Litter-free Lunch is a Lie

When I first started sending Kiddo to school with lunch, I packed everything in sturdy, long-lasting Tupperware® containers but after a few failed to either come home or show up in the lost and found, I decided zippered plastic sandwich bags would be better.

But then the paper-trail of guilt trips started flooding in (ironic, how much paper has been printed to encourage litter-free lunches). At her current school, they ask that Fridays are litter-free (my guess is that the janitorial staff come in before school and if there's no stinky balogna sandwiches and apple cores leftover, it's easier to deal with on Monday morning).

Of course Kiddo figured out the loophole herself -- she just packs her plastic sandwich bags, leftover crusts included, back home where at least I can compost the crusts. I realize, compost aside, this seems environmentally irresponsible but I'm pretty sure that for the same amount of plastic/energy/cost that goes into one Glad or Ziploc semi-disposable container I can get away with a few bags.

Morning of Dissapointments

First day of 10 off for me... and my only big break through the summer. Started with two minor disappointments...

1. We went out this morning to tour the "bioregional" school where kiddo will be spending two weeks in their summer school program. Overall, I love the concept ("open schooling" that includes gardening, hands-on science, writing, reading, akido, community exploration ... plus a few things I'm less thrilled about) and now that I've seen inside the building... I'm no longer sold on sending her there full time. Suffice to say, I'd be happy to spend more money on the camp if it were to go toward maintenance of the building itself. Two weeks should be enough of an experience for her.

This means she'll have activities a-plenty through July and more hang-time in August.

2. After the tour, I went downtown to stand in line to file our passport paperwork. I showed up just after 10:00 and soon got told that it was not gonna happen. Apparently they now hand out numbers to the first people to line up, then the rest of the people just have to hope someone doesn't come back. The security guys said usually about another half dozen (maybe up to a dozen) get through the line after all the numbers are gone; there were about 25 ahead of me. So... I walked across the street to the nearest post office and mailed them. Fingers crossed...

I had a couple more errands to run, then I mostly wandered here and there through town until I got to Chinatown where I grabbed lunch for myself and hubby and hopped the next bus home.

Now the weather has turned to crap (pelting down rain under very grey skies..) so it's just as well I'm inside.

In the meantime... here's some public poetry: