Just Another Manic (Garbage) Monday

Monday at our house means GARBAGE DAY! It's a very exciting thing, anticipating the garbage truck. At least it's exciting for the younger set in our house. Max is a very discerning future sanitation engineer. He can tell me, from several hundred feet away, whether a garbage vehicle is a front loader, rear loader or side loader; if it's a recycler vs. straight refuse; and if there's room on the back for a kid to hang on or not. (Suffice it to say, Max's dream ride would be to hitch up with a really stinky front loader). For moi, Mondays mean gathering up all the stinky, putrid future landfill and trying to shove it into one garbage can. This is my ambition; to consolidate the weekly waste of a family of four into one small garbage can.


Halfway to the end of the road. Sam is pointing at one of the endless distractions along the route. It might be a puddle, a bird, an airplane. Or simply an excuse to stop and further prolong the morning's garbage event.

Our garbage can(s) are collected down to the end of our road, which is about a two minute walk. WITHOUT small children.

But when I have to take the kids, this can literally take half the morning. There's the motivating them out the door, away from their best friend, the good little monkey who was sometimes very curious. Then, there's the bundling up. Into many layers. And boots, and rain gear, and hats. All this, knowing that when we return to the house, I will have to strip the above layers in order to get to their muddy clothes which I will remove and replace with some other fresh laundry that, too, will be muddy within a matter of moments.

If it's a good day, meaning that I've composted, recycled, and not made any poor consumer choices for the week, than I'm working on a 1:2 ratio. As in one garbage can to two kids. On a bad day, I'm wrangling two kids and two garbage cans, and that's hard. But on a RECYCLING DAY (every other Monday), the days I really dread, it can be a 3:2 ratio. Three garbage cans, two kids. And let me remind you, dear gentle readers, that this mom only has two arms. Two not so very long arms.

So there I am, loaded up with stinky poop heading down the pot marked, uneven, and did I mention...Muddy?road with my two future sanitation engineers. Who jump in every puddle. Who stop to slay every prickly blackberry bush. And, in the case of Sam, often fall down face first into the wet sticky mud and then need to be hugged, dusted off, reassured, and soothed. And motivated to continue down the road so that I can pawn off this putrid stink to some poor, unsuspecting sanitation engineer who will have to remove the lid and empty our garbage stink into the toddler dream truck.

Did I mention that it rains here? Often?

There are often howls, tears, or bribery involved in order to turn us around after the garbage cans have been delivered. Some people want to stay and wait for the garbage trucks. Other's want to continue to Georgia's house or the park. But turn around we do. And we make the long, uphill trip back home.

And that's when the challenge really settles in. Transitioning the mud babies into the next activity. Either to go back inside or get in the rennievan so we can start the next adventure. Today I just couldn't fight that battle. There were places to go, things that needed to get done (sorry, babe, I'll pick up the dry cleaning tomorrow), etc., but the boys just wanted to play outside. It was a balmy 37 degrees, they were already muddy, and it wasn't raining TOO hard.

So dig away, my boys. Dig and dig and dig. Maybe we can dig a hole big enough for a garbage dump.