God Works in Mysterious Cans

So, the other day as I drove my husband to work and the little girl to preschool, I was having a crisis of faith. Not a huge, “Does God exist?” type crisis, but just a “Tell me everything is going to be okay” type crisis. So, as the hubs was telling me I would find a job soon and everything will work out somehow, and I pulled to the corner to drop him off near the Metro, there on the corner was a giant shredded plastic bag with cans and bottles falling out of it. I mean, it was huge. Enormous. My jaw dropped to the floor, and I, caught in the flow of traffic, had to go around the block as my wonderful husband, dressed in his work clothes, picked up a giant bag of slightly sticky recyclable trash and stuffed it in the back of the car. I don’t know whose it was. Maybe someone left it there for someone else to recycle? Maybe it was discarded from the gas station also on that corner. Maybe it had fallen off a homeless person’s cart, too shredded to transport? I don’t know why, but it felt to me like a sign from heaven. Yes, it’s a bag of trash. But like the day I jogged and found plastic bottles along my path, I love those kinds of coincidences that could be just that, a coincidence, or could be something more.

Thank you, whoever you are, for the gigantically sticky, somewhat shredded pile of bottles and cans. Some were smashed too much for the machine to accept. Some were plastic, but not California Refund Value plastic, some were mangled, but another 93 cans and bottles were pulled from that bag so far. (I can take the smashed ones to the center that will recycle by weight.) Your trash has value to me, and it makes me happy.

Can total before running to the can-by-weight recycle center? 1590.

Getting By With a Little Help From My Friends (Written on May 24th)

I have been worrying—worrying and praying. I know that everything will be all right. We have been making ends meet, and we’re even able to have a bit of fun. We went to the beach on Saturday. My hubby was able to do a paid focus group, which made us a little money, and we headed over to a friend’s house for a game night. Our friend very kindly provided sodas and tacos, and we provided sugar cookies we’d made that morning. (I still had flour and almost enough sugar to make them palatable.) So, we aren’t hurting too much, but still, I am worrying about not having been able to find a job yet and also about HOW FAST the time is going. Remember how when you were a kid, the days stretched on forever? When you were in the midst of winter, summer was so far away? How did I go from being laid off on February 8 to still sitting here filling out applications in the end of May? And, I’m sorry, but wasn’t it May 1^st about a minute ago? And now it’s the 24^th? We’re almost in June. JUNE! How did this happen?

The positive side of me says, hey, that’s nearly 4 months of quality time with your baby boy that you never would have gotten if you were still working. I would have been dropping him off with a stranger. And I wouldn’t know when the first time he blew a kiss was. I wouldn’t know if he was still chasing after the dog in the back yard. Who knows if he would still be the mama’s boy he is now? I didn’t know his schedule before. I had no idea how many naps he took, when he ate, when he played. Now I know he needs to eat early in the morning. I know he will sleep almost three hours every day. I know he likes to chase our dog and scream and laugh. I know he loves to cuddle. I know he smells great with baby shampoo in his hair. I know he loves to cuddle with teddy bears and his sister’s “borrowed” bunny rabbit. I know a stern “NO” can make him break into tears while falling down and bumping his head into the table won’t.

However, even with all that, I still stress out about not having an income. I’d been working at the same job since I was 22. Ten years later, now married with two kids, a dog and a mortgage, that job is just gone. Poof. So, with the new five million can project, I am walking a fine line between environmentally conscious activist and bag lady with a little dash of money-making mom thrown in. The idea of providing a college education for my children is another thing that I don’t want to think about or worry about right now. I have enough on my plate, right? But if the next 14 years fly by as fast as the previous almost four have, then I need to start thinking about college for my kids. So, enter the five million can project. Getting enough money—at least $125,000 for a college education for each child in the year 2024—is an extremely daunting task. But if I can find something more manageable, say, picking up the “nickels” that people toss in the trash, I can break it down into little tasks, micro-movements. And while many people just throw that can away—I know I used to—not all of them. I recycle at home, but the cans at the office, the water bottles when you’re out, when it’s just a pain in the butt to hang onto that bottle all day in order to recycle it later. You just decide, “Eh, it’s just one” and throw it out.

But my outlook has changed now. I find so many little things, so little, that do affect us, our planet, that are easy, yet inconvenient to do. Now, when I see a soda can or bottle sitting in the trash, I have to pick it out. I look crazy, dirty, going through the trash. Who looks in the trash to pull stuff out, right? Now my outlook is, “Who throws that away?!” I actually start to get at least annoyed if not angry about these things, just because it shows people aren’t thinking or caring that much.

