Personal Maintenance
One recent morning, fog on the mountain, fog in my head, compressed and tangled up under the covers, I reached for something that turned out to be me and gashed myself on a knuckle with a fingernail not long enough to be lethal, but hurtful just the same. Later that day orchestrating a symphony of awkward movements I sliced a line across my chin with the same weapon. A man working for me said how did you cut your chin? I know you didn't do it shaving, he went on to say. I had run out of shaving cream awhile back and was for days pondering what to do about it, while my lazy beard pretended to have purpose. Self conscious about too much laziness surrounding my scheme I purchased some shaving cream, and, certainly no more than a day later smeared it about my faced and scraped over it with a triple or perhaps quadruple bladed razor, and cut my lip in the process, which bled profusely and reminded me of all the school yard fights I avoided, except for the one where the kid spit in my ear. After shaving, and compressing my wound, risking no more, I trimmed my fingernails.
...more recent posts
Dumaine Boys Hit The Road
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA: April 4, 2007
"We had a great showing and audience response...
Joshua and Mario, featured in the film, attended an MIT class the next morning. As an adjunct to the screening, a group of students in city planning/urban design were required to propose and implement a rebuilding program in New Orleans. Some chose to work on educational problems, some chose economic development. The class lasted an hour and a half and throughout it all they asked questions of Mario and Joshua who provided them with a background tapestry of the city: the police, the crime, the schools, jobs, families, etc. At the end of the class, the teachers and students enthusiastically thanked Mario and Josh for their insights and explanations. Not bad! How many local guys can say they lectured at MIT?
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA: April 5, 2007
Beautiful Harvard lecture theater; great crowd of enthused and engaged students. The response was overwhelming and the discussion went on for a good hour afterwards. A terrific group of panelists engaged the students on a range of issues brought out in the film. In fact, the Harvard Graduate School of Education is interested in incorporating the film into an educational curriculum for high school and college students. We will do everything we can to assist them in this effort.
'Wow! Wow! Mario and Joshua, just . . . what you've been through. I want everyone to give you a standing ovation.' -- Moremi Singleton, Harvard Student
250 Harvard students gave them a standing ovation."
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA: April 4, 2007
"We had a great showing and audience response...
Joshua and Mario, featured in the film, attended an MIT class the next morning. As an adjunct to the screening, a group of students in city planning/urban design were required to propose and implement a rebuilding program in New Orleans. Some chose to work on educational problems, some chose economic development. The class lasted an hour and a half and throughout it all they asked questions of Mario and Joshua who provided them with a background tapestry of the city: the police, the crime, the schools, jobs, families, etc. At the end of the class, the teachers and students enthusiastically thanked Mario and Josh for their insights and explanations. Not bad! How many local guys can say they lectured at MIT?
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA: April 5, 2007
Beautiful Harvard lecture theater; great crowd of enthused and engaged students. The response was overwhelming and the discussion went on for a good hour afterwards. A terrific group of panelists engaged the students on a range of issues brought out in the film. In fact, the Harvard Graduate School of Education is interested in incorporating the film into an educational curriculum for high school and college students. We will do everything we can to assist them in this effort.
'Wow! Wow! Mario and Joshua, just . . . what you've been through. I want everyone to give you a standing ovation.' -- Moremi Singleton, Harvard Student
250 Harvard students gave them a standing ovation."
Oh Gussymay
The snow from two days ago has melted, except for in shaded areas here and there. This morning I decided to check the weather without getting out of bed so I awkwardly reached behind my head and lifted the window a few inches. An arctic blast blew in against my neck and down my collar and along my spine. I quickly shut the window, onto my thumb, and expelled a few select obscenities. It is Easter Sunday and I am still in bed, listening to the Choir of the Abbey of S. Pierre de Solesmes. The music is making me a little sleepy, which reminds me of those youthful days gone by sitting on a wooden pew in a Methodist church in Dallas. But whereas it was considered bad form to nod off in church I cannot see that nodding off in bed should be a problem, except perhaps to a jealous insomniac. The rising sun is on the back of my head now. Now its not. Now it is. Now its not. The wind conspires with clouds. I don't want to fall asleep. I just woke up. I might miss the benediction. Now I am bathed in white light, listening to a chanting choir, in bed, on Easter Sunday.
