If you love me, you’ll recycle

Because this blogs tends to revolve the ever present struggle to be an environmentally friendly person and family, I’ll share one of our recent challenges. Alton, my dear husband, tends to be very accommodating. He’s a cooperative kind of guy who doesn’t obviously go out of his way to make me crazy (I couldn’t imagine how good he’d be at it if he really did go out of his way). For example, he went out to wash our cars last weekend (which in itself is very nice). Now, I know that it’s probably better to take them to a carwash where the water is recycled, but he wanted to wash them here at the house so be it. I asked him to wash them on the grass (as opposed to the drive way where the soapy water would drain immediately to the storm drain and out to the retention pond) and he acquiesced. Pretty nice, huh? Which makes the next story all the more surprising.

We were at a friend’s house watching a UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) match. (No, I don’t believe it’s a brutal sport, I believe it’s the ultimate in testing physical and mental ability in a basic kind of way, and some of the fighters are pretty hot.) Well, Alton’s the only one there drinking Heineken, no biggie right? That is until his “friend” (I'll call him Scott) comes into the living and says, “Diane, I just looked in the trash can and Alton’s not recycling his bottles!”

Oh, you gotta love a tattle tale. Did I wish I’d remained ignorant, that my dear, dear husband chose to disregard my feelings so blatantly? And not only did he chose to do this, but he did so in a public forum, in front of the watchful eyes of our friends, with no thought of me. Oh the inhumanity. Alone in a crowd, I salted my whiskey with tears that night.

Weeks later and my heart’s on the mend. It’s helped that Alton has indeed redeemed himself. Example, what are we on, C: at a recent poker get together here at the house, he made sure everyone knew where the recycle bin was. What a good man.