A New/Old Solution

Remember that broken wicker loveseat?

Yeah, that really happened. All of it. No April Fooling, if anybody was confused.

It got dragged down the driveway for the next morning's garbage pickup. And - I bet you won't be surprised - the truck left without taking it. I wasn't totally surprised, even though they had taken our broken wicker chair a few weeks earlier. So it was probably time to call up the company and find out what was necessary for the loveseat to be hauled away.

Think $$$$$.

I just never got around to calling their office. There wasn't a lot of spare in the budget, after all. Even the simplest weddings put a drain on it. I'm trying not to raise the amount on the magic credit card these days, and Social Security payments have their schedule that do not always match our wish lists. Nobody ever heard of "overtime retirement" at time-and-a-half, did they? So the call just hadn't gotten around to being made.

Steve and I had discussed how to demolish the thing into littler pieces. A saw? Lots of work. An axe? Both too dangerous and we'd have to go to the store to get one, meaning I'd have to make a face  mask, something else that was getting postponed.  Pruners? More work and even more mess. So it sat, down at the end of the driveway, next to our buried garbage can, as Sun City does them. Saves us from having to haul anything down on a regular basis other than the bin for recyclables.

Steve came up with an idea last night. He'd been online, and reading that Corona Beer was ceasing production due to its unfortunate name and the  idiocy of their former customer base had prompted it for him. How about if he took his own remaining few Corona beers, popped them in the fridge to cool, and sat down at the end of the driveway around 6 AM when the truck came by, offering them to the crew as a bribe to remove the loveseat? I made it even simpler for him, reminding him that they couldn't consume them while on the job, and the beer would be warm anyway by the end of shift, so he might as well not bother chilling the beers.

I also recalled a conversation from the club. A regular fellow named Earl used to use beer or water, depending on the heat, to keep in the good graces of his garbage collectors when he had something extra needing to be hauled away, and on some days "just because." "A little appreciation never hurts," Earl would say, chuckling.

This morning I looked out when I came into the living room. The loveseat was gone. Steve was grinning. It had worked. He informed me he hadn't even gotten back up the driveway before that  eyesore was in the truck and it was on its way.