Zzzz

The bad news: my cold has gotten nasty.

The good news: I'm going to sleep like a rock tonight, thanks to my little green friend. Don't you love those z's coming out of the bottle? (I guess I shouldn't say that I'll be consuming a distant but wholly identical generic cousin of my green friend, should I?)

7:24:58 PM      trackback [] 

Trash talk

The trash collectors in our complex come every Tuesday, usually, but on a totally random time schedule. Sometimes it’s 6:30 in the morning – always the days you forgot to put the trash out the night before. Sometimes it’s late afternoon, like today. They’re here now, the barrels having collected a day’s worth of hard rain. And why is there no cover on my trash barrel? I’m speculating it pinwheeled down the hill one windy day and was run over by the return commuters, who would also have had to dodge the empty barrels blowing around the street. Or near-empty, since they don’t get out the loose scraps which either stay in the bottom or blow around the complex along with the loose barrels.

These guys are not hired to think. A neighbor of mine once tried to get rid of an old, beat-up trash barrel and it took her three or four weeks to get them to take it. She taped a big sign on it with something like “Please take!” and the thing was empty so it wasn’t being used to contain trash. But they kept leaving it. Picture a guy looking at the barrel with a big question mark over his head.

Inside the house, I am currently the sole owner of trash removal duty. My current housemate will pile it on til it’s overflowing – well, so will I, actually, although at least I pull it out and stomp it down a few times before I decide there’s no more avoiding taking it out. My last housemate spoiled me because she was right on top of it – hauling off that bag whenever it even got even near full. [But wait, I should mention that my present housemate does regularly volunteer to take the recyclables over to the recycle center. That's very helpful.]

I guess I shouldn’t complain. At least I don’t have to go to the dump with this stuff. It’s nice and civilized that someone comes and hauls out our weekly trash and takes it off someplace where none of us have to think about its existence.

3:44:59 PM      trackback [] 

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11:31:55 AM      trackback [] 

Spring morning

Yesterday's poem at The Writer's Almanac, "Some Glad Morning," by Joyce Sutphen, from Naming the Stars (Holy Cow Press):

Some Glad Morning

One day, something very old
happened again. The green
came back to the branches,
settling like leafy birds
on the highest twigs;
the ground broke open
as dark as coffee beans.

The clouds took up their
positions in the deep stadium
of the sky, gloving the
bright orb of the sun
before they pitched it
over the horizon.

It was as good as ever:
the air was filled
with the scent of lilacs
and cherry blossoms
sounded their long
whistle down the track
It was some glad morning.

I like the image of the ground breaking open "dark as coffee beans." It reminds me of spring gardening, digging in the dirt. Since I live in a condo, my "gardening" consists of filling all my window boxes and planters. I love to do it and it's just a one- or two-day project, but container gardening in these parts generally has to wait until around Memorial Day.

The other image I love in the poem is the middle verse: the sun being pitched across the sky like a baseball - another harbinger of spring, and one that's already here.

I'll have to wait a few more weeks, I think, for the scent of lilacs. When I was growing up, there were thick lilac bushes outside my bedroom window and the scent used to drift in on the breeze. I had these sheer dotted white curtains with a band of pink-and-white checked gingham to match the bedspread and wallpaper - my mom was really big on the pink girly thing, though I guess I must have been too because I don't remember objecting. My brother's room across the hall, of course, was all blue.

It's raining again and due to rain for the next few days. But it's supposed to be 50-60°F. "April showers bring May flowers."

11:04:43 AM      trackback []