How My US Postal Service Package Traveled 3,300 miles For A 120 Mile Trip

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published May 11, 2026] 2026

Seriously, US Postal Service, you can do better. I know I have a quirky address but my house has been here for 79 years. You should be able to find it by now.

Now, I will concede that addresses in La Jolla can be problematical. They are basically permutations of the same ten Spanish words in an endless mix and match. I can see why those postal carriers confuse Vista Playa Bonita with Playa Bonita Vista.

That said, I have a file that is literally four inches thick of correspondence with the La Jolla Postal Service about their difficulties in finding my home in the decades I've lived here. Some of the post masters I have correspondence with have been dead for 25 years. (Yes, really.)

To be clear, the regular carriers who deliver five days a week have always been wonderful. The La Jolla Postmaster job, however, has a higher turnover than the swing shift at Jack in the Box.

It's the subs that deliver on that sixth day or during holidays and summer vacations that are the bane of my existence. It would really help if US Postal trucks had GPS systems in them which astonishingly -   given that they are a delivery service - they do not. I don't know what the subs do with my mail but bringing it to my house is not on the list. 

One of the USPS s admitted improvements is a feature you can sign up for called Informed Delivery. It emails you an alert of the mail (often including a photo of the envelope) that is due to be delivered to your house that day. So now, at least, I know in advance what mail I'm not getting.

The USPS problems were recently illustrated to me in a way that made me despair that they could ever stay in business. I ordered a clothing item a shirt - from a company in Los Angeles. They notified me the same day I ordered it April 23 that it was en route to San Diego (120 miles). This was great news until I noted that it was coming by the United States Postal Service (USPS).

Here is the verbatim copy of the USPS tracking of my shirt's Journey Across America over the next nine days:

Shipping Label Created, USPS Awaiting Item

LOS ANGELES, CA 90033 

April 23, 2026, 4:32 pm

Accepted at USPS Origin Facility

LOS ANGELES, CA 90033 

April 24, 2026, 7:04 pm

Arrived at USPS Regional Origin Facility

LOS ANGELES CA DISTRIBUTION CENTER 

April 24, 2026, 8:19 pm

Departed USPS Regional Facility

LOS ANGELES CA DISTRIBUTION CENTER 

April 25, 2026, 3:36 am

Arrived at USPS Regional Facility

SAN DIEGO CA DISTRIBUTION CENTER 

April 25, 2026, 6:05 am

Arrived at USPS Facility

DALLAS, TX 75211 [Huh?]

April 27, 2026, 12:42 am

Departed USPS Facility

DALLAS, TX 75211 

April 27, 2026, 7:11 am

Arrived at USPS Regional Facility

DALLAS TX DISTRIBUTION CENTER 

April 27, 2026, 7:23 am 

In Transit to Next Facility

April 28, 2026

Arrived at USPS Regional Facility

FRESNO CA DISTRIBUTION CENTER [Gah! No!]

April 29, 2026, 2:35 am

Departed USPS Regional Facility

FRESNO CA DISTRIBUTION CENTER 

April 29, 2026, 7:49 pm

In Transit to Next Facility

April 29, 2026, 10:10 pm

Arrived at USPS Facility

HIGHLAND, CA 92346 [NEAR SAN BERNADINO - OK, right direction at least.]

April 30, 2026, 1:54 am

Departed USPS Facility

HIGHLAND, CA 92346 

April 30, 2026, 4:35 am

Arrived at USPS Regional Facility

SAN DIEGO CA DISTRIBUTION CENTER

April 30, 2026, 6:43 am

Arrived at USPS Facility

SAN DIEGO, CA 92122 

April 30, 2026, 2:32 pm

Departed USPS Regional Facility

SAN DIEGO CA DISTRIBUTION CENTER 

April 30, 2026, 2:32 pm

Arrived at Post Office

SAN DIEGO, CA 92122 

May 1, 2026, 12:49 am [that took 8 hours??]

Out for Delivery

LA JOLLA, CA 92037 

May 1, 2026, 6:10 am

Delivered, Front Door/Porch

LA JOLLA, CA 92037

May 1, 2026, 12:19 pm

To summarize, this shirt was mailed the afternoon of April 23 and arrived in San Diego at 6 a.m. April 25^th. I expected to see it later that day. But no! It was then routed to Dallas (why? why?) where it arrived on the 27^th, made stops in various USPS facilities there, and was sent on to Fresno where it arrived on the 29^th. After a nice visit there at their assorted facilities, it traveled on to Highland (near San Bernadino) where it arrived on April 30. It was trucked down from Highland to San Diego where it finally was delivered to my home on May 1.

