The New Year is coming

Do you believe in  New Year's resolutions? I don't. I just hope next year is better than this year. 



One must not think that the residents or the city of Kitchener knows when and how to clear snow and ice off sidewalks (and streets). I don't care too much about the streets right now because I don't commute by bus and so far the roads cleared simply by having cars driving on them but the sidewalks matter - to me at least. I don't think to too many other people because most  Canadians keep their ass attached to a (heated) car seat during the winter so what do they care what the sidewalks look like. Argh! Two days ago it first rained, then snowed fairly wet snow. Clever people would have gone out that evening and cleared the slush off their sidewalks before it could freeze. And they would have burnt off a lot of turkey calories at the same time! But nobody did. So yesterday my daughter and I stepped out the door and after my first step I thought, "oh shoot, ice!". By that time my daughter was already lying flat on her back, slipped in the ice (no, we did not have to go to ER). Poor baby, she will not be walking much outside this winter. Salt seems the most common "tool" in the fight of winter here in Kitchener and I don't like it.  The slush sticks far too well to the stroller. Never mind the puddles we leave behind every time we go into a shop or other building - stop starring, I am not going to clean it up. Get out the snow shovels and sand., they are much more effective and better for the environment. But I have not seen any yet.
 
So, I got a little book for Christmas called Life Lines. One of the first ones is, "We own nothing, everybody rents." It's true, especially when it comes to our planet. I received an email today from CPAWS asking  for donations and listing their achievements for this year. I am not even happy about the achievements, even though I probably wrote letters to lots of MPs telling them to help protect this or that space or area. But the tarsands are still there, still operating, still expanding. No change. Kyoto, a disaster - Canada, the big loser, bailed out. F*** this. The Canadian government ought to be jailed for it. Or have above phrase tattooed onto their foreheads. Do they really not get it? No they don't. That's far more than embarrassing.

Oh, and the worst, last year at this time we did make donations to different environmental organisations, this year we are far from it, low tide in the bank account due to a dead job market. Instead, we have the prospect of taking our building management to court over our windows. Hey, there's a new experience looming! When it rained inside our bedrooms the day we moved in we were told this problem is new. Recently I found out leaking windows have been an ongoing issue and the windows were apparrently repaired last spring. With no improvement obviously! Our building management is well aware of the problem, it has been contacted by our superintendents verbally and by us in writing at least twice. Nothing has happened. As soon as the temperatures dropped the outside window panes froze shut they were so wet. (Are they going to burst when too much ice accumulates?) The inside panes are daily covered with water and mould grows everywhere on the frame and surrounding area unless I clean it off every week. We think the windows do not comply with the local building standards. Neighbours have unsuccessfully tried to change the situation, with the management getting away with their poor maintenance. How can that be, I wonder?

I read an article recently from an engineer who wrote a letter to The Record suggesting Canada should produce pre-fabricated houses, just like they put up here everywhere but smaller, and ship them overseas to help with the housing crisis in poor countries. After all, Canada has plenty of forest to turn into lumber and it would help the economy. My quick thoughts on that: Safe the forest, and safe the rest of the world from these poor constructions called houses. Unless of course they come without windows. Maybe new houses like in all those ugly suburbs are better than the oldish apartment buildings we live in but then again I don't want to live in suburbia. That's for car-addicted people, not people like me who dream of giving their bike an upgrade and have fenders and other handy things installed. That is once I earn money of course. 

Over Christmas we rented a small car and unlike in Edmonton we got one too. Wow! It was a Toyota Yaris and with the three of us, car seat, stroller, Christmas gifts etc. it was well loaded too. It worked well and still it was very fuel-efficient. We need more of those, the cars I mean, and rental agencies that rent them out. 

How safe is your water?

Quick, look at the Essentials of Waterproof which will tell you what Canada's Federal government and the provinces do (or not do and should be doing) to protect our drinking water. Thankfully, we live in Ontario now which has the highest standards in the country! If you don't have the time to read 4 very interesting pages look at least at Canada's drinking water report card by Ecojustice.
Click on this Link to get more information, access to the full report and to sign the petition to support safer water for all Canadians.  At least, I don't want to end up having to buy bottled water for my every day needs like drinking and cooking!

Once more yes, I found it shocking, disappointing but not surprising to find out the government does not do anything to protect our drinking water sources!

Which world does he live in?

