My First Weekend

To those of you who have expressed concern over my 2 drink minimum – RELAX! I was kidding. In fact, I failed miserably this weekend. I had no drinks whatsoever. The closest I came was that I had one regular Coke in the place of one Diet Coke. That will put me on the road to ruin!

I had dinner Saturday night at the other Tami’s house. As we were finishing, she pointed out to her daughter Hannah that the cup her applesauce came in can be recycled. That reminded of a decision I agonized over recently. I am no longer recycling. I don’t have curbside pick-up. I have to take the recyclables to separate dumpsters at the back of the complex. As the fall was growing colder, I began to think it would just be easier to stop doing it for the winter. I felt very guilty about it, but my plan was to start again in the spring. In fact, I felt so guilty about it that it took a month before I really went through with it. But once I got over all those pangs of guilt and threw newspapers directly into the regular dumpster, my feelings changed from guilt to liberation. No more separating, no more rinsing cans, no more special trips to the special dumpsters. Is recycling really worth it? I would save it up for 2 or 3 weeks, then load it into the car and drive to the bins. But I couldn’t park close to the bins because there are glass fragments all over the driveway. (I noticed this a couple years ago before it caused a problem for my tires.) So I parked 20 feet away, outside the gate, and made 3 or 4 trips from the car to the dumpsters. All this time, the car was running, spewing pollution into the atmosphere, and increasing my carbon footprint. (Is that how the environmentalists talk?) And what about the extra water I used to rinse the cans and bottles? So I have decided to stop recycling, and I don’t feel bad about it anymore. I dare you - Go ahead and throw a can right into the trash and see how you feel. You might be surprised!