Confused, Perplexed, Puzzled and Bewildered

I don't know if you actually watched that documentary I posted yesterday, but man, that thing scared the living bejezus out of me. I couldn't sleep. I had to turn on reruns of 30 Rock to fall asleep and then I dreamed about Coke building a plant next to my apartment building. I should have posted Friday the 13th instead. It would have been a lot more relaxing.

I woke up really grumpy from lack of sleep, but when you have a kid, the morning train never fails to pull into the station. So there I was, reading picture books at 6:30 am. Among the choices today was Sylvester and the Magic Pebble (William Steig). If you're not familiar with it, I highly recommend it for kids of ALL ages - including you big kids reading this - for the beautiful lesson it teaches about appreciating what you have. Of course, it was fitting for me since I couldn't help but take a moment to be thankful after watching yesterday's film. But the part I'm thinking about is when Sylvester (who's a donkey) sees a hungry lion while holding the magic pebble. Being scared and flustered by the sight of the beast, he says "I wish I were a rock." Steig writes about how the lion bounds over just as Sylvester turns into a rock and ends up walking away, "confused, perplexed, puzzled and bewildered."

Well folks, after seeing that piece last night, I'm the lion. It's like, I've been tackling this problem the only way I know how - by using less water in my home. I looked at the problem, and thought, "Hey, there's a water shortage in my area. I know! I'll just use less water!" And just as I bounded over to face the problem head on, the whole thing went from being a donkey to a rock. Just like that.

Now I'm confused, perplexed, puzzled and bewildered. I mean, I'm taking the Navy showers, I'm putting crusted dishes in my dishwasher, I'm giving my plants every unused drop of water in the house and have sworn off bottled water. But after last night's movie, well gosh, it seems like that's like putting a Hello Kitty band-aid on a gunshot wound. So, now there's a new law in my house: the only bottled drinks allowed in my house will be juice, milk and alcohol.

I didn't know if I should make such a bold statement when I first thought of it. After all, I don't like being a hypocrite and I love a little lemonade in my water. But then I realized something. Lemonade is made from LEMONS! Are you thinking what I first thought? Karen, you have to use the water anyway, so you might as well buy it and recycle the bottle. But what was explained in the documentary is that if you water the crops to grow lemons, that water gets soaked back down into the ground and replenishes the land. But if you take the water from one area, bottle it and then transport it to another location, the original site of the water simply dries up and becomes uninhabitable.

In Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, the confused lion simply walks away saying, "Maybe I'm going crazy." Which is kind of what I did last night. I didn't feel a renewed sense of energy, I just felt overwhelmed and turned to fiction for some sense. But, if that lion had just looked down at his feet, he would have seen the magic pebble sitting there and he would have figured it out. I may be perplexed, but I'm staying to figure this rock out.