Newest News and the Usual Thoughts

Well it's a week away from move date more or less. My school stuff is done and I have turned in what I hope is my last paper ever. I have one more day of working for my boss and we have resubmitted the article for publishing. Half my room is packed and the rest will go quickly next week. I was able to sell back almost all of the books I had wanted to resell, but I still have the stack of magazines to go through. And mainly I've been spending a lot of time visiting with family and friends before moving.

I've been in the process of applying for and interviewing for a job or two. Hopefully one of them works out. Both are part-time which would hopefully enable my husband and I to actually get to spend more time together, especially since his schedule is somewhat unpredictable. We just received our housing this week, so he's been able to spend the last few days moving in and unpacking what we already have down there. We decided to buy a used washer and dryer off a couple that we hope will last for quite a while, and he currently has our car down there (we drove down together a week or two ago) as we are going to try to just use one car. We will have to buy some furniture however, as neither one of us has much, but we are hoping to get a mix of used and new. We purchased a new couch, but have been gifted already a futon and an entertainment center. And the rest we will just wait on.

I've had the usual guilt surfacing in buying new stuff (hot weather clothes, the couch, etc), in spending money on good bye dinners and visiting, and just general consumption purposes. And the last few days I've had that usual questioning of whether or not I am living to the values that I want to. It's going to be a different transition--moving to a completely different location and actually living with my spouse also. The last year of being busier and living with another person has influenced me to be a little less environmentally aware and actively engaged than I was living by myself. I've also been consuming more and with less insight than I was previously. These changes aren't some that I'm entirely comfortable with and this transition either offers opportunities to get back on track or to get even further off track. However this transition period is also occurring in a less environmentally friendly location and includes another individual....

I'm looking forward to setting up house and hopeful that we still might be able to plant something on our patio. There are rumored to be a blueberry and a pumpkin farm nearby, so I'm also hopeful that we can tap into some local goods. We finally found a decent grocery store, although it's an hour drive away. We discovered that there is curbside recycling on post, although they don't recycle glass apparently. (Every time I've had to throw a glass container out, it just kills me.) But I'm hopeful there are a lot of other little ways that we can bring some of our Oregon "green-ness" into this new location. Whether that's based on continuing to buy safer personal care products, practicing greener cleaning via safer products and/or baking soda/vinegar, attempting to container garden, trying to buy in bulk to reduce waste, finding where used stores are, cutting back on impulse purchases, cooking and hosting more at home, etc; there are a lot of steps we can take to make the right impact.

Off I am to my final weekend on the coast of Oregon for a while. May each of you have an enjoyable weekend!