This shirt has seen more of the North Central Plains area of Texas and the California Central Valley than most Americans. I wanted to ask it: did you have fun? Did you meet other nice shirts? Maybe some friendly handbags? 

But even more I wanted to ask the US Postal Service: why, when this shirt had already traveled 120 miles from LA to its destination city (San Diego) on April 25 did you truck it an extra 3,138 additional miles on a deluxe sight-seeing tour to Dallas (1,183miles) then Fresno (1,558 miles), then San Bernadino (282 miles) then back to San Diego (115)? That doesn't even count its inner city transfers to different distribution centers. Hey, gas is expensive these days. I'm sure you guys get a discount, but really. Do you think this is why you could be losing money? Because it would have been so much less expensive for you to just deliver it on April 25 when it was already in town. In nine days, even walking from L.A. would have been faster.

Sadly, this shirt didn't fit so it is now en route back to L.A. I don t even have the heart to look at the tracking. I just hope it's having a good time.

 

 

Dear Lasers Soccer Parents - Part 3

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published April 27, 2026] 2026

This is Part Three of a three-part series of excerpts from memos I sent to parents as team manager of my younger son Henry s Lasers soccer team. As much as I whine about technology, it was infinitely more difficult to manage youth sports in the pre-internet, pre-cell phone, pre-Google Maps era.

April 1

Memo to: Lasers Soccer parents

From: Inga, Team Manager

(1) Hotel Reservations for State Cup

Don't forget to call the Embassy Suites in Brea to make your hotel reservation! The reservation is under La Jolla Lasers Soccer Team.

(2) Request from Coach Trevor #1

He would like to remind every one of the barbarians, er, lads to bring a ball to soccer practice, even if coming straight from a baseball game.

(3) Request from Coach Trevor #2

Coach Trevor wants to know if the team would like him to return to coach us again next year (starting in August). I should mention that he broached this subject before our disastrous games in Chula Vista today so if he suddenly claims no knowledge of this query...   Anyway, it's something he wants us to think about and hopes to have a meeting about it at State Cup. The requirement for him would be that the boys have a different commitment for the spring season than they had this year. I think this means that baseball players need not apply. No, just that players that also play the b-word sport would be willing to miss more b-word games than they have this year. As in, all of them.

April 13

Memo to: Lasers Soccer parents

From: Inga, Team Manager

(1) This could actually be my last memo. (But don't count on it; it's so hard to let go of a captive audience.) Just wanted to remind people of a couple of details, mainly that if anyone knows of any outstanding debts this team owes, or thinks they should be reimbursed for something, speak now or forever hold your receipt. I want to close out our account for the year as soon after State Cup as possible.

(2) If you need to find me at the Embassy Suites: (a) finding me under Henry's last name/my former married name will get you nowhere. (b) Most of you know my significant other, Olof, who will probably get there before me (since he is coming from L.A.). But for those who don't, he just hates being treated like a mugger-rapist-child molester pervert who hangs around hotel lobbies trolling for soccer players. So yes, he belongs there. (c) This broken home stuff is really the pits.

See you Saturday!

Thursday, April 14

Urgent Phone Tree Message from Inga, Team Manager

Re: STATE CUP FIELD LOCATION HAS BEEN CHANGED!

Please call and leave a message on my home answering machine that you received this information!

Last night Thursday - at 9:30 p.m., the State Cup Director called me and said, "I'm sorry to give you such short notice, but we re changing your State Cup location for Saturday."   Then he put me on hold for three minutes. This, fortunately, gave me ample time to get completely hysterical, so by the time he came back on the line, I was able to instantly launch into a full diatribe: ("Are you KIDDING? Dream ON! We're NOT moving! Forget it! If you're sending us back to Bakersfield, we forfeit! You've got the wrong number! This is not the La Jolla Lasers; they have moved and left no forwarding address. If you think after all this you re still going to get Shelley [hot team Mom whose body had been offered to keep us from playing in Bakersfield] etc. etc."

Fortunately, they are just moving our entire bracket to another field in Brea, to Brea Olinda High School. Since a number of you are driving up on Saturday and going straight to the field, I need everyone to confirm with me that they received this new information as there is no way for us to find out where you are if you go to the old field. For those staying at the Embassy Suites on Friday, the National Science Foundation's copier and I will have produced new maps and directions. All playing times and opponents remain the same.

April 30

Memo to Lasers Soccer Parents

From: Inga, soon-to-be-ex team manger (woo-hoo!)

I swear this really really is the last memo you'll get from me. And this one bears good news!

