We ripped down all of the walls from Abigail’s room and loaded it into boxes.  We just got “medium” boxes from a store and they weighed, when full, around 80 pounds each.  Emily and I hauled them down the steps to the trailer.  One day last week, I hitched up the trailer and headed to the dump.  I have never been to a landfill before.  When we lived in TN, our county had a really cool place we called the dump.  In actuality, it was a bunch of big dumpsters where the county would accept trash, metal, plastics, etc…pretty much everything.  It was open every day and was super convenient.  It was a dump I guess but not a true landfill.

So, here in WV, my county does not have a TN style dump so I had to take the boxes to our proper landfill.  I don’t know if you have ever taken stuff to a landfill, but it was an adventure!  I pulled onto scales where the nice lady took down my information and my weight.  She then told me to “follow the dust and stay out of the way of the guy on the loader.”  I get that it is a large piece of equipment, but it made me wonder if the guy on the loader was stable.

Anyhow, I followed the dust awhile and sure enough, I could see a huge loader driving back and forth over a huge pile of junk and trash.  Truck after truck was lined up.  They whipped around and backed up to the pile, somehow missing the guy on the loader.  Some unloaded stuff by hand, while others in the big trucks dumped and ran.  Not having a dump trailer, I had to back into my spot and unload by hand.  As you might guess, the smell was…bad…very bad.  Bits of stuff were blowing around.  Crows were picking over who-knows-what.  It was dusty and I always had to keep an eye out for the guy on the loader.

Once I had it all unloaded, I had to drive my way back out through the huge ruts and blowing junk.  Getting out was harder as there was no dust to follow.  There was still plenty of dust but it wasn’t the following kind of dust.  Anyhow, I finally made it back out and drove back up onto the scales.  My load ended up weighing 820 pounds which cost me around $16.  That seemed like a pretty good deal.  I had another same-sized load I took another day so my house certainly groaned with relief.  One little room shed 1600 or so pounds of weight.  I guess the guy on the loader was probably happy to see more junk to push around too, so all in all, it was a pretty cool experience.  My nose will never be the same and I permanently coated my lungs with pulverized nasty blowing around the landfill.  Who knows, maybe the guy on the loader was trying to find his way out and was just following the wrong dust!