Green

I always wanted the chance to decorate with colour. I like colour. I rarely wear black - at least not in the daytime, and since I never go out at night these days, that means I never wear black. Grey does nothing for me. I'm scared of wearing patterns, so I just try to coordinate a couple of nice colours on top with a neutral/denim bottom. Which is really not the point I was trying to make but I'm distracted by a film just now. (How to Kill Your Neighbour's Dog. Kenneth Branagh being an English curmudgeonly type. Sort of engaging, actually.)

Anyway. I loved choosing the paint colours, but I admit I didn't fully think them through. Maybe that's impossible before you live with them. So now my bedroom walls are a lovely taupe/tan/light brown with a tinge of pink and I have no idea what sort of bedspread to get (seafoam, I think). And my living room walls are green and picking a sofa is suddenly annoying because it has to be a boring beige or else another dark brown leather (which would be practical, and I love our existing dark brown sofa, but doing it again seems lacking in imagination. I suppose I can make it pop with bright cushions or something. (I didn't just say "make it pop". You imagined that.) I want it to be restful and calming, but I'm afraid the whole house will just look like it was decorated by a child, with all this yellow and red and green. I suspect my next house, if there is one, will be all tasteful tones of toffee and taupe. And then I can have the green sofa.

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Every time we're home in Ireland I'm amazed by my parents' frugal living. Their global footprint is practically in the negative. They hardly ever seem to spend money, but where I really notice it is in the size of the bin. They have a tiny rubbish bin under the sink in the kitchen, and a space for recyclables and paper/card and a compost bin. The "everything-else bin" takes forever to fill up - until we visit and suddenly it's full of used nappies and whatever other non-recyclable detritus we shed as we go through our consumer-driven life, opening packages and going shopping and ripping off labels and breaking stuff. Part of it is having small kids, part of it is that when we're there we're on holidays and it's more than likely Christmas too, and part of it is the fact that it's not 1977 any more like it was when I was four.

Also, the recycling in Ireland is better than here. Our local people only take plastic containers numbers 1 and 2, when they're bottles with a neck narrower than their body. Which means all those yogurt cartons, margarine tubs, hummus and fresh pesto containers just go into the regular bin. And you're meant to sort out the paper and card and leave it out separately, tied up (we just dump it all into a big Pampers box, since there's always one of those on the go), even though I could swear I've seen them just chuck the lot into the same truck with the plastic/glass/cans stuff.

I'd like to consume less and produce less waste, but then what would happen to the economy? If I can just manage to get through the summer without spending almost $10 at Starbucks every day to keep the kids entertained, that will be a start. (At least if we go to IKEA it's only about $5. Assuming I don't buy anything but comestibles. Miss recognises the underground parking lot there now: she shouts "Kee-A, Kee-A" as we drive down, and I break into "IKEA, IKEA, I just saw a store called IKEA," with apologies to West Side Story, every time.)

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All a bit disjointed, but that's what happens when I update with the tv on.