It’s Saturday afternoon and I have a spring cold along with some sort of intestinal thing. It’s just a stomach ache, but combined with the cold, I’m feeling bleak and aguey. Dim, without spark. LightGirl has team tryouts today. I wanted to go watch, but I have no motivation and then there’s this aguey feeling. So I’m on the sofa searching out new front doors for our house, this does nothing for my spirit as the door I found is made of Brazilian mahogany, so I think I will single-handedly demolish the rainforest.

I began serious work again yesterday on my snowball quilt from the Kaffe Fassett workshop I took in November. Here is my first shot at it on my design wall. I don’t like it. There are some blocks that are too light. I took them out and replaced them with others. It’s better now. The intersections between each square will have small burgundy diamonds which will give it a lot of spark. I spent some time this afternoon figuring out how many large squares I will need to make a bed sized quilt. The answer … 193. I may have cut that many already, but I’m not sure. Next I need to get some border fabric. I’m no longer certain of the fabric I did purchase when I took the class.

I’ve also been following, but not participating in an e-mail conversation about how to be more “green.” The conversation was initiated by my sister-in-law. LightMom contributed a link to an EPA site where one can calculate one’s carbon footprint. Another person pushed back a bit asking questions about the increased costs of production for hybrid vehicles and flourescent bulbs, not to mention the somewhat poisonous ingredients that those products contain (mercury, and battery acid).

Don’t get me wrong, I think these conversations are vitally important. I’m just depressed. They’re coming about 20 years too late. I was on the debate team when I was in highschool. I don’t want to get into specifics about when that was, but I will say that I’ve passed my 25th reunion … Bono and I are the same age … separated by about 1 year and 4 days. In any case, the question up for debate my senior year (late 1970’s) was whether or not the United States needed to reduce its dependence upon foreign sources of oil. We drew straws to see who would debate the positive and who the negative. I was on the negative team, which meant that I argued to continue with the status quo. It didn’t matter. I still needed to be well versed in all the arguments that our positive opponents might throw our way.

Here’s the sad thing.  The technologies that are being touted as so new and vital today … yeah … well.  They’ve been around since the late 1970’s.  The automotive industry has been able to manufacture hybrid vehicles for decades.  They simply had no incentive to do so.  No one gave them any.  Not our government.  Not us.  No one.

I’ve known since 1979 that our gas prices would hit $3.00 a gallon at some point.  The only miracle that it didn’t happen before now.  I’ve been waiting and watching for this for years.  The Europeans have paid these prices since the late 1970’s, it’s about time we start ponying up.

This has been coming for a long, long time.  So now it’s cool.  But after all of the Green Up Days I worked on.  After the days, weeks and months I worked canvassing for a National PIRG to get a stupid bottle bill passed in Virginia and we still don’t have one.  So now at the last minute, it’s trendy and Consumerigon can make a few extra bucks on so-called “green” products.  I just hope and pray our national ADD doesn’t kick in and our attention turns elsewhere at the crucial moment.  These changes need to be life changing … like the sort of diet where one loses weight and keeps it off, rather than yo-yoing for years.  They need to be slow, steady and permanent.  And I’m not certain we’re capable of that.