Odd Baby Sprout

I've been untwining myself from my workplace.
I mean, that seems to be happening, whether I'm doing it actively or not, and now the connections that were sparking all the time are . . . not.

It's like the noisy, bright midway at a fair has shut down.
Quiet and dark.  

"I don't know anybody!"
I do. But without work connections firing all the time, I've felt a bit panicked and empty. Lonely.
I sense that I just have to wait this out, this discomfort, and see what sprouts.

I put together a thing this morning: Odd Baby Sprout.
I'd woken up thinking, I want to meet new people.
I meant flesh people, but here's a starter friend.

I want to meet new people?
What?
Do I?
I haven't felt that impulse in this decade, the 2020s. Rather the opposite--I couldn't stand more, like one more Brussels sprout when you're overstuffed.

It's nice, this feeling of wanting.
A REALLY WEIRD thought has been humming in my mind:
'I want to fall in love'.
Not with a person (not necessarily––I can't imagine that). I think it's my mind/heart signaling that it's open for business again?

I'm hesitant to mention it.
I've wondered if my sudden lack of feeling for my workplace (that came on in late November) was a sign of PTSD burnout. Work has been that horrific at times.
I feared the blankness I felt signaled a shut-down of Soul.

But now I'm wondering––(hoping, honestly)––if it's the opposite, that it's me recalling my resources from a done deal, taking them back for myself.

Am I okay?
I dare to hope, I'm okay.

Meanwhile, it's fine to be at work. I enjoy unpacking donations. I can't imagine I ever wouldn't enjoy that.
Otherwise, I don't care much.
I'm not dead though. I'm annoyed. I'm amused. But I'm not giving my life energy to it.

Two recentish things that weren't causes of my disconnect, more like reflections.
One. Ass'Man, who was an annoyance and an amusement, left at the end of September.
Him giving up on the place was not just about his alcoholism--it was a sane move on his part.

The other. I'd mentioned Ray showing up last fall with bright yellow eyes and taxidermied skin. I'd thought he wouldn't make it through the winter, and I haven't seen him since.
If he's not dead, I don't know what.

One cold, wet day, I'd washed his feet in the mop room, dried them, and gave him new dry socks and boots.
I don't feel that I failed Ray. But he represents an endless need I can't meet.
I've seen this one through.
I am free to leave.

Do I really feel that?

I guess I do. I really do.

Sometimes I feel panicked. But also relieved to be unhooked, and even excited to see that's next. New people? What's that?

Odd Baby bounces!

Hair, Ice, Cousin

I. Penny Cooper's Afternoon Out: Hair

Since Covid, I've mostly cut my hair myself, with pinking shears, but I decided to go see my old pal, Karla, who cuts hair professionally (but affordably) for a treat––and to catch up. We were neighbors, thirty years ago.

Yesterday I went, after work. Penny Cooper went too: "A strand of my hair has come loose."
She brought a dollar to pay. (She saves money coins in a dear little pot made by potter GZ.)

(My hair looks the much same now, but it's nice to feel tidied up.)

Karla is such a pro. She determined Penny's loose strand didn't need to be cut but simply tucked in place and smoothed with a little gel.

"What's been happening with you?" she asked. "Tell me everything."

"Well, there was a disease going round," I said, "which killed millions; and the city went up in flames after a man got killed in the street by the police; and we just had a 50-degree Christmas, so I guess the Earth is melting..."

She kinda laughed. "Me too, all that!"
And there we were, attending to hair, and very nice it was, too, to share such a once-normal thing.

II. Penny Cooper's Afternoon Out: Ice

After my haircut, I walked over to the lake and met Julia, to look at the ice.  Usually the lake's been frozen for many weeks by now and is covered in snow, but not this year.
While the warm, dry weather is alarming, the conditions allow for great ice viewing.

Julia's hands, my turmeric coat & raspberry boots:

Julia is a master of ice and takes astonishing photos of it.
Below is my screencap of her Instagram page. Take a look at more: instagram.com/happifydesign

My pictures all have some little doll in them. Imagine that.

The ice is several inches deep, with many frozen over cracks.
I felt nervous and didn't walk far from shore, though people were walking and skating on the center of the lake.

BELOW: "It's a transporter!" Penny Cooper prepares to beam up.
(That's an air bubble trapped in the ice.)

BELOW: Seaweed in ice.
(I would just note that the girlettes do not get cold. "We're plastic."
But I do--it was damp and chilly.)

III. Cousin Celia

Sister texted me in the evening: our oldest cousin, Celia, has died--the first of our cousins to go. A heart attack.
At 78, Celia was fifteen years old than I am. (Fifteen?!) 
I remember her as a cool young adult I saw at our grandmother's yearly birthday parties.

Sister saw the news from another relative on Facebook.
The last time we'd seen Celia was at our grandmother's funeral in the mid-1990s. She estranged herself afterward from family on her mother's side (which included our father). I don't know why, but that's normal in our family, which carries a Sicilian gene for unrelenting resentment.

Looking at the photo her son posted on FB, below, right, I think she must have been fashionable all her life.
Nice haircut. She looks a bit like Sofia Coppola to me.

That is not a Palestinian scarf, btw--at first I thought it was. Though Celia was a fundamentalist Xtian, so who knows what ideas she held about the the Second Coming in Israel, and all that nonsense.

Below, left: And there's baby Celia in the arms of her mother, my Auntie Mary, who sent me a birthday card every year of my life until she got Alzheimer's. She was famous for sending cards to everyone.
I took it for granted when I was young, but looking back, it was like getting haircuts in a salon: a civilizing thing.

Funny, these strangers whose lives intersect with one's own... Like fault lines in the ice, they just keep going into the distance.

The Brownie Look this season...

I have been feeling at sea, as I start to look for another job (I just heard from the public schools that my application has "has been forwarded to the hiring manager for further review").
And then I remembered (how did I forget?)  that I'd committed to MAKING TOYS when I was in New Mexico a year ago.

