RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING: YES, ANOTHER ONE

 1) Y'all, a homeless man has set up camp in one of the church doorways. 

The pastor noticed that someone was sleeping out in our breezeway yesterday morning. We have this gap between the buildings where our mailbox is, and the entrance to the building from there is a small covered area that has a security camera trained on it. We have had people sleep there before, and we generally don't bother them, especially if it is a woman, because we know they are probably looking for a safe space for the night. They tend to move on after they notice people moving around in the church. 

I may have screwed up, though. When the guy, a very slight, young looking man with prison tats all over his face, woke up, I knocked on the door and spoke briefly to him. He thought he was going to get yelled at, but I told him it was fine. I meant that I wasn't running him off right then, but I think he took it to mean that he could now live here or something. When I came in today, his stuff was scattered out in the doorway again. On days like today, when I'm here alone, I don't particularly care for having a strange man right outside the doorway where I can't see him, especially when I have to go out there as part of my job. I don't think that being homeless makes a person bad or anything like that, but because this guy is an unknown element, I don't know if he's someone I should be worried about or not.

I am torn for wanting this person to feel safe and for wanting myself to feel safe. If I was homeless, I'd want someone to have compassion on me, but I know we can't have this guy living in our doorway. I don't know what to do.

2) OK, I know you're going to think I'm crazy. Maybe I am crazy. However, I'm going to tell you this because it 100% happened, and if I am crazy, you can at least know where I started to lose it.

Yesterday afternoon, I was the only person left in the building. Our homeless friend had walked off of the property and according to all of our security cameras, there were no other people around. I was killing time, watching YouTube videos, and waiting for it to be 3:00 so I could go home.

I heard a child shriek out in the lobby of the church, which is just outside my office. It wasn't a scary sound, really. It was the kind of sound a little kid makes when they are either playing or just about to get mad. I wasn't even startled at first, because when little kids are around, it's a sound I've heard a thousand times here. Only thing was, there were no children here. It was loud enough that I looked up to see what was going on before I remembered I was alone. I stood up and looked out into the breezeway, just in case the homeless guy had a family we didn't know about, but no one was there. I looked outside, in case the family next door, which has kids, were playing in our parking lot. There was no one there.

Y'all, I don't know if you've ever experienced hearing a sound that has no reason to be heard, but part of my skin that normally doesn't crawl, crawled. My heart was telling me to GTFO of the building as fast as I could, but my brain was telling me that I should grab my bat and go check out the strange noise. I don't know what I was going to do with my bat, bludgeon a child to death, I suppose, but thankfully I listened to my heart this time. Before I left, I paused long enough to shout into the void of the empty church (you know, just in case a small child sneaked in through a vent or something. Kids can do that, right?) and ask if anyone was there, but I didn't get an answer. I was so unnerved that I was even afraid to turn off the light, but I did manage to do that much. I ran out to the car and locked myself in that, because as you know, ghosts can't get inside locked cars (allegedly...hehe) and went home early.

I'm sure there is a good reason for what I heard. Probably even a rational reason. Until I know for sure, I don't think I'm going to be comfortable alone in this building for a while.

If it is a ghost, do you know anyone I could call? 

3) I've picked up my crocheting again for the first time in almost two years! I don't know why I stopped, but I have so many different interests that when I put one down to try another one, sometimes it takes a while to pick things back up!

I don't know what made me grab my hooks again, but I sat down one night with a, mostly used, roll of yarn to make a dish cloth, and I just kept on making dish cloth sized squares! I don't know if I'll keep up with this long enough to make a whole afghan's worth of squares or not, but we'll see. To date, I've still only managed to make one entire afghan, and that was a labor of love and endurance. I was determined to finish that one because I'd set a goal and knew where the end product was going. Right now, I'm just chugging along to see where I get to on this one. 

If it ends up as a blanket, it's not going to be very pretty, but it doesn't have to be pretty to be warm!

(That philosophy applies to humans as well. Just FYI.)

HAHA

I had some time today to go back and read the blog entries that I've written throughout last year, and this last entry, I realized that I basically wrote the same things, over and over and over!

Y'all, I know I have a terrible memory, but I genuinely had no idea that I had the same thoughts so often and that I'd write about them as if they were just occurring to me!

I blame the COVID. Oh, and 2020. It was Groundhog Day for an entire year!

Yes. That is what I will blame. Not my terrible memory and lack of things to talk about.

I'll try and do better, I promise!

Hehe!

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING: EARLY 2021 EDITION

 1) Happy new year, y'all!  

Did you guys celebrate in an appropriate manner like I did?  You know, a giant party, swapping drinks, and tongue kissing strangers at the stroke of midnight?  Hehe.  You know, just like every year!

