Heath Ledger, Toxins, and Hyperlinks

Heath Ledger kicked the proverbial bucket today. This makes me sad because it's not very often you hear about the kids from Perth hitting it big and I've had a crush on him ever since he intimidated the pants off the nerdy kids in 10 Things I Hate About You. You can read all about it here. He died from a pill overdose - over the counter pills. This leads me (or my new BFF Dr. House) to believe that he had some kind of pre-existing heart condition that he wasn't aware of and was just trying to relax for his massage. Took one too many and boom: cardiac arrest. He was in the middle of filming the new Terry Gilliam movie. That's enough to put anyone on the 'luudes.

Totally unrelated: I just did that thing where you turn on the wrong burner and then walk away. And then I'm sitting in the office blogging and chatting and I think "why does it smell like something's on fire?" And I go to investigate to find that I had turned on the wrong burner and what was sitting on that burner was the cast iron skillet with just enough oil in it to smoke like the dickens. So I've opened all my windows and I did a little air-out dance in the hopes that the smoke will leave before the smoke alarm goes off and the whole building evacuates. It's a LOT of freaking smoke. I'm completely brain-missing.

So my daily reads are Treehugger and Ecorazzi as well as the Daily Intelligencer and whatever else strikes my fancy. And I've run across a lot of evidence that the toxins in our everyday lives leach in the uterus/placenta/umbilical cord of babies. Not Cool. Now, I've always been a bit of a hippie but when we brought home our kitties, with their depressed immune systems, and the vet reminded me that I should be careful about keeping the floors, etc, clean because residue on the floor gets on their paws and then they lick their paws...you see where this is going. So out went the toxic cleaners and in came vinegar/citrus/sand cleaners and scrubs and my home has been clean and relatively toxin free ever since.

And now that the green light has been given for the attempts to reproduce - ok - almost been given - I'm all freaked out about lead and asbestos and...VOCs and all of the other shit that I encounter on a daily basis. I have a chain smoking boss and a couple of clients with whom he sees to race through cigarettes. At least once a week I walk onto a job site and the subs are wearing face masks and I'm high within a minute of being there. And then there's the stuff that quietly, softly, in it's very own odor-free way off-gasses carcinogens as long as it exists. PVC, anyone? I've picked up some books and done some research and let's just say that while I am still focused on the Big 3 R's (reduce, reuse, recycle) and all of that...Greening my potential baby has jumped to the top of the list. Does this mean I'm giving up potentially mercury laden sushi and alcohol-containing drinks? Hells No. It just means that my chain smoking boss is going to have to move downwind whenever he needs to smoke.


Ok, so now the smoke is clearing out and Steve has started dinner. He said something about from-scratch mac and cheese with pancetta and tomatoes...my stomach is growling already!


PS - have you noticed my use of hyperlinks? Steve showed me how to do it a while ago, but I just remembered. I feel like a blogging rock star :-D