Trash Talk

I am guessing I spend more time than the ordinary person contemplating trash. As a psychologist, I am depressingly aware of what this preoccupation may reveal about me but, nevertheless, for years my mind has been consumed with "garbage in, garbage out."

I haven't always had primarily trashy thoughts. In fact, for many decades I gave waste nary a thought. I trace the etiology of my preoccupation with post-consumption to the day we moved into a house. A house we actually owned. And had to maintain. A house whose occupants seem to generate lots and lots of waste. And with no landlord or management company to make the garbage magically disappear.

As I unpacked during our move in August several years ago, I looked all over the house and yard for a place to put our trash. Surely, our lovely historic house, which came with central air conditioning, vintage gas stove and Japanese bath, had trash cans.  We had previously lived in apartments, condominiums and rented houses, and trash cans had just always been there.  Where did one get a trash can? How did one fit a trash can in the car? And, most perplexing, when the time comes, how does one throw away a trash can? While I have since figured out the first two conundrums, I am still uncertain of the third.

In our city, we are allowed to have up to seven trash cans. I have no idea how the city's Department of Public Works, Trash and Waste Division came up with this calculus of receptacles-per-residential structure, but I did not recall seeing any neighbors with seven cans of refuse adorning their home on trash day. I went to our local hardware store, which had in stock four cans with handles and wheels, so I purchased four cans with handles and wheels. I learned that our subcntracted trash service, Athen's Trash--implying that our garbage is destined to be a future archeologist's dream--will take whatever trash is "in" the can.

And since we are paying a private company to remove our city's waster, I make sure our cans are filled to the brim every Monday. If a can is a little low Sunday evening, I will blow through a box of cereal just to be able to throw away something bulky to fill the precious space. I have been tempted to hoard those styrofoam packing peanuts just to have something to fill the cans with when they are not up to capacity.

But more often, we have too much garbage, and I have to surreptitiously throw away items on the sly, such as at gas station trash cans or at public parks. We have had our four cans so completely filled that even the addition of a gum wrapper would make them topple Jenga-style. The most dramatic example of this is when we attempted to trash our ping-pong table. We took off the legs and rolled the green table top into our trash area in our driveway. We noticed good old Athens didn't take the hulking mass of plywood for several weeks. I suspected they were being sticklers for the "in" the trash can bylaw, so I took a saw and hacked the table into trash-repository-size pieces. Problem solved.

I am a more than a little wary of the sanitation-collection process, due to earlier negative experiences. Believe it or not, I have actually received citations from Sanitation Departments in two different states (actually, one was a Commonwealth,  not a state). I had not been aware that one could commit illegalities involving garbage, aside from perhaps littering on the highway. One such ticket was for throwing a bag of trash in a private dumpster in Boston. The only way I can imagine that they were able to identify it was my trash was by going through the Hefty bag's contents to identify the owner. I felt sort of privileged that a fledgling garbologist took such an interest in my refuse. I was fined $25. Another $25 fine was levied when we moved to Park Slope, Brooklyn, and deigned to put recyclable-worthy trash into a non-recyclable trash can.

Who knew throwing away stuff was so damned complicated?

Prior to moving into our home, I had never had cause to purchase a trash receptacle of any kind. Well, this is not completely true. I, of course, have gone through perhaps dozens of those smaller kitchen trash cans. In fact, the purchase of our current kitchen garbage can was particularly humiliating. I was at The Container Store, with precise kitchen measurements in hand, attempting to gauge how many gallons of trash our can should be able to hold. I noticed that the store seemed to sell garbage bags that were not the usual 13-gallon Hefty size that I typically buy in bulk, on sale, at Target. I asked the perky sales person which trash can would work with the regular trash bags to be bought at stores other than The Container Store. The clerk fired a series of questions at me regarding my thoughts and feelings about garbage can "liners." I noticed that the priciest of the trash cans all had a steel insert that "lined" the can and seemed quite unnecessary to the process of temporarily storing waste. I can spot a sales pitch a mile away, and did not want to get suckered into a $200 trash can, so I quickly informed her we have no need for "liners." This stopped the sales clerk in her tracks as she apparently struggled to pleasantly interact with such a barbarian who did not suitably "line" her trash can. It wasn't until later that I realized that "liner" was TheContainerStoreSpeak for "trash bag," and I had described to her the practice of maintaining waste in our kitchen in a bagless recepetacle. I can only imagine how that story went over at the subsequent staff meeting. Good thing I usually order anonymously online anyway.

