Suzy Says

The road to town

The town

You have to get a lot more up close and personal with your garbage here in Hooterville.

I mentioned earlier that I invested in allegedly animal-proof garbage cans when I moved here. I say “allegedly” because so far they have remained animal-proof, but I’m figuring that it’s a case of “them that have and them that will”, and one of these days I’ll walk out with yet another armload of empty wine bottles to discover that a hungry bear or a determined raccoon has stopped by for a snack and left the leftovers all over the place.

Even when unmolested, though, the cans of garbage tend to get pretty gross pretty fast. And it’s winter (or at least winter-esque), so when I think about what it will be like to lift the lids and add to the unlovely contents in the height of summer, my tiny mind runs away screaming.

There’s no garbage collection, so when the cans are full and/or I can’t take it anymore, it’s time to haul them to the dump. You have to pay to leave your garbage there, presumably for a decent burial, but recycling is free. How’s that for motivation?

The truth is, I do actually have garbage collection. It’s yet another service provided by the long-suffering Rob, who must at least once a day reflect on the fact that the “worse” part of his wedding vows eighteen years ago was not supposed to include taking out his sister-in-law’s trash, relighting her stove’s pilot light, and answering her ridiculous questions on a daily basis.

I came home the other day to find that he had not only emptied out the cans, he had compressed them into fewer cans so it was cheaper. How’s that for thoughtful? He also puts up with my compost contributions. Compost grosses me out, so I take it over to Megan and Rob’s compost box, where I steel myself to open the lid, dump it in as fast as I can, and run away, trying not to scream. All those bugs! Eeyagh!

By the way, it’s a total mystery to me how there can be so many spiders in my house and so many bugs. Maybe my spiders are slackers. As far as I’m concerned, they can play Catch Me If You Can outside.

I went to the Rite Aid today in the big town (not to be confused with my little town, pictured above), and I have to say that my current garbage situation made me think a lot more about all that wasteful packaging. Why is hand cream inside a box when it’s already in a plastic tube? When I looked at my Chico Bag of drugstore items, all I could think of was breaking down the packaging so it would take up as little space as possible in the recycling cans.