The other week, I went around the one side of my kitchen table, and what do I see out the side window on the back wooden fence out by the area where my one neighbor keeps their plants, but a fat squirrel, just sitting on its haunches and gnawing on a bread heel.
I wanted to see how much it ate, so I just kind of stood there with my coffee cup, watching it out the window.
It's so nice down here; you always have so much time.
Like last month I got an email from the retired school nurse at the resthome that I used to work at.
She said that my one (placid) (Tibetan) coworker the other morning was helping her, and she asked her if she had heard from me, and she started reminiscing about how I'd ask her stuff about the (Tibetan) language, and so the school nurse filled her in on everything that was happening with me, about how I was no longer working in healthcare for now, but was instead working at a (Thai) restaurant near my house down in the college town that I live in now.
And, she said that they had a very pleasant conversation about language.
So, I went and texted my old coworker since I still had her number, and we chit-chatted a bit by text about everything.
I had sent her a text this fall when I was reading the memoir of a Uyghur woman who had been imprisoned in China, since the woman had said that everything started there when the Chinese government had brought in a nasty government functionary who was known for cracking down on Tibet, and I thought that was interesting, but my old coworker had never texted back, perhaps because she was busy or something, since sometimes we'd talk about China and Tibet and the Tibetan government in exile, and it was something that we would have talked about quite a bit in person, if I was still working at the resthome.
Anyhow, though, I thought it was very lovely of her to think about me and wonder how I was doing!
So often in my life I've noticed that I do that a lot for others, but so many others rarely do it for me.
A lady calls on the phone and my one (Thai) (newlywed) coworker can't understand anything she's saying, so she hands the phone to me, and I have to ask the lady to talk slower and if she's on speakerphone, since reception seems bad and I can't hear her.
"Can you hear me now?", she's like after a bit. "CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?"
And, she asks about what's in the sweet-and-sour, and can we make it big, but then she goes on to order the cashew nut stir-fry, and she orders two, and she gets not only chicken but she adds tofu, then she asks how many eggrolls come in an order, and I say two, and she gets two, and then I go to confirm the order, and she has me take one stir-fry off, since "that's high," when I say the price.
And, she shows up like twenty minutes later, and it's this (stringy) (young) (black) lady with crazy eyes and a puffy coat, and when I go to check on her order, she asks me if I can throw in some sweet-and-sour sauce, and when I go to pick some up from the bins, she's like, "No, the darker one," and so I go and pick up a couple of the egg roll sauces to throw in, since that's what she had wanted, though it's normally not what I would have given someone.
And, I come out with her order and she's talking loudly with my coworker and the (female) (Thai) owner with the tired face and there's something about "does she speak English," and the owner is apologetic and she says something about a free cookie and she slips a bagged free cookie into the order, even though we don't sell cookies and I have no idea where the cookie came from, though it seems to pacify her.
"What was that?", I was like, when she had left.
And, they asked me if I had talked to her, and I said yes, after she had come in and before I went in back to go get her order, that's how I knew she wanted the egg roll sauce, and they said that she had been standing around, then all of a sudden she said that no-one had said hi to her, and she kicked up a fuss about it.
"That's weird," I was like.
Then, I was like, "I bet she wanted a discount," and I told them about her order over the phone and how she took one off because it was too expensive, and how she added different stuff into the different combinations and wanted to make it large and then got the egg roll sauce when she got here, and one wasn't enough for her, she asked me to put in a second.
"I bet she was trying to combine items for the most food, and she figured out that the way she could do that was by ordering the cashew chicken with extra and adding in the sweet and sour sauce after, instead of ordering the basic sweet and sour stuff like comes on the menu."
"Maybe," the owner was like. "But that sauce isn't the same that the cooks use."
"But she doesn't know that," I was like.
Then, I was like, "Hmmm, weird."
I also was thinking that maybe that not speaking English thing came from how no-one could understand her when she first called, and my one (Thai) (newlywed) coworker had been the first person to pick up the phone.
1) Panang curry, but sub broccoli for green beans.
2) Thai iced coffee, but only a little ice.
3) Call-in order for a curry, and you can have onions in the curry, but no dried onions on top, if that's what they are that they add in on top at the end.
4) Pad thai, no peanuts.
5) One stir-fry with extra sauce and extra mushrooms, but get out an extra pan and fry it in that, not the deep fryer.
6) Lime slice with an unsweetened ice tea.
(And maybe a few others that I blocked out, all from a 45-minute period of getting slammed with tables and take-out orders, like where I'd be ringing up a bill and someone would call in a take-out order while I'm doing that and I'd set the phone down and it'd ring again right away for another take-out order, all constantly for like 45 minutes.)
The other week I went to go drop off a used jigsaw puzzle at the one resale shop near me (like always recently, I drew a picture on the back to show where the missing piece was, including its orientation and instructions with little arrows and short, easily legible descriptions like "3 over and 9 up").
The resale shop is kind of cool... It's like this big old converted parsonage with a creaky wooden door and a first floor with old rooms full of everything, and a big desk surrounded by huge tall Plexiglass panels at the front, where someone sits and doles out money and writes up a list of what they've sold that day.
On that particular visit, the (older) (thin) (short-haired) (white) lady with glasses and a tasteful sweater said they'd be delighted to take my jigsaw puzzle back, and she asked me what kind I do.
And, I told her.
"I always do a thousand pieces," she was like. "I got into them during the pandemic. I started with five hundred pieces and then I moved up, but fifteen hundred or two thousand is still way too much for me."
"How about that one?", chimed out from over in the foyer this one (hugely potbellied) (wrinkled) (old) (white) guy with (mildly darker) skin and glasses and a mud-colored beard and limp hair.
"Yes, my grandkids got me it," she was like. "It was a jungle scene, fifteen hundred pieces. That was a tough one! It was all vines, and sometimes an elephant."
And, she chittered on about that, and the older potbellied guy began chit-chatting with some (younger) (Asian) (foreign) college kids who were in the shop to buy some stuff, saying that the shirts he can get there are nice for sleeve size, but they don't fit his belly, but if they fit his belly, the sleeves are way, way too long.
And, the (foreign) college kids just stood there in the old house foyer, looking at him and listening.
In the lead-up to the holidays, a lot of people came out of the woodwork and came out to the restaurant in big groups, and a lot of them were fairly weird and were not our usual clientele.
One big eight-person table straggled in and ordered in bits and took forever and was always wanting something, and the guy who grabbed the bill was this (younger) (bearded) (white) (townie) guy who wore flannel and who had pig eyes despite being skinny and who just seemed overall like he lacked class, and when they finally left and I went to go clear the table, I saw that he had left $10 on a $120 bill.
"Can you believe this?", I was like to my one (Thai) (newlywed) coworker, showing her the bill after I brought it back by the main register.
And, she couldn't believe it, but she also pointed out that there's an automatic 15% gratuity that the system adds on for every table that's 6 people and over.
"No way," I was like, since I didn't know that.
And, I said that he actually just handed me his credit card and never looked at the itemized bill I was bringing, so he probably didn't notice that, and he meant for the $10 to be the entire tip, but between that and the automatic gratuity, he actually ended up leaving a very good tip, overall.
"Instant karma," I was like.
