Recyling

So today I threw out my recycling the second time. That’s right. Same bags as I threw out yesterday. Why? Well, yesterday I did some major purging. No, not throwing up. Throwing out. Our apartment had accumulated an insane amount of magazines over the course of the year. It was like watching a Jon and Kate Plus Eight Marathon as I tossed away magazine after magazine with their faces plastered on the cover. I saw the tears in the Trader Joe’s shopping bag forming as the pile continued to grow. I have a habit of knowing that the result of my actions will turn out badly, yet still proceeding, ignoring all warning signs. Like when I know the milk smells kinda funny but I taste it anyway. Or when I read up on how to remove nail polish from my couch and ignored the warnings that nail polish remover will not work (it doesn’t) but doused the cushion in it anyway. So when I lifted the bag of magazines to carry downstairs to the garbage room, I knew that it wouldn’t hold. Yet, I still had to try. The magazines cascaded through the bag, just as you see on television when someone’s grocery bag completely breaks, cans of tomato sauce erupting, apples rolling down the street. Luckily, magazines are a relatively stink and stick-free clean up. Into bag two (and getting smart, bags three and four) I had all my magazines ready to go. I got downstairs to find that my key to the garbage room would not open the door. I fumbled like a moron, and after a good five minutes gave up and left the bags right outside the garbage room door. Flash forward five hours later when I was drunkenly stumbling home from my night out. I almost let out a shriek when I arrived at my door to find that all three bags of magazines had been placed outside my apartment. I felt like I was in a horror movie, something that I thought was dead and gone, mysteriously reappearing. I had a hard time falling asleep last night, thinking that someone had been outside, clearly angry. To think that my bags of magazines infuriated someone so much that instead of bringing them two feet into the garbage room they reached into the bags, found my address and then brought all three heavy bags back up the 9th floor. It gives recycling a whole new meaning. So today, the cycle began again. I brought the bags back downstairs. Key still didn’t work. Hopefully, tomorrow morning won’t bring with it a return of the magazines. But more likely, this is probably one of those situations where I know I shouldn’t have done what I did (left the bags outside the garbage room again), but did it anyway.