Dear ZPG

This is about an imaginary conversation I have in my head all the time.

Well, I suppose it's not actually imaginary, I'm actually having the conversation. The conversation, you see, is between me and . . . me. And, I suppose that since I am real on all fronts, a little too real for a certain husband of mine I am afraid, then the conversation is in fact real and not in the least imaginary.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I've been working out a dialogue so that I can be prepared for the iffy possibility that the population management people may come after my family some day.

Wowee, do I sound nuts or something?

Mebbe I am.

But, but, but, but, since NPR doesn't come in well on my radio in The Bus, I spend a lot of time while I'm driving watching all of you in your own cars talking and singing to yourselves. I'm not so different from the rest of you, I just happen to bring up my idiosyncrasies in a public venue.

Okay, back to the population control folks. See really, I agree with them. If we all keep careening out of control like we are, then I have too many kids for this failing planet to support. I was irresponsible, I put my own interests before those of the greater good. It's true. I knew all this long before I chose to go forth and multiply, I knew I was gonna replace more than just myself.

Having said all that, I am unapologetic (mostly, cuz honestly, which two kids would I put back in? Quite frankly there ain't much room in there for any of 'em.). As the mother of four, and hopefully someday more, I have a bigger responsibility than most to make my family's carbon footprint as teenie-weenie as possible. I also have a bigger responsibility to consistently and frequently do The Right Thing because the consequences are farther reaching compared to raising a single biological child.

Quite frankly, without my kids, I'd probably wouldn't be out "there" being a do-gooder, guardian of mothers' and coastal lagoons. I wouldn't care so much about who is in charge of the country, the world, or my city. My four kids make the future tangible and meaningful. Without those little nut-butts, I would be schlepping around my home in a Snuggie, eatin' Lean Cuisines, watching DVR'd episodes of Oprah, and thinking about how much this place needed someone to get their butt in gear and do something about "it" but never really doing very much at all. So, in rebuttal to the Zero Population Growth folks, who scorn my family for being on that slippery-slope towards super-sized, here's what we are doing:

I'm raising them right. They're being raised with a conscience. They're going to vote meaningfully as adults. They're always do The Right Thing by humanity, community, ecology and all the good stuff that ends in the letter "y". They have a strong sense of morality. If they lose sight of those damn morals I'll beat the Hell out of them with a can of low-VOC paint . . . see that's funny because -- oh never mind.

Secondly, my kids are thin and physically fit; therefore, they don't take up much space.

Thirdly, we are vegetarians. We're not contributing to the ruination of the planet by eating methane-farting cows. Here, Annike demonstrates how to choke down Daddy's dahl, naan, and aloo chat.

We eat organic and local. Easy to do in these here parts, but done none-the-less.

Also, with help from Little Tovey, we make our own beer right in our closet. No harsh chemicals. No noxious by products. No waste. Same bottles used over and over. Good, clean drinking. Saving the Earth one beer at a time!

I am a midwife. I promote self-care, personal responsibility, investment in the present and future. I encourage my patients to empower themselves, so that they in turn can also do The Right Thing. Eventually, their children will learn to do The Right Thing.

When my children take baths, I don't empty the tub down the drain. I fill up buckets with that bathwater and I use it to water the plants outside. Believe me, this is a real pain in the ass.

"If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down." Oh, for crying out loud, not sure my puddins stick around long enough to listen to the second half of that verse. But I'll be damned if my toilets aren't filled to the rim with tinkle before they get flushed.

We compost.

Waste not. Okay, waste less. For example, everyday their lunches (and mine and Lars') get packed in reusable containers. No plastic baggies, no juice boxes, no disposable applesauce containers. There's room for improvement, without a doubt, but we're off to a good start.

We use Energy Star Appliances.

We dry our clothes on a line. In an article by Natural Home and Garden, you can read about the significant benefits of line drying. Since we've started, we've dropped our energy use by nearly 20%. Our energy bill, in the high-priced zone of the country that we live in, totals $75 for gas and electric. Not bad for a stain-troubled family of 6.

So to those esteemed champions of sustainable living, the ZPG people, with whom I have frequent imaginary discourses with -- my kids are gonna be so amazing and so incredible as adults that they'll be like negatives to population growth. They'll turn this Earth around, clean it up and whip it back into shape.