The girlettes say they have been waiting patiently for me to remember. This morning, Spike put together The Brownie Look
... It's all about outsized underwear!

(I wrote "lingerie" at first, and was corrected:
"We're eight, we wear underwear.")

Spike is also wearing a dancing-pixie Brownie pin. It came in a shoe box of old doll clothes Puzzle volunteer gave me at Christmas. She's 73, so this would be from the 1950s.

Why did the Girl Scouts choose the anarchic pixie for the Brownies? Generally benign and even helpful (cleaning up at night), but they can be disruptive too. And they're definitely not Christian.
I guess like little girls?

I found the origin story online:

Brownie Origins

Once, the level of Girl Scouting we know as Brownies was called Rosebuds. But the girls didn’t like their name, so they asked Lord Baden-Powell (the founder of Boy Scouting, which inspired Juliette Gordon Low to create Girl Scouting) for a new name.
Most people believe Baden-Powell named the Brownies after Juliana Horatia Ewing’s 1870’s story, The Brownies, about a couple of helpful Brownie children.

There are lots of Victorian illustrations, but I like this one by Katherine Milhous from 1946:

Imperfect, but became willing to BUY A STAMP

I'm halfway through Great Expectations, reading it for the first time (though I know the story--must have seen a film of it at some point).
I decided to try it after hearing that it's much better than David Copperfield (1850), GE written by a mature Dickens years later (1861)--it's his second to last book.

And it is, much better. I'd loved David Copperfield when I was young, but the last time I read it, a few years ago, I found David insufferable--an unbelievable and unlikable spotless, innocent victim, a judgmental prig, and a dupe.

The main character of Great Expectations, the narrator, Pip, is no hero. He is much more solid and relatable than drippy David, and more likable, being like us.
He fucks up--betrays his childhood protector out of social ambition, loves the wrong woman, knowing it will bring him misery.
Half the time he knows he's doing wrong even as he does it, and rues it, but does it anyway.
Other times, he deceives himself. "All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers", he writes.

Other mistakes are not his fault, they are the work of social machinery that deforms the good. Got your sleeve snagged in the mangle? Your wedding dress, too near the fire?
Bad luck.

The object of Pip's desire, Estella, is also a real person, unlike most of Dickens's women. She is self-aware, knows she has been emotionally stunted (intentionally, by Miss Havisham), and warns Pip not to love her.

And the characters who act badly, like Miss Havisham, aren't puppet figures of evil, they are recognizably mentally ill humans.

The somewhat? happy ending feels tacked on. (I skipped ahead and read it). At the urging of a friend, before publication Dickens rewrote his more realistic unhappy ending--but the finale is ambiguous enough not to feel false. Most of the story is so realistically grim, I'm glad Dickens took his friend's advice and gave Pip and Estella some moment of happiness.

Will it last? Eh, probably not.
__________________________

I am cheered by Great Expectations. The title is ironic. Pip is flawed. Things don't go well, much of the time. Large social forces are at work, and not for the greater good.
It's like me and my life!

I was thinking about that yesterday, writing about having ended a friendship badly. I knew I should let my friend know why I was cutting her off, if not right away, then much, much sooner than I did. But I didn't . . . out of a kind of moral laziness.

"But, I didn't have a stamp!"
Uh-huh. You must buy a stamp. That's what grown-ups do.

I'd say that I grew up when I realized I was not the innocent victim of circumstances, but the responsible party (I mean, sometimes!)--who if she doesn’t (I don’t) act responsibly, at least knows and acknowledges that.

I don't think David Copperfield ever realizes that about himself, which makes him a bore.

Pip does, and I love him for it.
______________________________

Just as I was feeling my shortcomings yesterday, praise for my work came in, which was a nice counterbalance.

First, I stopped at the Heart of the Beast Puppet Theater, a few blocks from the store. Twice a month they hold a Puppet Library, for anyone who wants to borrow puppets (limit of four), for free.
You can see how big some of them are compared to the person on the ladder, right.

I introduced myself, and that man said that he noticed when I started to do books the store, because I featured a certain sort of book, faced them outward, and so he started to go there more!
People often compliment BOOK's, but they aren't usually specific.

Mr Furniture had also praised me years ago for making books visible that the previous Book Lady didn't.
That is, I choose to face-forward books about race--and also, class, gender, books in Spanish, art books--and COOL OLD BOOKS (on display now).

Then, for a second Saturday, The Em volunteered to help me sort "fem-fem", as she calls it--boxes of ephemera (phem-pehm) I've stashed away. She's a huge help, and good company, and again made me feel great about the work I do---the previous Book Lady threw fragile papers out.

I took another Look-Alike photo--her idea, actually. I like that this has become a Thing We Do.
This is a vintage rubber bath toy--Em says she is doing a Power fist.

And one more look-alike, below:
Moby Dick, complete, and abridged (each page has one work, like "HARPOON").
Some customer had moved the board book, right, to the Children's Books section. People do this sometimes--move books to their "proper" places (though more frequently they move move them the hell out of place).
Yes, thank you: not a children's book, even though it's a children's book format. I moved it back.

You must buy a stamp...

Emmler found a stash of letters from the 1970s in an old bar stool she scavenged. The letters were from a young man (eighteen?), newly in the military, written to a high-school friend.  
The writer is always asking for letters in return--seemingly with little success. It reminds me of how slow paper mail was (is), especially when you're waiting to hear back from someone...

But also, how personal--no email ever looked like this:

Clearing Up Loose Ends

I. Explaining the End of a Friendship

This morning I wrote a note (on paper) to an old friend, Lib, whom I'd disappeared on several years ago.
I'd thought that what she'd done--something pretty egregious that had upset me to the point of having a nightmare--was perfectly clear and needed no explanation, so I just went away.

