Today was a special Monday, or at least it is supposed to be. It is the day I planned to finally throw out the secret garbage I’ve been keeping in my room for far too long.
I call it secret garbage because I wouldn’t want to throw it out using the normal procedure because that is subject to inspection, scrutiny, and sometimes a lecture. The garbage I have been saving secretly under a pile of dirty clothes with their own special scent would not pass inspection and may in fact have caused anger and a lecture if not expulsion.
I always consider the worst as a possibility because you’ll just never know which direction spontaneous uncontrolled anger will take. It’s like a cut electricity wire dancing in the street. Will it go this way, will it go that way, will it kick me out of my house. His house.
I gathered the various hidden stashes and put them all into one big plastic garbage bag as quickly as I could because it stank enough to have its own adjective created.
When I was ready to take it out to the curb at 6:15am I was surprised by the appearance of the two dogs in the open area upstairs. His door was open.
I have no idea whether this was intentional and perhaps a new idea he’s working on or whether the dogs have figured out how to open his door on their own. In either case, the point was the dogs are awake 90 minutes ahead of their scheduled morning. They want to go out. It’s only been an hour or so since they were up with their master for their early morning goodbye. The routine is they stay in bed quiet and not involving my attention and till around 7:00 a.m. when I wake up and begin the morning breakfast preparations for the chickens.
I can’t let them out now. The last thing I want is to wake the chickens at 6:30 in the morning because that means the rooster will start making that sound. The sound no one wants to hear at 6:30 in the morning. The sound that repeats over and over for 20 to 30 minutes despite the fact that all the hens are already around him eating their food and there’s no one and no reason to continue the noise but it’s a rooster, and one of its prime jobs is irritating the neighborhood and myself.
So I chose to ignore the dogs. It’s not like they really need to go to the bathroom one hour after they’ve just been let in. I go back in my room and close the door and they do whatever they’re doing outside my attention.
I decided not to force them back into the bedroom. I will after we have our official morning break at around 7:20.
It was mostly the surprise that caught me off guard. Ironically when I’m on a stealth mission to get the extremely smelly garbage out to the curb. For a moment I thought, what if he hasn’t left yet and he’s in the bedroom. Luckily that wasn’t the case.
6:30 a.m. now and the garbage has been taken out. I look around the room and think of the things that I could add to the garbage but since this mission went off so easily, I realize I can do it every other week. I can add my garbage to the collective and nobody needs to know.
The secret stealth part was just in my mind to make an otherwise dull story a little bit more interesting in my head. Had he actually been home and still in his bedroom, it would have been a different story. Throwing out extremely smelly garbage that contains rotting food that should have been disposed of instantly is bad enough. Trying to sneak it out would definitely be because for a rather loud lecture. They happen far less often as I approach my 2-year residency here but some things even I know across the line.
It’s done. It’s over. I can now continue on my very slow quest to tidy my room a little more.