Uhh, Really?!?!

Imagine this. You just moved into a new house a few months ago. All of your cute little neighbors 40 years your senior invite you to a yearly block party down the street.  You stroll down to the party the day of and make polite chit chat with all of these people you hardly know.  You begin talking to two men who start to do that thing where they are talking about you right in front of your face because they want you to react to something but they don’t want to say it to you directly.  I don’t recall the exact conversation but it was something like, “Haha yeah she’s working a lot on that house. I wonder if she’s going to keep that headstone.” And the two men chuckled whilst I stood there in a state of confusion and social awkwardness regarding how to respond to such an odd presentation. 

In mere seconds my thoughts went from what are they talking about, to suddenly, my mind flashing to the end of my driveway side yard. There lays a large rectangular chunk of granite… I mean they are joking right? NOPE. My now husband and I hurried back to our home to flip this behemoth over… to find that fricking piece of granite was a headstone! W.T.F.!?!?!?!????!!!!  ? !   ?     !

Now before you get all “Ew, OMG I would HAVE to move out of there,” I have to tell you a little more.  To clarify, there is no body buried on my side yard.  This is a classic case of cheap, old stubbornness. The story the neighbors told is that this headstone was for the sister of the woman who lived in the house until she passed (not in the house!).  There was a misspelling on this headstone so instead of just telling the headstone company to dispose of it, she kept it. To decorate her garden. So now I get to deal with it. Yay me!

I could not handle the weird as hell yard décor so I had to get rid of it immediately. However, I’m not sure if you know this. Granite is ungodly heavy. I mean, seriously. I am really, really strong but this was too much. However, I am not one to just give in, because like the owner of this headstone, I am excessively stubborn and I had my sights set on disposing of this thing. I wasn’t able to lift the damn thing up so devised a new plan. I tipped my big garbage can dumpster on its side and rolled the granite into the garbage can.  Victory! Well, until we tried to push the garbage can back to standing. My husband and I pushed, rolled, shook, kicked, wedged, and every other verb you can think of to try to stand the damn thing back up.  It didn’t work. Finally, my sweet, sweet neighbor Mark found us exhausted on the driveway and asked if we needed help.  He had the magic touch and we got it on its feet!

The next struggle was actually moving it up the driveway to the street for pickup. This again was a team effort but we succeeded. We were praying and praying the garbage men would take it… and not call the cops so we covered it up with leaves. I once filled a garbage can completely with dirt and they refused to take it because it was too heavy.  Ok, wusses, if a girl can get the can to the street all by herself you should be able to pick it up.

Learning from this “headstone disposal” project: Garbage men WILL take a headstone that is extremely heavy if in the dumpster thingy… but they won’t be happy about it.  They left me a note basically saying don’t ever make your garbage that heavy ever again.  And as long as there are no additional death markers in my yard, I can definitely comply!