Afterward, she'd contacted me twice asking what she'd done wrong. Clearly the problem wasn't perfectly clear to her.
Now, this was a friend of twenty years. Lib never called herself neurodivergent, but I knew she wasn't good at interpreting other people's motivations––she was terrible, in fact, in ways that led to other broken relationships, which always mystified her too.

But I didn't reply to her because I was hurt and angry, and I thought this time the reason SHOULD be clear. To be honest, I was so hurt & angry, I was willing to let her suffer.

What changed was that a different old friend, Allegra, contacted me this fall and told me she thinks she, Allegra, is on the autism spectrum (she called it Asperger's). (I'd blogged about it.)
I'd ended my acquaintance with Allegra (never a full friendship, in my mind)--and I'd also thought it was obvious why. I'd even written her a note with an allusion to why, which I'd thought was sufficient.

But, no. Before she talked about autism, Allegra told me she was hurt and baffled as to why I'd ended "our long friendship".
I realized that she and I saw our entire history differently.

After seeing Allegra, I read more about neuro-types & friendship, and I found articles describing exactly what I'd done:
I, a neurotypical (NT) person, EXPECTED the neurodivergent (ND) friend to know what they'd done to upset me, but I hadn't told them, or not in ways they could hear.

 [googles] I just found this article again, by The Articulate Autistic:
"The Biggest Mistake You Can Make with an Autistic Person Is to Assume We Know What We Did Wrong".

So, I wrote and apologized to Lib for not being clear years ago. (I didn't mention neurotypes because I don't know where she is with that, and anyway, it doesn't matter:
A friend who ends a friendship (me, in this case) should be clear and fair. I wasn't, and I apologized.

I would be happy to let this be the end of it, but I also said she could write back if she wanted, but that I didn't need it.
I'm open if she needs/wants to.

II. Clearing Up Loose Ends

Why did I do that this morning?

Well, besides me thinking about autism because I might work in the field (obviously I need to know more!), I think the timing it's connected to me wanting to leave my job at the thrift store--whenever I do--with clarity, with my eyes open, with things sorted.
Literally sorted.

All this week I've been sorting piles of fun stuff I'd set aside to look up because it's expensive, or to bag up because it's fragile, or just to keep around because I like looking at it.
I'm deciding if I want to take some of it home, or put it out for sale.

This is SO FUN, so very very enjoyable, it made me question my decision to find another job.
Would I stay at the store if they paid me a good chunk more than minimum wage ($15 by law in my city)?
Maaaybe... ?
I mean, I'd still feel done there, and even a little... bored... And there's still the infuriating management.

But it is a factor that I'm getting old, I don't have much savings, and my social security is going to be minimum:
It makes all the sense in the world to earn more money for the next seven years (until I'm 70). I think teacher's aides start at $20 or more--plus great benefits (even dental!).

If the store would pay closer that?
This is a moot point. They pay the least. They do the least.

Most I'm putting the saved books and paper ephemera out for sale. Because we got rid of the glass display case where I used to put expensive books, I'm pricing them rather inexpensively and taking my chances that with those cheap prices, people won't take the price-stickers off in order to get them for the baseline prices.
(Books without price-stickers are 99 cents for paperbacks and $1.99 for hardbacks.)

But, I decided I don't really care.
If someone loves a book and steals it, fine.
I don't like when books are stolen to be resold, but the truth is, I usually don't know what the person's motivation is. (Sometimes I do because I recognize the resellers, but honestly, they don't usually remove or swap stickers--or not that I've caught them at. It's not in their self-interest? or they're just nice? I don't know.)

These are most of what was on display at the end of yesterday:

As always, I also set aside books I know friends or certain customers will want. (Kirsten--I have a pile of pamphlets for you.)

Below--Candy Cook Book for a friend who works in handmade chocolates; Songs from Alice for a friend who collects Alice in Wonderland stuff;
Goodnight Moon in Spanish for a coworker who just became a grandmother to a baby whose father is Hispanic;
and a book with cool illustrations for Em.

xx

Adventure Awaits: get yourself [& share] that shitty-ass help

I'm starting to take photos at work, to remember the people and place by.
Coworkers here are blurry enough I'm going to share this one. I like and respect both these people very much, and I will miss them.

I got the Adventure Awaits mug ^ because I am trying to cultivate that attitude. I'd read about dealing with anxiety (mine) when I was working with people with dementia (it could be overwhelming, being on my own the whole time), and a helpful tip I read:
when you feel anxious about trying something new, say to yourself, "This is excitement, not fear."
That works when the anxiety is just nervousness, not, you know, paralyzing chemical tsunamis.

I have my moments of anxiety, mostly in the middle of the night.
The thought will come to me, "Maybe I'll get lucky and die, and then I won't have to look for a job/make a dental appointment!"
But I never think, "Maybe I'll make that happen".
My thought of death is more like a happy hope for delivery from making phone calls, deus ex machina.

And sometimes I'm kinda depressed, again in such a low level way, it's like: "Am I really going to have to brush my teeth for 21 more years? That's... [does math online] 7,665 days."

And then I feel kinda depressed that it's ONLY 7,665 days.
So, it's not depression. It's just life.

I have never suffered paralyzing anxiety or depression, as mattdamon does.
So I'd have hesitated to advise him, as I did yesterday,
Be pushy and make them give you help--except that I'd heard it first from an authority: comedian Maria Bamford [links to "Ask My Mom" & web series on her site].

She knows ALL about it.
"When we were dating, my husband Scott and I discovered we share the same hobby, starting at about ten years old--longing for death."

She says from long and broad experience that most help for mental illness is shitty:

"Health care can be super shitty.
Go get yourself that shitty-ass help!
Don't feel gaslit if the wait for Suicide Hotline 988 is 45 to 90 minute wait... Lower the bar--call anybody."

She does a hilarious bit about calling Hertz car rental (2:49 min.  video).

 I figured if she can push people to get help, I can too.

