Resthome Christmas (1 of 3): First subway car occupant.

On my way into the resthome to work on Christmas Day, a (young) (slim) (darkish) (moustachioed) (Indian) guy got onto the subway car and sat a few seats up from me and slouched downward into it.

He kept coughing every minute or two, never covering his mouth.

After like the fourth or fifth cough, I just got up and moved down to the other end of the car, to get away from his germs.

Was talking with the printer the other day.

The other day I was talking with the local printer when I was picking up some things for my campaign, and I started talking about the price-gouging local gas company, but I slipped up and when I said the company's name I said "ass" instead of "gas."

And, she laughed and agreed that the company's ass, and was like, "Your Freudian slip is showing."

Isn't it funny?

I have so many blogposts about my coworkers and my jobs, and they're just happy and full of joy.

That shit certainly wasn't the case, when I was working in academia.

"Good decision," not to pursue any tenure-track academic work.

A funny exchange at the resthome: New resident.

The other week I was escorting a guy who had moved in a few weeks earlier down to dinner in the elevator, and this one lady who's lived there for a while was with us in the elevator, so I asked them if they had met each other like I've been doing with him, to make sure he gets to know everyone.

"No, we haven't met," the woman was like, and they introduced themselves.

Then, she was like, "Are you new?".

"No," he was like, "I'm old."

"Well," she was like, "You certainly are fresh."

. . .

My one (Mexican) coworker was with us in the elevator as an escort to the woman, and we both laughed at the exchange, it flowed so fast and funny.

"People pay for comedy like this," I told her.

Vacation of a (Mongolian) resthome coworker.

One woman who works at the resthome is from Mongolia.

She actually doesn't work for the resthome per se, but is instead extra help who comes in to help this one couple who need it, an arrangement that some people do if they need services above and beyond standard assisting living services.  So, I guess she really isn't my coworker, but I like to think of her as one, though now that I think of it, I don't think of all the private aides that way (I wonder why I do that?  Could it be related to how much I vibe with someone).

Anyhow, my one (Mongolian) coworker is maybe in her mid-50s and bigger boned, and she's always smiling and radiates positive energy, though she tends to be on the quiet side.

And, I didn't see her for the longest while, then a few weeks ago, I finally saw her again, and I asked her how she was.

"Good," she was like.  "I was on vacation."

"Did you go back to Mongolia?", I was like.

"Yes," she was like, "Forty-five days."

"That's awesome!", I was like.  "I hope you did something special?".

"Oh yes," she was like, smiling.  "I drank mare's milk and rode horses."

. . .

I fucking *love* Mongolians.  Such bad-ass people, and so nice.  To think she went from riding horses, to back to assisted living.  It boggles the mind, but is so awesome that it happens. 

Whenever I've met Mongolians, I get such positive vibes from them.  It must be something about the culture.

A conversation with a resthome resident about health insurance.

The other day I was visiting with the one resthome resident who has a dark sense of humor, and he asked me what was new, so I told him about how I had gone online and picked my health insurance plan for next year.

"Is it good?", he was like.  "What does it cover?".

He used to work in business and tends to be interested in stuff like that, so since he wasn't really too familiar with the details of the Affordable Care Act, I roughly told him about the essential benefits concept of the Silver-level plans.

"So if I took an axe and split your head open, would it cover that?", he was like.

. . .

[. . .]

Another life story tidbit about that same resthome resident.

That one same resthome resident who grew up in the German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia used to go dance in coffee houses back when she was younger - waltz, foxtrot, everything, she said.

Also, that's how you met guys, and her mother would always try to go with her, so she had to come up with excuses and ways to go there by herself, like making up a story and then going to the coffee house or like ditching her mom and slipping away and then heading there, she said.

Life story tidbit of one resthome resident.

One of the resthome residents who I work with grew up in a German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia, and married a Hungarian.

She had mentioned that she did Hungarian cooking, and I always just assumed that she learned it because of her husband.

As it turns out, she just really likes Hungarian cooking, and she had learned it growing up before she met him, alongside all of the Czech stuff she knew.

"They're very different," she was like.

Two observations of a homeless person.

The other week I was heading from my lawyer's office to my one job where I assist a woman with disabilities, and I had to take a bus on a busline that I'm usually never on.

And, at one stop, like about 5-6 (black) (homeless) men got on.

And, as we went up the street in this chi-chi neighborhood, this one guy who seemed affable was just sprawled out on a seat and talking loudly about where people he knows lives.

And, as we passed this old shuttered ornate bank, he tells this guy, "Yeah, like ten to fifteen Polish guys live in there, if you're out here in the morning you'll see them coming out in the alley," and he said that they live in the basement and even have beds and put down carpeting and everything.

Then he saw me listening and was like, "You probably can't believe this, can you?", and I said no, and then I asked him how they got in, and he said the lock on the front door was broken, and they originally got in that way.

Then, he went back to talking affably to his friend.

And, a few blocks later, we pass a U-Haul storage place, and he's like, "One of my friends lives in there, he has a little box, seventy-six dollars a month, and he just rolls out his bedroll and sleeps in it, seventy-six dollars a month, that's smart."

Conversation at the local bar.

The other week I was at the one neighborhood bar that I tend to go to, and this one eccentric (older) (Italian-American) guy who says he's from New York City was in there, and somehow me and him started talking about the November elections and backlash against elites, then Bernie and Trump, then the 2009 financial crisis and the like, and we were talking about all of this last topic for quite some time.

