Tuesday

I meant to post this last night, but it kept giving me error messages. When signed out of Blooger, I couldn't access my blog at all! I left a self-pitying comment on Rose's blog, but it wasn't there when I checked just now.

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Story Time

So I took DS to Story Time at the library this morning. He was pretty shy at first, but by the end, he was really having fun, even getting down to sit on the carpet with the other kids and giving the answers when the storyteller asked him a question. I'm really glad he enjoyed himself, because he takes a while to warm up to new kids and new situations. He didn't want to go this morning, but I hope he will want to go next week. His favourite new song was "Itsy Bitsy Spider". *grin*

Harold

So it's Tuesday night. I have scooped the litters and cleaned the guinea pig cage and collected the garbages. Will I put them out at the curb, or get up really early, and put them out just as the truck is coming down the street? It's that second one. Is it because I'm lazy? Do I like getting up early? Raccoons or dogs? Cute garbage guy? No, it's Harold.

Harold is insane, but not insane enough to be committed. So Harold prowls the streets on garbage night looking for garbage to call his own. Our garbage was the garbage he liked best for 6 or 7 years. One bag, every week. We noticed that a bag a week was disappearing, so I tried just putting it on the porch. One bag gone in the morning. We started putting out only the bag with diapers and cat litter, because it stank up the hallway. It would disappear. Now I was a bit upset because what if this guy thinks we're giving him a present or something?

When I was off on maternity after my son was born, and after we had started to set the garbage out when DH went to work, early early in the morning, I found a strange man in the back yard. I asked him what he wanted and he asked me if Steve lived there, and then left abruptly. When I eventually saw Harold during the day, I recognised him as "Steve's friend".

After a while, we got a bit complacent...who cares if some nut wants a bag of garbage? But now, he had a taste for diapers and cat litter. He always took that bag. One night I finally saw him. We had been putting it out later and later, but that night, the bag was gone almost as I went back in the house...I looked down the street and saw a guy on a bicycle. It was snowing and I was barefoot, but I watched him. And he looked back and dropped the bag. From then on, the bag would disappear shortly after I went into the house, like he was waiting down the street somewhere.

A cousin of mine is a cop and he told us that we couldn't really charge him with taking our garbage. We should try to get him on tape, and if we did that, say 10 times, we could have him charged with stalking, so we set up the camera. And caught him, on tape every week for 4 weeks. It skeeved us out, especially how he checked for the bag he wanted. That was when we stopped taping and started putting the garbage out when we heard the truck. We did this for 3 months, then we found a bag of our own garbage all over our front lawn. After DH cleaned it up, a guy on a bicycle drove past. No doubt he had been watching. We called the cops. They told us his name and said they'd have a word with him.

A month or so later, I saw a bag of garbage on the street on garbage night (It has to be on garbage night, no other night. There are rules in the little psychopath world.) and thought nothing of it, except when I walked by later, I noticed that it had cat litter leaking out of it. I left it there. If he was watching, he got no fun from me. So now I get up at 6:45, because the truck comes promptly at 7:00. I watch the truck come down the street and put the bags down when they get to the neighbour's house. I haven't seen Harold for 6 months, but it's too much to hope that he's gone. I'm sure he's still out there somewhere watching. It's not that I need the stuff or anything or that it's mine, it's that he's watching and waiting and it's freaky.