I recently opened the pages of my beloved Real Simple magazine to see an article on the many uses of zip lock bags. I became instantly excited and a bit self-congratulatory since I have been using zip lock bags for a variety of reasons since becoming a mother. Need to bring crayons to a restaurant to keep the kiddies amused? Throw them in a zip lock. Game pieces keep falling out of a battered and torn game box? Zip lock. Special hair clips getting lost in an over crowded drawer? Zip lock. I felt good about myself, thinking that I had come up with an idea worthy of the pages of Real Simple.
Fast forward two issues. A letter to the editor chastising the magazine for extolling the virtues of a product that is not environmentally friendly. Oh well, there goes my Mother of the Year award.
I try to be "green". I am militant about recycling at home. If I work someplace that does not recycle paper, I bring my unwanted paper home to recycle. My car is littered with plastic water bottles because I will not throw them away (and always forget to bring them in the house, but that's another story.) However, I am also a busy mom, and sometimes a busy schedule necessitates short cuts. I'm sure I have single handedly destroyed a rain forest somewhere due to the number of paper towels I use (sorry, Sting). And I never for one second considered cloth diapers. So, I straddle the line between tree-hugger and wasteful capitalist.
But I guess that is what parenting is. A series of inconsistencies. One minute good cop, the next bad cop. One minute confident, the next deflated. It's all a point system. And we just hope that when all is said and done, the majority of our points are on the right side, whatever that "right" side means to us. Who know, maybe one day I'll have enough points for that Mother of the Year award after all. In the meantime, please excuse me, I need to grab an extra-large paper towel and clean up some spilled non-organic milk.
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