Certain Mondays are about as bad as it gets for me at work. I have to wake up at 3 AM, eat, take my pills (I'd better!), go to work. Receive several hundred dollars' worth of junk food, about 10 trays of donut and pastry products, and over a hundred dollars worth of sandwiches. Helping Ron, of course, and taking care of "My" snack machines. But then, having done all that, I'm generally off around 9-10 AM when a lot of people are just getting started, or taking their first coffee break. Not bad!

Today was a little sad, and a little "Boy, I'm glad I listened to God". Now, obviously I'm bipolar. Yes, I will have delusions if I don't take my pills. I will have strange and paranoid thoughts, feel invisible bugs crawling on me, and occasionally hear things that aren't there. To be a total geek, though, I have to clarify and say the last two are "Hallucinations" and not delusions. OK, back to subject. Having said all that, you can be certain I DO take my pills. Occasionally I'll get a prompting I'll feel is from God. If it's not paranoid, I'm inclined to follow up.

Sometimes it's "Go talk to that person" "Tell the driver you will pray for them" and my favorite "Make/give that person an afghan" - stuff like that. So, today, I got a prompting, "Take Ray (Sandwich guy) one of your new paperback Bibles." OK, I can do that, but why? I see Ray every week. I don't want him to think I'm some kind of fanatic. It's bad enough being "crazy"!

I did it. I told him, hey, I want to be at least as assertive as those Mary Kay salespeople, or the JW's, or whatever. I'm a Christian, it's really sustained me through some awful times. So, here's a Bible, I'd love you to have it, but I'm not gonna beat you over the head with it. He said thanks, and then he said, "How did you know?"

I asked him what. Today's his last day, he explained. "The old lady sold the business, so I quit, I just wanted to say goodbye to you and my other regulars." Totally unexpected. I'm going to miss him. Imagine if I hadn't taken him the Bible. I'll most likely never see Ray again. I would have missed an awesome opportunity (he took it happily, by the way).

I also noticed that someone helped themselves to one of my "Free books" and re-tacked up the "Read the Bible in a Year" tract I left out. Yay! I love to think about other people getting the comfort I've gotten from God's word.

On a totally different note, it's going to be exciting next week. God only knows how much our "new" sandwich company will raise prices. According to Ray, they've been bleeding red ink for a long time. We have another option, with the "R" company. Worst case, we'll move to them, but I'm going to miss Ray. We used to stand outside gossiping like a couple of old ladies, swapping back sci-fi novels. [sigh] I'll pray for him to get an awesome boss who values and respects him.

My beloved Postal Service. I gotta love them, and thank God that when I mailed Sue's afghan (she got it!), I sent it UPS. Ask me why. Today, when I came home, I found a priority mail package on my doorstep. It was clearly marked "Fragile", one end was totally crushed in, and it looked like a large person had sat on it. The half ounce spindle was fine, amazingly. It reminds me of another Priority mail package, 10 years ago now. It had a one pound glass jar of honey, and some tea. It also sported treadmarks over the top of the crushed-in-box. And, again, amazingly, it was fine. God's protection, I guess. That's why, every time I ship something, I pack it to get thrown down at least one flight of stairs.

The only package I'm still waiting on is the wool from RH Lindsay. Two pounds of wool, one pound of "Camel Top, dehaired". Yee-ha! I call it "fun".

I finished Ron's "No-eye-holes" ski mask. He LOVES it. It's about 16 inches long, in a wool-mohair blend (Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride worsted, and a few small striped in Paton's Merino). It's mostly a heathery denim blue, with a few gray heather stripes. It is always difficult for me not to capitalize heather but in this case it's lower case. The stripes give it a cuter, harmless air.

Last year, Ron was wearing a black ski mask turned around backwards and pulled over his face while we waited outside in the winter. Since he's blind, the eye and mouth holes are just big cold air leaks. It was a miserable day. People kept doing freaked-out-double takes when they saw him, the black knitted face just freaked them out. So much, so, that they apparently never saw the long white cane in his right hand. One guy actually got a restaurant manager and told him there was a "Dangerous person" outside. The manager came outside, took one look at us, and said "Oh, it's YOU!". I wanted to avoid that with this hat/mask, so I went with the stripes. I figured stripes are more festive and less rapist/assassin/covert ops. It worked. Everyone he showed the hat to (by pulling it down over his entire head) chuckled and smiled. Yay. Everyone is happy, Ron is warm. Eventually I'll get a photo up.

I'm gonna run now. It's almost Lithium time. I'm so glad we live where it's quiet. Neither of us slept well last night and we both needed a good nap when we got home.