October 8, 2016 - Please take my word for it; switching from summer clothes to winter clothes isn't always that easy.

“I have real work to do in the real world,” I impatiently commented to my husband who was going to obviously interrupt me.  Yes, I worked out of my office which happened to be just six paces from the bedroom and twelve paces from the kitchen, but it was still my “profit center” as I so lovingly called it. 

As the sole proprietor and only employee of St. John Title Company LLC, I was at my desk working hard to make a living.  I did a mental check; yes I had stolen that line from the character, Linus, in the recent “Sabrina” movie where Harrison Ford was telling his sibling, “David” that he actually worked for a living.  Good movie that was.

“Where do you want this laundry basket, it is empty,” my husband asked as he plunked it down on top of my much needed, as-fast-as-you-can priority work for a good client.

I had to drag my mind back from the 5,000 acre search papers that were spread out over my desk and stared at the white laundry basket.  Suddenly the realization hit me.   My husband had just come back from a “dump trip” as we call it in our household, but they have a quaint name for it here in the South, “Convenience Center”.  This is where you take your garbage, your sorted recyclables to a cement pad location that has various movable metal containers to dispose of your various “stuff”.

Lightning fast I connected the dots . . . “Oh my GOD!”  I gasped.

“Oh my God!” . . . I could hardly speak as the realization sunk in. I asked to verify what I thought had happened,

“What did you do with the bags that were in it?” 

“I tossed them out.  They were in the kitchen – you were rummaging in your closets this weekend, I took them to the dump with the rest of the stuff like I do every Monday.”

I jumped up accusing him, “You didn’t see that they were sweaters?  I mean they are ALL my winter clothes – All my good stuff . . .”

“They were in the laundry basket; you had other stuff from your weekend cleaning out here . . .” he said.  He had no clue what he had done.

They were all my good sweaters, my cashmere sweaters. It was my entire winter wardrobe of the “GOOD STUFF”.  Each one of them was folded with a lavender wand in the center.  Each sealed in a clear plastic bag. 

The Sunday afternoon the day before I had gone to the shed and plucked them out of the various drawers where my off season wardrobe was stored.  When I brought them in, I simply put them down in the corner of kitchen near the sliding glass window because I didn’t have my drawers and closets straightened up yet in my bedroom.  They were not meant to be tossed in the DUMP!

“OH, MY GOD!”

He stood there without a word to say.  He didn’t say – which surprised me – “How was I supposed to know.” [He said that much later when I berated him soundly.  He had the “oops” look on his face and decided he better be silent.

I immediately went into action, “Oh my GOD!” 

I grabbed my car keys. I was still in pajamas – my usual modus operandi – working at my office in my house.  I paused, changed quickly into a pair of jeans, and sweatshirt and tore out of the house.  My tires actually scrubbed out of the gravel drive kicking up crushed stone and then scrubbed rubber as they hit the pavement.

I was thinking, ‘maybe I could easily climb down into the metal container and retrieve them.  They were all packaged separately – surely the bags would keep them clean in who knows what sort of garbage was tossed in the convenience center.’

My 284 V-8 engine got a workout that morning as I speed up the road to the “convenience center” as I prayed out loud to Mother Mary and Jesus to help me in my hour of need.

When I got to the convenience center, I asked the sweet little old man on duty, “Did you see my husband?  He had a cobalt blue Amigo?  He dumped a basket of bags?”

“YUP, ‘bout half hour ago.”

“Those were all my winter clothes – my entire wardrobe.  Can you get me a ladder so that I can climb down in there to get them?”

“Them’s been compacted – you wouldn’t want them now. . . .” he said shaking his head.

“Yes, I do, they were all separately bagged, it happened less than ½ hour ago . . .”

“You’ll have to wait until they get to the weigh station.”  He suggested.

“You don’t understand, they are not WAL MART sweaters they are expensive CASHMERE sweaters . . . “

“Container’s only half full.  You’ll have to wait until tomorrow when they are at the weigh station.”

“NO, NO, you don’t understand . . .  who is your supervisor?”

After some debate I did manage to get the man on duty to call his supervisor.  It took more than one phone call.  Eventually, the supervisor was on the telephone with the man on duty and we had an unsuccessful three way conversation . . .”

