Other people might see a marriage counseling session to discuss finances or the division of household chores. My husband and I had one on garbage. In our town, you can put out eight units of garbage meaning that you could put out 8 garbage cans each filled with 4 bags if you wanted. Or you could you put out 7 garbage cans and for example a love seat. I use the love seat example specifically because we had to get rid of ours and yes the sanitation men took it without having to make a special call or anything. The rules also require you to put out any trash to be picked up by 7am. They aren't kidding about that one.
A few years ago the Big Giraffe ran out as the garbage truck was approaching to add more trash to the pile. He got a written warning to not do that again. Ever since that day, mentioning the garbage men seems to conjure up images of people with really big muscles and attack dogs that are ready to chase the Big Giraffe down the street. Hence the marriage counseling session. The really great part is if we had actually gotten a fine, I believe it would have only been ten dollars. For the record, we get written warnings every winter from the post office when the snow plows knock our mailbox down and this has not stopped the Big Giraffe from putting mail in our mailbox or interacting with our mailman.
Our town is switching over to having residents pay for each individual bag of garbage in a couple weeks. Now we will have to buy special garbage bags and if we have a larger item like a love seat, we will have to make special arrangements to have it removed and we have to pay for it. Needless to say I, like many other residents, am taking advantage of these last few weeks to get rid of excess garbage. Unfortunately this seems to terrify the Big Giraffe. I thought it was because our garbage smelled like a dead body due to some chicken that went bad three days after I bought it. I had to put it outside. On the news they said that some neighbors in a MA town had turned someone in because their house reeked of cat urine. Well, our garbage reeked of decay and could be smelled from our driveway. No, the Big Giraffe did not want to exceed our usual one unit of garbage.
After a little bit of coaxing, my statement that I was going to do it without or without his help, we worked together to unearth some woolly mammoths from our freezer that had been there since the beginning of time. Alright since 2005. I swear I could see the Big Giraffe contemplating whether or not it was worse to have possible diarrhea from eating old frozen meat or to get a written warning from the garbage men.
In the end harmony was achieved. Isn't that what marriage is all about? Fortunately we didn't have too many scary items in our freezer, so we ended up with a grand total of two units of garbage.
A. Elliot's Lesson Learned: Some fear the reaper and others fear the garbage men.
Hey Big Giraffe, I love you!Labels: Humor (at least Attempted), Mom-Care |
Wow, I would LOVE eight units of garbage! Does that include recycling? We have to use our own garbage company and are limited to 2 barrels (about 3 bags) and a box of recyclables. Oddly, we always excited by one and had super cranky garbage men who wouldn't take the extra bag.
We've since switched and have a great company. One week, we didn't ge tit out in ti,e (they switched us from the afternoon to the morning and it was the ONE week we didn't put it out the night before) and they even went to llok around the back of the house for our cans. They emailed me that night and said they'd swing by the next day to pick it up. Since switching (and it costs less too for the same amount) we've oddly, used less garbage. We went from two full barrels (plus the extra bag) to sometimes just one barrel.
Our town does pay per bag if you use the town dump, but it costs like $2 a bag! And the yearly dump pass. No thanks!