The Good Errand

January twelfth. I had been moving three bags of things toward the door of my apartment since sometime in November. You know how that goes. They were sitting in the hallway doing nothing except making me slightly guilty every time I walked past them, until Simone texted on Thursday and said she had Sunday free and did I still want to do that thing with the boxes.

I did still want to do that thing with the boxes. I just apparently needed someone to make it a plan.

That's us getting a large cardboard box through the loading door of the donation drop-off two neighborhoods over, which is a sentence that makes it sound more coordinated than it was. Simone used her day off. She drove. She did not once complain about the bag that had somehow acquired a faint smell of old craft supplies, which I will attribute to the letterpress card and leave it at that. The volunteer working the door offered to take a photo of us mid-carry and honestly I think she just wanted to document the comedy of it.

surveying the damage (the good kind)

That's the stack once we'd actually unloaded everything. Simone stood there reading my handwritten labels with an expression I can only describe as skeptical of my organizational system, which, fair.

post-mission debrief. she had notes.

We stood on the step outside for a while after, not quite ready to get back in the car, she had thoughts about the labeling situation, and also the bag situation, and also apparently the November timeline, which she found extremely funny. I didn't disagree. The whole thing took maybe two hours total and then we went and got coffee and I told her she was owed at least eleven more of these and she said she was aware. It's January. The apartment feels about three degrees lighter. I think that's the right way to start a year, not with a resolution exactly, but with finishing the thing that was already halfway done.