                                                $$$$$$$$MONEY$$$$$$$

You are getting a refund! The reasons for this are: (a) we added another player (b) unbelievably, everyone paid up (and my cousin Guido didn't even have to threaten them that hard) (c) the Embassy Suites was cheaper than the place we were going to stay in Bakersfield so coach expenses were less, BUT (d) we ended up having to pay for referees at State Cup which I hadn't expected. HOWEVER, (e) we saved ref fees on the one game the other team forfeited, NEVERTHELESS Coach Trevor drove so we had to pay him gas mileage.

The checks - made out to Moms and in denominations suitable for a nice lunch or a massage - are for varying amounts of money. This is due to the fact that everyone paid me a slightly different amount of money (some in blocks, some rounding off my request to the nearest $10 etc.) Some forgot how much I asked for and just sent me mysteriously-odd amounts of money (and hey, I wasn't proud, I took it.) The bottom line is that everyone was charged the same expenses from the time they joined the team. The accounting firm of Price Waterhouse has reviewed this account and OK, maybe not. But if you have questions, call me.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank you all (a) for the gift certificate to Georges at the Cove and (b) that it wasn't a Thigh Master. Henry has even talked his way into being included in the Georges meal. It occurred to me that he ought to know that there are actually restaurants where you don't yell your order through the mouth of a clown. (Could be risky; he might want to go to one of the Georges places again.) So, thanks it was really kind of all of you.

And as the saying goes that's all folks!

 

 

Dear Lasers Soccer Parents - Part 2

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published April 20, 2026] 2026

This is Part Two of a three-part series of excerpts from memos I sent to parents as team manager of my younger son Henry's Lasers soccer team. It was infinitely (understatement) more difficult in the pre-internet, pre-cell phone, pre-Google Maps era.

March 14

Memo from: Inga, Team Manager

To: Lasers Soccer parents 

Oh, no! She s back! And I ll bet she wants money! Right on both counts.

I need to start collecting money. ASAP. Since wringing checks out of you guys tends to be a time-consuming job, I am hoping to collect the rest of the season's fees all in one check. Suffice to say, if we have money left over, you will each get a pro-rated refund. So by my hopefully-correct calculations, attached is a breakdown of the total which includes Coach Trevor's fees for March and April, plus his hotel and transportation expenses for State Cup. I really need a check from each of you as soon as possible. Please (please please) don't make me call you 15 times. As my kids will testify (hopefully not in court; we're working out the terms), I can get very grumpy when provoked. A reminder to only call my work number if it is really really important and/or good news.

March 24

Memo to: Lasers Soccer Parents

From: Inga, Team Manager

(1) Money

I still have not received checks from five people. I hate having to call people and nag them for money. Hence my new team policy:

NO PAY, NO PLAY

So either send me a check (if you haven't already) or call me with a story so piteous that I cry uncontrollably for at least five minutes. And good luck with that. Keep in mind that I am a divorced working mom earning just above minimum wage in an entry-level job. I have a heart of stone. So: NO EXCEPTIONS, including and especially, "It's in the mail."

(2) State Cup

I called the nice State Cup people again this morning as they had promised me details about dates, times, and location of our games by "mid-March."  When I called earlier this month, I offered them my body to change our location from Bakersfield to Allen Field in La Jolla where games in our bracket are actually being played. Unfortunately, a request like that would require more like Shelley s [hot mom on the team] body than mine. [Shelley - call me.] Anyway, their nice recording says that the packets of team assignments are going out by "March 28." The National Science Foundation (who pays me and provides a photocopier) and I will get this information to you as soon as possible.

March 28

Memo to Lasers Soccer parents

From: Inga, Team Manager

Re: There IS a God

OK, so we knew that. But He/She speaks in mysterious ways. Despite the State Cup folks continued insistence that we would be playing in Bakersfield, they have assigned us to Brea, the northern-most community in Orange County. Shelley -  if you had anything to do with this, thank you! And Bill for lending out Shelley. Way to take one for the team! I don't know about the rest of you, but not having to drive to Bakersfield again has renewed my will to live. Our games, you will note from the schedule, are on Saturday, April 16 at 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. and on Sunday at 11 a.m. I also taped onto the schedule their charmingly cryptic directions to the field. I will be getting you a more detailed map of both Brea and our hotel before the game. Please note that if we win our bracket, we do go to Bakersfield the next weekend (April 23-24). Far be it from me to ever suggest throwing a tournament but half of our team is also playing baseball now.

Given the shortness of time available, I contacted the travel agency that is handling hotels for any teams that want their help and in hopes of not reliving the Irving Thanksgiving Hotel Horror of two years ago (80 soccer teams staying at a 17-story high-rise with only king size beds available; the elevator fiasco and the fire we won t go into), told them we wanted something that not more than four other teams are staying at and that there was ample choice of types of beds (including the availability of rollaways.) I called back later today and they'd forgotten who I was/what I wanted and said, "You vant [sic] Bakersfield, right?"

