Trip Home (19 of 22): Parents on the deck.

I was sitting out on the deck doing work, and after my mom came out to sweep acorns off it, she sat down in a chair and lolled around with the broom over her shoulder.

When my dad came out, he was like, "Hon, is that for working, or to ride on?", and he then he mugged for her, and she laughed.

Trip Home (18 of 18): Another medical problem.

Another time this old Italian (Italian from Italy) guy came in, and the whole back of his head was this giant tumor that looked like cauliflower, only with red and black and yellow spots on it.

 "It wasn't clear if it was tissue, or if it was dried pus in there," she was like, "Since if you put your hands on it, it'd move around like it was all one solid piece."

She said the guy had had it for years, and his wife would just rub olive oil in it every night.

"So we were like, 'Why'd he come into the ER all of a sudden?'".

As it turns out, his daughter was visiting and was so disgusted that she made him go to the ER right then and there. Again, she never found out what exactly the guy had...

Trip Home (17 of 17): A medical problem.

I had another vivid dream that same night as the dream of the homeless people, and it was even more odd and disquieting, but I forgot what it was...

 In any case -

My one friend's aunt works at a hospital and once on an ER shift this prostitute came in and she smelled horrible, and had this pain in her belly, and every time she ached, she'd grab my friend's aunt on the shoulder and it'd hurt her, since she had these big long nails, and they were dirty, too.

So, first, my friend's aunt took a tooth brush and scrubbed out the dirt from under her long nails.

Then, she did a quick exam, and when the prostitute opened her legs, this little ball of jelly slightly bigger than a golf ball slid out, and in it just below the surface there was nothing but small worms quivering around, like maggots, only a little smaller and a little thinner.

"And that was the smell," she said. "It was some parasite or something."

"So what was it?", I was like.

"I don't know," she was like.  "That's the downside of working in the ER, you'd see something like that, and then there'd be something else, and when you remembered a few days later, you couldn't even remember the name to go check the file."

Trip Home (16 of 17): A Dream.

I dreamt that in the middle of the night a bunch of people were down outside my bedroom window talking and drinking, and I peeked out and could see that they were homeless people who had been around the neighborhood, and was worried about my parents since the master bedroom was on the groundfloor and near where they were gathering.

Next, I'm out on the road walking down with my dad, flashlights in our hand, and when we get down by our neighbors the undertakers, since the homeless people had decamped to there once they saw us up and about in our house, we see one cross the road to this path that crosses over to another lake, and is hemmed in by forest on one side and lots on the other.

I then shine my flashlight in the homeless person's face, and realize it's a (40-something) (black) woman who I know from labor protests, and she's drunk and maybe on drugs, and I'm embarrassed that I treated her like that, to shine my flashlight in her face, and so introduce her to my dad and make some small talk and then pretend like nothing happens as she goes onto the path to the other lake.

Trip Home (15 of 17): Mom's comment.

The other day when I got home from eating out at the local Mexican restaurant ("La Senorita"), my mom said something to me (can't remember what), and I made a joke about having a wet burrito lodged in my stomach.

"Well, when it starts to dislodge," my mom was like, "Give me a warning."

Trip Home (14 of 17): Text.

The other day when I was home I was coordinating meeting up with a friend who was in town to visit her brother and was going to the fair, and I texted her something about maybe meeting up dinnertime since I liked to suntan around noontime on my parents' deck, to which she replied:  

Omg-u r so funny. Sure that works. Once I know fair times I'll holla. Wear sunblock ginger. 

 . . .

Trip Home (13 of 13): Wildlife.

When I was at my parents' house, I brought lots of Latin lessons to prep, since that was the most portable work I had, though the least pressing.

In any case, I'd go out on my parents deck and be shirtless and even out my tan line and have coffee and prep Latin, and just enjoy the view over the lake, and the wildlife, like this cute little black squirrel who's always around and has a very shortened tail - part of it must have gotten clipped off! - and the hummingbirds, which would come up to the couple flowerboxes on the deck and drink from all the flowers...

Once, when I was sitting there, I even saw a hummingbird fly from the flowerboxes to 3 clumps of almost-ripe tomatoes on 3 separate tomato plants in planters on the other side of the deck.

The hummingbird must have been attracted there by the color red!