Garbage Barge

That sense of responsibility I referenced yesterday may be overinflated in general, but there is definitely a strong environmental component. It hits in other ways. I also really hate waste.

Now, I do not doubt that a part of that is also the poverty; the need to conserve resources feels different when things are scarce. The unemployment, care giving, and pandemic have me in a total scarcity mindset now, and it has been that way for a while. That is one complicating factor out of more than one.

It is also complicated by the specific dynamics of my household. My sisters are wonderful, caring, environmentally conscious people, but they are also squeamish and weird about a lot of things where they cannot be budged.

That plays out in multiple ways. For example, they are big moisturizers, so they go through lotion quickly. Once the pump starts getting air in it, they are done with that container, but there may still be about a third of the bottle left. I put another cap (previously from an Aquafina bottle; more recently from an ACT bottle, standard sizing has its up side) on the lotion container, turn it upside down, and keep it in my room so I can get all the dregs out.

They do not have patience for small soap bars. They will open up a new one, while I am trying to compress slivers together and make it work, even as it gets slimy and keeps sliding out of my hands.

They don't eat leftovers, so that's on me, even if I don't like the thing that much. (I have learned that I can get them to eat bread heals if the heal part is facing the inside of a grilled cheese sandwich.)

I believe it was when I was reading Marie Kondo's The Life Changing Manga of Tidying Up that I noticed -- perhaps it was the emphasis on sparking joy -- but I started feeling like I was making myself a second-class citizen by always choosing the slimy and leftover and unappealing for ethical reasons.

Carol Burnett had a sketch show in 1990, Carol & Company, that I enjoyed. One sketch focused on different couples in a restaurant. 

The younger couple were two people who had met and had instant chemistry, and were now trying to get to know each other. They discovered they had a friend in common. He started reminiscing about that girl's fat friend, wondering whatever happened to her.

"She slimmed down and became a lovely person who goes by Marjorie."

Before that reveal, he repeated what he had used to call her. I think was "Large Marge the great big barge." I don't think he actually said "garbage", but that was how it entered into my head: garbage barge.

It had been many years since I had seen that sketch, but I got to the point where every time I stepped into the shower and saw the slivers of soap "Garbage Barge" flashed through my head.

I don't want to be wasteful, but in that time period my goal to be kind to the earth was working in opposition to being kind to myself.

I'm not saying it has to be that way, but it was a complication. At its core was not my thrift, but my inability to value myself.

It's about two years later, and that's still a struggle. Then again, so is the scarcity.