Filed under: eco-friendly, green, organic, sustainable | Tags: back, california, eco, ecostiletto, exercise, fat, green, los angeles, loss, medicine, pain, sarnoff, sustainable, weight, workout, yoga
With my husband working out of town for two weeks and a major deadline looming, “stressed” barely described what I was feeling last week. I hurt. Specifically, my neck hurt. And my back. Basically a solid “V” of pain stretched from my lower back to my shoulder blades, then turned in at my shoulders to travel up my neck.
Pain. Serious pain. Pain so bad that I couldn’t turn my neck. I couldn’t bend over. And when I woke up in the morning, I cried because I thought I’d never be out of pain again.
I tried everything. I drank relaxing tea. I rubbed on homeopathic anti-inflammatories (Topricin usually does the trick). I took hot baths with salts. Then I moved into stage two of damage control: over-the-counter anti-inflammatories and pain medicine. Finally, I turned to prescription muscle relaxers.
Still, the pain.
The one thing I didn’t do—and hadn’t been doing—was yoga. In the past, a bare minimum of twice-weekly yoga sessions kept my chronically tense back muscles from seizing up. When I do yoga, I can move my neck. I can stretch my shoulders without wincing. I stand straighter, breathe deeper. Any level of stress is manageable.
But because my husband has been out of town, my kids are at camp for three hours less than they’re usually at school, and the Barnacle (read: baby) is on preschool strike, I haven’t been able to get to the gym to do yoga on my own—let alone to a studio to take a yoga class. And although I’ve been practicing for more than 20 years (my dad took me to my first yoga class when I was 11), the idea of doing yoga at home—with the dogs sniffing around me and the kids yelling for attention—just seemed like a chore.
Enter YogaDownloads.com. I stumbled upon this site one night when I realized that 1. the only thing that was going to make me feel better was yoga and 2. there was no way I was getting out of my house to do it so I’d better find a way to do it at home. I searched “download yoga” and grabbed my mat, and the rest is pain-free history.
Although there are other sites where you can download yoga classes, YogaDownloads allows you to grab 20-minute yoga classes for free so you can test them out and see which instructors (they’re all awesome, but Dawnelle is my favorite) you like best. And where some peeps are promoting yoga videos, YogaDownloads are mostly audio which, especially if you’ve been doing yoga for a while, is so much better because you can close your eyes without distraction. I created my perfect class by lining up my favorite four sessions on my computer, using the one-minute shavasana at the end of each session to add extra poses that I love, like headstand.
Not that I could do a headstand when I first started YogaDownloading. I could barely touch my toes. But for a few days, I would do a relaxing 20-minute yoga session before I went to bed. Then I’d leave the mat and laptop computer—wireless internet access disabled, so I wouldn’t be distracted by emails—next to the bed, so I could do another few sessions first thing in the morning.
I wouldn’t say I’m completely stress-free, but today, my shoulders aren’t hunched and I’m standing tall. And I lost the six pounds I gained in my brief stint with vegetarianism. Bonus!
Filed under: parenting | Tags: baby, california, children, dad, eco, family, father, green, home, kids, los angeles, mom, mother, parent, preschool, sarnoff, sustainable, toddler, two, work
My two-and-a-half year old daughter can say the alphabet and count to 20. She recognizes a handful of the letters in the alphabet and knows how to share—most of the time. She sings “Tinkle, Tinkle, Little Star,” “Itsy, Bitsy Spider” and Hannah Montana’s “Hoe-Down, Throw-Down.”
All of this—except that last song, a product of a week-long road trip with her eight-year-old older sister—is a direct result of the fact that, like her brother and sister before her, the Barnacle (read: baby) has gone to Montessori school since she was 18 months old.
Until recently, she was happy there. And so was I. I’d known and trusted these teachers for more than 10 years. Sure, my daughter cried a little when I dropped her off in the morning—a painful five minutes that the other kids grew out of after a few weeks. But after those few minutes, and when I picked her up from school, she was completely happy. She kissed and hugged her teachers, talked about her friends when she was at home, and was on par with her peers both academically and socially.
But in the last few months, those morning minutes of tears stretched out until the Barnacle (read: baby) was throwing an hour-long tantrum that began at home and lasted until I pried her fingers from around my neck to hand her to her teacher. She wouldn’t brush her teeth or hair, wear her shoes or clothes, and a few times I even took her to school in her pajamas. The worst was trying to get her into her car seat, when I physically had to force her into the straps—both of us crying.
It was hell.
