Choices, Choices

Today, I had just stepped out of my bath when I got a message from our renters that there's another leak  in the roof.  I already had some errands planned, so when my husband got in from the morning chores I proposed that we pool our errands and go by the rental house while we were out.

Errand pooling = a reduction in gas used

But ... 

If we were going to go look at the roof leak, he wanted to take the ladder, which meant driving our pick-up truck instead of our hybrid.

Truck use = more diesel used

As we got on the road, he saw that we actually needed to stop and get more diesel in the truck.  We got to the station, and looked at the prices ....

$5.89 a gallon for 90% biodiesel.  Or $4.69 a gallon for 20% bio.

Or, we could just go with mineral diesel, and even that's not cheap.

How much do I want to pay (and can we actually afford it right now, because we may have to get a roof repair done on the rental house right before Christmas!) to know that I'm not contributing to the tar sands/gulf oil spill/middle eastern wars over oil?  And, s**t, biodiesel is still bad for air quality and climate change!

OK, back on the road again, knowing that we were 20% not culpable in all that bad stuff and 80% still culpable, but we are still errand pooling right now ...

To the downtown public library, where I had my canvas book bag and returned a few items that should have gone back before we went on vacation but didn't make it in (oh well, paying library fines supports a fine public institution, right?) and got some books I needed for work and home ... no moral compromises to speak of presented themselves there.

Then on to the mega fabric/craft store.  We got there and found a parking spot large enough for our stupid giant pick-up truck.  And then I realized that all my reusable shopping bags live in the back of my hybrid, because who would ever take the pick-up truck shopping?  That would be a silly thing to do.  And the little compact bags I keep in my purse are still in the purse I took on vacation with me.  

So this little forgetfulness = 5 unnecessary plastic bags being used

I'm sure my husband loved going through the fabric store with me.

I was hungry by the time we got to the check-out line, so I grabbed a bag of candy.

Junk food = all kinds of bad choices from so many points of view

We got stopped at a flashing red light intersection, and my husband being himself, he laid down his horn on the person two cars ahead of us who wasn't "getting some balls and just going for it".  That led the person one car ahead of us to honk back, and then flip us off through their back window.  And then, because we might not have seen that flip off, she rolled down her side window (in the rain) and stuck her arm up as high as it would go and flipped us off again.

And my dear husband honked at her again.

Argh!!!!!!!!!

This is why I always want to drive.  But I don't like to drive that damn truck.

We just should have driven two cars.  The truck would have only been used for a short drive, and the hybrid would have done the across town errands.  And I wouldn't have come home with 5 plastic bags or been flipped off today.