Defender of the Garbage Can

 One of our four garbage cans was missing. On a bright Monday morning I returned from running errands to find our Gelbe Tonne (the yellow one, for plastic) gone. Its former contents, fortunately all in plastic bags, lay heaped in a pile.

 Our neighbor volunteered that the week before, he'd seen a guy traipsing through the woods hauling a yellow trash can. The traipser was apparently lurking about somewhere taking trash cans on joy rides, abandoning them whenever he was tried of them.

"Oh, yeah," said my daughter, returning from school around lunchtime. "I thought it was odd someone had left a trash can up at the tram stop."

That's where ours had landed? My son ran up there, found our yellow trash can on the platform and rolled it home. Meanwhile the police, whom he'd called, appeared at the door, finding the trash can now where it was supposed to be. Was it damaged? No, but . . .

They'd keep an eye out for the guy, they said, and left.

Yesterday, my eagle-eyed and eared son heard a rusting downstairs and rushed out. The thief now had our "everything" trash container and was strolling up toward the tram stop. Keeping a safe distance, my son snapped photos and ran into the police along the way. They were glad to have the photos and confided that they knew who the guy was. Somebody using many recreational drugs.

Conversing with the trash cans too.

My son rolled our trash can home.

I have yet to check our downstairs area this morning but am glad that our attentive knight, Defender of the Garbage Can, is on duty!

 

On Rewatching the Harry Potters: Dinner for One Transphobe?

We're going through them, one by one, the teenagers and me--also dipping into "Harry Potter in 99 Seconds" and other charms on You-Tube (if you haven't seen this entertaining re-cap, lose no time). We utter Snape's long drawn out "obviously" before he does in the fifth one--Umbridge needling him about why he didn't get that defense against the dark arts position. We know about Emma Watson actually punching Tom Felton during the filming of The Prisoner of Azkaban, and why Buzzfeed says she did. As we eat our tacos or our fish or our tofu, chanting along with the dialogue, we forget, for very small moments, all the ills of our world. Until we start wondering why J.K. Rowling is saying what she's saying about transgender people--why she would imagine that transgender women would be a danger in a public bathroom. The notion brings me back to a story deemed newsworthy back when I was a teenager--I may have seen it on the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, or I may have seen it elsewhere, but I saw it on some network news outlet back before CNN was founded: somewhere in Europe, at some bars, there were unisex bathrooms! Patrons of bars would enter a cubicle, do their business, and find themselves soaping their hands in a sink next to a person of what was then coyly designated "the opposite" sex. 

And this was news. People were talking. ("I mean, what would I do? A guy at the next sink? But if he's cute . . ." was the level of discourse.)

Oh, we've come a long way. I tend to see J.K. Rowling as more disturbed than hateful. The questions running through my head include "what's really eating her? Did she have some bad experience in a public bathroom?"

 Let's go to the bathroom scenes in her novels for insight. The troll shows up in a bathroom and he's a tough challenge for a bunch of first years. Moaning Myrtle messes with the U-Bend and the toilets in a girl's bathroom so unpleasant for her remarks and the constant flooding that it becomes a great place to hide out and brew polyjuice potion. And that's the bathroom with the faucet leading to the big bad basilisk in the basement. Monsters--snakes--a lollapalooza of interpretation here? Then Myrtle gigglingly appears when Harry's naked in the prefect's bathroom on the fifth floor during his efforts to solve a riddle involving an underwater egg. Not a girl to discreetly look away, Myrtle (also the animated stained glass mermaid in the window) wink and stare, making Harry most uncomfortable.

There's definitely bad stuff going on in the bathrooms of Harry Potter. We've only just finished the fifth one. Maybe I'll have an insight while watching the last three films . . . .or maybe I'll just wish Rowling would remember the advice emerging from the coy, or just lonely, Myrtle: "you're always welcome to share my toilet!"

A Ten-Minute Vegan Recipe That's Really Easy

You will need:

Potatoes

A can or two of chick peas

Tomatoes

Olive Oil

Cumin, salt, pepper, paprika, dill, and a veggie-flavored salt.

Put a little oil in the bottom of a large cooking pan. Set aside. Pre-heat oven to about 200º or a bit more, if you're willing to stir and watch. Rinse and drain the chick peas. Put them in a bowl with a dash of olive oil and the cumin, salt, pepper, paprika. Add garlic if you like, likewise onion. I would have done so, but was in a hurry and that would bring the preparation time up to a whopping fifteen minutes. Slice potatoes, arrange at one end of the pan with salt and pepper. Pour the chick peas into the middle. Lay the tomatoes at the end and add dill and veggie salt. Bake at about 200 for around an hour. And voila: