Stuck Somewhere

I was stuck in a basement for 45 minutes. I was waiting for a ride and I had nothing to do. There was a bar nearby but I had already spent my budget for the night. I didnt have a book, something I always carried as a youth before I got a smartphone. 

In high school I read Puerto Rican novel called  La Guaracha del Macho  Camacho which is roughly  translated to Macho Camacho's Song (But a spicy song like a calypso or salsa). Its good and it's been translated into English. It centers around a giant traffic jam and that is where I learned to always have a book. Dog eared paperbacks from drug store racks with the spines splintered. This was Puerto Rico and there was always a jam or a line. 

But, I didnt have a book. The emails from work disappointed me as I couldn't effectively answer them from my phone. I'll buy this Monday knowing I could if I could get the purchase requisition form on my phone. "Boss, can I get a loaded up tablet computer like a surface? Thej I could always be on and only be stopped by the physical stuff. Needing to pull TP out of toilet and carry supplies up to rooms. What do you think?"

But my boss rarely answers my messages. 

I'll write in my blog. Type out a post like those phone novels in Japan pounded out with a smartphone on the bullet train.

What about? So I reach for a writing prompt and get this in a cursory Google

IT IS America Recycles  Day! Oh boy...recycling is my jam. No joke. I worked two years for the National Recycling Coalition helping run the ReycleMania competition. Colleges measured what they threw out an won prizes. Most recyclables. Least waste. It was a lot of spreadsheets and sitting. It was a remote position with my boss in South Carolina and me in Ohio. They paid for a phone an I remember once at 8pm getting a call and it was from a college in Hawaii. I was excited. "Hey, how can we do better at this?"

Now, I dont know but I was just out of college and felt the world could change. "Well this is what we did at my school. We picked up cans after footballs games. Hawaii is a bottle bill state, right?"

The recycling at our home is so clean. It's the pure cocaine of recycling right from the jungle lab and not muddied by dealers and middlemen. The recycling industry is changing and China no longer wants out junk. Any contamination and they reject it. Cleveland is awful at recycling. The local news sensationalize it and how they suck. They put a tracker in a dumpster and the load goes to a regular dump in Lorain County. I don't take my recycling to the bin by work but instead give this garbage a ride and take it home to set in my suburban bin.

I cringe at the bins with cans wrapped in plastic bags and flimsy yogurt containers! A neighbor shoved a plastic chair in the bin once! You are wrecking it for us all! 

I know the younger me would shake their head at the current me who is not as aggressive a recycler. Much more keen to say "fuck it" nowadays I dont haul my bottle from the pizza joint that doesn't recycle all the way back home. I already give a box of trash a ride each week from work.