...when they were sitting on a chair arm and talking with a nearby resident, and the resident started saying something about medical tests or something like that:
"Really?", in a theatrically polite and inquisitive voice, but as they scooted away from them on the chair arm.
. . .
(I kept this on my "to write up" list for like ever, and now I can't remember which coworker it was! - I think maybe my one [Tibetan] coworker who was born in Nepal?)
...over the phone, after I thanked the (younger) (black-sounding) lady for helping me to sort through my questions and concerns:
"You're welcome," said very slow in a low, almost purring voice, and kind of sultry, too.
Last month at the resthome, the one very pleasant newer resident asked me to teach her sudoku, since she sees them in the paper and her daughter sent her a book, but she doesn't know how to do them.
So, that day the sudoku in the newspaper was at the 3rd of the 4 stages of difficulty, so I told her to wait until Monday when it was a "1" and that we'd get a puzzle and do it together then.
Then, that Monday I had a minute and I grabbed a puzzle and I taught her for a bit, but then I had to go do work and I never had any more time to teach her sudoku that day.
Then, like a week later it was an incredibly slow shift and it turned out that she was free right at the same exact time that I had absolutely nothing to do, so I dug out an easy sudoku from a newspaper and I sat down with her and we took a half hour and we did the whole dang puzzle together.
She was super appreciative.
And, like a week later, she told me out of the blue that she had done another one, and she wanted me to check it for her.
. . .
(This is the same resident who whenever I tell her an innocuous new joke I've learned, usually an atrocious pun, she says that she read years ago that a lot of humor comes from prisoners, since they sit around all day and have nothing to do and so come up with a lot of jokes.)
At the resthome, workers notice all the time when other workers are gone, like when someone's been on vacation, or like when someone's started working different shifts and so the two people don't synch up like they used to, or like when maybe people usually work the same shift and they bump into each other all the time or at one particular time of day on that shift but somehow they don't just one particular time on this one shift for whatever reason, and then they see each other again the next shift and one of them asks the other where they've been.
I see this all the time at the resthome, but I *never* saw that happen in academia.
Yes, academic work is more cloistered away, but to me it seems that it's more like my one art school colleague who wears women's clothes says, academics are so self-absorbed, of course you have all these people posing as other races and getting away with it forever.
Twice within like a month this spring into summer, I had begun wearing shorts into work, but then when I had gotten into work and I went to go pull out my work uniform from my backpack and put it on, I realized that I didn't have any socks to wear (since when I was wearing the shorts in, I also had put on sandals, so I didn't have any socks on my feet, and I also forgotten to throw a pair of socks in my backpack).
So, both times I ended up wearing my work shoes that I keep at work without any socks on, and I pulled my pants down lower on my waist so that the legs would go pretty low and no-one would see a flash of bare ankle when I was walking around the resthome doing my rounds of duties.
My (recently deceased) uncle's neighbor wanted to buy his house, and it turns out in retrospect that the guy was lying to my mom and demanding all of these inspections in order to dishonestly get her down on the price, like where he would recommend a contractor and then talk to him in (Spanish) in front of her about the results of the inspection, or he would say something was wrong with the electrical, only a second opinion from someone that she found somewhere else was that there was nothing wrong at all with these certain wires that he claimed were hot.
And, on top of that, my mom says he doesn't like women, anyway.
So, after my mom caught on to what he was doing, the neighbor was over and brought up again the inspections and the problems that they were supposedly uncovering and that maybe they should get just one more, and so when he said that, my mom blew up and was like, "Come on, another inspection, we've inspected everything here but your anus!"
And, then he blew up at her.
So, she ended that interaction, and afterwards she went to a real estate broker from who she finally found more trustworthy people to sell to.
Later, my mom found out from my uncle's one friend that he never liked that particular neighbor anyways, though he never really said that to too many people.
And, the guy's a (Trump) voter, too.
Last month I sliced up some brussel sprouts and fried them up in some bacon fat along with some diced onions, and then I added a couple eggs into the pan and scrambled them up on the side, and then I had all of that with strong black coffee for breakfast.
And, like an hour later, I could feel like what felt like water moving around in my stomach, and I thought it would go away, only it didn't, so then I headed into the bathroom, and as soon as I sat down on the toilet, it was just like this solid gushing pillar of water that just came out of my ass and straight into the bowl, for a lot longer than you think a shit could last.
And, I waited a few minutes, and then I squirted out a little bit more.
When I finally got up, I looked, and it was like a light brown color, with more water than shit in it, where it left a color like watered-down beef broth on the toilet paper after I wiped and looked at that.
Then, like a half hour, I came back to the toilet again, and some more of that came out of me again, as like a coda to my experience.
I think my body doesn't react well to undercooked brussel sprouts, especially when mixed with fat and dark coffee.
