I am not my Swedish furniture.

It's not Swedish, for one thing. I think it was probably made in China, but it was cheap. And with the Big Boy Mortgage cheap is key. Two hours it took to assemble. Frame, then drawers, but now I have a real live chest of drawers in my bedroom. And it doesn't look like something I picked up at Christmas Tree Shops for an embarassingly small amount of cash.

Then I took the box out to the driveway and propped it on the fence next to my trash barrel.

Holy Mary-- I have a trash barrel. And I have to take it to the curb every Thursday. It's the little things like this that kind of blow my mind.

So later, after the long overdue cleanup of the Home Office, I take another bag of trash-- personal papers covered with scoopings from the cat box, take that identity theives!-- out and hear a rustling in the box formerly known as the container of my chest of drawers.

I didn't linger too long. I assume it's the Local Skunk, whom I discovered days after moving in rustling around in the shrub by the back door. I call him Pepe, but with the Spanish pronunciation rather than the French, so I don't get sued for copyright infringement.

I hope Laurel doesn't spot him. Since we moved, she seems to be missing The Suz's IsCats, Bubba and Booger. I sense she's having trouble filling the hours. I don't need her trying to make friends with the local wildlife.

I have wildlife in my backyard. I have a backyard.

And the upside of taking out the trash at night is that I can look up and see a sky full of stars.