This video, below, is longer--45 minutes--but so good--her address to an OCD conference--where she shows her anger about how EXPENSIVE it is to get help.
Which is one (two, actually) reason she recommends 12-step programs: They're free. Free!

That’s where I differ from anti-religion people.
I get it. There're some . . . problems with humans in groups, especially if they're claiming they know Universal Truths.
But, it’s FREE.
And if you have nobody (mattdamon literally said that--"I have nobody"), they are somebody, and they will even invite you to share your name.
Which, not many strangers do that unless they're taking your credit card details.

Bamford's recent book Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere (2023) got donated recently.
I took it home and read it immediately.
It's good, but she's a stand-up comedian, and I think she's better live (on video)--so if you don't know her, I'd say, start there. Then read her book, and you'll hear her voice performing it.

I LOVE that she nails 12-step programs for being stupid cults. And that she also loves them because they are free and everywhere and offer some sort of shitty-ass help. 

I felt reassured that my suggestion to Asst Man that he try AA wasn't stupid. Or, yeah, it was stupid, but it was better than nothing.
He'd said no, he wouldn't even try AA, it was a cult.

I hadn't read Bamford's book yet, so I didn't feel empowered to say (but wanted to), "So? Is it better to drink yourself into a stupor on the couch every night, in front of your kids Join the frikkin cult, Asst Man!"

Full disclosure: I recommend 12 steps because I went to OA (overeaters anon) after my mother died, and it was, yeah, full of weird language, but also very, very helpful to sit in a room with strangers and say, "I'm having a shitty year, and I don't even know how to feed myself".

One of the kindest things anyone has ever said to me came from a woman in OA. You're not supposed to give unsolicited advice, but she came up to me after the meeting in a room with a dank carpet, and she said,
"Go to the grocery store and get makings for a green salad."

And I said, "Okay, lettuce. I don't know, though, what should I put on it?"

Without missing a beat, she said, "Mushrooms and green onions."

AND I DID THAT.
___________________

My favorite part of Sure, I'll Join Your Cult is the appendix, where Maria Bamford translates the 12-steps, with their sometimes bad advice and their off-putting Christian language. EXAMPLE:

"THE TWELVE (Silly) STEPS OF (Super Stupid) TWELVE-STEP PROGRAMS (My Version––Which Is Unapproved and Apostate)

Step 7. We humbly asked Him [God] to remove our shortcomings.

"Zoinks. that smells Xtian. HOWEVZ, there is something about the psychology of compartmentalization where if I put a problem aside even for a few hours, that can help. (As far as God removing negative character traits, it seems my bad habit of parking illegally is more powerful than any deity.)"

Wherever we are coming from, whoever we are, we can share that shitty-ass help!

Thank you. Keep coming back .

_______________________

 Maria says [on her website]:

"If you need help, dial 911.
SUICIDE HOTLINE 988.
I know. Health care can be super shitty.
Go get yourself that shitty-ass help!
I love you and think you deserve it."

"You are your own child"

I went out to dinner with L & M yesterday and talked about preparing to leave my workplace of the past six years... Complaining about the things I've said here so often–– the management, the minimum wage pay–– and I stopped.

I've said those same things for five years (took me a while to cotton on). I'm not leaving because of the management or the pay.

I'm leaving because the (my) story there is over.

I've lived through a couple rotations of staff and volunteers now, and I see the same story playing out. The only original coworkers remaining at the store are Big Boss and Manageress.

But more importantly, I've answered (or come to terms with) a lot of the questions I brought or that came up for me at the store.

Let's see... Off the top of my head... Each of these could be a post in itself, but, briefly...

1. Absolutely, the Number One Lesson:
I AM NOT THE SAVIOR.

This is not a choice--to set good boundaries, say, or to practice self-care. It is the bald truth. Realizing this, full-on, was enormously liberating.

2. Other people are their own/belong to themselves.

That seems self-evident, but I didn't fully grasp it before.
And, I am my own.
Ditto--enormously liberating.

3. Poverty is bad.

And this is news?
Well, kinda, to me. I see now that, more than I knew, that I didn't fully grasp it before. Six years ago I still held some middle-class, romantic ideas about how poverty ennobles, like suffering makes great art.

No. By definition, poverty impoverishes.
From pre-Latin *pau-paros "producing little; getting little".  

Whatever GOOD is in people who live in poverty comes from the people, not the poverty.
If it's good, it's not poverty. It's kindness and empathy, it's grit and bounce. FUN and play! It's curiosity and innovation and intelligence(s). Grace and grit. Et cetera.

And poverty is not only about money--though that is key, obviously: No money, no dentist.

It is about littleness. Little choice, little resources, and, maybe most of all--little respect.

mattadmon came in yesterday, to ask BB for his job back. He'd disappeared on the store three months ago.
BB did not deign to hire him back. (Because BB is not a good person. He has hired far worse workers. But he doesn't like md.)

I had coffee in the break room with mattdamon after, and he said, "People LOOK AT ME because I don't have a job."

Now, the guy has issues. I mean, in the store's neighborhood, no one cares if you have a job. They don't have one either.

But in his mind, he carries the people who do care --and he's entirely right.
I said, "You know what Mr Furniture says: Welcome to America. Our highest value is money, and if you aren't making any, you don't get respect."

I fear that mattdamon is not going to make it.
Once again, I "loaned" him money for rent, for the room he lives in. He won't accept a gift, but this time I knew to say,
"Don't pay me back. One day you'll be on your feet, and then--pay it forward."
I also gave him some social services numbers. (That he hadn't found them on his own during all this time is one of his problems--some mix of pride (shame) and paranoia.)

Here, "I am not the savior" and "Other people are their own" come into play.
I would not be surprised if mattdamon ends up evicted and throws himself off the Lake Street Bridge. He has said he would, and I believe him.
On the other hand, he's got skills, and I can imagine one day in twenty years, he finds me and gives me a million bucks.

His story, however it goes, is his.