Finally, he was like, "And I know some guys who work down on Wall Street, you know what they tell me when they get drunk?".

"That they want to suck cock?", I was like.

At that, he was stunned, and just stopped talking for a noticeable span of time.

The one quiet artist girl who tends bar heard, too, and though she's usually unflappable, she laughed pretty hard at that, and just looked genuinely surprised at my reply and dumbstruck as she laughed.

Comment on Trump of this one resthome resident who's near a hundred.

This one resthome resident who's near a hundred is a retired businessman who tends to have a dark sense of humor, for example he always makes jokes about me or him jumping out the window, and he enjoys it when I do the same, like when I'm assisting him and I tell him to go stand up and then the next instruction I give him is something like, "Now, go jump out the window."

Anyhow, the other week the topic of Trump came up, and right away he was like, "I hope that son-of-a-bitch drops dead," and he said it slowly and clearly in the same slow calm tone of voice he always has, but he was just dead serious, like he almost never is.

Two comments of my one (Mexican) resthome coworker who likes true crime.

The other week at the resthome, my last resident of the night to help was this one resident who likes her nighttime TV and who I try to help between TV programs right when one program has ended and before another one begins so that I don't bother her and interrupt her TV watching, but on that particular night I got delayed and I got there at like 9:15pm or 9:20pm, not at nine on the dot.

And, she was like, "Do we have to do this now? I want to watch this" when I said I had come a bit later than usual but still wanted to assist her, and then when I said we could still do it quick between commercials, she was still surprisingly stubborn, since usually that's less than ideal but still okay with her.

And, her program came back on when I was assisting her, and I half-listened to it some while I was working with her so I could catch her up after we had finished, and wouldn't you know it, I got hooked, since it was the story of the only known instance where a Munchausen by proxy victim upped and killed the person who was taking care of them and pretending that they were sick.

"Do you mind if I watch this with you for a bit?", I was like, after we had finished and I had escorted her back to in front of her TV.

"Please do," she was like.

And, I kept watching the TV show for like twenty or thirty minutes, I was so addicted.

Afterwards I had to run down to the office to get ready to go since it was already time to clock out, and I bumped into my one (Mexican) coworker who likes true crime.

When I started gushing to her about the great true crime show I had just been watching with that one resident and I ended my summary with "...and the daughter turned out not to be sick at all!", my one (Mexican) coworker was like, "That's a good one."

Later, she also observed, "See, when you're tired, you're tired" (i.e., 'when you get sick and tired of something, you really get sick and tired of it'), since I guess that that was the lesson that she had learned from that true crime story.

Resthome crack: Trivia about John Wayne Gacy.

So, I'm reading the memoir of John Wayne Gacy's lawyer, and the other week when I was working at the resthome, I kept it in my front uniform pocket like I always keep some reading material for when I have downtime, only I had it cover-in so that no-one would see the cover and be scandalized or anything like that.

(I highly doubt that anyone would be scandalized, but still, you never know.)

Anyways, when I went to go assist the one retired psychiatrist, he saw the book and asked me what I was reading, and I told him, and he asked me if I learned anything interesting, and I said, yes, I did, that when Gacy was a boy he used to steal his mothers pink silk underwear and rub them all over himself and then go bury them under the porch.

"And you never did, motherf*cker?", he was like, with a perfect mock-serious tone of voice to suggest that it was something that everyone does.

LOL.

Comment of a hundred year old resthome resident.

A few days after her birthday, I popped in to check on one resthome resident who had just turned a hundred, and she was sitting at her one desk in her living room, and like every square inch of her desk was covered in cards that she had stood up so they faced her.

"Oh my gosh, what is that?!?" I was like, to her.  "Did you get a card for every year of your life?!?"

"Probably two," she was like.

Busier shifts at the resthome.

It's really interesting how the amount of work can ebb and flow at the resthome, as new people move in and as other people leave through death or to go to more care intensive facilities, or as the same people who have been living there require more care than ever.

Lately, for instance, one new man moved in, and then another guy who's been living there has been needing more time per check-in and more check-ins overall per shift as his dementia has been progressing.

Like two days in a row I slept over ten hours after getting off shift and going home, and at first I thought it was a fluke due to me not getting enough sleep and maybe the weather, too, but then I realized it was because I was working that much more per shift with less downtime than ever, and I needed the sleep to recharge.

Right before this period, the amount of work had been light, and so you'd get maybe a half hour's downtime in the early afternoon, and then again at dinner, and then maybe towards the end of the shift, but now it's like ten minutes early on, and maybe twenty minutes at dinner, and then finally some sit-down time like right before you go home.

That extra work really adds up, to drain you.  You just get to work and it's go - go - go for like eight hours.

I really do like this job, though; it's busy and fun and always different, and my coworkers and the residents are so nice.

A crack by that one retired psychiatrist who I assist at the resthome.

The other week I went to go assist that one retired psychiatrist who I assist at the resthome when he was getting up from a nap, and when I go in, he's lying there all groggy and clothed on his bed with his shirt accidentally pulled up a bit over his big white belly and exposing his navel a bit.

"Is it me, or is it cold in here?", he asked all groggily as soon as I got in.

"It feels pretty normal," I was like, "But maybe it's how your shirt is pulled up and showing your stomach."

"That's supposed to be sexy," he mumbled.

Kindness on the subway.

The other week when I stood up on the subway and was waiting at the door as the train coasted into the one station where I get off to go to work at one of my jobs,, I put my hands into my pockets to check for my hat, and just as the train was finally coasting in and the doors were about to open, I realized that my hat wasn't in my pocket, so I quickly turned around and glanced back to where I had been sitting, to see if it had fallen out.

