And so it goes.....

Today was supposed to be the big day, the day that the charity would come and take away all of Mom's remaining furniture and clothing and miscellaneous other things that we have no use or space for so that we would never have to deal with it again, and then we could clean the apartment and get it all ready for the final walk-through tomorrow with the apartment manager.

Key phrase in that sentence: "supposed to"

Apparently, the charity we chose only has one truck driver, and that driver had some sort of accident, and that accident didn't seriously injure him, but it did take him out of commission for a while, and so that charity is no longer able to pick up Mom's stuff.

Apparently also, it is impossible to find a charity that picks up donations that has a truck available at the last minute on the last working day of the year. I know this because, after the Salvation Army explained that their trucks are all booked through mid-January, they gave me a list of all of the local charities that do pick-ups, and I called them all, and got the same answer from each and every one. And then I had an emotional meltdown in the middle of Mom's apartment, I am not ashamed to say.

But I'm better now. I cleared more space in our garage, so tomorrow we can bring the clothes and small appliances and other miscellany over here for storage until we have the time and energy to deal with it again. As for the rest of the furniture, the apartment manager will get to dispose of that at her discretion. I've had enough siblings work enough vacant apartment cleaning jobs to know that that stuff will still find good homes. And we were expecting the management to make up excuses to keep the cleaning deposit, anyway, so now we're saving them the trouble by giving them a real reason. Anyway, it's not like we didn't do everything in our power to be good stewards in this crappy, crappy situation.

Either way, tomorrow we'll be done with the apartment. Which is definitely bittersweet, but it will feel so good to cross that monster off of our to do list once and for all.