Plastic Bottles

our family room this morning
"Venue One" (see below) is in the right corner

Some months ago (how many?), Joyce and I (as is our wont) were sitting on the couch, streaming some TV show that had a feature about plastic bottles--all this while nibbling (!) on our supper. This is how we almost always have supper, and this, I know, will perhaps disappoint some of you who think we have candlelight and dining table and family china and exotic meals every night. Perhaps I'm wearing a tux? Joyce her old prom dress?

No, we're fairly routine about most dinner things: chicken, fish, turkey slices, rice, sourdough bread, baked potatoes, spaghetti (now and then), sourdough waffles (rarely) ... all of which we make up for with Sparkling Conversation. (Believe that, too?)

Anyway, on that show (and I cannot readily find it on Google, so, perhaps, I dreamed it? I know I didn't!) the narrator told us that most plastic bottles do not get recycled, and one of the reasons? The little rings that affix the cap to the bottle--sometimes seriously so. (Husbands do come in handy now and then when some Raw Muscle is called for.)

From that day forward I have been snipping that ring off before putting the bottle in the recycle bin--sometimes with a pair of scissors and sometimes, generally at a meal, with a sharp knife (no truly deleterious consequences yet--though Joyce cringes whenever I do the latter; I try to calm her by telling her I was a Boy Scout once).

One day--a few weeks ago--I slid the knife under the ring, turned it so the sharp edge was now functional, and ... POP! The ring flew off the bottle and soared ... where? Neither Joyce nor I could find it. I thought I'd heard it hit the wall across the room. But ... no ...

So we said what we usually do in such situations. "Well, the people who buy our house will find it."

Flash forward a few weeks ...

Since COVID-19 has arrived, I've been doing my Daily Reading, morning and afternoon, not at Open Door Coffee Company but in Venue One (morning) and Venue Two (afternoon) in our house.

Venue One is in our family room, in a (fairly) comfortable chair in the far corner from the coffee table. (See pic at the top of this post.) Venue Two is in our living room, in the front of the house, where I can read, write, and stare outside at birds, trees, pedestrians, etc.

Okay. This morning I had just finished my work at Venue One (about 8:30), and I was gathering up my things to head into my study to do some work (including this blog post) when I saw a bottle-cap-sized blue ring peeking out of the lower edge of the coffee table.

There it was! (Had it thought we'd forgotten it? So it peeked out for a quick look-see--and got caught?)

I took the pic you see below, cropped it, and emailed it up to Joyce in her study.

No reply as of yet.*

BTW: Those are not crumbs you see on the ledge--an optical illusion--or a couple of smears on the camera lens ... right?

*Just before I posted this I got a reply: "!!" At times, we both can be so eloquent!