PlazaJen: Passion Knit

We had a busy weekend, filled with things to do & lots of projects screeching for attention - including the Dreaded Garage, which has been chock-full-o-boxes for a year now, and I've been dragging my feet on The Cleaning Out Of It All. I did finally start this summer, which is an excellent time to do such a project in Missouri, if you enjoy sweat in your eyes and getting cranky in under five minutes. I had high hopes of having it done last month, and those hopes were FOLLY and LOFTY and did not pan out. But I'm making headway! And one thing we needed to do was get some of the trash/toss stuff OUT so I could continue to organize/pile (and have a sense of accomplishment.)

So on Sunday, we loaded up JWo's trailer? And went to the dump. I've never really been to a dump before. We went to the "community" dump when I was a kid, I rode along once, in the winter. There's a good reason to go to the dump in the winter, and I'm sure you can connect the dots there. It was all rather exciting, and disheartening, and amazing, and revolting, ALL AT ONCE. We pulled up to a structure that was not unlike a Checkpoint Charlie, where we paid $52 for the honor of dumping our own trash. We also got little one-size-fits-all orange vests, in a package that described them as "blaze green", and signs everywhere instructing us to wear HIGHLY VISIBLE CLOTHING AT ALL TIMES. Also a sign that photography was not allowed! Can I just tell you how mad I was at that point for not bringing the camera?

We drive in, and you drive up up up and then around and down and up and side to side, and all you see for a little while is lots of earth-moving action. Bulldozers and many other big pieces of equipment, pushing gravel and stone and dirt. It was quite dusty, that was the first sensory perception. Then you come down and around and wind by a sea of porta-pottys. You don't think about where those things go, do you? You're usually drunk, and wishing you could just hold it 'til you get home.... but somebody's gotta empty them. These were, blessedly, and assumably, empty. Wind wind wind around and down and now the pavement ends and more signs telling us to WEAR VISIBLE CLOTHING and then the smell hits. Faint at first, sickly-sweet and rotting. Now we're driving up up up again, and the next thing I see? Buzzards. Circling, swooping. The smell gets stronger. And then we turn and go straight down this HUUUUUGE hill, to the bottom, where I see a couple other vehicles, and people are dumping their trash. It's SO not organized, like, follow these lines & back up to this point. You just back up to the edge, and breathe through your mouth, and unload stuff as fast as you can, pell-mell and crazy. I was wearing a bright pink sweatshirt hoodie cardigan & I decreed I was NOT going to wear the vest on top of that, I was HIGHLY VISIBLE in what I had on, thank you very much. In less than ten minutes, we were done & climbing back up the hill and then on out of the giant gash in the earth, where allllllll our trash goes. Deffenbaugh empties all their trucks there, so if you live in the KC area, I pretty much guarantee all your stuff you leave at the curb ends up in the same place I stood. It made me feel bad, for what we're doing to our earth, how much crap we buy gets thrown away and buried back in a hole in the ground, and how much more trash I have still that has to get hauled away. (I'm buying those little trash stickers though, I can guarantee I don't have 52 bags of trash, and the stickers are a dollar each.) The good news is, I'm donating almost as much as I'm throwing away & at least someone else will benefit from my pack-rattedness.

But it was an experience, and made hilarious at the onset by my husband wailing out the sounds to the theme song from "Sanford & Sons" the whole time. And I recalled how, when my packrat father had left town, my mother did some cleaning & made a trip to the dump, and threw out a pair of his boots. My dad came back home, and made his OWN trip to the dump, where, lo & behold, he saw a nice pair of boots that looked awfully familiar & weren't ready to be thrown away yet, and back home they went......much to my mother's chagrin!

(If you want a little flashback, just go to this website & his intro music is exactly what we've been singing around here the past couple of days...)