I am not an expert on the French language but I think the XM radio guy just swallowed and then briefly choked on a French word. Now he is speaking in a non-committal tone about the death of Christ, as if he wants to make it perfectly clear that he is a scholar of music, not religion.
I have an on again off again relationship with neatness. From where I lie I cannot really see the clothes strewn about the floor. Pushing them to the foot of the bed is a technique you can borrow from me, with attribution. The kitchen though, oh gussymay, don't make me get up and go into that kitchen. If I had any art cred the kitchen could be a much discussed piece of work.
The kitchen was already an ill-attended mess two days ago, an hour before it snowed at 10 p.m. when Bernadette emailed and said she was hungry, in NYC. I said I was hungry too. She said I could put anchovies in a pan and melt them. What else? I said, perking up to the possibility of an actual meal existing amidst the sparse stores of my cupboard and fridge. Sauteed garlic and roasted pine nuts and throw in some currants if I want, over pasta. Oh my dear God, I have all those things. And I grated fresh Parmesan or some other fancy cheese-like product over it. It was goodalicious. I didn't clean up afterwards.
Mr. BC emailed me this morning with a link to an article which was to remind me that long term marijuana use does not adversely affect the brain. I don't know why he sent it to me. Its not like I have ever judged him, nor in 42 years have I ever seen him smoke pot or ever been aware of his having smoked pot. But I guess there are things you just can't know, and also, I suppose, he wanted to unburden himself. Hey man, I'm not judging you, you can count on that.
Yesterday I had breakfast at the cafe and overheard a rather learned sounding blowhard Republican tourist go on about how President Bush is right, was right, will always be right. I went back for dinner and had the crabcake and grilled shrimp platter while listening to stories from a table full of visiting jazz musicians. They were behind me and I did not know who or what they were until one of them made some obviously first hand experienced commentary about Lionel Hampton. I then had to turn around a bit to see who I was dining with, and for whatever reason, I began deriving comfort from their presence.
The snow from two days ago has melted, except for in shaded areas here and there. This morning I decided to check the weather without getting out of bed so I awkwardly reached behind my head and lifted the window a few inches. An arctic blast blew in against my neck and down my collar and along my spine. I quickly shut the window, onto my thumb, and expelled a few select obscenities. It is Easter Sunday and I am still in bed, listening to the Choir of the Abbey of S. Pierre de Solesmes. The music is making me a little sleepy, which reminds me of those youthful days gone by sitting on a wooden pew in a Methodist church in Dallas. But whereas it was considered bad form to nod off in church I cannot see that nodding off in bed should be a problem, except perhaps to a jealous insomniac. The rising sun is on the back of my head now. Now its not. Now it is. Now its not. The wind conspires with clouds. I don't want to fall asleep. I just woke up. I might miss the benediction. Now I am bathed in white light, listening to a chanting choir, in bed, on Easter Sunday.
I am not an expert on the French language but I think the XM radio guy just swallowed and then briefly choked on a French word. Now he is speaking in a non-committal tone about the death of Christ, as if he wants to make it perfectly clear that he is a scholar of music, not religion.
I have an on again off again relationship with neatness. From where I lie I cannot really see the clothes strewn about the floor. Pushing them to the foot of the bed is a technique you can borrow from me, with attribution. The kitchen though, oh gussymay, don't make me get up and go into that kitchen. If I had any art cred the kitchen could be a much discussed piece of work.
The kitchen was already an ill-attended mess two days ago, an hour before it snowed at 10 p.m. when Bernadette emailed and said she was hungry, in NYC. I said I was hungry too. She said I could put anchovies in a pan and melt them. What else? I said, perking up to the possibility of an actual meal existing amidst the sparse stores of my cupboard and fridge. Sauteed garlic and roasted pine nuts and throw in some currants if I want, over pasta. Oh my dear God, I have all those things. And I grated fresh Parmesan or some other fancy cheese-like product over it. It was goodalicious. I didn't clean up afterwards.
