I Could Get Used to This

Almost 11 and still in my jammies. Living out in the middle of nowhere helps if you want to stay undressed. When I lived in a development you were asking for a knock on your door if you stayed in your nighties. It might be the Latter Day Saints, or breast cancer research or Girl Scout cookies. Not here. Last time someone "stopped by" it was a kid looking to pick up scrap metal, or someone telling me my sheep had crossed the road and were on their way to Syracuse (in that case I got dressed real quick). Living so isolated is cool most of the time, but if the rungs gave way on the ladder to the hay mow, and I went down, it would be a long time for someone to find me. Now that Matt comes home at night that's not such a worry. It's cold outside and cold in here. I like it that way. Matt likes the apt. to be as warm as summer. I'm trying to explain to him that now he's in the Green business he has to act like a Greenie. Greenies reach for a sweater instead of the thermostat. On the way back from the green building conference in Pittsburgh (the organizers purchased carbon stamps to make up for the energy they used to put on the conference and the Greenies coming from Vermont drove collectively in a bio-diesel bus) he stopped at his co-workers house in Ithaca. Matt says Ithaca is a tree-huggers paradise. Well, it's a college town (Cornell) which makes sense. Earl, Matt's co-worker and a environmental engineer, lives in a small energy efficient ranch house. He took Matt through the house, which, Matt tells me, is neat as a pin. Even the bedroom has not a thing out of place. Let me tell you, Matt will NEVER show Earl my bedroom, or my guest room, which is piled high with fiber and fabric. Earl's wife is a child psychologist and must have complete job/life satisfaction and no need to crap up her house with crafty things. I'm very happy for her! Earl takes every scrap of paper, cardboard and plastic he uses at work home with him for recycling. I sense Matt is slowly being brought over from the dark side of conspicuous consumption into the world of green living. He remarked last night that our purchase of the barn and making an existing structure into a living environment is very green. So is buying the pine flooring from the neighborhood mill. He wants to buy windmills to make our own electricity - fine with me but he'll have to build them himself. At $40,000 each on the cheap it's quite an investment. Right now I will settle for the third chimney pipe I need to get my wood stove working. The chimney needs to clear the barn roof, which is very high, in order to work correctly. The way the wind comes off the Great Lakes and tunnels through this valley we could have all the juice we could possibly use.