We made a very unexciting purchase recently – a purchase that we didn’t exactly agree on. It’s not like there was a huge discussion though. We bought a new a garbage can.

I thought our garbage cans were acceptable. I even asked the guy on the truck and he said he’d seen a worse. But Bob likes to replace things before they disintegrate, so he decided a new one was in order.

I really do appreciate Bob not waiting until things are dilapidated before replacing them. That was the same reasoning he used when he bought me my car, so I should just shut up about it. But I knew he would go off to work with a view of our garbage cans in his rear-view mirror, and I would be faced with the question: How does one throw away a garbage can?

It’s not like I could put one inside of the other. I already had the word from the garbage collectors, who are experts at such things, that ours was not necessarily garbage material. Even though the very name garbage can could be interpreted as such, but I digress.

So, I decided to listen and wait for the sound of the truck coming down the street. They usually collect around 10 in the morning, I’d just rush out and meet them. Of course, that day they came at 4 in the afternoon, so I spent most of my day jumping up and running to the door to see if they were coming. It was like I was a kid waiting for the ice-cream man. Finally, they came and the disposal of our trusty, old can was complete.

Shiny New Garbage Can – Isn’t it pretty?

But that opened up an entirely new situation. Every time I’d take the garbage out, I would put it in the remaining old can, the lesser of the two evils, which Bob kept. The new one was so nice and shiny. It didn’t even smell like garbage. It seemed wrong to treat it like it was any old garbage can. I wanted to keep it nice for as long as possible. I didn’t realize how weird this was until I went to throw garbage out and saw that Bob had placed the new can to the front and he had put garbage in it. Can you imagine a person doing such a thing? He had reduced the older, beat-up can to back-up.

I stood there staring. How could I let him throw trash in it? To treat it like garbage? I could not. I reached down and switched the bag to the old can. This went on for over a week until I finally confronted Bob about it. “Why are you putting garbage in that beautiful new can?”

“What are you saving it for? It’s a garbage can,” he said.

And it was. He filled it with too much garbage for me to switch to the other can. It was over. The garbage smell had arrived. Try as I may, I couldn’t save it.

I looked at him and said, “I just can’t keep anything nice around here.”

This is Day 4 of The Ultimate Blog Challenge