So I called and discovered there is an Embassy Suites in Brea. Working on a rate with them.

BTW, I still haven t received checks from a few people. Tomorrow's memo lists your names!

March 29

Memo of the Day to Lasers Soccer parents

From: Inga, Team Manager

Hotel Information for State Cup in Brea

We are actually going to stay at the Embassy Suites in Brea! There are a couple of qualifications, however. They are primarily a business hotel and so don't want unsupervised kids in rooms by themselves - at least any that they know about and that are causing trouble. They also don't want high-density rooms due to the free breakfast. (If they knew how much these kids eat, it would definitely be a deal breaker.) I'm not suggesting that you lie, but when they ask how many people will be in the room, you might want to develop amnesia about any number over four. In fact, they want a parent or at least a parent of record in every room which I didn't foresee as a problem. I assured them that we are a very sedate, well-mannered family-style group that has hardly ever been ejected from a hotel before.

Money (sigh, always money)

The State Cup people just informed me that we have to pay the ref after each game. Cash. So after all this careful budgeting, I may need to ask you for more money. This makes it more imperative than ever that EVERYONE gets their money to me as soon as possible! I just hate to think of poor Coach Trevor up there in Brea sleeping in his car and eating dog food. I imagine Coach Trevor hates to think of it too. So you know who you are pay up!

[Stay tuned for Part 3 of Dear Lasers Soccer Parents next week!]

 

Dear Lasers Soccer Parents - Part One

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published April 13, 2026] 2026

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a long-overdue file cabinet cleaning project and coming upon a folder of communications as a team manager to my younger son Henry s Lasers soccer team. The Lasers organization, a AA traveling team, professionally coached, seems to be long gone. But as I noted in my column, managing youth sports in the pre-internet, pre-cell phone, pre-Google Maps era was exponentially more difficult. For the next three columns, I am going to revisit team memos from that era which could not illustrate this more clearly.

November 4

To: Lasers Soccer team parents

From Inga, Team Manager, and General Purveyor of Unpleasant Financial News

(1) We need money

What, again? What are those team managers doing with our bucks, padding their kids'  college funds? OK, OK, I've heard it. Our October coaching fees for Coach Trevor plus the Irvine Harvest Cup and State Cup registration fees, plus Coach Trevor s expenses for Irvine were all calculated by my predecessor on the basis of 12 paying players. Since one has departed, we only collected these fees from the increasingly grumpy parents of 11 players. By the principles of Boolean algebra, symbolic logic, deduction, and long division, this means we are short of money. The league maliciously refuses to act like a nice friendly bank and give us overdraft privileges. They do an automatic deduction of our account on the last day of the month for Coach Trevor's salary, so if your kid suddenly doesn't play, you'll know why. (Just kidding. We are mature adults and would never stoop to punishing kids for the actions of their deadbeat parents.) Other payments, for those who have asked, are made by the Team Manager (moi) submitting a check request to the League Manager; I have no direct access to our funds. We have paid both the entry fee to the Irvine Harvest Cup and to State Cup. The league has magnanimously (and because I begged them) come up with our $200 bond for State Cup (separate from our entry fee) but warns that if we do a no-show, we have to ante up the money ourselves to pay them back or consequences too dire to even mention will occur. (Something about your kid playing fullback on a rec team in perpetuity.) I figure if we bring everyone's account balances up to (X), we will have enough to pay the November coaching fees and cover the shortfall mentioned above.

(2) Thanksgiving Weekend Harvest Cup News

In keeping with National Youth Soccer regulations, we will be informed of our game times in Irvine with the absolute minimal notice possible to ensure maximum inconvenience, stress, and difficulty in Thanksgiving holiday planning.

November 16

Memo to Lasers Soccer Team parents

From: Inga, Team Manager

Attached, courtesy of the National Science Foundation's photocopier at my office, are copies of all the tournament information that was sent to me. Frequently asked questions:

(1) When are we playing in Irvine?

Our games are Friday at 12 noon and 6:40 p.m. Games on Saturday are 10 a.m. and 5:35. I am assuming that most people will come up on Friday morning and meet at the field no later than 11 a.m. (I doubt we'd be able to get into our hotel before mid-afternoon.) We'd have to win our bracket or be the wild card to play on Sunday which makes the hotel arrangements problematic, as always.

(2) How do we find out if a practice is cancelled due to rain?

