“Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good action; try to use ordinary situations.”
4″ of rain fell yesterday. It started raining the night before then poured all of yesterday. We even had thunder to give the rain a bit of spice. Today it’s 50°, and the sun is lurking behind light gray clouds. Gracie is busy watching the men clean the yard across the street. Their blowers were the first things I heard this morning. Today is one of Gracie’s favorite days: dump day. We’ll go as soon as I finish loading the car with my cardboard, bottles, magazines and newspapers. Did I mention the trash? She would have loved the old dump with piles of refuse and seagulls everywhere. The dump now has bins for all the recycling and bigger bins for the trash, and there are no seagulls.
When we lived in South Yarmouth, my father used to love to go to the dump. Every Sunday morning, he’d ask if anyone wanted to go with him. Guests were in big trouble as they were usually dragged along as if the dump was a tourist destination. I used to be able to see the old dump from the highway. The seagulls were always circling hoping to find a morsel. That dump too has been replaced, and from the highway, all I can see are green hills where the old dump used to be.
I sometimes drive by our old house in South Yarmouth. The only changes in the forty plus years since I lived there are an addition added to the kitchen side and a fence in the back. My bedroom was on the first floor as was my brother’s. I’m often tempted to stop and peek in the windows, but I can still see every room in my mind’s eye. It’s the same with the house we left to move to the cape. I remember every piece of furniture in every room. In Ghana, my house was small, four rooms, and I know every one of them as if I still lived there. My bedroom had a wall of slat windows, and I actually made curtains. They were of brown Ghanaian cloth with a design. I cut then hemmed then used string to hold them across the windows. In the living room, the light bulb hung from a long wire. I made a shade from a Bolga basket, the same ones you can now buy from catalogs. I cut a hole in the top and used pieces of a wire hanger to hold the bulb. The shade left a small circle of light on the floor below it. During the rainy season, the only time we had bugs, the circle under the lampshade was always filled with dead ones from the night before.
Well, enough with the memories. I need to get to the dump.
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April 14, 2011 at 1:35 pm
Maggie remains smitten by the concept of a car ride, but I would think the garbage dump must just be a huge bonus.
At the depths of this whole leg debacle, both Maggie and I were politicking for a Saturday morning outing but I am not sure I would have been smitten by the dump. They were difficult days so you never know.
Maggie has an excellent perched arrangement in front of a fron window and thoroughly enjoys an hour or so of full alert.
April 14, 2011 at 11:17 pm
My Dear Hedley,
Gracie goes crazy when I put on my shoes. She knows I’m going out and expects always to come. She, like Maggie, is smitten by the ride and loves nothing more than sticking out her head.
The dump has become quite boring.
When I was stuck inside for two months, a ride anywhere would have seemed a lark.
April 15, 2011 at 12:34 am
Kat says: “a ride anywhere would have seemed a lark.”
Because you said that, suddenly I wanted to know why a lark (i.e., the etymology of that kind of lark). Sooooo, I looked it up. Here ’tis:
==
shortening of skylark (1809), sailors’ slang, “play roughly in the rigging of a ship”, because the common European larks were proverbial for high-flying; Dutch has a similar idea in speelvogel (“playbird, a person of markedly playful nature”).
==
April 14, 2011 at 2:19 pm
Sunny here today and it will continue to stay so more or less they say, temperatures will go up once again too 🙂
I don´t think I ever went to the dump when I was a child, I have absolutely no memory of that. The first time I went there they had already started with recycling everything and that was around 20 years ago. I can´t remember seagulls but I do remember the rats that ran around there. Even if everything were put in recycling bins they still found enough to eat.
Nova is free from the cone now but has to go through yet another round with antibiotics. I´m boiling rice now because her stomach can´t take much more antibiotics.
Have a great day now!
Christer.
April 14, 2011 at 11:19 pm
Christer,
The day was lovely with sun and comparative warmth for a cape spring.
We had trash men when I was a kid, and we never went to the dump. Here you have to pay to have someone pick up your trash so most of us go to the dump, but at over $100 for a sticker, it his becoming more expensive.
