Mini E Helps With The Twidiculous Can Drive

Recently, I felt the need for some twi-merch, but, had no money. So, I held a can drive, (for more deets, click here) that no one donated to, but, it worked out okay, I just ended up taking ours back last night and got about $17, and my in-laws back today and got about $26 dollars woowoo! Hooray for having lots of drinkers around!!!

Last night, it took me about an hour to collect all our cans from around the house, and then, as it was one of the most blustery nights we've had in forever (I lost about fifty cents worth of cans, three helium balloons, and nearly my cart to the wind tunnel the outdoor return created), it took me about two hours to return them. Thankfully, Mini E was there to help!

he helped me pick just the right thing to listen to while we returned the cans

 

he helped load the cart (in the cupholder)

 

this is how many cans we had the first time, the return here isn't closed off at the ends 

and I had to hold the carts with my feet while I returned cans 

so the carts didnt' blow away : P

I was generally pleased to survive the gale force winds (I think I read later they were going at approx 45mph) and that we collected nearly $17.00 from what I knew was going to be the smaller can stash, but, was less than thrilled with how poorly kept up their machines were (two were broken, one was on the fritz, and their bottle machine kicked out at least half of my bottles, we had to do hand count on 101 by the end!!!) and that their machines are outside. Yes, they at least put a roof over it now, but, it only has one wall so it's open at both ends, normally not a problem, but, last night was trouble! Thankfully, even though they have the right to refuse to cash out more than 144 bottles worth of cash ($7.10) they didn't exercise that right and honored all my slips.

Day Two, I dropped the big boys off at school, then headed over to the in-laws to collect their massive stash of cans and bottles. I had the baby with me today, and as I was confident we had at least enough for a shirt, we headed into the bigger town (about 20 mi away) to the nicer can return that is just down the road from the nearest hot topic.

We ended up having three massive carloads all together. The machines were working good, and we only ended up with four to hand count by the end. It took about 90 mins this time to return about $27.00 worth of cans (the true beauty of  better working machines) and mostly were alone in the can room so we could sing, count, and go over all our barnyard animal noises and such.

 

the third of the three cartloads we took back at this store 

(nice indoor return was much better!) 

can you see where Edward fell in?

 

Edward helps by handing me the cans

a bit later we were joined by another guy in the return so I stashed E, he kept looking at me funny, I was wondering why

 

  I'm guessing this had something to do with it .... 

I actually got caught in the act by a store employee while I was arranging this next shot, she just smiles at me and says to my baby "does mom play with your toys?" to which I irrationally and immediately stated that no, it was MY toy... on second thought later, it may have been better overall to just let her think it was my son's ...

 

In the end, we had quite a nice stack of return vouchers, 

here Edward proudly stands with the stack of return slips from the second day 

he's very happy he could help me achieve my goal.

 

Edward rolls in the total amount raised, 

he's delighted that we had enough for both a shirt and a purse!

 

Last but not least, there was this blanket at Hot Topic I may have to go back to get ... I guess they have a whole Charlie the Unicorn line as well ...

All in all a very satisfying result for the effort put in. I may have to do this every three months or so, there won't be such a big haul if I do it regularly, but, I can feel less guilty about all the twi-merch I feel compelled to buy at least ...