And now I'm the crazy box lady! Hello new neighbors...

I mentioned I’d finally sorted through a bunch of the boxes? I was pretty excited – I had a really good number empty, so I broke them down and started putting them out for garbage day (saving a few for the hubby as requested for when he paints the foyer). I put them by the curb with a few bags of other garbage (mostly packing supplies) on top of them to weigh them down.

The next morning I saw the garbage truck arrive and take the bags. Hmm – well, recycling must come later and get the boxes. No problem. I went off about my merry way to run errands – noting all the other garbage and recycling (including boxes) in front of my neighbors. OK, thank goodness, I got my days right (I wasn’t entirely sure about this).

I came home several hours later to find the garbage and recycling gone in front of the other houses – and sort of gone in front of mine…. Without the garbage bags to weigh down the flattened boxes, they’d blown all over the neighborhood! The neighborhood that I’ve JUST moved to! Oh man! OK – not to panic! The baby is still asleep in the car from the drive, I can do this. I ran to the first neighbor’s lawn and started gathering boxes and running them to my garage. Then I heard a voice from across the street – it was that neighbor calling over to tell me that they’d blown on his lawn too! Oh no! (Worse yet, this neighbor is super chatty and I was NOT feeling that I had the time to talk to him right now.) I ran over explaining that my husband was at work and the baby was asleep in the car as I grabbed the boxes. He said – oh, just one of those days, I guess. So I decided to ask – um, was today not recycling day? He confirmed that it, in fact, was. But maybe they hadn’t taken my boxes since they were flattened. So I asked – but wasn’t I supposed to flatten them? Well, yes, it turns out I was.

ARGH. So who knows the motivation? The garbagemen just didn’t pick them up. Maybe they couldn’t see them when they passed because they were flat (even though they were piled about 15 high!). Maybe they were already blown everywhere! But this was my afternoon – a sleeping baby in the car and a frantic me trying to get my boxes from around the neighborhood and then to get some of the crap in from the car while the, by then screaming, baby begged to get out of her car seat and the dog barked from the door. I need to drink more!