And there it was, a black knit blob on the seat, and this (younger middle-aged) black lady in a pink coat with an eyebrow piercing raised her head up to get my attention, as she was pointing at my hat on the seat beside her.

How kind of her.

I nodded at her with a smile, rushed back, snatched it up, and then dashed out the opening doors at my station, without missing a beat.

A shit mystery.

The other week I cooked up a big huge pot of beef barley soup and had two gigantic bowls before bed, and then the next morning at the first smell of coffee I suddenly had to go to the bathroom, and when I sat down and let loose, it was just like a steady row of composed and well formed and decently sized shit droplets, all a subdued red brown color.

Usually, it's like a liquid machine gun, after I eat barley.

I wonder what happened?

I did have a couple baked potatoes, too, maybe that affected things and helped bind all the barley together to the point where it was like a normal shit.

Later that day I had to shit a second time, and though I thought that that shit would be the one like a liquid machine gun, it wasn't, it was the same kind of shit as before.

I've honestly never had this happen!

Life certainly can be weird.

Comment of a (Nigerian) coworker.

The other week at the resthome, my one (Nigerian) coworker said that people in his country have been talking about whether their president has been replaced by a clone.

Basically, he went away to Britain for medical treatments for like four months and let the VP run things, and now he's back, and people are saying he's a clone.

"I do not think that is true, but that is what the people say," my one coworker was like.

He also said that this kind of stuff happens in Nigeria since you simply don't have the amount of press coverage that you do in the U.S.

"Here, they hide things, but the press looks, and they say more," he was like.

An odd person on the subway.

The other week when I was going in to work in the early afternoon, I was sitting at the north end of the one subway car, and there were a few (mid-30s) (black) males sitting around my end of the car, and they look pretty normal, but then one of them says something that's really loud, and it's obvious that there's something wrong with him, even though he looks clean and is decently dressed and everything, because his voice is too loud and what he's saying is disconnected from what's going on, or something like that.

Anyhow, later on, this one (white) guy gets on with a baby carriage and goes to my end of the car, and one (black) guy gets up and moves to the middle of the seat to make some room for him so that the guy can sit closer to his daughter in the baby carriage, and then they're on the car for a while, and then when he moves to get off the train with his daughter and wheels the carriage towards the doors again, that one weird (black) guy suddenly notices that he's carrying a small paper takeout bag from a restaurant and is like really loudly, "Is that food? Can I have that?", and the (white) guy is flummoxed but ends up being like, "Yes," and then he gives it to him right before he leaves.

Later, too, a (younger) (white) yuppie couple is on the train and they have a takeout box from a bakery, and the guy at some point sees that and is like, "Is that food? Can I have that?", and the (white) guy from the yuppie couple demurs because he said that he bought it as a thank-you present for a friend who's apartment he was staying in, but then like ten minutes later he pulls out a gigantic cookie with yellow frosting and calls out to the guy and gives it to him anyways, and is like, "Three cookies should be enough for her anyhow."

Even later, after the yuppie couple left, that same weird (black) guy starts talking about his takeout bag and randomly announces to someone else across the aisle from him (a friend?), "I'm not eating this now, I'm keeping it as a surprise for later on, I'll open it up and see what's in it."

. . .

He made me nervous.

Also, I think the first (white) guy, the one with the baby carriage, may have been French.  He had a bit of an accent, I think, when he talked.

Some people on the subway on my way home after work the other night:

A (30-something) (moustachio-ed and bearded) (Latino) dude watching his phone while it plays rap music really loudly, and this (very fat) (30-something) (Latina) woman who walked onto the train with him and who's obviously with him but is just sitting there cramming him into his seat from the side with her bulk and is looking around nervously, and they're sitting in the two seats facing backwards, and they each have an open bottle of Miller Genuine Draft that they're sipping from, and they both smell like alcohol, even from ten feet away.

Wisecracks about reality ghost shows.

My one client with disabilities really, really, really likes reality ghost shows about the paranormal, and every once in a while she's watching one while I cook or clean and so I watch it with her and we discuss it.

For some reason - maybe TV and film production subsidies? - a lot of these shows nowadays seem to be filmed in Canada, and the other week a guy who was relating his one big paranormal experience started out his story about how back when he was young back in Ontario he was sitting on his front porch with his parents playing euchre, and as soon as he said "euchre," we started tittering, it was so Canadian.

A few minutes later in the show, then, he talked about meeting some entity in the basement and being freaked out and running up the stairs and through the living room, and as he was relating that, I added in "...and then I was running so fast and suddenly I fell, I tripped over a cribbage board," and my one client with disabilities started tittering.

Then, a bit later in the same show, that same guy was talking about how that same night that that freaky stuff had happened in the basement, he was sitting in the living room watching TV, and then he realized that the temperature was dropping and that he could see his own breath and that the entity was back, and my one client added in, imitating the guy, "But then I was like, 'F*ck no, wait a minute, I live in f*cking Canada, it gets f*cking cold up here,'" and she made me titter.

During the next commercial break, I told her that we were like Mystery Science Theater 3000 for paranormal reality shows, and that there should be shadow shapes of our heads up on the TV screen.

Comment of a very old artist who lives at the resthome.

At the resthome, there's this one artist who's very old, almost a hundred, and when I was visiting with her the other day, she was lamenting the demise of circuses, though she agreed with me that it was bad to keep lions and tigers and elephants and whatnot caged up.

