To the dump

Christmas tree leftovers

James called today to ask if I could help move a tub from his backyard to the dump. It was a tub my cousin Dave and I helped him put in his backyard a few months ago. It was made of cast iron. It was heavy. A certain point I thought about "the girl" and her ability for lifting heavy objects. It was something she told me once when I first met her.

It was obvious that I needed an outlet to get my mind onto something else. Staying at home for the past few days was starting to get to me so I volunteered to help move stuff. The tub actually moved pretty easily. There was a glass sliding door and some card board as well. The hardest part was moving the tub from under the backyard stairs where it had been sitting for months seeping into the soil. It wasn't because the tub was heavy and stuck inthe muck. It was that there was no where to stand for leverage.

We ended up using a wooden plank, found in the yard, as a lever. It would not only unjar the tub from the mud but we could use it to slide the tub out over some bricks. I started to think that all those MacGyver TV episodes I'd been watching over the Christmas holidays were starting to pay off.


The tub in the dump

It was the first time I had visited the dump. There was a Christmas tree pile. It seemed like such a waste. The piles of used refrigerators, stoves, and other discarded items were huge. It was hard to believe that all that stuff had accumulated in such a short time. It was today's garbage. You read about trash that gets thrown out and transported but to actually see all the stuff in front of you... well, I'm surprised that we have room on this planet to walk around.


James unloads some cardboard