Garbage Day Redux

In the past I've mused about the lack of recycling on my street. I'm not sure why I expected Christmas to be any different. It ended up being worse than I possibly imagined.

In addition to the extra holiday waste, due to Christmas our trash collection day was pushed back. So it was closer to a week and a half worth of garbage versus just one week. While I'm happy to say that I had three overflowing recycling bins, I also had an overflowing 121L garbage can. Had we planned things a bit better I don't think it would have been overflowing, but we had thrown out the two florescent light bulbs from our kitchen that had died and they are both about three, maybe even four feet long. And then we had the ridiculous amount of styrofoam that the baby's new toy box was surrounded by. But when I compare my garbage to others, I don't feel quite so bad.

My neighbours to the left are a five person family. I quite expected the usual amount of garbage to double but I was pleased to see that it had not. It was the people to the left of them that nearly had my eyes popping out of my head.

They are a double income, no kids family. Both of them look to be late thirties to early fourties. I am generally annoyed with the woman anyway because she seems to feel the need to blast the radio of her frigging Buick Rendezvous, tuned to a horrible station in my opinion, as loud as it can possibly go. And she works shift work so she is coming and going at all hours of the day and night. I know this because I once talked to her at the superbox. For those of you that don't know, a superbox is a mailbox that the mail for numerous houses goes into. Each home has a key to their individual mailbox. There are probably close to twenty or thirty boxes in each. But I digress. Anyway, just because she is coming home at, oh I don't know, 1 or 2am, she STILL has the radio blasting at max. Seeing as she is to my left she has to drive right past my house. My bedroom is in the back of the house, probably at least eighty feet from the street and I can still make out the words to her terrible music. Very annoying!

I digressed further, sorry. The point to all this? A household with two adults, they had one recycling bin.....and SIX garbage bags! SIX! It would take my family around two months to get to six garbage bags and that is with a small child in diapers and cats. Words don't quite adequately express my shock.

And we wonder why we are swimming in garbage.

Some More Confirmation

A few months back I talked about an interesting conversation that honey had with his grandfather's second ex wife. Honey's sister was getting a divorce and was with a new guy, his mother was with a new guy and was selling her house etc etc.We had some confirmation of the information she provided when I saw the for sale sign.

We discovered that his mother has had a house guest for the holidays. The vehicle matches what she said her new man drove and the plate is from where he is from. As such we assumed it was her boyfriend. Makes sense that they would spend Christmas together. On our way home from my aunt's house on Christmas Eve, we saw a new vehicle behind her garage. It was a truck, we couldn't tell the make, but one of her garage doors was open and we could see numerous people standing around. We assumed that it was his sister taking as much of the furniture as she wanted seeing as we declined it all. We were a bit surprised that his mother never called him over Christmas, even though he told her not to bother as he was "working overtime", she generally doesn't listen to him.

Yesterday I noticed that her boyfriend's car was still there. We had sort of thought that he would have gone home by now. Then honey went to visit his cousin but on his way they saw the truck behind his mother's garage again. This time he decided to play stalker/detective with his cousin. Sitting in his cousin's rather plain and inconspicuous car in the convenience store parking lot across the street from his mother's house, they watched as a group of people tried to load a fridge and a washer and dryer into this truck.

Again working on assumptions, he identified the men who he believed to be his mother and sisters' new boyfriends. Although I guess it's not that hard to do when there is only one older man and his sister was hanging off another. But there were two other younger people, one guy who left in the truck with his sister's new man, and a girl who hung around with her. From my Facebook stalking we are guessing that they were her boyfriend's younger brother and his sister.

What does all of this mean? Well, potentially that his mother lied to him. She told him that she wanted little to do with his sister as she didn't approve of how she ended her relationship because she cheated, particularly because she was still dating and living with the guy with whom she had been caught with. She also didn't approve of the fact that she had given up(as per usual) on her hair stylist dreams and had gone back to working at a car rental place. His mother had spent a ton of money on her school and it was pretty much pissed away. And then there was the fact that after all these years, his mother had finally realized that her daughter treats her like her own personal ATM and had made her over pay for TV's and other electronics and had basically paid twice for her car. But here they were, standing around, laughing and joking, very buddy buddy. Could she be faking? Sure. Do we think she was faking? No.

Second, we think that his mother's boyfriend is still around because the two of them are going back together. Between us driving by on Christmas Eve and what honey witnessed yesterday, his mother doesn't have much left in the way of furniture. Her house is now sold and apparently the possession date is in a few short weeks. If all the paperwork is signed and she has given all her stuff away, what is keeping her here?

The sooner she moves the better. The Christmas gifts really got under honey's skin. They are all out of our house now, but I know it bothers him that she did it. I really can't wait until she is out of our lives and can't bother us anymore.

Just Pathetic

Honey's mother felt that after three years she needed to buy stuff for him for Christmas and despite never having met our daughter that she needed gifts as well. A pathetic attempt to bribe him into going to her house for the holidays and see her one more time before she apparently leaves for her new home about nine hours away. Also an attempt to drive a wedge between honey and I. It worked, kinda, at first.

We were on the same page regarding the stuff she bought for the baby. We both agreed that someone who has never met our child, nor spell her name correctly does not deserve to purchase anything for her. We quickly donated the stuffed animal and book to a Christmas charity. A little girl will at least have a nice Christmas at her expense. The clothing we returned, as she was kind enough to include a gift receipt, to purchase something else.

But the gifts for him were a different story. For whatever reason, he felt that "she was trying" and "he should give her a chance" despite knowing full well that these were basically blood gifts. That we could be liable for repaying her full value plus some ungodly form of interest compounded by the minute or something because we've been there and done that. He finally realized that it was incredibly strange that she did give him stuff, five separate gifts in fact, all but one of which was from both her and her new boyfriend. He finally got that she dropped off these gifts at his cousin's workplace because he knew that she would never be able to give them to him herself. And he finally got that he got more presents in one Christmas(this one) than he had gotten from her in our entire relationship.

So we opened them. There was a jacket that was too small and some sweaters that he would never wear. Again she was kind enough to include a gift receipt. I returned them today and realized she spent a rather astonishing amount of money. Money that we then spent on the baby and new pillows with some left over. I'm thinking new towels!