I hope she gets well soon!!
April 15, 2011 at 12:30 am
Wow! Surely, Kat, you don’t have to pay the folks over $100 to pick up your trash, do you? That sounds like a LOT of money, no matter how you slice it.
April 14, 2011 at 2:32 pm
There was a small land fill near my home when I was a kid and it was our great pleasure to play in it whenever we could. I spent a lot of time dump picking and got some interesting things.
The two big land fills near me have long since been covered over but I remember the one off I95 always had masses of seagulls. Now I watch the gulls head inland in the morning to stake out their favorite restaurant parking lots and dumpsters. In the evenings I see them heading back seaward to home base.
I don’t know what it is about other people’s trash that is so attractive but I have always found it so. I still scope out the roadside offerings on big trash day. Fortunately I have a small vehicle that will not accommodate the neat stuff I see out on on the side of the road or I would have a huge collection.
April 14, 2011 at 11:22 pm
Dear Caryn,
My town had a dump, but I don’t ever remember going there. My dad would bring out the barrels for the truck to pick up the trash.
The gulls even hang around Burger King’s lot. I notice them when I go to Dunkin’ Donuts.
The best picking is when colleges let out for the summer and the students leave their apartments. The sidewalks are filled with great pieces of furniture and just about anything else you’d need for an apartment. You’d need a truck to haul it away!
April 14, 2011 at 7:15 pm
My Peace Corps daughter is jealous. She had no electricity and had to get her own bath water from a well and build a fire like a girl scout. You were living in luxury!
April 14, 2011 at 11:25 pm
Z&Me,
I had electricity most of the time and water three or four days a week. I used to take bucket baths when there was no running water. I had a stove but couldn’t use it as there was no gas; instead, I used a small charcoal burner for cooking. Wood charcoal was sold in the market. I’d lean my bread on the sides for toast while the water was heating for coffee.
I was glad for the electricity.
April 15, 2011 at 6:18 am
It’s all a matter of scale. In Holland we live so close together that all garbage is collected.
Also scale; I was born on a canal in Amsterdam, where we lived for the first 9 years of my life.
The house was from the 17th century and little had been changed since. I still remember the bedstead and the pantry in the kitchen, which was enormous in our children’s eyes. A table was conveniently situated in the middle, so we could run away from punishment. Unfortunately never long enough.
Many years later I looked up the old house. From the bridge opposite the house I felt like I could lay my hand on the roof. What once was a spacious house turned out to be tiny. It was hard to understand how 2 families of 5 could have lived there with a small business on the ground floor. But the war had only recently ended and everything was hard to get.
Still; good memories.
April 15, 2011 at 10:12 am
Bert,
I think here it is a matter of taxes. We’d have to pay more to hire men and buy trucks. Most towns off Cape do have trash collection.
When we were kids, everything looked so big to us. I remember the corridors in my school were just so wide. When I saw them years later, they were quite narrow.
April 15, 2011 at 9:16 am
Swarms of screeching Sulphur Crested Cokatoos today. Goodness knows where they come from & they make a lot more noise than seagulls.
April 15, 2011 at 10:22 am
Pete,
I don’t know if I agree. Tons of seagulls are so darn noisy.
April 15, 2011 at 10:36 am
Kat ma petite.
Wait till you get to the land of Oz & experience ’em yourself (heh heh)
Ever heard a Tasmanian Devil scream?
But I guess in Ghana there must have been some weird noise at night
April 15, 2011 at 10:21 am
Rick,
I have to pay over a $100 to bring my own trash to the dump. The town has no pick up. You’d have to pay a private contractor.
April 15, 2011 at 10:24 am
Rick,
We always thought of going on a lark as a bit of an adventure with no plans and no destination.
April 16, 2011 at 10:02 am
Pete,
Funny-I called the cat I brought back from Africa Tas after the Tasmanian Devil. In the dry season, most of the night noises were people dancing to the sounds of drums. I didn’t live where there were roaring beasts.