Gary like to play the trash game. You know this game. This is the game in which the husband, in lieu of taking out the the trash, manually compacts the trash into the kitchen wastebasket . Eventually, the wastebasket is so tight with trash you can no longer just pull out the trash bag; you have to pin the wastebasket between your knees and breech-birth the trash.
If the trash can is loaded up the way Gary likes it, there is a lot of suppressed potential energy in there, what with the candy wrappers and Scott towels filled with dog pee and syringes and empty tubs of vegetable dip and junk mail.
I know precisely what’s in my trash because I have to touch the top few layers and stabilize it. This ensures the trash doesn’t explode into the kitchen while I’m trying to dispose of it. I have to touch the trash. I hate to touch the trash. It’s trash. I want to forget it. I want to hide it in the cabinet under the counter. I don’t want to fondle the trash with my lily whites. And I don”t want to pry it out of the wastebasket so I can pitch it into the big trash bin in the garage.
I realized the root of the problem when Gary left this morning. I had noticed the trash had reached critical mass the night before, and I was too tired to deal with it. So, I gently reached under the counter and tucked a lone scrap of cellophane on top of the trash souffle that had risen above the wastebasket rim. That’s why I was relieved this morning to hear Gary wrestling the trash out of the wastebasket. Then, before he left, he yelled, “Bye, honey! I took out your trash!”
My. Trash.
MY trash!
As in: we get divorced and I get the trash.
As in: separate bank accounts, separate vacations, separate trash.
He left it out so I can see it. He says I’m lucky he didn’t put a spotlight on it. I say he’s lucky I let him live to take out the trash another day.
12 responses to “Trash Day”
Well, the trash was in the kitchen, so of course it’s yours. (Um, did I just expose the larger problem?)
Small children are great for packing rubbish into bins. I use my boy to trample the recycling wheely bin like a grape crusher. It works a treat and I’ve not lost him yet.
That first paragraph had me nodding my head going “yes! I do that move all the time!”
It must be in the genes. The MALE genes. My husband does the exact same thing.
I got my husband young, and I trained him about the trash — at least, the taking out part. I’ve almost got him trained on the putting into the can part. It’s not that hard. I just threatened to put him into the can (or, failing that, something precious to him, like his laptop) if he didn’t put his used bandaids and empty candywrappers INTO the trash can. Next to, nearby, or across the house do not count.Highness, one thing caught me — syringes? you don’t use a sharps container? I have a diabetic cat who requires daily injections and my vet got me a sharps container for her (not the ‘snap off the needle’ kind but the whole syringe kind).You probably use a ‘snap off the needle’ kind, but I got SUCH a LECTURE about sharps containers from my acupuncturist that I feel as if I will go to hell if I don’t inform everyone else about them (you can get home versions at Costco).
Are there any men that don’t do the trash-compacting thing? I don’t know any! Instead of fighting it any longer, I’ve decided that the trash dumping is now my domain. Only because if I don’t do it myself, it will never get done the way I want. But of course, I plan on being cranky about it.
Gotta be a guy thing. My dad is the KING of smashing down the trash. Remember that episode of the Simpsons where Bart instead of taking out the (overflowing with rubbish) waste basket stables his banana peel to the mess? Yeah, that was my house growing up.
Er, that should read “staples,” not stables.
~~Silk – Shush, you!jamon – Seeeeeee – YOUR SON. So the cycle of male wastebasket abuse continues.Marriage-101 – It must be something in our female genes.sue – I know! At least Gary puts down the toilet lid.Sherri – Nope, sharps go in the container after they are unscrewed from the syringe. Then I embarrassed myself by asking the Walgreen’s teenage manager what I should then do with this collection of sharps. I thought I was saving them for something, like some secure bio-hazard disposal…KC – Well, I should do it myself, but Gary cleans up at the end of the night, and he does his smashing thing then. I suppose I could empty the trash before I go to bed and leave him just an empty can. BUT WOULD HE APPRECIATE IT? NO! I think I’m going to grump too.Kathy – When I first met Gary he had trash crawling up the wall about two feet over the top of the trashcan in the kitchen corner. So, I suppose he (and your dad) feel smashing is civilized.
Highness (doesn’t that sound so good?), ya know, in Florida you are actually expected to turn those sharps in either to a doctor’s office or some other responsible place so that they CAN be disposed of safely. I know this from my acupuncturist and my veterinarian (a whole different lecture — what is it about me that makes people think I need to have this stuff hammered into my head? On second thought, I don’t want to know.)I was thinking again about your custody of the trash. Do you ever ask Gary if, since he’s only taking out your trash, he already picked his trash from the bag? Of course, he probably doesn’t believe he creates trash, just like my dearly beloved doesn’t believe he sheds hair or leaves dirty footprints.
My trash peeve is when people take out the trash but don’t put a new empty bag in. You go over to the bin with two hands full of dripping cantaloupe innards, step on the lever, and … ugh. No bag.
Sherri – (Actually, “Your Highness” is only required once, after that it’s Ma’am) Wow! Maybe that’s the law in MO, too. I’m only going by what some teenager at Walgreen’s told me. And I called Gary on his percentage of the trash. He has at least half just due to the wads of gum alone.TasterSpoon – Actually, that’s bad too. But, none of it is as bad as sitting down and seeing an empty toilet paper roll, of course.