Offal I Can't Refuse

The news this week is brought to you by Sara over at Lovely Listing. Only not really. Not in the sense that she gave me any money, or asked me to mention her, or even knows who I am or has ever read The House and I. For all I know, she’s a member of some vast right-wing conspiracy and wishes I would go step on more frogs so she can out me for the plague-wrecker I am. But she’s my new favorite blog, so I’ll talk about her till they come make me stop!

See, what she does, is: she takes photos from real estate listings -- really ridiculous photos of strange rooms and odd angles -- and gives them these little captions that make you laugh and laugh. Go there! Now! Look! Read!

(For future reference, she is in my blogroll under the name “My Listing-Lover.”)

(For past and present reference, those of you who’ve been in my blogroll for a while, you are now all called “My Something-Lovers.”)

(For search-engine reference: this is not a sex thing – although I wouldn’t mind a couple thousand of those porny hits.)

Now, on to the news of the week:

I know it will shock you to discover that I'm featuring an item this week that affects only me – well, me and 54,000 other folks, but I don’t give a holy hoo about any of them. It comes from Sunday’s Boston Globe, the South Shore Section, and there is no link. I had to type this. So I took the liberty of adding editorial comments. I also re-paragraphed it a little to make it easier to read in this format. Here goes:

TOWNVILLE [where I live] —

Residents don’t have to sort their recycling anymore. [can I have a HOLLA!!]. Glass, plastic, cans, paper, and cardboard can all go in the same recycling container [I’d throw in that final comma, too, but that’s just me]. And residents no longer need to use a special recycling container, but can throw everything in a regular trash barrel [oh my god, I think I’m hyperventilating], which they mark with a recycling label provided by the Department of Public Works [oh, crap, so I can’t just chuck it in the bin with the regular trash? Balls].

The change to “single stream” recycling [meaning: we take it down the road and dump it in the River, so why get your hands dirty?] started this month when the town switched its waste disposal contractor to Capitol Waste Services for curbside collection [why not Capital Waste Services, I wonder? Ah well, if anybody googles them and finds anything bad, I don’t want to know about it. Hear?].

“We anticipate increased recycling [erm, you mean I could have been not doing it all along, using sorting as an excuse? Balls!] and increased recycling revenue [lemme hear you say “tax cut!” and then we’ll talk], just because this is easier [you know what would have been really easy? A little notice in the mail, or a door tag, or something. Who the hell reads the Globe South section? Besides me, I mean.],” said DPW director Robert O’Connor.

Among the items that can’t be recycled through the program are plastic bags, fabric, foam packaging and Styrofoam, aerosol cans, and food waste [so what you’re saying is: you haven’t invented any new technologies or anything. Got it. But, um, while we’re at it, can we get a ruling on used tin foil? It’s been a point of contention at the AssVac for a while.]. More information [blah, blah, blah]…

Okay, this is me again. And you might want to stand back and block your ears, people, because I’m fixin’ to shout…

I DON’T HAVE TO SORT MY RECYCLING ANYMORE!!!!!!!!!!!

This doesn’t change much in terms of my actual daily life, of course. I may not have to separate the paper from the cans, but I do still have to pick out the stryofoam when Johnny throws it in there (and maybe used tin foil), and I do still have to keep it all apart from the cigarette butts and the cat poo. Although you really ought to be able to recycle cat poo, don’t you think? I know a dog or two who have a few ideas in this department, if the DPW is interested…

But if you’ve known me for a while, you know how much I hate recycling. (Don’t remember? You can read an oldy but particularly Goody post right here.) I hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, so every little bit of my not having to do it counts. In fact, I’m having tiny little lazy-orgasms right now, just at the idea that I could go get a Rubbermaid-type bin with a decent lid to keep the rain out, slap one of those whatchacallit stickers on it, keep it outside with the regular trash barrels, and never again have to keep two weeks’ worth of trash inside my house!

I think I need a tiny little cigarette.

Of course, though, that would mean walking outside with every box and can, instead of just to the back hall. Which would probably mean some sort of temporary transfer bin. Which would inevitably become my job to empty. Just like the disgusting, smelly, fruit-fly-laden compost guck. Which was also decidedly not my bright idea. And for which I’ve also been scolded (I throw eggshells in the trash can, so?). And which I therefore also hate.

Hey, Capitol Waste Services! Can we get a ruling on the worm-food? Preferably before Johnny and I turn each other into it?

Thanks so much!


Happy News Tuesday, everybody!

HA!

Driving home to see the family for Easter the other day, we heard a story on the radio about a woman in Texas who’s getting hassled by the Homeowner’s Association because she tore out her grass lawn and replaced it with naturally-occurring stone and sunflowers. The city (San Antonio, I think it was) has a program set up to encourage things like this – it’s a water conservation thing – and they actually gave her $300 towards the cost of the landscaping. But her neighbors hate it, and they’re taking her to court.

