I commit

Dear Earth;

I know you are mad at us. I know this because there is a winter storm warning in Alberta, which may affect Beaker coming home tomorrow. And it's been below zero here for over a week.

I get it. And you know, I don't blame you for being pissed off. We aren't taking care of you. We're slobs. We don't clean up after ourselves and we leave our crap everywhere.

So here's the thing.

If you will finally allow spring to... uh... spring, I will make some commitments to you. I'm just kind of waiting on a break in the snow. So I can actually get into my backyard. So I can follow through on the promises I made a while ago.

Shall we revisit them?

Back in the fall, I promised you a few things:

• A worm composter - for my paper and bills
• A food compost - for nasty leftover food debris
• A sorted recycling 'centre' out the back door where the following will be sorted: paper, plastic, metal, glass. (I did tell you how difficult it is to recycle plastic in Hometown, right?)
• Returning my exceptionally difficult to recycle plastics to London Drugs, which is the only place in town that actually takes plastic


Other friendly things I'm going to give you:

• A nice indigenous garden this year - even if it annoys Beaker
• A natural yard - I don't plan on watering. So you'll need to help out there - rain once a week?
• A commitment to resell or freecycle any large items that are reusable coming out of our house
• Future Fetus will be a cloth diaper and a cloth wipes baby

We already launder in cold water, turn off the taps when washing faces, teeth, hands, let yellow mellow, run the dishwasher on the light, econo wash cycle, and keep the house at 19 degrees. We've got CFLs in all the sockets, and I routinely flip the powerbars to the off position. I know there's lots more changes we could make, but we can't do them overnight, and we have committed to one big change every month (to be determined, each month).


So, Earth, sweetie? Do you understand that we, as a family, really care about you? That we want you to be happy? That we want to raise Punkin and Future Fetus to be wonderful earth loving kids who will also make positive changes to prolong your happiness?

All I'm asking is that you let Beaker come home on his days off. So that we can celebrate your big day together, with you.


Love you loads-
Ella