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A Commution Pollution Solution

(Bugs & Cranksyness since last we met:

Probably. So far as you know.)

Preparing to sell your house can tell you a lot about yourself. In my case, it tells me that I’m an unmitigated pack rat with an apparent penchant for worthless crap, apparently. I could have gone my whole life without learning that, frankly. At this point, I’m seriously rethinking my decision to not simply set the attic on fire and let nature take its course.

“No, this isn’t one of those things you should be trying at home. Your local authorities would no doubt frown on anything involving body parts, hacking, or minor celebrities from thirty-year-old sitcoms.”

On the other hand, setting the attic ablaze now wouldn’t do a helluva lot of good. For one thing, I’ve already had my nose thoroughly rubbed in my latest character flaw, in the form of nineteen bags, boxes and piles of aforementioned worthless crap that I found in our upstairs storage space. Worse, the really and truly useless crap isn’t up there any more, since the missus and I spent the better part of the weekend dragging it down out of there.

And into the basement. Where those nineteen bags, boxes and piles sat next to the additional fourteen sacks, bundles and stacks of useless crap that we were keeping down there. At least we had all of our old useless shit in one place. Some people would call that progress. Personally, I call it a pain in the ass, neck, back, arms, legs and feet. It’s bad enough the crap has to be useless; does it really have to be heavy, too?

Of course, herding the dregs of our past into one small area was only half the battle. Tomorrow is trash day in the neighborhood, so this evening we bagged up the trash and lugged that crap right out of our hair. And onto the curb, for pretty much the entire length of our property. For one night and part of the morning, that’s going to be one impressive display of unwanted used garbage.

Come to think of it, it’s probably a good thing my wife and I took turns hauling that trash out, or the neighbors might have started wondering whether one of us had hacked the other up and stuffed the pieces into Hefty bags. It’s probably fortunate we don’t have kids, too — this is reason number 3,248,132, if I’ve counted correctly — or the neighbors would be asking about them, too. Even at that, we had way too many bags. I’d venture to say that someone could dismember the entire Brady Bunch, three-quarters of Eight Is Enough, and a couple of anonymous drifters, and still not require as many bags to hold the pieces.

(No, this isn’t one of those things you should be trying at home. Your local authorities would no doubt frown on anything involving body parts, hacking, or minor celebrities from thirty-year-old sitcoms.

Also, you don’t want to waste that many bags. Those things get expensive. Trust me.)

At this point, I have just two fears. Or one fear, really, but it’s a two-parter. First, it’s supposed to rain all night, which means the trash outside — including a couple of cardboard boxes among the bags — is going to get all soggy and wet. Second, our local trash guys seem to be a picky bunch. Either that, or the trash compactor is a very messy eater. Whichever it is, we often find items that we thought were disposable, and that we put into the trash barrel, lying on the curb on the evening of trash day.

So I worry a bit that I’ll return home tomorrow night to find a funky, degraded, oozy Brady-sized pile of trash that the garbage men wouldn’t take. And that’s now impossible to pick up, move, or get close to without recoiling in disgust. I’m not quite sure what my next move would be, should that happen. I think I’d have to seriously consider constructing a fake bus stop enclosure over the pile, just until the house is sold. Build a nice high bench to cover the crap, slap down a sign with fake route info, and voila! No more visible mess.

Sure, I could find a way to mask the smell, too. But that’s the beauty of the plan. It’s a bus stop. Those things are supposed to smell like garbage, from what I can tell. I might even have to pee a perimeter around the bench, to make it more realistic.

Hopefully, it won’t come to that, and the garbage is just gone tomorrow. And yes, it would probably have been easier to have not hoarded all that crap in the first place — but that doesn’t help me much now, then, does it?

Worst case scenario, the faux stop is too realistic, and the city takes notice and actually starts using it on the bus routes. That would be unfortunate — not least because then it wouldn’t be only my pee around the bench, I’m sure. Or my own garbage stashed under the bench. Still, what a selling point for potential house buyers, eh? “Steps away from bus stop! A commuter’s dream!”

Maybe I should start collecting more useless crap, just in case. It pays to be prepared, right?