Treasure your trinkets!

Brrrr.... Overnite temperatures are dropping into the 20s F ( –7ºC), and it's dark at 4:50 PM.
Time to bring out the bright, spangly trinkets!

I made up a dozen dollar grab-bags of ornaments this week at the thrift store, and they almost sold-out in a day. 
(Making grab bags is a favorite of mine.)

And then, in service of the little darlings, I gave in. 
See, I intend not to give the store so much emotional/social energy, and it's GREAT that I'm starting to explore other social spaces... 
I can feel it working already to divert my attention:
I'm fuming about the lack of follow-through on Land Acknowledgements instead of fretting about poor business decisions.

(You know what they say in 12-steps: Progress, not perfection!)

But of course I do care (a lot) about my work and the people there, and one thing that drives me batty is Big Boss's decision not to buy anymore shopping baskets––though we are always running out of the five we have––
because, he said, people steal them.

People DO steal them--and the shopping carts too. It is frustrating.  But our cheap-o baskets cost like $10/each in bulk.

I'm sure--and the google-research I did agrees--that the increase in sales from shoppers having somewhere to put their selections (imagine that) would more than make up for the occasional theft of a basket.

So... I gave in and wrote Big Boss a female-gender-coded email this morning. That is, girly. I used cute emojis, and I kowtowed. I had written in a straightforward way requesting baskets in the past, and he'd turned me down.

Now I'm trying this way. I sucked up. He likes obeisance--it makes him feel powerful. I mean, duh, of course--that's the point of it. It's interesting to see it at work, and to think about how we need that sense of personal power--and the various ways we try to get it. 
Having underlings kowtow is a weak and unstable way. [See, President of the United States] 
 
It's so interesting to me that (almost all?) religions teach the wisdom of humility--
NOT because you should think you are a worthless worm, (worms are far from worthless!), but because when your Ego runs the show, you are being led around by your inner toddler.
The more you can let go of that need for worldly power, the FREER you are.

Anyway, if my email were a toy, it would be pink with curlicues.
I even pulled the string on the back of the toy and it giggled and twirled and suggested there might be a FOOTBALL metaphor (BB loves football) that explains how taking a small loss can lead to a bigger win.

All in service of ONE GOOD POINT:

Buy us some baskets, pretty please, Mr Big Boss! 

Invisible subtext: Don’t be stuck in your ego attachments.

I sometimes think BB is in the wrong job.*

But that's not my business, says Kermit the Frog.

It IS my business to display Christmas items. And, as I wrote to BB this morning, Xmas decorations are small, and people need carts and baskets to load up on them.

I actually wrote these words:
"Let's make this a successful holiday sales season."

Will it work?
I don't know. Maaaaaybe....
I'd give it a 50/50 chance. I will have tried anyway, and I can let go of the outcome. (Uh-huh. Watch this space for cries of outrage when it doesn't work.)

Anyway, gendered talk is like race code-switching, which BB says he's aware he does. When he's talking to the Black guys in the back, he speaks very differently--in the way he grew up--than if he's addressing the all-white Christian board. (He's effective talking to white folks (like me) because he's not race blaming.)

It's an option, sometimes effective. If it works, I'll be glad. 

BELOW: I hung the grab-bags on hooks along this holiday shelf (one of two).
 I started the display this week, after taking down Halloween. I think it's ridiculously early, but it's BB's call, and other stores have it out.
 People are buying it too. 

So, whatever, I genuinely don't care about the timing.
I enjoy the fooffing and faffing. I'll will line the shelves with red and green paper, etc.

Sadly there's almost no cool and unusual holiday stuff this year. It's almost all modern crap--ceramic Xmas village houses, resin Santas, cozy mugs that say "hot chocolate" on them, plastic bulbs, and five thousand tangled strings of lights.

 The little trinkets are where treasures are to be found, but there are fewer and fewer old, painted-wax choirboy candles from Giftco, for instance, fragile glass bulb ornaments, or teeny-tiny wood skiers and angels made in Taiwan... 
I have a bunch of those teenies--rocking horses and trumpeters, and the like for the Girlettes' wee Christmas tree. I was going to nab any that come in, but so far there've been, maybe four?

Treasure your trinkets!

And don't let your ego get in the way of other's shopping convenience. 🙄🤣🤣🤣

_____________

* BB may be in the wrong job, but if you look at it that way, so am I. 
If some inner spring in me weren't askew, I'd be more effective--and maybe I'd have been able to take on leadership roles without the inner resistance I have always experienced.

However, I don't regret it--it's a skewy path we walk. Our brokenness may be our guide to a true, good place.
That may sound woo-woo, but I mean it. If I can accept my bent springs and broken strings, I can work with--or around--them. 

My laziness and avoidance of leadership, for instance, has kept me out of some  thorny thickets--and that has left me free to do things like create toy tableaux, going in a direction that feel JUST RIGHT.
I want to keep going that way.

As I was walking to work yesterday, I saw the God's eyes on the fence from a block away. I felt such a sense of rightness that they are anonymous--even invisible to many people, including BB who  drives past and parks in the lot on the other side of the building.

I thought, this is right, to have made and hung these, and then to have stepped back, to have remained Unimportant, to let the eyes shine on their own for the handful of people who see them.

 It makes me feel shiny in myself, like antique lead Christmas tree tinsel.