As someone who’s gone to the dermatologist way more times than the doctor or the dentist combined, I was in the right place at the right time to overhear a poignant coming-of-age conversation. As I walked past the soap aisle in the grocery store, I saw two middle school girls pondering the acne face washes.

“You have to use it every day?” one of the girls wondered in dismay.
“Yeah, it says ‘Daily Face Wash.’ You use it every day,” her friend explained.
“Every day?” the first girl repeated, her voice filled with the horrible injustice of it all.

Ahh. If only it were that simple! Welcome to the world of acne, sweeties. May yours clear up before you turn 26. I also sincerely hope that you have luck with Clearasil and Noxzema instead of prescription drugs requiring multiple blood tests.

The great thing about living in a state where pop cans have a 10 cent deposit is that people actually bother to recycle them. When I was in college, it boggled my brain to see a bunch of cans in my suitemate’s trash, until I remembered that she was from Connecticut and thus unenlightened. Their cans have a 5 cent deposit, but ours are worth TEN! CENTS! EACH! It’s like landing on a double word score!

I don’t think 5 cents is a big enough incentive. Most of the out-of-staters I’ve met pitch their cans. If you want to appeal to people’s greed and actually get them to recycle the damn things, you’ve got to up the ante. 5 cents is a pittance. They scoff at your Jefferson! But a Roosevelt! Now that’s a whole different story.

So my question is, do you people in funny states actually bother to return, or at least recycle your cans? Am I falsely accusing you of environmental treason? Stand up for yourselves, you nickel-scorning scallywags! People like you are a dime a dozen! (You wish!) Come on, let me have it.

Anyway, cans are the topic du jour because I met the Can Man today, and I sure as hell hope I never run into him again. I dragged my garbage bag of cans to the grocery store this afternoon (several month’s worth, totalling $16.80, I’ll have you know), and was innocently and robotically feeding them into the can return machine. The machine next to me was beeping its “I’M FULL PLEASE EMPTY ME” beep, but I assumed the other machine was in working order.

There I was, feeding my cans in, when Can Man shows up with a bag. He seems disgruntled about Full Machine, and goes off in search of someone to remedy the situation. An employee shows up, types in a magical code, and the beeping stops. Can Man doesn’t insert any cans, for some reason, but just stares at the machine for awhile. He grumbles something about this being “ridiculous,” and slaps the machine.

I glance down at my bag, and hope that I can finish up before this guy totally flips out. It would be helpful to add that I was in a small, enclosed room at the back of the grocery store, with no witnesses or anyone to hear my scream if he started pelting me with empty Snapple cans.

I hurry and finish up, making my hasty escape and cursing the fact that I’m too freaked out by Can Man to squirt Purell on my hands. Oh the germs, the germs! In my peripheral vision, I see Can Man feed a few cans into my machine. Then it starts beeping! TOO FULL! TOO FULL! “Jesus fucking Christ!” he shouts, and I have to swallow a nervous giggle as I speedwalk out of there.

Come to think of it, maybe it’s better that most states don’t do the 10 cent deposit. People get just a little too riled up about their refunds.

ATTENTION, INTERNET:
cupCAKE: kiki
cupCAKE: i think i finally have boys figured out
cupCAKE: in general
cupCAKE: so life should be much easier from now on

I need $19.95 plus S/H and I need it now. The legendary Roll’nGrow, “the miracle garden in a box,” is back! I remember being enchanted with that infomercial when I was little, so you can imagine my glee when it came on during the commercials. It’s basically a roll of fiber impregnated with thousands of seeds. You just roll it on a patch of dirt and watch nature’s bounty spring forth. The voiceover is fantastic:

“You hoe and you rake, you shovel and you ache! And for what? Flowers that might not bloom? … Just roll out our floral carpet, water, and let nature do the rest! Thousands of flowers wherever you want them!”

The commercial is mesmerizing. My fascination completely disgruntles my mom, the consummate gardener. As I enthused about the POSSIBILITIES, she just rolled her eyes. But I will not be deterred. One day I’ll order it and stealthily unroll it in the neighbors’ yards under the cover of night. Imagine their SURPRISE when THOUSANDS of flowers bloom right before their very eyes. Roll’nGrow, you amaze me.

In other news, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. We bought some 2-month old fancy chickens to spice up our flock of Rhode Island Reds. Hopefully they’ll play nice and not peck each other to death when we move them into the coop. We got a White Sultan hen (”pullet” is the fancy word for immature hen, I think), an Ameraucana pullet (blue/green eggs, here we come!), a Black Sex Link pullet (who likes to peck at me when I feed it, the meanie), and a cutie little Napoleon Complex-suffering Cochin rooster (”cockerel”, I think).

The White Sultan is my favorite because it makes R2D2 sound effects and has a real passion for eating. The day after we bought her, we found her sleeping in the food bowl. White Sultans basically have pom-poms for heads, and you have to trim the feathers once in awhile or they won’t be able to see! We pledged to keep our coop rooster-free, but my mom couldn’t resist the little Cochin. He has cute feather-covered feet, and is about half the size of the girls in his harem.

The Black Sex Link is a sneaky one, and tends to peck at my fingers whenever I try to open the cage or, god forbid, try to feed them. It enjoys perching atop the watering jar and defecating into the public water supply. We’ve only been able to find one Ameraucana so far, but the fact that we’ll have a blue egg every dozen thrills me more than is probably necessary.

EIEIO.

As we get ready for Big Move 2006, we’ve been coming across all sorts of things that we don’t really want to move with us. We’ve got monitors in the basement from computers that have long since self-destructed, and plastic baggies of AA batteries that have bled their toxic sludge. The temptation is to hurl it all to the curb and let people 5 generations from now deal with the aftermath, but my inner hippie, the one who was born 2 decades too late for the ’60s, has qualms with giving Mommy Earth a booboo.

The annoying thing is that it’s so HARD to do the environmentally conscious thing. Nobody locally will take some of this stuff, and the stuff they will take, they charge you for. Which I suppose is fair, since recycling is expensive and there’s probably no real demand for post-recycled goodies, but I’m also stingy.

The good news is, apparently Goodwill will recycle monitors and old computers, so we’ve got that one covered. The leaky AA batteries are another can of worms, though. Radio Shack and office supply stores will take cell phone batteries and Ni-Cd batteries, but they draw the line at non-rechargeables, which people tend to use more of anyway. If we really want people to rah rah sis boom bah save the Earth, it should probably be easier and more convenient.

There’s an annual hazardous waste collection in April, but we missed that. I guess I’ll be carting this stuff to the new house, but I’d feel a lot better about getting rid of it now. Have you found anywhere to recycle single-use AAs?

(By the way, earth911 is handy for finding local places to recycle things like fancy batteries and inkjet cartridges.)

I’ve also got some old cell phones and eyeglasses that I want to donate, but I’ll have to do some legwork on that. I know Verizon will take old phones, but I want them to go to one of those charities that provide battered women with cell phones to call 911. I think Verizon participates in that, but they also give them out as loaners to people, and if I have a choice in the matter, I’d rather have them go to people with a real need. I think I heard that the Lions Club will take glasses, if you have any you’d like to donate.

Why does it have to be so hard* to do the right thing? Whine whine, moan moan.

* inconvenient