Happy Dance

Here's Farmer Bear doing a happy dance––happy to have eyes, a clean coat and fresh stuffing, and attached limbs once again.  It's probably been decades since he had a bath.

This handmade wool bear, lumpy with matted sawdust, limbs dangling, was listed last summer on ebay by a seller who specializes in Minnesota goods. She told me later he'd come in a box of stuff at a farm sale. He was not just household-dirty but dirty with dirt from the ground. She was going to toss him but her husband said someone would buy him for five dollars. 
That someone was me.

I'm glad I had vintage glass eyes for him. I'm going to experiment with stitching a nose too. Not sure if that's a good idea, but I can always unstitch if it's not.

I don't like having to undo my work. 
That's a nerve-wracking thing about making or remaking things with no plans––knowing, as I work, that it might not turn out. 
If I'm lucky, I can un– and redo it. 
If not, I just have to live with a botched job. (I suppose that's one reason people like kits and patterns--you may complete them poorly, of course, but at least you know what you're aiming for. )

Why does it take me so long to finish a bear? That's why, I realized. Taking them apart and giving them the spa treatment is fun, and I often do it right away, but I have to screw up my courage to make final design decisions.

I'm feeling braver lately.
Even with all my fretting about work, I've continued to be in a Possible mood---feeling that life is opening up, or could... or will, in time.

There's so little I can do about the larger picture at work, it's just not worth worrying about. Not that being pointless ever stopped worry! but after that flare up the last couple weeks, mine has settled down again.

Half the time, I can't even convey how intractable some of the problems at work are. I phoned my auntie Vi yesterday––
[she got hearing aids this spring, so we can converse again--I wish she'd gotten them ten years ago at 83, as it's been a decade of dwindling spoken communication, but for some reason she utterly refused--when I pushed the subject, she even became angry with me, which is very unlike her]––
and I gave the example of no hand soap in the bathrooms to represent the way the store works (or doesn't).

She told me her local coffee shop has a schedule posted in their bathroom, with boxes for workers to tick when they have done a spot-check. Wouldn't that be a good idea for my store?

Trying to describe how useless that would be felt overwhelming,  so I didn't. Work doesn't even have the communications channels to put such a plan in place.
Do you remember when I was hired last June, I asked Big Boss how he would announce that I was the new Custodian of Books?
He looked a bit baffled, laughed, and pretended to call out, 
"Hey, guys . . .!"

On my first day, I went around and talked to all of my new coworkers (who I knew from volunteering), to make sure they knew. Some of them acted like, OK, but why are you bothering to tell me this?

It's just another world from my usual one. When I ordered something online for a coworker, my sister understood that this coworker didn't know how to use a computer. 
But why did I put it on my credit card? she asked.

"He doesn't have a credit card."

"Well, couldn't he use his bank card?"

"He doesn't have a bank account."

Anyway, I'm feeling restored, and I'm ready to look for a second very–part-time job. I have the time. If I'm not working off the clock (which I did a lot last summer), and if I'm not pondering during my days off ways to improve the store (I'm stopping NOW), I actually only work 20 hours/week. 

I used to work every Saturday as a receptionist at a nonprofit––I want to add something low-key like that. When I'm making more money, I can consider if I want to move. That can wait.