Mr. BC emailed me this morning with a link to an article which was to remind me that long term marijuana use does not adversely affect the brain. I don't know why he sent it to me. Its not like I have ever judged him, nor in 42 years have I ever seen him smoke pot or ever been aware of his having smoked pot. But I guess there are things you just can't know, and also, I suppose, he wanted to unburden himself. Hey man, I'm not judging you, you can count on that.
Yesterday I had breakfast at the cafe and overheard a rather learned sounding blowhard Republican tourist go on about how President Bush is right, was right, will always be right. I went back for dinner and had the crabcake and grilled shrimp platter while listening to stories from a table full of visiting jazz musicians. They were behind me and I did not know who or what they were until one of them made some obviously first hand experienced commentary about Lionel Hampton. I then had to turn around a bit to see who I was dining with, and for whatever reason, I began deriving comfort from their presence.
I Rented Rocky Balboa
Shame and his little brother, embarrassment, will kill you. You have to outwit shame and his little brother embarrassment.
I'm eating some fat, fancy Medjool dates to get my strength up to go on with this. I don't want to go out for food. I went out for breakfast. I have a number of items in the cupboard and the fridge that can be classified as food even though if you came over right now and were looking for something like a meal you would be disappointed. I have a half of a shad roe pair and I might cook that up later if I can get over being disgusted to look at it. Being disgusted is not a good start to a meal. I have a jar of anchovies that if my head were a little smaller I could say is bigger than my head. I could put a couple of anchovies on a cracker later and that would be like a snack. There is a nice jar of garlic stuffed olives in the fridge and that is making me think of having a martini. I don't however have any gin. Fortunately, in various bottles in a couple of different freezers I do have almost a gallon of vodka, so woe is me settling for a vodka martini.
Bernadette can visit me in VA from NY for extended visits because she can work from here, may God bless the Internet.
She recently left out from one of those visits and the day before the exit, due to my general nature, the fineness of Bernadette, and an occasional over sensitivity to a waning moon, I became noticeably depressed. Then, I got over it, more or less. I did not the next day wail to Bernadette before the Dulles backdrop, Please Don't Leave Me, I Can't Be Trusted Alone, I May....
Ah, now we're getting somewhere. The mere suggestion of self-destructive behaviour, that's something to be ashamed of.
Mr. BC sent me an email the other day with a link for a dumb game site and in his brief subject line message he said something like, waste a few hours. I have over time, not exactly begrudgingly, but certainly hesitantly, come to realize that Mr. BC is right a fair amount of the time. I have therefore made it part of an ongoing concerted-effort-program to do whatever Mr. BC tells me to do. Except when I really don't feel like it and then I just say to hell with that idea. I might go on to mumble--that's the dumbest idea I have heard in some time.
So Sunday, and Bernadette is gone a day already, the college basketball semi-final games of Saturday night, watched alone, were a disappointment and a bore, and I am considering work versus something else I am actually quite good at, not working. Yeah, I know, the suspense is killing you. I went back to the game site, which I had looked at perfunctorily when Mr. BC had sent it. That day I had become quickly bored throwing 2-D darts at 2-D balloons.
But Sunday I found new dart throwing purpose and I made it through 20 of the fifty balloon levels before deciding to take a break. I spent my break time looking at some of the other choices and found a dueling tanks game that occupied me for the next three hours. What? Yeah it was a beautiful spring day outside. I could see it out the windows. I was very close to it, separated only by some sheetrock and rough cedar siding. I had the windows open. I could hear the wind through the pines and the chirping birds while I decimated the enemy computer tank. Whenever I felt guilty for wasting time I just reminded myself that Mr. BC is almost always right.
