Oh, I am Fortune's fool

I actually uttered this phrase yesterday, followed by a more mundane, "I can't believe this is happening." I was not in the position of the character originally making the remark, which is to say, I was not being urged to flee because I had just killed my girlfriend's cousin in a stupid duel because he had killed my best friend in an even stupider duel. I was merely trying to take out the trash.

It's really more the occasion for a quotation from Comedy of Errors, but one did not spontaneously come out of my mouth, so here we are.

Raphael shovelled out the back walk and the driveway yesterday, so I, after fulfilling a tedious number of actions of both cat- and Pamela-care, staged six bags, four  light, two quite heavy, onto the upstairs back landing. I then grabbed the heaviest bag, which was the organics recycling, went stealthily downstairs, and shut the door to the kitchen before any cats noticed and tried to help me. Nuit rolled all over the bag containing the organics recycling (read: lightly rotting vegetable scraps, tea bags, and coffee grounds) the last time that I took it out, which did not end badly but was disturbing.

I got everything else down to the first floor and then heaved it outside the back door to await its fate. To the upstairs trash I added three bags of cat-box scoopings from downstairs. When I described the downstairs catbox procedures to Eric, he said, "Oh, so you're making catbox scooping sausage with polyetheylene casings", and that is exactly right. Lydy uses an ingenious device called a Litter Genie (three or four of them, actually). You pull down a suitable quantity of strong polyethylene from a long tube of it coiled up in the upper part of the Litter Genie, tie a VERY SECURE knot in the bottom, and scoop cat boxes into the bag inside the bin with abandon until the quantity of bag that fits in the little bin is full. Then you open it up in the middle, pull down enough more polyethylene bagging to make a second knot, cut it off with the convenient razor blade (complete with plastic guard so you can't cut your fingers), tie the second knot, and  take the resulting sausage out of the bin for disposal. Because it was icy out back and even with ice cleats I am very skittish about ice since I slipped on some and broke my ankle a couple of years ago, I had let these sausages accumulate.

The last two times I did this, when I pulled down to get enough plastic bag to make a knot, I came to the end of the coil of tube. I managed to make some sort of knot, but felt nervous about them, and eventually put two of the three sausages, the ones with inadequate amounts of extra for knotting, into a regular trash bag. So I had this trash bag and one sausage.

I then went through to the front of the house, took off my shoes, put on my coat, hat, and mask, stuffed my gloves in my pockets, and took my boots, with their floor-destroying ice cleats, through into the back hall, the floor of which is covered with ancient linoleum that can't be further destroyed except with a sharp instrument and a crowbar. I sat on the steps, put my boots on, and went outside.

I always take a light bag in my left hand and a heavy one in my right. I made a couple of trips. It was a lovely winter evening, and the path was not treacherous.

I came back for my next trip and picked up my bedroom trash in my left hand and the lone sausage in my right. The upper knot gave way, which caused me to drop the bag, and it spilled the top third of its contents onto the sidewalk. I don't know if I sequestered the wrong bag or just failed to make a good  knot even when presented with adequate amounts of plastic bag. I left the mess where it was while I took everything except the lightest remaining bag out to the carts. Then I bent to untie and open up that lightest bag. My mask, which had been behaving fairly well, promptly fogged up my glasses. I took it off and stuffed it into my pocket, followed it with my gloves, and took off my glasses to wipe them on my shirt. I heard the distinctive tinking click of the left lens falling out of the frames. It does this regularly. I haven't had an eye exam or gotten new glasses because of the pandemic. I had tightened the screw down just the day before, but it's apparently subject to a lot of stressors as I use my glasses.

I had fortunately caught the lens in my hand. I thought of trying to put it back and tightening down the screw with my fingernail, which I do regularly if I am not near the tiny screwdriver. But a very little thought showed that this was not going to work. I put the lens into the pocket of my coat, under a glove. I put my glasses back on. I was able to see well enough to do things, though the entire view was slightly hallucinatory. I have progressive lenses and they did not progress as well with one missing.

I managed to open up the light bag, and then got the snow shovel and used it to put the spilled clumps of used litter and the sausage with its remaining contents into the bag. I tied it up hastily, as if stuff might leap out. I scraped the sidewalk thoroughly, dumped the scrapings onto the snowy lawn, and then cleaned the snow shovel in a convenient pile of clean show. I put the bag into a garbage cart with considerable satisfaction, admired the residue of the sunset, and went inside.

I hope your trash and other mundane details of your lives are behaving better than this.

Pamela