I have done for him what I chose to do, out of my own story.
I gave him the blonde girlette with the chewed-off toes who looks like him last summer when he had terrible plantar fascitis. (He showed me a photo of her up on a ledge with a toy chicken!)

I could give him all my money, or invite him to share my apartment.
But you know what?
I don't want to. I sense he is a black hole and I am not pouring any more of my resources into it.

4. Cultivate Your Pluck: "You are your own child"

This is not to say, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but, feed your self.  Not as some fluffy self-care thing, like a bubble bath, but to survive.

The other day, a regular customer, Ebony, was telling me how she'd made a fuss at the doctor to get the care her daughter needed. It worked.

"If I had a child," I said, "I would do that too. But I don't always do it for myself."

"You are your own child!" she said, with some force. "You take care of yourself!"

The last thing I said to mattdamon was, essentially, to cultivate his pluck.
"I know this is hard," I said, "but you have to be pushy. Don't worry if people in charge are looking at you like scum--they are stupid if they do. Make them help you. You deserve it."
And I gave him a little squeezy-armed pink money that grips onto things.
"This can be your cheerleader."

md is not my child. I feel compassion for him, and I am sad at how fucked life can be, but I am walking away, and I can accept that with a grace I did not have six years ago.
Grace is not some pretty thing.

There is more, but that's it for this morning because I'm off to work!
I am clearing out stuff I've stashed away so when I leave, whenever that is, I have done right by it. And by me.

Love ya'll!

Transition

I'm musing, trying to get clear on what I want from myself and my workplace--emotionally and physically--before I leave there.
(I applied for the special-ed teaching assistant job yesterday. I have no idea if they'll hire me, but I'll keep looking if they don't.)

I haven't left a job at a physical workplace in years and years. Or, not one I cared much about. (I wrote for the publisher on contract, at home.)
What do I need to do?

Are there any physical things I want?

Mmmmm... not really.
I've loved being around things. I am always curious to see what comes in. It's like it's always Christmas morning. "What's in that box?"
But I almost never want the things for myself.

Books?
Not really, either. I culled my own bookshelves and returned a bunch of books I don't want.

I think what I'll miss is the river of things and books. I enjoy watching it flow by and occasionally plucking something from it.

People?

Uh... Not really, again.
In six years, I have not made friends at work.
I have loved some of my coworkers, but our social worlds are separate. Mr Furniture, for instance, does not welcome "Europeans" (white people) in his house.

I've enjoyed chatting with some regular customers, but only in passing. The only one who asked me out for coffee was BJ, and she asked me as a romantic prospect, which I was not. But we were friends until she died two springs ago.

I would see a couple of the volunteers, socially, but I don't feel personally close to them. If I get a job in special ed, I'd definitely want to spend time with Abby, who specialized (MA in Ed) in that field.

The closest to a friend is Emmler Bemmler. I love her, but I don't want to be intimately in her life, with its major drama and trauma. And she says herself that she is a bad friend--doesn't keep in touch with people.
She and Ass't Man were friends separate from me, but they have not even talked since AM and I fell out.

However, I asked her if she'd take over my job, if I leave.
She said yes, "If BB will allow it." (She and he didn't get along, and then she quit being a cashier.)
Since the store doesn't advertise, I thought I should look around for my own replacement.
E's not a big reader, but she loves books--though maybe mostly to cut up for collage. 
If she worked at the store I'd volunteer, to help and visit here there.

When I first thought about leaving, I thought I'd for sure want to volunteer, but unless it were to see Em, I don't think I would. I don't want to give the store any more of my time. And I don't want to try to control BOOK's, once I'm gone. I can imagine whoever takes over will do it very differently (and quite possibly not the way I'd like).

Thinking about it, I feel free to go.

I applied! "This is going to be wonderful!"

Yay! I submitted my application for a Special Ed Assistant to a nearby high school, just now. They had three openings--I applied for the one working with students with ASD (autism spectrum disorder). 

I'd be open to working with other students, but neuro-divergence interests me. All these interesting questions around "how do our brains navigate the world?" come up when we start to look at neurotypical & neurodivergent experience. 

I have friends on the spectrum who have shown me the world in new ways--illuminating the intricacies of social circumstances, for instance, that shift like lake ice... Sometimes beautiful, sometimes treacherous.

I see how easy it is for me as a neurotypical person to enter into social situations that are designed for brains like mine, as most of them are. And people with social training like mine. My mother was something of a Southern belle, and she taught me intricate manners--like, what to say when you enter a room where two people are already talking.

I learned soooo much from my Black coworkers who grew up in poverty about their social worlds. Mr Linens used to literally instruct me:
Don't say that, don't do that ("don't lend that guy money"), etc.

Overall, I just feel it's great if everyone has access to the information about how to navigate whatever area they want to enter. Like learning other languages to travel or talk to people.

(I should write out some of that...
But not this morning--I'm going back to work after three days off.

I took an extra day because the wind-chill has been dangerously cold. It still is this morning, but the wind's supposed to ebb and the temp is going to "warm up" to 6 above 0 ( -14 C).

Here's bink & Astro yesterday. Some work was being done in their house so they came over here (in a car).
Astro is earing an ear muff made from a sock.

 

I am excited about getting a new job! If not this one, another. The public schools have lots of openings for special ed assistants--I think I mentioned they hired Ass't Man who has less social service jobs than I've had. He's had none, while I've worked with seniors--and wrote for a K-12 educational publisher too.

I looked back at my posts from 2015, when I led Activities on a memory care unit, with people living with Alzheimer's and other dementias.
I was happy to be reminded of a woman with Alzheimer's who used to cheer me on. If I was grumbling and saying something wouldn't work, she'd say,
"Don't say that! Say, This is going to be wonderful!"

I wrote: "I usually resent people telling me to cheer up, but when someone with Alzheimer's says it, well, it gave me pause. Maybe I'll try that, I thought, and filed it away."

