Fast, Cheap and Easy Tip #1

Or: How I manage to live on a state worker's salary in this half a horse town.

Some while ago I read someplace... I read, you know... I don't spend EVERY second trapping the random thoughts that flit through my brain... something written by some man who appeared, up until that moment, attractive to me in some way I can't recall now, when he said... and I can't say why he said this but it occurred to him, apparently, and now I am recalling it for you... something to the effect that there was nothing less attractive to him than a really beautiful woman reaching down to pick up dog poop. He couldn't help it, he said, it just really disgusted him.

Ok?

So there I was at 7AM this morning staring into the grass that lines the sidewalk near my house with a dog leash in one hand and a plastic bag of poop in the other and, as I was staring... I was looking for the one piece of poop I had missed having disappeared in that disappearing-in-the-grass way dog poop has... and I remembered this thing this guy had said all these months ago. And it occurred to ME, all these many months later that there is very little I myself find less attractive than a big pile of dog poop that someone... I won't say a MAN because, god knows, there are idiot women walking around who think it is beneath them to pick up their own dog's poop, too... felt too attractive to pick up.

How the hell does that guy think poop is removed from the streets, yards, parks and every other place a dog who is lucky enough to be owned by someone who attempts to care for it walks, hm?

I know very few people who don't have an MTv reality show named after them who hire other, presumably less attractive, people to pick up dog poop FOR them. You pick up your own dog's poop, for crying out loud. It's what you do if you were raised right or ever had an intelligent thought in your head.

Jeeze-US.

Which brings me to:

The Cheap Tip O' the Day If You Haven't Already Thought of It Yourself

When you are at the mainstream supermarket of your choice, stop on your way out and pick up a bag of plastic bags from the recycling can they have strategically located next to the entrance for well-meaning people who want to feel better about the detritus they generate by shoving a bag of plastic bags in there where they can rest for a moment before they are hauled off to the incinerator.

The bags, not the people.

Never mind the existential argument of paper versus plastic for a moment. We can get back to that any time.

What? In THIS town that incinerator is where every bit of everything that goes into the garbage goes... they aren't even pretending to landfill this stuff and we all know it... it gets burned up into cinders and the heat does not generate electricity to make the people's electric bills in this town more affordable or even to reduce the cost of doing business by businesses or is otherwise made use of... it gets burned up and there goes THAT revenue stream... it's all true. You could look it up... but never mind that, either, this is the tip...

Pick up a bag of bags so you have something to pick up your dog's poop with.

It's a lot cheaper than buying the plastic bags they sell for this purpose and it gives new life, for a second, to a poor, doomed, about to be burned up plastic bag. You are allowing it the dignity of having greater use and the plastic bag doesn't harbor any delusions about how it is too attractive to be so closely involved with dog poop.

Don't worry about asking permission to take the bags from any supermarket staff... you could, in the interest of good manners, I suppose, but I never have and I have taken the lid off those barrels and rummaged around for a decent sized bag of bags right in front of those poor men who retrieve carts from the parking lot for a living and not one of them has ever said a word to me not even when they were looking straight at me while I was doing it... you could, though... it would be a way to make conversation and, hey, you might meet someone...

If anyone ever did try to stop you, I'm sure they would lose interest about the time you started discussing the problems of that freaking incinerator and why people think they are too good to pick up their dog's poop...

I'm just saying.