Some Neighbors Might Notice Their Garbage Heavier

I had moved shelves to the new place but left papers and magazines they had once held strewn about the floors in the old place. H-Town and The Prophet wanted to bag the papers.

"I was just going to take them out when some recycling bin or garbage can became free," I said. Tomorrow was to be garbage day, and then I would be able to refill the containers.

They wanted to bag them now to make it easier to take the stuff out. I didn't think this was necessary, but I said okay.

But then leaving the old house tonight, I saw the neighbors' garbage and recycling containers standing at the curb. Did any of them sleep in the front rooms of their houses? Would any hear a slight rattle of cans?

I went back inside and brought out some recycling bags. The neighbor across the street had filled his recycling bin half way. I filled it the rest of the way, upgrading his waste by adding Outside magazines to his mere beer cans.

A second neighbor had garbage and recycling bins nearly empty. I filled these as well.

From down the street there were gunshots. I figured I'd better move fast lest someone imagine some connection between the shots and the Mad Recycler on their own block.

Returning to a third neighbor with still more bags, I saw the neighbor at the second house actually standing at her recycling bin, looking at the papers I had added to it. This was after midnight.

I whispered loudly, "I'm adding stuff to everyone's recycling bins."

"What?" she said. I repeated myself.

"I wanted to put this in," she said, hefting a cardboard box full of more stuff.

"Well here," I said. I dropped my stuff, went to her, took her box, and dumped it into the third neighbor's bin. I think fast like that sometimes because I play those computer games where you move things around to solve puzzles.

I then dumped my stuff on top of it, swung the lid shut, and said, "That's cool, right?"

"Fine," she said, turning and going back to her house.

Sheesh lady, just trying to spread a little love here.

Good thing I'm leaving.

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It's Like The Rapture Up In Here

They're all gone. The housemates have gotten their acts together and mostly moved their personal stuff out. I've been detained by excess cleaning of filthy appliances, carpets, trash in the basement, none of which was put there by any present housemates, including myself, but for which, having lived here for 17 years, I feel more responsible.

H-Town and Tater-T moved first, carrying out their boxes a few at a time, making many trips in their mini-vans. Now their rooms are empty. This weekend, only The Prophet and I were left, feeling like it was The Rapture, with our comrades now passed on to a better place -- a place, in this case, with air conditioning. Last night The Prophet made dinner here and left his dirty dishes, and went to the new place. Today I woke up alone.

Stopping over at the new place, finding them settling in, it's different. In recent years in the old house, we never had played music in the common spaces. Now, H has set up a small stereo in the living room and was playing the sugary pop of today, which sounds like either Black Eyed Peas or Lady Gaga, depending on whether the singer is Black or White. They asked me where I would put the disturbing art of wood, nails, and glass that dates back to the genesis of our old house, and I said I didn't know -- it is perhaps too heavy to hang on the drywall. The Prophet mentioned the mantle over the fireplace, and H said maybe it could go there. "The art is dark, and might blend in there. I could accept that," he said.

In the old house, the art was grandfathered in. Now, H-Town decides.

Speaking of the mantle, I said I'd like to put that picture of myself with those old housemates from 17 years ago on it.

"No," said The Prophet. "This is a new house."

"I never want to hear about those folks again," said Tater.

We're getting the truck today. We will keep it for 3 days, moving in the evening hours the big furniture, including my bed. Perhaps tonight I, too, will sleep in AC. But I will have much work to do back here before it's all over.

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Quite a Statement

One friend lent me his paper shredder, but another said it sucks and lent me his as well. The second friend said of the first's, "His makes thick strips. Mine makes thing ones."

Like tagliarini vs. fettucini, I figured. Or Burger King fries vs. home style.

As an afterthought before leaving me to feed the machines, the second friend said that his shredder tends to shut off when it overheats. You can't do anything until it cools off.

So I use the second paper shredder until it overheats. Then I set it aside and use the first one. It also overheats. Then both need to cool. I have 17 years of paper statements to go through, and it's not pretty. I had thought about just burning them, but I wanted to be environmentally conscious and shred them for recycling. Now I'm not so sure. Still, to sit and feed these to a fire would take just as much time, maybe.

The shredder can fills quickly with the fluffy strips. While the shredders cool, I take the can to the recycling bin and dump it in. All that paper pasta is filling the bin fast. I scoop it in my hands and turn it over, as if it were compost needing fresh air. I hold it to my nose and smell something comforting in it. What does it remind me of? It takes me several trips to the bin to finally identify it. It is the same smell as the paper in the Hardy Boys books I loved when life was simple, when I was not getting kicked out of my house with nothing to show for it but the joke of having lived here for 17 years with some 50+ different housemates, all of whom the landlord never knew about, paying dirt cheap rent . . . and after all this time, the joke still feels cut short. I had wanted to stay until I could finally buy a house. Now I simply must move, like commonplace people do.

Seventeen years of statements. This is quite a statement.

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An Open Letter to Former Housemates

You dressed mummies in a second floor bedroom . . .

You took calls in a fundraiser for Hell in the dining room lined in plastic . . .