I tried everything. I discontinued the potty training. I left the big-girl bed unmade and let her sleep in her crib—with five blankies. I took her to school late and dropped her off quickly. I took her to school early and played for 20 minutes before handing her over. And once I drove out of that parking lot, I tried to forget about the crying baby I’d left behind.
But last week, I hit my breaking point. I just couldn’t pry off those tiny fingers one more time. So I took her out of school for the rest of the summer. I was convinced I could make it work: I’d write when she was napping, playing quietly in her room, or watching the occasional hour of “Sesame Street.”
At first, it worked out just fine. We walked the kids to camp, played on the swings and slides at the park—on Thursday, we even went to the beach in the afternoon. But the work part? Not so much. My daughter is so happy playing in her room that she wants to share all that she finds there with me. She’s given up naptime. And her PBS hour has stretched into two.
I love my daughter. And I hate for her to be upset. But when she’s home, I’m constantly interrupted. My back is knotted up because I can’t make it to the gym to work out and stretch, which makes picking up my 32-pound baby even more painful—and me even more cranky. And I feel like none of my tasks are ever finished—just halfway complete.
I know we’ll adjust. I’ve cut back my workload so that it will be more manageable. We’re all taking a vacation in August. And the summer will slow everything down, making morning trips to the park and a few extra minutes of “Handy Manny” not such a big deal.
I hope that after spending the summer at home, in September the Barnacle (read: baby) will want to go back to her numbers and letters and teachers and friends. But what if she doesn’t? The idea of permanently working half time makes me feel trapped—and the fact that I feel trapped by the idea of spending as much time with my daughter as I do with my work makes me feel guilty.
It’s a classic conundrum. And no, this post has nothing to do with going green. But it has everything to do with being a mommy.
Any advice?
Six weeks and one day ago (not that anyone’s counting), I became a vegetarian. A pescatarian to be exact, since I could give up the thrice-weekly chicken and occasional In-N-Out, but sushi? C’mon.
My intention was to walk my eco-friendly talk a little more. Some sources estimate that animal production contributes more to global warming than cars, and last month I saw a PETA video that really drove the point home (and totally grossed me out in the process).
As PETA puts it, “You can’t be an environmentalist and eat meat.” And although I only bought organic and free-range meat, and tried to avoid inorganic meat in restaurants (except, of course, the aforementioned In-N-Out), even the conscious meat eating was weighing me down.
And that, of course, was also the point. After more than a few friends told me how those last few stubborn post-Barnacle (read: baby) pounds virtually melted away after they went vegan, I was sold. Reduce my carbon footprint and my one-pack? Sold!
But it didn’t work out that way. After eating tofu, beans and whole grains for six weeks, I’m now six pounds heavier. Apparently, my type-O blood needs straight protein, not protein-rich carbs.
So now I’m faced with a conundrum: Save my ass and start eating (free-range, organic) steak or gain 50 pounds over the next year to help save the environment.
What would you do?
Filed under: eco-friendly, food, green, organic, parenting, sustainable | Tags: birthday, california, children, dad, eco, family, father, green, kids, los angeles, mom, mother, organic, party, sarnoff, sustainable
It’s been a month of birthdays for the Sarnoff family. First there was my husband’s 40th surprise party, which ended up with a karaoke performance of “I’ve Had the Time of My Life” complete with lifts. (Yes, tequila was involved.) Then, my daughter turned eight, and we hosted a five-girl, two-movie sleepover party. (No tequila, but an equally painful morning after.)
For both parties, I tried to keep it simple—and conscious. For my husband’s party, we splurged on dinner was at our favorite organic restaurant, Akasha. As a gift, I gave him a DIY Grain Surfboard kit, made from sustainable hard wood. Guests came back to our house, where we served organic gimlets in reusable cups, recycled the bottles and composted the lime peels, with a little help from my favorite sustainable party planner, Paige Anderson of Bash Eco Events. For my daughter’s sleepover, the theme was “Christmas in July,” so we broke out the box of ornaments, borrowed a reusable tree and played freeze dance to carols.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t totally consistent on the sustainability front. I wanted to put a childhood photo of my husband on his cake, so I ordered it from a traditional baker. My daughter craved egg rolls, so we ended up ordering Chinese (luckily, we can recycle Styrofoam in Los Angeles). We even decorated miniature stockings with fabric paint—not the most eco-craft idea, and they loved it.
But both my husband and my daughter had fun, and I survived another July.
