Easing back in

[Chicken lady]

Thank you for the validation on the room. I don’t usually internalize things like that. Get angry, yes, but the overwhelming sense of frustration and hopelessness is out of proportion. I may be too invested in my job. That room is one of the few totally safe spaces in my life. I wasn’t expecting the level of disruption that was going on in the building. Other teachers will help me move my stuff. And I will help them. The kids will come back. The middlers will make crude jokes about the “wax”, the teens will try to help me clean it.

The wanting to peel my skin off thing is physical though. It may be psychosomatic, but it’s an actual physical sensation that started during the really bad depression in June, not a metaphor.

Today is my anniversary. Dh and I have nothing planned except that he is staying home all day. (Rare) the weather is supposed to be overcast, rainy, and hot. I just need to do regular every day things - chores, laundry, dishes, exercise, class planning.... only the classes are really pressing right now.

[Chicken lady]

So, yesterday was nice. I didn’t really “accomplish” anything, although dh took me shopping for new shoes - which I needed for school.

today I am starting to feel a lot of pressure around things I want/need to have done, but I am deliberately relaxing with my coffee and my cat at the moment.

i made my very long to do list because it helped me feel like I have captured and controlled all of the things. When they start crowding around I can say to them “yes. You are on the list. Go wait your turn.”

[Chicken lady]

I did well today. And I feel pretty good.

progress on work communication.
advance on laundry, small retreat on dishes.

cleaned a stall. Got the bunny out for a hop outside.

made mozzarella and ricotta (one if each - didn’t try to do a big production, just cheese for my pizza) and homemade pizza and custard to freeze tomorrow.

trimmed the edge on one pot.

setting up coffee and going to bed.

[nswef]

Sleep well, CL.

[happystuff]

I love the idea of making the list and having things wait their turn! Sounds like things are progressing well. Continued good luck with everything.

[Chicken lady]

Yesterday I didn’t look at my list enough and I forgot to make a doctor’s appointment. So that is near the top today.

also yesterday I worked at the food bank. Before I type this, I need to ask, if your personal position on what I am about the write is that I should leave all the unwanted food at the foodbank and let them throw it in the dumpster (whatever your reason is) and that is the only frame of reference from which you can respond, please don’t respond to this. It will not be helpful to me, and I will need to virtually ignore you in order to avoid engaging in mental behavior that is counterproductive.

so, the food bank has limited fridge space. And we often run out of milk. Also, people take very few fresh vegetables. Yesterday we had a lot of milk with a long storage life remaining, so none of the vegetables could go in the fridges. Everything that wasn’t going to last on the counter for three days was set out for the volunteers to take when we closed, and after everyone else “shopped” the rest ended up in my car. It filled the back of my suv. And I spent two hours “processing” it when I got home and didn’t finish.

I did put about half the bagged/packaged chopped lettuce and other veggies directly in my compost. I also gave my chickens as much as I think they will eat in a day or so. I flattened a couple of the cardboard boxes and used them in the garden under the bedding from the stall I cleaned out (that job was not part of the 2 hours) the bunny had a fresh, organic romaine heart as a treat. And I had a healthy yummy dinner that included rice and olive oil and spices as the only purchased items. Dinner tonight will be similar, and I have nice radishes washed and ready to snack on (prepping them was part of the 2 hours)

I have a really hard time with “waste” so my motivation is primarily keeping this stuff out of the landfill, cutting disposal costs for the food bank, and using the available food instead of buying more, or at least returning the organic material to enrich my soil. The benefit to my grocery and feed budgets are secondary.

my biggest stumbling block is that so much of this stuff is packaged in non-recyclable bags and clamshells. Yesterday when I was filling the bucket for compost, I set aside one medium sized clamshell with a crack and started filling it with plastic bags. I don’t have trash service, so I will drop that in the trash can by the cart return today when I stop at the grocery store to get a few (non vegetable) items. I have no problem returning packaging to the grocery store for disposal - they often “donate” food to the food bank that is no longer edible along with usuable items and they take a tax write-off on the total and advertise how they are contributing to “zero food waste”. By getting only the packaging back, they are still saving on disposal costs!

I get get annoyed by the existence of the packaging and how long it takes to open and dump it all. Also, I am washing the clamshells and looking for ways to reuse them. Particularly projects I can do with my students, since I now have over a dozen identical clam shells in each of several sizes.

