Stepford Annoyances

Aside from my own mental issues living in this Stepford-like neighborhood, I am basically happy with things in my tiny pocket of the Pacific Northwest. Lately, however, my replica of Wisteria Lane has me quite annoyed with a few things.

I’ve got the most spoiled, pansy-assed garbage men in the world. When you apply for a job in the State of Washington, there is usually something within that job description that clearly gives a requirement as to the amount of weight you have to be able to lift in order to work that job. For example, as an event manager, I had to be able to lift 40 lbs. due to all of the crap I’m required to schlep during an event. One would think that a citizen who applies for a job hauling trash might deduce from the get-go that they could safely be required to lug at least 50 lbs.

This must not be the standard for the company that does the garbage for our neighborhood, because since we’ve moved into our house we get these notes claiming that our bucket is too heavy for them to haul. It’s not like we are a bunch of pigs that produce thousands of pounds of trash. We recycle avidly, breakdown our boxes, and upon eyeballing the other neighborhood cans, seem to have the same amount of garbage, but we will regularly pull up to the house after work on a Friday evening and find our full trash can hanging out, unemptied. We place our can right at the curb, and the garbage truck pulls up next to the curb, where does the hauling come in?

We had to pay an extra $7 to have a can of trash hauled away after it stunk up our backyard for a week, because the garbage company refused to take it away. At times like this, I wish I was living in New Jersey or New York where the mafia runs the garbage collection. If my full can kept appearing at the curb, I could at least take a batch of my Great Grandma Costantini’s amazing lasagna to the capo and get the trash collected properly. Here, I have to pay an extra fee after placing a half a dozen phone calls. This isn’t a big crisis issue; it’s just a slight thorn in my ass that I have to deal with.

The other thorn that happens to be costing me money is the summer wave of vandalism. I was a teenager many moons ago, and I know it’s kind of fun to do random acts of senselessness to make life in boring suburbia a bit more interesting. However, destruction of property that results in higher homeowners association fees is not cute, just obnoxious.

Since I am a good person here to fulfill a community service of some sort, I will now illustrate scenarios of appropriate summertime vandalism. Bad Vandalism: a bunch of little assholes completely trashed the sprinkler heads in the common area, and now they all have to be replaced. This won’t be cheap and will cost everyone in the neighborhood money.

Good Vandalism: the other morning when I was driving to work, I saw a house completely and quite methodically covered in toilet paper. The sprinkler head destruction was just stupid and unnecessary, but the t.p. job was a sheer work of art. They covered every inch of the front lawn with a layer of toilet paper the same way a skilled carpenter would hang wallpaper. Had I not been in a hurry to get to work, I would have snapped some pictures, because no teenage toilet papering prank that I did ever came close to this. Sure, the clean up will be a bitch, but it won’t cost the rest of the neighborhood any money. Again, a perfect example of good vandalism.

Some of the other minor irritations include fireworks, neighborhood speed driving, and removal as Social Committee Chair. The 4th of July was nearly a month ago, and almost every night my neurotic cockerdoodle freaks out, because one of the little neighborhood bastards is shooting off a ration of loud firecrackers. Of course, this happens just as I’m in that sweet moment between awake and asleep, where you’re just ready to drop off into a delightful dreamy coma.

The tweens and under 16s set off the fireworks, while their older, licensed siblings drive through the neighborhood like they’re street racing. I’m a lead foot by nature, but even I slow down in my neighborhood for fear of hitting a random kid. Jeff and I were walking the dog and the girl to the park one night, and when he saw some girly racing up the street, he stood out in the middle of the road until she came to a complete stop, then verbally abused her into slowing down, completely unaware that had she not hit the breaks, he would have been a bloody hood ornament. It’s times like these that I know exactly why I married my man.

I have officially been removed as the neighborhood Social Committee Chair, and I have no idea why. Not that I give a rat’s ass, because it’s one less thing that I have to focus my limited amount of energy on, I just wonder how that decision came about. I know I don’t fit in here, because I lack the fake social skills and proper Katie Couric hairstyle, but last year’s 4th of July BBQ was well organized. Oh well, I’m not willing to be more chipper, attend Bunko night, or get the Katie in order to be Social Committee Chair, so I’ll just have to make fun of the women who do. Life in Stepford may barely be interesting, but it is always slightly annoying.