Today is much like the last few days: cloudy, chilly and damp. It will stay in the 50’s, but I’m okay with that. Hot days will come soon enough. I have a list of errands today, none of them fun or exciting. Gracie would disagree. The dump is on the list.

My father loved his town dump. He went every Sunday and always tried to get one of us to go with him. Any weekend guests, including friends of mine from school, were generally coerced to take what we used to call the tour. The dump in those days was filled with tall piles of trash and had lots of seagulls flying overhead making all sorts of noise. My father would wend his way around the piles then add his contribution. The dump was easily visible from the highway. The birds gave it away. But now, the dump has changed, and my father would be keenly disappointed. The piles of trash have given way to recycle bins and trash bins and it has no seagulls. From the highway, all you can see is giant grass hills where the piles of trash used to be.

The house next door is a summer rental. It has never had anyone living there full time. The owners come up from New York before the start of the season to get the house ready. They mow the weeds in the front and back and put out the plastic deck furniture. That’s it for outside maintenance. At the end of the summer they’ll be back to mow again and to put the furniture away for the winter. The house is pretty simple with shingles (or shakes as some of you call them) on all four sides, no painting necessary. The front yard has pine chips instead of a lawn, no mowing necessary. Every Saturday the renters haul out the trashcans to the road and the trash truck comes. A couple of times I added a stinky trash bag to the pile. The alternative was to put it in my trunk until the next day, but even that one day is too long for stinky trash to sit enclosed in a hot trunk. I don’t ever meet the renters. I just hope they’re quiet and too tired to stay out on their deck too late. I almost called the police once because of noise. Our town has an ordinance about noise after 10. I held off, but I’m getting older and crankier and less tolerant. I just hope this summer’s crop is a quiet one.