Returning from vacation is a return to everyday routine
Coming back from vacation is always such a shock to the system.
One day you’re enjoying the scenery and looking for ways to amuse
yourself; the next day, you’re back at home doing laundry and
getting cat hair off the couch.
Returning from vacation is a return to everyday routine
Coming back from vacation is always such a shock to the system. One day you’re enjoying the scenery and looking for ways to amuse yourself; the next day, you’re back at home doing laundry and getting cat hair off the couch.
Vacation means fun, sun and frivolity; home has routine and calm. And part of that daily routine, for me, is walking the dog.
I usually take my dog Charley down to Aromas School in the evening. I got in the habit of doing so this past winter, because it was so wet and muddy that anything paved and covered looked very appealing.
I found out there are other advantages as well. The walkways at the school are lighted, which makes it a much better place to walk the dog at night than the roads near my house, which have no street lights.
In addition – and believe me, this is a big plus – the roads around my house are lined with weeds that produce burrs and foxtails. Foxtails are especially bad for dogs. They have a way of burying themselves in ears and between the toes. Charley has acquired a couple of deeply buried foxtails in the past, which have involved expensive veterinary visits.
These days, I do anything I can to avoid foxtails.
So we go to the school and ramble around for a while each day. It’s exercise for us, of course, but it’s also an exercise in nostalgia for me.
This is the school that my sons attended, kindergarten through eighth grade. When they were of a certain age, I felt like we practically lived here. I knew all the teachers, the administrators, the secretaries, the janitors.
In Aromas, the elementary school is the center of the town’s social life. It’s where I met other parents and made friends. After Hunter, my youngest, graduated from eighth grade, I missed that easy camaraderie.
Wandering around the school during the summer is an odd feeling. There are usually kids playing on the playground or guys shooting hoops or other people walking their dogs, but there aren’t too many other people I know. For a little town like Aromas, this seems weird.
Charley is pretty easygoing on the leash, so I have plenty of time to think. And pick up trash. This has been my main preoccupation lately.
Because the community uses the school grounds freely, there always seems to be a variety of garbage around. Soda cans, candy wrappers, milk cartons, burrito wrappers, and even empty Cup O’Noodles containers.
I figure since I’m there anyway, I might as well pick up some of this stuff.
Picking up trash seems like a fair exchange for the time that Charley and I spend there. There are some days when I pick up a lot, and some where I pick up only a little. Sometimes Charley is pulling me along so fast that I don’t get to grab too much.
But every day that we’re there, I try to pick up at least one piece of trash, and more if I possibly can.
In some small way, it makes me feel like I’m part of the school again, and I’m able to help. And that’s something that makes me feel good.
So if you see me wandering around Aromas School with a plastic bag in hand and a dog leash in the other – attached to a dog – and wonder what in the world I might be doing, that’s what I’m doing.
Being the trash lady isn’t such a bad thing.
