Years ago when the beach urchins were small and I schlepped them over to the Westgate Kroger to do the grocery shopping, there was a guy working as a bagger over there who seemed to have Tourette’s Syndrome or something. One day, in addition to his typical tics, he must’ve asked me 20 times “Paper or plastic?”. Over and over and over again. I looked at Elsie, the Uber Cashier who was somehow related to The Burkes (who lived next door to us then). I whispered, “Is he stuck?” She just rolled her eyes.

No that wasn’t “nice” of me but I don’t think the beach urchins were old enough to “get my drift” (but ya nevah know) and I knew Elsie would. Tourette’s or not, I think this man had multiple issues going on and I am glad Kroger was willing to employ a harmless if rather difficult person. Since the Plum Market moved in I don’t shop at Kroger much any more. I kind of think that both Elsie and the paperorplastic guy have died…

I do my best to take my own bags to the grocery store. Backpack, Chico bags, and others. I have been doing that for years. I hate when I get to a big grocery store and don’t have my own bags and the cashier bags umpteen gazillion items two to a plastic bag. I can use a certain number of plastic grocery bags to line small wastebaskets but I would rather not take plastic grocery bags home at all… Especially not to the moomincabin…

…but I do not have a dog… NPR posted an interesting article about the issues surrounding plastic grocery bags. The gist (one of the gists) is that if plastic bags are banned at the checkout, people who typically re-use those bags buy small plastic *garbage bags* (in boxes) to pick up Rover’s poop and line their smaller wastebaskets. And then there’s the whole thing about if we use paper grocery bags, we are cutting down trees to make them. But then what do we do about the giant bag fields in Kenya or the garbage patches in our oceans?

I do not have an answer. The pic is my own mound of outerwear for the various temperatures we endure around here in the winter. None of it will be garbage for a loooong time. It is on an ugly green armchair in our front living room and consists of three jackets, a LOVERLY pair of Smartwool leggings, a long wool skirt, I dunno how many scarves, three balaclavas, a bomber hat, my cute red hat, my purple skiband, and glubs. When I am suiting up in the dark in the winter, I have to use my iPhone flashlight to find my purple skiband because everything looks black, even with the LED twinkle lights that keep The Landfill at a twilight zone level of light throughout our long winter nights. Yes of course I could turn on a *regular light* but that would take all the fun out of it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 9th, 2019 at 6:06 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.