I put that question to Coach Trevor. There was a long pause before he replied, "Why would we cancel a practice due to rain?"   You could hear him thinking, "Boy, these California kids are worse weenies than I thought!"  Keep in mind that Coach Trevor is British and if they cancelled due to rain, soccer would be extinct. I explained that it has nothing to do with the kids getting wet; the problem is that the kids'  cleats tear up the field when it's wet in our arid climate. The roots just aren't very deep. Anyway, if it is so wet that we really can't practice, Coach Trevor will let me know and I will activate the dreaded Phone Tree.

(3) So, Inga, what is the best way to reach you since you work?

Shucks, I was afraid that someone was going to ask that. Four years of Cub Scout calls ruined my bosses' otherwise good natures about my volunteer activities. (The final straw was when someone asked my boss - a world-renowned researcher - what the requirements were for a Wolf Badge.) So I am going to give out my work number but ask that you not call me there for routine calls. Emergencies only. If a man answers, hang up.

(4) Unsolicited weather tip 

Two years ago this team played under lights in Irvine at Thanksgiving. Despite my having grown up in the Snow Belt, I can say with absolute certainty that the coldest I have ever been was at one of the night games at that tournament. With all the hotel'a blankets and towels wrapped around us, we looked like candidates for a list of 10 Worst Dressed Inuits. (The main problem was the wind.) Anyway, since we're playing two evening games, come prepared to channel your best Nanook of the North.

[Stay tuned next week for Dear Lasers Soccer Parents - Part 2]

 

The Dark Ages of Youth Soccer Team Management

[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published March 30, 2026] ©2026

As much as I whine and complain about technology, I have to confess that I am almost berserkly envious of how much easier it has made managing youth sports teams and organizations.

As a divorced working mom, I was always looking for activities to do with my sons since they weren’t all that interested in lunch and shopping never mind getting mani/pedis. Go figure.  Given my work schedule, I wasn’t able to do any volunteer activities during the school day but did manage to put in plenty of hours running Pack 4 Cub Scouts, and managing soccer and basketball teams.

Back in the Paleolithic era of youth activities management, our only sources of communication were phone trees, Thomas Bros maps, and the U.S. Postal service. I’m hard put to decide which of three was the least reliable.

To those who don’t even know what a phone tree was (and lucky you), it can be defined as “an archaic and fundamentally unreliable method of disseminating critical information by purported telephonic communication usually resulting in confusion, blame trading, and players at the wrong field.” 

The way it worked was that the team manager (that would be moi) would call three designated people who would then call their three other designated people. If all went well, the three people I called would have contacted nine more people. 

To say that this rarely worked would be an understatement.  I was often leaving the message on an answering machine without ever knowing if the person got it, or acted on it.  Those poor folks at the bottom of that tree often ended up with communication root rot. 

You remember that old game of “telephone”? The one where people whispered something in the ear of the person next to them, etc. By the time it got to the last person, the message was usually unrecognizable from its origins.  And that, of course, was often the outcome of phone trees.  The recipient of the message had to pass it on accurately which happened pretty much never.

If there was a sudden cancellation or change of field for a game, it was a rare day that everybody got it.  And it goes without saying that they blamed the team manager.

Getting instructions to game fields was another hurdle. I always had the most recent Thomas Bros map book, which for those no more familiar with it than they are with phone trees, was the gold standard of location services.  An early but almost instantly outdated GPS, if you will.  The problem was that our games were often in North County, an area growing so fast at the time that if you only had last years’ Thomas Bros map book, the field wasn’t even there. So saying, “See Thomas Bros page B-65” wasn’t going to help if that page showed a large unincorporated area with a lake and no streets – or field.

Don’t even get me going on the Snack Mom schedule.  Even if I made assignments at the start of the season and passed out a printed schedule, people forgot, or lost the schedule, or were out of town, or traded dates with someone who then forgot. Personally, I think those kids would have survived just fine without orange slices at half time and juice boxes and cookies after the game. But that’s just me. The debate over how healthy the after-game snacks should be was never ending.

This all got yet more complicated for tournaments, especially County Cup, and exponentially more complicated for State Cup, which was invariably in Bakersfield even though there were teams in our bracket playing right up the street at Allen Field.  Please note that Bakersfield is at minimum a five-hour drive from here and requires going through L.A.  I like to think that cuisine has improved up there over the years but I still remember Bakersfield as having the second worst food I have ever eaten. (The worst was at my nephew’s Basic Training graduation in Lawton, Oklahoma. No matter what you ordered, it had chicken gravy on it. The stuff labeled “heart healthy” just had less chicken gravy.) 