I am dusting off that file and pulling out that woman's saying. Come to think of it, she'd been a high school teacher...

Off I go! THIS IS GOING TO BE WONDERFUL!

"To change the things I can..."

"May I cultivate the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

I am facing some big changes. Health, diet, and an ongoing quest to age well; a job search; and, just living with a heightened awareness that... who knows?! We never know what tomorrow brings.
My feelings are acting like a mouse in the walls... sometimes, contentedly and quietly nibbling; other times, racketing around like they’re shod in tiny horseshoes.

What helps?
Choosing to change some things I can change.
We're in a three-day stretch of extreme cold, like much of the US, so I'm staying in, so that does not include hill-walking outside.

Instead I'm doing things around the house, like altering this book cover, below.
A couple years ago I'd looked for images to help me envision the character Murderbot. It's a human-cyborg construct, the protagonist of a series of sci-fi books by Martha Wells. It has no gender and indeterminate race, but almost all illustrations of Murderbot make it look masculine, and usually imply it’s white too.

I'd collaged a photo of a United Nations soldier, an African woman, [second photo, below] onto the cover of the first book of the series to help me visualize Murderbot otherwise, as I read.
Yesterday I collaged another--I'd cut the illustration off another novel whose name I don't remember:
 Murderbot doesn’t wear makeup, but this could be one of several other characters in the novel.

Nice Changes

I'm starting to feel excited and good about changing some things in my life. And as I go that way (toward change), I feel less overwhelmingly angry at the workplace culture dominated by BB. Though I do want to get away from the negativity at work, I feel calmer about it, less reactive, more trusting that I can explore new possibilities.

[Example of workplace culture: 

A  quality BB values most highly in a worker is obedience. To me, this is a slave mind-set, and I don't understand why he thinks it's good.

Since I work independently, I've often been free of his oversight, but his expectation of obedience is sticky, pervasive, and toxic.
Like Febreze!]

A nice thing I didn't expect:
having changed my diet a little a couple weeks ago, I notice that I feel a little better in myself. I'm taking in no red meat, a lot less dairy (still eat cheese, but drink all-oat milk in coffee), almost zero alcohol, and way fewer processed foods.

These are relatively small changes because I didn't eat a whole lot of those things, and I still eat lots of sugar––in my tea, for instance (but probably less because I'm not getting it in hidden forms).
I could have expected these little things would improve my mood, I guess, but I wasn't thinking about that. I was thinking about helping my internal organs. 

Focusing on the medical has been surprisingly helpful, so far. It has lessened the hard emotional responses that always arose when I changed how I ate.
Framing the changes as medical sets aside issues of body-presentation (looks), which have always been a painful tangle for me. It becomes easier to make changes because I’m not feeling deprived or judgemental.

"Cut way down on processed foods" is a big change at work, where there's a lot of free junk food. I wouldn't always eat these things, but sometimes I would, because they are often out in the break-room:
week-old donated donuts in puddles of glaze; powdered coffee creamer made w/ sodium aluminosilicate (sodium, aluminum, and silicon); cheap pepperoni pizza that oozes orange grease.

At first, I’d decided to drink no alcohol, but I chose to drink red wine this week, when I went out with Abby, who teaches special ed, to talk about working in that field as an assistant. I was anxious, and I wanted to join her in a drink. 
One glass was good, and I decided that's okay, once in a while. 

Abby was super encouraging about me working with teens in special-ed. "You're good with all types of people at the store," she said, "and we do get all types. And you create community too."

I was so very grateful to hear insights about my strengths, I realized again how undercut I am at work, in contrast. 
There's no guarantee how a new job will be, but I want to seek out more support in general.
A workplace or other social group that encourages people to say things nicely (even critical things) would be nice.

Meanwhile, I’m working on eating nice things that are helpful not harmful. Nice!

Bestir yourself, Self

In Wodehouse’s very first Jeeves & Wooster story, Jeeves says to Bertie, when Bertie’s fiancée wants him to read Nietzsche:

“You would not enjoy Nietzsche, sir. He is fundamentally unsound.”

You can buy this on a t-shirt. 

I do enjoy a little bit of Nietzsche to buck myself up [See, complacency, prone to], but it’s true that if you go out too far with him, you’ll find you’re sitting on a very flimsy branch indeed. 

However, I just saw something Nietzsche said about betrayal/trust that expresses so nicely how I feel about store management, I am going to quote the blighter:

"I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you."

It’s not mere carelessness and ineptitude on management’s part, it’s culpable negligence and active lying. 

And ineptitude. 

Yesterday BB came back to the clothes sorting area, next to my work area, with a couple bottles of Febreze. (Donated of course—the store doesn’t buy supplies if they can help it.)

“Spray this over racks of clothes ready to go out,” he said to Clothes Alice. 

Alice has environmental sensitivities (don’t we all?), and she said she couldn’t use it. 

She’s only part time, though, so he was going to leave the Febreze for days she’s not there.

I spoke up. “Don’t use Febreze! That stuff is toxic.”

“I never heard that,” BB said. 

“You never checked,” I said, pulled out my phone, and quickly found and read out loud:

 “The chemicals in Febreze are neurotoxins… aggravate allergies and asthma…”

BB took the bottles away. 

I said to several coworkers gathered around, “You don’t want to breathe anything but air—” 

and, looking at Grateful J (now manager of furniture because Mr Furniture began driving the store truck full time)—Grateful J who had refused my offer of a mask when he was taking down the dressing rooms in a haze of sheetrock dust, 

I added—“like, not plaster dust.”

“Oh, sheetrock isn’t plaster,” he said. “It’s not dangerous. It’s plaster that you want to watch out for breathing—the particles are sharp-edged.”

I pulled my phone back out, looked it up, and read out loud:

“Sheetrock is gypsum plaster pressed between two sheets of material”.

(I did not add that lungs do not care for soft-edged dust either.)

