When my husband and I returend from Las Vegas, we were physically and mentally exhausted. Vegas is a perpetual wonderland in the middle of a dessert. Every fantasy, every dream, every childlike excitement can be and usually is, fulfilled daily. Dreamily I traveled the world, gazed into the waters of Venice and peered off the tippy top of the highest New York City buildings. You can do it all. You can have it all. It was excessive, hedonistic, and exhausting. There’s only so much dream-fulfilling a body can take.

When we came home, I noticed that we had four bags of trash to set out on the curb on trash day. Four bags. We’d been gone for a week and yet we still had four bags of trash. How can two people make so much waste? So much of our trash was packaging, or throwing out items no longer needed, no longer useful. Even at home, excess was exhausting us.

Ryan and I sat down and had a very long, and important talk about things. We have talks all the time. Our political talks are epic, and we share the same views. We talk about the collapse of the Ameriacn economy, the smothering of the planet with waste, the Zombie-pocolypse. My husband is the thrifty one- he worries about these things because he worries about money. I’m the analyst and the plan maker- I worry about these things because I want to be prepared with a plan in case of eventual invasion. We boarder on paranoid, neurotic, psychotic. But we’re so academic about it you wouldn’t know any better. Two academics talking about how best to secure the house from zombies and it almost begins to sound plausable. We’re almost embarressed about how much time we spend talking about this.

But it has other uses too. We talk about how the rising cost of gas and electricity and food has impacted our spending elsewhere, and what are we going to do about it? Talking about these things has led us down the path that we are now on: a path to live greener, healthier, less excessive.

Whoa nelly! Less excessive? Is it possible to stop my excessive trips to Target, Pier One, Bed Bath and Beyond? Is it possible to rein in our collective need to well, collect things? As my husband would say, isn’t this kind of talk left best for crunchy granola hippies? Isn’t it more expensive to live greener, healtheir, less expensive? How can we look our friends in the eyes and say “You’re eating off organic plates. You’re sitting on organic bamboo chairs. We only eat fruits and vegetables that have fallen off a tree.” I think I saw a glimmer of humiliation spring into my husband’s eye when I suggested such radical changes. But then we got serious. Stopped joking around and poking fun at the stereo types. Like I said, Vegas exhausted us.

And from these talks, these discussions, this exhaustion, came the Green Apple Project. The name is my own devising. Something so important to us, so important to everyone, deserves a name I think. It deserves a significance so that when we really do look our friends in the eye and say “I grew those vegetables in my chemical free garden” I don’t feel silly about it. And they’ll know it’s totally cool too.

I believe that being aware of our impact on the environment scares people away from caring. Buying organic has always appeared more expensive. Going “Green” has always seemed out of our league. Only people who have the time, the money, the space can do it. Green living is just a fad. These are the things people say and I think I used to believe them too. And boy, I was so wrong.

The Green Apple Project is all about how wrong I was and how my husband and I are changing our excessive ways. Little ways, easy ways, ways that everyone can do themselves. The Green Apple Project is important to me. I can’t wait to share it with all of you.

I’m debating whether or not to make it a blog all its own or talk about it here and just mix everything together. I think the current fad of blogging is that every blog is dedicated to just one topic (hah! So much for that here) and I suppose that does make sense in a way. As I develop the project, I’ll post more info here. I’m so excited about it. I can’t wait to share the changes my hsuband and I are making to our lives.

(Note: Spellchecker is down in WordPress. As soon as it is back up and running I’ll fix these mistakes.)