Another thing that made me angry today, I ran to the store for milk and had my canvas bag with me. So, while I filled up the canvas bag with foodstuffs- eggs, bread, juice, bananas, the milk didn’t fit. So, the clerk put the jugs of milk in plastic bags. What the heck is the point of that? Don’t milk jugs have handles already? And what’s going to hold the milk jug’s weight better, the jug handle, or the flimsy plastic handle that will break before I get to the car? I know for a bagger, it’s not an easy life. Everyone wants their bags done a different way. But just ask, dude. Just ask. I don’t want extra bags if they’re not necessary. Every little bag adds up. I just don’t want them adding up in my ocean. (Okay, okay, OUR ocean.)

So, another run to the recycling center tomorrow, but from my past weekend, (the 22^nd and 23^rd) we got $24.25. That’s 485 cans from my dear friends and all our soda-guzzling gamer pals, my friends who are getting ready to move and had too many recyclables cluttering their kitchen, my friend who was apparently collecting Coke bottles on his shelf at work for decoration. Thank you all for your donations. Once again, that was 485 cans from friends. This points out to me that when we work together (or when I ask for help) we can do so much more. I had reached only 1012. With a little help from my friends, I (we) have reached almost half again what I was at before. We’re now at 1497 cans. I get by with a little help with my friends, I guess. Thanks, friends.

Where Can You Find Extra Money?

EVERYWHERE!

Yeah, it's not much, right? But in the past week, I found my nickels at a focus group I went to-- we were provided juice in the morning and sodas with lunch. Sixteen commenters created a lot of waste, and a lot of that was recyclable.

My husband helped did some volunteer work a couple of weeks ago. The gig was an art auction for charity. And the bottles of Pellegrino, wine, and regular water bottles abounded! Another bag for the kids' college fund and another set of bottles and glass saved from the junkyard, sitting and rotting.

And, yesterday, the hubs asked if we could stop by the local car dealership. We've been a one-car family since last September, when our beloved Saturn died. And we drove past to look at a Mazda-5, when what do you know? They're giving away free hot dogs, burgers, sodas and water to everyone who stops by. And when I asked the d.j. if they were recycling any of this, he sheepishly responded, "No, I forgot my other bin at home." I don't know if he was being sarcastic or not, but I asked him if I could take the trash bag home. He paused and said, "Sure, if you really want to."

And later that evening, while I pulled cans and bottles out of the big plastic bag filled with the ends of hot dog buns, cheese-food wrappers, napkins and useless cardboard cups, (Seriously, they were already wrapped in tin foil, why did we need the cardboard too?) I reminded myself that it was all for a good cause. And 64 more cans and bottles saved from the landfill.
Total Cans found since last time:164, for a grand total of
1012 cans! WE have broken the 1,000 point! And a total of $50.60
Thanks for your trash!

More True Stories of Recycling

California is supposed to be one of the greenest places in the U.S. It probably is, I guess. My uncle calls us "the land of fruit and nuts". Yeah, we're earthy and crunchy and all that good stuff. But sometimes, we're also LAZY. I don't want to shake my finger at you, but I went to the L.A. Times Festival of Books last week. (http://events.latimes.com/festivalofbooks) And there were a LOT of people there. There were a lot of water bottles and soda bottles and cans goin' around, and lots of them made it back to the recycling bins, which I did not pilfer for bottles. But, I did look for my "nickels" in trash cans, on the ground, and I made another $3.65 off of people who threw those bottles away in a garbage can right next to a recycling bin!!!!

There are so many little things we can do that make a difference. There are things that we don't even THINK about that add up. We need to start thinking about it, people! We need to notice that when we throw away a can or bottle, it never disappears. Plastic. Never. Disappears.


Think about it this way, you know how your laundry seems to pile up? You wear one or two outfits a day, your spouse or boyfriend wears an outfit or two. Your kids wear an outfit or three, if they're as messy as mine. After two weeks, the mess, the pile is out of control, so we clean up that pile. We wash and reuse 'em. How many bottles of water, cans of soda, bottles of tea or juice do you drink a day? That pile NEVER gets cleaned up unless we recycle it. It gets moved around. You know that pile of laundry after two weeks? Imagine it, unhampered, after 52 weeks, times all the families on your block, in your school, in your neighborhood, in your state, in your country, IN THE WORLD.

That's a lot of laundry. Please don't just throw it away.

Anyway, people at the L.A. Times Festival of Books who couldn't reach over to the recycling bin instead of the trash can, thanks. $3.65 towards my kids' college fund. (73 more cans and water bottles) 848 cans found. $42.40 total.