A sign of how much I was walking on eggshells, in academia.

Every time I see that I get a call from my elder care company, something in my chest leaps up, and I think that I must be losing my job for some reason.

The first time was a day or 2 after a really difficult shift with a client who got confused and then paranoid, and I was afraid that somehow I wasn't a good match, and I was going to lose my job.

Instead, they were calling to check on me, to see if there was anything I needed to process and talk about, since they had heard that I had had a tough shift.

Isn't that awesome of them?  Exactly like an employer should behave!

The second time was after nothing in particular happened except me working a lot of fill-in shifts, but again I was afraid that I was going to lose my job.

Instead, they were calling to see if I could work one new evening shift for the next month or 2, or perhaps longer, with the same client who I had been working with during the fill-in shifts.

I really was walking on eggshells in academia, and exposed to so much arbitrary behavior.

What nonsense.

A dream of magazines.

The other week I dreamt -

I'm holding a copy of Mad magazine in my hands, and there's some other magazine beneath it, and so I slide off the Mad magazine off the top of the one underneath, and suddenly I realize that I have a second copy of that very same issue of Mad magazine.

. . .

Central Asian restaurant.

The other week I went to a Central Asian restaurant in the city, with my one friend who delivers singing telegrams.

It was full of Central Asian families with more women than men and kids, and an occasional Russian, and the whole dining room was shaped like a yurt, with these arches painted up to look like the yurt's supports going up to the ceiling, in which they had like this inset circle with a ceiling beyond it just visible through the hole, kind of like the sky behind the smokehole.

The menu was a mix of Soviet dishes and noodle dishes and whatnot, and it was pretty good.

By the end of the meal, there was also a number of like 20- and 30-something Central Asian guys there, a couple there with each other, and one with a friend and like a girlfriend or something.

I don't know why, it was maybe something in the way they dressed or held themselves, but they seemed a fuck of a lot more masculine than guys from typical Asian countries (China, Taiwan, Japan, a lot of times Korea), and it wasn't just the sparse facial hair.

There's something very Mongol and macho about them. 

Maybe it's the Soviet experience, too?

A grocery store trip the other day.

The other week at the grocery store, this (middle-aged) (fat) Latina and her (short) (middle-aged) (moustachioed and uber-macho) (Latin) man walked by me in the aisle, and honestly it was like you were in a car smoking pot with all the windows rolled up, the smell was that strong.

When I got up to the cashier, this (younger) (Latina), I was like, "Wow, did those people smell like pot."

"It doesn't matter as long as they don't hurt anyone," she was like.

Then, for some reason she got switched out by another cashier just a few moments later, this (slightly older) (Latina), and I said more or less the same thing to her.

"Yeah, that was kind of crazy," she was like.

Got majorly pissed off the other day.

The other week I got home late from work, and I had a fill-in shift the next afternoon, and then a very long shift the day after, since a lot of people from my one job were on vacation and I was filling in for them.

It was like ten-thirty at night, and my neighbors had people over.

At like eleven, they turned on some kind of music or video games, and the bass and music was loud, so I whacked the ceiling with a broom handle like I've done before and they seemed to quiet down, but then a half hour later that music was back, and then I whacked the ceiling again and they seemed to quiet down, but then a half hour later that music was back, and then I whacked the ceiling again, and then that did finally quiet down permanently, but people were still up and about and coming and going until like one/one-thirty in the morning.

I just read a lot in my bedroom, since I was figuring it was like a one-time sporadic thing, and like when this has happened before, they'd sleep in the next day, like I was planning to do, since I was working later in the day, so it wasn't such a big deal after all.

Then, before 9am, people were up and walking around, a lot, and then more people got up and it just got worse.

That *pissed* me off, since I had barely gotten like seven hours of sleep, and I was working a lot and definitely needed more sleep.

So, I whacked the ceiling a few times since they were lumbering around - a few of the people's friends do that, they don't walk softly at all - and then later they weren't stopping so I whacked the ceiling again, and someone knocked back, like mocking me.

That *majorly* pissed me off, so I went out onto the back enclosed porch and up the stairs and knocked on their door, and their one lumbering immature friend went to the door and saw me and turned around and was like, "I don't want to answer it," so then one of the upstairs neighbors came out.

I can't remember what I said, but I used the word "fuck" a lot, and I said that they should behave like fucking adults, and that I was working a lot of shifts in dementia care and that when you don't get good sleep you can't be attentive with clients, and that if they want to play video games loud till late at night and have people stay over and then be up early in the morning and make noise, do it at someone else's fucking house, because this was just fucking bullshit.

And then I went home and tried to get back to sleep, and they were like church mice upstairs.

Later, on my way walking to the subway stop to go in for work, I called my parents and started talking to my dad.

When I mentioned the loud video games late at night, right away he was like, "What the fuck is that...?", and he was a bit quizzical when I mentioned how some people slept over there, too.

I then said what I did, but I felt bad, but my dad said no, maybe it'd give them something to think about the next time.

He also said that them being just out of college explains a lot, and that the one kid knocking back on the floor was just bullshit.

So nice to have a couch.

Since I had bedbugs, I had to wash everything and cleanse much, and other stuff I rotated through a freezer, but a lot of other stuff I just boxed up or left in an outside storage area, since if you wait an entire year, that's long enough for them to starve and die, whether adults or any eggs that are on there and hatch in the meanwhile.

So, I haven't had a couch or a comfortable chair in a year, just my bed and my kitchen table and chairs.

Finally, a year elapsed since I moved in to my new place, so I was finally able to bring my couch and chair in.

It was so nice, to have a couch to lie on and curl up in a blanket and read.

That day I ended up reading an entire book, though I had read an entire book the previous day during the world's easiest client home care shift, since the client needed very little assistance.

It was just so lovely, to have a couch again.

A reflection on academia, by my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend.

I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but I've thought about it a lot, so it's probably worth repeating.

My one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the brother of the brother-sister pair I'm friends with), says that he's sick of the pretense of charity with academia.

"You accept low pay because it's a charity," he was like, "But the students are getting richer and richer, and paying more and more."

Then, he's like, "Please, enough, just stop the act and pay us a living wage and make a job a job."

He also said that he's noticed how administrators talk about pitching in and whatnot for alumni donations and even to calm people down over budget cuts, but they never apply that to themselves.  If you ever question why their salary is so high, he said, it always boils down to, "Because I can get that much, and I took it."