Green Baby

Last night I checked my email and found a note from my mother-in-law. It was information about a contest that was going on at her workplace… a “picture contest”. She said I should submit a picture of us doing something energy efficient. The top twelve pictures would go into a calendar.

‘Cool. I’ll submit a picture of Collin,’ I thought. Every grandma would love to see her grandson in a work calendar, right?

But what can Collin do that is good for the environment? He’s only four months old.

Maybe I could take him to a windfarm and prop him up next to a windmill?

No good. There are no electricity gernating windmills out here.

Maybe I could lay him out on a giant solar panel?

Hmm… okay. But where will I find a giant solar panel? I could lay him out next to the solar lights that light the way up our driveway!

No, that’s dumb.

And so I decided to sleep on it… I laid awake in bed for a while, racking my brain on how to portray Collin as a good energy-conscious baby.

When I woke up this morning, I had the perfect solution. The reusable shopping bag!

I always kind of figured they were a ridiculous scam. It probably takes more energy to produce one reusable shopping bag than, like, 45 million plastic shopping bags. But they sell like hot-cakes. “Green” is in this year. Scam, they may be… but Collin would look so frigging cute in a reusable shopping bag! So, I loaded him up, bright and early, and headed out to do some grocery shopping. “While we’re there I’ll buy a couple of those bags.”

And so, off we went to hop on that reusable bag bandwagon.

About $85.00 later we returned home with some various incidentals and two reusable shopping bags. It’s amazing that $85.00 worth of stuff can fit into two bags. I threw the groceries on the counter and lugged Collin, his blankie, the new reusable grocery bag and a few staple groceries out into the lawn for the photo-shoot. He had fun chewing on the bag and I had fun arranging bananas, milk and carrots artistically around his head, taking photos from different angles.

Look what I bought!

 I left him in his camo clothes to appeal to the midwesterners out there in Iowa. Boy, he’s cute. I bet he’ll win! Maybe they can make him Mr. November? But which shot is better?

Green Baby

Satisfied with my photos I went inside to upload them and read the contest rules that were attached to Linda’s email. I waited patiently for the .pdf file to open up. It read:

ENERGY CONSERVATION COMMITTEE DRAWING CONTEST RULES
Draw a picture of yourself doing something energy efficient in the space provided below! Winners will recieve a $50.00 savings bond!

NAME:
AGE:

Wait a MINUTE…

DRAWING CONTEST?

AGE?

It was at this point that I realized the contest was a drawing contest for little kids. Not a photo contest.

I would feel kind of bad taking a $50.00 savings bond away from a ten year old.

But I bet I could win if I really wanted to.

Check out more interesting factoids about reusable shopping bags: http://www.reusablebags.com/facts.php