I could waste the whole day playing computer games but I chose not to. At 6 p.m. I left the house for the first time. Wow. It was pleasant yet alienating. Like I had never been outside before and it would take some getting used to. I was happy with the outside but also put out by it. The nerve of this outside I said to myself because there was no one else to say it to. I had a brainstorm while outside. I got in the Jeep and drove all of one block to the art gallery/video rental establishment. There was something going on. Oh God, not an art opening I cried, to myself, but even if I had cried it out loud and every living resident of this town was listening it would not amount to a group large enough to fill a medium-sized movie theatre. I looked in my mind to my other email inbox that might have warned me of such a thing, an art opening when I just want to rent movies. I circled the block and stopped short of a new family with beau coup kids swarming the yard of a previously uninhabited dwelling. I didn't actually circle the block, I had just turned right past the gallery and movie rental place and was facing a dead end. I stopped short of a kid on a big wheel, feeling the motherly concern of one nearby. I made a deft backwards two point turn and just like that, in this matter of seconds, whatever was going on was done going on. I parked and entered the movie rental part of the gallery. An amiable man was talking to June. Hey June, I said. Hello Jim, she said.
June was munching on colorful peanut M&Ms from a white bowl on the desk behind which she sits. I try when forcing myself outside, to be sociable. You going to eat all of those? I said to June. The amiable man, who had been talking about some business with June, and who clearly had some proprietary relationship with the M&Ms, offered me some. He picked up the white bowl from the imitation wood grained desk and held it out to me. I was chewing gum but I took some anyway. I did not know what to do with my gum so I experimented with chewing gum on one side of my mouth and M&Ms on the other. I was disappointed with the results.
Let's get back to the shame theme.
I picked, from the few shelves reserved for fairly recent films, Rocky Balboa, Invincible, and Jesus Camp.
The man left and I checked out. I asked June if she could not record that I had rented Rocky Balboa. We joked about it some and I left.
I came home but Rocky Balboa would not cue up on my laptop. I took it up to the bighouse and stretched out on the leather couch and watched it on the fifty inch plasma. I have a perverse interest in mediocrity. My critics would say that is just narcissism. I had very low expectations for the film and that is a good way to find yourself pleasantly surprised. It did not however, surprise me in that way. I then watched another uplifting sports related flick, Invincible, with Mark Wahlberg, and there is at least one scene that Disney should delete from all their inspirational sports flicks, but doesn't, yet other than that one scene and a few other minor transgressions, Invincible is pretty good. And Wahlberg is very good.
I was sleepy so I came back down here to the caretaker's residence, and cued up Jesus Camp, in bed, on the laptop. I have watched every major horror movie ever made and a fair amount of minor ones and Jesus Camp is by far the scariest movie I have ever seen, and it is a documentary. The documentary I think should not be seen as a reflection of Christianity as a whole but for that very select and perhaps frighteningly large group of extremist evangelicals, it paints a very disturbing picture.
Bernadette today was concerned for my mental welfare as reflected in my lack of email to her (combined with some first hand experience concerning my mental potential) and when I did get back to her and said that I had last night watched Rocky Balboa she became very disturbed indeed and made me promise not to tell anyone else. So, let's keep this one on the down low.
Shame and his little brother, embarrassment, will kill you. You have to outwit shame and his little brother embarrassment.
I'm eating some fat, fancy Medjool dates to get my strength up to go on with this. I don't want to go out for food. I went out for breakfast. I have a number of items in the cupboard and the fridge that can be classified as food even though if you came over right now and were looking for something like a meal you would be disappointed. I have a half of a shad roe pair and I might cook that up later if I can get over being disgusted to look at it. Being disgusted is not a good start to a meal. I have a jar of anchovies that if my head were a little smaller I could say is bigger than my head. I could put a couple of anchovies on a cracker later and that would be like a snack. There is a nice jar of garlic stuffed olives in the fridge and that is making me think of having a martini. I don't however have any gin. Fortunately, in various bottles in a couple of different freezers I do have almost a gallon of vodka, so woe is me settling for a vodka martini.
Bernadette can visit me in VA from NY for extended visits because she can work from here, may God bless the Internet.
She recently left out from one of those visits and the day before the exit, due to my general nature, the fineness of Bernadette, and an occasional over sensitivity to a waning moon, I became noticeably depressed. Then, I got over it, more or less. I did not the next day wail to Bernadette before the Dulles backdrop, Please Don't Leave Me, I Can't Be Trusted Alone, I May....
