It's getting harder and harder to make charitable donations

 

I used to have no problem getting rid of clothing I no longer needed.  When my wife died, I brought at least 15 large bags of clothing to a local charity - and they were grateful to get it.  Today, with Covid-19 causing many thrift shops to close, it's much harder to get rid of extra clothing without putting it into the roadside bins without receiving a receipt for a charitable donation.

When the LGBT center's thrift shop was open, I used to bring bags of clothing there for resale - and I know that it did the center good.  However, Covid-19 forced the center to make a hard decision, and they closed down the thrift shop.  Luckily, I knew of a few places that still accepted clothing donations.  But they had limited store hours, most closing at 5 pm.  AARGH!  Since I didn't want to wait until I got back from vacation to make my donations, I drove to a nearby donation center - and arrived a minute before closing.  (Their lights had just been turned off as I pulled into the place.)  So they reopened just to take my bags (and of the woman ahead of me), and get us out of there as quickly as possible.

I have nothing against this place, and I will likely use them again.  But I intend to use Goodwill for my next donation, and see what receipt I get from them.  If I'm lucky, I'll get the type of receipt that my accountant can use to maximal advantage at tax time....

It's all a matter of timing and location.

Softball and baseball.  Both are sports played with a bat and a ball.  And both depend very much on the speed of the ball in motion and the location of that ball.  If the subject ball is thrown to the catcher in the right location, it is a strike.  If not, it is a "ball".  But if the subject ball is thrown at the wrong speed in the wrong location, the batter can hit the ball in a way that disadvantages the pitcher's side.  Timing and location of the pitch become quite important in a game that is not played with a clock governing the game.

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Why am I opening up with "Timing and Location" today?  Well, almost everything in today's activities could have been a disaster if the timing and location were different.  For example, today was my monthly visit from my cleaning lady.  I was leaving the house at 12 noon to see BXM.  If I had waited any longer, my cleaning lady might have seen me leave the apartment in my feminine presentation.  Instead, she might have seen me in a feminine presentation, but she didn't see me come out of my apartment.  So she may not have put 2 and 2 together to get 4.

I reached BXM's place around 12:45, and had to wait a long while before she came out.  This habit of hers is frustrating now, because she doesn't have to care for an ailing father.  When we finally got moving, we drove to a little venue near her house, and then went to her favorite thrift shop to do some shopping.  And this is something that, in retrospect, was a total waste of my time.  There is a good reason why a lot of goods make it to the thrift shops - many garments are not stylish enough to keep in a woman's closet after a wearing or two.  Often, the garments are old enough that their style has gone in and out of fashion several times.  I was not impressed with the garments I saw there - my time is much more important to me than inspecting about 6 linear feet of hanging garments to find only 1 or 2 dresses I might consider trying on for size, much less buy for my closets.

Around 4:00, BXM and I left the thrift shop, and she decided to pick up some food at the market around the corner from the thrift shop.  She told me that she'd be 5-10 minutes, and it took her over a half hour in the place.  While waiting for her, the deliveries to the thrift shop started coming in, and I vacated my parking spot instead of being blocked in by the delivery trucks.  So I drove around the corner and across the street to wait for BXM.  After 20 minutes or so, I tried to ring BXM to no avail.  Another 5 minutes later, I tried to ring her again.  No luck.  A few minutes later, I saw her come out of the store.  But I was not going to yell in my male voice to get her attention.  Instead, I'd drive back to the parking lot (but not enter), letting her see that my car was not there.  (She had 5-6 bags of groceries in her hands.)  I figured that I could give her a taste of similar medicine by not being there where and when she expected.  She texted me after a few minutes, and I told her where I was.  When I brought up the 2 phone calls I made to her, she claimed that she has hearing loss (a possibility), but her excuse doesn't fully ring true to me - she was talking with her cousin before I arrived, and she didn't bother to cut that chat short to be on time for me. 

Once I dropped BXM off, I killed time before going to game night.  I had a fun time there, and expect that I will have good news to report to "the gang" next week.  As usual, I ate too many snacks, and this is something I'll have to learn to manage in the future.  Hopefully, I won't eat too many snacks next week, as I'll have a doctor's visit the next day for my yearly physical.

Arriving home, I found 2 messages on my machine.  The first was from the census bureau, looking to find out if I could make it in for a training session on Tuesday.  I'll give the person a call sometime in the morning to say "yes", as I expect that my tenure with the bureau will officially start that morning.  The second call was from my cleaning lady.  She left her phone on my dining room table, and she reached out to find out if she left the phone here.  Only one problem - she gave an 11 digit phone number, not repeating the number  for me to be sure that I got it right, or that she spoke it right.  So I'll wait for her to reach out again, so that I can get her phone back to her as quickly as possible.