October 19, 2002 - Saturday
I took Harry to the dump today. Big deal, I suppose, although Harry did get quite a kick out of throwing the plastics and glass bottles and cans into the respective industrial size recycling bins. And, he liked watching me throw the big garbage bags into the huge dumpster, where he knows from a previous trip that a backhoe equipped with not a back bucket but a masher will soon compress my and all the other garbage bags in something of the opposite of "digging." And, any such relative distraction is hard to beat for a short time in the middle of a weekend afternoon.

But, the big thrill with taking Harry to the dump this time was riding with him in the car. It was "mommy's car," the usual dump car because it has more volume in the back then our family station wagon, and I had already folded up the back seats and loaded the garbage when Harry started giving his mother a little sass. I had just unpacked the carseat we purchase a couple weeks back for Jeremy once he turns one in order to take the cardboard box to the dump, so it was sitting there in the garage ready to go. I only needed to install it in "mommy's car." It would have to go in the front passenger seat because of the garbage in the back and that's something I would have been more hesitant to do had I not seen a couple of pickup trucks with front seat children's seats dropping off and picking up from Harry's preschool. However, what it did was let Harry ride with me in the front. I could look over to my right and there he was, looking out the windshield and the big side windows, and looking to his left and seeing me. We talked. We laughed about the swervy and bumpy roads on the way to the dump. Harry smiled at me and I smiled at him and we drove down the road as father and son on our way to the dump.


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