Oh How Funny Garbage Can Be

The Tide, being a dog and all, will sometimes get into trouble and it often involves garbage. I don’t know what it is about garbage that is so appealing to my dog. I assume it’s the leftover food that gets thrown away because she is after all starving, or at least she thinks so. When I’m cleaning up the kitchen she loves to lick the garbage bag – maybe it’s the scented order repelling bags that taste so good. I hope to never find out.

Last week I came in from work and guess what? The Tide had decided she was going to go to town on the garbage. I don’t have a can at my house, but hang the bag on a cabinet by the kitchen sink. I don’t know if the bag had fallen down or if she got it down, but in any case, as soon as I walked in I knew she had been in it. There was a trail of garbage from the entrance of my house to the kitchen. I know for a fact there was left over taco meat, mushroom soup and a bag of cooked rice, all of which had been eaten. I’m sure there was a lot more there that she consumed, but I don’t even want to think about it. Needless to say, she didn’t get any dog food that night; I figured she had had enough food for one day. I should have taken a picture of her mess, but priority number one was getting it cleaned up.

One night this week I cooked a bag of rice again. I ate half and put the other half in my lunch for the next day. I went outside to take out some recycling and when I came back in she had that bag out of the garbage. I guess she really likes rice these days. I keep hoping she’ll break herself of this nasty little habit of hers, but I really don’t think she will. Do you think they have garbage anonymous for dogs?

Speaking of garbage, as you may know, I went to Holiday World in July with Jackie and her family. While I was there, my brother stayed at my house and looked after The Tide and ate all my food. This is not really much of an exaggeration. Of course, I told him he could eat whatever he wanted and bought some things he liked so he could have those as well. In the days following my return from Holiday World, this happened and so I really didn’t feel like cooking very much and wanted something fast to eat and every time I went to get something it was gone. I wanted a hot dog – all gone. How about pizza – all gone. It seemed like all the convenient foods in my house were gone.

The pizza was really puzzling to me because I never saw the pizza boxes in the garbage and couldn’t figure out what might have been done with them. Personally I would have put them with the recycling, but my brother… not so much.

I have a small garbage can, and I mean small that sits by my fridge. It’s red and quite cute, but I never use it. I don’t keep a bag in it and have never really found it to be useful because of how small it is, but I keep it there because it was a gift and it’s also where I sit my lunch sack each afternoon when I get home from work.

I would like to preface the rest of the story by saying that I clean my house every weekend, but when I vacuum, sweep, and mop the kitchen, I don’t always move that small garbage can. Most often I do, but if I’m in a hurry, I’ll just go around it and quite honestly in those weeks following my brother’s stint as a house sitter I probably didn’t clean very much at all because all I felt like doing was a whole lot of nothing. So, a couple of weeks ago, I was cleaning house and moved that small garbage can. I picked it up and thought it seemed awfully heavy, or at least heavier than it normally does. I opened it up and voila – the pizza box was folded up inside along with some empty soda cans and some other paper items. Luckily there wasn’t anything perishable and stinky in there. It gave me a good laugh though because for the longest time I wondered where on earth my brother could have but those pizza boxes.

By the way, when I was a little girl, I was fascinated with the garbage man. I would always run to the window when I heard them coming down the street. I thought it was so cool to ride on the back of the garbage truck and decided that when I grew up I wanted to be a garbage man – yes a garbage man, not a garbage woman. Years later, when in high school, I took a trip to the incinerator as part of a trip for my leadership group. It was mesmerizing! I loved every minute of it. I don’t know what it is about me and garbage, but clearly we’ve had a long past and as long as The Tide is around, we’ll probably have a long future.