8 bags until I start to feel weird

Some small moments in your life really let you stop and see yourself from the outside. This morning, I had one of those rare moments.

At 9:30 I roll myself out of bed so that I can get the trash out before the trash guy comes by. I pull on jeans and decide to keep on the pajama shirt, because I have to shower later. Then I go downstairs, put the dog out, put out the trash and recycling and notice that the neighbor has about 14 bags of leaves on the curb next to her trash can. Her car isn't in the driveway so I don't even bother to knock and ask. I just grab two bags and walk them back across the cul-de-sac and toss them over my fence. Two people are walking their dogs, and I say "Good Morning" but they don't seem to hear me.

I go back for more and more dog-walkers come by. By the sixth bag and the fifth dog-walker, I start to feel conspicuous - is it the pajama shirt, jeans and snow boots or the uncombed hair or maybe the fact that I am stealing garbage bags and throwing them over a fence? By the eighth bag, I decide that I am actually quite weird and I still need to empty the trash cans inside. I pause on the way inside to pull some cereal boxes from my trash, take the bags of crumbs back inside to feed to the chickens and tuck the boxes in the recycle bin. Like I needed the eight bags of stolen trash to tell me I was weird.

And in case you were wondering, once the girls, and I emptied the leaves into the chicken yard, we jumped in them piled them up and jumped again and again. It was certainly worth the theft, I only regret that the trash guy came before I could go back for the rest.