Cans of Spaghettios. Spare pants. Exercise bras. Homework books. Camera charger. Phone charger that will never actually leave my car and therefore my phone will be near death ALL WEEK LONG. Jet's Pizza Bags. Cat hair from the clothes I'm currently wearing. Magazines I've just received in the mail. Half empty bottles of Diet Coke. The list goes on and on and if you think the show Hoarders is bad there should be a car version because, seriously...peoples cars are nasty. Mine is no exception.
What's even worse, though, is that I will use these items over and over again from Monday to Friday in an attempt to just make it from one place to the next. Is there still some peanut butter residue on that granola bar wrapper? Who NEEDS lunch when you have that? Can I brush my hair with these four pencils I found under my seat next to a discarded cd case that has been smashed to smithereens? Why, yes. If I've learned anything from Obama it is at least YES. YES WE CAN.
The one thing, however, that I cannot stand happened to me just last Tuesday. I was late leaving work because they hate me there and will suck the life out of you at every chance they get and so I was pulling a rather impressive, albeit rather dangerous quick-change in the car before exercise class on Rochester Road. After the great "Sports bra is near the temperature of melting from being in car all day" fiasco I found my water bottle from that morning still sitting in my cup holder and without even thinking, took a giant swig.
It as like drinking molten ass in liquid form. I don't even know what I was thinking. I mean, maybe it was just my basic human instincts kicking in. Water. MMMM. You know, the same way you get when you see Patrick Dempsey on TV every Wednesday. Man Meat. MMMMMMMM. Am I not an animal too??!!
The wretching that ensued...the God-Awful Prissiness of the situation as I hacked and hemmed and hawed and cried like a tiny baby without it's mama is almost too shameful to mention.
HOWEVER. HOWEVER HOWEVER HOWEVER HOWEVER HOWEVER.
I must mention it. Because in one of the earlier mentioned magazines, National Geographic to be more specific (it's more than just pictures of naked people!) they did an entire edition on clean water. How everyone needs it. How we're running out. How we all need to pitch in.
And here I go, getting all Nancy Reagan on you ("Eat your green beans! Don't have sex! Drugs=Yucky!") but in that edition I got to read the step by step process of water purification in Nigeria.
Are you ready for this? Taking old water bottles and filling them with water that is laden with bacteria...cloudy from WHO KNOWS WHAT and laying it on sheets of metal in the sun for up to six hours. It's called the SODIS Water Purification System (that's right...it's real...like Brita, but not as advanced??Oh and yes, their site is written in Swedish or something) and it has helped their students grow from a 10% graduation rate in the sixth grade due to diseases they contracted in water to over 95% passing.
And while I don't want to freak you out, that is essentially what my water went through last Tuesday during my horrified princess bit in the car.
Warm water! Ew! How can I be happy it's purified when it's too hot to drink?!
I'm not saying go out and buy six gallons of water for a child in Kenya today. I'm not saying that I'm a world water activist who is suddenly jumping from one plight in need to the next (although, it would appear that way according to this blog). I'm just saying that world water is a serious problem, regardless of how easily it comes out of our taps.
And that this amazing lake that looks like a foot in Asia, as well as the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro, are slowly disappearing and we're all blisfully unaware as we throw away one half full bottle of water after another.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to time myself in the shower and to read more on that whole "Golden Water From the IceCaps" thing Paris Hilton was involved in last year. I'm not saying these things will fix the world. I'm just hoping to become smarter about it overall.
No comments:
Post a Comment