and the beat goes on

The Vancouver civic strike is the beast that just won't die. Piles of trash are starting to appear in parks, despite the efforts of a number of park users to pick up what they see. Our trash bins are overflowing, though I am taking much solace in knowing that our relative impact has been small. I am rather amazed at the amount of trash the other two families in my building produce - because we're still not doing that great a job of being trash-less.

Andrew and Sebastian took on the job of sorting their recycling so we could move our own growing pile off of the fireplace mantle and out into the blue boxes. He is amazing - he made two over flowing blue boxes fit into one, with room to spare. Allowing our own sizable pile to fill half the other box (I think he is magic).

During the strike, not only are parks getting more trashy - but so is the beach. Today's trip was actually quite eye-opening, mostly it just pissed me off that people can't fucking pick up after themselves. Thankfully, the trash-cans are getting emptied (occasionally) and so there was somewhere to put the trash we picked up. Oh, I forgot to mention the rat we saw run across our path on our walk last night - good times!!!

That said, I am glad the beaches are still open, with bathrooms that are being occasionally attended to. With the pools closed there isn't anywhere else to go for a dip, though driving to Burnaby, like my friend Kristi did yesterday, is not such a bad idea.

Here, again, for the benefit of all my Vancouver mama-friends is the wonderfully comprehensive list from yoyomama.ca of things to keep this strike from wrecking what's left of summer.