You wired the living room for heart-popping beats when techno was still technical . . .

You were not too proud to sweat with 20 or so others in our rooms of barren plaster and no AC to watch countless season openers and closers of Star Trek . . . or flicks by Pedro Almodovar or Peter Greenaway or Andrei Tarkovsky.

How much would you pay now to own a piece of your post-college past?

It’s not just a piece we’re talking about. It’s the whole place.

Yes, now your old hippie group home can be yours for the ridiculously high price of just 300,000! Hardly a wall has been painted, a floor waxed, a bathroom mildew stain scrubbed since you left. Everything is just as you left it, but multiplied . . . no, exponentiated! A single washer dryer set in the basement has become two; a few unclaimed clothes strewn about have become heaps; that collapsing shed in the back has collapsed further like the body of some decaying animal once bloated by the gasses of bacterial digestion, but now slowly deflating while snakes and maggots scurry around it.

Act now while supplies last!

(Just please don’t kick us out or raise the rent. If 300,000 is too high for you to pay, name your own price. You might get laughed at now, but soon enough they’ll come around. As one housemate said, “We can live here until we die while the price is 300,000.)

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Class Distinction

It’s a process that few would understand. Certainly not the realtor who sat under the chandelier and proclaimed that the house and property we rent could sell for over $300,000 as it is now (in need of much renovation and central air) if the empty side yard is big enough to build another house on.

Sitting with a more understanding friend under that same chandelier, I explained it thusly: We keep four of the bulbs in it loose enough to not shine, and the fifth tightened until it does shine. That is a bright enough light for that room, though being a point-source, it casts stagey horror-flick shadows. When that light burns out, we tighten another, making it glow until it burns out.

“How many housemates do you have here?” said my friend.

I told him five.

“So each housemate could be responsible for one,” he said.

Yes, I said. And when all five have burned out, then it’s time to change the filter in the Brita pitcher, I said.

It’s a beautiful process. And yet, like the realtor, whatever sucker buys this heap of bricks for $300,000 certainly would not understand.

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Why Did She Do It?

I had simply taken 6 months to complete my registration on Freecycle, a process drawn out partly by the numerous obstacles established by the group’s proprietor, who is quite the net-nanny when it comes to keeping scammers off her site. I swear, you could let your pre-schoolers on there talking about free toilet seats or hernia belts, and they really would be talking about just those exact things, with people not lying about their age or gender.

To register on Freecycle, you have to send an email saying you will follow the rules. And then, to post, you have to follow the rules. Which I didn’t on two attempts each to offer two items, a washer and a dryer, which have been out-of-service for years and probably don’t work. My last rejection was back in May, and I didn’t follow up on it for months. But this past Monday we got the bad news that our landlord was sending a realtor to check out or property with an eye toward deciding whether to sell it in the next year. This means we better be purging. So I took a deep breath and my ADD pills and set out to follow the rules exactly this time.

Within hours of posting, someone responded. She wanted the washer. We worked it out. She would rent a Home Despot pickup truck and come get it after work.

I worried. I had envisioned two guys in overalls from Habitat or something, with ownership of a truck and skills at repair presumed -- not some single woman having to rent a pickup.

I wrote back, “You understand these have not been used for years, right, and might not work?”

She didn’t respond to that, and I thought she might not show up.

I was heading out to clip my nails in the dark front yard around 6pm when a stranger came up the walkway toward me, her feet shushing through the leaves. She was the type who refused to raise her voice, and thus, didn’t respond to my calling out, “Hello?” as she approached. She was in handshaking distance when she said her name. Her truck was down the street -- she was walking house-to-house so she could read numbers.

I directed her to drive around back and I opened the cellar door. Her pickup had come with a handtruck but no straps or ramps. We dusted off the washer, and I said again, “Are you sure you want this,” reminding her that it had not been used for years.

She said she didn’t mind tinkering with it, and did I know what a new washer cost these days?

I reminded myself that these were free. But still, it seemed, since she had paid for truck rental, that she was paying too much.

Housemates came out and gathered ‘round, and we hoisted the washer on to the back of her pickup.

She had not asked about the dryer, but I pointed that out to her. “Sure, I’ll take it,” she said. So we wheeled that out and lifted it onto the truck.

Then we went about the basement gathering up old boxes and styrofoam packing material to put in the spaces in the truck bed to keep the washer and dryer from clanking against each other.

I offered her all the rest of the contents of the basement, but she declined. Indeed, taking the old unused washer and dryer was aid enough for us. We had been talking for years about cleaning out the basement. We had had a yard sale and barely sold anything (and had been unable to sell this washer and dryer); we had talked about taking them to the landfill where we would probably have to pay a fee for dumping them; we had cleaned out a few other things around them. Still, these appliances had remained unyielding in their spots, essentially natural rocky outcroppings, immovable in our basement, a burden persisting.

Now, just because I had managed to send a few emails correctly, someone else had rented a truck and taken them. It’s like a void opened where a bad feeling had been; like being absolved of guilt. Some of our persisting roots have been uprooted. I can see to a day when we might actually float free.

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