Something just snapped

This has been a busy week - evening meeting all evening Monday, evening meeting all evening last night. (I'm not going to get down to Twin Oaks tomorrow: I had no time at all to work in the garden, and I won't today, because (a) I have to do some kind of Federally mandated "incident response training" (It's an online thing, I've been warned it can take up to six hours) and (b) it's very likely to be storming - and hailing - by the time I get off campus. (And if my car gets dinged by hail because I'm tied to the computer getting my NIMS certificate...well, I will be very displeased).

Anyway, I think I'm feeling it. (Also, my allergies have kicked up for another round. Something new must be flowering. Pecans, probably.)

I was driving over yesterday to pick up the van to take half of my ecology class out into the field (It's a long story.... I have to split the class in halves because I have no one else who is free who is "certified" to drive the big vans. It's a major headache.)

Anyway, as I was driving over, I saw a fast-food restaurant bag in the middle of the street.

And I just snapped.

You have to understand: this Saturday is the city trash-off day. I participate in it because I am at least nominally a member of the city beautification group and it's the one form of "Civic Engagement" that I do (another long story there about Civic Engagement and the expectation that we do it, but I won't go into it). So, on top of a long and frustrating week, I get to spend half of my Saturday picking up trash.

The thing that frustrates me a bit about the trash-off days is that the population of people who PICK UP trash, and the population of people who TOSS OUT trash from their cars are two different populations. So no one ever learns the lesson that there is someone out there arduously picking up their old Sonic drink cups, or their empty cigarette boxes, or the beer bottles they decided they had to ditch before getting home...

The other thing that frustrates me is that there can be something like 300 man-hours (100 people working for 3 hours) spent picking up trash, and in two to three weeks it can look like no one ever picked up any trash.

So anyway, seeing that bag out in the street, I just snapped. And I apostrophized to the (absent and unknown, of course) people who threw that bag out of their car:

"Oh (not very nice word). That's right, just throw your (another not very nice word) trash out of your car. Go about your (yet another not very nice word) merry lives; there will ALWAYS be someone who comes behind you and takes on the (and another not very nice word) responsibility and picks up your trash, both literal and figurative, for you."

I think my responsibilities are starting to wear on me more than a little.