Trash Talkin

Ayup. So yesterday I felt kinda flat, blah, no juice, no spark of enlivening, fortifying, galvanizing zing to make my soul sing and my fingers move at anything other than a reticent pace. And I didn’t really feel like I had anything to say, and I had Connor and he was starting to cry anyway, so I emailed my lame effort to myself to post this morning and, well, then . . . the cat peed on the Roomba.

Now this is perhaps the oddest 21st century sentence I’ve had to utter since the turn of the century. Yes, we have a Roomba. It’s a small circular vacuum cleaner with sensors in the front like those mechanical pets. When it hits a wall, it turns around. It’ll keep turning through your rooms til the place is vacuumed. It helps if you’ve given the place a good once-over before you begin, but the thing is pretty cool for keeping those wads of cat hair, bits of string, dust bunnies and general schmutz off the baby, who is now all over the floor.

We have a Roomba because a couple of neighbors got married, were renovating their house and loaned us this exquisite example of modern convenience while they were still picking wood nails off their floor. After a few rounds, we looked at all the hair wound in the thing and realized that there was no way we could return it in anyway near it’s original state and purchased them a new one. The device is plugged in next to my desk, which is incidentally near the cat box. Since I didn’t really hang out at my desk last night, I didn’t notice that the cat box hadn’t been cleaned yet that day – which is stupid since I’m in charge of the downstairs cat box. I just never see the damn thing. And when I do, I’m busting ass so hard to use the little time I have wisely that the last thing I’m going to do is go play with the kitty poo using a spoon.

I would like to think that if we keep that box pristine, my ancient 19-year-old spiny, spiky, wobbly beast of a hairball yakking cat is going to stop peeing on things,. In fact, though, I think this is vengeance. I think the cat has intuited (as they will) my affection for the vacuum cleaner that just runs itself and is jealous. I also think he’s got Alzheimer’s or whatever version of it cats get. He’ll sit and stare at the wall, hunched like an old man. I think he’s trying to dream up things to pee on.

So my lovely husband and I find this as I’m trying to get out of the house this morning. I have a new routine – pile a bag or two of recycling into the trunk of the car on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Between porch sitting, band practice, cooking, cat food, plastic juice bottles and pickle jars, our recycling is the stuff of epic. The city used to pick it up and sell it to a recycling plant, but decided that kickbacks to its road builders would be a more useful investment of city funds. So now we have no bullet train and no recylcling service but great roads by which to haul the crap to the center yourself. Being as I have some extra times in these morning, I take a few bags down to the center on my way to school. It adds about 15 minutes to my morning commute, but the dwindling pile bottles and cans is worth it.

But there’s nothing like a peed-on Roomba to bring out the worst in two people loading recyclables into a trunk. Nothing seems to be quite a deconstructive moment than deciding which bins, bags, and baby wipes to use to rid the world of too many beer bottles.

So the recycling is three bags less and my day is just starting, but at least yesterday’s sleepy blahs are gone and I’m ready to do good in the world again. Even if its one bloody bag of trash and one thorough Roomba cleaning with alcohol and Q-tips at a time.