“Oh SHIT!” Hubby bellows from the study.
“What is it?” I ask from the living room.
There’s a moment of silence.
“Oh crap!” he growls in his most disgruntled voice.
“Honey, what’s going on?” I ask. I haven’t moved a muscle at this point although I have paused the AppleTV on which I am watching a rerun of Parenthood.
“I forgot to take out the recycling!”
This is indeed a crisis moment. We have missed our previous two recycling pick up days. Recycling is only picked up every other week. We are awash in recycling.
“I’ve got it! I can take care of this!” I say. He is still getting dressed and now I hear what got him started in the first place. The recycling truck is ambling up the street. I go to get up out of the recliner but it is a slow process. I threw out my back this week and I’m gimped up.
“Can you do it?” He asks, peeking out of the hallway mostly dressed.
“Team effort! Team effort!” I say positively, heading for my boots. I don’t know what this means, but it sounds good.
But the time I actually get my boots he is fully dressed and barreling out the door, still swearing. I see the truck pass by our driveway and tell him so but he has entered a fantasyland from which there is no escape. He takes out the recycling cart.
By the time he gets back into the house he has accepted that we have missed our initial pick up but he has not given up on the recycling man. We dive into the car at his insistence to chase the recycling truck through the neighborhood.
We make an absolutely magnificent effort of shadowing the truck for a block stopping beside him at every house but the recycling man will not even make acknowledge our presence beside him, much less talk to us. Finally, hubby accepts the inevitable: we will not be able to convince the recycling man to come back to our house and get our recycling cart. We go home defeated. With two more weeks to wait.
Thank God for my first world problems.
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