Penny Cooper Prepares to (not really) Die

Penny Cooper is mightily pleased--plans are well underway for this year's Penny Cooper Triumphant:
The Annual Easter Reenactment of the Martyrdom of Sydney Carton.
(––"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done", from Tale of Two Cities, ya know).

Yesterday Emmler lent me a grocery cart to be Penny's tumbrel.
It should have only two wheels, like a wheelbarrow-- but it has been deemed "an acceptable modern interpretation".

Aaaaand, bink & I went to an antiques faire this Sunday, where I found a little food chopper that will make a perfect guillotine blade. (Only two dollars.)
The guillotine is new this year--at Penny's repeated request.
I'd always been reluctant to make a guillotine before, but this year I've lightened up. "It's just pretend," she says.

None of the girlettes wants to play the executioner though.
They say they can't, they are too short, that you have to be as tall as a guillotine.
"A bear can do it!"
You'd think one of them would relish the role of the "bad guy"--maybe one of the rogueish Duquettes? But, nope--they don't.
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I am a little sore in the body today because I ended up volunteering at the thrift store yesterday, and after five weeks away, I can confirm that it's quite a workout, lifting, reaching, stooping, bending...
And it hurts my hand joints--another confirmation that I made a good decision to leave this work.

I'd been uncertain about going back to the store. As I walked the few blocks from the bus, (too cold-windy to bike), I felt strong sense that I was going home, but I was worried about feeling either too sad there, or possibly being rejected.

But it went great!
Better than I'd hoped.
Everyone was glad to see me—even, after giving me some grief, Manageress.
She said my BOOK's replacement, Amina (not her real name), was doing well but had lots of questions that she herself couldn't answer---could I hang around until Amina came in to work?

I said I'd be happy to. Would she like me to start sorting toys while I waited?
"Please!" she said.

Okay, then. 

I felt at home, in the best possible way--in my element, an entirely free agent, with NONE of the pressure of being staff. What a relief, to be free to do just the stuff I love.

I also felt a little smug, being able to report that my new job is going well, and that I enjoy it. 

I told them what I earn and was encouraging everyone—Manageress included—to look into working for the public schools.  Manageress got play-angry (not really play) – – saying I should stop trying to lure her staff away, but when I said that teaching aides get unemployment over the summer, she got quiet.  
Then, “…I could go home and visit my mother in Eritrea,” she said.

Amina has been doing a good job, but is naturally not yet as fast as I was, and there was a pretty big ol' pile up. It felt good to plow through and get that down--and sorting the little toys into grab bags was always a favorite task of mine.
I even set up a side-by-side on the Toy Bridge—pink-haired, star-eyed figures of Strawberry Shortcake and  Gamora from Guardians of the Galaxy. 

I priced and put out a lot of toys before Amina came in, and then we spent the afternoon sorting books. She's smart--more than I'd realized (I'd never really talked to her in the years she was a customer, just liked her, intuitively) --but she's only a freshman in college and doesn't have the breadth of knowledge.
You can't quickly learn all the details, every author/book/topic, there are too many; but you can develop a Spidey book sense--a tingle that says, I should check this particular book.
She catches on quick.

I was careful to emphasize that BOOK's are hers now, and I'm just there to support her. I said I'd come again, if she'd like--maybe regularly on Saturdays, if I can manage it. She said she'd love that.
Nice!

I'd texted Em that I was at the store, and she came to help for the last hour, and said she'd like to volunteer every Saturday too, if I do.
I'd love that. We rarely manage to get together outside the store, and we have a lot of fun there, exclaiming over tchotchkes and ephemera.

I walked her home after, and she lent me the toy grocery cart. Of course she had a cart. Her apartment is a palace of creative destruction and re-creation, collections, and tools & supplies for quirky, playful, sexual, angry, sumptuous collages  and constructions:
-- some, possibly unsettling, like a framed tooth (she has dental issues), or mutilated religious imagery (that to me is in keeping with the grotesqueries of the religious imagery itself…).
I will take photos sometime.
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Having gone back to the store, I am returned to myself.