Comparative Parenting

My family is loud.

But we are loud for a reason. We have several televisions and several computers. But since we live in a home with many rooms, none of this technology is housed in the same room. So, it follows, at any given time, none of my family members are in the same room at the same time. So how do we communicate? By shouting from room-to-room, of course. I didn’t say we had a good reason for being loud.

Yes, the official protocol in our home is to address each other face-to-face, using an “inside voice.” But this is not always realistic when you are a mom firing off multiple directives at children while simultaneously checking email and trying to beat your all-time high score in Webkinz’ Color Storm. When my family shriek at each other from room to room, I fulfill my mom duty by bellowing “Stop Yelling!” even louder from the comfort of my desk chair. By the way, our house was built in 1927 and has very thick, soundproof walls.

Having never been a parent before, I had little sense of whether our family interactions were anywhere on the bell curve. So I broached the subject of inter-room communication with some fellow moms. However, I carefully chose who I asked. Any mom who seemed too composed or took a Zen-like approach to child-rearing was out. I apparently picked likeminded moms because I was assured by my sample that they have their moments of engaging in “outside voice” talk while inside the confines of their homes. I felt better.

But I do not know for sure whether these moms truly are screechers, or were just humoring me. Because when you live in a house and travel by car, parenting is a private matter. Behind closed doors, you are free to yell, eat with your hands, sing off-key, watch bad TV, and engage in any number of socially unsanctioned activities, without fear of embarrassment or judgment.

However, there are ways to penetrate the “Cone of Silence” of suburban living: eavesdropping on your neighbors in their backyards and through open windows. During the spring days when it is too warm for the heater and too cool for air conditioning, I get an idea of how my unflattering parenting moments stack up against my neighbors’. Had it not been for auditory glimpses into our neighbor’s family lives, I never would have known that one neighbor’s child didn’t start her Science Fair project until the day before the fair. Or that another neighbor kid has a temper and gets really mouthy with his father. And if I thought we watched a lot of TV, we are absolute luddites compared to one set of neighbors.

Several years ago we lived in Brooklyn. Living in shared buildings, with no backyards, and where you are constantly walking, means your parenting skills are on constant display. For someone who is used to keeping separate sets of all parenting supplies (snacks, wipes, water, make-up, gum, change of clothing) in both the car and home, there is an enormous learning curve to this public parenting. Hair has to be combed, diapers packed, boogers cleaned, all before venturing out; no longer can these acts be done at a red light or a parking lot.

Parenting in the public arena seems to have a whole different set of priorities. In my experience, Brooklynites show a great deal of concern when a baby is missing a sock. My daughter was stroller age at the time, and enjoyed removing her left sock and hurling it in the street. Also in my experience, Brooklynites appear to calmly stroll with their toddlers while both mother and child are perfectly groomed, engaging in numerous “teachable moments” by observing the wonders of nature, while singing European children’s songs on pitch, with all socks intact. As a temporary Brooklynite, I was not up to any of the aforementioned tasks, and felt the looks of pity as I balanced ripping grocery bags on my shoulders as my child pulled the scrunchy out of her hair, knocking the stroller enough so my ice coffee spilled onto the handlebar tray, causing me to curse/trip/further spill.

