Who's the garbage picker?

That would be me...

I had to work today. A birthday party. I do a lot of them, and it is sooo hard to sit there and be witness to all the waste. Wrapping paper that, if you're anything like me and wrap the gift in the car at traffic lights and finish up the bow in the driveway or parking lot of where the party is, has been manufactured for the purpose of being torn off an hour later goes right in the garbage (side note: I reuse old wrapping paper or have Jacob paint the paper they crumple up and put in shipping boxes for padding or brown paper bags). Paper plates, napkins, cups, plastic utensils go to the garbage too. The food waste is another matter altogether. These huge chunks of cake get portioned off for little two and three year olds. They eat two bites and in the garbage goes the rest. Drink boxes are the worst. A kid takes a sip, puts it down next to half a dozen identical drinks and it's either forgotten or discarded because no one can identify who it belongs to.

Ahhh! It makes my skin crawl. Anyway...today tops all the other times, including the time that a mother dumped this giant, 1/3 eaten sheet cake right into the garbage right in front of my very eyes. I couldn't believe my eyes, and if you know Seinfeld and you rememeber George and the eclair...well, that's all I'll say about that. So today I was cleaning up in the kitchen where the kids ate. I always wipe down the 'disposable' tablecloths and fold them up for future use. Sometimes the parents are really happy about this and take them home. This pleases me immensely. Other times they turn their noses up at them, so I say, "OK, I'll stick 'em in our birthday party box for someone else to use." Other times though, some helpful bystander will come along and in one quick motion wrap up the tablecloth and everything on it, and toss it right into the garbage. They don't even notice all the unused, uneaten things that could be saved.

But today, while I was cleaning up, the birthday mom took entire piles of unused plates, napkins and bowls and dumped them right in the garbage. Like a dozen of each. Like they probably should have just stayed wrapped in the cellophane and could have been returned to the store. I almost had a heart attack. I look at stuff like that and all I see are the natural resources it takes to manufacture them and the places they'll go to sit and decompose for God knows how many years.

I'd already picked four empty pizza boxes out of the garbage by then, so what was a little more? I couldn't wait much longer than the time it took her to take five steps out of the room. In I went and out of the garbage came all the paper goods. Hey, they were just sitting there on the top, totally clean. I also saved half a pizza, two orders of untouched bread sticks, half a bowl of fruit salad, half a veggie platter and three drink boxes - before they made it to the garbage.

There you have it. I'm a big, fat garbage picker.