The Day of the Dumpster-Diver

The Day of the Dumpster-Diver December 21, 2011

Yesterday started out on a fantastic note. My little brother, home from his sophomore year in a blaze of glory (no, really, the kid got a 90 on his accounting final at A&M;, people, plus steady 100’s in his Mandarin class) most unfortunately came down with a terrible case of strep throat over the weekend. I did what any awesome sister would do. I made fun of him for whining like a little girl and then made him a strong hot toddy.

But by Monday he was ready for stronger medicine, so off to the doctor he trotted. They gave him some antibiotics and told him to quit whining like a little girl.

So yesterday morning I was woken up by Liam and we headed for the bathroom because I  had to pee. Ever since starting Creighton, peeing has become a much longer and more involved process than normal. So as I was attending to the “3 C’S”, Liam was wandering aimlessly about the bathroom.

Or so I thought.

When I looked up, the child had gotten ahold of my brother’s toothbrush and was shoving it enthusiastically in his mouth. That would be the strep-covered toothbrush. The very one.

In case you’ve somehow forgotten, Christmas is in like four days or something. And then two days after that we’re moving to Florida. So you see, I simply do not have time for yet another round of hideous childhood illnesses.

So I threw a hail Mary and called the doctor’s office to beg for a prescription for an antibiotic for a child who does not, as yet, need it.

Really, Calah? you’re probably thinking. In this day and age of gross overuse of antibiotics which have led to hideously mutating antibiotic-resistant monsters, you ask for an antibiotic because your kid might get sick?


I have no defense. Desperate times, people. Desperate, desperate times.

Never fear, though. The NP told me I was out of my mind for even asking, and then reminded me that if Liam gets sick he must be seen because strep throat can cause scarlet fever in children.

Actually, though, I never knew this. Is this common knowledge? Everything I know about scarlet fever I learned from Little Women, so the very phrase strikes terrible fear and images of Christian Bale into my  heart.

+

She did reassure me that just because Liam happened to shove a strep-covered toothbrush down his throat, it doesn’t necessarily mean he will absolutely get strep. Her reassurance wasn’t that reassuring, though, because after I told her what had happened she yelped, “Oh Lord help us!” And then at the end of the conversation she reminded me that I really ought to pray very very fervently.

So that was the morning. By early afternoon my imagination had concocted various scenarios in which we all nearly died awful deaths from scarlet fever, my hands had busily cleaned and packed the black hole closet which had been ours at my parent’s house, and some idle part of my mind had wondered if there was a saint designated as the patron of scarlet fever. In between all that, I had played “roaring dinosaur” with Liam, who was feeling very lonely since my mother had taken the girls to Chick-fil-a for lunch, shuffled some loads of clothes to pack out to the car, and half-watched a documentary about the state to which we’re about to move. (Oxycontin Express, anyone? Really, Florida? Really?)

Obviously I had been a bit distracted and scattered during the afternoon. But when my mother returned I quickly got back on track, took a shower, put the littles down for naps, and took Sienna to the store to get ingredients for the special birthday dinner she requested. (She hated it.)

Mid-dinner-prep I got a phone call from the Ogre, who was nearly to Wichita Falls, but who had locked his jacket in the back of the truck. And, unfortunately, the keys to the back of the truck were in his jacket pocket.

Fortuitously, though, we had done stupid things like this before. On our first move cross-country we managed to lose every key to every lock ever, and so the Ogre bought me a master key to such locks. He wanted me to check my keys and make sure I still had it so we could get into the back of the truck.

“No problem!” I chirped cheerfully. I glanced around briefly for my keys, then began an in-depth sweep of the disastrous kitchen counters. After a few minutes I realized that the macaroni was rapidly approaching overcooked, the white sauce was boiling, and the onions were quickly being carmelized to death, so I told the Ogre I would have to find them after dinner.

We ate quickly and then we all began searching for my keys. By we I mean myself, my mother, my sister, my brother, and Sienna. Four adults and one precocious six-year-old with a knack for finding things.

