I know I’m late getting this post up today. But I’ve been working my little butt off this weekend on a project that I’m hoping to announce tomorrow.

The lesson of this week’s tally is that I must always remember to specify what kind of packaging I want when people send me things. Those free kids books I wrote about last week… several of them came in plastic envelopes. Here’s the tally.

Items purchased before the plastic project began:

• 1 3.5oz container of Fudge hair putty & lid. No idea what kind of plastic it is. There’s no recycling symbol. So, yes, I’ve been using hair putty in a plastic container. But it’s stuff I already had. And I have one more that I bought early last year that I’m using up right now. I haven’t bought hairspray since I used up my last container, and right now my hair is at that awkward in-between stage where it needs something to give it a little hold or I look like an insane person (which some might argue that I am.) Why am I letting it grow out? Ask Terrible Person. :-)

Now for the new items:

• 1 plastic FedEx envelope & piece of bubble wrap. These are kind of ironic. Anna ^[1] used these materials to ship my North Pacific Gyre sample ^[2]. She apologized profusely. She’d rushed them to FedEx to ship to me in time for my presentation and had no time to find any other kind of material. So now I’ve got this plastic. But I forgive her. Anna rocks. (Somehow I forgot to include them in an earlier tally.)
• 2 plastic wrappers from two 24-can cases of Instinct cat food. April is the cruelest, and busiest, month for an accountant who is involved in just way too many things. My goal for May: start making food for those cats and stop buying all these @%$&*#$% cans!
• 2 Tyvek envelopes used to ship Michael Recycle ^[3]. Yes, Tyvek is recyclable ^[4] by sending back to Dupont. But I should have asked the P/R person to use paper or cardboard.
• 2 little price tag holder thingies from some Goodwill purchases on Saturday. It’s so weird. I haven’t shopped for clothes in over a year. Why did I feel the need to do it during Crunchy Chicken’s Buy Nothing Challenge ^[5] month? Um… because she said it was okay to buy used stuff and I just had to push it? Because my current clothes are so old and raggedy that I can’t even donate them ^[6] in good conscience? Because the weather shot up to 85 degrees on Saturday and the heat went to my head?

Okay, that’s it. Stay tuned for an announcement tomorrow. And also, later this week, remind me to tell you what I learned from my cats this weekend.