Frauenfelder's book Made by Hand obviously focuses on Do-it-Yourself-activities and still I am buffled how ignorant towards other benefits of his enterprises he (and his family) is. The first chapter was about replacing his lawn with a vegetable garden. The second one was about mending his espresso machine to make better espresso, something I can't relate too because I am no coffee-addict nor would I bother to cause myself high blood pressure by drinking espresso. The third chapter is about his chicken coop. Apparently he wanted to chickens for the eggs, although building the coop was the major DIY-job, but once the hens start laying eggs his family is all put off. On page 109 he admits that they buy packaged food, including eggs in a box from the refrigeratored shelves in the supermarket, and it obviously did not occur to them that this food comes from living creatures. The fact that the eggs slip out the hen's bottom upsets them. So it takes the family a while to actually overcome their absurdism and consume the eggs. Shockingly, when his kids bring friends over they all react the same, can't believe the eggs are edible and keep them as toys instead.  

I don't think I need to point out in detail my reaction to his revelations. I have a lot of trouble to believe anybody, ANYBODY, could be so disconnected from their food sources, have such a city-dweller attitude of "food comes from the supermarket", that they have trouble eating certain products like eggs once they realise it comes from an animal like a hen. What do biology classes teach nowadays? I bet Frauenfelder and his family could not drink milk from a cow milked in front of their eyes. I wonder if his wife breastfed their two daugthers. At the beginning of the book he mentioned that they took a breast pump when they moved with their newborn to the Cook Islands. 


Also, he does not mention anywhere that his home-produced food should be healthier than supermarket stuff. He notices the eggs look and taste different but does not seem to come to the conclusion that this is because the hens aren't battery-kept and fed on grains.  Unfortunately, his vegetables aren't necessarily poison-free. Until he got the chicks he had pest control come in every month to treat his garden against insects, spiders and beetles and such. He stopped doing this in order to not poison the hens. It did not occur to him that the treatment might harm him directly or through being absorbed by his produce? For him it's all about the experience of creating something with his own hands. He does not even mind to buy whatever it takes from the hardware store to complete a project. More accidently, he realises there are cheaper ways and he for example can use scraps from his junk pile that he tends to have in a corner of his garden.
  
I appreciate that he gardens, keep hens (and later in the book probably bees too) and gets his hands dirty. I would love his efforts even more if he considered his impact on the environment too though.

Waterloo Regional Museum

The Waterloo Regional Museum had its Grand Opening today. It's a great museum with lots of stories about the region, no doubt about it. It also is a LEED certified building and to let people know about a touch screen in the main hall of the museum tells you all about it: The Region of Waterloo Council aims to have all their new buildings LEED Silver certified. They do already have LEED Gold certified buildings. The Blue Bin program for recycling was first established in Waterloo Region, too, FYI.

So the museum was built with over 30% locally sourced materials, uses 25% less energy than ordinary buildings, has low-flow toilets, faucets & urinals which are also fed by storm water for 8 months of the year. The storm water is collected from the building itself and the parking lot and kept in a pond. The roof was painted white to reflect the sun and prevent the building from heating up too much which would then require air conditioning. Interestingly, a decision against installing solar panels or a living green roof has been made due to cost. Both options were more expensive than the white roof that still has its environmental benefits. After all the museum was built from taxpayers money. Ah! The museum planners consider adding on solar panels when they become more affordable. These are not all the building plus points but all in all I must say they made a great effort. I am glad to live now in a place where the environment matters, and seemingly matters more than profits from environmentally-invasive industries.   
                        

My news about diapers, meat, balcony and parking

       Our daughter now uses the potty at home when she is wearing panties. I am so glad she got the hang of it now even though she has not learned yet how to pull her panties down but we'll get there. At least she fights having diapers put on which is understandable now that she is all proud to use that thing that her parents kept pushing under her bottom for quite a while. When we go out she is in cloth diapers and at night we have to use disposable. I can't squeeze enough layers around her and into her diaper cover to prevent her from soaking through. Only disposable will keep her dry. 

We ate organic meat that we had actually purchased for the first time tonight. I can order from the same store that delivers the organic box and is does not even cost more than the supermarket stuff. Surely, it is the only organic meat we can afford right now. A roast of beef (around 1.5kg) costs $74. Organic ground beef is it for the next while or else we eat vegetarian and fish and thinking about it, salami and wieners from the European Import Store. Luckily I don't get there too often.     

