Passions

Now, when I said (in the last entry) that I am much less inclined to fly into rages as I get older, I want to make one thing clear – I WAS NOT REFERRING TO GARBAGE BINS. Indeed, just one entry onward from that "the world will not end, so I can calm down" entry, I am ready to rant and rage. About garbage bins.

This is the situation. There is an apartment building behind our house, and they have an easement on the driveway, so we can’t park there. Blech, whatever. A few years ago, a pizzeria moved in. Their entrance is on the busy street that the front of their building faces. Their kitchens, and their garbage bins, are at the back.

I want to make this very, very clear at the start – we never had any garbage bin trouble until the pizzeria moved back there.

I could be wrong, but I believe that every residence and business in Buffalo is allowed to own and use so many garbage bins. If their weekly garbage won’t fit into said number of bins, the residence or business needs to have a dumpster. Shon has had quite a time bitching about the number of bins the pizzeria has and uses. Of course, the night before garbage day, these bins are dragged down our driveway, dragged over some flowers, and placed on our small front lawn. They leave very little space for us to put our bins out, especially if there are snow banks, as there often are in Buffalo.

Even more infuriating, they have decided that our huge house, comprised of two very large apartments and a total of eight people right now, only need one bin, so they keep taking our other bin. Oh, how I have struggled with this! I have talked with workers about this, I have taken bins back to our house where they belong, all to no avail. I’ll battle for two months about the pizzeria workers taking our bins, things will be fine for a month, and then it’ll start up again.

It got worse when some of the pizzeria workers took all of the bins to their parking lot, INCLUDING our two bins, and spray painted their address on every… single… bin.

INCLUDING OURS.

I felt I had to repeat that.

Unbelievable.

Well, I have a feeling that an omniscient observor would remark that I wasn’t in the best mood this morning, because I didn’t get enough sleep (a hugely windy night, windows rattling in their frames quite scarily, my air conditioner making loud kazoo noises), but I contend that I would have been just as pissed about the garbage bin situation were I well-rested. Which I never am, anyway.

This morning, I came down, saw the mass of bins all over our lawn, and frowned. Someone from the building behind us (in all fairness, probably not from the pizzeria – there are also apartments and a convenience store in that building) had brought out their full garbage bin after the garbage truck came through. Inexplicably, they saw that all of the other bins were emptied, indicating that they were too late, but they left their full bin out front anyway! When the pizzeria workers came out to get their bins, they left the full bin for us. And only that bin. Obviously, we couldn’t use it.

I did rant and rage all day. At this point, I’ve complained to so many people that I’m starting to feel quite helpless about it. I went to the city’s website, and I can complain about pretty much everything BUT stolen garbage bins.

After a day of feeling quite volcanic, I took the full bin back to the building behind us, took two empty bins, and spray painted our house number on every single surface of those bins, except the bottom. Their spray paint was white. Mine was silver. Silver trumps white.

*~*~*~*~*

Speaking of feeling quite passionate about something, I finished Wuthering Heights this afternoon. I hadn’t read it since I was in my teens, and back then everything was, "Why can’t Heathcliff love the younger Catherine? Why can’t Linton be nicer? Why would the elder Catherine pick Edgar over Heathcliff?," and on, and on, blah blah blah.

Back then, to me, passionate romances were the best. You couldn’t really be in love unless you were constantly making each other unhappy, every evil man had a beautiful soul, all the more precious because it was guarded (I seriously wanted Heathcliff to get together with the younger Catherine!). Conflict was a sign of caring. Heathcliff and Catherine would have been happy forever if they’d ended up together.

Well.

At the ancient age of 31, I feel exactly the opposite. The elder Catherine wanted to have her cake and eat it too (I still don’t understand that phrase – are you not supposed to have the cake once you get it?). The younger Catherine put up with entirely too much bullshit, as did her father. Heathcliff had no redeeming characteristics. As for Linton, he should have been throttled at birth! And Healthcliff and Catherine would have driven each other crazy had they gotten married, it’s obvious to me now.

I haven’t really wanted to date for a really, almost embarrassingly long time; I’m starting to feel like I might be in the mood for some sort of romantic diversion sometime soon. Reading this book underscored that I want no drama, no petty jealousies, absolutely no adulation whatsoever on either side. No tiny misunderstandings that turn into huge fights.

What I used to think of as "passion" is utterly repellant to me.

Instead, I like this thought: I was reading the latest Elle, and there was an article about new designers. One of the companies profiled is a husband-and-wife team who make high-end jeans. They sit across from each other at sewing machines, making their creations. Doesn’t that sound divine, somehow?