Tuesday, April 21, 2009

What A Dump!

Tomorrow is officially Earth Day. But my teen, tween and I celebrated early. This past Sunday, we had a nice little family outing at the local landfill, Rainbow Disposal. Nothing like the smell of trash decomposing to bring a family closer together, I say.

And given the choice between a day at the beach or a tour of the dump, well, we are anything but predictable.

Of course I want my daughters to be environmentally aware and to care enough about Mother Earth to treat her kindly. We do our part by recycling our water bottles. But the real reason we spent part of our Sunday at the dump was because my tween was offered a bribe by her school: Attend the "Public Awareness Day" at Rainbow Disposal, and earn extra credit in Science. My tween's grade is teetering between a "B" and a "C," so she needed that little push into solid "B" territory.

While I appreciated all the hard work and effort that went into pulling this day together, the come-see-how-we're-spending-your-tax-dollars-so-when-we-increase-your-fees-there-won't-be-an-uproar day, the local dump is not where I wanted to spend part of my weekend. My daughters were even less enthused. Normally an outing such as this would lend itself to a churro and lemonade. But for some reason, none of us had much of an appetite.

So we walked around long enough to grab a souvenir that my tween could give to her teacher to prove that we were there. Then I took a picture of them in front of a pile of trash, which was the highlight of the day. And inside of 10 minutes, we left, gulping for air.







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