Goodwill sucks

I can hear Trent in the other room talking to his father.

"The girls are crying."

"Why?"

"We just got back from Goodwill."

Then I hear Erik shuffling in his flip flops, coming to me in the scrapbook room, "Are you ok?"

"No! I hate Goodwill."

and I do. I've written about this before. 

Sometimes I think if I load the car up as fast as I can and then drive to Goodwill with old toys and outgrown clothes and then drop it off real quick and NOT think about it, it will be easier.

But it never is.

I was making the u-turn to get to Goodwill when I started having doubts. I wiped away the tears and kept driving. I reminded myself that I am not throwing away memories, just toys and clothes. We keep moving forward to make new memories, right?

We quickly got out of the car and gathered as much in our arms as we could. We wanted to get rid of it before we changed our minds and before I started crying again.

"Wanna receipt?"

I grabbed the receipt, said, "Thank you" and got in the car as fast as I could.

I wasn't even out of the parking lot before I started crying.

When I turned out of the parking lot and got on the main road, I heard Katrina crying. I turned around to look at her and she said, "I miss my big horse." Giant tears are rolling down her face.

She picked it out herself this morning as a donate item. It did surprise me when she chose it, but I didn't say anything. I wanted to encourage the cleaning out of her room. Her room is a disaster.

I told her that it would be ok. I told her that she hadn't played with it in awhile and some other little girl or boy would be so excited to find it and take it home.

It would make their day. 

I guess that helped a little. I thought about making a u-turn to take her back and retrieve it but I turned right instead of left.

I kept going until we pulled into the driveway and then finally into the garage.

Only one item made it back alive from Goodwill. At the last moment, we decided to keep Trent's pirate ship kite.

Maybe the next time we take a trip to Goodwill, the pirate ship kite will go. Or maybe I'll make Erik take the dreaded trip to Goodwill. He is so much better at it then I am.

My attachment to "things" has got to end one of these days, right? Geez. I've watched enough Hoarders to know better.