After that, we got to talking more around that subject, and I mentioned how my (now dead) (maternal) grandmother went to the wedding of her one friend's niece who had run away and worked in carnivals for a while, but then come back.

"Her wedding dress had a low back," I was like, "And when she walked down the aisle, everyone was talking because they could see all these tattoos all up and down her back."

"What were they?", the artist asked me.  "Were they nice?".

And, I had to confess that I didn't know, and I felt slightly embarrassed and ashamed, like I was making fun of the bride, too.

I also remembered at that time that part of that story might have been that the groom's party or maybe it was everyone wore cowboy boots, but I wasn't sure, so I didn't say anything.

Ethiopian politics.

The other week at the resthome, one of my (Ethiopian) coworkers was saying that she really really likes the current prime minister of Ethiopia, and that she doesn't like American politics at all, and she made a face when she said 'American politics.'

"He's a nice man," she was like, going back to talking about the Prime Minister, and then she was like, "He does so much good, and everyone likes him."

Our one other (Ethiopian) coworker who was sitting there nodded and agreed with her, too.

My one coworker then pulled up the Prime Minister's picture and Wikipedia entry on her phone, and I read through it, and it had all this stuff in there about him freeing long-time political prisoners and reaching across ethnic boundaries and whatnot.

He did seem good, at least from Wikipedia.

Pleasant coworkers.

I can't get over how nice all my coworkers are at my one resthome job.

People are always helping each other out, and sometimes we bring in food for each other.

The other week, I brought in a day-old apricot coffee cake that I had gotten for half-off at this one (Italian) bakery that's near where I get my haircut, since I had stopped through there after getting my haircut like I often tend to do.

I left it out on the table in our office with a plastic knife, and people kept getting bits of it all night.  My one (African-American) coworker really liked it and I told her she should take some home for her mom and her sister if there was any left at the end of shift, but there turned out to be not that much left, and she said to leave it for the night shift, which we did.

A dream of my uncle.

The other week I dreamnt:

I am in a room and am sitting down at a table, and my maternal uncle is standing above me, and he's a bit thinner and a bit younger and his hair is darker, and he's leaning in over me and is unnaturally in-my-face and aggressive.

From what he's saying, I find out that he's taken a post-retirement job as a union buster, and he's trying to call me out for my unthinking support of unions, and to justify himself.

. . .

Hanukkah memories.

The other day when I was working at the resthome, I was very surprised that the retired psychiatrist went down to the candle-lighting service, since he usually doesn't attend stuff like that.

Afterwards, he told me that he really enjoyed it, and that when he had looked at the program and the songs in Hebrew that they were going to sing, he didn't recognize any of them, but when people had started singing, he recognized some of the melodies, and he hadn't heard them in years.

A memory of petition season.

Back when I had to go and gather a lot of signatures in order to qualify for the ballot, me and a (younger) (white) guy who was born and bred in the neighborhood but had just moved back from Florida where he was for a few years but then decided he didn't like it got to talking, as he was waiting for the bus.

First off, he couldn't sign for me, since he hadn't changed his voter registration back to the neighborhood yet.

Second, he was pretty sympathetic to the task of getting signatures, and he said that you have to have a "tough skin."

He did it himself for different campaigns years ago back before he moved to Florida, he said, and he said people gave him crap and threw him attitude all the time when he was out doing it.

At least for me, that was a relief.  Somehow I thought that I was the only person to get that!  I guess not...  The older I get, the more it really comforts me to find out that other people have experienced the same difficulties that I have.

Cat puke.

Sometimes, the cat of my one client with disabilities throws up, and there's a pile of cat puke on the floor.

Usually, it has chunks of largely undigested crunchy cat food in it, in a clear-to-brown liquid.

At first it made me decently nauseated to clean up, but now it doesn't really bother me at all.

I usually take a paper towel and fold it over a few times, and then I kind of mop it up and pick it up at the same time, and then I go and throw the paper towel into the trash, with the cat puke safely in the middle of it. 

And then, I go and take a fresh paper towel and put some cleaning spray on it, and wipe over the area where the cat puke was, just to make sure that it's all clean and fresh and there's no cat puke liquid residue sitting out on the hardwood floor in her apartment, since that might corrupt the floorboards or the finish on them or something.

Sometimes, depending on how much liquid there is in the cat puke, I can feel a sort of moist warmth coming through the towel onto my hand, when I'm taking the cat puke paper towel to the trashcan.

An observation by that one retired psychiatrist: Porn stigma.

The other day at the resthome I was assisting that one retired psychiatrist, and as we sometimes do, we started talking about Stormy Daniels.

From there our conversation went off into talking about porn more generally, and I was telling him about tidbits from this one oral history of the (straight) porn industry that I had read years ago.

For example, that people ogle the actors at bars, but treat them like social outcasts and don't really interact with them or respect them.

"That's entirely unsurprising," he was like, "The same thing happened back when I was in it..."

On another note, he ran over his wife's foot when he was in his motorized wheelchair, and her one toe now is all black and blue.

She took a photo of it and blew it up and printed it out and hung it on his wall in his living room, so he sees it every day.

"Is that to make you feel guilty?", I was like.

"I would assume," he was like.

A culture of passing petitions.

One of the things that's been very striking from my campaign has been how the old political machine people have a culture of passing petitions to gather signatures so that people can become candidates.

