This morning while I was in the middle of executing a perfect "Y" turn to get out of my garage and head up my driveway, I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw that I'd nudged my garbage bin and it had tilted backwards. I put the car in park and as I walked over to right the bin, I realized that it's twin, the recycling bin, was missing.
My bin nudging had sent the recycling container sailing down the hill below our driveway. The garbage bin was empty but our recycling only gets collected every other week so it was overflowing. A week and a half's recycling had now fluttered down to rest on the hillside.
When I was cleaning yesterday, I dumped the shredder wastebasket into the recycling bin so there were teeny tiny strips of paper intermingled with the plastic berry containers, tin cans, bits and pieces of aluminum foil, newspapers, magazines and junk mail littered all over my backyard. It was a major mess. I would have to wade in leaves to get to the bin -- leaves that are, I might add, the same color as snakes.
Earlier in the year I made a bargain with all creepy crawly things that if they'd stay out of my area, I would stay out of theirs. This hillside was clearly not my area. It seemed wrong to welsh on an arrangement that had been working so splendidly.
What to do? Honestly, my initial impulse was to let Jerry deal with it but I immediately discounted that as being a little immature. It was high time that I put on my big-girl pants and handled this mess myself.
I broke into my secret Halloween candy stash and ate three miniature Butterfingers. Fortified by chocolaty goodness, I grabbed my jingly snake bracelets and searched the garage until I found my rubber knee boots -- these boots are not the cute kind like the girls in Charleston wear when it rains. These are brown rubber farm boots which I wear when I don't know how high whatever muck might be that I'm about to step in. I pounded them upside down on the pavement until I was satisfied that all the spiders were gone, crammed my feet in them and embarked upon my task.
It took two and a half hours for me to pick up the recyclables and drag the bin back up to my driveway. Although I was serenaded by my neighbor dog during the entire time, the only living thing I saw was a Daddy Long Legs. That's all I saw. The whole time I imagined thousands of beady eyes staring out at me from under piles and piles leaves.
If, like my husband, you've ever thought to yourself, "Chris stays at home all day. How does she spend her time?" Well, now you know. Not quite what you'd imagined, right? Me either.
.
Last night was different because in addition to our sweet bluebirds, yellow and purple finches, tiny woodpeckers, Carolina wrens and cardinals, about fifty turkey vultures arrived. I started wondering if they knew something about me that I didn't know yet and was relieved that they weren't circling. Man, those birds are big!
It was shortly after the vultures were perched high above us in the trees that we realized it was raining bird poop. (We must have been the vultures' second stop, right after some road-kill buffet.) It was splattering everywhere and Jerry, whose newly repaired brand-new car was parked out in our driveway, ran outside and desperately started whacking two sticks together. (Remember the stick scene in the movie "The Parent Trap?" It was kind of like that only louder.)
Immediately the sky was black with birds. The jumbo avians swooped gracefully into the air and lit a few hundreds yards down into the woods where they remained undisturbed until they caught their collective breath and flew onward on their journey.
Before bed, Jerry covered his car with a couple of old sheets, just in case.
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Even though it's going to be February tomorrow, I am still sweeping up Christmas needles in my living room every time I vacuum. The weird part is, our tree was artificial.
