Early in the pandemic I was a Bob Jones Trail die hard. James was home and so I’d submit a request for leave and hit the trail as often as I could. But these days I’m only free in the early evening and so the next best thing is what I call “The Loop.” It’s basically about a 45 minute circle from our house up the mountain, down the mountain, and up the mountain. It’s peaceful to then cool down on Treehouse Bench.
I was noticing a lot of trash of late and so last week I talked James into doing The Loop with me while I also used my handy dandy trash grabber for some local community service. I got the blue doctor’s glove and the thing that looked like Quip toothbrush packaging and at least one beer bottle. Down along the canyon I went to get a plastic bottle full of discolored water and James yells at me, “Don’t get that! It’s a bottle full of pee.” And naive me is like, “Naaaani? Nah.” (OK, I didn’t speak Japanese. But I totally should have.)
And then he gives me the backstory on how bottles such as this come to be and are flung out of people’s pickup truck windows. I added that pickup truck part which I’m sure is a veritable stereotype but based on the forensic evidence, this bottle is totally from a pickup. I use my grabber to put it in the bag as I do NOT plan to walk past it now every day and have to look at it, and am glad for this life lesson given I might have emptied it in order to recycle the bottle.
A few nights ago I’m enjoying a golden, sparkling wine beverage and Jake is like, “How can you drink that? You won’t even drink water out of yellow glasses!” Then he gets a huge case of the giggles at his own wit.
He’s right. At some point I proclaimed I will not drink anything from our yellow glasses. And now…. yellow water bottles.