Overall, the city I live in has an absolutely absurd amount of signatures that a person needs to get for them to get on the ballot, so it's a challenge for any challenger, but an incumbent knows the ropes and has the money and the bodies to do it pretty easily, especially if they're from neighborhoods with petition-passing culture; people know the drill, they get a clipboard, and they run around and snag signatures from friends and family and people they know in the neighborhood, or even people they bump into.

This has been something that I've been thinking about, and then the other week, I ran into a (white) (progressive) woman who I know from the neighborhood, and she was in the bar with a(n older) (white) (male) friend of hers from a different neighborhood, but one with a similar petition-passing culture among the born-and-bred residents there.

So, I was telling them about my thoughts on this, and how younger gentrifiers who think of themselves as progressives just don't have that same level of familiarity with the culture and even the process, and the one guy who she knows who I had just met totally agreed.

And, he told me about the time that he went to this one wake in the family of someone running for judge, and one of the family members had a clipboard and was going up the line of the people waiting to pay their respects at the casket.

Negative campaigning.

It's really crazy, a few conversations I had towards the end of the last general election.

Like two Democrats I know - a (female) (black) security guard at the local library, and a(n older Latino-heritage) (female) person who I met when I was out canvassing - both said that they were having a hard time deciding who to vote for in this one race that was getting massive play on TV.

Basically, the negative personal ads on TV were turning them off and making them wonder who to vote for, even though they both admitted that the Democrats had better policy and that Republicans were crazy.

It really makes you realize, how all that money floating around can be deployed into negative campaigning and drain off the votes from the left, to get rightwing reactionaries elected when they wouldn't be otherwise.

It's so sad, and so perverse.

Winter time is here...

So I now walk to the subway every morning, instead of bike.

I can't risk the wear and tear of salt and water on my bike, all winter long.

It can destroy a bike!

A night-time ride on the subway one night after work:

At one end of the car a man is stretched out and sleeping, and at the other end of the car there's a (20-something) (black) guy in shorts with his legs showing and smelling all like BO, for like a third of the car, and in one of the forward-facing seat pairs there's this (early 30-something) (white) couple with their arms around each other.

Later, a(n older) (black) guy gets on dragging a wheelie suitcase with bundles on it behind him, and he goes down to sit at the end of the car with the BO guy, and his head is shaven and he's wearing sunglasses and he has this boil or something about the size of a giant gumball on the back right of his head, just sticking out to the point where the skin is stretched and a little lighter around the edges.

Even later, the car fills up more, and this (older) (dreaded) (haggard) (black) guy gets on, and he sits at different places in the car and talks with folks like the (white) couple, and makes them uneasy.

When he's in my part of the car, he cracks open a beer can, and sits near a (younger) (black) couple, and says that he hopes that they're making babies.

Resthome anecdotes (2 of 2): Such language.

The other week at the resthome, I was helping out the one retired psychiatrist who likes to swear a lot, and I ended some list of stuff with the word "shit."

"[The full form of my first name!], he was like, "Such language.  I think I taught you that, f*cker."

Resthome anecdotes (1 of 2): Dinner absence.

The other week at the resthome, this one woman who I tend to discuss books with a lot observed to me that this one gentlemen who hums to himself very loudly wasn't at dinner that night, and he wasn't at lunch that day either.

"But the funny thing is," she was like, "I still heard him doing that in my head, today at lunch."

"Interesting," I was like, and I then told her about how sometimes I hear my cellphone alarm going off in the morning and I wake up, but it's not it at all, it's just me thinking that I hear the sound from the cellphone alarm.

Pen mystery.

The other week I was at a library branch after work, to print a few pages and scan some stuff to send out by email.

And, late in the process, I drop my pen, but when I look down on the ground, I can't find it at all, even after I get up and move my chair and my backpack and look around everywhere, to the point where I worry that any librarian who's looking on and seeing me might think I'm strange, like some of the people who suffer from mental illness and hang out at the library and use the computers all the time.

That night when I get home, though, I unzip one pocket on my backpack, and there my pen is, sitting out on top of some stuff.

I'm guessing it dropped into an open pocket of my backpack when it fell, but I didn't see it at the time, and I must not have seen it when I zipped up the open pockets on my backpack and got up and left, after I had been searching for the pen and then finished up all that I was doing at the library.

A dream of the resthome.

The other week, I dreamnt -

I'm upstairs far up in the resthome, and it's this confusing area of escalators and whitish walls and dull business carpet, all very anonymous.

Later, I make my way down, and I'm down on the regular floors, in this area with relatively empty multi-level wood floors, and a small divider wall and stairs here and there that go between levels, and I get a call to go meet a patient who's coming back from rehab.

Instead, I lie on my stomach on the wood floor and do things on my laptop, when I know I should be working.

After a while, I get up, and I go put some knickknacks on a glass coffee table that's standing out there, and one of them is this greenish ceramic leaf with an inordinately long stem.

And then, I wake up.

. . .

A few people I meet when I'm out campaigning:

1) This (white) (bro-ish) (late 30-something or early 40-something) guy in (neon green) construction gear who's walking by and who I approach with my usual greeting and hold out my campaign literature to, but he holds out his hand to me like "talk to the hand" and is like "No thanks, I don't need any propaganda today."

2) This one (white) (purple-dyed hair) (early 20-something) who's out walking a (small) dog and who I immediately speak to after that, and it turns out she just moved here from the rural Northeast to join friends and to try living in a city for a while and she's not registered to vote, and I thank her for her kindness and mention that guy's response, and when I say, "You have to wonder what people who say things like that are like in everyday life," she's like, "Do you really want to find out?".