Ah, now we're getting somewhere. The mere suggestion of self-destructive behaviour, that's something to be ashamed of.
Mr. BC sent me an email the other day with a link for a dumb game site and in his brief subject line message he said something like, waste a few hours. I have over time, not exactly begrudgingly, but certainly hesitantly, come to realize that Mr. BC is right a fair amount of the time. I have therefore made it part of an ongoing concerted-effort-program to do whatever Mr. BC tells me to do. Except when I really don't feel like it and then I just say to hell with that idea. I might go on to mumble--that's the dumbest idea I have heard in some time.
So Sunday, and Bernadette is gone a day already, the college basketball semi-final games of Saturday night, watched alone, were a disappointment and a bore, and I am considering work versus something else I am actually quite good at, not working. Yeah, I know, the suspense is killing you. I went back to the game site, which I had looked at perfunctorily when Mr. BC had sent it. That day I had become quickly bored throwing 2-D darts at 2-D balloons.
But Sunday I found new dart throwing purpose and I made it through 20 of the fifty balloon levels before deciding to take a break. I spent my break time looking at some of the other choices and found a dueling tanks game that occupied me for the next three hours. What? Yeah it was a beautiful spring day outside. I could see it out the windows. I was very close to it, separated only by some sheetrock and rough cedar siding. I had the windows open. I could hear the wind through the pines and the chirping birds while I decimated the enemy computer tank. Whenever I felt guilty for wasting time I just reminded myself that Mr. BC is almost always right.
I could waste the whole day playing computer games but I chose not to. At 6 p.m. I left the house for the first time. Wow. It was pleasant yet alienating. Like I had never been outside before and it would take some getting used to. I was happy with the outside but also put out by it. The nerve of this outside I said to myself because there was no one else to say it to. I had a brainstorm while outside. I got in the Jeep and drove all of one block to the art gallery/video rental establishment. There was something going on. Oh God, not an art opening I cried, to myself, but even if I had cried it out loud and every living resident of this town was listening it would not amount to a group large enough to fill a medium-sized movie theatre. I looked in my mind to my other email inbox that might have warned me of such a thing, an art opening when I just want to rent movies. I circled the block and stopped short of a new family with beau coup kids swarming the yard of a previously uninhabited dwelling. I didn't actually circle the block, I had just turned right past the gallery and movie rental place and was facing a dead end. I stopped short of a kid on a big wheel, feeling the motherly concern of one nearby. I made a deft backwards two point turn and just like that, in this matter of seconds, whatever was going on was done going on. I parked and entered the movie rental part of the gallery. An amiable man was talking to June. Hey June, I said. Hello Jim, she said.
June was munching on colorful peanut M&Ms from a white bowl on the desk behind which she sits. I try when forcing myself outside, to be sociable. You going to eat all of those? I said to June. The amiable man, who had been talking about some business with June, and who clearly had some proprietary relationship with the M&Ms, offered me some. He picked up the white bowl from the imitation wood grained desk and held it out to me. I was chewing gum but I took some anyway. I did not know what to do with my gum so I experimented with chewing gum on one side of my mouth and M&Ms on the other. I was disappointed with the results.
Let's get back to the shame theme.
I picked, from the few shelves reserved for fairly recent films, Rocky Balboa, Invincible, and Jesus Camp.
The man left and I checked out. I asked June if she could not record that I had rented Rocky Balboa. We joked about it some and I left.
I came home but Rocky Balboa would not cue up on my laptop. I took it up to the bighouse and stretched out on the leather couch and watched it on the fifty inch plasma. I have a perverse interest in mediocrity. My critics would say that is just narcissism. I had very low expectations for the film and that is a good way to find yourself pleasantly surprised. It did not however, surprise me in that way. I then watched another uplifting sports related flick, Invincible, with Mark Wahlberg, and there is at least one scene that Disney should delete from all their inspirational sports flicks, but doesn't, yet other than that one scene and a few other minor transgressions, Invincible is pretty good. And Wahlberg is very good.