I love our balcony. It stores our bikes, I dry the laundry there and it's a great playground and place to catch a fresh breath of air when need be during any nerve-straining home activities. Looking out on the buildings car park, a line of tall trees and dead-end neighbourhood street and in the distance the city centre light pollution is so little that we can see the stars, when they happen to be around. I noticed neighbours drying their clothes on their balcony as well. 

The car park with 70 spots is always half empty which we take as a good sign. There are about 46 units in the building. That means that not every unit has a car and most units defnitely do not own two cars.Talking about parking, the newly opened Waterloo Regional Museum has only built the minimum number of car parking spots required by law. Great, but they should have advertised this more before the Grand Opening today. Once the car park filled up drivers just put left their cars along both sides of the road despite the no-parking signs. The option to take a shuttle bus from the nearest mall was not well advertised either. We took a bus from home and then walked 2 km through a park to get there. Alternatively we could have taken two other buses and would have been gotten off 900 m from the museum. But the connection was so time-consuming it would have taken longer than the walk-option. If that's the nearest bus stop to the museum though arriving without a car will not appeal to many visitors.

Compost & Recycling in K-W

K-W has started a green bin system for compostable garbage. Unfortunately apartment buildings are excluded so far. We have recycled bins for corrugated cardboard, paper, plastics/ metals/ juice boxes etc. and the standard garbage container. The recycling bins regularly flow over on the weekend before pick-up day on Monday. I don't think that supports people with the recycling because in the end you are just going to throw everything in the garbage container. I would like the compost bin jsut because I decided not to have a worm composter in our apartment, or in the summer on the balcony. Our child is far to inquisitive and I don't want worms and compost all over my apartment.   

By the way, the garbage containers in the parks have been removed for the winter. A really bad idea because now there's lots of litter in parks. The city knows it's not ideal. They remove the bins because they can't be accessed once the snow falls - there is not winter maintenance on lots of trails. They should leave at least the bins that border onto a sidewalk but it is probably to difficult to map where bins need pick-up and where not. So they take them all. My husband has picked up garbage in our nearest park a few times, on his way to playgroup with our daugther. Since I have been in contact with the volunteer coordinator of the city of Kitchener I asked for help and the city sponsors us gloves and garbage bags. Not quite as elaborate as in Edmonton where you get one of those spears that help you pick things up off the ground but it's better than nothing. Since we have lots of time, unemployed life it's called, we might as well clean up the park. After all, we take our daugther to parks and playgrounds practically every day and we prefer them tidy.       

Talking about going outside. Our daughter loves going outside so much that she will collect her shoes and jacket and stand at the door, clearly indicating to her parents her intentions. Or, that's a new favourite, she goes onto the balcony, probably still hoping that one day a magical door opens in the railing and she can step right onto the ground. Weather does not matter, she wants out in any weather. We don't mind.  

How is your lawn doing?

The grass is still green here in K-W which is sooo nice. Of course the grass gets mowed too, right over the 3 inches of leaves that cover it up and get mulched in the process. Only few people put paper bags filled with leaves onto the curb for pick-up. Some just rake (or blow) the leaves onto the street which I don't like. I prefer the leaves left on the ground, in parks and on sidewalks I love to shuffle through them. I don't think many people leave the leaves on the ground due to organic gardening practices, a natural fertiliser. Maybe, they just can't be bothered to invest the time for raking them up. After all, most front and back yards are still fairly large here, compared to German standards. And the maple trees dump a lot of leaves, that's for sure. I think a lot less people here rake up the leaves than in Germany. There, it is kind of a competition. Then the leaves get either picked up or (improperly) composted in a corner of the garden. My husband told me today most people will rake up the leaves in spring, something I have not heard of before. We are both reading Mark Frauenfelder's book "Made by hand" right now. Hubby started on it and told me what happened on every page so I decided to read it myself. It's a great book. Frauenfelder got rid of his lawn a long time ago, turned the space into a garden and grows a huge variety of fruits and vegetables on it. Mind you, he lives in California. Lawns were the result of posh Europeans who thought it necessary to demonstrate they did not need their land to grow food on it because they could afford to buy it. It's a trend that spread like a bad weed but without benefits. That is unless you have kids that need green space to run around in but even then a more natural approach (wild flowers & grasses mix?) would be much nicer. I'm glad Frauenfelder applied the natural method to killing his lawn, with vinegar, newspaper and mulch. Pouring Monsanto's Roundup on top of the grass surely would not have been an appropriate start to organic gardening. Can't wait for next spring to try our balcony garden again.