Taking her to court, can you imagine!? For landscaping her yard in the manner she saw fit. The ecologically-sound and politically-correct manner, no less!

Unfortunately, she’s screwed. Because apparently when she bought the house she signed a paper – she wouldn’t have been allowed to buy the house without signing the paper – that said she promised to keep the grass green and cut it every Tuesday and only hang pink curtains in the windows and stand on her tippytoes when she answered the door and whatever else the Homeowners Association decided was befitting their particular cachet.

What would possess a person to go and sign a thing like that?

Oh my god, if there were a Homeowner’s Association in this neighborhood they would have us tarred and feathered. We made a conscious decision when we moved in that we were going to deal with the parts we had to look at first – in other words, the inside – and when (if ever) we get that under control, then we’ll think about the parts that other people see. I mow the lawn, but that’s really about it.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Johnny plants a garden every year but then he doesn’t weed it and it gets all overgrown. I don’t weed it either because it’s not my fucking garden. He also plants things along the whole length of the fence so I can’t mow along it, but then he doesn’t weed them either. And I’m not gonna do it because they’re not —well, you know.

Speaking of the fence… It is not only chain-link, but rusted and disgusting, and it leans over in a couple places where people came around the turn too fast and wound up in the yard. That happened before we were here; it’s been like that since we moved in. A neighbor once offered to pull it up for us for nothing, if we gave him $2600 to take down the only healthy tree in the entire yard, but I said no, thanks, and I haven’t seen him since. We can’t afford a new fence yet, anyway.

Oh, and speaking of trees: There are six of them in the yard. Four silver maples: that big healthy one out back and three along the fence whose roots have bubbled up and cracked the sidewalk, and which are so big and old they threaten to throw branches down on passing cars every time the wind blows. Then two in the middle of the yard that I don’t know what they are because they haven’t any leaves. They’re sick with some kind of festering rot that kills the branches from the bottom up. One of them’s lost all its branches – it’s just a naked trunk blowing precariously in the breeze – and the other oozes brown goo on the picnic table from the branches it has left. The goo hardens up like rubber cement, and the squirrels eat it.

Oh, and speaking of squirrels: Johnny feeds them. Throws whatever’s gone bad in the kitchen out into the yard. Mushy apples, sprouted potatoes, hamburger buns that have been in the freezer since last Fourth-of-July. The squirrels come and eat it all but other things do, too. Starlings, skunks, raccoons. Just this afternoon Johnny saw a big black cat eating the hamburg buns.

Oh, yeah, speaking of cats? I feed the strays. It started with this runty one who only had half a tail and one perpetually swollen ear. I felt bad for her so I started putting a bowl under the porch. Well, of course, you never feed just one stray cat, now do you? The last time I checked there were six – plus a few who actually have owners but still like to come down for a little evening nosh.

Speaking of the porch, it kind of sags. (“Kind of” my ass, the thing’s a goddamn U). We actually were going to take care of that when we first moved in because a friend offered to lend us a set of jacks and all it takes is a week and a couple of cement blocks, but then he decided his mum’s house was uneven, and jacking up a whole house takes much longer than just jacking up a porch, and then his brother thought it looked like a good idea, and, well, blood is thicker than water after all. If our turn doesn’t come round soon we’re going to have to go ahead and rent one, because we have to get it done before we paint, and – oh, yeah, speaking of paint…

We’re not just talking a little mildew or an unfortunate color choice – actually, the color’s not that bad. No, we’re talking peeling you can see from the street at 40 miles an hour. Some windows have different color trim than all the rest. The whole back part that was rotten when we bought it got all new cedar shakes and they never got so much as primed.

Let’s see, did I forget anything? Well, there’s the pile of dirt that Johnny had delivered for the garden that turned out to be more dirt than he needed and what are you supposed to do with extra dirt? There’s the trashcan with the hostas in it over by the fence, which Johnny dug up somewhere and I which I wouldn’t let him plant because I hate hostas, so they’ve sat in trashcan-stalemate in the yard for going on three years. There’s the composter that all the veggie scraps go into but never get turned or treated or used. The fenced-in section in the corner where the leaves go every fall so that they, too, can never actually get composted. Oh, and then there’s the back porch, where Johnny puts paint buckets that he doesn’t feel like washing out, and where they sit until they’re full of rusty rainwater that probably really oughtn’t to be washed into the watershed.

In other words, our house would give any Homeowner’s Association fits of St. Vitus’ Dance. It’s a blight. It’s an eyesore. It’s a stain. And I don’t care what the neighbors think about it. I’ll get out there when I’m good and ready. And when I am, if I decide I want to fill the yard with rocks and plant sunflowers then, dammit, that’s what I’ll do.

Actually, I did plant sunflowers last year, all along the chain-link fence. They didn’t come up, not a single one.