Some customers from the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:

A(n older) (white) couple where the woman has (thin) (pale) skin and (frizzy) (curly) (gray-brown) hair and a (blank) (shellshocked) face like Laura Palmer’s mother on Twin Peaks, and the (cleancut) man has a (clenched) ex-military vibe, where he wants red wine but only if it’s fresh, and we give him something opened recently, and he tries it and he immediately says can we open a new bottle, and he then says that the owners should buy vacuum pumps for the wine so they don’t waste it, and it turns out that he owns a (finer dining) establishment nearby and he knows the owners, too, and, also, they have super-specific add-ons to the order, where the man wants “half” of the amount of onions that are usually put into the fried rice he’s getting, and then the woman, who isn't saying all that much, assents to what he has and asks for the same “half” amount of onions in hers, too, to save trouble, she adds, haltingly.

A question at work about my appearance.

The other week at work, my one (newer) (tall) (Thai) coworker asked me what was up, since I looked different and very good.

“Oh,” I was like, and I explained to her that it was because it’s finally summer, and when it’s summer, my skin noticeably darkens and my hair bleaches a bit, and this happens every year, and in the past I’ve also had people comment on it, when the change with my complexion happens, where it like flips and my dark hair turns light and my light skin turns dark.

"Ohhh," she was like, seeing it for the first time, and realizing what she was seeing.

“I’ve also been doing a new skincare routine the past two months," I was like, which caused my one (older) (Thai) coworker who’s a whiz at the phones to cock her head in a little and in the tone of like gossip, be like, ohhhhhh…

I also also said that I’d been blasting Katy Perry before work, and it’s music with positive energy that puts me in a good mood.

Schedule mix-up and aftermath.

So, the other week with the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, I knew I was working that Sunday like I had been for the past month-and-a-half, but I was just up and making coffee and looking at my phone, and right then a text comes in and it’s my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker, and she’s like, where are you, and I realize that I had misremembered my schedule and I wasn’t working Sunday dinner like I had been for the past five or six weeks, but rather Sunday lunch, and the restaurant was open and she was all by herself and had been for like fifteen or twenty minutes.

Oh crap, I thought, so I texted her back that I had messed up the schedule and was coming right away and I would be there in ten minutes, and so I went to swish toothpaste through my teeth and throw on my work clothes and dump my coffee in a(n insulated) (ceramic) (to-go) cup so I could sip it right then and on my way to work, as I also ate a banana and ran out the door.

Anyhow, the next week I had to work that same shift again, and she was saying that she was planning to remind me the night before when we were working together that we both had to work lunch the next day, and I laughed, and I played dumb and I asked when does the shift start, is it twelve-ten or is it twelve-fifteen (we should be there five or even ten minutes before the hour, like eleven-fifty or eleven fifty-five).

Anyhow anyhow, the day-of, I’m walking in to work on time, and I see her up ahead speeding by on an electric scooter like they have for rent in the area, and then I walk to the back alley and back in through the kitchen, and somehow she had stopped and paused and was talking with a few coworkers who were doing food prep, so I immediately ducked around by the stoves to hustle down the hallway towards the timeclock, and by the time she saw what I was doing and tried to follow me, it was too late, and I had clocked in before her.

“Where are you?”, I turned around and said to her, as she stood there not clocked in yet. “I’m here and you’re not here. What’s happening?”

An unfortunate joke at someone’s expense.

The other week at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, it was pretty late, and my one (tall) (skinny) (Latino-American) coworker who just graduated high school came in with his (cool) girlfriend and another friend of theirs and they were all dressed up all edgily, with her in like short shorts and a tank-top and piercings, and him in (black) slacks and a (white) ruffled dress-shirt and a (black) bowtie, but put together kind of off, I guess to make it punk.

“Oh my god you look like Chippendale’s,” I blurted out.

“What’s that?”, he was like, though.

So, I had to explain it to him.

“It’s like Magic Mike,” I was like, and he didn’t know what to say, and he also seemed slightly embarrassed because he didn’t realize that he was matching their uniform.

At the end of the night, too, the (husband) (Thai) restaurant owner asked me what I had said to him, since I guess my one (older) (Thai) coworker who’s a whiz at the phones had told him vaguely about the incident, and when I said that he looked like Chippendale’s, he just gave out this big belly-laugh, and my one (older) (Thai) coworker who’s a whiz at the phones started laughing, too.

So, I guess they knew what Chippendale's was.

A reply to a running joke.

A while ago I was taking a weekend trip to a nearby town and was taking an early afternoon bus to get there, and so I wanted to hit up this small local breakfast café that I never get a chance to go to, that’s near the bus station.

And, I asked my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker to come join me, and she did, and she had us take pictures of each other to send to our one (tall) (new) (Thai) coworker, but when it was my turn to take a picture of her, she covered her eyes for the picture, and somehow that started everyone saying that I went to breakfast with “a secret girlfriend.”

Then, a while after that, I wanted to check out this limited-time brunch special dish at a nearby café that everyone was talking about, but the place has weird hours, and so my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker couldn’t go with me, and so I was saying that my secret girlfriend left me, I’m so sad, etc. etc., and sometimes I’d make more elaborate jokes like it was tough for me to work, since every time I’d see my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker, she’d remind me of my secret girlfriend, and it would make me sad all over again.

And, a few days after that, for some reason I slept poorly, and when my one (older) (Thai) coworker who’s a whiz at the phones asked me why, I was like, “Because my secret girlfriend left me.”

“Move on,” she was like.

Some interactions with my one (Chinese-American) coworker at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:

1) When I tell him that I brought back some special cured sausages this year again from when I went to go visit my parents back in my hometown, and that I want to bring them in when he’s working since he’s the person that liked them the best last time but I had forgotten them that particular day, he looks at the schedule and sees we don’t overlap again that week, and is like, “You can drop them off.”

2) When it’s time for the staff meal, he wants to order this breaded chicken stir-fry a lot, presumably since he’s graduating and leaving soon and will miss it, somehow.

A dream from the other month.

The other month, I dreamnt –

I’m in this simple church with a tan interior, like simple tan limestone and then tasteful wood benches, and like no decorations at all in it not even a crucifix, even though it’s a (Catholic) church, and somehow it’s in (Italy) and there’s some but not that many people there, and during a break in the service a(n older) lady comes up to me and somehow I know she’s from Sicily, and she takes me to an alcove and there’s like an interior room there where it opens up into a small historic shrine for a special form of the Virgin Mary that is important to where she comes from, and she wants to show it to me, but somehow I don’t follow her in there because I’ll go after the service is ending, and then when it’s that time, the door is locked again, and so I never get a chance to go in.

(. . .)