Interesting supermarket happenings…

The other evening, I was at the supermarket on a Sunday to get my groceries as usual.

When I was doubling back in the produce section to get some carrots, a young (Asian) woman backed her cart from sticking out of the aisle.

“Sorry!”, she was like, flashing braces.

“No problem,” I was like.

The store was very busy, and there was an exceptional amount of kids doing cute things.

One (hispanic) family I passed had the older daughter walking beside the cart, and the mom trailing behind, and the dad pushing the cart, with this tired young 5 year-old sitting cross-legged in the cart.

Later, by the eggs, when I passed them again, the kid had a plastic vegetable bag out, inflated full up and he was waving it back and forth from side to side in the cart, though not bouncing it off the sides.

When I went down the coffee – tea – spices aisle to go get some vacuum-packed coffee, this little (African-American) toddler was coming up the aisle being like “Bye bye! Bye bye!”, I think because that one N-SYNC song “Bye Bye Bye” was playing over the loudspeakers, though I’m not sure that the toddler’s family was aware of it, or even paying attention.

Glumness over class cutting...

So, though I had anticipated the possibility of getting my last class cut in retaliation for unionization activity and seeking improvements in workplace conditions, the email came a bit out of the blue (I had expected it earlier and had thought that that time had passed), and it left me in a funk.

Going into one meeting with a faculty admin person the day after that retaliation happened, it felt odd even to be on campus.

Fortunately, right after that meeting I saw the one (black) (female) security guard I know who writes urban romance novels, and she was so genuinely happy to see me, that it was just wonderful, to know that the cool people I like like me...

Funnily, the same thing had happened with another (black) (female) security guard in the other building, when I had been in there a month earlier for another meeting around these issues, and when she said she hadn't seen me and asked me how I'd been, and when I said my classes had been cut, all right away her face got all stony and she was like, "I don't like that."

(Funny enough, a [white] [female] artist colleague said like those exact same words later that afternoon, when I bumped into her on the stairwell and also told her of my situation.)

My one lawyer friend from Missouri says that all relationships ending cause distress, especially when it's on bad terms, even when a person's okay with the situation.

Too, I really appreciated this text from my one (Asian-Canadian) friend, who I had gone out for drinks with the night I received the news of the cutting, and who I had texted to tell him that I was feeling oddly blue and ashamed:

I don't think you have anything to new [sic] ashamed of.  I'm sure of [sic] the strategies of power in an institution is to belittle.  Just keep doing what you think is right.

. . .

Disgust at consumption habits.

I bought ten kiwi on sale the other week.

Then later, I was in my kitchen, and had two along with some other fruit for dessert.

I was very disgusted with myself, thinking about the massive carbon footprint that allowed those fruits to get up to the American Midwest in October.

I had a similar reaction to the pineapples I was getting really good prices on this spring and summer.

New strategy with ideas for stories:

I refer ideas for juicy stories to appropriate publications and freelancers.

I don't have time to do everything, and I'd rather have a story done okay-to-good by someone else, rather than have a perfect story by me that never gets written.

One publication already assigned a freelancer to a story, about the evolving mission of this interesting group of nuns who I've seen mention of in free local newspapers for several years now.

The freelancer already wrote me for people to interview in several areas related to the story, and I wrote him a list of names.

He was very appreciative.

The danger of radical feminist blogs.

I've been reading radical feminist blogs so much, that I begin to suspect that every male person (including men who transgender) should be treated like a perverted threat to women and children, and screened and kept out of bathrooms.

It's kind of true, though, though I think I'd have a different reaction when confronted with individuals versus thinking about classes of persons.

It's funny how a media bubble can really radicalize your thoughts.

Bedbug bites are just awful.

On my skin, especially the closer they are to my buttocks going up my leg or down my lower back, the more the bedbug bites get to be huge itchy red welts, and even anti-itch cream doesn't work too well, all day.

Sometimes, midway through the day or even a day later, clothing rubbing up against them makes them all swell up and get itchy all over again.

I find as I've found with mosquito bites at different times in my life, that the only method to definitively stop the itching is to scratch them severely till the top layer of skin is gone.

(Seriously, I do that, and have for years, it's worth it long-term, rather than deal with the incessant itching.)

Now, because of that, my buttocks and lower back are a sight.

On some parts of my buttocks, I have these scabs half the size of quarters, sometimes like an inch apart in some places.

I look in the mirror when I'm naked, and it's like I'm a leper or something.

The bright red of the scabs looks real nice on the pale white of the cellulite by my butt.

More laundromat happenings.

At the laundromat the other week, I bumped into the wife of my upstairs neighbor couple with the kids who sometimes run around in the morning and who don't seem too concerned with thinking through and fighting an infestation even though their young son has had bites.

I asked the wife if they had seen any more signs of bedbugs, and even though I had received a text from her husband that day that there had been nothing that week (I text my neighbors to check in every time I wake up with bites), she said on Thurs. her son had woken up with 2 bites close together.

"Oh wow," I was like, "That's definitely bed bugs," and then I offered (again) to help them get set up against them, since the infestation would just get worse and b/c even though the pest control company didn't find anything, that company didn't seem to be too good.

"Yeah," she was like, "We were thinking it wasn't bed bugs and maybe something else, since nothing had happened in like two weeks."

I then gently offered (again) to help them, and listed the evenings that week that I'd be home, but she seemed totally noncommital and just out there.

As soon as she left, I talked with the (Mexican) woman there, the one my downstairs stoner dudebro neighbor had asked if she had five husbands.

I told her that that woman was my neighbor, and though her son had gotten bites, she didn't seem to care.

The (Mexican) woman seemed aghast.

I then told her that they were weird people, and "she has crazy eyes" (ella tiene ojos locos).

The (Mexican) woman laughed and agreed, and said she had noticed that.