Taking out the Trash

One of the highlights of my week is to take out the trash. Okay, this may sound a little wierd, but I really enjoy it. I usually only take it out at night, after I've come home from work, cooked, ate, cleaned, etc. It's a short walk from my apartment to the dumpster, but it's the only time of the day that I really feel like I am outside and in the real world.

My days pretty-much consist of getting up, driving to work, sitting infront of a computer all day--much of which inside a big room full of noisy machines and no windows-- and then I drive home going from one rectangle to another (apartment-to-cubicle-to-apartment).

But my quiet, nightime walk to the dumpser is a mini vacation where I can see a few stars behind the trees and a bright, comforting moon.

It reminds me a little bit about the nightly walk I took as a kid (a looong time ago, in a galaxy far, far away) from the barn to the house in the dark winter. We would have finished all the nightly milking chores, the vacuum pump turned off, the equipment cleaned and put away, and the cows quietly munching away on hay. We'd shut off the lights and go out into the frozen dark. I'll always remember how the snow crunched like cereal under my boots in the below-zero air. And if I'd stop for a second, everything went completely and utterly quiet. I'd trudge up the hill and eventually reach the basement where the rush of warm air would fog over my glasses and I'd strip off my coveralls and boots. And then on to a well-earned, good night's sleep.