(Credit to Papa for the title)
I’m still here! It has been a busy week. Chaotic, even. Some days, it just seems like there is so much NOISE. No rest for the brain. But, I’m still here!
The house repairs continue. No, that’s not right. The house destruction continues. That’s more like it. Repairs will come (I think). But right now, we are still in the tearing things down, phase. We thought we were about to start building the hall bathroom back up, but then we found a point where the roof was leaking down into the wall. Soooo, instead of putting new floor in the bathroom, I tore out more drywall, and my husband had to refocus his attention on roof patching. And that is pretty much how it is going for most things.
We did manage to get one deck removed. Can’t take credit for that. We had some hired muscle in for the day. I can however, take credit for driving to and even into, a dump. You know I have developed some sort of strange enjoyment over burning down the old and gross around this place, but there was some question about exactly how safe it might be to burn the remnants of the deck. Being old treated lumber and all, so to the dump we had to go. I’m sure it’s nothing new to some folks, but this was my first experience with a dumping site and not something easily forgotten. First off, the smell is horrendous. Yeah, just really awful. Smells like rotting garbage, since you know, that’s what it is… And you all those cliche sci-fi movie scenes that depict some futuristic world covered by trash? Well, that is exactly what it looked like. Pretty weird. So, no need to visit one, now (I’m sure that’s on everyone’s list of places to see, right?). They did have a really impressive hydraulic lift system there for tractor trailers though. I mean, this thing was massive. It lifted the entire trailer straight up in the air, totally vertical. Of course my first thought was, “Gee, I wouldn’t want to be standing under that thing if it malfunctioned.” Which is entirely true. Crushed by garbage? Not how I want to end my day. But still, really impressive.
It did give me an up close and personal look at what happens to all the stuff that gets tossed out. Obviously, everything has to go somewhere. It can be easy to distance yourself from what that “somewhere” looks like, so it was a unique opportunity to see it up close. The waste management companies do a pretty impressive job at mashing around what is there and ultimately planting grass seed when the place is eventually closed down, but still it solidifies, that I would rather not buy what I don’t need, and burn what waste I safely can. One last thing. To actually drive into this place, the entire time you are driving over man-made hills of garbage, so the topography is, shall we say, interesting. The hills are pretty steep and as you drive up them, in the back of your mind you are half wondering if you are about to just drive off a sheer drop on the other side. Additionally, I had some concerns about my ability to actually drive my rear-wheel drive pick-up back out once the load had been deposited. But, turns out, it wasn’t really that extreme and we drove out just fine.
So there you have it. One more thing I never thought farm life would include. This adventure is just full of surprises and new life experiences. Some good and some not as good, but always interesting and seldom exactly what we expect! Who knows what I’ll be reporting next!