Confessions of a Grandma

The other night Mike and I were cleaning up after supper. I had a bag of compostable garbage--the kind that has to go to the transfer station because it is heat treated to turn it into compost…NOT the kind that goes into my garden compost bin. Any way, as I was filling a dish pan, Mike holds up the now empty bag and asks if I wanted to rinse it out or just throw it into the household trash. “OMG, no! You tossed that stuff into my garden compost??” I was horrified, horrified. Mike looked at me with an “I was trying to be helpful here” look and said, “I hope you are not going to mention this your blog. I don’t want my compost incompetence exposed to the world.” Silly man. First of all, I’m pretty sure the entire world does not read my blog. Second of all, it was mildly distressing, yes, but I pulled myself together. I’m not crazy. I can get past these little upsets. And third of all, why would I even write about what he did with the garbage and how I can’t believe that he has lived with ...

A recent post on A Slower Pace got me thinking about recycling once again. Mike calls it my hobby. My children grew up with recycle bins under the cellar stairs. There was one for newspaper, one for cans, and one for glass (which then had to be further separated into clear, brown, green), and one for plastic like gallon milk jugs and shampoo bottles. The first time my daughter came home from her college dorm, she said, "Mom, there are people in the world who don't recycle!" She'd been amazed to see one of her roommates toss an empty shampoo bottle into the trash. You try to protect your children from the cruel realities of life, but eventually they have to leave the sheltering nest. One of the things that really put me over the edge at work was colleagues who tossed paper in the wastebasket when we had a paper recycle bin in every room. I mean I can feel my blood pressure spike just recalling that. Just pure laziness in my book. My family thinks I am a bit of a trash ...