Dumpster Diving

Yesterday I went dumpster diving. Not because I’m a zealous re-use advocate and not because I’m an environmentalist and not even because I was hungry and there was no food in the house (which would be the most likely reason for me to give dumpster diving a shot). No, the reason I went dumpster diving is… wait for it… because I dropped the cat’s poo-trashcan in there.

Background: I have a small, plastic tightly lidded trashcan I keep near the litter box. I bag the poo each morning in a plastic grocery bag, drop the bag in the trashcan and walk the big trash bag containing all the small bags to the dumpster once a week. Yesterday morning I dumped all the old litter into the trashcan and gave Mr. Snowball fresh, new litter. Then, since the plastic trashcan was so heavy from all the extra litter, I carried it to the dumpster versus just taking the big trash bag out and carrying that.

As I upended the trashcan, the handle on the trash bag got caught on the handle of the trashcan (still with me?) and the weight and momentum of the heavy litter yanked the trashcan out of my hands and carried it to the bottom of the dumpster where it was just out of reach of my fingertips to haul it back in.

F**k.

I spent a solid three minutes bent in a pike position over the open door of the dumpster, convincing myself that if I just waggled my fingers a bit harder, they would grow the extra 1/8” necessary for me to grab the trashcan.

I hauled myself up on the little door ledge but now I was too tall to reach into the bottom of the dumpster so I jumped back down.

 I considered leaving it and buying a new $8 trashcan, but I’m cheap.

 I finally dragged a big cardboard box out of the trashcan, stood on that and retrieved my kitty-poo carrier. Then I promptly went back into the house and showered again because even just leaning over into a dumpster is gross.

And if all that wasn’t bad enough, I for some reason felt compelled to blog about it.

The End