I won't do it and nobody can make me.

Mr. Sandy is on a long trip to Far Far Away, and the single mom gig is enough to fray the strongest nerves. Anyone unused to it, such as I, will crack. It's only a matter of how long it will take. The household just cannot run at the same level as with two adults participating. Some things have to give.

This trip has been long enough that I can tell what some of those things might be.

So you might've expected this post to be a mildly amusing anecdote about something one of my girls refused to do. Negative, captain. I'm the crankypants of the moment, and I absolutely fucking refuse to:

Compost.

Our setup is to have a canister on the counter into which I put all the day's food debris. From my perspective, the waste goes away and the empty and clean canister reappears on the counter. A lovely seamless process. Someone takes care of that.

Mr. Sandy, of course, empties it into a garbage bin outside that's been dedicated to the cause. The bin's lid is held on securely by two bungie cords, intricately criss-crossed to foil the raccoons, who are ingenious, and have time on their side. Well, Mr. Sandy must fucking love composting, because emptying the canister is highly unpleasant. Lid off canister, check. Lid off bin... not so easy. The bungies of course pop completely off the thing and disappear behind all the other stuff next to it, or perhaps even under the deck, from where they are not easily retrieved. The compost bin itself is swarming with horrid bugs industriously breaking down all the crap that gets dumped in there, but when you open the lid, they swarm up from the vile-smelling, rotting depths to about oh, face level. Then the goop in the canister inevitably won't come out in one motion, so you can't just dump it and go, and of course you haven't thought to put gloves on, and of course some of whatever it was runs down the outside of the canister, and so on. I know, I know, call the whaaaambulance. But the whole process puts me in an intensely foul mood. So for the record, and for the good of myself and my family, I hereby quit composting.

Now I know composting is the Right Thing To Do, and I know it makes great soil for the garden, but guess what's second after composting on the list of things I don't give a rat's ass about and won't do on my own? Gardening. So there.