Earth hour day

I have to say, even though I've got darned little to show for it, I liked today. That same Asian wonder child who has worn me ragged all week with her avid attention to everything except what she's supposed to be attending requested, insisted and then finally demanded that she and I go out for a meandering psychogeographic stroll around the neighbourhood. We ended up at a small park about 20 minutes walk from here, where we waited out a couple of kids who were intent on pushing their dog down a little slide (my little Chinese flower doesn't like dogs). After our turn on the swings, we headed towards home, but stumbled across an interesting little family. Dad was practising his fire juggling act in preparation for Earth hour tonight, while his son was up a chestnut tree peeking down at us and his daughter was trying to throw a home made frisbee at her brother. We had no real choice but to camp out on their sidewalk for an hour, do some sidewalk art and flick around some of the rapidly disappearing hunks of dirty old spring snow. When mom came home (wonderfully friendly face beneath a flaming rainbow full of hair) she seemed slightly confused by us, not having a clue who we were, but then quickly decided that she liked us and so suggested that we buy a house a few doors away that had gone up for sale. Instead, we chose to pack up and walk home.

Trip to the grocery store with one of my older kids, who did a marvellous solo PETA act at the meat counter by describing her disgust for raw meat, and pointing out that ground beef looks like "some kind of disgusting red spaghetti." I suggested that we could perhaps opt for veggie burgers for dinner rather than the Dad's Famous Home-Made Cheeseburgers that we'd all primed our taste buds for, and with a classic and charming dissociation she said "oh, I'm fine once it has been cooked, but I don't like to see it like this." I could have taken a moment to argue the ethics and philosophy of this, but she's 12, don't you know. Sometimes you just have to leave stuff like this alone. Especially on a day when you've been lucky enough to befriend a fire juggler.

At 8 pm, the lights went out. There was an immediate and happy change of atmosphere in the house. Even though it wasn't really dark outside, we were all suddenly "camped out". The little ones felt they couldn't even move off of the couch without a flashlight in hand. Mom and the older kids, strangely, decided that the only thing for it was a quick dip in our guilty pleasure -- the backyard hot tub. There was something oddly festive about the darkened street, and a bit of jollity about the discovery that one of our neighbours, apparently pretending to douse the lights, had simply pulled down some opaque blinds we hadn't known they had -- you could see the light creeping around the edges.

At 9 pm, slightly past, the lights slowly crept back on. Computers began to whir again. Snacks were served. It occurred to me that we could do this a lot more often. It also occurred to me that in my kids lifetime, and very possibly my own, there was a good chance that we'd be doing this not out of a symbolic nod to the need to conserve, but because there'd be no choice. It won't be quite as much fun then.