Day 324: Bottled Water

Tonight Eric and I wanted to watch a movie that neither of us were terribly interested in as background noise to our homework and regular playing on the computer.  We have a ton of documentaries lined up on Netflix, and decided to watch "Tapped" - a documentary about the bottled water industry.  I've got far too much to say about the movie, so instead of typing it all out, I'll post a review and hope you will all watch the movie as soon as you get a chance!

The rest of the night we took care of business at home - laundry and graduation announcements.

"Tapped, a new documentary about the bottled water industry from director Stephanie Soechtig and the producers of Who Killed the Electric Car?, is a pretty damning look at how consumers have been tricked into spending too much money on water packaged in plastic and quite often not as clean as what's available from the faucet.

I knew bottled water sucks, but I didn't know it sucks this much. Not only is it a clear waste of resources (only 20 percent of plastic water bottles used in the United States are recycled, and far too many of the rest probably end up in the Pacific Garbage Patch), it's an incredible waste of money for consumers, who pay more than the price of gasoline for water that's marketed as "pure," but in reality is largely unregulated, full of harmful toxins like BPA, and far less safe for drinking than free tap water. (In fact, 40 percent of the time, bottled water is nothing but municipal tap water, freed from the government oversight that keeps it safe.)

Tapped, which began a one-week run at the IFC Center in New York on Friday, traces the evolution of bottled water from its hoity-toity Perrier days to its present ubiquity, and succeeds at making the industry reps look like total jerks. A few too many mid-interview cutaways to Soechtig looking concerned came off as a little journalistically self-important, but Tapped does a solid job of covering every aspect of this damaging industry and inspiring more outrage than despair. It features interviews with the likes of Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin and Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), not to mention some footage of Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) tearing into an FDA rep at a government hearing.

I will never look at bottled water with anything less than loathing from now on.

Watch the trailer:" ~ Claire Thompson, grist.org

Our collection of reuseable bottles and travel cups - we are definitely through with supporting the bottled water industry.

My second round of line dried clothes!

 Eric finishing up his graduation announcements.

It was a really hot day and we don't have our air conditioner turned on yet, so I cooled Mystic down with an ice pack.

As soon as Eric stepped on the chair to adjust the fan settings, Mystic was immediately laying on his feet.

Ta-Da!

Day 17: Lots of Babies!

 Today was filled with babies of one sort and another.

First I have to poke fun at Eric for being a baby about not playing on the Playstation 3 for 5 days!  It could have killed him!

I was a baby about getting out of bed - the alarm was set for 9:30 and I finally slithered out at 10: 33 for a dirt spray and finally rolled out to work.

Jack, the six year old with autism that I nanny for, was great all day long.  However, he melted down when I took him home in the afternoon and his dad ran out to the store to get Jack's baby brother's medicine.  When he sees his dad, that is my cue to leave.  So it is very upsetting for him to see his dad and then have his dad leave and me stay.

Bryson, Jack's baby brother has an ear infection and will scream if he's not in your arms all of the time.  While dad was at the store, I was holding him, but...this did not calm the screaming.  Ear piercing, hope the neighbors don't call the cops, wailing.

My brother, Kris, got hit by a stray firework [not a firecracker, but an up-in-the-sky ooooooo ahhhhhh firework] and I helped him change the dressing for it this afternoon.  He made the massive mistake of wrapping his second and third degree burns with straight gauze, meaning the gauze was now embedded in the skin like glue.  I spent more than 30 minutes slowly soaking the gauze in water and peeling it back bit by bit.  His skin looked like zebra print from the way the firework had burned him.  On the plus side, I got to help my brother while hurting him immensely!  And now he has the ever so important non-stick gauze layer in between the skin and the gauze wrap.

 Yikes!

Finally, my favorite [local] baby, Andrew.  Over the weekend his carseat fell off of his stroller while on an escalator and he tumbled, while secured in his seat, before Kris caught him.  He is such a trooper!  He got scrapes and cuts on his forehead and right foot, but everything is healing quickly.  I watched him most of the day and he was a big baby too!  Just general fussiness, going through the "don't put me down" stage.  But at the same time, he loves being down because he, at six months old, has learned to full on crawl!

Now that we're both home from work - Eric is comfortably playing and I am laying in bed watching "Julie & Julia" while blogging.  Interestingly, in the middle/end of the movie Julie and her husband split up because her blog took priority, eek!  I'd better go make a sweet dessert for Eric to make up for blogging away!