Sweet

"Your table manners are so good," I said to grandson the other day, as he said, 'please, thank you, this is delicious and may I be excused from the table' and took his plate to the counter.  "Mummy must have taught you well."  "Well Grandma, you taught Mummy so she taught me," he sweetly replied.   

Now, that's one compliment I will treasure.  His sister is completely logical in her politesse.  "I like this, but I don't like it, but I like it," she commented.  Translated, this means, "I like this soup you made, but I like the other kind with the tortellini better, but I still like this one."  Sounds logical to me.   
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With the deluded Greta stumbling boringly around the world, I got to thinking about how our parents' and grandparents' generations recycled before recycling was invented!  Like this:

• Paper bags only, used for other things such as covering school books
• Waxed paper, no plastic wrap
• Beer bottles taken back
• Milk bottles picked up by the milk man
• Water from a fountain
• Frozen juice mixed in the same container
• Clotheslines
• No canned soft drinks
• Cloth diapers
• Ironing
• Paper straws
• Cotton and cardboard tampons
• Leftovers used for soup or casseroles
• Visiting the shoemaker regularly (I still wear pairs that are 30-40 years old)
• Making one's own clothes
• Saving and re-using wrapping paper, ribbon and string
• Wearing hand-me-downs from older siblings and cousins
• Pens and inkwells at school
• Fillable fountain pens
• Push lawnmowers
• Saving screws and all sorts of other hardware items
• Knitting.......

I could go on, but those are just a few that come to mind.  As I said, we were recycling, re-using or repairing before any of it was invented.