Conversation with a mad (black) woman.

The bus back home on Mon. stopped at this rest-stop/convenience store/Hardee's for a 20 minute bathroom/food break, and after coming out of the restroom, I went outside to go sit on some benches near where the bus was parked, and since on one bench there was this huge (black) lady sitting and the other was empty, I sat down next to the (black) lady and asked her how she was doing, and as it turns out, she was coming back from her 1st visit to Dee-troit, and she was pissed.

"We didn't do nothin' but stay in that damn hotel room and play cards!", she was like. "I wanted to go out and see the city, we can play cards at home, but no, we play cards, and my other sister, she man crazy, she just sit there and wait for the men to text her and then go and show off her text she got."

She also added she wanted to go out and window-shop and try new restaurants, but all they did was go to the McDonald's in the basement of the Marriott.

"But I got a present for my grandson," she was like.

"Oh," I was like, "Like candy or a t-shirt or something?"

"No candy," she was like, "Lord that chile is fat, and he say, 'Gramma, I'm not gonna get big like you,' and I say, 'Honey, look around, you already there, the only place you gonna go is fatter.'"

After that, she was saying how she did finally make it to the casinos, which is where she had been wanting to go, and she liked it, and she would like to go back to visit again sometime, but she won't go with her sisters, and only on a weekend when her one friend there isn't working and can show her around.

Family debate - healthcare.

My one uncle (my mom's brother) visits my great-uncle a lot since his wife died like last year or the year before last. He says the visits have been getting kind of bad because my great uncle always likes to tell it how it is, but he's been ranting about the socialism of health care, and, like my uncle says, "But his bills are paid by Medicare."

My mom agreed, and said that if he felt that strongly, he should refuse on principle those checks, as well as Social Security.

She also added that she says that a lot when she's around old people who bitch about government spending like that.

Troubles at my godmother's house.

I was in the basement of my godmother's house laying out some clothes -- me and my brother were sleeping in the basement on this trip to see everyone -- and I see this dark shadow scurry around and settle by the corner of this dusty giftbox that for some reason was standing behind an armchair down there, and when I look closer, it's a big silverfish, so I took my sandal and tried to bash it, and I missed, but it started running across the (white) carpet and I bashed it there, and rubbed it into the weave a bit since it was making all these mangled fucked-up motions and wasn't fully dead after the first smack.

Also, when I woke up in the morning last week and went in the bathroom at like 5:30am to wash my face before putting on some coffee and heading out to take the morning train home, there was a big silverfish scurrying over the edge of the bathtub, and I killed it there, and then I looked in the tub and there was another big one just sitting there, and I killed it too.

Tour of my mother's childhood neighborhood.

So, this past weekend when I was visiting relatives, and my brother was out in the garage with my uncle at my uncle's house helping him clean it up and unearth some stuff in boxes for him to get and take home, my mom decided to walk down to the local Walgreen's, and she invited me along, and said she was going to walk down the street she used to walk down to go to her elementary school, too ("St. Stanislas Kostka"), since that wasn't too much out of the way.

After walking a few blocks from my uncle's house - he lives in the house where my grandmother used to live - my mom was like, "Oh look, there was the factory where my dad used to work! Sometimes I used to come down here when he was getting off shift in the evening, and walk him home," and I asked my mom how old she was and if her dad liked it, and she said eight or nine, and she never thought about it at the time, but she thinks now he must have liked that very much.

Then, a little later, she was was like, "Oh, and here was a corner store, and it was the coolest thing, if you had any money in your pocket, you could stop here after school and get anything you wanted, and in fact, there was another corner store up the block, so you had your pick of two corner stores!"

Then, we walked past there to the school building, and she was like, "Oh, up in those rooms was the 8th grade, and you were so cool when you finally got up there, and down in the corner was where the kindergarten was," and then we walked around to the main steps, and she was like, "And we used to line up in two lines here, one line boys and one line girls!", and then we walked a bit further, and she gestured towards some flower beds, and she was like, "And here was the tarred area."

"Mom," I was like, "Maybe you called them that in the 1950s, but we say 'disabled' or 'handicapped' now," and she got pissed, because she simply meant that there was an asphalt place where they used to play jacks, and then she got even more pissed because when I told the story to my godmother and my dad, they (but not my one other uncle!) were like right away, "Tards? You mean like retards?", and my dad even added in a voice like he was my mom giving a tour, "Oh, and over here was the boy with four eyes," which she got pissed at.

My dad also can't let a joke go, and he said that the next day he must have just been walking along and like four times he busted out laughing to himself thinking of the tarred area.

Weird Dream.

So, the other night I had a weird dream, probably caused by me the other week during my Greek reading session talking with the 2nd-career doctoral student who is Jewish about biblical fundamentalism and how it crosses orthodox-conservative-liberal lines.

Anyhow, I dreamt that somehow I was in his apartment in New York City (?), and I walk in and there's this little dingy kitchen that is maybe twice the size of the space where the door swings open, and I see this drain, and I know in the drain is where they put the bomb because of all the scholarship that he was doing that was riling up the conservative Jews. Then, I go in a door to the right, and I'm in this walk-in closet with some clothes hanging up, and a small bed there, and I realize that that's all of his apartment, and that that's where he lived and studied (? - past tense, was he dead?), and that there wasn't even room for him to spread out his Septuagint and lexicon and grammatical aides for when he was translating.

Watermelons.

All summer long I've been buying watermelons and keeping them cut up in a pot in my fridge and having a big bowl when it's hot out, and it's really added to my quality of life, it's so refreshing.

But, I always bring it up to (black and white and other) people when they ask me how I'm doing right after I've recently eaten watermelon, and I wonder if that's an inappropriate topic of conversation with (black) people.

Saw Tennille on Tuesday.

So, on Tuesday I saw Tennille and got my haircut.

Nothing too much doing, but she thanked me for the stroopwaffels I had given her. She said she doesn't like stuff that's too sweet, and they were just the right level, and she had everyone try them and though she had wanted to save some for later, she and the other people at the salon polished them off right then and there.

She also was happy I had gotten complimented on my last haircut, and we tried it longer and textured on top and shorter on the sides, and she said that not only does she love men's hair since you can do so much with it, and that guys who come to her are always surprised at how she changes it up for them, but also that not everyone would do a haircut like I just got, since it has a little edge and a lot of guys are too conservative for that.