The Missing Sock

I've been thinking a lot recently about my motivations for living a more sustainable life. I started out not really in this camp--drove me nuts then I married John at my advanced age of 33 and he would frown with a superior look that we should get rid of all our Teflon, or that we shouldn't ScotchGuard our new furniture. Not to mention the fact that he washed out and reused plastic bags. Yuck. It was startling how often he was right, however, as verdicts about things like Teflon and ScotchGuard just keep piling up.

When we reached a boiling point over the constant stream of negative news about the environment and we started Planetfesto.org, and all the research that we amassed behind it, something subtly began to shift. I started making changes not from guilt, but because it's, underneath it all, kinda fun. (And we hope that that spirit gets to people through Planetfesto.) The best way to describe it is that it's similar to that part of my brain that gets lit up after I find the sock that has been missing for months and put the pair finally back together. I wake up excited to go to the farmers' market not because I know that I should, but that it feeds my soul in a way that I find unexpectedly delightful. There is something so connected, and deeply friendly, about looking down at your plate and knowing about almost everything on it--the farmer that grew the corn, the stories about the lamb that you heard from the rancher, that you've picked berries in the field from which the blackberries came from. There's an equal delight that we now have a hard time finding a plastic bag in the house, or that I usually get better mileage in my Prius than John does in his (although that seems to be changing, damn him...). I also love that the kids know where food comes from, get great delight in feeding our worms and hearing the latest news from the eccentric worm guy at the farmers' market, and want to know where something comes from before they eat it.

OK, enough. But I did want to let you know that this is actually getting fun...