Ma poubelle

We have some kind of luck.
OR, as I prefer to think of it, we have some kind of strange guardian something or other floating about like a very specific skilled wish granter. Ask for a million dollars? Nothing doing. Ask for a piece of electronics to fix itself after being broken for several months, poof. Granted.
World peace? HA! It laughs in our faces. Have a mugger return a stolen wallet? Sure thing.
To clarify though, I have been reaping the benefits of said ghostly wish granter/protective spirit of odd and un-related things only through marriage. I certainly never had such luck. I really only get to stand under the umbrella of weird protection with my husband.
It's his eyeglasses who go missing in Maine and given up for loss only to be found, after miles of driving, hanging undamaged outside the car door. I don't mind that it's not personally my guardian object angel, marriage does have it's fringe benefits besides the hottie blue husband. :)
It's good to lead gently into one's chaotic thought process with illustrative descriptive mental images of a ghostly character hovering about our old printer. It's a good fake out for what's really on my mind.
Trash cans.
Again.
I either have a fetish, am very trash conscious or need to get out more and expand my horizons. A fourth and more creative option would be to start a whole new blog, Trash Talk, but I am fearful of the sort of readers one might draw near with a title like that.
The connection between a strange aura around our possessions and my trash cans is this. After several cans went missing, presumably stolen...one came back.
After more than a year one of our trash cans turned up at the bottom of our drive way and I am tickled pink, green and a light shade of iridescent blue.
The guardian has struck again.
The questions that bombarded my mind after seeing our lonely little bin we purchased from Lowes, sitting down by the mailboxes, almost left me speechless. Almost.
"What the..? Seriously? Look! LOOK! It's our bin! Is it? How..huh? I...er....."
These questions were just my brain's way of trying to process an almost impossible situation. Our stolen bin had come back. It did not have the look of a plastic trash can possessed by a sentient spirit so I assume the bin thieves returned it themselves. Unless....unless the guardian of inanimate objects has been working out and has managed to develop a few corporeal muscles and pushed the bin back all by it's invisible self. I am actually leaning really hard towards that possibility. I like to picture the expression on the bin thief's face when our can started hauling itself out of their bin thief hide away and began bumping it's way along the road towards home.
We stood that day. Staring at our long lost member of our trash sorting family. Warm afternoon sunshine played over it's dull grey brown features. It's shadow stretched across the road as if reaching for us.
"Is it really our bin?" We asked, not wanting to hope and have our hearts broken.
We looked around, peering into the bushes and neighbor's driveways for possible bin thieves with nefarious n'er do well intentions on their faces. We were alone. Me, my husband, the guardian of inanimate objects and our garbage can.
There was no mistaking it. It was OUR can.

(exhibit B, pull made from plastic handles off of boxes, how many other bins identical to ours would have an identical extra handle for long armed husbands to hold when pulling the bin up and down the steep driveway?)

It still sported the fashionable little pull we'd made from plastic handles off of some boxes. It was missing the lid, which we very well knew was in our garage, lonely and useless as the cruel bin thief didn't take it when it had taken the bin.
I marched over, ready to take my bin back to where it rightfully belonged. Thoughts of neighbors *accidentally* not noticing they'd taken a bin from the communal trash area, that in no way matched any of the other bins down there, had a special handle and kept it for over a year...accidentally....washed through my mind.
I stepped close, victory so close. Score one for justice....
"Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww."
I will save you a description but suffice it to say the....bin-napper....for lack of a better word, had apparently tossed a half can's worth of perishables in the bin for goodness how long and left it.
Perishables, no lid plus Southern California heat is a pretty nasty math equation.
I was tempted though...to retrieve what belonged to us, to clean up some one else's careless and disgusting mess just to return the bin to it's rightful place.
I stared hard at the can....and I sighed.
"I guess it's their bin now."
I was only sad for a moment, it actually seemed like pretty good instant karma. Leaving the mess where it was. As it turned out the garbage men didn't even touch the can, and who could blame them, I'm not sure they get hazard pay.
BUT...
I did get one teeny weeny extremely power packed moment of satisfaction from this whole peculiar bin experience.
I took the garbage can lid that belonged with the bin, and the very day we saw its return, placed it lovingly and a little sadly on the can. They might as well have the lid too.
Then...I cackled all the way up the driveway. Rubbing my palms together in a seriously evil genius sort of way. Imagining the mind trip that was gonna do to them, if they even noticed.
And they did.
Perhaps just a little bit of justice and a tiny sliver of shame. As later when we walked down to check the mail, still that same day, we saw the bin had been moved to the other side of the cans. As if to hide it from view.
They'd need much bigger bins to hide their shame though.
I like to wonder if that messed with their minds...knowing that we know....and yet didn't take the bin back? Ah well.
Maybe they're not jerks, maybe they're actually some forgetful old lady who accidentally took the wrong bin home after gathering her cans in the middle of the night and then maybe she lost track of it in a garage full of junk and cats and old lady belongings for over a year until finally she spied it through her dusty spectacles and declared "That's not mine, oh golly!" and promptly returned it.... Yeah, it was probably that.
I find most of life's annoyances go down smoother if I pretend they're perpetrated by forgetful old ladies.
In the mean time the bin remains, they apparently not claiming it and neither are we...unless I actually break down and reclaim what's rightfully mine and clean the heck out of that thing whilst half sloshed on rum. A person would have to be half sloshed, at the very least, on something before attempting such a chore.
Ah well.
But kudos to the guardian object angel, I am seriously impressed. I do not suppose many people can claim their garbage bin was stolen for a year and then returned...what a strange and oddly satisfying experience that is.