We searched high. We searched low. I got cranky and snappy. My mom began to question my sanity. My sister escaped after a while for retail therapy. My brother did sweep after flash-lit sweep of the driveway, the walkway, the grass, my car, and the creepy woods next to my parent’s house before giving up and collapsing into a chair. Two and a half hours in, I poured another glass of wine and decided it was time to try and locate some bolt cutters.

While my mom and dad called around, asking likely people if they had bolt cutters, I decided that there were two places which I had to go through more thoroughly before giving up entirely. I had already done a quick search of the bottomless toy chest, as had my mother, and I had picked gingerly through the truly disgusting trash until my stomach turned and I had to give up.

I decided to tackle the worst one first. I told my mom what I was about to attempt and she provided invaluable help in the form of rubber gloves. I gulped down some liquid courage, grimly pulled the gloves on, steeled myself and began picking through the trash, piece by putrid piece.

My mom stood next to me and held open another trash bag for me to transfer the trash to. The first layer wasn’t too awful — excess overcooked macaroni, onion skins, empty bacon wrapper. But the next layer was the packaging for raw chicken, complete with leaking raw chicken juice. The layer after consisted of empty jars of marshmallow fluff which my mother had used to make fudge earlier. In transferring the jars, strings of marshmallow fluff attached themselves to my gloves and, like most other chemically manufactured substances, behaved totally unnaturally, refusing to break or detach. Instead the strings seemed to multiply and elongate, wrapping themselves around the fingers of my gloves, the raw eggshells from the next layer which hadn’t been entirely evacuated of their contents, and the leftover stir-fry which had spilled from its container and permeated the entire lower levels of the trash can.

It’s chemically delicious!

While I was transferring an eggshell bearing zucchini and rice, coated in raw chicken juice, and wrapped around and around with marshmallow fluff, I began to consider what it would mean if we did in fact find the keys in the trash can. It would mean that my son, the dumpster-diver, had graduated from eating food from the trash to putting non-food and non-trash items in the trash. I considered whether this would be an improvement over the potential death from listeria and salmonella and decided that as long as I kept having to search through absolutely fetid bins of trash for vital tools to life, it would probably be a draw.

We finally reached the bottom of the bin. There remained about six or seven small pieces of trash. My mother and I could both clearly see that the keys were not in the trash can, but out of desperate hope that my own bout of dumpster-diving had not been in vain, I persevered, picking up a small paper towel.

Just there, underneath the paper towel, so completely at the bottom of the trash can that the plastic trash bag had formed a lovely little cradle for them, lay my keys.

My mother and I made weird shrieks of relief which quickly turned to mystified expressions of horror when I pulled the keys out of the bin and we saw the state they were in.

It seemed that the entirety of the trash can had converged upon my keys. There was egg yolk and a small bit of egg shell caught in the clicker for our car, raw chicken juice and bacon grease coating the lanyard, a grain of rice clinging to my Majestic Liquor card and and a pea caught in the grooves of my house key. And inevitably, wrapped around and around the whole thing, strings and strings of marshmallow fluff.

I laid the keys down on a paper towel and my mom began to attack them with vinegar and water. Vinegar and water is, to my mother, what Windex was to the father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. After a few seconds of furious spraying, she turned on me and began to spray my gloves all over with the mixture. Once the gloves were deemed acceptable to remove, she turned back to the keys. I swear she would have sprayed me down if I hadn’t quickly side-stepped the vinegar attack by calling off the search for bolt cutters.

After several minutes of wiping, vinegar-ing, wiping and re-vinegar-ing, my keys were sort of decontaminated. I had to throw away my UD lanyard which I’ve had since college and all of my small key-chain cards, but otherwise the keys made it through the horror.

I can’t say the same about myself. When I woke up this morning, the first thing that registered was that my Ogre was lying beside me. I flung my arm across him and buried my face in his chest and then, suddenly, I smelled marshmallow fluff.


Browse Our Archives