A Good Morning for a Reality Check

If you ever live with me the first thing you should know, and you'll find that it's very true after just a week, is that I am not a morning person.  I can sometime pass myself off as being one, like when I worked at B's and had to open in the mornings at 5:30 and would get up at 3:45 and would be completely awake by the time I took orders on the back drive window at 6:00 sharp, but I'm just not.

In general my morning routine is this:

• wake up, go to the bathroom
• find my way back to my bedroom (which is like five steps from the bathroom, but if the hall is dark and I'm still asleep, those five steps are hell) where I will attempt to locate my glasses
• glasses on? glasses off? whatever, I go to the kitchen to get a glass (a bowl and spoon if I'm eating cereal) and get the milk jug out of the fridge
• I'll sit at the kitchen table, pour myself a full glass of milk to take with my morning meds and then eat whatever food I've taken to the table for breakfast

After breakfast, I'm generally in an alright mood as long as it isn't too early and there isn't too much noise.  The best advice I can give anyone who lives with me on how to deal with me in the mornings: don't talk to me unless absolutely necessary, or at least wait until I leave the kitchen table.  Which, in all honestly could be a while because that's where I wakeup.  And just because you see me going through my Twitter feed while eating my cereal, that does not mean I'm ready to talk. Just a FYI.

Why am I telling you this? Well, since my brother has been home for a while now, he hasn't really gotten the point yet. Or if he has, he ignores it just to annoy the shit out of me, and don't tell him this (he probably already knows) but it's been working.  He'll bang on the bathroom door when I get up, or he'll be talking so loud while I eat my breakfast that it just makes me outrageously cranky. Or, he just make snide comments as soon as my bedroom door opens.  Today however, none of this happened.  I had a good morning!

I promise there's a reason to this post...though I must admit since I'm in a good mood I'm being kind of long winded today.

As I mentioned yesterday, since the weather has been oh so lovely this week my brother and I have done some work outside.  Well, this work has lead to a massive mountain at the curb by our trashcan and the mountain has been growing.  It is definitely an eye sore, but the way we look at it, at least it's not just sitting around the property anymore!

Today is our trash day and let me tell you, we're pretty good about making sure the trash cart is out at the road for our trash man to pick up in the mornings.  Even when we do forget, our trash man will come up to the house and get it from the porch and take care of it, something that the other company we had before never did and definitely something this guy doesn't have to do as a part of his job.  But he does.

Anyway.  We didn't expect much from the growing mountain to be taken today when the trash man came around.  We definitely hadn't expected for the trash man to come knock on our door and have a little chat with us.  He told my brother that he didn't have enough room to take everything today but that he would take as much as he could and then he'd come back for the rest of it.

Our trash man speaks very poor English and though we can get frustrated with that sometimes, we couldn't when he was all smiles and so friendly.  When he and my brother got done talking, he reached out to shake my brother's hand and before he turned to go back to the truck, he wished us a Merry Christmas.  We watched as he dumped the four carts we had out there and threw some of the stuff from outside into the back of the truck.  He even ran after two plastic bags that got picked up from the wind so they weren't just laying in our yard.  Before he took off to go to the next house he waved at my brother and I.

My dad who had been in his bedroom came out and asked what was going on when he saw us standing by the window.  We told him about the trash man and my dad smiled.  He told us that our trash man was the friendliest person and explained how every time he sees him he's got a big smile on his face and always waves.

It was then that I realized something.  Our trash man is probably one of those people that may not have a smooth life.  His family might be struggling from paycheck to paycheck.  For all I know, he could be having the most terrible year of his life but he seems to love his job. A job that a lot of people wouldn't think twice about.  Our trash man doesn't have to wave at us when he drives by, nor does he have to smile and say hello, he sure as hell doesn't have to do us favors like coming to the house to get our cart or taking more of our junk than he's supposed to.

The mystery behind our trash man is interesting to me this morning because I've realized, once again, how much I take for granted.  Like all this junk we have around our place.  Sure we don't use it, but at one point we did and there's a lot of memories behind that stuff.  Like all those garden hoses that are so worn we had to pitch.  We used to have massive gardens every summer and I can remember hours were spent with my family and some close friends tending the garden and then processing the produce throughout the summer.  Those are memories that I sometimes forget about but I find are really wonderful ones.

I feel like in the midst of my rambling I might have forgotten the main point to this post but I do know that I'm thinking more of all the positive things and the blessings I've had this year.  Who knew that our trash man would give me such a reality check?  I think I might even try to get up early next Thursday to greet him outside and tell him thank you.