3) This one (older) (white) woman who answers her door and we get to chatting about an American flag decoration in her window, and then she points out how there's like a foot of spots on the window all across the front window, and she says it's the cat who goes there, since he has allergies and sneezes, and I immediately see that the spots only go as far up as cat height.

She also points out how the cat destroyed each end of the blinds, so it could make its way out onto the window sill and sit and watch the world go by.

A disturbing dream of boating and drowning.

The other week I dreamnt -

I'm in a smaller enclosed motor boat with my father and another passenger, and my dad is driving the boat.

Waves kick up and begin washing over the windows more and more, and next thing you know they're over the windows and almost like four-fifths up the boat where there's just like half a foot of light over there, and my dad says everything is all right, and the boat keeps moving ahead, but I'm afraid we'll sink, and I start thinking about how I'd have to kick out the windows and swim out to avoid being trapped inside and drowning, once we go down.

And, a little bit of water comes through a window, which I latch closed at some point.

But, the dream continues and we reach shore, and we're outside my one childhood home where we lived the longest, the one on a small lake.

We were boating on our small lake the entire time, and I always had been aware of it.

We docked by the resort a few doors down from us, rather than by our house, and then walked over to our house.

. . .

Anecdote of this one resthome resident who uses a wheelchair and likes to sun herself out in front of the building.

Like a month ago, this one resthome resident who uses a wheelchair and likes to sun herself out in front of the building told me this one anecdote about this one time when she was sitting out in front of the building sunning herself, and she was enjoying some coffee that she was sipping now and then out of this paper cup.

When she got done with the coffee, she didn't know what to do with the cup since there wasn't a trash can nearby and she didn't feel like holding onto it while she was sitting there, so she set it down on the sidewalk.

And, next thing you know, a passerby comes up and throws some change in it.

An endearing feature of one resthome resident.

There's this one very elderly resthome resident, whose husband and daughter both predeceased her, and now she lives there alone and she has pretty bad memory problems where she forgets when and if she did things, but she's often in quite a good mood where she says everything is "marvelous" and she speaks in simple Spanish with you and she drops in Italian phrases, too, like "mille grazi" (sp?) and "arrivaderci" (sp.?).

The other week, too, I noticed that to hold down her hair, she wears paperclips, the big kind, one on each side, for a big swath of hair.

Since then, I've noticed that whenever she needs to hold back her hair, she uses paperclips.

It's so wonderful, and so endearing, and so totally her.

I'm afraid to mention it to her, since she might change it.

What style!

This one resthome resident's lifelong fear.

This one resthome resident is getting to be almost a hundred, and the other afternoon we were chit-chatting and he mentioned that he was afraid of cats and dogs.

"Why?", I was like.

He then said that back when he was a kid, he heard his brother screaming loudly from down the block, and he ran over and there was a cat hanging off his finger, biting it.

So, since it wouldn't let go, they picked up a brick and started hitting it on its head until they killed it.

Then, some city workers came and took the cat away and tested it, and it had rabies, and his brother had to go and get rabies shots, where they put a big needle into his stomach.

He never mentioned why he doesn't like dogs, though.

Hearing another language on the subway.

The other week I was riding the subway, and there were two (older) (Asian) people sprawled out each on one side of the car in the forward facing seats there, and they were wearing knit caps and clothing that was a bit dirty, and they both were talking very very loudly.

(I think they were Vietnamese.)

Anyhow, when the one guy on the right finished a couple very loud, very slow sentences, he was talking very very loudly on an otherwise quiet car, and somehow the last word he uttered was something like -

COCK!

- and the word just hung out there for everyone to hear, as he stopped talking.

An occasional wish of mine.

Social media keeps me informed, especially Twitter, but it also takes up an inordinate amount of time.

I need to be more conscious of my use of it, and limit it to a bit each day, and put my darn phone down when I find myself picking it up and checking for updated accounts and stuff.

So much of Twitter is froth that will fall away, and takes me away from activities where I can work on projects that will have lasting effect.

My apartment's just filthy.

Between how much I work and how much I campaign, my apartment can get just filthy.

Right now I really need to clean the bathroom floor, and this dirt tracked into the hallway, and scrub my refrigerator, and do all of my laundry that's been piling up.

But, it's hard to find the time or the energy, and it really doesn't bother me that much, so I don't.

Levity at the resthome: My temporary confusion.

The other night when I was working at the resthome, I come out of a room and my one (Filipina) coworker is coming down the hallway and saying my name and is holding out this thin, couple inch long rectangle box thing at me, and at first I think it's a mezuzah that's fallen off someone's doorpost, and she wants me to come help her figure out how to reattach it.

Then, I realize it's a small long thin specialty chocolate bar that she wants me to have.

I took it, and later I showed it to a resident, and they agreed it kind of looked like a mezuzah from a distance.

A little bit later than that, I told the story again to another resident, but when I went to go reach for the chocolate bar to go and show them its shape, I realized that I had already eaten it, and there was just an empty crumpled wrapper in my uniform smock pocket.

Lesbian chorus trivia.

The other week at my one client's house, my (lesbian) coworker was going off shift, and was heading off to her lesbian chorus practice.

"So what do you say for good luck, like 'break a leg' or 'break an ovary' or what," I was like.

At that, my one client laughed and was like, "TTG," and I was like, "What?", and then my coworker explained that the conductor will whisper "TTG" to them a lot right after they go onstage and before they start singing.

As it turns out, TTG is a singing posture acronym telling them to straighten their backs and put their chests out, only instead of being like "Straighten your backs," it's, "Tits to the Goddess!".