I think about the use of my time, but I am still using chunks of my time for activities in which I see less benefit. So I should quit those first. I am trying to approach this situation more as a lever to help me than a hole to fall down.

there have been times I have brought stuff home and not addressed it fast enough, and ended up with a huge clean up task. So I am telling myself up front - if you can’t block out the time to address this properly, you can’t do it.

i tend to come home from the food bank and read on-line and eat not always healthy food. Forcing myself to unload the car and start processing yesterday after one glass of water and an e-mail check meant that I sat less and snacked on veggies.

if I keep up with my kitchen, mud room and fridge (not there yet) projects like yesterday will be easier to do, and I will have a more functional kitchen, mud room, and fridge.

i also stopped on the way home at the home of a friend who qualifies for food bank services and won’t come because she doesn’t “NEED” it. I showed her my car. She agreed to start coming.

so, I guess what I want as a response to this is support on ways I can use the situation to motivate myself to make better choices: (make a salad! Don’t eat the leftover pizza, dh will want the leftover pizza!) (stop watching art videos and clean the mud Room! Food bank is tomorrow) and maybe ideas for easy ways to use or process stuff (there is a lot of chopped salad, which is basically eat/chickens/compost?) and I just wanted to process what is going on in my head (it just occurred to me that if I take scissors in my car, I can actually come home and park next to my compost bin and sort there, so that the worst stuff goes straight car-to-compost)

and also, I am looking for positive feedback on realizing and accepting that a lot of this stuff is going to go bad and I need to dump entire containers in the compost rather than picking out the “good” greens - (unless I am making a sandwich right then and have no other greens - unlikely.) I can’t save everything and everyone and sometimes optimizing means triage and letting go - not continuing down the path of diminishing returns until you are paving the road to hell with grains of sand. It’s a mental health journey as much as an environmental one.

so yeah, ask me questions that make me think, or offer suggestions that support what i’m already doing (thoughts on time limits or process, or cutoff guidelines)

or just shake your head or post tldr and move on....

[iris lilies]

Because DH grows a huge garden, well, multiple gardens actually, there is always produce on my counter that will go to rot.But we compost it all, so it doesn't bother me. It did, at one time years ago bother me, but no longer. Zuchhini and okra and cukes are this week’s excess produce. We give some away when possible.

CL I thought of you in a recent issue with our garden club. It’s about ribbons awarded. We had a big flower show and gave out lots of ribbon, hundreds.

Two weeks after the show, the treasurer sent out a plea to return any ribbons we dont want because they are expensive and the clubs will recycle ribbons.

I harrumphed and rolled my eyes because I had already thrown away the stupid ribbons I didnt want. Very annoying that the organization couldnt have collected them at the show, I would have gladly turned all mine over to them but for my Best in Show rosette which I will keep. Also, clerks stapled ribbons to entry cards, so it was difficult to separate the two without a staple remover. Poor planning! And now, yesterday, I got another message reminding people to bring back ribbons to a meeting today, so more yapping about it, more obsessing, more energy devoted to the ribbns. I think it was a big issue because this was a very big district show where lots of ribbons were handed out.

None of this really addresses your issue, I think, but it continues the conversation about recycling.

[Lainey]

I wonder if your friend can be your partner-in-crime and help process some of these leftovers? I think it's worthy of your time but I can see how it could crowd out your other priorities, so if you have at least one other person as motivated as you it should make it much easier.

[iris lilies]

The scissors in your car idea is good, it is supportive of getting the job done faster.
I always carry scissors in my car because I am always snipping off flowers here and there.

[SteveinMN]

I occasionally work at our food bank's "produce drops", which are incompletely-named mobile supermarkets which pop up in local food deserts. The foods there (not just produce, but meat, dairy, bakery, and canned goods) is fairly predictable but the quantities widely varied. After all clients have been served, volunteers and the staff at the venue are encouraged to take home anything left over. What can be composted is; the rest of it goes to the dumpster. I'm not sure if the reason is legal (can't take it back once offered there) or financial (does not make economic sense to roll a truck, driver, and pallet mover to retrieve food and inventory it once again).

I take food home quite mindfully. It's tempting to cart home big bags of romaine or several clamshells of strawberries (for free!) but we cannot go through that much produce and sometimes my time/ability to process and freeze/dehydrate is minimal because of space other commitments. I don't can; nor do I want to at this time. We also have several months out of the year when the compost heap is in a state of suspended animation, so it does not serve me to take home produce which will see the compost bin before it sees the kitchen.

Streamlining the task is good (scissors in the car; can you take empty containers to the food bank that you then fill up with "good" produce, immediate compostables, and wrapping to be upcycled/recycled/tossed?). Lamenting all the packaging is understandable, but I look at handling it as the price of free produce, and -- if nothing else -- you should congratulate yourself that you are removing at least some of it from the wastestream (many other people are nowhere near as diligent).

For me, though, doing this comes down to how much you value this task this relative to other tasks that take your time/energy/space. In my case, it's maybe four times a year. It's worth the push to get it done. If it were an opportunity every week I would feel differently about the effort. Perhaps enlisting others is a worthwhile goal (neighbors? DH?). Perhaps effort should be put into finding ways to make the produce more attractive to the people it's meant for: offering it cut-up/seeded/ready to cook? Providing quick easy recipes for it or ways to incorporate it easily into family favorite meals? Offering storage tips? -- reuse instead of recycle the food.