Taking Care of Business

Second only to feeding the goats at the neighborhood Kinderboederij, the favorite activity for a certain four-year-old in this house is the glass recycler just around the corner. Once each week, or perhaps not quite as often as that, we gather all the empty glass jars and bottles in the house and carry them down the street to the green metal bins. Marked carefully for white, green and brown glass, this receptacle is built partially in the ground and is the perfect height for our little man to heft the bottles into the slot and push them on their journey down-down-down into the deep cache of... what? Broken glass I guess.

Whoosh~CRASH! The bottles slide through the opening and land splat on top, shattering with a satisfactory cacophonous sound.

"Again!" Andrew cries. "Another one!" And we watch bottle after bottle disappear into the deep chasm.

It's always a little hard to wait until the next jar of peanut butter is empty so we can play the game again.

The truth is I have always been a lover of the recycling mantra--reduce, reuse, recycle--but never knew it could be so much fun to send glass on the first part of it's journey to become something new.

I find the double measure of entertainment while taking care of the earth to be extremely appealing.

Ik ben Totaal Gestoord

I am a dork. A completely irresponsible girl.

When we first moved to The Netherlands and set up a bank account we did so under my husband's name. The bank in turn issued us a debit card.

A card. As in single. Only one card on the account.

To be honest, this wasn't really a problem. In the first place we were living a student-life schedule which meant that much of our day was spent together. Don was around every morning as well as most evenings so all outings to the grocery store or elsewhere were joint enterprises. Therefore, it certainly never mattered that I wasn't carrying a card of my own. I had a personal money-bags by my side and he doubled as a grocery sack carrier. No big deal.

The second part of this equation is the fact that we were self-financed during that first year, as in there was no income, and the easiest way to stay on budget was to live on a cash only basis. Withdrawing money at the beginning of the week, making it stretch and last to the end was an enjoyable challenge. I got a real kick out of making it to Saturday with a few euros still left in play. There is nothing like the rush of living within your means!

But that was the first year.

The second year of our international experience brought an income, a change in schedule, but alas, no additional debit card. The past 14 months or so have been a continual juggling between Don and I as we swap the single card back and forth, or make quick stops at an ATM, depending on our individual spending needs.

Finally, we decided that we needed to get a second debit card. It would mean the end of our little swap and exchange, but we figured it would be the best plan all around.

Yes, you can say it, we are a little slow on the uptake.

Don and I scheduled an appointment at the bank and then sat through the painfully long process of adding my name to the account (after all, I am soon to be a source of income in this family!) and applying for an additional card.

It arrived in the mail last week.

And finally here is the point of this post:

In the past seven days of my card ownership, I have lost the card three times. By lost I mean misplaced, and by misplaced I mean stuck in strange places. Like the bookshelf, the mantelpiece and the pocket of a pair of pants crumpled up inside the laundry hamper. Only one of these losses caused deep consternation and woe as I stood at the checkout of the grocery store with no means to pay for my already scanned groceries. But seriously, lost three times in seven days? Don't they make places to keep these kinds of things, like perhaps a wallet?

It just goes to show that I am really not the world's most responsible person. Who says that 41 years is in any way the age of an adult?

I suppose it's a good thing I don't have any car keys.