message in their heads. A kid could grow up - whether they are black, female or any non-white male - with great self esteem and feeling really good about themselves. And then a story is read in class that could put the idea in their heads, as well as in their classmates heads, that maybe, just maybe they aren’t as good as the others.

I certainly wouldn’t want schools teaching from books that would send this message to my daughter. If people who are black think certain books are not a good idea to be taught in classrooms maybe we should respect that.

You can’t erase history and certainly mistakes of the past need to be learned about so they aren’t repeated. But it could wait until kids are a little older. Juniors and seniors in high school, or even better yet, college. By that time young people should have a strong, and hopefully, positive self-image.

Most of the planet’s population is already non-white males. Over time, even in this country, white males will be a minority. In the future almost every kid in a classroom will be part of one of the groups that were discriminated against in the past. Maybe sexism, racism, the holocaust and other atrocities can be taught and linked together as examples of how we must not ever treat any group of people as less than human.

Barbie turns 50 this month and today, March 9th is her official birthday.

If you have a daughter or might have one some day - did you or would you let her have Barbie dolls?

I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, I had Barbie dolls and they didn’t completely screw me up. On the other hand, it did give me warped ideas about what adult women are supposed to look like - but I got over it.

I don’t know yet if I would let a daughter have them. I haven’t kept up, but I’m guessing they still make them with unrealistic proportions. If they changed them and made them more realistic I think they would be ok. I did just read that Barbie’s waist is now bigger, but as far as I know her breasts are still really big. The really old ones that look like they are wearing lots of makeup just look creepy to me.

If they offered different ones with not just different skin and hair colors, but height, waist and breast sizes and with no makeup I’d feel much better about a daughter having one too.

The idea of having a doll that is an adult is to help young girls explore what they would like to be when they are an adult. And for them to imagine being something other than a mother, which is about the only option with the more traditional baby dolls. That’s a great idea, its a shame its been messed up to some degree due to the way Barbie’s body is designed.

And March 8th is International Women’s Day:

Additional information about International Women’s Day can be found here:

Women for Women International

Women’s Voices for Change

… the problem here is with strangers passing judgment on other people’s situations

– Anna Quindlen (Newsweek, Feb. 16, ‘On Their Own Terms‘)

(Yes, I’ve been catching up with my Newsweeks that I didn’t have time to read yet.)

Anna Quindlen had a great article recently about RU-486 and since I cannot write like she can I want to quote a few parts for today’s post.

A few points I want to make here:

1) As human beings our bodies belong to us - not to husbands, boyfriends, etc., not the government, not politicians, not the clergy and definitely not total strangers.

“… between the clinic demonstrations, the political discussions and the imprecations from the pulpit, too many American women have come to feel that their pelvis is public property (Anna Quindlen).”

2) I’m concerned about young women today who are certainly not old enough to remember what life was like for women before Roe v. Wade and also have not been told or heard about what women went through in the past concerning childbirth, etc. when they did not have equal rights.

“But change in party or philosophy cannot change this undeniable fact: women who do not want to be pregnant will try to end their pregnancies. They will do it because they don’t have enough money, or enough support, or they think they are too young or too overwhelmed by circumstance. They always have, and they always will. Rat poison, Lysol, ergot, bleach—oh, the historical list of desperate measures is long. (Anna Quindlen)“

With all of our rights - those specific to women or not - we must be ever vigilant or we risk losing them. Don’t think it can’t happen.

3) Keep in mind that those who would control our reproductive organs are not likely to pay you or your child’s medical costs or college, or be there when you have to work two jobs to avoid being homeless, etc. Even if you are responsible and still find yourself with an unwanted pregnancy that you cannot terminate and then are not able to provide for the child properly, you could be accused and even arrested for neglect.

Be strong! Stand up for your rights. Don’t ever let anyone control any part of your body or mind!

It was about babies who are stillborn or that die shortly after being born. I had no idea there were still so many stillbirths. According to the article there are 26,000 a year (they didn’t say if this was just in the U.S. or not) and apparently in most cases doctors don’t understand why.

Way back when the babies were just immediately taken away, women were given lots of valium and everyone pretended as if nothing had happened. Obviously not a very psychologically healthy way of dealing with it.

Thankfully things have gotten better. Now the parents are allowed to hold the baby, take pictures, etc. All to help them better cope with the loss - and research has shown that it does help.

