A lot of random thoughts

My back is in a very fragile state right now which makes me angry with my body. Once again, right at a crucial moment it is failing to hold me up and do the work I need it to do. If it isn't my back it's my hip. If it isn't my hip it's my feet, which have also been giving me some trouble again. How is it possible to have such a deep disconnect between the person I am inside and the shell I carry around on it? I have sewing to do, cooking, canning, and gardening to do. I went outside to water my vegetable garden last night and the weeds are phenomenal. A sea of them stretches out over my whole yard, weeds taller than myself. I started to rip a few out to give to the hens and realized how much strain that would put on my already fragile back.

I am strong. I am able. Why can't I just go out there and weed for four hours without having to worry that my back will go out; that my back will collapse in on itself and send me to bed? I look at my yard and see how I want it to be but I don't know how I'll ever have the chance to transform it, to bring it back from the grips of choking bindweed and every type of giant weed known to man? I want my hands out there but if time isn't directing me elsewhere, then this stupid body of mine is.

So I was laying in bed with an ice pack on my back and I watched the pilot show for Little House On The Prairie. It got me thinking even more about what would have happened to a person like myself if I had lived on the frontier. I don't have to look too far for an answer: I'd be dead. I wouldn't make it very long as an adult. I would have died in childbirth, or Max would have. But if for some crazy lucky reason we didn't, I would have not been able to do the work necessary to stay alive. What did people with bad backs do back then? What did they do if their feet hurt all the time and their arches fell (mine haven't, but I'm worried about that right now)? Oh the fun of having an imbalanced brain with no medication and only fear from every person in your life that you might be catching, or dangerous, or that the only solution is to lock you in the attic and not talk about you ever again.

Obviously I would have been done for once I broke my hip unless my family had lots of resources to see them through caring for a useless family member who couldn't walk for three months.

My refusal to have more than one child would probably have resulted in my being abandoned by my spouse who would have expected me to have as many babies as our union could shower down on us and the only way to avoid having children back then was to be infertile or abstinent. Abstinence from sex has never been popular with men. Among the decent ones it merely ruins your relationship. But any woman unlucky enough to marry one of the rough members of the male of our species might find themselves being raped by their own spouse. You can cringe if you want to, but that's the truth. And if your only choice is being savaged by your own husband or being savaged by the waiting wolves, what do you do?

There is an easy feminist direction I could take here, but that's not what this is about. It's about survival in the modern world compared to survival on the western frontier.

Here's a question I have had for as long as I can remember and have heard no one else ask:

Back when there was no toilet paper, what did people use to wipe themselves after relieving their bowels? I have heard it suggested that leaves may have been used. But leaves may not have been available all the time. So did pioneers use their hands and then wash their hands? Or did they not wipe themselves at all, and wouldn't that have created the most uncomfortable conditions for pioneer bottoms everywhere?

Here's another totally random question I've just snatched out of it's trip around my head:

If the entire planet is warming up and becoming an inferno, doesn't that mean that solar power will be more practical than ever? If the sun is hotter and brighter all over the place doesn't it seem that the one positive thing about it is that there's more sun to harness into power? Don't think I don't realize all the profound changes that global warming is making such as the extinction of many species of animals and insects. But I am trying to think of something positive here too. If global warming is irreversible at this point, then shouldn't we at least try to make the best of it at the same time that we try to change our ways to slow down the whole degradation of the earth?

If the planet could ice over ten thousand years ago or so, how do we know that it could never happen again? What made that happen the first time?

Have I said recently how much I think all Hummers should be burned at the stake? (Uh, not the people driving them for crying out loud! Just the cars.) Wait a minute though, that could create some nasty toxic fumes-all Hummers should be SCRAPPED.

On a related topic:

I am troubled by some questions about being green. Just as we are discovering that eating and shopping locally can be more important than eating and shopping strictly organic, I am wondering about making choices between consumerism and energy efficiency.

Let me give you an example: I am shopping for a second fridge. Having two refrigerators may not sound like a very green choice to make in the first place but having one will enable me to do more canning and freezing of local fruits and produce which will reduce the amount of canned goods I will need to buy during the winter from other states. So it aids me in supporting local farms. I decided to make it a priority to buy an Energy Star approved unit to at least use as little extra power as possible. But my friend Lisa B. knows someone who bought an energy efficient fridge and has had to have the motor fixed at least two or three times. She told me that it seems the energy efficient models have weaker motors.

So how do I make a responsible choice? One of the major problems with energy waste in our country here is people buying crap all the time-a new car every few years, brand new houses, more junk and more junk without demanding that that junk be made in factories that use responsible methods of waste disposal and efficient use of power. Consumerism drives the waste of resources in this country. The antidote to consumerism is to buy good quality things that you really need and not replace them all the time. TO BUY LESS. The better the quality you buy the longer your purchases will last, the less you buy.

But if buying the energy efficient product means you will have to keep fixing it and probably replace it sooner, how does that serve us all? It is important to me to make a good choice that will benefit all of us in the long run. How can I tell which choice that is?

Filling up a tiny tank of gas is challenging. In Oregon it is against the law to fill your own tank of gas. You must let the gas attendants do it. There are two problems Oregon gas attendants have with filling up my Vespa tank: 1) they are scared of overflowing the tank and 2) they don't understand fractions so when I ask for "one and a quarter" gallons they invariably look at me like I just landed on their nose bringing them a fresh case of malaria. I quickly put it in terms they can understand and say "1.25 gallons". This is when they stutter their confusion and hand me the gas nozzle.

Yesterday when this happened I filled my own tank but when I tried to let go of the trigger to stop the flow it wouldn't unlock so my tank overflowed all over my scooter. And my hands. This isn't good for several reasons, the most important being that I am a person with serious anxiety issues and one of the things that makes me especially anxious is any fluid that has the potential to explode. So if I have gasoline all over my scooter and some got on the battery case, could some have seeped inside, and if so, in this 90 degree heat-could my scooter catch fire? I couldn't possibly ask any of the gas attendants if it's safe to drive when you've just spilled gas all over your vehicle because I already know that they would just look at me with more fear and loathing.

The other reason why this isn't good is because it's a waste of a precious resource. I definitely use infinitely less gas than a person driving a Hummer, but even so, I can't help but think that no drops should be wasted if we are willing to kill for it, which our people most certainly are proven by the fact that that's what we're doing right now. So then an uncomfortable question comes into my head: how much gas did I waste and what does that look like in human life? Did I just waste an Iraqi adult? Or did that waste just represent the loss of an Iraqi baby?

Either way, I can't help but look at gas as something to take seriously and every time I go to fill up my scooter tank I am participating in something much larger and darker than just cruising around town running my errands. People are dying so I can keep doing that. I'm not saying we should all stop using gas at once, but that we should be mindful at all times of what it's costing all of us to do it.

Here are some simple things all of us can do to make a difference:

• We should consolidate errands and use our bicycles more often.

• Making one trip a week to the grocery store on your bicycle would be a meaningful saving of resources.

• Walk your kid to school if you live within a quarter mile of his/her school.

• See if your bosses would let you work slightly longer hours for four days a week so that you can commute one less day a week?

• Ditch your gas guzzling car for a more efficient vehicle.