My siblings and I are hoping among my father’s papers are family tree information. For school long ago I had to make a family tree, and my father was very interested and gave me a lot of details on his family side, but those papers are lost. In fact he might have had it, and probably had a lot of other research too. I seem to remember not only Irish but Scottish antecedents. My last name is a Scottish one, but considering that my grandfather was a con man, anything is possible including made-up names or family members. I do not care to do research online, as that seems like asking someone to please steal my identity.

Already the landscaping man called to ask if he should start to mow the lawn in April. But of course the weather did that thing it does — of rising to 60+ degrees for a few days, before reversing itself and dropping to below 30. It’s all to trick us.

While I suspect that there’ll be so much rain next month that hardly any mowing will be possible, I could be wrong. The weather is so weird these days I think I will write down the conditions in a journal, because by next year I’ll forget it all.


**
If you read enough news articles about pollution, it can freak you out enough to send you looking for ways to be a less polluting citizen. At least there are more options now than there used to be.

I’m trying out a clothes detergent that isn’t in a bottle, just a thin cardboard envelope, made by TruEarth. Soon I’ll be trying out a bar shampoo, and a bar soap for dishwashing that you use with a little scrub brush. Not sure about these, but we’ll see. The last 2 are very expensive, and I doubt I could continue using — but have no plastic involved at all.

The best thing was that I found a zippered bag for doing laundry in that is designed to filter out most synthetic fibers so they don’t go into the water supply. It’s called the Guppyfriend Bag, and it’s sold by Patagonia. I bought 2, and maybe later I’ll buy another or so. Right now all my fleece items are going in them, to start with. That weird Cora Ball thing, that Trout has written about, was also on my mind, because I have some blankets of dubious fiber content that can’t fit into these Guppy bags. (People who don’t use public laundromats like me, of course, can add special filters to their washers’ hookups.)

I’ve unfortunately delayed doing laundry lately so I have Mount Washmore now.

The water comes to my mind more often because my town has just horrible-tasting tap water. The town is careful; they switch periodically from chlorine to chloramine, like they're supposed to; this prevents bad stuff from building up, but so much chlorine!
The water is probably pretty clean, but sometimes I can’t stand it, it smells like a swimming pool. I have a Zero Water pitcher, which gets rid of the chlorine along with other stuff, leaving the water tasting wonderful.