It's Not Easy Being Green

I took my last Sunday drive on Saturday morning. I knew my car would sell this weekend, so I took some time to just drive around one last time. I specifically went looking at places I couldn't get easily on a bus or via the subway, such as Pacific Heights or anywhere on top of a hill.

I'm committed to living within the mass transportation system here. Doing this will save me $225/mth for a parking space in the building garage, plus other car-related costs.

I could only do this in San Francisco or New York. Even Chicago's mass transit systems isn't quite good enough to do without a car.

So, one day later, my bank account is a little more abundant and my carbon footprint has been reduced.

Against the influence of my worst vices, I guess that I'm green. I never wanted to be one of those people who were fanatical about the environment.

And I'm not one. If I can't figure out if something goes in the recycling barrel, I still throw it in the trash. In Kansas City, they could refuse to pick up the recycling if something wasn't just so.

I have no idea what the rules are here. Like if you forget to rinse a can, does it still go in the recycling? I thought that they can't use something that has food on it. Maybe that isn't the case anymore. I am not sure, so I stand there debating in which sack to throw the can or food container every time.

I always feel like that stereotypical Indian on the horse from the 1970's is passive-aggressively shedding a tear at me if I can't figure it out. He sheds those tears like a machine gun in my environmental nightmares, curse him. Being Indian only puts more of a burden - people think we aren't allowed to be careless with the environment like everybody else.

For a person with ADHD, it is pure hell sorting garbage, frozen with indecision. I stand over the various sacks over-thinking it and growing more irritated at being put into the place of feeling like an environmental baddie for not being clever enough to memorize upteen million rules for umpteen million pieces of trash.

It was so easy, in those halcyon days of yore when I just put everything into one bag. Now, it's just pure anxiety and frustration. To further drive up the stress, now for private homes, they threw in the green barrel for compost items.

It hasn't come to my apartment building yet, but I'm going to be even more flummoxed when it does. From watching the restaurants do it, it includes a lot of things that one wouldn't think go in it, like paper napkins.

But as of today, I am using less resources to live on the planet without a car. I guess that feels good.

I've worked out most of the problems. I'm going to try to make more trips to the store - just buying what I can carry up the hill easily. It will give me more exercise, I'm telling myself.

If my ADHD wins out, which it probably will, Safeway delivers groceries for $8. You order online and they deliver it within a two hour window on the day you choose.

If that doesn't work, I can rent ZipCars for $8 an hour to run errands. They are conveniently placed all over San Francisco.

Please, don't hate me because I'm green.

I'm probably hating myself more as I try to divine the will of the trash gods, cursing my indecision and angst.