7/28/11, Kunkel Park, #50

Happy Birthday to me!  

7/26/11, Route 31 South towards circle, #49

Returned to complete the rest of Route 31 South, and easily filled another heavy bag.  It always feels good to pick up large pieces of debris like this sheet of styrofoam, which is such an eyesore and makes such a mess!

7/25/11, Route 31 South towards circle, #48

The facelift that I had guesstimated would take 50 minutes was more involved than I thought, so I will have to return tomorrow to finish it.  I started at Happy School and headed south.  Lots of trash.  I had to leave some behind, as it was sitting along the edge of the woods tangled in patches of poison ivy.

7/24/11, Denow Road Shopping Center, #47

Another extremely sweaty morning crisscrossing hot pavement.  It made me smile when my iPod shuffled up Counting Crow's rendition of Big Yellow Taxi... "Don't it always seem to go -  That you don't know what you got till it's gone - They paved paradise and put up a parkin' lot."  It is the perfect theme song for my last two facelifts.  Anyway, I received positive comments from two very nice people.  Thank you, nice people!  That makes up for all of the others that I am invisible to.  Most people just look the other way while Julie and I step and stoop and step and stoop our way across the landscape dragging a black bag.  Sort of like we are like homeless people or something ... you know they exist but you'd rather pretend you don't see them than actually help, because chances are they are crazy and who wants to deal with that?  And I have to admit that I do feel and absolutely appear a little crazy, doing this in the middle of a heat wave!  I gathered a very heavy bag of trash.

7/23/11, Nassau Park Parking Lot, #45 & 46

Julie and I spent a very long time (and there is a heat wave going on, by the way) crisscrossing the humungous Nassau Park parking lot in front of Michael's and Target. Although we were literally dripping with sweat when we finally dragged ourself into Wegman's for a cold drink, we were extremely happy with all of the trash that we had collected.  

Why?  Why eat three and leave five on the pavement?

7/21/11, Kunkel Park, #44

On this particular day at Art in the Park it seemed like there were pieces of litter everywhere.  Much of it was from some projects that had been done, but an equal amount had been left behind by other park guests.  I gave the campers a challenge they were happy to accept:  See how quickly you can pick up 20 pieces of litter.  Within five minutes, the park looked much better.  

7/11/11, Groton Long Point Lagoon, #43

 My amazing friend Sally did a facelift for me around the lagoon at Groton Long Point, Ct.  Seeing as I am coming down the home stretch, I am incredibly grateful!  As a child, I was very lucky to be able to visit Sally and her family nearly every summer at Groton Long Point, and those memories are highlights of my youth.  I can close my eyes and put myself right back on the beach, the hot sun sizzling the baby oil slathered all over my body, listening to the tinny sound of "Beach Baby" blasting out of my red TootaLoop transistor radio.

7/10/11, HV Quarry Baseball Field, #42

When Julie and I did our facelift along this portion of Route 31, I had noticed that the driveway leading up to the Quarry field was peppered with litter.  But first, I cleaned around the traffic triangle at the intersection of Route 31 and Pennington-Hopewell Road.  The triangle looked a lot tidier without abandoned drink containers and the large, heavy truck tire tread that had been abandoned there.


I was afraid to reach into any of the foliage to pick up pieces of trash.  Call me a baby, but I'm not eager for a repeat of yesterday's ant incident or another bout of poison ivy.


Not surprisingly, most of the garbage was snack bar related.  

7/09/11, I-95 Ramp to Route 31, #40 & #41

Although a facelift was done here on December 4, 2010, it was time for another.  It didn't look too bad from the road, but I single handedly collected enough debris to fill two black garbage bags.  


Our town doesn't look as litter strewn in the summer as in the winter.  This is why: mowers shred garbage up into small pieces that are more easily swept away by wind.  But there are shards of soda and beer cans left behind, and whatever fast food containers have accumulated since the last mow.

The hot, humid weather and difficult glove situation continue to make facelifts less pleasant than usual.  During this facelift, I felt a crawling sensation on my un-gloved left hand and when I glanced down it was covered in small ants.

Small ants sting.

7/03/11, Shop Rite Parking Lot, #39

I know it's crazy, but we can't stay away.  We needed a fast dependable facelift, so we headed back to Shop Rite and were very pleasantly surprised by how oddly ... neat? ... the parking lot appeared.  Seriously, it seemed to be pretty much devoid of it's usual collection of plastic bags, store circulars, and general trash.  We were impressed by someone's efforts to tidy up.


However... there was still plenty for two experienced trash collectors to collect.  I focused on all of the disgusting debris that gets smushed against the turtarriers.  Isn't "turtarrier" a great word?  A turtarrier is the cement block used to mark the end of a parking space.





It was still really hot and humid, and to complicate that, Julie and I found it extremely difficult to get our plastic gloves onto our hands.  (Note to self, keep baby powder in car for those moments).  


It was a successful, but kind of gross, facelift.

7/02/11, Shop Rite Stormwater Basin, #37 & #38

After months of noticing debris in the stormwater basin on the left hand side of Shop Rite, Julie and I just had to clean it up.  I know, we are supposed to avoid Shop Rite.


It started out to be a gorgeous day, but it quickly got hot and humid.  Hot and humid weather make facelifts much less fun, just let me throw that out there.  


We decided to leave our garbage neatly bagged up next to the outdoor garbage cans instead of dealing with the dumpster scene.  We know how that can go...

June?

I am not quite sure where the month of June went.  It was obviously a very busy month.  Perhaps there was a lot of bad weather on weekends?  Was I overwhelmed by the end of the school year and the beginning of Art in the Park?  I do know we did travel one weekend.  Whatever my very good reasons were, the result was a month without a single facelift.  

5/29/11, PEAC Health Club, #36

I wanted to do a face lift in a place I visit frequently, PEAC Health & Fitness.  The landscapers there do a terrific job and it is clearly well maintained.  But, sigh, it is my cross to bear that my eyes are constantly drawn to those little bits and pieces of trash that are missed by most. 

It was an interesting face lift because the trash was so "healthy" compared to every other spot I have cleaned.  

A sampling of the most common items discarded in the parking lot:

those little plastic single use teeth flossers 

pieces of energy bar wrappers

chewed gum or gum wrappers

socks or footies (just one of each) 

Power-ade or water bottles

I was there super early in hopes of avoiding attention, and to my amazement a small group of obviously dedicated gym rats arrived about 5 minutes before PEAC opened to hang outside the door.  I received some good natured ribbing and invitations to clean cars and homes!