Garbage. And no, not the band.

Today will be a week that Robert has been gone. Feels like a month.

In his absence I get to be in charge of trash, because it just doesn't seem right to have a seven year old or a four year old hauling a big trash bin or a huge bag (or bags) of recycle to the curb or through the neighborhood to the recycling center. And when I say recycling center, I really mean dumpsters.

So on Monday, after our prompt and efficient garbage men toured la neighborhood, I thought  - why not make a clean sweep (<---- see what I did there? Heh!) of it and take the recycling. I've been, um, organizing some things and we had some boxes and other recycle-able things in our utility room. I loaded up my car and headed to recycle city, where apparently, a nuclear test site has been relocated.

Frankly, it looked like a construction dumpster (or six) threw up. Boxes, furniture, and garbage were everywhere. There was a small path to one dumpster but the other three were completely inaccessible.

Sadly, it was even worse than this. Good grief.

Photo credit: http://johannburkard.de/blog/programming/java/garbage-collector-pitfalls.html

We live in senior enlisted and junior officer housing. It's less than three years old, for crying out loud. It was so disappointing to see all the trash just chucked out like it was a city landfill.

Well, I'm always up for a little extra cardio, so I got to work with the intention of simply making all the dumpsters accessible. To my surprise, I discovered that the other three dumpsters were empty. I have to say it, I live in a neighborhood with some sorry, lazy, nasty people.

To further prove my point -  as I was attempting damage control, two cars pull up to unload their recycling. Big, burly he men were driving these vehicles. Did they offer to help? No they did not. One of them was going to put his bags on the ground beside one of the dumpsters until I gave him the 'Mom glare'.

Never underestimate the power of the 'Mom glare'.

About 40 minutes into my cleanup efforts, a truck from housing pulls up and one of the maintenance guys gets out and starts to clean up too. He told me that the dumpsters in the other housing area are way worse than ours. That? That is very, very sad.