the end of the world as we know it
Well, yesterday was educational.
Three people volunteered, out of the blue, to meet me at noon and come help me pack up the apartment. How many showed up? None.
So much for NannyLula‘s desire to take one of my workshops, ever. If she showed up with Julian Assange hanging off one arm and Bono hanging off the other, covered in diamonds and waving fans of $10,000 bills, I’d turn her away. I was wrong about Nanny Lula: turns out I didn’t give her the time/place deets. All the above now applies to the others. As for the others, well, I’m sure the universe has something in store for them.
Tonight is the Big Meeting with the co-op board. They’ll want me to have $3000 and/or gotten my tax assessments up to date and correct for the last (I dunno, every time they mention dates they add years retroactively) five (currently) years. Given that the burglars took half my papers (thank GOD not the T4 for the work I did in Yellowknife) and I was stuck up in Penticton until a few days ago, and that since I got back I’ve been trying to pack up my apartment in case I get evicted effective tonight, that ain’t an option. Not in any universe governed by the laws of space and time.
Oh, and my very nice potential business partner insists on a meeting this afternoon. Like I’m gonna be any use at that.
Yesterday I did fifteen, count ’em, fifteen loads of laundry, since it doesn’t make sense to pack up dirty clothes. Today, the task is going to be bunging all of that into boxes since I don’t exactly have the time to curate my collection and will have to do a huge editing session wherever I end up.
Which brings me to Union Gospel Mission. A multi-service nonprofit on the Downtown Eastside, they have done great work and I’ve always been a big supporter, so when I realized I was going to be offloading a lot of things like my old bookcases, my hideabed, and some bedroom dressers, they were the first people I called. We organized a pickup time, and all seemed well. They’d even take the clothes that didn’t fit me anymore, provided they were in good condition. SUPER!
When I said three people bailed on me yesterday, what I meant was “three people and one multi-service nonprofit.” The driver emailed to say they were short-staffed and he didn’t want to put the volunteers to work helping him load my donation. That they are short staffed because they don’t have nice donated things in their shops to sell to raise the money to pay salaries seems not to have occurred to him. Seriously, after four or five days of emailing to organize this pickup, to bail on the afternoon before? UGH.
In any case, without a car, and with no working buzzer to let people in to pick things up, the donation scenario becomes complicated. Nigh impossible, particularly by the 31st. I may just toss it all out onto the sidewalk and watch the scavengers take it away.
In any case, I know by March 1 I’ll be in a better place one way or another, a place where the guy at the next table doesn’t pass out reeking of vodka at 10am) with or without my stuff (if the co-op decides to somehow hold it for ransom). There really isn’t any point holding on to my stuff, since I don’t have and am not likely to get $3000. And if they keep it, they have to store it somewhere more secure (Hello, break-in and flooding!) than the apartment anyway. Thank god I got the jewelry out when I did.
Wish me luck. And, if that doesn’t work, revenge.