Wringing coaching and tournament fees out of player’s parents – checks that I had to deposit at the bank in the teams’ account - was part-time job all on its own, never mind booking hotels.  At the time, Bakersfield’s hotel selections were confined to Abysmal and Really Abysmal.  I’m told they’ve improved.

We did plenty of out-of-town tournaments besides State Cup that also required accommodations.  Some parents wanted more upscale hotels while others wanted the cheapest motel in the area.  But we all needed to stay in the same place. 

I fortunately had access to a photocopier at work (thank you, National Science Foundation!) so I could print off copies of maps and memos, snack Mom assignments, and schedules to hand out at games.  But if a player was not at a game, they didn’t get one. 

Sometimes it all got a little much.  In doing some really really overdue file cleaning, I came across a folder from one of Henry’s soccer teams that I managed that contained a transcript of a recording I put on my phone.  It read:

Hi, this is Inga.

If you are calling to say your son can’t come to County Cup because you will be in Maui, press one now.

If you are calling to complain about State Cup accommodations, press two now.

If you are calling to question March-April coaching fees, press three.

If you can’t find your copy of the Snack Mom schedule but think it might be your week, please press four.

If you are calling to say you can’t host the end of season team party after all, press 5.

If you are calling to ask if we can change the spring soccer practice schedule due to baseball conflicts, do not leave a message because you’re the people who insisted your kid could do both.

If you know where I can get a prescription for Prozac, PLEASE, stay on the line.

(And yes, this was an actual recording that lived on my answering machine for some weeks.)

Interestingly, a lot of people called to listen to that message who weren’t even on our team.  I’d come home from work and see I had 32 calls.  Most people didn’t even leave a message.  Or they’d say, “A friend told me to call this number.  Love it.”  I think there were a lot of other frustrated youth sports managers out there. 

The mere thought that one could manage all of this with MapQuest, group emails, and Zelle accounts is a world I could never have even envisioned.  Had I been able to, I would have foregone being a team manager and made the kids go for lunch and mani-pedis.

 

 

 

There Has To Be A Better Way Than "Lifting Lids"

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published March 23, 2026] 2026

I'm starting to feel bad about being so critical of our local government. But would they stop giving me so much ammunition?

So what, you ask, am I going to whine about today? (So many choices, so little space.) Lid lifters. Yup, those $70,000-a-year-plus-benefits folks that the city has hired to creep around in the early morning hours before the garbage trucks come and look for miscreants who have put plastic bags in the blue recycling bins or greenery in the black-now-gray trash bins.

But especially to look for discarded batteries that have caused some 25 trash truck fires in the last year alone. This is a really big deal. Those trash trucks are expensive.

Lithium-ion and other rechargeable batteries can ignite when crushed or punctured inside collection trucks which can ignite sparks and fire, potentially destroying the entire truck, never mind jeopardizing the safety of the driver.

While regular single-use batteries (those Cs, D s, AA s etc.) aren't designated hazards in some cities, they are considered hazardous waste in San Diego and not permitted in the black-now-gray bins. They can apparently still spark if mishandled, especially lithium types.

A trash truck in San Diego typically costs $350,000-$450,000, but the exact price depends on the type of truck (side-loaded, rear-loaded, front-loader) capacity.

Whether the truck is rendered irreparable by the fire or can be fixed and returned to service is obviously costing the city a bunch of money if we re multiplying by 25 trucks. And that's just in the last year alone.

So I can see why the city would really want to prioritize doing something about this. But paying people $70,000 a year to see if people have left used batteries sitting atop plastic trash bags (they won't actually open your bags) seems an inefficient way to do it. Especially since the goal is to have everyone's trash examined only once per year. You'd just have to get really lucky that that's the week the battery scofflaws chose to discard those AAs in plain sight.

Even if they re not going to open my trash bags, people - I would be one of them - find it very creepy to have strangers rooting through my black-now-gray trash bins. And given the hour, how would we tell them apart from homeless people?

The city maintains that the lid lifters, besides trolling for batteries and propane tanks, are part of an education program to help the city residents understand their totally insane trash sorting rules.

Should they see an item in an inappropriate bin, they will put an "oops" tag on the bin, alerting you where you've gone wrong. If they catch you putting something dangerous - a propane tank, for example - they will put a "do not collect"  tag on it for the trash folks, and you'll have to remediate the problem then call to get your trash picked up another time. (And good luck with that.)

I would like to mention here that once bins are on street, residents have no control over what other people put in them. The public has access to our black-now-gray and green bins all the time since the bins are too big to fit through our back gate. People putting dog poop bags in our green bins (or even the recycle bins if on the street) makes me nuts.

But they could be putting batteries, paint cans or other hazard waste in our bins and, if appropriately disguised, we'd never know.

