The last four weeks passed as if in a dream. No cooking, no keyboarding, no sewing, no laundering. At first I couldn't even take a shower without help. A third operation in less than four months took the starch out of this old hen. At first my right arm bore a very large half-cast plus yards of padding and gauze. Then I graduated to a splint, black and tan this time.
(An aside: see that crooked ring finger? It is fused at the second joint, but the surgeon didn't set it straight.)
The splint restricts finger and thumb movements, so I've had to find ways to manage the smallest tasks. Last night I needed to open three bottles of supplements but that turned out to be a daunting task. I needed three tools to cut through plastic shrink-wrap, pull off a plastic strip, and penetrate inner seals.
What a pile of debris! What a triumph to have broken into the vault! The two bottles of cranberry extract were each half-filled, so I consolidated them into one. That created another piece of debris.
The Tylenol murderer is responsible for part of this. In 1982 an evil person put potassium cyanide tablets in bottles of Extra-Strength Tylenol on the shelves of various Chicago supermarkets. Seven people died after swallowing what they thought was Tylenol. Congress jumped in and passed anti-tampering laws. If you ask me it's overkill, pardon the expression. Wouldn't one seal be enough? Who wouldn't recognize one broken seal as a sign the bottle had been previously opened?
Another aspect of the mess in the photo has to do with manufacturers who half-fill bottles of supplements. What are they thinking? Is this an effort to fool us into thinking we're buying a big bottle of something or other? Do they have bottles only in one-size-fills-all? Whatever the motive, I'm left with an unnecessary bottle to add to our local landfill.
Why, I wonder, don't consumers rise up against the horrid packaging we encounter daily? Everyone, normal people and handicapped alike, struggle with packaging.
Where should we begin?
P.S. I took off the splint to write this. Although this gives me an exhilarating sense of freedom, I have to put it back on and wear it for two more weeks.
(An aside: see that crooked ring finger? It is fused at the second joint, but the surgeon didn't set it straight.)
The splint restricts finger and thumb movements, so I've had to find ways to manage the smallest tasks. Last night I needed to open three bottles of supplements but that turned out to be a daunting task. I needed three tools to cut through plastic shrink-wrap, pull off a plastic strip, and penetrate inner seals.
What a pile of debris! What a triumph to have broken into the vault! The two bottles of cranberry extract were each half-filled, so I consolidated them into one. That created another piece of debris.
The Tylenol murderer is responsible for part of this. In 1982 an evil person put potassium cyanide tablets in bottles of Extra-Strength Tylenol on the shelves of various Chicago supermarkets. Seven people died after swallowing what they thought was Tylenol. Congress jumped in and passed anti-tampering laws. If you ask me it's overkill, pardon the expression. Wouldn't one seal be enough? Who wouldn't recognize one broken seal as a sign the bottle had been previously opened?
Another aspect of the mess in the photo has to do with manufacturers who half-fill bottles of supplements. What are they thinking? Is this an effort to fool us into thinking we're buying a big bottle of something or other? Do they have bottles only in one-size-fills-all? Whatever the motive, I'm left with an unnecessary bottle to add to our local landfill.
Why, I wonder, don't consumers rise up against the horrid packaging we encounter daily? Everyone, normal people and handicapped alike, struggle with packaging.
Where should we begin?
P.S. I took off the splint to write this. Although this gives me an exhilarating sense of freedom, I have to put it back on and wear it for two more weeks.
1 comment:
When I was younger, I used to trust the "people in charge." Now I realize that no one knows what's going on!
Our family has graduated from small recycling crates to a huge, garbage cart for recycling. Now it's the fullest of our receptacles! The garbage can may hold two-three bags of waste a week, but that still goes to the landfills, which doesn't even seem like a real place since I've never seen it!
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