Vomit comet
I've had these bags of leaves sitting in the front yard, in some cases since January. The bags are the thirty gallon, black Hefty plastic bag variety.
I can find a million excuses to avoid doing things I find unpleasant, and that list officially ended on Saturday morning after I got back with Bob from baseball. I don't know why, but I think the expectation of seeing the fucking things in the yard when I got back from LA next weekend finally depressed me to the point of motivation.
The local transfer station processes leaves and lawn clippings as mulch. You can see the transfer station's huge front-end loader turning over the steaming mulch at various times of the year into these long lines of black material that residents back their vehicles up to and grab by the trashbarrel load at planting season.
It costs nothing to drop off your leaves if you have a dump sticker, so I finally hauled the leaves off to the transfer station on Saturday. I drafted Mom's assistance as she dropped Emmeline off from an overnight stay at her house.
It took us three trips to get them all -- about ten bags or so on each run. The process went fine except for one thing: One of the bags had gotten some rainwater trapped in it. Maybe about three or four gallons' worth -- enough to make a signficant difference in weight, at the very least.
On the last trip to drop off the leaves, I hefted that water-drenched bag into the back of the van on top of some others. As I heaved it into place I accidentally tore a hole in its overloaded bottom. The rainwater had mixed with the leaves, and percolated a rich, hearty tea that smelled somewhere between dirty underpants, vomit, and humus. That dark witch's brew cascaded out the bag and into the back of the van, directly onto the rug in the cargo area.
The other bags of leaves channeled the bulk of the waste water out the back, where the sewage streamed out and down onto the pebbles of our driveway. Still, there was enough fluid to saturate the Aerostar's rug to the point where we spent a fair amount of time mopping it up with beach towels, applying carpet cleaner, and vacuuming it out.
We thought we'd had it licked, but Bonnie returned this morning from church complaining that the van smelled of vomit. She's right.
Well, I'm on a jet plane for LA in a few hours and fumigating the van seems beyond my reach right now. So after dinner tonight I'll buy a few industrial strength air fresheners and position them in strategic locations around the van, and hope for the best.