Where has the time gone?!

I just realized yesterday that next week is October! Can you believe how fast time is flying!! Things have been crazy for me these past 3 months. Once I found out I was only going to be working 20 hours a week at the Chamber, my first thought was, YES! Finally some time to blog! ;) Oh, but the opposite happened, I seemed to have just as little down time as before! Yeah I had more time to be at home and work on the house, but still no time to catch up on everyone’s blogs and blog myself. Well one look at the calendar and I realized why……I’ve got Ambassador Meetings, Holiday in Paris, Leadership Lamar Classes, Tour de Paris, Paris Downtown Association, The Arts Downtown, Ribbon Cuttings, Jazzercise and Paris Main Street Board Meetings. I have somehow become one busy girl!! ;) But the thing that has taken all my time in the last week is a presentation I am getting ready for on Monday. I don’t know that I have been so nervous in a long time!! The presentation is for my Leadership Lamar Class. Each year the class does a project and we have a lot of people come in and tell us about different projects that we could do. Why so nervous you ask…you think I tell stories and stuff bad on here…well get me in front of a crowd just staring at me and listening to me and I ramble more than I do here!! But I’ve got all my facts down on paper (100% post consumer paper;) ) to pass out to the class and all my notes ready, so I think I should be okay! I’ll let yall know Monday night how I did. We wont make a decision for another week or more, so after a nervous presentation I have to wait at least a week to find out if anything is going to come of it, and I’m not a patient person! ☺

Happy 100 Post

Wow...it only took like 3 years to get here ;)

Landfill...

I promised a post about the landfill and here it is…..Finally!! ;) And just keep in mind that I am a Terrible writer!! This story had such a huge impact on me I know I could never do it justice in words…but here goes anyways…..

We had some boxes of floor tile that we pulled up at 111 that were in the way and needed to be taken out to the landfill. We got our manifest filled out and were ready to go. Well Joe and his Dad and Mom were ready to go that is….I had already decided I was going to stay at home and clean house…I didn’t want to go to a landfill! I was cleaning the house when my phone rang, it was Joe letting me know he had forgotten the manifest and could I please bring it up there to him. Still giving me the impression that I was not going to the landfill…I was just bringing him the manifest and then I was leaving. But he tricked me!!! I ended up in the van on the way to the landfill!! I’m not really sure what I was expecting to see (and smell) when we got out there…but what I saw (and smelled) wasn’t it!! The smell was HORRIABLE!!! You know how bad rotten eggs and bad milk smell?? Well put both of those smells together and multiply it by 1000!! Luckily Dave had air freshener in the van that helped a little bit. ☺ So as we start to smell the landfill you still cant really see anything yet…its all behind the large “hill” that is to your right. So as we pull the van around and up the hill there it is…..This huge massive area full of trash! Yes most of it is already buried (hints the “hill”) but there is still a lot not covered. As we were sitting there waiting for the worker guy to dig a hole for our garbage 2 or 3 trash trucks come and dump their loads and I was just amazed at how much stuff can be in a single garbage truck! Imagine dumping tuna fish out of the can…you know how it kinda keeps it shape…Well that’s kinda what the garbage did…until a bulldozer came and started plowing it down. The guy finally finished digging our hole and we had to drive up into the actual land fill part (before we were just sitting at the edge of it). Other garbage was literally inches from the end of the trailer. At first I just refused to get out of the van, because if the smell is this bad while I’m still in the van…I Don’t want to be out in the open air with it!!! As I sat in the van looking around I was over come with emotions….anger at all the people who had wasted so much….resentment for those who let us get this wasteful and those who don’t care….absolute sadness the nature we had destroyed, you could tell just beyond the fill that this area used to be full of beauty and life….and most of all, guilt. I had helped fill this place up…how many bags and bags of crap have I just thrown out without a second thought? I eventually had to stop just sitting and thinking and help Joe get the heavier boxes off the trailer. But once that was done I stood on the end of the trailer for a second just looking out at the massive pile of garbage, and I was overcome with the urge to cry and vomit at the same time…while I never did vomit I did have to hide a few tears (cause I knew Joe would probably give me a hard time).

I know it probably sounds cliché and some will call me a tree huggin hippie, but that trip was a life changing experience for me. For a while now I have believed that Global Warming is not just a hoax and that we as occupants of the planet have a responsibility to take care of Mother Nature, and Joe and I have been trying to live a “green lifestyle.” But, the landfill really made things even more real to me! Now instead of just turning out the lights, we are now turning out the lights and recycling all paper, plastics and aluminum that comes through our home. Since we started working on 111, we have been going by “green” standards and using as much reclaimed wood in our remolding as possible, and now we are also recycling everything that we absolutely possibly can.
And if that makes me a Tree Huggin’ Hippie…than so be it! I will gladly wear “Tree Hugger” on my messenger bag once I’m riding my bicycle instead of driving a car (which will be once we move to 111).