Charlie built the sales counter with a big round area. I think she had in mind some designer space, with a large bowl of fruit or a huge vase of flowers gracing a wide open space. She said she wanted to give a sense of space and openness...

The counter area is piled up with a variety of items. There are the boxes of goods that are being checked in (they call that receiving). The boxes hold a wild mixture of everything I contain in a Santa's bag of stickers, helicopter parts, yarns, pens and pencils, beads, sketch pads, drafting tools, adhesives...

There are also piles of paper that Charlie keeps amassing. Maybe she's a paper collector. I've heard that humans collect things. Or maybe it's a throw-back to her days of working in the schools. Schools tell me that they are storehouses for marked-up paper. Does that make me a school, if Charlie keeps piling up the papers? We have classes here.

No. No, I'm still a warehouse.

Also on the counter is a box of rolled sandwiches that Charlie, Leo, and Nan bought for lunch and couldn't eat them all. Some of the customers will help them with finishing off the sandwiches. Plates and napkins sit on the crowded counter to encourage the grazing. Charlie's huge soda cooler (she tries to tell people it's water, but she needs to work on her poker face), and Leo and Nan's drinks are on the counter. On the circle there is a slightly bent helicopter being attended to by Leo and the customers who are gathered there, eating sandwiches, sitting in the stools, and chatting.

At the opposite end of the counter, near where Nan is working to receive the mountain of new items, there is a secret pile of treasures that Charlie collects to buy from her own store. Nan has a similar small pile next to Charlie's.

What is it about people and stuff? I suppose I never will understand since I'm just a glorified container. But that's really why I wonder about this. I have plenty of stuff inside of me. My middle section is used for storing and organizing furniture for a nearby showroom. The stuff flows through me regularly. But on either end of my warehouse, there are offices where people stay in me each day for their work. In those places, some of the stuff stops flowing. They call it owning the stuff, and then it stays with them. If I owned all the stuff that came through me, I'd clog up. Don't people clog up?

Charlie's pile of treasures and papers looks pretty clogged to me. She's acting like she thinks it's congested too. I can tell by how she walks in circles, trying to get around the happy customers to find something productive to do. She looks bewildered. But then, instead of unclogging her mountain of papers while she can't move around the shop, she goes in the yarn room and plays with the dog instead. How much sense does that make?