Just Grace Goes Green (10 page)

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE RED PANDA

1
The red panda is super cute!

2
They are only a little bit bigger than a normal housecat.

3
They live in China, India, Laos, and Nepal, as well as a couple other places in Southeast Asia.

4
They sleep up in trees during the day and move around at night. This is called being nocturnal.

5
They eat mostly bamboo but sometimes they also eat berries, fruit, and roots.

6
Red pandas are endangered because their
homes are disappearing. People are cutting down their trees to use the wood and then building farms and towns where the trees used to be.

I'm starting to think that mostly when you think about saving the earth you are going to be sad. It is not a feel-good problem.

WHAT HAPPENED IN MIMI'S ROOM

As soon as we finished our project we went upstairs to Mimi's room. Mimi wanted to start working on the scene we were going to make out of clay. I'm not allowed to have clay in my room but Mimi's mom is really picky about her downstairs being clean so she likes Mimi to keep all that kind of stuff in her own room.

Gwen and I sat on the bed while Mimi looked for the clay. Her room is a huge mess, but she says she likes it that way. She always seems to find the exact thing she is looking for, even if you can't imagine how she could do it. While we were waiting I noticed that Gwen had picked up Willoughby. Mimi gave me a look that said, "See! She's got him!" and then she found the clay.

Mimi is much better at making characters than I am, so she made the red panda, the tree, and her own superhero. We couldn't make our clay superhero costumes as good as the ones we had drawn, but still, from far back they looked pretty good.

Gwen said it would be really cool if we could make a movie, like the kind people make with clay. Then our superheroes could swoop in and grab the red panda and fly off
with him. Of course none of us could do that sort of thing, but still it gave us the idea to make our superheroes be flying, and that was better than having them just walk up to the panda. It is not so easy though to make superheroes look like they are flying.

After a while we called Mimi's dad and he helped us make that part of it. He's really good at construction stuff.

MIMI'S DAD'S BIG IDEA

To go downstairs and eat ice cream sandwiches.

MIMI'S BIG IDEA

While we were eating our ice cream Mimi's dad asked Gwen what she wanted to do for her birthday. I had totally and completely forgotten to remember that we were probably going to have a party for her. Gwen said she didn't know, and then that's when Mimi had her big idea. Mimi said, "I know a great idea! Let's go to one of those places where you can make your own stuffed animals."

And I knew exactly why she had suddenly had this big idea. It was a great way for her to get Willoughby back. Gwen would fall in
love with a new fancy stuffed animal and then she wouldn't want Willoughby anymore. It was brilliant and perfect! But that was only until Gwen said, "Ewww. Those places are for babies. I already did that when I was five."

Mimi was not going to give up, though. "It could still be cool," said Mimi. "There's one at the mall that has all sorts of cool older stuff too."

"Now, Mimi," said Mimi's dad, "this is Gwen's special day, so she gets to decide. If you really want to go to that place at the mall we can do that on your birthday."

"No," said Mimi. "I don't want to go there on my birthday."

"Well, good, then it's settled. Maybe you girls should work it out and let me know what you decide," said Mimi's dad, and then he left the room shaking his head.

IT'S NOT EASY TO FIX EVERYTHING

My empathy feelings were suddenly working super hard, and that was because both Mimi and Gwen were sad. Mimi because her excellent plan had not worked out, and Gwen probably because she was sure her birthday was going to be terrible. I was wishing with all my energy that I could think of a great way to solve both Mimi's and Gwen's problems at the same time. But I could tell that that was probably not going to happen.

There are lots of fun things you can do on your birthday, but most of them are not so fun if you are not with your best friends. Just when I was thinking that I wouldn't be able to think of anything, Mimi's dad came back into the room. He said, "Girls, this is just a suggestion. We could get a group together and go out to one of those Japanese restaurants. You know, the kind where they do the fire show at your table. I'll let you talk about it. Let me know." And then he was gone again.

I was surprised, but suddenly Mimi was all excited about the idea. She said the chefs twirled knives and even made volcanoes out of onions. It sounded pretty great. It took Gwen a minute to think about it, but then she said, "Yeah, that sounds like fun." One problem solved; now just one to go.

DINNER

Mimi's mom is a great cook, so it's always nice to eat over at her house. They eat stuff that I'm surprised I even like. Weird stuff like asparagus and clams and olives—grown-up food. The only thing they never have is sushi, and that's too bad for Mimi because she likes it almost as much as I do. I try to get Mom to order it when Mimi is over at our house—that way she gets to have some.

After dinner we all went up to Mimi's room to work on our plastic bottle project. Gwen said she thought it was important to scare everyone first with facts about what happens if you just throw away your plastic. That way people would want to recycle more. This was not a hard thing to do. Everything about pollution and garbage is 100 percent scary and sad.

FACTS ABOUT PLASTIC

1
Recycling plastic saves two times more energy than burning plastic in an incinerator.

2
Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour, and most are just thrown away.

3
Recycling a single plastic bottle can conserve enough energy to light a light bulb for more than five hours.

4
The average American drinks about 167 bottles of water each year. That is about 50 billion plastic bottles a year for the whole country. Almost 38 billion of those are not recycled and are instead just thrown away.

5
It will take almost five hundred years for a plastic bottle to decompose in a landfill.
There were a lot more facts, but sometimes a little information is just perfect and maybe even better than too much information. It was all saying the same thing anyway, which was that if you didn't recycle your plastic bottle, you were hurting the earth, and that was really bad for everyone.

Finding out all this information was making us feel like we really had to help the earth.

SAVING THE EARTH

When I got home I still had to do my one conservation thing for my chart. I wanted it
to be something big and important so that I would feel better about the world before going to bed.

I walked all over the house but I couldn't find anything big and important to do. I tried to get Mom not to flush the toilet after she used it, but she said that was disgusting. In the end I just brushed my teeth without letting the water run.

Brushed teeth without letting water run in the tap.

It hardly seemed like any savings to the world at all. But that was how this whole recycling thing was working out anyway. It didn't really make much difference if only one person was doing all the recycling all by themselves. Everyone had to do it together or else it wouldn't work out.

I made Mom and Dad promise not to run the water while they brushed their teeth too. So in the end, that made me feel a little better.

GOOD NIGHT TO MIMI AND GWEN

I flashed my lights and looked out my window to say good night to Mimi and Gwen, but they were not there. I was kind of glad about that. I did not want to see Gwen holding Willoughby and Mimi being all sad with Bunny. I let Chip-Up sleep on my bed with me. I was sad that he was not a real dog. Something soft and warm and furry would have been perfect for tonight. I was going to
have to remember to start bugging Mom and Dad about a dog again.

LOOKING AROUND MY ROOM