Insights from the Dump

We are finally finishing cleaning up our yard from the ice/snow storm that took down so many trees and branches. I know I am growing up and getting more mature because there are times in my life I wish I was a girl. This may be confusing to you. Yes I am a woman, and a real one at that, but I am not a REAL girl. I do stuff all the time that real girls wouldn't do. Like cutting down trees with chainsaws or building decks and fences by myself ect. I use to just crave experience so bad I wanted to do EVERYTHING. Well, now that I have done a lot it is okay with me not to have to do everything. In fact, I want to try out being a girl. I haven't really done that yet. I want some man to go, "Oh let me help you that." as I am just a wee thing and a girl to boot. "Oh thank you strong man. It is so heavy and I just didn't know what to do, until you came a long." I am really terrible at this but suddenly see value in it.

As I was taking a monstrous load of branches and wood to the dump, I was thinking how I would love to be a girl - particularly today. The dump is one of Americas sins. If you go there is is the grossest, smelliest, ugliest place. Pleh - yuck! I always hate going to the dump and I feel like a terrible person when I do. I feel like I am polluting the world. Giving it cancer. Condemning it to death. Today I was dumping wood so what I was dumping didn't make me feel that way, but just being in that place did. So I am already feeling down from this horrific place when I get on top of my monstrous tangled pile of wood. How am I ever going to get all this stuff out of the trailer by myself. It is so heavy and tangled and pokey. I feel it is impossible for one little girl to accomplish such a feat by herself in this pit of despair. But I begin. I get slapped in the face with twigs and pathetically wrestle with the branches. I decide I will be here all day and there is no joy in the world. And so I commit myself to this misery and just keep working. I pull, yank, push and throw. I feel like I am making no headway. It is so impossible but I keep working.............and then what do you know, I am done in 15 minutes. 15 minutes of misery. That was it. I am shocked and surprised. Then a flood of memories of these same feelings come to me. Oh yeah, this is what happens to me every time I go to the dump. I think there is no way I can do this by myself but once I start and just keep going, it magically disappears. I have learned this lesson of "just keep working and the impossible become possible", many, many times, yet I still forget it. What is wrong with me? Why am I so stupid? Curse this flawed brain. If I could only remember what I learned, I would be so smart. I would actually have a head start on tomorrow. But instead I have to waste time re-learning and re-learning.

Now that the task is done, I am okay with not being a girl again and see value in being capable. - What a strange roller coaster of emotions.

(Note, Ryan took this mango pile to the dump the day before, but sadly it already closed. So today I needed to do it because he was at work.)