Maddie models some gift bag items

The other day when I accidentally gave a panhandler a fortune cookie fortune, I got an idea.

I’ve been trying to put together items for a small (very small) gift bag for the people asking for help whom I encounter at intersections while out running errands.

I was thinking some sort of small snack, like a snack size candy bar, but with the temperature still getting up into the 70’s here in mid-November, chocolate is not something I could keep in my car.

Then, the fortune cookie incident.

Fortune cookies! Perfect.

You can get fortune cookies in bulk relatively cheap.

Not that I want to send anyone to Amazon, on account of evil lord Jeff Bezos, but if you search “bulk items for homeless,” lots of ideas will come up. Depending on how much coin you have to invest, you could really put together something nice, and useful.

I got some quart size plastic bags to hold the items. Inside I've put...

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1. A fortune cookie. CAT NOT INCLUDED. I've got just one cookie in each bag now, but I might put in two. If they don't like their first fortune, they can take another crack.

2. A rinse-free bath sponge. It looks like a cloth. This purchase was a disappointment. For some reason, I thought these were going to be individually wrapped. But they are not. The cloth is rather large, about the size of an actual wash cloth, so I folded it into a smaller square to place into the bag. I'll probably have to write a little note with instructions. All you have to do is wet it with water and wipe yourself down, but you wouldn't know that if you just got one of these loose in a bag. You wouldn't even know what the thing was, I don't think.

3. Hot Hands hand warmers. These won't be useful until it actually turns cold, I reckon, but I'll go ahead and pass them out now. A cold snap could come any day now. This purchase was another disappointment because I got confused about how many warmer packets I was getting. I read "ten warmers" and thought ten packets, but it's five packets. So, at this point, I can only make five complete gift bags. I would cut these to create ten packets, but only one packet would have the instructions on it.

4. A tiny little chapstick. Mmmm....vanilla bean. And SPF 15! Shown with toe beans for sizing.

I'm putting the bags in a box to keep them handy in my car. I figure I'll stash it in the back seat, so I can reach back when the time comes.

I'll be giving these out instead of cash, and I'm a bit concerned that people are going to be irritated or frustrated about that. I don't want to come across as someone who doesn't trust homeless people or other panhandlers with cash. When I give money, I really don't care what they spend it on. Anyone who thinks that panhandlers aren't making good use of their money if they use it to buy alcohol, drugs, or anything other than whatever someone's approved items might be should read Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. It's a first-hand, journalistic account of just how difficult, if not damn near impossible, it is to survive working the types of jobs that have, in the last two years, been labeled "essential". And this book was published back in 2011, before pandemic times. Things are much, much worse right now. Getting a job doesn't mean you won't be homeless. Not by a long shot. If you're never going to have enough money to get any traction in life, what you spend it on in any given day really doesn't matter.

The gift bags have nothing to do with judging how anyone would spend cash. This is more about my own limited resources - if I gave out money, I would run out of money fast, and not be able to give anyone anything. Finding cheap, but useful items and purchasing them in bulk allows me to give more people a little something.

I hope that it helps them. I hope that it makes them feel something other than struggle and misery.

Maddie is very tired from her turn as a kitty Vanna White.

Fortune Cookies and Compassion

I'm not a country girl, but I'm not exactly a city girl, either. One of the hardest things about living near Charlotte, NC has been the frequent confrontation with poverty that comes when living in highly populated areas.

There are intersections I pass regularly where, more often than not, people stand with cardboard signs, asking for help.

I don't want to be someone who rolls my windows up and looks away, sealed off in the protection and comfort of my car.

And yet.....my anxiety disorder(s).

We're in a pandemic, and masks are hit or miss.

And what if someone is dangerous, what if they becomes physically aggressive?

As a Myers-Briggs ISFJ and an Enneagram 6, I think of these things in the forefront of my mind.

Still...The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

I'm not a wealthy woman. Not by any means. I wouldn't be able to afford much of a cash impact, given the number and frequency of people I pass that need help.

I have a plan. More on that in a later post, perhaps.

Today, I caught a red light when trying to exit onto the interstate.

A tall man with sandy brown hair was walking the media with a sign. The sign said he was a vet. He had a knapsack a few feet away.

My heart started beating fast. I decided I was going to give him the last bit of cash I had on me - a five dollar bill.

He'd turned his back to the first few cars and was walking slowly down the median away from me.

