for pick up

My city has spent the last 36 days wading through rotting garbage, mouldy food rewarmed by what sun we ever get, putrid smelling, soaking wet copies of The Metro, and raccoon droppings left behind by the most wretched of God's scavengers.

Today, it's all over. Victorious we rise from heaps of steaming, reeking waste – and all in time to take on another pending challenge.

Two weeks ago, my mother phoned. I was walking to work, and remarked, just barely, about a garbage receptacle that had busted open, spewing remnants of the neighbouring Pizza Pizza onto the pavement, like a first year student.

"I swear, Carli, I will cancel my trip if that strike is not over by the time I'm supposed to come…" My mother can't stand a used kleenex left on the counter, let alone a month's worth of garbage decorating every city curb within a 10 block radius of my downtown front door.

My mother is a demanding woman. That's putting it mildly. I've learned that she always gets what she wants. (Or maybe I've just learned to always give in.) Either way, Caron Rothman is a woman of her word. If the strike didn't end, her flight wouldn't land.

As I log on to my browser this morning to check her arrival time, the block lettered words flash across my homepage:

THE STRIKE IS OVER!

And her flight? Of course it's on time.