I have to say that if I were in charge of trying to save the city the cost of repairing or replacing 25 pricey trash trucks per year by discouraging people from putting batteries in the trash, I'd take the Swedish approach which can be summed up in three words: make it easy.

Clean air, clean water, and recycling are all very central to the Swedish ethos. When we lived there, our apartment complex of 32 units had exactly three 30-gallonish bins which were serviced perhaps once a week. That was because every few blocks, there would be an entire bank of big green recycling bins for every type of recycling you can imagine: clear glass, colored glass, every type of paper and plastic, and yes, one just for batteries.

Such is the Swedish priority for recycling that when an American friend decided to try to sneak a few empty wine bottles into her building's trash bins, she found the bag outside her apartment door the next morning with a note full of Swedish umbrage. Swedes can smell recyclables in a trash bin from 30 yards.

My friend sent an email to the rest of us warning us not to attempt this. But if we did, she lamented, be sure not to include mail with your address on it.

Now compare this to San Diego's battery recycling program.

Batteries can be recycled at the City of San Diego Household Hazardous Waste Transfer Facility at the Miramar Landfill on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The service is free for City residents but requires an appointment [italics mine] and proof of residency [italics mine again]. All types of home-use (alkaline, rechargeable) and automotive batteries are accepted. 

An appointment? Proof of residency? How many people are realistically going to do that? They're going to dump them in a trash bag in their black-now-gray bin knowing the lid lifters won't see them.

Now, there are other ways to recycle batteries in San Diego besides the city dump. How much time have you got?

There are various recycling events around the county during the year but none that tend to be near here.

As far as anything that might be even remotely convenient to anyone in our area, Staples stores accept rechargeable and single-use (alkaline) batteries.

O'Reilly Auto Parts at 1501 East Garnet Avenue in Pacific Beach accepts used car, marine, lawn care and motorcycle batteries for recycling but NOT household, non-rechargeable flashlight batteries (like alkaline), i.e. the type Staples accepts.

A little farther afield, Dream E-Waste in the Sports Arena area (4009 Hicock St., suite D) accepts all household, rechargeable, and specialty batteries.

Got all that?

Frankly, if I had $10,000,000 (25 x $400,000) of trash trucks at stake each year, I d be working hard to make sure it was really really easy for people to dispose of anything that would potentially destroy them.

Having a six-hour window by appointment-only one day a week that people have to drive to seems, well, lacking. While the Swedes strive to make recycling so easy you'd be embarrassed not to do it, our local government seems to ask, "How can we make this incredibly complicated, expensive, annoying, and largely ineffective?"  (Balboa Park parking fees, anyone?)

Because if we want to keep batteries out of the city's trash, the lid lifters aren't it.

 

Why Losing A Pet Can Be Harder Than Losing People

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published March 16, 2026] 2026

Recently a news story appeared about Olympic Alpine skier Lindsay Vonn who had hoped to compete again this year in Milan but suffered a career-ending compound tibial fracture during her first run. The headline read "Tragedy strikes Lindsey Vonn."   But the tragedy the article described? Her dog Leo died. Forget the leg.

Having recently lost our beloved 16-year-old bichon-poodle mix, Lily, we understood this well. Her predecessor, our much-adored English bulldog, Winston, died on his own terms of a sudden heart attack. We hadn't had to euthanize a pet before Lily. My husband and I both admit that we are not doing well without her.

I wrote about Lily in my February 5 column and was fortunate to get many wonderfully compassionate responses. Losing a cherished fur family member is, alas, an all-too-common experience.

All of the comments were lovely but there were three that especially touched me.

One was a ten-hanky poem concluding I have left paw prints on your heart. Yes, Lily did indeed do just that.

Another reader noted, "Winston was surely there in heaven to greet Lily when she arrived."   I'm not particularly religious but this image truly cheers me.

And finally, a very kind man noted after his own experience losing a beloved pet: There is no better friend and few harder losses, adding, They say time heals all wounds. There may be exceptions to that rule. 

I couldn't agree more. Definitely feeling that exception.

I've had plenty of time recently to ponder why the loss of a pet is often so much harder than losing a person even people we've loved very much. 

It's well known that animals' pure unconditional love creates an incredibly strong emotional bond. They are the companions who shape your home's routines and rhythms. They love you - and you them - with a steady uncomplicated devotion.

And then, all of sudden, it's really quiet. The silence is literally deafening.

You don't realize until after your beloved fur child is gone how much she's affected every one of your senses. The sound of her paws on the floor, the weight of her on your lap, the pure joy of her silly expressions, the sound of her bark when the mail man breaches the front porch, the softness of her wooly head, and yes, even the ever-present doggy breath. (If there was one way I failed Lily, it was not brushing her teeth enough. But we both really hated it.)

