Sunday Scribblings #149 -- Art

The Art of...Dumpster Diving

Hubby and I decided to drive to a nearby town for our bi-weekly grocery shopping trip today. Normally we go on Sunday after church, but today we were both experiencing a little cabin fever after enduring the winter snow and extreme cold temperatures of the past couple of weeks. Besides, Hubby wanted to visit a little shop that was closed on Sundays.

Part of our bi-weekly shopping routine involves a trip to the recycling dumpster to deposit our two-week collection of glass, plastic and steel cans. We’re not really tree huggers, but we try to be environmentally conscious and it does give us a sense of satisfaction to know that our outcast items will be re-incarnated into something useful rather than accumulating in a landfill somewhere.

As we approached the area, we noticed other recyclers were also taking advantage of the balmy weather. Since the two existing dumpsters were in use by the other recyclers, we were glad to see a third one had been added to the fleet.

Hubby popped the trunk of the car and hauled our bag of recyclables to dumpster #3. When I saw him poking around, I naturally assumed the dumpster was full and he was trying to rearrange some of the existing refuse to make room for our stuff.


But no, a closer look revealed he was pulling something out of the large bin. I groaned. Now, Hubby is a wonderful person, but he has had some past struggles with an addiction to dumpster diving. He had made some remarkable progress. In fact, I thought he was cured. But, alas, he seemed to be falling off the wagon today. Evidently the temptation was more than he could resist.

I called Sunshine, who had not accompanied us on the trip. “Guess what,” I said. “George (that’s what we call Hubby) is dumpster diving. Can you believe it?”

Just then Hubby opened the back door of the car. I was afraid to look, but at the same was overcome with horrified fascination. I slowly turned my head in time to see him loading the car with his newly acquired loot—books! I braced myself for more to come. Hubby has a passionate love affair with books and I knew he would not be able to leave any orphan books in a dark lonely dumpster. Sure enough, he made another trip and yet another.

Upon returning home, I googled “the art of dumpster diving” just to see what I would find. To my amazement, there is actually a book entitled The Art and Science of Dumpster Diving. I don’t think I’ll tell Hubby about it--he doesn’t need any tips. I think he already possesses a natural talent for dumpster diving. Besides, he doesn’t need any more books at this time.

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