![\"tucson-catalina-view-cloud.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/01\/tucson-catalina-view-cloud.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nI have taken to staging the trash in a backyard queue. \u00a0 It constitutes the foreground of our otherwise lovely view of the Santa Catalinas. Someday, all the trash will all be gone and we will only have a view of the mountains. \u00a0 But for that to happen, I have to be diligent about getting the absolute maximum out of our single barrel trash pickup every week.<\/p>\n
Last night “Harriet” said, “Did you take the trash out?” \u00a0 And I said, “No, but I’ll get it in the morning. \u00a0 They never show up before 10 a.m.” \u00a0 Can you hear famous last words there?<\/p>\n
So early this morning, “Lucy” shifted in bed and said, “There’s the garbage truck.” \u00a0 And I said, “It’s still dark out!” \u00a0 It was 6:30 a.m., and yet there was the truck noisily working its way down the opposite side of our street. \u00a0 So I became Ricky Ricardo, and dashed out into the morning chill in my pajamas and bare feet to roll the barrel out from the carport to the designated spot by the curb.<\/p>\n
I looked down the street and it seemed the truck was taking its time picking up the trash in the cul-de-sac, so I ran back into the trailer, put on my unlaced shoes, and ran back to the yard to my trash queue. \u00a0 Hmmm, what to choose? \u00a0 An old toilet — no, that would need to be smashed into smaller bits before it would fit, and I thought “Maybe someone will want it.” (Forgive me for thinking at that moment that I was going to find a willing home for a 40-year-old water guzzling el-cheapo used toilet. \u00a0 I’m not a morning person.)<\/p>\n
I finally went for the gray barrel of construction debris, and hauled that out front to dump into our city-approved green barrel. \u00a0 Even then, it was still only half full, and the truck was still in the cul-de-sac. \u00a0 Back to the yard again for another shopping trip.<\/p>\n
This time I picked up three empty paint cans, and some styrofoam. \u00a0 I was going for bulk rather than weight, since I had lots of space left and I didn’t feel like doing any heavy lifting. \u00a0 After all it was<\/em> 6:30 a.m. — did I forget to point that out? Finally the barrel was full, and I went back to the Airstream into my nice warm bed.<\/p>\n Four hours later, the garbage truck showed up.<\/p>\n The truck we had heard at 6:30 was not the garbage truck. \u00a0 It was the recycling truck.<\/p>\n It has been a perfectly nice day here in Pleasantville, but I am wondering how much longer we can stay here and pretend to be normal. \u00a0 Obviously Eleanor is starting to crack already. \u00a0 In addition to her superhero fantasies, she has proposed we hitch up the Airstream this week and head to Tempe or Casa Grande to go to a festival and do some furniture shopping. \u00a0 We may yet do that, even though we don’t really need to. \u00a0 It’s just that sitting still is hard to get used to, and when the trash pickup starts to loom large in our priority list, we both know that it may be time to get outta town for a few days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We really are turning into Ozzie and Harriet, or maybe Ricky and Lucy. \u00a0 I went to bed last night thinking that I’d forgotten to put out the trash. \u00a0 What more suburban thought can I have? The trash has become important to me. The renovation has generated a lot of it, cardboard boxes, styrofoam […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>And that, dear readers, is the most exciting thing that happened all day until UPS showed up with a few new photographic tools I ordered, including the folding reflector<\/a> that Eleanor is modeling in the photo at left. \u00a0 (She is flapping around the carport pretending that she is Wonder Woman. \u00a0 Like our neighbors needed more reasons to wonder about us.)<\/p>\n