GARBAGE TRUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

oh yes, wednesday IS the most exciting day of the week around here. that’s right, wednesday is garbage day.

my kids LOVE garbage trucks. when shane was little, he used to go running outside, every time he (or someone else) heard one rumbling up the street. i remember one time he came in all excited because the driver had given him some ritz crackers. um, yeah. sorry kid, you don’t get to eat anything given to you by an on-duty garbage collector! yes, i realize he mostly just drives the truck, but still…

when we lived in ohio, they didn’t have the automated trucks that pick up your can, empty it, and set it down again like we do here. they had old school garbage trucks with actual people who jumped on and off the back of the truck and emptied everyone’s cans. actual people who wore orange and white striped uniforms. actual people who looked strangely like convicts in those uniforms. actually, it turns out those people were ACTUAL convicts! it took me like 2 months to figure this out.

anyway, now micah is the one all excited about garbage trucks. layla likes them too, but 4 is probably a bit past the optimal age of garbage truck excitement. our garbage gets picked up once a week. our recycling and yard waste gets picked up every 2 weeks. on those weeks, garbage day is REALLY exciting because we get to see 3 different trucks come by. actually, i think we get a pretty sweet deal here, because the trucks go down both sides of the street, and living on the corner, we get to see them go down the cross street as well. on the street i grew up on, everyone had to put their cans on the same side of the street, so the trucks only had to make one pass. although less efficient, this way is WAY more exciting.

i think shane secretly likes having younger siblings, because he gets to relive some of the wonderful things from when he was their age. things like bob the builder cartoons, toy trains and… garbage trucks! he has taken it upon himself to be the official announcer of approaching garbage trucks. he yells, and everyone comes running to the front window to watch.

well, today there was a bit of a downside to this whole procedure. if you know anything about layla, you know she likes to draw. well, actually she loves to draw. and write. and color. and glue. and cut. and paint. and stamp. and anything else that can be done with paper. one whole wall in my kitchen/dining room is wallpapered with her creations. dave has likened her to pigpen from peanuts cartoons, except instead of a cloud of dirt following her around, it’s a cloud of paper. so as you can imagine, a fair amount of her creations wind up in the recycling (after she’s gone to bed, of course). DON’T JUDGE! it has to happen. there is no way EVERYTHING she makes could possibly be saved and treasured forever and ever! and because of the sheer volume of pictures she makes, she generally doesn’t notice when some go missing.

until today, that is…

the announcement went out, kids came running… it happened to be the recycling that was being picked up…

“hey! he just dumped my picture into the truck! he dumped lots of my pictures into the truck!!!”

oh boy.

fortunately, we escaped tears or any sort of major hysteria. shane, bless his heart, was smart enough to point to the wall and remind her of all the wonderful pictures we DO save, and i gushed about how much i love her pictures, but that we can’t keep all of them because she makes so many. although a little miffed, she seemed okay with this… i do feel a little bad, though. maybe i’ll just have to create a bin of ‘layla creations’ (a big one) and dump them all in there when i’m tidying up. then i’ll give them to her when she’s moving out and let HER deal with them. that’s what my mom did to me. well, some of them, at least. i have to admit that i was an avid lover of paper when i was young as well, so i assume there were a fair amount that made their way into the truck! i lived. i guess she will too! ;)