Shit and water.

This past weekend my landlords put a notice on the door that on Monday the water would be off from 8am till 5pm, so I made sure to fill buckets in the bathroom and keep water in my fridge and pots of water on my stove.

Anyhow, when I took a shit about 10am, it was massive and red (from bean soup and potatoes paprikas, which I had made that weekend and had been eating as leftovers), and when I poured the bucket of water in to flush - I had already flushed earlier that morning - the stream of water broke up the shit and the bowl rose up and a lot flushed away, but a lot didn't, so I was left with toilet bowl full of cloudy red shit, and the smell, so I closed the lid.

The rest of the morning, somehow, I forgot that that was in there, so a few times when I went to go take a piss from drinking coffee, the shit sitting in there shocked me every time I lifted the lid.

Conversation with 2 (black) women.

Sunday morning I made up a big pot of kidney bean soup with fresh vegetables. Later, when I was at the drugstore buying some toothbrushes so I could get some cash back and have money in hand for a local used booksale (one weekend only per year), the (black) lady at the checkout counter asked me how I was, so I was like, "Pretty good, I put on a big pot of soup this morning, and it warmed up my entire apartment and my entire apartment smells so good now."

"When is it done?, 'cause I'm coming over!" the (black) lady at the next register over burst in and said.

I said something, and then told them to have a good day, and they both said to have a good day too.

Silverfish silverfish.

1) I came in one night, something skittered from by a shoe onto a dark part of the carpet, where it came to rest. It was a silverfish. I killed it.

2) Sunday morning I got up, and I look in the bathtub, and there's a small-to-medium-sized silverfish hanging out underneath where the tap is. I also killed that one.

News from the black neighborhood bar.

The last couple times I've gone into the black neighborhood bar, there's been a printed sign on the door saying -

Please no animals in the bar, with the exception of seeing eye dogs.

- and then under that, hand-written -

Anyone Bringing animals into the Bar will Be Barred!!!

- which makes me wonder what someone brought in to make that sign go up.

Also, the other (week) night when I was in there having a beer, a hooker left with the only other white customer.

Phone call.

Me and some friends were planning to go this Cajun restaurant in a (black) neighborhood, but the website didn't have hours on, for some odd reason, so I called them. I was busy and they were busy, so the conversation was very barebones and matter-of-fact, but at the end, when I was like, "Thank you," the (black) woman who answered replied, still very brusquely and business-like, "No problem, darling," and then we both hung up because we had shit to do.

Exam proctoring downtown.

The other week I had a chance to proctor a human resources exam downtown -- you have to wake up early, but you get to study and get paid like $90 for it -- so I took the 6:30am morning train in.

On the train, I sat next to a middle-aged (black) professional woman and we were behind some of her middle-aged (black) professional friends, and there was this older blonde (white) woman behind us who kept dropping things and went up to get to the door to get off, but then came back 5 minutes later because she forgot her bag under her seat etc.

Anyhow, when she went back up to the door again, the (black) lady next to me gave her a look, and I was like, "What's up with her, is she on drugs or something?", and the lady immediately was like, "No, just a rough morning, that all, the poor thing," and then she went back talking to her friends about one of their sons who was in college ("He a lit major," one of them said).

As it turns out, the lady and I were both getting off at the main station downtown, and we were by the door together and started chatting. She worked for the city's public transportation unit, and I told her I was administering an exam, but she was sleepy and was like, "Good luck on that exam!"

"No no no," I was like, "I'm actually giving it, so thanks for the luck, but I don't need it."

"Oh," she was like, and then all of a sudden she brightened. "Then don't hurt them!"

Forgot.

I forgot about the sex doc a few Tuesdays ago -

The discussion hostess was a young 20s black lesbian, very affable, and she was saying that seeing the owner of the drag show bar talk about his life made her realize how different things were from back even in the 70s, and that even came through in old pictures of the bar, and how the clientele was young gay men, and now it's all straight women for bachelorette parties.

"I guess I don't really understand what life was like in the 70s," she was like.

At that point, the older (white) guy who grew up in an Italian neighborhood and went from being a thug to being a male nurse and then a sexologist raised his hand and was like, "Well, the first thing you have to know was that everyone was on drugs all the time. When I think back to then, I have a hard time remembering times when I was *wasn't* on drugs."