And to my pals out there, you can do the little things. Lots of good little things. They don't seem like much, like drying your undies out in the sun one day, washing the floor with your bath water, or even not flushing after every pee. But, with The Right Thing always on the forefront of your mind it won't take long for all your little things to add up and make a Big Right Difference.

Gas Guzzlers

We're having a cold front down here in Southern California, the windchill has got my fingers all bluish at the tips. In fact, our high was only 64-degrees today. Might as well be back in Michigan, all this frigidity.



So anyway, I sloppily puttered around the house today, dressed in my denim capris, woolly zippy-hoody, ski socks and my husband's overstuffed slippers. I did some laundry, vacuumed, you know that same ol' same ol' stuff that women have been longing to rid themselves of for centuries. Then, because I'm feeling a scooch under-the-weather and because every visitor at our home this afternoon said I looked a bit feverish, I climbed under our sturdy couch blanket (made with Michigan nights in mind) and curled up on our futon. And, in a completely out of character move, I turned on the TV where I dozily caught up on Project Runway and nursed Tovey endlessly.



In the kitchen, Lars and Mike happily chatted about the physics of beer as they set about on their semi-regular Sunday Beer Making Day. I half-listened to them trade microbiology hypotheses and give each other advice on best gadgets for fermentation. Occasionally, Mike popped in the family room to say a few words to me. One time, he angelically took sleepy and ornery Tova from me and bounced her until she succumbed to a nap, her snotty and drooly cheeks smooshed into his dark shirt.



Mike left after the beer was safely stored on top of my heating pad. Lars began making Tofu Pad Thai, smells of lime and rice noodles filling the house. Wild kids flapped around on the trampoline, duking it out in a game they made up and refer to GaGa. The few straggler kids, (who aren't ours) waited for a parent to come fetch them out out of our yard, mashed with our babies yelling and screaming in unison -- some crazy mob of nutbutts in a full on chorus of "mine" and "cheater" and "you hurrrrt me" and, of course, "I'm telling!".



Later was dinner. Excellent, as usual, courtesy of my husband -- what he lacks in laundry skills, he makes up for in dinner serving. As we were all sitting around the table, one of the kids (I can't remember who now) brought up the digestive system. And for those of you who have discussed the digestive system with your children well know, this topic cannot be complete without the special highlight of the whole process . . . poop! Round and round they go, happily throwing out the words poop and dookie with utter exhilaration. Poop! They were thrilled, tickled at the idea that they could use Potty Talk at the table, exploring the limits of what falls into the tidy circle of relevance.



My husband, with a glint in his eye, fervently engaged in the discussion. From melons to cucumbers, bread to ice cream, he and the kids determined together what came out as solid and what came out as liquid. And, as many of you who are familiar with my husband know, never one to miss an opportunity to put it into music format, my husband broke out in a robust version of They Might Be Giants' latest hit "Solid, Liquid, Gas". Having thoroughly discussed the first two states of matter already, Lars found it absolutely delightful to pass a large and loud fart as he sang out "gaaaaas." This, of course, sends my older three children into giggle fits sending Lars on repeat performance of the aforementioned song and "act." The rest of the evening seemed likely to deteriorate from there.



Sitting quietly this whole time in her corner of our kitchen table, 10-month old Tova happily munched on her tofu and rice noodles. With determined patience, she stoically endured the shenanigans of the evening, never making a peep. And, except to occasionally suggest that she wanted more raspberries by bringing the fingertips on her two hands together for the sign for "more", we really didn't have cause to disturb to her. However, seemed like Bitty Tovey had had just about enough of it once Daddy got to singing. Around the time of the third encore, Tova thrust her two baby hands into the air and waved them side-to-side, then said "ahhhh duh!"

To you non-sign language speakers this may not seem huge or momentous or amazing or any of that, but to those of you in the know, you would have already recognized the sheer enormity of what just transpired. Tova looked her daddy and her naughty siblings in the eyes and told them to "shush" the best way she could. Not only did she do the sign-language for "all done" but, she also spoke. All of us stopped and stared, mouths dropped open. Moments later, we burst into applause, and this time Tova gladly joined us.