EVERYTHING IS UPSIDE DOWN

     Doug didn't have a helper today, so I went in at 10. He had the meat sandwiches and PBJs well underway. I bagged and sacked a few dozen meals from those, then 12 breakfast sacks. He put two big turkeys in the oven for tomorrow's dinner and simmered corn and carrots for tonight's. This being a weekday, our diners got only sack lunches, and we had a group of almost 10.
     Around 11, a man came to the back door wanting a sack lunch. Doug gave him one. This man is well known here; when he's sober, he's brilliant, but more often he's stoned. Today he was not brilliant. About an hour later, Doug called me to the back door and I peeped out to see our late-morning guest sound asleep on the back stairs. He'd spent last night on the courthouse steps, rain and all, until they ran him off at 4 a.m. The will to live is a powerful thing.
     Hottie was in and out of the kitchen, sometimes plying his usual act-the-fool shtick, and sometimes engaged with Doug on more serious issues of shelter work. They bounce between those behaviors too quickly to interject, so I didn't. Hottie is withdrawing. He used to be so engaging, but now he more often retreats from opportunities to speak in full sentences and makes hasty exits to his office.
     Whatever brought him there was not a happy event, and the thing that is pulling him home is causing some pain too.
     After lunch, Doug deep fried two large pans of chicken fingers and set them on the work table alongside the pots of carrots and corn. He asked me to fill 40 plates for tonight's dinner, cover them and put them in the warming oven while he went up to the office to interview a man.
     The fellow had come to the shelter looking for a position like mine. A wealthy Englishman, he feels that he needs to "get in the trenches" and experience some real life. Boy, I hope he joins us on a Sunday or two! I'd love to share the trenches with a neophyte and observe. It's too bad he couldn't have been with us today; we certainly had show and tell!