I was sleepy so I came back down here to the caretaker's residence, and cued up Jesus Camp, in bed, on the laptop. I have watched every major horror movie ever made and a fair amount of minor ones and Jesus Camp is by far the scariest movie I have ever seen, and it is a documentary. The documentary I think should not be seen as a reflection of Christianity as a whole but for that very select and perhaps frighteningly large group of extremist evangelicals, it paints a very disturbing picture.
Bernadette today was concerned for my mental welfare as reflected in my lack of email to her (combined with some first hand experience concerning my mental potential) and when I did get back to her and said that I had last night watched Rocky Balboa she became very disturbed indeed and made me promise not to tell anyone else. So, let's keep this one on the down low.
Crash Goes The Breaking Glass
Was I excited about getting a colorful new Rappahannock county tag for the Jeep windshield? You bet I was. With the Badgers long knocked out the NCAA tournament, what else did I have to be excited about? Naw really, I was over the Badger thing. Only to have the Longhorns knocked out, then the Aggies. I'm going to root for the Hoyas this evening, which clearly, may not be to their advantage. Go Tarheels.
I scraped off last year's tag, a woefully sad looking misprint of a county sticker, and applied the cheerful multi-colored 07 logo, carefully lining it up just so with the complimentary-colored inspection sticker to its left. If I would just wash the Jeep, still slimed over with white filmy road gunk from the recent but not that recent 8 hour drive through highway hell froze over, I would have a vehicle envied by many. Especially that great majority driving around with bland state required stickers.
I was on my way to the dump. As you may or may not know, as spring approaches and the temperatures rise, you cannot use your garage as a refrigerated way station for storing garbage for weeks at a time. You have to get rid of that garbage, take it on down the road. Which is a bummer sometimes but look on the bright side regarding the spring thaw. Those paint brushes you forgot to clean in early winter, left in buckets of water which froze solid for two months? You can now clean those up and get some use from them.
So, like a soccer mom with a Jeep full of smelly kids, off I went to the dump, proudly displaying my new sticker, which is also required for legal dumping. I have been corrected for improper dumping protocol on more than one occasion. I am not a rebel. I try not to defy authority. I do not like to make mistakes and then have them pointed out to me like I'm some mis-fitted, ill-bred, smelly offspring of a negligent soccer mom. That there is what I call a little metaphor inversion. Given the choice between being a soccer mom or a smelly bag of trash, I choose not to choose. I can be both.
That guy at the dump is just doing his job. I am not faulting him for that. Still, he makes me nervous. You think I don't go to the dump as often as I should because I'm lazy? Ok, fair enough. But also the reason I don't go is because I'm intimidated. What else can I do wrong at the dump that I haven't yet done wrong? If that guy is on duty he's going to find something. Here's an example of what goes through my mind. Besides the trash, I am loading up recyclables--a few beer, wine and liquor bottles, about forty or fifty pounds worth, all neatly sorted by color, and I'm worried is this guy gonna think I'm a booze hound. I work through that by describing myself to myself, and the situation, in such a way that I come out not looking like a complete drunken loser. Sounds good to me, and I am feeling strong and confident and full of hope. The stack of newspapers has amongst it several plastic wrapped sections from the Sunday papers. Should plastic really go into the big rail car dedicated to newsprint? Should I unwrap these sections? Is the guy going to see me throwing this questionable contraband into the rail car? My armpits itch and I get flush in the face just thinking about it.
I don't want you think I spend all day thinking about this stuff, no, no, no, just part of it. I'm at the dump now, slinging the little thirteen gallon white with red drawstring trash bags into the sectioned off pits like I'm some kind of jazzy big city garbage man with style coming out my ears instead of what I actually have which is just those little bristly hairs, and I am doing nothing wrong, but still feel like I'm being watched. And this is because I am being watched. The guy is over there in his booth with the tinted windows, but he can't touch me because I'm golden. I am the master of trash hauling protocol, except for that plastic around some of the newsprint, and, did I remember to take off the caps from my liquor bottles? I think I did. I think I did take the caps, and that one cork, from my liquor bottles.
