Snuggled as I was into our Adirondack Christmas, I missed the piles of snow. But rest assured, I got the piles of garbage. What the heck! Will someone get going and clean this city up! Someone, return it to My Beautiful New York? (Bloomberg, it’s a good thing this is not an election year.) This blog is dedicated to all of the beauty of New York, but lately it’s hard to find it beyond the piles of trash.

Tuesdays and Saturdays are usually pick up days outside of our apartment building, but I’m pretty sure nothing’s being picked up around here besides bed bugs. (Kidding.)

After a juicy conversation with my pals at lunch yesterday (about Toddlers and Tiaras), I was trying to get back into the swing of writing by reading the paper (I know, I know. There’s got to be a better way.) I was reading the New York Times about garbage pickup.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/nyregion/03garbage.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

There in the paper was a photo of my work friend Judith Santiago. Funnily enough, I had just bumped into Judith the day of the photo, Sunday, at the new Trader Joe’s on 72nd Street. I had met her mother who appears in the photo too.

I messaged Judith on Facebook, “You’re such a terrific writer, I always knew you’d make it to the New York Times! (But it’s only a photo of you today! Look on page A17.)”

Judith is very pretty and this photo does not do her justice. But the picture does capture the mountains of trash and the disgust we all feel as we walk around  them. Unlike the melting snow, the  trash piles do not seem to be disappearing; instead they are piling up.