“Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”
-- Golda Meir --
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Golda makes a common mistake in the quote above. Not all Mid-eastern folks are Arabs, like the Persians of Iran, for example, and most are insulted if you call them Arabs when they're not. It's a history/blood/tribal thing, like a Scotsman being annoyed if you call him an Welshman, or if you call either of them an Englishman.
Unless, of course, Golda really did specifically mean Arabs. (The title of this post does not refer to Golda.)
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Squiggy the Squirrel was back this morning, none the worst for his battles.
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Garbage is collected here twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays. The time of day is random, anywhere from 8 am to 6 pm.
I put out one small kitchen can sized bag, often only half full, so I don't have to store anything between pickups even if I miss one. Daughter's family makes a lot more garbage, as is expected with more home cooking and many daily diaper changes. She often has a full regular garbage can, but sometimes puts it out only once a week.
I flat-out don't understand what's going on in the house directly across the street.
Every pickup their two or three large cans are overflowing. There's two adults and two early-teen kids (whom I often don't see for days at a time, so I suspect there may be some kind of shared custody arrangement). How on earth do they make that much garbage!? I know they don't recycle, but still....
Daughter's cans are bungee'd to the side of their house, with bungees holding the lids down. The folks across the street have their cans alongside the side fence, with no lids! I have often seen, late at night, the tails of racoons, opossums, or skunks waving out of the top of the cans. When the cans are full to overflowing, the scavangers pull the stuff off the top to examine, or just tip the cans over.
What bugs the hell out of me is that the people don't seem to care, and they don't learn. They'll go out and gather up the garbage on their property, but they ignore what has blown or been strewn out onto the street.
I'm getting very tired of collecting their paper towels, cigarette packs, potato chip bags, paper cups, and every other type of debris from my curb and lawn.
Today it has reached a crisis. I'm very annoyed and I don't know whether I should say something or not. Nobody else in the neighborhood has said anything, so there must be a reason for their reticence. I'm not sure I want to find out why.
Thursday was Thanksgiving. They must have had 15 people in the house. Thursday was garbage day, but of course it was skipped for the holiday. Friday morning, they put three large grossly overflowing cans plus a big black garbage bag out at the curb - OUTSIDE their fence, of course. There was no pickup. When I went to bed, all that stuff was still at the curb, and I thought "Raccoons will feast tonight."
Sure enough, this morning one can had been tipped, several bags torn open, and garbage and trash was strewn in the street. Later in the morning the woman was out there picking up trash from the part of their lawn outside the fence and stuffing it back into bags. As usual, she did not pick up what had blown into the street.
Now here's what blows my mind: there is no hope of a pickup until Monday, but she left the overflowing cans and the black bag sitting there! So they'll be there tonight and Sunday night. Does she think racoons take the weekend off? What the hell is she thinking? IS she thinking? How can anyone repeatedly clean up trash, and NOT figure out how to avoid it? Is she incapable of learning?
Photo taken through my living room window a few minutes ago, through a screen, and severely cropped:
I don't understand.
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