Packing It In

I've taken the last week of August off work (a couple weeks away) to paint my room and clean at the new place, and to do the final move. There's plenty to do beforehand, here in the place I've lived for seventeen years.  
Mz has found a little studio apartment of her own for Sept. 1 too, so it's quite a whirl around here.

I spent yesterday evening after work going through my things, throwing many away and setting some aside to give away. 
The activity made some of the girls nervous, so I set them all on the "TO GO" shelf. (Red Hair Girl is still at bink's. She's never nervous.)

Now they are happy––listening to Bounce (in gold): she and Sparkle are the only ones who've seen the new place with its doll house. 
Penny Cooper is holding her blue jacket, to make sure it doesn't get left behind. 

I was surprised at how easy it was to get rid of things.
If I felt a tug, handling a thing, I didn't toss it.

But I didn't feel even a tug as I put old journals and calendars in the recycling. 
A lot has changed since I last moved, in 2002, that makes these things inert: both my parents have died; no nieces or nephews have been born; I'm much older, of course, and know who I am (without visual aids); and––key? the Internet has become a storage bin.

I know that technology will change, platforms will disappear (I keep expecting Google to announce the closing of Blogger), and, who knows, maybe we won't always have this seemingly free energy to run these machines . . . but, then, everything is temporary.
For now, it makes it easy to feel at home anywhere, with just six little dolls and a laptop.

Hello, Shoppers!

Meanwhile, I'm settling into being a cashier at work, three short (four-hour) shifts a week.
It's a wild scene.

Yesterday a big, middle-aged, black guy dragged two rolled-up rugs to the register, to decide between them. It didn't take long.

"I'll just take this one," he said. "I don't feel well."

Sweat was rolling down his face, and he looked nauseous.
"Your stomach?" I said.

"No," he said, gesturing to the left side of his chest, "I feel like someone's grabbing me. Been feeling that way all morning..."

It was eleven a.m.
"For god's sake," I said, "you're having a heart attack! Do you want me to call 911?"

No, he didn't. This guy, who didn't own a car, was going to drag his rug two blocks to his apartment and then walk or bus to the ER. 

Luckily, Big Boss came by at this moment.
"Take this man and his rug to the ER!" I said. Big Boss said he would. 

The man was still a little reluctant.
"Go!" I said. "You're going to take your rug, get down the street, and die, and then I'll feel guilty! So go!"

He did. 
I keep sensing that being a grey-haired older lady is a secret super-power:   because I'm not threatening, I feel I am listened to in a different way.

I'm still pondering this. I think it has to do with the sexual power of youth (a side-effect of simply being in a young body) giving way to the unexpected power of being invisible (reproductively nonviable) and socially/politically unimportant.

And I guess it maybe helped that Big Boss is black man, like the shopper--no loss of face.

Front of house is dramatic like that, a lot.
A rough-looking young woman was throwing a fit the other day because she'd set her little plastic shopping bag down somewhere and couldn't find it. She was rude and crude, attacking the staff. (I wasn't at the register.)

Later, after she left, we found her bag.
It held a couple needles and vials of naloxene, the stuff you keep on hand in case of opioid overdose. One of the managers thought you could get high on it, but I looked it up, and no. It's not fun, it's just a life saver.