Recycling bin

Today was pretty good. My friend came over to play beautiful piano music in preparation for her recital, and the house was even clean when she came (isn't company great? such a good motivator). Even getting Joseph from school was easy because I have finally reached picking-Joseph-up nirvana with all the right streets for avoiding traffic and snagging a reasonably close parking spot. Then I vacuumed the van. Then I finally made it to the library for the first time in four weeks.

At the library I was able to find lots of books I wanted and was excited that my hold on E. B. White's essays came in (I have been planning to read it for 6 months but only placed the hold a day or two ago). Jacob showed off for the librarian as she was checking out all of our books, even giggling a little for her. Then we went out to the car and I changed Matthew's dirty diaper. I walked over to the dumpster, threw it in, and then sighed as I realized what I had done. I had thrown it in recycling instead of trash.

Since I love the earth, I decided to get the diaper out. If I were an inch taller and had proportionately longer arms I would have gotten it just fine, but it was barely out of reach. So I climbed up, reached in, and grabbed it.

I didn't fall in or anything. (That would have made the story 50% better, huh.) It was a little gross but nothing worse than the diaper I had just handled. But what was interesting was what all was in the recycling bin. Besides newspapers there were tons of DVDs (or at least their cases) and books.

Curiosity almost got the best of me, and I was almost willing to reach in further to take a DVD or book home. But then I figured the DVDs were all pretty scratched, and besides, the first one I saw was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire which was arguably the worst Harry Potter movie made. And the first book I saw was Just Ella, which had a scene where she dug a gross hole out of a prison and the whole book was just sort of gross and I was done with gross. And maybe the physical copy of the book was gross, too. Surely something must have happened to it to just toss it in recycling instead of donating it or selling it elsewhere.

So I decided to leave the dumpster diving for another day and properly discard the diaper before heading home. And so that is the story of what you find in recycling bins at libraries.

In good news, it looks like DVD cases are recyclable some places. Probably here. Who knew?

Anyway, if you're looking for a free book, the library recycling bin might be a good place to look. Watch out for dirty diapers.