I really hate Garbage Day. It’s not the day itself, because I use that as a point of reference for what day of the week it is. When you are a shift worker, there has to be one constant that you can count on to use as your point of reference. Garbage Day is every Tuesday, thus it is always in my mind that it is 5 days until Garbage Day or 2 days after Garbage Day.
What I hate is the careful gathering of things that I don’t want anymore and have already thrown out and yet I will spend time collecting that stuff and securing the bags. Logically, I have made the decision; I don’t want to see this stuff again. And yet here I am.
For example: Litterbox Tossings. I have already decided that I don’t want those before the cats have even been to the Litterbox. Then they make the visit and throughout the week I scoop out their offerings and put them in a sealed plastic box. On Garbage Day, I empty that box into a garbage bag. Not only is this whole affair distasteful to me, but I am traumatized each and every Tuesday, like clock-work. What if the Litterbox bag spills and it touches me? What if the Litterbox bag breaks on the way to the end of the driveway? What if a bird pecks at the Litterbox bag while it’s out there and it spills out before the truck gets here? I’m a wreck.
I worry that if I drive the bags down in the car that when I’m pulling out the Litterbox bag it will catch on something as I’m pulling it out of the hatch and it will break open. I have a half-baked plan where I will simply close the back door on the car, get in, head for the highway and drive east. The bag, of course, would be laying in the driveway. That is why I take my purse along when I take the garbage out. I need my credit cards and ID for this portion of the plan. Bru is on his own.
Sometimes I have to get the garbage ready after I’ve worked a brutal 12 hour night shift and I really don’t care for that at all. I put it off for the first hour or so after I get home, while I have a coffee and kind of decompress from work, but I’m tense, sort of waiting to hear the sound of the truck. Yeah, I know it never comes that early but the one time… and yeah, I know I should do it the night before, but the night before I’m thinking that I’ll have lots of time when I get home in the morning. Believe me, I’ve covered all the bases. In my book, tomorrow is always the best day to do anything.
When I first get home from nights, there are two things waiting for me. They are furry and they are hungry. They cannot be reasoned with or cuddled or distracted. They must be fed NOW or they will DIE. They are weak from hunger, but strong enough to walk back and forth across my keyboard, ordering porn off the Internet and knocking things onto the floor until I open a can of foul smelling chum that they will hork down like feral animals from some mountainous region in Nepal, at which time they will run around like fools and then gleefully visit the Litterbox.
Afterwards they will sleep for hours like patients in some hidden coma ward to the point where I will actually check on them to ensure they are breathing because if they are truly dead, I can still catch the garbage truck.
Once those two creatures from hell have been dealt with, I can have a coffee and then try to come up with a way to avoid taking out the garbage. I could put it all in the freezer until next week. I could hide it outside somewhere. I could keep pushing it down in the garbage cans – I’m sure I could get another week out of those cans… and on it goes.
But it is inevitable and I will put all of the ‘tossings’ together – 4 bags or more, and head down to the end of our driveway, which is longer than that of the Beverly Hillbillies (circa 1960’s). Through a freak of nature, it is uphill both ways.
Once I have dumped off those bags, I feel incredible relief and to amuse myself, I often think of what kind of situation could possibly arise that would make me actually take the bags BACK to the house again. Like, what possible scenario could occur where I would place the bags BACK IN MY VEHICLE and drive them back up the driveway. I’ve had years to think this over. Years. There is NOT ONE manifestation of a single occurrence in which I would put those bags back in the car and take them home.
Gunpoint? Shoot me – I’m not taking them back. Knife point? No defensive wounds here. I’m not taking the bags. Kidnapping? Yay, I’m going on a trip. I haven’t ridden in a trunk since I was single. Threats? Seen my cats at meal time lately? Nope. The bags stay.
Oh, hmm, yes, I have heard of recycling, but until last week, I thought it involved a bike, so I was out.
There you have it. Tuesday is my big day. In my world of self-generated chaos and overwhelming denial, I know this one thing. Garbage is due on Tuesday and we always have garbage.