“Why did they tell me it was okay?!” he said—meaning the apartment management company he once worked for.

“Because people lie to get you to do stuff,” I said. “Or they’re stupid and don’t look stuff up.”

Though he doesn’t look stuff up, GJ’s not stupid! 

He’s super smart about attaching-things-to-other-things (something I’m stupid at), and plant sciences. 

What he is, is gullible.

I KNOW that anywhere I work, I will encounter The Humans—and we are a wonky lot, creatures of habit, prone to taking the path of least resistance. 

Me too! 

I’m sure if I get a job in the public schools, I’ll soon be raging about how badly they are managed. 

I can think of an example already: 

I recently learned that students can keep—and use—their phones in class. 

I wondered if private schools allow that. 

Looking it up, I see the most elite school in town, Breck, just last year required students to keep their phones in phone bags during class.

I should think so.

If you’re going to keep ruling the world, you better stay sharp. 

One of my personal “stupidities”—or, things that dull sharpness—is complacency. 

It’s not stupid, of course, in an uncertain world—and the world is always uncertain—it’s not stupid to stay in place. It’s a survival skill. 

But there’s more than survival. 

There’s this question that I blogged recently—in support of developing resilience:

“Is this [whatever] helping me or harming me?”

The answer is not always clear, but Penny Cooper has cast her vote:  “Look for a new adventure.”

And I think of Jane Eyre, who said that if she couldn’t be free, at least she could have a different servitude.

For the change. 

Stir it up!

Be Small, Be Brave

SMALLNESS  IS  STRENGTH

Above, from a children's book cover, whose title I forgot

I'm applying for a new job.
Yesterday I applied at the food co-op down the street, for an all-round store staff position.
[Oh, I just now got an email saying I didn't get an interview. Not heart-broken.]

Now I'm applying at nearby high schools, to work as a special-ed assistant (what Ass't man left to do).

Here's what that decided me to start looking for new work, after almost six years at the thrift store:
The dressing rooms that have been closed since Covid summer 2020 got taken down.

These, below, are the store's former dressing rooms. Covid concerns aside, the rooms were sites for drug use & theft, and management decided to close them forever when we reopened in August 2020, after closing because of Covid and damage caused by uprisings after the murder of George Floyd.

Workers suggested the dressing rooms be removed, to create more floor space.
Retail. It's what we do.
Upper management said no, it would be too much work to remove the  metal (maroon) door frames.
The doors were closed and locked, and the space remained unused.

Three+ years later--below--this week a volunteer who used to work in construction removed the dressing rooms.
With the help of Grateful-J, it took 5 hours.
All this new space! Clothes will go there--they're the store's top seller, by far.

I don't know why management decided to take the rooms down, all of a sudden.
It doesn't matter why. It's a perfect example of the haphazard way the store is run. Management's default response to any suggested change is NO. (That's why I don't ask if I can change something myself, like put down a rug. I just do it.)

Change--even improvement--is seen as a PROBLEM.

It drives me crazy that decisions are made, if they are made, with no foresight, no investigation of options, certainly no outlay of money (the volunteer wasn't paid, of course).

I asked Big Boss if he was happy to see all that floor space.
He could not say he was. "Now they need to get paint and fixtures and all that."

And I thought, I HATE THIS.
I hate the constant negativity from the top. "That won't work" could be management's motto.

I hate how management is stingy with resources--from office supplies to job training. Forget any emotional support.
Big Boss said he knows--he's been told--he should give praise;
but, he told me, he thinks people shouldn't need praise.

And more--we work in hard, hard circumstances, with drug dealers committing murder across the street, with people in desperate need, with sadness and fear...
And this is not addressed at all. No comfort, no strength, no nothing.

I hate the results of mismanagement, all the things I've complained about here for YEARS. The poor pay, for sure: everyone's stuck forever at minimum wage.
But also the lack of community, mutual support, any information about ... anything that might be helpful to our jobs or our lives.
Workplace safety? What's that?

There is no doubt that my work in BOOK's is a good thing.
Customers tell me all the time--every week, at least, and often every day someone says something nice about books. Sometimes a little thing, sometimes something heartfelt, like when someone said our store was a beacon.
A couple weeks ago, a man asked me if I was the person who did books. I said yes, and he said,
"I want you to know, what you do matters."

And I believe that. I know it.
BOOK's Matter.
(And toys are good too--they're a pain, but I like to see kids happy with toys I've prepared (washed, repaired, bagged up).)

But it surprises me how hard it has become to keep working with no support from management--no help with decision making, no money for supplies (I've bought my own, sometimes)--and, much worse, to work in an atmosphere of constant dis-couragement.

Our Christmas bonuses were half what they were last year--not that they were much to begin with.
I got the big fifty bucks this Xmas.

I went to Big Boss. "Are you trying to tell me something?" I said. "I worked harder than ever this year."

"Did you?" he said.

I was flabbergasted. "The book nook?" I said.
A massive undertaking that had me moving hundreds of pounds of books, and one that opened up more retail space.

"It's not you," he said. "Expenses are up."

I just walked away.

I'm not sure that BB gets it that in retail, space is money. I'm not sure what he gets, but it sure isn't the basics of retail. Or human psychology.

And Manageress is entirely unsuited to any sort of responsibility. She spends half her time pricing shoes in the back room, leaving the cashier to run the front of the store. Our newest cashier is twenty-three years old, and she's left to deal with all the wack-a-doodle customers.

My biggest problem is what this all has done to me.
My fuel gage is near empty.
And, worse--I didn't expect this, I truly didn't see it coming:
I do not believe I am a failure at the store--quite the opposite!--
but I feel like a failure.

I feel like an impatient, reactive, negative mess.
I'm not, I know it.
But working in a place with management that rewards lack of effort and punishes initiative, is reductive to the human spirit.

Recognizing this is, actually, incredibly encouraging.
I AM FINE.
I have possibilities. I will pursue them.
And in the meantime, I have BOOK's.
I love them, and they love me. I am sustained.

