Grumblebum

 Happy Fall Equinox!
My favorite season, with a ten-day forecast of temps in the 70s.

Marz and I are going up north for a couple nights this weekend.
Not to our usual motel in Duluth, which was booked (it's peak leaf-viewing season), but to a Tiny House airbnb--cheaper, surprisingly--on the south side of Lake Superior--there the shore is sandy beach, not rocky bluffs.

Glam shots from the site:

I'm feeling dissatisfied and a bit bored with my life––boom!––after Auntie Vi's death.
Death (grief) can shake you upside down...

Nothing's particularly wrong with my life, or nothing that wasn't wrong before.

I haven't complained about store management recently, for instance, but––ha!––it's as inept as ever.
Yesterday one of the best workers was storming around saying,
"Could we have some systems around here??? I want to walk out and NEVER COME BACK!"
The manager on duty said nothing.

I met my coworker smoking by the dumpster. "I'm sorry," I said. "I feel that way too sometimes. You're a good worker--have you thought about a different job?"

"I hate changes," he said. "And I love it here."

Yeah. The people who choose to stay stay DO love it, usually... and hate it too. It's very Best of Times/Worst of Times.

And then, a month ago Big Boss had asked me to take photos for social media, and email them to him to post on FB (since I deleted my account).
I just checked and he hasn't been posting most of them on FB.
(I post them myself on IG.)

"Shall we revisit this plan?" I just emailed him.

Meanwhile, Ass't Man (AM) is––praisethelord!––far BETTER than before––ever since around my birthday in March.
AM has been making slantwise apologies to me:
"I grew up being taught this wrong idea about 'color blindness'", he said the other day; and, "I had a chip on my shoulder and grandiose ideas about improving this place when I came here ...".
 

I reserve full trust.
But he hasn't gone off on anyone in six months, and he's been fun again!
I mean, I invited the guy to volunteer in the first place, a couple years ago, because he was lively and interested.
Then he became a dictator ... and now he's been back to his chill self, enjoying showing me weird donations and speaking in funny voices.

He also--wonderfully--gives all the workers super great deals on stuff. As a middle class white guy, he isn't grateful for our store credit, (unlike some of my coworkers who think management is "nice" (!) to give us anything); he sees it as offsetting our serfdom-level pay.
And it does--especially the generous way he doles it out.

So in that way, he uses his power for good, and it's true that I almost never spend money on anything except dolls--the Halloween pumpkin doll costume was and even most presents I give are from the store––which means I live pretty well on minimum wage.

So, the thing is, I'm just antsy.
I haven't learned anything new in ages.
(Geez, Self, that ^ is totally NOT TRUE.)

We've all been knocked sideways the past couple (eight) years, and it's not like everything's right-way up now either.
But it's not that, I don't think. Or, it's that, but it's other stuff too.

Sometimes dissatisfaction is an opening, an invitation for Change to come along. And sometimes it just passes.
I don't know which this is.