I don't take things personally

I am anticipating having a job again; I'm thinking about my desk, my workspace, the people I will interact with, our little community.

Today I volunteered at our Food Pantry. It is my second time to help and today I realized that it is and will be a perfect place to practice patience! I get in there and see that there is so much work to do, and that there are so many people standing around not knowing what to do, or working inefficiently, and I go directly to shenpa!!! I can barely contain myself. I feel angry, annoyed, dismissive of others efforts, basically, I am impatient with perceived inefficiency. The exact opposite of Go with the Flow!

The other thing I want to say about the Food Pantry is this. Today I picked a bunch of food, 3 cans of vegetables, 3 cans of fruit, a huge bag of oatmeal, a bag of white rice, a bag of pintos, a box of Saltines, a couple of boxes of girlscout cookies, a spring of fresh tomatoes, a watermelon, 4-5 russet potatoes, 4 small onions, a single serving of flavored yogurt, something called pork patties, and something offered to me as "biscuits and gravy." Also, a loaf of rye bread, a jar of sugar free apricot jam, and a small tin of salted almonds. So, very nice, and I'm surprised at how excited I am about the "goodies." This is what we feed the poor. The pork patties could hardly be considered food in the first place, and they expired in 2010. And, more disappointing, the watermelon is bad, like they got left in the sun.

So, is this the best we can do? It might be. What do I know? I know that much of the food I get is the very cheapest stuff. Potatoes, onions, rice, beans, pasta, these things are cheap. What if we could feed poor people great food?

Can after can of peas, potatoes, applesauce, greenbeans, soup, tuna. Bag after bag of macaroni and spaghetti, tons of the nasty frozen fake ass food. I guess we poor need to just be grateful we are getting any food at all.