Rain story (2 of 2): Umbrella.

Like a few days later, I was walking to work, and I had my umbrella out since it was raining pretty hard.

It was windy, too, and by the time I got to the resthome, my pants were soaked from the hip down, since that's how much the rain was blowing underneath my umbrella.

Thankfully, our new uniforms are of some kind of synthetic material, and my pantlegs dried out during the forty minute meeting that started off my shift.

Rain story (1 of 2): Lake.

Last month, I was leaving my one client's with disabilities's house, and it was just pouring, like the hardest rain you can imagine.

She's always joked about the lake in front of her house, and after heavy rains a few times before I'd seen like a large puddle by one corner of the intersection, a bit of which stuck out almost into the middle of the side street.

I'd never seen anything like this before, though.

It was honestly like rain covered more than half the road, and was up over the curb and onto the sidewalk, and I had to walk onto the highest parts of the mulch heap up on the grass strip between the sidewalk and the street, and the water just stretched down the side street like that, flowing a lot, and then as I walked upstream it was out and around into the main street, where I had to kind of find the shortest across part of the puddle and hop out into like an inch of water, since there was no way I could jump across it and onto dry pavement.

I got soaked as I walked to the subway, too.

Right when I got to the subway, too, I not only just missed a train, but the rain died down.

In retrospect, I should have waited some.

A conversation with an artist voter in my district.

The other week I was at one of the neighborhood bars, and I bumped into this one (older) (Asian immigrant) artist who I've met before, and we talked a bit about local politics and my campaign, especially affordable housing issues, which she's super concerned about.

She was a bit down from national politics and had been drinking all evening, and when I ordered chips, she asked for one, so I shared it with her, and later I ordered a big packet of Beernuts, and I shared them with her, too.

"Please, have as many as you want!", I was like.  "My dad won a hundred dollars on a scratch-off ticket and sent me fifty, so you can thank him for that!"

Like right after that, she started talking about the difficulty of declining funding sources for artists, and how the NEA had been on the downswing with funding since the Bush years, and how it was really depressing, and she kept saying stuff like that.

All of a sudden, then, I started laughing to myself, and I told her, "Sorry, I really shouldn't be making jokes with voters, I've been telling myself I have to stop doing this, but..." - and at this point my tone-of-voice became a bit theatrical - "...you mean to say... " - and at that I gestured at the Beernuts - "...that you're not content with peanuts?".

And then I just laughed and laughed at my own joke, really heartily.

She smirked a bit, too, but only for a second, and then she grimaced and like immediately gave me the finger.

She held it up right in front of my face.

Toenails.

I really like clipping my toenails.

I've noticed lately that the nails on my little toes are getting flatter, so it's easier to push back the cuticles and then clip off the nail, straight across in a big flat straight line.

Every time, too, I feel that the end of my big toenails are catching at my sock, I stop and pull off my sock and go and look, and what do you know, it's time to clip my toenails again.

My one (lesbian) coworker used to work in a foot clinic years ago, and she knows a lot about diseases of the foot and leg, as well as their healthy condition.

She said that toenails change over the course of your life, and that the nails in particular get thicker.

Oddly, I had been noticing that lately at the resthome, with a few residents whose bedtime routines involve feet.

Each of them is like 90 or a hundred, and their toenails are very thick and humped, almost more like talons than toenails.

I wonder how or even if you clip toenails like that, when you get older.

I think the resthome has a special guy come in every once in a while, to check people's feet and maybe clip their toenails for them.

Advice of my one (Tibetan) coworker, to a resident who wants to die already.

So it turns out that my one (male) (Tibetan) coworker has been talking some with the one older resthome resident who wants to die, since she's raised the issue with him too.

He told me that he reminded her that suffering and pain is always part of the human condition.

"That's like Buddhist, right?", I was like

"Yes," he was like.  "I am Buddhist and I read that."

Jokes with a (Ghanaian) coworker.

One of my dining services coworkers is this young woman from Ghana, and the other day in the dining room me and her and some residents were talking, and this one resident asked her how her modelling was going, and the resident told me that she had encouraged her to look into modelling.

"You're so beautiful," the one resident was like.  "And tall and thin, too."

And, my coworker pulled out her phone and showed us a few pictures that a friend took of her, for a portfolio.

As it turns out, she had taken up the resident on her advice to explore modelling!

Later, too, me and that coworker were talking, and it turns out that she's in community college and is doing her science prereqs, and then she's going to transfer out to finish her undergrad.

"Are you thinking of medicine?", I was like.

"Yes, I think I want to be a doctor," she was like.

"You know," I was like, "That would be great.  After you work as a model and break men's hearts, then you can work as a doctor and help heal them."

She *loved* that joke.

"You are so funny!", she was like.

West Africans have the best sense of humor; it really is like a pleasure in non-mean jokes about the ridiculous or in wordplay.  It's very affable, it is.

My joke with a new (Ethiopian) coworker.

My one new (Ethiopian) coworker at the resthome is like 24, and her name is "Zabiba."

Like I always tend to do with people from different ethnicities, I asked her if her name meant anything, and said that it was an Arabic word meaning "raisin."

That surprised me, and then I said that she was too young to be "Raisin," that that might work for when she's old and wrinkled, but it doesn't work now, she should be called "Grape" instead.

She laughed and enjoyed that joke a lot, so the next time I worked with her, we were talking about "Raisin" again, and me and her looked up the Arabic word for "grape" on my smartphone.