I put on my mask, took my five out of my coin purse, rolled down my window and called out "Sir?"

The man turned around and walked toward me, saying an eager "God Bless you, ma'am." When I handed him the five, a slip of paper fell and went swiftly twirling onto the road.

He asked "What was that?" and bent down.

I knew exactly what it was, and a little pang of loss hit me as I watched the paper flutter away.

"A fortune cookie fortune."

"Oh!" The man chuckled. It was good to see him smile, a personable man, not a subservient beggar invoking God for his benefactor.

He bent down and picked up the paper.

When he stood, I told him that my father was a vet, and the man blessed him too, and asked me to thank him for his service.

He was already walking back toward the safety of the median as cars rolled forward through the light that had switched to green.

Now, I'm worried about what that fortune said. I have no idea. I keep them regardless of what they predict, stash them in tucked away places. I hope he got a good fortune. I hope it was fitting and meaningful to him.

I'm also worried about what else I might've inadvertently slipped him along with the fiver.

I don't know why I told the man that my father was vet. I don't have any special sense of my father's service. I don't feel like the daughter of a veteran (whatever that feels like) although, technically I am.

I think I just wanted to connect him beyond handing him money.

I worry that I gave the message that identifying himself as a veteran was the only thing that let me see his worth and evoked my compassion.

So many worries, don't you see?

I am trying to remember the man's chuckle , the soft way he took the money from my hand.

I'm trying to fill my life with more compassion, action to weigh out the worry.

Everybody here has the squirt doodies.

Mistakes were made.

First of all, after I reported the increase in my depression symptoms, my psychiatrist increased my dose of Effexor. My stomach's lip curled like some old bitch finding a rotten kumquat in the produce bin at her local farmer's market.

Next, after much debate, we decided to switch Maddie and CC's food. We did this immediately. In turn, they immediately started dropping light brown gel-turds with cherry topping, which was blood. I was ready to haul their asses to the vet, but internet research revealed that this can happen when you make food choices for cats without slow, steady notification and consent. I kept an eye on them, and am happy to report that their feline feces are now back to the shape of fused together Milk Duds.

But then there's Pluto. Poor Pluto. We switched his food on a whim. What a wild ride.

He woke me up at 3:30 two mornings ago. He had a nervous look on his face and was making little grunts. I figured out pretty quickly that he needed to go out, and I knew it wasn't going to be good.

Reader, it wasn't. He sniffed frantically, hopping back and forth before he finally crouched into position like a gnarled tree root. What came out of his back end was sloppy and pitiful and it happened again at 5:30, then 8:30, then the rest of the day every 2-3 hours.

I cooked and fed him plain chicken and rice. His appetite is in tact, so he had a few small servings of that throughout the day. I was hoping by evening that there would be some sign of solidification.

It was not to be.

The turds continued like some kind of caramel-colored soft serve delicacy from hell's McDonald's. I don't even know if I can call them turds. They were pile deposits. Pluto's rear end out-mouth started to make weird suction noises.

I want to say right here that I pride myself on being a good neighbor. I've come home, grabbed a bag, and driven back to the scene of the crime to pick up poops I had to leave behind upon discovering I didn't have a bag with me.

But there's no collecting diarrhea. You have to just leave it. You have to let it do the cruel work of suffocating the grass underneath it and becoming one with the earth. You have to let it decompose like the kibble-corpse that dog poop is.

Luckily, most of the piles were squirted out under the cover of night.

All day during the day, Pluto farted Big Farts. He was on the couch next to me for my virtual therapy appointment, and if you think you have a hard time with Zoom, try being on camera while you're inhaling continuous clouds of noxious methane.

Maybe it was methane? I know it's methane with cows, but maybe dog guts produce a different gas? Who knows, but my nostrils are the heroes my mouth doesn't deserve.

After a squirt-poop followed by a full-meal vomit of chicken and rice in the lobby early this morning, things have slowed down.

I'm hoping tonight is better because I am sleep deprived, thus completely worthless. I've been in my pink bathrobe all day. I haven't brushed my teeth. I've only put on pants for poop runs.

Also, at some point during the night last night when I was out with Pluto, the giant cat tree crashed down. CC and Maddie sleep in the tree (it features soft cat baskets), so last night they were forced to degrade themselves and sleep with me.

Pity them their idiot parent.

Send us succor, for we are in the keeping of an imbecile.

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