It isn't Easy (or Cheap) Being Green

OK Here is the deal: this year two of my cars were hit by, well , uhmmm, my house. Not to mention my HOUSE needed to be replaced.

What a better opportunity to do something good for the environment! How often does a person have a real excuse to replace two cars and a house?

SO I was thinking, Well Maybe this is the time to go green, like i have wanted to do for a long time. Instead of getting a regular new car we could get a hybrid! We do need the van for the kid and Bill's work and we got an obscene discount on it, so we are going to get the minivan. BUT for the other one, why not get a Prius?

Then I am also a fan of this show "Living with Ed." It is a show all about the daily life of Ed Begley Jr, the actor who also lives a totally green life and his house is full of things that save the earth. He recycles rain water, he has a reverse running meter, he has tons of solar panels on his house recycled everything, electric cars. he has a wind turbine thingy on his roof.... etc HOW AWESOME I am thinking that you know.... When you have the chance to completely do over these three huge assets, maybe we could do some of this stuff right? WHY NOT get a hybrid car? WHY NOT add a bunch of green features to our new house? I would LOVE THIS: Ed Begley Jr His house is so efficient at making its own electricity or whatever that he makes more than his house can use and he actually sells it to the city and it goes back onto the power grid.
So awesome.

SO WHY CAN'T we do this?????
Uhmmm its VERY EXPENSIVE.

A Prius, (60 mpg) equally equipped as my Matrix (33 mpg) that was about $14K would have been like $28K About twice as much. Why not get a used one? I LOOKED there ARE NO used Prius cars at least not on Portland. I found ONE that was four years old with 50K miles on it, and it was $20K . We looked at other hybrids as well, like the Ford Escape Hybrid and FOrgettabout it. Same deal.

AND the way construction costs are we will be lucky to even rebuild the house we had, never mind adding things like a solar water heater etc.

We are looking into it, but it makes no sense to me that those who actually WANT to do all of this AL Gore stuff cannot do it , really, because all of this stuff and technology is so expensive. You have to be Ed Begley to this stuff and that is SAD. So at times I get frustrated and yes I TOO would like to save the earth on a grand scale but we cannot really afford to.

Bummer.