Now Accepting Nominations

I win the Worst Housekeeper award for today, but I will accept other nominations.

We recycle in this house because... um, I'm not sure, it's a jumble of images ranging from a crying Native American to an owl to a cheery pamphlet I got from my local government. I also have this idea that landfills are bad, even though Penn and Teller told me not to sweat it.

Side note: What kind of bizarre People's Republic have I moved to where the local government is in charge of picking up my trash? I'm as flaming liberal as they come without actually setting things on fire, but Big Brother deciding who will haul away my empty couscous boxes just seems weird.

Another side note: I live near a landfill now. The north half of the county-owned plot of land is a park. The south half is the dump. I have this urge to go to the park and dig straight down.

So anyway. We not only recycle, but we recycle PROPERLY. No yogurt cups sully our plastics. No unwashed soup cans impart their foul beefiness to my blue bin. No soda backwash ever trickles onto our bundled cardboard. We read the numbers, we rinse, we empty.

And that means a can will sit in my white sink and rust for two weeks, leaving a permanent ring on the space age material, because by george, we will not put it in the bin without rinsing... but we're way too lazy to haul it all the way outside.