Cat Litter

Met with some good friends recently and in the course of our many conversations, we realized that we both lamented the demise of the white plastic buckets in which 40-lb. units of cat litter could be bought at Costco (about three months ago they switched over to a non-biodegradable bag-like plastic container). Oh, the many uses of those white buckets which became ubiquitous in suburbia:

• small gardening tools and supplies
• toys
  
• sheet music (I swear, my band's librarian uses them to hold pieces going in / out of folders)
• mold for snow fort bricks
• white out drills in the Antarctic (okay, so that's not in suburbia)
  

If I didn't consider the four that I still have so valuable, I'd consider selling them for $2 apiece at the next neighborhood yard sale. They'd sell out.

Our recent stop in the Frederick, Maryland area reminded me of how similar and homogeneous many of our consumer experiences are here in the metroplex. Frederick is a good 3-hour-plus drive from here, but we ate breakfast from food purchased at the same grocery store (Weis) that we use, cleaned up spills with paper towels bought in bulk from, where else, Costco, and saw the same combinations of complementary stores in big box malls as we traveled to and fro.

Still, I remain fond of the Frederick area. It rests right on the border between built-up Suburbia and quaint rural. In some ways, that's why I've become so fond of Lansdale, though Lansdale certainly doesn't boast the size and economic vibrancy of Frederick and the I-70 corridor. The area reminds me of what Reading could be, if Reading could somehow overcome the deterioration of safety and economy that has befallen it in the past decades.