679 Empties

During the summer months, we always move our house plants out onto the screened back porch, where despite the paucity of direct sunlight, they seem to thrive. Bringing them back inside this fall was more challenging a task than in past years. These wretched cats seem to be on a mission of total destruction, and plants are a very attractive nuisance. The Christmas cactus had been broken sheer in half before I finally found a relatively safe spot on top of the curio cabinet.

In the midst of all the shuffling of that one particular plant, I decided I should buckle down and re-pot it. The pot in which the roots are growing is tiny, and that pot is currently resting inside a much larger receptacle. I knew we had potting soil in the garage, so it seemed a simple and timely task, a way to compensate for the destructive forces that had so recently torn the little plant in two.

However, when I went in the garage to find the potting soil, I quickly threw up my hands in defeat and retreated back into the house, tail between my legs. There would be no tender ministrations, for the potting soil was buried in a virtual avalanche of soda containers.

As his name might imply, SodaBoy drinks a lot of soda. [There is really no way to say that without it being a huge understatement.] And since my job involves longer hours than his, he does the majority of our grocery shopping. Problem is, he doesn't like returning the empties. We have curbside recycling, and could simply place the cans and bottles in the blue bin, and leave it to the city to attend to the details. But we live in a deposit state, where every container returned to store nets a nickle, and I am far too cheap to let that money slip away.

So I decided this afternoon to take advantage of the warm weather, and load up the car for a bottle run. Load it up I did: hatch, back seat, shotgun. When I unloaded the sticky bags into shopping carts in the supermarket parking lot, it took two full size carts, piled high, with even the bottom racks stuffed. After an hour of feeding cans into the machines and lining bottles up on the counter, I walked away with receipts worth $33.95 to put towards the grocery bill.

And the best news? I made a good-sized dent in the container drift in the garage, unearthing the potting mix. There might even be room for a car in there now.