Skip to main content

Throwing tea in the harbor


For months now, I have been ranting to anyone who will listen (and really that's only my husband, who has to share my bed, and my coworkers, who have to sit in an adjoining cubicle for 8 hours a day) that our forefathers would never have allowed what's happening in our country these days. We're all sitting around griping -- myself included -- about gas prices and grocery prices and wars and idiot leaders...but who's going to start the revolution? Who's going to throw the tea in the harbor?

I was delighted to learn today that we've rediscovered a little bit of our revolutionary roots. Tonight ABC News reported that Americans drove almost 10 billion fewer miles in May 2008 than in May 2007. And guess what? The average price of gasoline has dropped 11 cents in the last week. YES! (Did you ever think you'd see the day that I danced over $3.87 a gallon?)

Keep up the good work, my fellow gas guzzlers. And if the price of gas keeps falling, please don't forget what it feels like to drop $75 in a single trip to the pump. Continue to conserve. It's good for us all.

Comments

  1. HEHE . . . I love that you went to the history! Although, I can bet that your husband totally turned to you and said, "Honey, it is a pendullum. It will swing back the other way."

    Americans today lash out against the "man" in much more creative ways, in ways that hit the pocket sooner . . . and honestly I think it works far better then some other methods.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A boy and his cat

Our backyard is a decent size and backs to woods. Every time a visitor steps onto our back deck, friend, family, and neighbor alike, we hear "What a yard! You need to get that kid a dog!" Apparently this is the natural progression here in Suburbia: house + yard + boy child + dog = happiness. Now, it's one thing to hear about our need of dog from friends or family who know us, but coming from neighbors and relative strangers it gets a bit old. My first response is always, Why do you think so? Which makes people hem and haw because they don't want to insult me by saying what's really on their minds: Because you're depriving that child of a human sibling , and he needs a friend . One problem: We're not dog people. I mean, we like other people's dogs, and I often think having a dog would be a major motivation to walk long distances regularly and get myself into shape. But a dog is like a toddler who will never grow up. They are needy, and they bark and poo...

Ottomania!

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about ottomans. A ridiculous amount of time, actually, given the number of other things I truly should focus my thoughts on. I find, though, that when the world outside gets scary (and scary is a truly relative term these days) I turn to online shopping for things I don't really need. Actually, it's more like online browsing; I rarely purchase. I spend hours searching for, oh, erasable colored gel pens or standing desks or all-natural curly-hair gel or the perfect black sweater. (Yes, these are things I've fixated on over this winter; I still haven't clicked "buy" nor settled on any of them.) This week, it's ottomans. By the way, my girl  BrenĂ©  Brown would call this behavior numbing . I'm okay with that. Because online browsing is way less detrimental (so far) than chain smoking, which is what I'd really like to do when the world is scary. It's a way to escape, to daydream, to focus on things tha...

Grown-up words and what to do about them

We know our children are little sponges who soak up all our words, actions, mannerisms. They are often parrots, but even more often they are fun house mirrors, amplifying and exaggerating our own idiosyncratic behaviors until we cringe, laugh, or hang our heads in shame. Yesterday while cleaning up his toys, Sweet Boy got frustrated trying to put one of his train pieces together. Instead of crying or raging like he would have a few weeks ago, he threw the toy down and yelled, "Oh, fuck it!" Oh. My. Lord. The air was sucked out of the room. We were suspended in time and space, frozen as our eyes met. I took a split second to consider my options: (1) Freak out and yell at him---scare him into never saying it again; (2) Ask him to repeat what he said, because maybe I heard it wrong and I don't want to overreact; (3) Ask where he heard that word, stuff his mouth full of soap, then call the offending child's parent immediately (a la The Christmas Story ); (4) Ignore it so ...