Tuesday, January 12, 2021

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.)


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