plastics roundup day

Today is a really fun day! Every four or five months or so the Master Recyclers have a huge plastics roundup and you can take all of your plastics there to be recycled or even reused if it is something like a bucket or kids toy or we found a plastic kiddie pool to take home and also a giant rubber made container for legos- yeah! We left our kids basketball hoop this time and also a quite a bit- three bags- of miscellaneous plastic and also a bag of plastic bags and a bag of assorted numbered plastics. We leave out some plastics for our curbside recycling, but this is a limited amount. I also take some of our numbered plastics to the recycling center every month or so, as well as some plastic bags- although we use larger ones for trash bags. The Master Recyclers send all the plastic to a plant in Eugene that recycles all of it! I am particularly excited about the miscellaneous plastics they accept. All of those little plastic fasteners and lids and packaging without numbers can go there. And they take things like broken laundry baskets and big wheels and cd's and plant containers. All in all it is big fun for me and this was our third time there. The next one is not until October 6, 2007 and I am already assessing some of the bigger plastic items in my garage for the occasion!

We also found a couple of gigantic water shooters at the plastics roundup that someone must have brought in to recycle. We brought them home and Samuel had a lot of fun with one of them for a while and then its pump broke and now it doesn't function at all. We could not figure out how to load the water into the second one. Finally I looked online and found that this particular speed shooter needs an additional fill up device, so.... that one is not working either. But- the real fun was that we found out that Jack really loves the water guns too! At first he did not like the water because someone [accidentally?!] shot water at Jack and he came in and hid behind me. But when they went back out and were told to NOT shoot water at Jack, he began running at the water shooting out and it turned into a great game. He barked and jumped around and chomped at the water. Everyone was quite disappointed when the shooter broke for good!




After the roundup and the farmers market (hooray!) we had to pick Magoo up from the vet's office. She had some sort of accident or unknown medical event today and was not able to use her right front paw. She also lost most if not all of her vision. Magoo is complicated in that no one is sure how much she sees as it is and her head wobbles and she spins, but these symptoms were odd even for Magoo. Unfortunately the vet could not offer us much in the way of information about what happened to her. The good news is that she is doing better and I just found she had pushed Maxwell out of the way of his wet food and gobbled it up herself. She jumped up on the counter top and when she jumped down she only had a slight limp. I am hopeful.

The kids were a little wound up from all of that activity and decided to paint- a sure fire way to focus and change the mood. Here are some of the lovely paintings they created today.




Eva also made a 3-D flubber-apple extravaganza that she said was a sponge cake and which she also really wanted me to REALLY eat and pretend it was sponge cake all the while. I declined, respectfully, of course. She seemed ok with it and I noticed she also declined and did not eat her own creation!


And our lovely table with some magical irises just out in the garden. Behind them you see the new paintings and many bowls of flowers Eva brings in to me daily.


Samuel has been using the large cash register lately and is learning about how a calculator works. Like magic! He was so excited when I showed him how to use the "+" and "=" signs. We are also reading quite a few books on dinosaurs, as well as books on anteaters and one on armadillos. Today we read a book called Joe Cinders, a sort of Western male Cinderella. Samuel loved that one. I am flipping through many gardening books, as you may have well guessed. I have a couple more chamomile plants to add tomorrow, as well as yet another cucumber plant. The man at the market told me they aren't really supposed to be planted until the second half of May. He just keeps the plants there because people want to buy them. I thought this was strange but it did explain why none of the other cucumber plants have survived. I cross my fingers for this one!