During our year in New York, I signed my son up for some sort of martial arts class. He had taken a similar class back home in Los Angeles, and it was one of the few activities that didn’t have a waiting list dating back to when the child was in utero. The class was at 5:30, giving me time to return from work, pay the nanny and take my daughter to pick up my son at his after-school program. The karate class was 15 blocks away. No problem, I previously lived in New York and routinely walked dozens of blocks at a time, usually with a goal of reaching a shopping destination. Nothing can motivate like a good sale. However, when I calculated the distance from school to karate, I didn’t factor in dawdling, heavy backpacks, bathroom stops, stroller gridlock, hot weather, cold weather, rainy weather, snowy weather, layers of clothing stripped off, layers of clothing put back on. Why didn’t we take one of those famous NYC buses, you may ask? Well, who knew that no strollers allowed on the bus unless they are folded up? Like that would work with two fidgety kids and enough gear to survive for years in the wilderness. And, at the end of our journey: a second-floor karate studio with 18 steep stairs and no elevator. How’s that for adding insult to injury. And to top it all off: A child who didn‘t really like karate after all.  

The Garden of Weedin'

I preface this all by stressing that I am by no means a meticulous person. My housecleaning philosophy is to invite only those guests with acute astigmatism (Ok, my father is an ophthalmologist) and a blunted sense of smell. Sort of like a proverbial unobserved tree falling in the woods: if no one notices or is ill-mannered enough to comment, then the clutter does not exist. When visiting friends' homes, I, in turn, encompass the trio of monkeys by neglecting to see, hear, or speak about mess or mold.

Having said that, I also have to confess that, when it comes to weeds in other people's gardens, I take no prisoners. And this is from someone who is philosophically against any sort of scenario that might theoretically involve the taking of prisoners: war, bank robberies, kidnappings. I am the first to admit that I am too lazy and uncoordinated to actually pull weeds from my own garden. No one in my household seems to be aware of the existence of weeds. And I will also, in the spirit of full disclosure, admit that we are too thrifty to employ a gardener.

My distaste for weeds is all the more incongruent given that my favorite flower growing up was a dandelion. I was well into my 20s before I realized that the puffy yellow flowers that morph into soft, but pollen-inducing, powder clouds are considered by the horticultural world to be the enemy of their lawns. I should have known then that I was not meant to live in harmony with nature. My lawn now is overrun with clovers, which I grew up thinking were somehow lucky, but now am told are the scourge of turf worldwide. Hmmmm.

I live on a block where everyone has front--and I imagine, back--yards. It is a pretty town, so it is not surprising that most of these lawns are well maintained. Even the little areas between the sidewalk and street are perfectly trimmed. I found out the hard way that homeowners are responsible for the upkeep of those little rectangles of sod. One day, shortly after we moved in, we came home to sprinklers aggressively watering the entire spread of sidewalk in front of our stretch of block. We were returning from a daytrip, and a neighbor ran up to us to inform us the sprinklers had been on all day. Since I had never actually been at home when the sprinklers went off, I assumed that this extra special watering (we live in a desert after all) was planned and funded by the largesse of our city. "Wow," I said to our neighbor--who is under the impression that my name is "Carol" and insists on using my name to punctuate every sentence he says to me--"this city really takes good care of the grass." The Carol-caller looked at me and gave it to me straight: "You own this land, Carol, and you will be billed for the entire day's worth of water." Whoops.

I tell you all this to illustrate that we live in a very conscientious and responsible neighborhood, where lawns are generally pristine and tended to by "professionals." So it is very curious that every time I stroll down the block to our corner Trader Joe's, I have to squelch the urge to yank what I perceive to be errant growths from these glistening rectangles of sod. The one exception would be the environmentally aware neighbors who insist on drought-tolerant gardens with plants native to the area (which, I say again for emphasis, is a desert). I have looked at such plants online and they are so pricey one could pay for months of overwatered lawns and still not break even. But these ecologically sensitive gardens tend to be wispy and look like the plants are all on death's door. One might think these gardens belonged to abandoned homes if the owners weren't so vigilant about cultivating these oases of faux weeds. I walk by and I just want water and prune. And, of course, weed.