Garbage Night

I hate Wednesday nights. It’s garbage night. So, I’ve gotta do what I haven’t wanted to do all week.

I’ve gotta open up the garbage can in our kitchen. I also have to stop myself from gagging every time. It always smells like a mix between raw farts and rotting corks of my wife's wine bottles that she swears she's going to turn into an 'art project'.

Anywho, I’ve got to stomp the mess down with my foot–repeatedly–to make sure nothing spills out, whether it’s coffee grounds, old food from the fridge, or my wife’s stupid attempts at whatever art project she’s trying out this week that she then abandons because, “If you can’t do it right then why do it at all?”

Hell, maybe I should toss her Sertraline in there for all the good it does.

Then I have to add another layer of leftover food from the fridge, old mail, empty wine bottles, whatever Jenny wants to toss out–it all goes into the garbage can. I used to recycle, but who cares, really? We're all gonna die someday, might as well take the planet with us too. Who gives a crap about the turtles or dolphins or whatever it is the Discovery channel is trying to make us care about this minute.

Then I’ve gotta tie the liner bag up, and of course, half the time it rips. Half the time, Jenny screams at me for filling the bag up too much. Half the time I scream back at her, but whatever. I drag it through our tiny backyard, over our abandoned gardening projects (because, once again, to quote my wife, "If you can't do it right, why do it at all?"), quickly whip the garbage dumpster lid open, toss it in, and slap the lid down.

Rinse, repeat. Every week.

Then comes the dance every Wednesday night, the stupid anxiety that Jenny has, wringing her hands over glass number 3 or 10 of Charles Shaw for that day (seriously, how she manages to be a partner at that law firm with how much of that she plows through the day, I could never tell you). Every week, she worries the same worry.

“Did the garbage guys come, or are they on strike again? Do we need to call–Oh, no, never mind, they’re just late. Oh, is it Dr. Johansson again? It is! Ugh, look at him! Stopping them from taking out his garbage. Why does he care so much about what he's tossing out? He’s probably a hoarder now that he’s retired.”

I sort of understand Dr. Johansson’s issue. You see, the university made him ‘emeritus’ which I suppose is actually smart-people-talk for ‘go away, Grandpa, and take your projects with you’. So now the old fart has no one to give his stupid science talks to, or conduct experiments with, and he’s all sorts of flavors of lonely right now.

So he does all sorts of weird stuff in his house when no one else is home in the neighborhood, during the day. Odd noises, weird lights, the whole shebang, they're all coming out of his house during the day. If I wasn’t at home working on these data sheets for my company and dealing with Colleen in operations and all of her whining, I’d never know what Dr. Johansson's up to. I wouldn't care, otherwise.

Christ, I hate my job.

Anyway, every so often, I get Dr. Johansson's poor wife screaming at him from time to time, usually right when I'm in the middle of a Zoom call with my team at work. It can range from begging him to ‘stop trying to play God’, and ‘Our kitchen isn’t a lab!’, and ‘What is that, Jacob? What is that unholy thing in our house? Get it out!”

So she does what I do–drag out the big bag of garbage every Wednesday night, just to get some decorum of cleanliness before filling up the trash and doing it again.

Sometimes I wave at her, and sometimes, she waves back. However, half the time she’s too busy muttering and sprinkling what I think might be holy water on her garbage.

But you know I always walk over, lift the lid up, and see what's inside. Just like right now.

Ugh, these nights. At least you listen to me.

I wish you’d wink at me again, garbage. It’s so nice when we make eye contact.