there is this old guy that lives a few houses over. he is kind of weird. he goes by many names in our house, but we most often refer to him as "abraham lincoln". i've noticed that he parks in front of our house a lot, even when the spots in front of his house are empty. he has a son that louise, dave and i refer to as "fake louis" due to the fact that he kind of looks like louis and drives a similar car. his son does the same thing. many times i will get home at the same time as one of them, only to see them park right next to me, while there are plenty of empty parking spots directly in front of their house, get out of their car and walk the couple of houses over to get to their house. now this never really bothered me. i always thought it was weird, but there is usually plenty of parking in front of our houses, so whatever...
now that louis has moved out, dave and i have been left to handle the house recycling. the last few times we have left out our recycling bin, we received a warning note telling us that they will not take our recycling if we put plastic bags in it. i just assumed that we accidentally put some bags in there, so i made it a point to make sure and check the bin before we put it out. a few weeks ago we got the note again and i was like "these recycling guys are crazy." i know for a fact that there were no plastic bags in there.
then one morning after i had taken the bin out for collection, i was making breakfast when i happened to look out the window and see abe bringing a bunch of plastic bags filled with cans and dropping them into our bin. wtf? why? now he is like 3 houses down, and if for whatever reason he wanted to put his recycling into someone else's recycling, that meant he skipped over a couple of the other houses' bins with the specific intention of putting his cans in our bin.
well now i realized that that's why we kept getting those warnings. so i went outside, emptied the cans into our bin and put the plastic bags on his front porch, hoping it would send him the message that we were onto him. well the bags were still there 4 days later, so i think any potential message was lost.
we got home late last night, so dave went ahead and put our bin out for collection. he told us that abe lincoln struck again! dave went outside like an hour after he put the bin out and noticed a plastic bag full of magazines were now in the bin. dave took the magazines out and placed them in a common area in between our houses that is yet another spot that you can put your recycling. what a weirdo.
this morning as i was leaving to go to work, i noticed another mysterious plastic bag in our yet to be collected recycling bin. apparently not satisfied with putting just his magazines in our bin, he decided he would step it up for a second round and put a giant bag of cans in our bin. so i took out the cans and placed them next to the magazines. i am not sure if the recycling guys will pick them up or not, but abe needs to stop.
this is one of those issues that's tough for me because i really shouldn't be that annoyed by it. it's not a big deal at all. i mean, besides the threat of not having your recycling picked up because some weirdo puts plastic bags in there. but it really is very annoying. it's such a mundane issue that really makes no difference in my life and yet i am bothered by it.
i guess the recycling combined with the parking issue together make a semi-viable complaint or else a questioning on why? why us? if you were living directly next door...maybe. but you don't. you can order a recycling bin for free from p.g. county and even if you didn't want to be bothered, you could leave your recycling outside without the bin and they will still pick it up. or if you didn't like that idea and were worried about your recycling getting lonely, why not put it in the bin of one of your neighbors? or in the common pickup area almost directly in front of your house? you bypass their bins and walk over to our house and put your shit there. why? it seriously boggles my mind.
because it is an issue that appears to be of minimal importance and because they don't know that we know, i will feel sort of silly going up to them and asking why or telling them to quit doing it. i also might not want to know why they have chosen our house. hopefully they're not stalking one of us (and if they are...hopefully it is jessie) instead i plan on being passive-aggressive and post a note on the bin saying something like:
To Whoever Is Putting Their Recycling In Our Bin,
If you do not have a recycling bin, you can order one for free here:
http://www.co.pg.md.us/government/agencyindex/
der/about_recycling.asp
If you still need to put your recycling in our bin, for whatever reason, please note that they will not take plastic bags and have refused our recycling in the past because of this. PLEASE DO NOT PUT YOUR PLASTIC BAGS IN OUR RECYCLE BIN!!! Thanks.
phil thinks that the exclamation points and all caps end to the note are a little too much. i'm not sure yet. i want to make sure that they notice it. but it might be too dark anyways when we put our bin out, so i dunno. maybe i can print it out on some crazy neon paper, or i can wait until the morning to put it out, hopefully getting it out there before the collection guys come through our neighborhood. we shall see.
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