OK, please don't call the police, I'm kidding. I had to work until noon on NYE, and then Steve and I met Anthony at the big park downtown and we walked around for a while. We grabbed dinner and then fell asleep asleep well before midnight.

Steve and I did, at least. Regardless of what some people think, Anthony wasn't involved in that part!

January 1st was an oddly disjointed kind of day for me, though. I tried to get in touch with people to say Happy New Year, as per usual, but I couldn't connect with some of them. It made the day feel kind of weird and incomplete. I didn't even get a new years kiss till way later in the day! Steve and I set about trying to clean out our pantry, but only managed half of it before we ran out of garbage space! He and I also didn't have the requisite black eyed peas, but we improvised by finding a plethora (... I just would like to know if you know what a plethora is. I would not like to think that a person would tell someone he has a plethora, and then find out that that person has *no idea* what it means to have a plethora.) of random beans and peas in the afore mentioned pantry. We invented a soup that turned out pretty good, but was too big for our soup pot! It had hot Italian sausage, every bean and pea we could fit in it, barley, and cabbage. Sounds pretty gross when I write it out, but it was a version of a real soup recipe we already had, and we liked it! I hope it checked whatever boxes that superstitious new year food might need to be checked. 

I picked up a crochet hook for the first time in about two years and made plain squares while we watched football games. It was a weird, yet cozy, day.

I hope you had a nice New Year's Day, too!

2) January is always an odd month for me. 

I admitted this elsewhere, but every single January I have this little voice in my head that whispers that someone I love has resolved to cut me out of their lives for good. I suppose that speaks volumes about my current self esteem, doesn't it? I constantly feel like I'm someone's bad habit! Haha! Even worse is that, as adults, people can choose at any time that they don't need you. They don't have to make a new years resolution. I know this. I don't know why that feeling always creeps around the new year, but it happens every year, and every year I pray fervently that it isn't true. I spend the entire month feeling on edge, waiting to see who is still talking to me by February. Anxiety is weird like that, though. Weird and irrational.  At least I hope it's irrational. 

You're still gonna love me forever, right? RIGHT?!

3) OK, I feel like I need to correct something I said in my last entry even though it's not really a big deal. It's been bugging me. 

In my attempt to explain our rather bland existence over the past few months, I think I might have implied that Steve and I had been keeping exclusively to the house for the duration of all the quarantine times. We have not. We should have, I know, but it didn't work out that way. I'm sorry if I made it sound like we'd been more conscientious that we actually were.

We've mostly stayed home, I guess you could say, but Steve has been exclusively working from home since early March and he did get the bug to get out of the house a few times, which meant some travel. Some of it was against my better judgement, I'll admit, but I won't lie and say I didn't go along. We were as careful as we could be under the circumstances, for what it's worth. I'm probably always going to feel like I had a hand in killing someone's grandmother, though, just because I have been someplace other than my house during 2020. 

It's hard, because literally no one else in my circle is the least worried about getting sick or getting other people sick. The main refrain is "You'll be fine. It'll be fine. Don't worry so much." I don't know what to do with that, so I just go along. Its easier not to argue. I always joke that Steve will have a COVID positive person just spit directly into my mouth at some point, so that I'll stop worrying, but let's hope that is something he resorts to down the line. WAY down the line!

4) I've found a version of "You Can Leave Your Hat On" that I might like better than Tom Jones' version. Its the one by Etta James, and a style of music I didn't know she made! Do yourself a favor and give it a listen. It's awesome!

5) You guys, I have jacked up my back big time and I don't even know what I did. I know I did something to it in August, but it's gotten much worse over the past month and change. I probably should have gone to the doctor way before now, but most doctors are very busy at the moment. 

I can't really do anything, exercise wise, without being in agony for two or three days afterward. I can't walk very far, can't run, can't even do Yoga. I'm fine if I sit or lie down, basically. I have gained so much weight and I hate it! I feel like I'm inside someone else's body. I also feel the need to apologize to people who have to look at me, and I'm terrified that I'm going to run into someone I haven't seen in a long time. I'm very embarrassed at myself at the moment, which is an icky feeling. I never knew how vain I was until now, I guess. LOOK AWAY! I'M A MONSTER! It's a good thing I have such a winning personality, right?! Heehee.

At some point I'm going to have to go see a doc about it, or I'll end up having to be moved around Hannibal Lechter-style everywhere I go, strapped to a moving dolly. At least I'll already be wearing a mask! :)  My dad had to have surgery on his spine, and they replaced some of his bone with cadaver donor bones. Maybe that will be what they do to me!

Go ahead and get the "Got a strangers bone inside you" jokes ready, if so. I'm going to want to hear all of them!  

6) This is a lot of randomness, so I'm going to stop here. I hope your 2021 is a hell of a lot better than last year was!

Oh, and I hope we're still friends in February!