The Great Garbage Caper

I can't even believe I am about to type this...

Okay, so like every other neighborhood across this great country, we have an official garbage day. Ours happens to be Wednesdays.

Lately, we've noticed some fishy things with our garbage cans - they're moved or someone brings them up to our gate for us, etc... We don't generally think anything of this because they get picked up so early that anything is possible.

Nosy Neighbor Lady swung by our house and asked if we were missing a garbage can. Ummm, no.

Rewind... Nosy Neighbor Lady seriously knows everyone's business. She is ALWAYS out in her driveway. I swear to God she washes her Corvette every single day, regardless of her driving it. She trims her lawn daily and sweeps up every speck of dirt on her property every five minutes. I think she does this in part because she is anal and doesn't have shit else to do during the day and partially so that she can keep tabs on the comings and goings of everyone and their mother on this street. If I ever hear or see a ruckus on the block, I just ask her, because she knows the full story within .2 seconds, I shit you not.

Anyway, back to my story. After confirming that all of our receptacles are in tact, she proceeds to tell us that she thinks another neighbor stole her garbage can. I'm not really sure if she was looking for sympathy or if she thought we were gonna offer our can up, that wasn't clear. What was clear was that she wanted to rat on the neighbor.

Now, the neighbor that I'm talking about is slightly messed up too. In our first encounter, he left my husband saying the phrase, "Mount Up Regulator" from an early 90's rap song. He also refers to the rims on his Honda Civic as "sick". He is like.... 46? Oh, and some crazy chick he had living with him got hauled away by the cops because she took an axe to the BRAND NEW hardwood floors he had installed in his house like two weeks prior. Obviously, crazy attracts crazy.

On garbage day, for whatever reason, our side of the street is picked up early in the morning and the other side of the street is picked up later on in the day. We pay for the biggest garbage can (I'm not totally proud of this because it is ridiculous for a family of 2.5.) and douchebag neighbor pays for the absolute smallest can. Turns out that he moves our can (or Nosy Neighbor Lady's can) after it is emptied over to his side of the street to fill up with his own trash and then moves it back so we don't noticed that he used our can. This is pretty clever, obviously. Mind you, we would have never noticed if Nosy Neighbor Lady hadn't told us. When me and the Hubby were both working, we were gone early and back late so there was no way would have figured it out. But now, I'm home during the day.

You have no idea how bad I wanna catch him doing this. Not because I care all that much, just to catch him in the act to see what he does when he gets caught. Because really, how big of a douchebag are you for even thinking this up? Who has time in their day to devise these kinds of plans? Am I just lazy because I'd just pay the extra $10 bucks or whatever it is for a bigger can than to trek my ass out of the house at like 5 a.m. to play musical garbage cans?