I have a few things on my mind tonight……

Yesterday, I went to Karen‘s funeral. Wow. It was such a tribute to her and her short 21 years! She suffered with cancer for 1/3 of her life! The most beautiful parts of the ceremony were when her younger sister sang Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel” and the 8 minute slide show depicting Karen with her friends and family. I cried. I don’t think there was a dry eye in the place. It was heart-wrenching yet so beautiful. It made me want to go home and hold Punky close and SQUEEZE him with hugs! She touched so many lives…

Last night, Hubby and I went out to a movie! *gasp* Wow! It’s been awhile since we have done that! We saw “Charlie Wilson’s War.” Phenomenal. I highly recommend it! Philip Seymour Hoffman is superb! Tom Hanks is Tom Hanks…..amazing! Julia…..well, I just love Julia! Excellent film….makes you think alot about our world today. Go see it.

Today, we’ve been busy taking down Christmas decorations……that’s the worst part of Christmas! I hate de-decorating! Ugh.

I had several interesting conversations with people over the past week or so about cancer and our society. Cancer has hit all around me this past year….and it sucks. It’s such an evil disease and takes so much away from people. (Granted, it also teaches us many of life’s lessons and teaches us that’s it ok to slow down…enjoy the little things…..stop and smell the roses…..BUT CAN’T WE LEARN THAT THROUGH ANOTHER VEHICLE?)

Anyway, I’ve also been doing some research and thinking about what it is in our society that makes this problem so prevalent these days. Man…the more I read, the more I want to collect my family into a room and lock us away from the outside world! Ok, so maybe not that drastic……but have you read about any of the chemicals and crap that are put into our products we use each and every day……..soap, handwash, baby bath products, shampoos, cleaners, etc. For example: Many anti-bacterial soaps, such as those you get at Bath and Body Works, contain Triclosan or alcohol. Triclosan has been reported to form a probable human carcinogen when combined with chlorine in tap water. What?!?!?

WHAT THE HECK?!?!?!?

Here, just for “fun” check out this website and look up your family’s products….. it’s UNBELIEVABLE! Because the FDA does not require cosmetics products to be approved as safe before they are sold, companies can put unlimited amounts of toxic chemicals in cosmetics.

WHAT?!?!?!? Click here to find out more about this disturbing news…

I think I am going to be concentrating on going MORE green! We do a lot of things already…….but man, we need to do more!

• We already use Shaklee and Method products for ourselves and our home. I think we’ll be re-evaluating some of the products we don’t use from Shaklee or Method and look that over again…
• We bring try to remember to bring “green” bags to the grocery store! My favorite bags are from Trader Joe’s and the ones from Costco! Method has a really cool bag too!
• Energy efficient light bulbs
• Our vegetable garden in the summer. We gets LOTS of produce from here!
• Recycle
• Reuse: we send our things we don’t need or don’t want any longer to Goodwill or sell it at our annual garage sale.
• Program our thermostat lower for when we are away and when we are sleeping. Throw on a sweatshirt….grab a pair of slippers!
• Wash our clothes in cold water.
• Remove your name from mailing lists! Get rid of that junk mail and all those catalogs! Click here!

ok, I am on a roll here….but fading fast. Tomorrow is going to come quickly…and if I keep going here I will NEVER be able to fall asleep tonight! I’ll write more later! 🙂