I should have

We had giant storms again last night (so: another poor night of sleep, because of the thunder and because my weather alarm kept going off for locations other than my own (I need to get a newer weather radio with better programming)).

I thought once or twice in the middle of the night, "I should check tomorrow morning early to make sure my trash can didn't get tipped over."

I was getting ready to fix breakfast and I thought of it again. (I don't put the blinds up until I'm ready for the day - dressed, hair combed, and all). So I opened the door and looked out.

No rollcart.

It was gone.

What the heck?

I saw a couple of my neighbors across the street out looking around too. And I saw two rollcarts down on their sides. I wondered if one was mine or if they were both the next-door neighbors. (Rental house, four or five guys in their 20s, so I guess  more trash than one 40-something woman generates.)

I quickly threw on some clothes and brushed my hair (the neighbors, after all, were out there) and ran out, with the original plan of checking both the downed rollcarts to see if one was mine.

(The city technically owns the rollcarts. If yours is lost or stolen or you damage it, you're on the hook for a new one. I have no idea what they cost; the one I had came with the house and then when the trash collectors dropped it and broke it, they replaced it and didn't charge me, presumably because it was their fault. It's also kind of a hassle to arrange to get one, and the city will only pick up trash from a rollcart, so you've kind of got an issue if yours is gone).

Then I looked down towards the corner (to the north of me).

There was my rollcart, at the end of the block, some 20-25 feet away from where I set it last night.

I don't know if the wind did that, or if it tipped over into the gutter and then got carried by the flowing water - or if there was some joker out last night messing with cans, seeing as it was only a few on the street affected. (But that seems unlikely, it really was a bad storm - unless someone hit them with their car and dragged mine, but it doesn't show any real damage).

(Once, someone came down the street and upended a bunch of the cans - tipping them so that there was no way to right them without spilling the garbage out. People are kind of awful sometimes. But that was on a clear night)

So I went down and retrieved it. (Our rollcarts are HEAVY, and they are top-heavy, so it's hard to right them when they've fallen over).

I considered righting the cans of my neighbors but - they had spilled garbage out of them, it was wet garbage and I didn't know. For one thing, I'm always leery of going on to someone else's property because sometimes people are funny about that. For another, I really didn't want to touch the wet nasty trash (I have gloves somewhere but didn't think of that in the moment). Also handling someone else's garbage without gloves....you never know.

I have no idea if the neighbors are even home - have not sussed out their work schedules yet and it's possible they went away for today and tomorrow.

I didn't. I feel a little bad about it. (Then again: the other neighbors who were out and about made no move to do it either). I dunno. I'm not driving back there from here (campus) to do it now, though.

And yeah, I know, "Would they have done it for you?" (Probably not, based on the limited interactions I've had) isn't the right question here - and anyway, it's the trash collectors that will wind up dealing with it unless one of the guys was home and awake and went out and took care of it.

But yeah. Oh well, I failed to do something good. I'll fail at that again.