Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes

Jack wakes up first, I do the after nap routine: diaper change to highchair, do the same with Fiona. The clock says 11:10 A.M. What?! How could I have had so much time and not be ready? I have twenty minutes before we need to leave. I’m bringing down the diaper bag and realize I need gas. I was supposed to leave early to have time to get gas. DAMN! Yesterday my car said I have five miles left. Is the gym more than five miles? There’s a gas station in the parking lot there. I get the quesadillas made, strawberries chopped, both babies dressed. Jack has a last minute poop. Change the poopy diaper, babies in car, forgot my sunglasses and phone, don’t need them, I’ll survive. I start driving, having cleared the odometer, the remaining gas goes down to two miles even though we’ve only done half a mile. I’m nearing the freeway entrance, I’m tempted to try to get to the gym so I can make meditation. But what if I run out of gas on the way? It’s like 100 degrees today. How irresponsible. I decide to get gas before I get on the freeway. I laugh, I was actually considering risking running out of gas on the freeway with my two babies in 100 degrees weather without my phone or sunglasses to make it to yoga on time to do the meditation part! I realize I’m crazy! We get to the gas station and I’m totally relaxed. Who cares if I’m late to yoga and go into class after the meditation? Which is exactly what I did and it was fine. I even had time to put my pants on right, Tricia in Play Center said, “I don’t know if you know this, but your pants are on inside out.” I just laughed! Of course they were.

It’s a quiet Saturday morning, the babies are taking their nap. There’s some clouds and fog in the sky this morning which is a welcome thing, I wish it would rain. Everything’s so dry, it scares me. Sometimes when I’m walking on the trail beside my house, the last chunk of open space in this neighborhood, I feel like its dying. It seems like more and more trees are dying and falling, I think of the movie The Road,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikeUBSrwZQA   I’m reminded of the scene when all the trees have died and all the forests are burning. But sometimes the trail feels like a sanctuary for owls, hawks, crows, coyotes, opossums, raccoons, and deer. How lucky we are to have a piece of nature to walk our dogs off leash, get some exercise, and peace.

As I was reading Jack and Fiona their animals on the farm books I was thinking about how much teaching to children is done using animals, farm animals, ocean animals, baby animals, mama animals. We use the animal sounds to help encourage language development. We tell stories about doggies howling at the moon and cows giving us milk. I have yet to see a story about how we get our meat. It would seem we are a very humane society by the way we talk about our furry friends to our children. I know they are totally too young to understand the concepts of factory farms and puppy mills. But I was struck by the thought, how can people grow up and not care about animal welfare when they’ve been raised to appreciate animals and learn from them? I was surprised when Alan came home the other day and said we shouldn’t eat any pork that’s not humanly raised. I’ve been trying to tell him that forever, but he listened to a program on the radio that talked about how awful pigs are treated and something about the meat being not good for consumption. It affected him, which is awesome!

I know it’s probably too late to save the world, but it’s not too late for my family to change. Just because I feel like there’s no hope for civilization, I want Jack and Fiona, and their generation to believe there is. I want them to have a dream of a better world, a humane world, a loving world. Things are already changing, legalizing Gay marriage has happened. Jack and Fiona will grow up in a place where people can love and marry the person that’s right for them. Maybe there is still hope for a better world.