Oh shit, here he comes. He's making an inspection run. I feel myself straightening my posture, sticking out my chest, sucking in the gut. Sir, yes sir. He can't touch me, I already told you this, I'm golden. I move over to the bottle dumpsters and risk herniating a disc by lifting the large plastic totes of bottles over my head and dumping them, crash, crash goes the breaking glass.
On the way home the stench of spilt beer residue in the bottom of the totes makes me think of spring.
Was I excited about getting a colorful new Rappahannock county tag for the Jeep windshield? You bet I was. With the Badgers long knocked out the NCAA tournament, what else did I have to be excited about? Naw really, I was over the Badger thing. Only to have the Longhorns knocked out, then the Aggies. I'm going to root for the Hoyas this evening, which clearly, may not be to their advantage. Go Tarheels.
I scraped off last year's tag, a woefully sad looking misprint of a county sticker, and applied the cheerful multi-colored 07 logo, carefully lining it up just so with the complimentary-colored inspection sticker to its left. If I would just wash the Jeep, still slimed over with white filmy road gunk from the recent but not that recent 8 hour drive through highway hell froze over, I would have a vehicle envied by many. Especially that great majority driving around with bland state required stickers.
I was on my way to the dump. As you may or may not know, as spring approaches and the temperatures rise, you cannot use your garage as a refrigerated way station for storing garbage for weeks at a time. You have to get rid of that garbage, take it on down the road. Which is a bummer sometimes but look on the bright side regarding the spring thaw. Those paint brushes you forgot to clean in early winter, left in buckets of water which froze solid for two months? You can now clean those up and get some use from them.
So, like a soccer mom with a Jeep full of smelly kids, off I went to the dump, proudly displaying my new sticker, which is also required for legal dumping. I have been corrected for improper dumping protocol on more than one occasion. I am not a rebel. I try not to defy authority. I do not like to make mistakes and then have them pointed out to me like I'm some mis-fitted, ill-bred, smelly offspring of a negligent soccer mom. That there is what I call a little metaphor inversion. Given the choice between being a soccer mom or a smelly bag of trash, I choose not to choose. I can be both.
That guy at the dump is just doing his job. I am not faulting him for that. Still, he makes me nervous. You think I don't go to the dump as often as I should because I'm lazy? Ok, fair enough. But also the reason I don't go is because I'm intimidated. What else can I do wrong at the dump that I haven't yet done wrong? If that guy is on duty he's going to find something. Here's an example of what goes through my mind. Besides the trash, I am loading up recyclables--a few beer, wine and liquor bottles, about forty or fifty pounds worth, all neatly sorted by color, and I'm worried is this guy gonna think I'm a booze hound. I work through that by describing myself to myself, and the situation, in such a way that I come out not looking like a complete drunken loser. Sounds good to me, and I am feeling strong and confident and full of hope. The stack of newspapers has amongst it several plastic wrapped sections from the Sunday papers. Should plastic really go into the big rail car dedicated to newsprint? Should I unwrap these sections? Is the guy going to see me throwing this questionable contraband into the rail car? My armpits itch and I get flush in the face just thinking about it.
I don't want you think I spend all day thinking about this stuff, no, no, no, just part of it. I'm at the dump now, slinging the little thirteen gallon white with red drawstring trash bags into the sectioned off pits like I'm some kind of jazzy big city garbage man with style coming out my ears instead of what I actually have which is just those little bristly hairs, and I am doing nothing wrong, but still feel like I'm being watched. And this is because I am being watched. The guy is over there in his booth with the tinted windows, but he can't touch me because I'm golden. I am the master of trash hauling protocol, except for that plastic around some of the newsprint, and, did I remember to take off the caps from my liquor bottles? I think I did. I think I did take the caps, and that one cork, from my liquor bottles.
Oh shit, here he comes. He's making an inspection run. I feel myself straightening my posture, sticking out my chest, sucking in the gut. Sir, yes sir. He can't touch me, I already told you this, I'm golden. I move over to the bottle dumpsters and risk herniating a disc by lifting the large plastic totes of bottles over my head and dumping them, crash, crash goes the breaking glass.
On the way home the stench of spilt beer residue in the bottom of the totes makes me think of spring.