The Perils of Paper

I Just Always Love Adore Alliteration.

We supposedly live in a paperless age.
We have email, EBooks, E-Ink, hundreds of different types of electronic documents, yet our photocopier/printers at Nuova Lazio have never been so busy.
We waste produce hundreds of pages every time we print out the student reports, and our rather weird system of double proof-reading means that each report (2-3 double sided A4 pages) is printed at least 3 times.  Seeing we have about 960 students, that means about 7200 pages used this term.

We recycle of course, but it still seems wasteful.

We recycle at home as well, and there hangs the tale.

My beloved is very strong on the whole recycling thing.  We separate out paper, plastics, glass and metal and put out the categories at the kerbside every Friday, the categories alternating with the weeks.

(I have a strong suspicion that all the carefully separated waste gets dumped into the same container and is probably destined for a landfill somewhere, but that's just my cynical TwistedScottishBastard psyche talking)

Obviously we have to store the recyclables until the due collection, and we have a large basket just outside our utility room door, on the back deck.

I hate to admit it, but my son and I are just a tad lazy. *looks guilty and crosses feet like a naught schoolboy*
We tend to leave all the crap recyclables lying in a heap beside the laundry basket until there's enough to carry the 4 feet to the storage basket.
Sometimes we leave newspapers and old magazines lying on top of the laundry basket until we feel the urge (euphemism for my Beloved's nagging) to put it in it's proper place outside.

She's not very well

Now at the moment my Beloved is going through a long and uncomfortable gastric upset. She is often nauseous and suffers from frequent shuffling runs towards (even sometimes on time) the toilet. 

She is decidedly not at her best.

So when she put the washing into the machine last night, she just dumped the contents of the washing basket straight in and started the wash.

I imagine that the intelligent and insightful readers of the blog can envisage the next incident.

When I emptied the machine the next day to hang out the washing, I was surprised to see that everything seemed grey, with the occasional blotch of red.

As I shook out the clothes preparatory to hanging them up, I had a flashback to yesterday's post. 
What is reality?
Is reality a f*cking snowstorm?
Is reality a f*cking blizzard?

Where's the f*cking clothes

I couldn't see for a few minutes, surrounded as I was by a maelstrom of fine (mostly white) specks that seemed to float all around, then cling to my clothes like desperate swimmers in the whirlpool of life.  (a bit flowery I know, but I like it).

After I had stopped sneezing, and had removed the detritus from my glasses, I could see the disaster in it's awesome fullness.

EVERYTHING WAS COVERED IN F*CKING PAPER.

EVERYTHING.

It took the rest of the day, with continuous brushing and shaking of the partially dry clothes before anything like wearable garments were visible.  I had to put the washing machine through about 4 cycles before the white specks disappeared, and even then I had to scrub the filter with a toothbrush to remove the gummy paste.

What would have happened if the thermal cutout hadn't worked

Then my beloved had the bright idea of putting some of clothes into the tumble dryer.  Have you ever smelled scorching paper mixed with melting plastic?
The paper particles stuck to and blocked the dryer's filter, and the whole machine became too hot to touch and the thermal safety cutout blew.
"It's not working" was the plaintive cry from my Beloved.
"It's because it's jammed full of f*cking paper" was my restrained and (in the circumstances) polite reply.

I had cold baked beans for tea.

Sometimes there's no f*cking justice.