And a little frog shall lead them...

Prologue: It Ain't Easy Bein' Green

As if he had the Shine, Kermit the Frog uttered this simple phrase back in the 70's probably never knowing that in a few decades, we'd all be striving for a deeper shade of green.

So I figured my first blog had to be a green blog as that is what all the cool bloggers are doing today. And I'm nothin' if not a trend follower. Spoiler alert: This is not a site you should visit if you want to share in the joys of being so called "green." No tips, no advice, no back patting, acknowledgement of good deeds. No trading of recipies or playlists. No sassy teenagers telling my my blogspot is "devoid of original content" like my nephew did on Facebook. No poking anyone, no best friend status. Just read it damnit.

I'm not going to learn anything, teach anything, retain anything. Neither will you if you read my blog. No feeling good or positive reinforcement of any kind. No personal growth. Remember, I come from a long line of dark people just biding their time waiting for Armegeddon. But rather, just for today, brothers and sisters, let us co-miserate on some of the adjustments we all have probably made to show we care, or at least want to appear to care, about our environment. And really, what is more important than appearances?

I've never been the most eco-friendly person in the crowd, unless that crowd was the Enron Christmas party. I would rock and rule that Xmas party!!! (especially if they had karaoke)!! if I didn't have to decline the invitation because they are like so politically incorrect and probably pretty dull at a party(see societal pressure/media hype). As my son expressed after a week of Vacation Bible School, "I like Jesus, I just don't want to talk about Him all the time." I feel the same way about the Earth. She's nice and everything, but I haven't gotten as close to Her as I probably could be on a conscious, spiritual plane.

But, my people boast not only a family tree that forks, but many environmentally friendly members both that share my DNA and some who have won the lottery by marrying in. Knowing that my sisters weren't using paper towels, plastic bags, tampons, gave me license to use up to 2, even 3 times as much of those products as I may have needed and know that I wasn't being irresponsible, but only taking up the expected carbon footprint for a person (or 3) with size 9 feet, extra Wide for a shot of non-fat carbon on the Side.

No, I'd place myself mid range on the scale of green: Zero being like the Exxon Valdez, and 10 being like, a Druid, or my sister, Anja, who is not a Druid, but better than a Druid when it comes to the environment. Yeah, my sister kicks butt on your Druid any time, any place. I'm maybe a 5, ok, a 4, but working towards the neighborhood of the 5's. Or at least getting close enough to throw a rock thru a window of a home owned by a person in the neighborhood of 5. But not an endangered rock because that would be wrong.

Any green roots I had I came by naturally in my DNA from that forkin' family tree. The rest of my greenability has been thrust upon me by societal pressure and media hype. (So I've admitted I've been not so vigilant about the Earth, but turning over a new leaf already. In my own defense, let's not forget that societal pressure and media hype have led to the trend-following of a lot of stupid things too, like stirrup pants, Crocs, lite beer, the Macarena, PopRocks (No, Mikey from the Life Cereal Commercial did not expire from a lethal combination of Pop-Rocks and Mountain Dew) but I will promise you to never stray too far from the promised topic, there is no GPS for my train of thought, just get on and hold on, no refunds).

Part One: Forkin' Family Tree:

My Grandmother was most likely the source of the dominant DNA in the family's "green gene" (I think it is chromosome number 13, or maybe red dye number 5, Chanel number 19? but I get confused with numbers since bearing children). Though her style came more from being the oldest child of Serbian immigrants in an extremely large family (estimates range from 12 to 17 siblings, but my Balkan people are known for their tendencies to exaggerate, so let's just say, more than capacity for a 7 passenger vehicle, fewer than, say, Warren Jeffs').

Thrift and conservation were ingrained in her as a way to survive--something that would be compounded by living through the Great Depression and both World Wars. Any given year between 1924 and say 1989, my grandmother could tell you what the price of butter per pound was, but her eyeglasses were known to turn up in the cookie jar. She proudly said she and my Grandpa survived the Great Depression eating "just two wieners a week," but always finding her silver lining, she would add "but we were so skinny and good lookin' back then, weren't we Daddy?"

I have distinct memories of every summer of my childhood spent filling 5 gallon buckets full of berries--black, rasp, straw, whatever. We'd slave in the hot sun for hours, fighting off gnats, bees, one time a bear, or maybe just a really ugly dog, lug the buckets home, wash, freeze, start jam. When I was about 14, my grandmother surveyed about 20 5-gallon buckets brimming with summer's finest and uttered "God, I hate berries." I was shocked and appalled that our berry-bonding labor was not one of the most joyous events in her life as it had been in mine, but rather an exercise of necessity. God provided it, you better use it or lose it, sister. Even today if I get a chance to pick strawberries with my kids, the experience has the dark memory those words ringing in my ears like the many gnats that drive you to seizure in the fields "God, I hate berries."

My grandparents had a cabin on a lake that was the center for most of my happiest childhood memories. A combination of thriftiness and "country plumbing" inspired the toilet paper rule, which back in the day was "Two squares for number one, Four squares for number two."

Now, when you are a child and you get only one vacation a year and it is in a place as awe-inspiring as Iron River, Wisconsin, when adults start gabbin' about "toilet paper rules," all you hear is "yadda yadda yadda," got my fishin' reel, got my home-made life jacket filled with Indian Corn, whatever!! on your rules ladies, I'm outta here. Until you have single-handedly demolished a bucket of (fill in the blank)berries and the elder women in the family are shouting them to you as you race to the bathroom.

