This week I watched the garbage truck pick up our bin and tip the contents into the back without incident ... and I breathed a sigh of relief.Just over a week ago we had a storm which made international headlines. Our little corner of South East Queensland was hit by something which has been termed a "hailnado". It sounds like the title of a bad movie, but it's a fair description for a storm which had thunder, lightning, strong winds going in every direction, really heavy rain and hail coming at the house horizontally at times. There was lots of damage reported in all the areas that were hit and we were actually very fortunate to get away fairly lightly at our place.
The storm also contributed somewhat to an entirely unexpected issue at our house. After the storm we had a few days of rain - which was excellent, we needed it!. But we had a couple of dogs here that we were looking after, for a friend who was moving house. The dogs were afraid of storms, so our teenagers made sure they were safe inside a room under our house when the storm hit, as well as for some time afterwards when the rain was hanging around. It was a good idea, the dogs stayed warm and dry.
However, that room is a bit of a chill out area for our teens. There's a spare bed down there, an Xbox, a table and a couple of chairs ... and a bean bag. You can see where this is going, right? Two bored dogs shut inside with a lovely, puffy bag of beans. Sure enough, after we'd returned the dogs to their owner, one of my teens went to move the bean bag and POOF! Little white beans everywhere. One (or both?) of the dogs had managed to create a hole in the bag.
The first I knew of this was when I went downstairs to ask one of the kids a question and I noticed our green wheelie bin standing outside the door. I opened the lid, only to see the bin was half-filled with loose bean bag beans! My teens had cleaned up the mess, but unintentionally created a new problem. Can you imagine what would have happened when the rubbish truck lifted the bin into the air and upturned it to open the lid? If you've ever had the delightful experience of dealing with bean bag beans yourself, I'm sure the picture is forming in your mind.
After a quick lecture to the kids about the perils (and possible fines) of casting our own unique brand of 'snow' over the neighbourhood - not to mention the environmental and wildlife impact - we set about removing the beans from the bin and bagging them up. That's easier said than done, I might add. It involved my industrial-sized vacuum cleaner, four household bin liners and a LOT of patience. The whole operation had to be done inside the house due to the 'flyaway' nature of the beans. They're slippery little suckers at the best of times, without a breeze to complicate matters.
As I said, to see the bin emptied a day or two later (with only the odd stray bean left on the ground after the truck moved off) was a big relief. We have a new rule at home now ... no more bean bags!
