Reviewed: Aquafresh Extreme Clean

This toothpaste is disgusting. It tastes like cough drops.

And today I made a PB&J (heavy on the PB, heavy on the J) and it just wasn't great. Because things aren't the same in the West, and nobody sells Polander All-Fruit. Which makes me regret the half-full jar of seedless raspberry I had to throw in the trash the day we moved, because moving means you find yourself, regretably, throwing away perfectly good things. Mustard. A can of creamed corn. And I'm still feeling the weight of that garbage bag on my conscience.

About a month and a half ago now, we were moving and packing and discarding and there isn't a harder place to try and do good than New York City. Because it's not easy to lug 6 bags of clothes and shoes and books and CDs and various other castoffs twenty blocks away to the Goodwill when your only wheels are a shopping cart.

And it wasn't just clothes and books, but trying to recycle things like old computers, stereos, printers. I had to throw my broken DVD player straight into the trash because after Googling in vain I found that the only place to recycling electronics was somewhere in the Bronx. Do you know how far that is from Brooklyn? It's completely ridiculous in a city of 8 million. Like telling the entire state of Virginia they have to drive to Cleveland to recycle...and no one has a car.

But despite the lack of All Fruit, and Black Cherry Schwepps, and Thai delivery, one of the many things I appreciate here is that Seattle recycles everything. It's practically composting against your will. New York could never pull something like this off; the rats would start overtaking people. And so my tread-lightly points are going back up.

Sometimes when I throw something away I take a minute to imagine where it will go. Because remember the movie Unfaithful? When Richard Gere dumps that body rolled up in a rug straight into the landfill? I mean, he just drives back there and his loafers are crunching around in all the trash with a dead body? It left an imprint in my mind.

And tomorrow when I wake up and take Joe to the airport for a funeral back in New Jersey, I'll also go buy new toothpaste and throw this full bottle in the trash and have the whole rest of the week to think about it.

0 stars.