They think I'm an eco-doof.

And, admittedly, when carrying it, I DO look like one.

A couple of weeks ago, I looked at the giant mound(s) of crumpled-up plastic grocery bags polluting my kitchen yet again and decided I need to do something to reduce my use of the damn things.

Not to save the earth, mind you, but to keep my kitchen from looking like crap.

I COULD just do what everyone else does and throw them away right after bringing them home, but my thrifty nature compels me to collect them and try to get a second use out of them. But even after lining all the small garbage cans with them, they leftovers still add up.

And I COULD take them over to Wal-Mart and stuff them in THEIR big box of bags, but something doesn't sit right with me about filling Wal-Mart's box with bags from other stores.

I wonder if at some point, Wal-Mart gets sick of all the bags trashing THEIR place and takes them to some other store with a similar box. Perhaps Target.

But I digress . . .

What I decided to do was reduce the number of plastic bags I bring home in the first place. I picked up a strappy canvas bag with a zipper, big enough to hold a little more than a case of loose aluminum cans of one's beverage of choice. It is black with a neon green America on each side, and some text I can't remember advertising some company. When I'm going to certain stores where I don't plan on buying very much, I take my little hippie bag and fill it up at the checkout.

Except one of these stores is the store where I GOT the bag, so I took a big permanent magic marker and wrote "GROCERY BAG" on it, so they could see I brought it from home and am not shoplifting it. It was free when I got it, but sometimes it costs $3.00. Any method to their pricing system escapes me.

One day, I didn't know we were going to Lane's grocery when we left the house for lunch, so I didn't bring the hippie bag. After lunch, we had some time to kill after lunch before the Angel Food Thing, so we stopped in at Lane's and picked up a bunch of their loose sodas ($.20 each). Both the owner, who was running the cash register, and the stock girl, paused at the end before putting my sodas into bags. They asked where my little bag was.

I was embarrassed. I must have looked like an embarrassed eco-doof.