Ok, I don't know about you, but even as a child, or especially as a child, four squares was not going to cut it for number two, the "Big Job" as it is known in my house today--especially after scarfing down all those fiber rich berries by the wheelbarrow-ful. Come on we are decades from hand sanitizer--dark days of bar soap here people!! (Oooohhh, Just pinpointed the roots of my germ phobia, but that will be my next blog).

I'm not sure there is anyone on the planet, Slavic or not, who could perform in those limited parameters, but I'm sure if we float the question enough, we'll see it on the roster as an event in the next Summer Olympics.

And so I ignored the guidelines of both number one, and number two toilet paper usage, went for half a roll, 3/4 roll--with ease--but did it quickly, furtively, guiltily as if they were watching me (and who knows? there was no door on the john in the cabin 'til about '82) and this was the 70's still Cold-War era when spy movies were big, but before anyone ever heard of wedging a tiny camera up a teddy bear's wazoo, so this must be the roots of my deep-seeded paranoia.

I'm sure I clogged the toilet, single-handedly flooded the quaint village of Iron River and promptly blamed my little brother for the whole thing. But the point is, my peeps were conserving while yours were still flushing Quilted Bounty down the drains by the truckload.

And it wasn't just water and paper my beloved Grandmother cherished, when she passed, the family unearthed a rather large box full to the brim, much like those berry buckets of my youth, of thousands of ballpoint pens carefully bound by rubber bands and neatly labeled "these don't work." She had half of a basement dedicated to the careful storage of jugs of water that she had emptied from her dehumidifer. Why? Well if she were here today, she would give you her stock answer: "You never know."

My grandfather would take his bald car tires and craft them into planters for container gardening. (It needs to be noted here that Martha Stewart's people were Polish immigrants--those bald-tire planters were the envy of all the neighbors and I bet Martha saw the same thing in her grandma's backyard, 30 years later, some Rustoleum, some glitter glue, slaps it on the cover of her magazine clears 500 dabloons easy!) These people really threw nothing away, found a use for everything. Reduce reuse recycle long before it was "en vogue."

Part II Societal Pressure/Media Hype

Now, flash forward to 2008 and I am living in Shorewood, the epicenter of all things green, liberal and good in the world. No really, people here have rainbows shootin' out of their gutchies, I kid you not. Don't think my eccentric and Old World Grandparents would be so pleased to be en vogue, as they constantly categorized us a "not fancy," or, not "high falutin'," no, our clan was and remains, as low-falutin' as you can be and still walk upright and boast a forkin' family tree; we have remained "not too big for our gutchies," or britches for you readers of Western European descent. But, we are doing our part, in small ways.

Part III: Doin' our Part

I proudly told all my friends that we are "like, biking, just about everywhere!!!" Then, a few weeks later, we dusted the bike off about the time my daughter started preschool.

Insert hidden benefits to biking here, but remember, no learning, no preaching, no growing:

There is the fresh air, the quiet, the chance to oberseve the beautifully colored petals of your neighborhood opening slowly like the dawn of a new day.

There is the time with my child, still small and sweet, strapped and helmeted on the back of my bike, kicking me in the rear like I'm her personal pack mule, (What are those steel-toed sandals??) listening to her angelic voice sing away (sometimes Itsy Bitsy Spiiiider, sometimes Nickleback's Rockstar, hey, third child, she's seen and heard some things and she's no dummy) as she spits Goldfish cracker remants into my curls.

Now for the downside:

A: Idiots!!! Stinkin' idiots. Not observing road rules as they chat on their idiot cellphones while they email their stupid friends and snap digital pictures without signaling as they adjust the radio and insert their contact lenses while catching up on last season's Flava of Love on the in-car DVD player while driving through a school zone at 50 mph. My defense to getting plowed down is a small metal bell with a pony on it that my daughter game me for Christmas one year.

Secondly, there is also the acute shortness of breath as I grunt my way over a small hill, a slope really. Note to self: stuff a defibrillator in the Blues Clues backpack if I'm going to keep this up.

And C: I almost lost my spleen in pothole on Murray Ave that was only a tiny bit smaller than my backyard. Things you gloss over in your safe, shock absorbent van, but on the bike, well, let's just say my reproductive years are now behind me.

But I begrudgingly have to admit, despite the obvious threats to my lifespan, I prefer the bike to the car. Also, interestingly enough it takes the same amount of time to bike as drive as there are no parking spots in the urban, walkable community by the lake at school drop off and pick up time 'cause even on a good day, most people are still driving their lazy selves everywhere anyway.

Then one day, I cursed my bike and the wicked eco-friendly world when my passenger pooped her underpants (that's gutchies for my readers of Eastern European descent) at a soccer game. Try riding that home on a bike! How I yearned for my allotted four squares of rough 70's style toilet paper and bar soap that day!! However on the scorecard of green-ality, and it really is all about keeping score, check off "Has experience cleaning up a brown site, and boy, was it a Big Job," which never fails to impress.

In the 70's, my father, being observant of his generation's energy crisis, started carpooling to work with a man whose name escapes me, but whose bumper sticker is crystal clear and it went something like this:

my wife? yes
my dog? maybe
My Gun??? NEVER!!"

I spent a fair percentage of my girlhood flummoxed over this redneck haiku. What the hell did it mean? Now as I troll the avenues of my adopted hometown on my bike, holding fast to my spleen as I text message my friends, crank up my Ipod, apply mascara, and swat at my child, I think my bike's bumper sticker would go something like this:

my dignity? long gone
my spleen? maybe next
my child's landfill-clogging PullUps? NEVER!!

And you know, somehow, somewhere, Grandma Gukich is reading this, my very first blog featuring lots of talk of berries and bowel movements, and hopefully, approving this message.