It's how you tell 'em

Jack loves to repeat his father's saying, "It's not how you sell them, it's how you tell them." In other words, it isn't the price you charge, but the presentation.

This came home to me today. For a variety of reasons (can you say student loans?) I have never developed frivolous spending habits. That is how I see it anyway; others may (read: do) interpret my tight purse strings as being cheap.

But this afternoon we watched the documentary "No Impact Man," which profiles a family's effort to leave no impact on the earth for one year. No electricity, no elevators (in NYC), local food only, pedestrian or bicycle transportation, and cloth diapers. They even forgo toilet paper.

Moving on.

The wife was reluctant. She likes reality TV, takeout and Starbucks. She hates nature. They made it work and managed to stay married.

Of course, anything like this makes you take stock. Could we do that?

I don't know whether we could ever be that extreme, but overall I discovered that in being frugal (aka cheap), I've minimized my impact.

I'm low-impact girl!

From this chair, I look around and see very few things we've bought outright. Just about everything we did is electronic (TV, laptop, camera, phone, etc.). All of the furniture was either a gift or second-hand (or, in the new lingo, reused). Even the picture frames on the wall were from the thrift store (I painted them). Most of my clothes came from consignment stores. Our trash is mostly kitty litter (how I wish there were a way around that).

Certainly we aren't perfect but it was nice to find that in being economical, we have preserved a bit of our green conscience. Cheap is in!

The sound of sausage in the morning

I don't know what books Jack read in school, but by the time I came to biology we were clear about environmental issues. My sophomore year I had to memorize the contents of book called 50 things we can do to save the environment for some kind of academic quiz contest. The only two I remember are to drive no faster than 55 mph and to save water. Maybe I subconsciously absorbed the rest and shaped my mostly responsible behavior after them, but I really took the water thing to heart. To watch someone leave the faucet running while having a conversation or when someone in the movies leaves the shower going while they answer the door in a towel - ooh, does my blood boil. Such a waste! I growl at the television and alarm the dogs.

But the victim of my insanity is my poor husband. I've barked at him so many times for walking away from running water that even now when I try and bite my tongue he hears my rant anyway and turns it off.

This morning wasn't one of those leisurely conversations over coffee mornings. It was begrudging and whiny. For me. He somehow manages to get up, get dressed and get breakfast on, regardless of the hours of actual sleep he had the night before. I am not so grown up.

So there I was four hours into what was supposed to have been an eight hour night but it was time to get up. He dressed and went out. I pulled the covers over my head. The water started running in the kitchen. I gritted my teeth and chanted "Sleep" over and over again. Our friend Colonel came in for breakfast. The water ran. Sluggo the Corgi came to see what was taking me so long. The water kept going. Whole minutes were going by. Gallons of potable, treated water down the drain.

"I can hear the water from in here, you know," I called from the bedroom to the kitchen. I had to yell over the sound of the whooshing.

"No you can't," he said. "It's sausage."

Oh.