Besides the “no one puts Baby in a corner” moment, my favorite memory of the whole week was between parties. The day before her birthday party, I took my daughter to the beach, leaving my son and the Barnacle (read: baby) at home with their daddy. While everyone else sat under umbrellas in the sand, my daughter and I joined hands and ran into gigantic waves that were breaking so hard we had to dive under them so we wouldn’t get knocked over. I taught her to body surf, showing her how to race the wave to the shore in order to catch the lip before it crashed. Every so often the current tumbled us, ripping our hands apart and flipping us around in the “washing machine.” But my daughter popped up every time, her eyes wide with fear but ready to laugh it off and jump back in with me. It’s the same spirit she’s shown since the day she was born, since she toddled into pools without warning, since she stretched up to her full five-year-old height in order to ride the roller coasters at Disneyland. She’s so fascinating to me, and so foreign, since I’ve always been so afraid of consequences. My daughter is fearless. And I am so blessed.
Happy birthday, my loves.
P.S. Here’s what my daughter is reading these days, 113 Things to Do by 13 written by Brittany Macleod, with a little help from her mom, Treehugger alum Terri MacLeod, which includes tips like “save water” and “go organic,” as well as “go off the high dive even if you don’t dive” and my personal favorite, “make dinner for your parents.” Preferably organic.
Filed under: eco-friendly, green, organic, sustainable, travel, vacation | Tags: architecture, california, compost, ecostiletto, environment, katrina, los angeles, louisiana, new orleans, organic, recycle, sarnoff, sustainable, vintage
I spent last week with my family in New Orleans where people still feel the wake of Hurricane Katrina. That was five years ago but there are areas where the city looks like some kind of Potter-esque villain pointed a wand and waved a swath of nothingness across a neighborhood. No cars. No trees. No people. Not even a stray dog. Just empty houses, and the scary-crazy hidden squatter-y things that go on in them.
But for the most part, the central city feels to me pretty much as it always has—air so thick you could wear it, smelling faintly of sweet flowers and sewage, the buildings gracefully aging, brightly-painted plaster crumbling away to reveal patches of brick like some kind of architectural peep show. You can walk down the street in the Marigny and simultaneously listen to six different types of music spilling out of the doors of six different no-cover bars—and each musician will be better than the last.
Now that the media focus is over, life goes on like it always has: People get up, go to work, grumble about the weather and glory in the fact that they live in one of the most frustrating and soul-inspiring cities in the world.
Because even though they’re still dealing with impacted social services and roads that never get fixed and levies that still aren’t secure even though hurricane season began July 1st, the people who live in this city—even the transplants or, as they call them down there, expatriates—are a different breed. New Orleans is more than just a city where they live. People here know the streets better than a New York taxi driver knows Manhattan. Ask them what they’re doing this weekend, and they’ll reel off a litany of options—from an out-of-season parade to a festival to a concert in the park. They love New Orleans like they love a mother, or a grandmother: They’re loyal to her. And proud of her, despite all of her failings.
And they’re industrious, especially those environmentalists who made it through the storm. On my first day, I assumed that the recycling truck would pick up glass and plastic, until my sister-in-law explained that in the city where perhaps more bottles are consumed per capita than any other city in the world, the recycling center there no longer accepts glass. She pays an extra $15 a month for the truck to come at all!
People here are environmentally conscious in different ways. They plant expansive kitchen gardens and compost their trash to feed them. My family keeps two heirloom chickens, which consume an amazing amount of their leftovers, and lay enough eggs for their family of three, as well as many of their friends and neighbors. You see fewer hybrids than in California, but many people depend on the streetcar for their daily commute—even in 100-degree heat and what feels like 100% humidity. The classic Hansen’s sno-ball—a New Orleans summer tradition—has inspired an organic fruit-juice sweetened option at a new café that’s scheduled to open this month. The Magazine Street Buffalo Exchange featured the best pre-worn clothing I’ve ever seen in one room—and the best dressed and nicest vintage aficionados I’ve ever met in one place. And the farmer’s market is the only place to be on Saturday mornings, rain or shine.
We take a lot for granted, living in California. The recycling truck picks up not only glass and plastic, but Styrofoam and aluminum foil as well. My local supermarket carries a wide selection of locally sourced organic foods. I can buy organic denim jeans at my neighborhood department store (if I’m prepared to look for them) and bamboo t-shirts for my kids. I can walk to the movies, the market, and to take my kids to school.
But I wouldn’t say we’re loyal. In a city so transient, it’s hard to think that we’re living in a place where we’ll spend the rest of our days—even if most of our days have been spent here so far. We’re always on the look out for some place better.
Maybe if we could just import those organic sno-balls?
