Not a Pretty Picture (and a few pretty ones)

Here is a pretty picture of meadow flowers Marz brought me from the farmers market yesterday.

Not a Pretty Picture

Michael recently blogged about a journalist using the phrase "folks on the ground" to refer to Wisconsin voters.
I thought of this when I walked up to my workplace yesterday and saw the real thing:
two people lying on the ground--seemingly passed out--one on either side of the street near the thrift store.

Big Boss and others have been in meetings all summer with the City and social workers, etc., about the folks living (and dying) on the street outside the store.
(Remember last summer, I'd tried to get the City to give the street trash cans? I didn't bother this year.)

Upshot: basically, there's almost nothing to be done--or, nothing the City will do.

Nonetheless, I called 911--(they did not send an ambulance, they sent a cop car that simply moved the people along, stumbling)--and I took a photo and sent it to our City Council member. I said,  "I'm writing to express concern: it's like walking the Gauntlet of Hell out here".

I didn't send the photo to the therapist I'll meet in person this coming week, but this morning I emailed her about what I'd seen. She and I had talked on the phone for twenty minutes on Monday, and I'd liked her okay, but I hadn't felt she really got what I was saying.

I had said that I'm not looking for "healing" from the trauma of 2020 (specifically the police murdering George Floyd, a mile away), because the trauma, the wounding, is not over; I see it every day at work.

However, when she mirrored back to me what she'd heard, she got it wrong, and in the past tense:
"You are looking to be healed from what happened...".

No, I said, I'm not, and I explained again that it didn't "happen", it is happening.
But I didn't sense the light turning on.

I just now wrote her:

"This is what I'm wanting help with:
handling the pain of others and the way it ricochets in my life and the lives of everyone around me.
I want to be able to work alongside it, effectively, and not be overwhelmed by it.
It's more like incurable cancer than an old wound:
I want help living with it as well as possible."

I'd filled out a required intake form too, but I'd left a lot of the multiple-choice questions blank. All the available answers were misleading.

Do I feel "a heightened sense of danger"?

Well, yes.
But that's because someone was shooting a gun outside the store the other day, not because I'm over-sensitized due to unhealed trauma.

Another Pretty Picture

People at work are stressed, oh yeah, for sure...
But meanwhile, Asst Man set up fresh new end cap displays, and as I was photographing this one, below, a customer came into view wearing a matching shirt.
I don't think he intended to strike a pose for my camera, but he did:

Let's see. Other fun things at work:
the set of Dansk silverware that I'd brought back to the store (after paying waaay too little for it) sold for $175–! (I did keep a set for myself too.)

And several expensive (for the store) books sold from the glass display case--Big Boss assisted a customer who wanted to see the set of Khalil Gibran books, which they bought for $60.
I always like when Big Boss sees I'm selling pricey stuff, because otherwise Books at 99 cents each don't bring in all that much.

I truly don't know why this low-rent thrift store of nonreaders ever decided to PAY someone to arrange the books like a bookstore, but I sure am glad they did--and every week customers tell me the same.

Another nice thing...
Below: Donated Steiff chimp "Jocko" from the 1950s, with old antique store price tag of $50, marked down from $120:

* * *

Ooooh--Marz just called and asked if I'd like to go up to the North Shore for the day, spur of the moment. Even though it's expensive to rent a car, and we'd be getting a late start (it's 10 a.m., and it takes two, three hours), yes, I said, I would LOVE to go see water crashing on rocks.
Better than any therapy!