The article focused on a group of volunteers - who are professional photographers - and an organization called ‘Now I lay me down to sleep’. They go to hospitals and take sensitive, beautiful pictures of the babies and their families.

No, the photographs don’t take away the pain - but they do help with the grieving process and leave parents with some tangible memory of their son or daughter to share and hold on to forever.

Puppies are cute as hell, but I’ve found that it is not easy to get a lot of work done with one around!

Between the frequent peepee and poopy breaks and keeping an eye on her to make sure she doesn’t get into anything she shouldn’t it can be hard to concentrate. Not to mention the lack of sleep and overseeing her interactions with her big kitty-cat brothers.

There must be some other work at home puppy moms out there with some advice to share! Work at home people mommies should have some of the same problems too - except maybe not the chewing on the shoes thing.

Please help! Any advice would be welcome! I want my web sites to be successful - but its hard with a little 8 week cute poopy monster around!

Here’s the little monster:

Here she is again in my office by her crate and a bunch of her toys:

It was a bit tricky because, as you can see below, the railings are not horizontal to the floor, they slope downward:

Here’s the treadmill with the desk on it, shown from the front:

Here’s from a side angle:

Here’s a close up of how it fits on the railing. Notice the foam he used to make it sit flat on the railing:

Here’s two pictures of the underside, taken while not on the treadmill (obviously):

Here’s the side so you can see how it is angled:

Please feel free to use this design on your own treadmill! If you have questions about how to make it, let me know and I can ask my husband. If your treadmill is the same type as ours, what I have should work exactly as it is on yours:

Since I usually use mine to read on, I need what I’m reading to be raised a bit or I have problems with my neck and back of head from from looking down the whole time. My husband made the additional stand to add height originally for another purpose. And then I use a cookbook stand I bought from Barnes and Noble for my book or magazine:

The additional stand does block the treadmill controls a bit, but not my that much. I just have to reach around or under to change the settings. But I really don’t do that much anyway, since I usually just keep it at 1.5 the whole time.

For more information about treadmill desks, here are some posts and sites where I first learned about the idea:

Liz from Healthbolt: Is it a Computer? Is it a Treadmill?

Brandie at The Home Office Organizer: Standing Desks: A Smart, Healthy Option

Ning social network: Office Walkers

And even though New Year’s resolutions aren’t alway a great idea because they can set people up for failure with too high of expectations - still, I find that the holidays often give me a break from everyday life to reevaluate where I am and where I want to be.

Health, being the most important thing, is a good thing to make steps to improve on when you do that evaluation.

Last year I tried to get involved with that WOMAN challenge thing but the pedometer I had missed most of my steps and made it just too frustrating to try to continue with it.

Over the holidays I bought myself a much better pedometer, an Omron, from Amazon:

I tested it and while it does lose small number of steps, it really doesn’t lose a significant number of them.

I decided to try to get to that magic number of 10,000 steps a day! What I found was finding the time to get that many steps in is the hardest part for me.

A few days a week I walk on our treadmill when I exercise, which gets me over half way there, along with regular day to day walking.

However, to get the rest of the steps in I realized I would need to use the treadmill more (at least in the winter). But how to find the time?

A while back I got interested in the idea of working while walking on a treadmill, but wasn’t sure how to set something like that up. The commercial treadmill desks are pretty expensive.

Well, I finally got my husband to make me something to fit over my treadmill so I could at least read while walking!

Next week, I’ll post pictures of how it was made so if anyone wants something similar, you can see how to do it!

Meanwhile, I’ve been doing pretty good with my steps. I noticed the pedometer that I have won’t register steps on the treadmill unless I’m walking at least at 1.5 - which is a little bit faster than some people recommend for working on a treadmill.

To get to 10,000 steps I need to just walk about another 45 or so minutes at 1.5, which I can do most days. I usually do it while I catch up on my reading.

These are my numbers for the past week:

• date      steps
• 2/3/09      9600
• 2/4/09      8150
• 2/5/09      10356
• 2/6/09      10182
• 2/7/09      10259
• 2/8/09      5597
• 2/9/09      9851

The really low day was Sunday - I find it difficult sometimes to get up to 10,000 on weekend days. I need a day or two to rest!

I hope to eventually get 10,000 steps at least 5-6 days a week.

So do any of you use a pedometer? Is anyone else trying to get to 10,000 steps a day? Any tips to share for how to do it?