Trash talk and dead bodies.

I don't want to keep dwelling on things that are different in this alternate universe to which I have moved. But I will. The thing is, it's just close enough to the old life I had that it throws me off. 

Take the trash pickup. Longtime readers of this blog -- all good-looking and tasteful, with powerful intellects and enormous patience -- will recall that in New York, I complained a lot about the free-for-all that was our trash situation. People put everything short of dead humans out for pickup, and maybe they disguised a few of those. You could use any ol' trash receptacle you had handy. And the garbagemen came by on Tuesdays and Fridays, with a "recycling" pickup on Wednesday.

Here, the trash pickup is one day a week: Monday, You don't dare miss it because they won't be back. So people have their stuff out Sunday night, although I haven't seen a pickup here before noon Monday. It's one of those towns where you get two large trash cans when you move in, one for garbage and one for recycling garbage, and everything has to fit inside. The truck comes by and picks up the can and dumps it into the hopper. Another truck comes by later and gets the other can. It cuts manpower by two thirds, and it keeps people from trying to leave a sofa or a piano for pickup. 

Well, they wouldn't try it twice. 

My main problem is that I don't know what the hell day it is. I had tuesday-wednesday-friday tattooed on my consciousness. When a holiday would bump the week forward a day, that was bad enough. Here, around Wednesday I do not know immediately what day it is, because the trashman would not be back for days. I'm a rudderless boat on the sea of time now. 

And I'm scared of my sink.

This is the first time in my life I've lived somewhere with a garbage disposal. The InSinkErator came with the place. I am glad to be able to get rid of most food garbage instantly -- so I'm not stuck with it until next Monday! -- but man, it's scary and loud. 

All I ever heard of these things were what happened when you let utensils fall into them and what HORRIBLE things happened to YOU when you tried to get them out. 

Stone cold killer

I mean, the way this thing goes through a head of celery or a chunk of beef has to give you pause. I could easily see Steve Buscemi's leg sticking out of the sink in a remake of Fargo. 

Wish me luck with the InSinkErator, and that I do not forget what day of the week it is when Monday arrives. Last week the truck dude failed to completely empty my garbage can and it's got some bad juju going on right now. If I miss him tomorrow, I'm going to have to shove all the garbage into the disposal. And I think that may work no better than trying to get Steve Buscemi in there.