Be Strong, Be Silly: Daryl & Carol and Jeeves & Wooster

I'm feeling a little jangled. I think I'd mentioned, I got some mildly abnormal blood-test results a couple weeks ago, and I'm adjusting my diet.
I cut out dairy (mostly); red meat, and alcohol.
All to the good! Not even that big of a deal--for instance, I'd already mostly switched to oat milk a few months ago.

The doc says not to worry, and we'll test again in three months.
I'm not too worried--it's manageable--but the uncertainty leaves me feeling... uncertain. And changing what I eat always throws me, emotionally.
This comes on top of me deciding to pull my attention away from work. That leaves me with a lot of free time. 
Plus, we're finally getting normal winter weather--due to fall into the single digits this week. For my taste, too cold to bike.

It's all just... jangling.

This weekend, I turned for strengthening medicine to Daryl & Carol in The Walking Dead.
You know them? They're both enduring abuse at the start–– the zombie apocalypse isn't initially much worse.
They start out as reactive and beaten down (below), but they grow into total bad-asses--and best friends.


I rewatched the first 13 episodes of TWD, which is all I'd ever seen or ever want to see.
The first season interested me--what do you do if you wake up in the hospital and the triffids have come?--but soon the show becomes too much of a soap-opera gore fest for me.

I'd gotten the DVDs from the library. The last disc was so scratched, it wouldn't play.
Feeling desperate, I found the episodes free online--in Spanish.
My Spanish is minimal. I turned on the subtitles (in Spanish), and since I'd watched the show ten years ago, I could follow. Also, the dialogue is not the point.

I was pleased I could pick up some words and phrases though.
Daryl is wounded, around episode 10?, while looking for Carol's missing daughter. Carol brings him dinner in bed and thanks him.
He says something about Rick being the leader of the group.

She replies, "Eres igual."
YOU ARE EQUAL.

I love that they see each other. I love, too, that the actor who plays Carol, Melissa McBride, is only four years younger than me. (She's 58 now.)

Daryl & Carol were helpful, and then for a completely different pair, I started reading Carry On, Jeeves, the first collection of Jeeves & Wooster stories.
So funny!

Hugh Laurie & Stephen Fry ^ are so good in the 1990s TV series, I like having them in my mind. But Bertie's internal dialogue is a hoot, and of course you lose that on film.
I was going to quote some of it, but it's all of a piece.

So, that's my plan: Be Strong, Be Silly.

(Ha, I forgot: on my old blog, Red Hair Girl once rescued Daryl from triffids!)
___________________

Oh--one more pair.
Starsky & Hutch was a major fandom of a couple friends, a few years ago. I was a fan of the fandom–––Starsky & Hutch are sexy together– but not the show itself, which I disliked.
I posted S/H fan art and the like 60+ times––other people's, but, I'd forgotten, I made a lot too. Huh.
Like this one--a rough photomanip using flowers from a Picasso poster that was on a bedroom wall in the show.

R.i.p. David Soul.

Saturday Stuff

Saturdays, the store is short-staffed and I often end up doing all sorts of things outside my Books & Toys.

I. Apples

To begin with, yesterday I bagged apples--this industrial gaylord was donated half-full of them.
We gave them away to people dropping off donations and put bags of them in the front exit hallway too, for people to take. They were all gone by the end of the day.

My hair is gleaming in the sunlight of the donations-bay garage door.

II. End Caps

Since Ass't Man left three months ago, no one's been doing anything creative with displays.
For the past month, Xmas decorations dominated. Xmas was taken down, leaving the three end-caps bare. So I did them (two, below).
We had a lot of little bird statues, which I put throughout.


The blue typewriter ^ is the most interesting thing. Ten bucks!
A customer asked me if it worked. (He was early middle-age.)
I plugged it in for him, and it does work.
The platen returned all the way to the left. "It's broken," he said.

"I think it just needs adjusting," said I, old person who took Typing in high school.
I fiddled with it, and yep--there's a key that says "SET", which allows you to set the paten return.
"I don't want it," the customer said. "Maybe if it had a case..."

I did not say, "Why did you ask then?"

Ass't Man came in later and said the end caps looked nice. I said he should come volunteer and do them--Honestly, the staff is calmer and happier without Ass't Man, and I'm not interested in being friends with him, but I hand it to him--he has design skills.

"I was thinking I'd like to do that," he said. "I don't have kid duties on Thursdays, I could come in after school. 
. . .You know it was my favorite thing."

It's weird to have this somewhat intimate knowledge of someone whom you don't trust. Again, I feel like we are a divorced couple.

"I do know," I said, "and you were the best at it."
_____________________

Donations have been kinda lackluster lately, but there's always something interesting--like this, below, plaster St. Therese of the Little Flowers in a glass shadow box.
Volunteer Art dislikes Catholica (he grew up Catholic and thinks it’s creepy)--and he always prices kitschy stuff way too low. I grabbed it and priced it $48.
Looked online later and see them for $160, and up.

ABOVE right: And this vintage dresser with awesome art-deco pulls! 
I don't usually price furniture, but Grateful J asked me for help.
He'd just put this piece out when a woman offered him $25. This woman restores furniture--she knew very well it was worth a lot more. The drawer pulls alone!

J sensed it was worth more, so he asked me to look it up.

I did a google image search and found a similar one (from the 1930s) for $2,000 on Chairish--an overpriced site, but indicative.
$250, I said.
"Oh, I wouldn't pay more than $50," she said.

Her haircut cost more than $50.

"If it doesn't sell, we'll drop the price," I said. "But people in this neighborhood need working furniture, so it'll sell for more than fifty to someone who just needs a chest of drawers."

The price was high for the store--we don't get a lot of antique collectors--and I thought it wouldn't sell for that much.
But within an hour, someone else bought it--didn't bat an eye at the price.