inside dog: Borrowed trash cans, borrowed time

This morning is trash day. Trash day usually falls on Mondays, but with the holiday weekend and all, everything got bumped. So it's Tuesday now and I'm eyeballing the trash bins and hoping and praying that the garbage trucks arrive soon so my guilt over stuffing a large helping of extra trash into each neighbor's bin (without asking first!) can be assuaged. But of course the trucks are late because they are playing catchup from the day off they received on their routes yesterday. I am rationalizing all this in many ways: It was Sydney's Birthday Week over here this week and so our cups runneth over with discarded pink princess packaging and party trash! The dogs DARED tip over the kitchen trash because I left the trash closet door open accidentally while I snuck recycling overflow into our neighbor's bins! And they'd probably prefer some extra trash in their half-empty bins to having crazy redneck neigbors with trash all over their front porch for a week, amirite?

This whole trash bin thing is pretty consistent with the larger issues I'm having lately with always playing catchup. This summer has been bad for that. My bed is covered in four loads of washed and yet unfolded laundry. My floor was lightly swiffered this week, but only after we hosted about 50 people for a backyard BBQ in honor of our freshly-minted 4-year-old. Even in the ten or so minutes it's taken me to type less than 250 words I've been interrupted separately by both my children. This tossed in with how ADD I've become since I've had kids ... you know, you walk into the garage to grab some milk out of the fridge and see the laundry sitting there and decide to swap loads over real quick. So you swap the laundry and bring in the basket and forget the milk. So you come back out to get the milk and see that the trash needs to be emptied (I think trash is a theme here!) so you empty it and go back in, and still forget the dang milk.

I feel like I always have this looming checklist above my head of crap to get done. It's a mix between the things that need to be done and the things I want to do (and for the record I did spray-paint some stuff yesterday and it was AMAZING). And on any given day, let's say I have a list of ten things to do, I get one or two things done, and sometimes one of those things are only half-completed and I only got that far because I let my children watch three straight hours of PBS.

I would like to blame it on the month we've had off between summer camp and the upcoming first day of school on Sept. 10. I would like to blame it on the 30 miles I'm running each week and how the long runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays knock me on my butt. I would like to blame it on our others-focused, crazy busy and sometimes disorganized lifestyle.

And you know what, I think I'll just do it. I'll blame it on those things. There, that should be better, right?

But it doesn't unload my dishwasher and fold my laundry. That doesn't think up a fun crafty activity and read to my kids, does it? That doesn't give me quality time with my husband. That doesn't make me spring out of bed when my alarm goes off at 6 am and then not get irritated when my children wake up at 6:08 when I've barely set foot in the kitchen to make coffee. It just doesn't.

A lot of my friends sent their oldest child off to kindergarten this week and I was standing in the kitchen this morning cutting up waffles and it occurred to me that in a year that will be us. Syd will start kindergarten and will suddenly be away from home five mornings and lunch times and early afternoons a week. It made a lump crawl up in my throat, thinking about that, about how much I will miss her. How much her poor brother will miss her (even though in a year he'll start his own journey at preschool three mornings a week! WHAT?!). I do not like this. Even though she loves school. Even though I'll be able to sit at the table with a cup of coffee and type to my heart's content. Even though I'll be able to run errands without anyone trying to jump out of the shopping cart. Even though the laundry will probably all be folded and my floor might be cleaner and the dishwasher might get unloaded once in a while. I mean, I could even go back to work part-time! Think of all the dollars I could make to fuel my Target habits!

None of that makes me feel better either. I am suddenly so aware that I am living on borrowed time. I have them to myself. Our home and our family is still their world. The garbage trucks thunder down the street as a reminder: What you anticipate will eventually come and sweep the overload away. You hope and pray for it to arrive. You twist your hands and bite your lip and plead for it to hurry. And like clockwork, it will arrive, holiday weekend non-withstanding. It will shock you awake and relieve you. And the sound is loud and screeching and unstoppable and terrifying.

Sydney, 1 day old

Sydney, 3 years, 364 days old.

How is trash day treating you?

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Bwah ha! We were totally dumping into our neighbors cans here until an email went around to everyone from the mgmt company how putting trash in others' cans is "a nuisance". Someone turned us in! Half the people here are freaking retired and were only using half their capacity! Plus we only put it in there if their can was already out to be picked up! Jerks!

Posted by: Erica | Wednesday, September 05, 2012 at 07:37 AM