“Let me just talk to your supervisor?”   I begged.  He willingly handed over the telephone shaking his head indicating I would have no positive results.

To the supervisor I repeated the story of what happened and when and what I wanted to do.  The climbing down with a ladder was out of the question and then I asked if I couldn’t get to the trash before it went off to the landfill.

I begged him, “Cashmere . . . yes, very expensive sweaters, an entire basket full – all individually bagged in clear plastic bags with a lavender wand in the middle of them . . . my entire winter wardrobe. . . .they will be easy for me to locate . . .”

Now I only remember parts of conversation; then I was just short of hysterical, and not having breakfast yet, was getting a little shaky from the adrenalin rush I was going through. 

The supervisor said, “My wife doesn’t even own a cashmere sweater.”

The supervisor now knew the gravity of the situation and now I wanted to resolve it my way. “Can’t we get to them now – can’t we have a truck come and get it now and stop putting more in this container and switch to the other container?”

“Yes, we have had to do this before, someone tossed out all their new prescription medicines by mistake . . . Be at the landfill at . . . wait a minute, let me check with the schedule . . . .[I heard murmurings as he covered the telephone to confirm the schedule with his staff]. . .be here at 1:00 p.m. and we will do a supervised dump.”

“Thank you, Thank you, my name is ___________– I will be there at 1:00 p.m.”

I thanked the supervisor profusely, before I handed the telephone back to the man on duty.  I didn’t leave until the man on duty put the “closed” chain over the “convenience center” metal container that had my belongings and unchained the alternate metal container.

I tore down the road back to my house trying to figure out how I was going to deliver my “as-fast-as-you-can” to my client and get to the Landfill station at 1:00 p.m.

When I got back to my office/house I advised my husband that we would be going to the landfill at 1:00 p.m. and he would be coming with me.

Later that day:

          I made my husband drive to the landfill while I sat with the empty laundry basket on my lap.  We discussed it rather calmly. 

          “How was I supposed to know,” he explained sheepishly.

          “An honest mistake . . .” I answered, I was eating humble pie because it really was my fault.  I had not taken the basket into the bedroom; I had left it precariously out in the other room.

          We reported to the office and then drove to the Landfill way station where the truck was waiting for a “supervised dump”.   On the way to the location for this process the supervisor asked,

          “What is a lavender wand?”  He wanted to understand the whole story.  He hadn’t asked that on the telephone.  But, when he had set up the “supervised dump” his employees wanted to know.  And, then we had a lot more employees around wanting to see this procedure of some “rich chic” retrieving her “cashmere” sweaters out of a smelling old metal container filled with assorted who-knows-what trash.

          I made my husband hold the laundry basket with the theory I remember how full it was when I brought it into the kitchen, hopefully I could snag my clear bags and fill it back up again.

          They backed the truck holding the metal container into the way station garage and the man in the rubber boots and plastic apron popped open the dump door with a metal hook rod.  When the doors opened my heart sank, brown liquid poured out the bottom and a limp kinked garden hose fell to the cement pad with some other litter.

          The driver then proceeded to do a “slow dump” where they would inch it out.

          I spotted nothing the first yard of debris as it spilled out.  White plastic bags and black plastic bags and brown grocery bags of refuge spilled out into a pile of rubble.  Then I spotted a bag, I snatched at it, then another and then another, the next yard of garbage that tumbled out I scampered here and there as I spotted the see through bags with familiar sweater colors and I tossed them into the waiting laundry basket.

          We were close to the end and I remembered I had also taken some flannel pajamas.  There was one pair, another pair and then the white goose down slippers. 

“YES” “I believe that is everything.” I said joyously.

          Only one bag was in really bad shape – my white cashmere sweater – looked like it had been opened in compaction.

          I thanked all the fellas gratefully and we returned to our vehicle.

          At the trunk of our vehicle I pulled off the icky plastic bags and put my pristine sweaters and winter articles into the recesses of the clean vehicle and tossed all the icky bags away.   The one broken bag I quarantined, thinking I could save it – or not – it was at least worth a try.

          As my husband cranked the car, he said to me, “I was worried I’d have to buy you an ENTIRE wardrobe for Christmas!”