But worst of all, the quiet.

She was a presence who was woven into every corner of my day. When I was outside watering the plants, she was right nearby, chasing rivulets of water down the patio. She provided guard dog duties when I took out the trash at night, and supervised unloading of groceries from the car. As I made dinner at night, she sat rapt while I ran column ideas by her. (She wasn't too pleased with the City Council either.)

Assisting with laundry was one of her favorite activities. Once all the clean clothes were in neat stacks on the bed, she liked to pounce on them like a lioness in the Serengeti, flinging underwear and socks into the air with happy abandon. She especially loved burrowing into a pile of laundry still warm from the dryer, luxuriating in this toasty cocoon. If people ever thought we smelled like dog, that was probably why.

Who would have thought such a little dog could have so much stuff? It wasn't just the custom ramps in every room that we had made to help her get up on beds and furniture after her two knee replacements. She had beds next to my reading chair and another next to my desk. A substantial section of kitchen countertop was dedicated to her arsenal of medications, non-refrigerated cuisine, shampoos, and anti-itch mousses. A whole shelf in the fridge housed her homemade foods. There were water dishes (she drank like a camel) in almost every room. She had a selection of soft fuzzy blankets for snuggles on the sofa or on laps, and for lining her two dog beds. The table by the front door was entirely usurped by leashes, harnesses, collars, assorted car seat belts and of course, poop bags. The hooks in the laundry room stored her puffer jackets (as she got thinner, she got cold more) and her much-hated rain coat. (Fortunately it doesn't rain much here.) We had foam blocks to raise her food and water dishes higher as she got older. It was too painful to look at all this after she was gone but its absence makes the house feel utterly barren. It's like we just gained 1,000 square feet of living space that we absolutely don't want.

One item that I am so glad I saved was Squeaky Pup. Early on, I got Lily a set of six squeaker balls, but she glommed on to one of them and eschewed the rest. Because she treated it like her child - licking it, cradling it tenderly with her paws - it became known as Squeaky Pup. She would not go to bed at night without Squeaky Pup in bed with us. You couldn't fool her by trying to swap one of the same color. She knew Real Squeaky Pup from the imposters.

Our bedtime routine after "final pee" and taking off her collar for the night was to locate Squeaky Pup to bring to bed. It had sometimes rolled under furniture or gotten lost under a blanket during the day. We'd carefully search every room, both of us looking under desks and behind doors. She loved this ritual. The funny thing was that she often knew exactly where it was but just enjoyed the sport of hunting for it. If I truly couldn't find it, I'd shrug my shoulders and say, "Lily, are you sure you don't know where it is?" And then, a minute later, she'd appear with it.

Squeaky Pup now resides on my desk. I'd give anything to be searching for Squeaky Pup with Lily again. It was a nightly conversation, a shared game, a cherished rite, her sense of humor in action.

She's been gone for some weeks now but the entire day still feels wrong. I think one of the hardest parts I feel is not being greeted with a white bundle of ecstatic wiggles when I come through the front door. My husband, although always glad to see me, just isn't an ecstatic wiggles kind of guy.

The empty floor spaces where Lily's beds were just haunt me as well. I was able to move things around the kitchen counters and in the refrigerator but there is nothing to be done about the bare spaces on the floor where Lily would be sleeping nearby when I was reading or writing.

She made everyday tasks seem warm and connected. Now they just seem like chores. How am I supposed to do those things alone?

She and Olof shared many rituals as well, especially their daily walks. They also watched a lot of sports together. She was much better at feigning interest than I was.

Even her doggie friends miss her. They stick their noses through our gate and wait for her. They seem puzzled when she doesn't come.

Sometimes the smallest stuff really gets me. Last week I found a can of organic pumpkin - a chief ingredient of Lily s homemade food - tucked into a corner of the counter. I just completely lost it. Ditto picking up her ashes, and the plaster cast of her paw print.

Olof has often remarked in recent weeks that a light has gone out in this house. And so much joy with it. We're just so profoundly sad.

My main goal these days is trying to channel grief into gratitude. I'm heartbroken that I'll never again have her snoozing in my lap making soft coo-ey noises as I stroke her head. But I'm grateful I had so many opportunities to do so because the pleasure was most definitely just as much mine.

So yes, Lindsey Vonn, your fellow pet owners get it. Shattered leg? Bad news. Loss of the beloved Leo? Absolutely tragic.

                                                                                  Lily

                                                Lily and the much-hated rain coat

                                                Lily and Squeaky Pup

                                                Paw print - heart breaking