Well, anyway, I'll write this little post about trash. Here's my new trash can:
She's a beauty, huh? Cool Guy is laughing because he has been there through the whole saga of Me vs. Trash. When you live in a city and trash pick-up is once a week, and you miss that day, then it is traumatic. At least it is to me. You can't know the times I've forgotten that it was trash day, and was lying in bed only to hear the whine and clang as the truck moved closer and closer to my house, while my overflowing trashcan sat back in the yard. So I'd leap out of bed and dash around half-dressed, trying to beat them to our curb. And some places we've lived, they were so arbitrary about where the can had to be sitting, or if it was supposed to be up on the sidewalk or down on the street. It stressed me out.
Here in Vegas, Baby, they pick up twice a week, which is fabulous. Ironically, I rarely have enough trash to put out my can twice a week. But this reduces my stress tremendously knowing that I can set it out in just a few more days, if I should miss the first day.
When we lived in San Diego, we had a couple of notable trash events. I will share. One was at the little house that was downhill from the street. This required my lugging the trash cans uphill on steps that weren't too well made. One day, the trash men declined to empty my can. I called indignantly to inquire why, and was informed that "It was over-weight." I'd never heard of this. I replied that I had carried it up(hill) to the curb and I was seven months pregnant. Couldn't those big men manage to empty it??? Apparently they had a radio in the truck and so someone came by later that day and took the trash.
The next incident was more dreadful, actually, and only related to trash because of my zealotry in trying to get everything into the truck on the specified day. That year, I worked as a teacher's aide in our elementary school, three hours a day, for a first grade teacher. Then, I'd pick up my kindergarten daughter and a couple of her classmates as my day care kids, go get my two little boys from my friend who sat for me in the mornings, and we'd go home till the "big" kids (1st and 3rd grade) were done in the afternoon. One day, my first grade was going on a field trip but I wasn't attending because they'd be back after my 3 hours were up and it wouldn't work out with my kindergartners, etc. Knowing that often parents forgot about field trips, I packed an extra lunch just in case, intending to give it to the teacher.
We were all about to head out the door for school, when I realized that the baby needed his diaper changed very badly. We got that accomplished (and by now I was using disposables--luxury!) and I could hear the trash truck coming up the street to empty our cans sitting curbside. I gathered everything up, hustled everyone to the car, and just as the truck started to pull away from our house, tossed the paper bag with the dirty diaper into its gaping maw and we headed off to school.
Sure enough, someone forgot their lunch, I came to the rescue with my sack lunch which I tucked into the box and sent them all off to enjoy Balboa Park or wherever they were going. That afternoon as I came to pick up my two children, I ran in to see how the field trip had gone. It had gone well right up to lunch. The little girl who'd forgotten her lunch picked up the sack I left, sat under the tree, opened the bag and said to the teacher, calmly, "I don't think Miss [Earthsignmama] wants me to eat this."
"Sure she does, she packed it especially for someone who needed a lunch."
"No, really, I'm pretty sure she doesn't want me to eat it," she said again, just as deadpan as can be.
By now the teacher was a teensy bit irked, she wanted to eat her lunch. "Here, let me see--" and she plucked it from the little girl's hand and peered down inside the bag.
Yes, I'm sure by now you've guessed that I tossed the lunch into the trashtruck and tucked the dirty diaper paper bag into the lunch box for the field trippers. ARRRRGGHHH! And that little girl was just as calm as can be. Not a squeal or a flinch. She was older than her years. The teacher, however, tossed it halfway across the park as she yelped. At least that solved the mystery for me of why the "diaper" had made a thump as it landed in the truck--it was the apple. I felt terrible for the hungry little girl, I was embarrassed for myself, my teacher died laughing as she told me the story and heard my explanation, but worst of all---a perfectly excellent lunch got dumped!!
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