The New Reality

 Today was...well, mainly what I did today was search for jobs online -- linkedin truly is wonderful in that way, though I hit a few other sites.  Guess I am glad I never blocked all the job emails from my last search!  Anyways, today's count was 54, which... my sister thinks I am crazy and need to settle down.  Probably true.  But I think we all know I am not wired that way, I don't want to be sitting around and being unproductive, and I recall how long it took to find the last job -- when I HAD a job.  No such luxuries now, so... off we go.  I took a break for Endeavour (quite good) and here I am now... where I applied to a few more.  

My sister came to Mass today and we went out for breakfast, where we discussed my new reality.  She has been down this path before, so I do appreciate her insights, even if I am not so relaxed about things, to put it mildly.  To be sure, some of my suggestions were a bit extreme/premature, but... at least she gave me a pathway on what to do going forward, and it was good to simply get together.  

Yesterday I had food pantry duty and we were surprisingly busy; we had big crowds the first two weeks, and we thought that would be it, but... nope, 99; close to a record month, as we had just under 500.  Nearly a third of the clients who arrived had already been there, and while we are not supposed to help them, we did give them a bag of produce.  To be sure, as we are closed next week, we were under orders to NOT leave any produce behind, and we did not; everything went, as did the bread.  I was fine with this -- people got something, it games the count a bit, and I will hear no complaints about produce causing a mess -- but of course people now expect it all the time.  The rain held off so we put the clothing racks out, and did a brisk business as well.  So that was good... We were glad to help, but we couldn't help but note that our costs are going up, deliveries are not, and the crowds are...not shrinking.