It's something like "Enab," which when she saw it she realized she had heard it before.

So, now I always call her "Enab."

She loves that joke, and just finds it funny.

A possible theme for a TV ghost reality show?

"Hos and horror" or something like that, on prostitutes' paranormal experiences.

My one client with disabilities loves reality shows about ghosts and stuff, and that was totally her idea.

I'd watch it!

A recent dream, of my client.

The other week I dreamnt -

From the back right behind, I see my one client with disabilities sitting in her wheelchair and taking off her t-shirt.  Her shoulderblade is right there and outlined very strongly, and you can see the bones around her spine, and she's just very thin.

I think to myself that I knew that she was thin, but I had no idea that she was that thin.

Then, I wake up.

. . .

My coworkers are so much more normal now, than in academia.

My coworkers are so much more normal now, than in academia.

I had taken a few extra days off from my resthome job so I could stay at home and work on projects more (i.e., my campaign, though I didn't tell the RN that specifically), and she arranged my days off so I had them all in a row, so I wasn't around the resthome for like almost a week.

On the day I got back, then, I was walking in on the street outside, and coming towards me were two of my (Tibetan) (female) coworkers who had just clocked out, and so I waved to them and said hi as we were approaching one another, and one of them was like, "Where were you?, we haven't seen you for a while!", and so I said that I had taken a few extra days off and that I hadn't been in for like a week, and that today was my first day back.

"Good, I hope you had a good rest," my one (female) (Tibetan) coworker was like.

Honestly, it is so nice to be in a normal workplace!  That interaction was so normal!  Did I ever have an interaction like that in academia?

It's interesting, I've been in touch recently with like two to three grad students I know who are finishing up, and all of them are like, "F*ck academia," not because of how few tenure-track jobs there are, but how miserable the working environment is, both the short-term jobs you get while you try to finish up your degree and maybe get a tenure-track job and then, too, the tenured people you have to be around while you do all that.

"Self-centered clowns," is how one (Italian) grad student described (most of) the tenured, in a social media posting.

A resthome story: A bonding gesture.

My one (male) Tibetan coworker taught the one hundred-and-one-year-old resident with dementia how to do a fistbump, and they do that now whenever they see each other.

"I like to have something with everyone," he was like, "so they know me."

Some people on the subway and in subway stations...:

1) In one subway station on my way to work, a (young) (black) guy just sitting and waiting, hanging his feet off the edge of the platform, till a few minutes before the train comes, when he swings his feet up and rolls over a few times and lays on his side next to a column like six feet in from the platform edge.

2) As I'm in a car in the early afternoon on my way to work, a(n older) (broad-shouldered) (fat) (bald) (black) man with a small circular cloth covered pillow and three red plastic bottle caps on it, calling out loudly to everyone and doing the shellgame with them at full volume, while he announces each and every move to the car very loudly as he holds a roll of (fake) bills like fifties and hundreds, like "best game on earth, folks, see where it ends up, win a hundred dollars..."

Then, when he does that at one end of the car and then finishes and comes to the middle of the car and sits next to me, I'm like, "Man, please don't do that here," and he says something to me and goes ahead, so I'm like, "This is a fraud, you let people win and then you go and switch it," and he starts to speak up something, and then a (young) (Asian-American) woman standing up and holding a rail strap near us jumps in and cuts him off and is like, "He switches it, if you look closely, you can see him!", and then he defends his dignity, but no-one really plays with him or even pays attention to him now, so he sits quietly for a few stops, and then gets off the train.

3) As I'm returning home late at night from work on a quiet car with just me and a (middle-aged) (black) lady and a (cleancut) (young) (white) guy on it, we pull into a station and this train from the other direction is at the platform and just dumping out people onto the platform from just car after car packed with young sweaty concertgoers who were at some downtown music festival and now they're all loud and shouting, and a few are ambling over towards our train but fortunately none get on, and then the doors close and we start pulling away, and I'm like, "I am so glad that they are not on here," and the (black) lady is like, "I know, I was worried too, I wanted that door to close faster!", and at that the (cleancut) (young) (white) guy perks up and looks at us and just laughs, since he agrees, too.

We all bonded.

Halloween: Two bits.

1) This one little (Asian-American) boy had one of the most realistic firefighter costumes that I've ever seen, with like a yellow jacket and green flashy reflective tape pieces on it and a realistic-looking hat (no cheap red plastic hat at all!).

2) This one (black) woman was out with a (younger) (black) girl with a witch hat and a neon green wig and blood on her mouth.

"She's a vampire witch," the woman was like, "But she lost her teeth."

We talked some, and then for some reason the girl tried to get my attention and started jumping up and down and was like, "I got coffee candy tonight, I got coffee candy tonight!"

"Well," I was like, "Between all that sugar and now all that caffeine, you might need to go and find another vampire witch at bedtime, to cast a sleeping spell on you tonight."

"That spell's called 'Baby Benadryl,'" the woman was like to me, laughing.

You know what irks me?

The people I talk to forever about my campaign who are clearly interested and might very well end up voting for me, but who then won't sign the petition for me to get on the ballot, and are instead like, "Come back."

If you don't want to sign, just say it, honestly, it's so much more honest and understandable.

Instead, they're all going through the motions like they have to do research, when you know they won't, and the idea that I somehow have the time to go back to them in particular is just laughable, since I just canvassed the section and that and the productivity of uncanvassed streets and my 50 hour workweek between my jobs and my commute make it very unlikely I'll ever come back, at least in this stage of the campaign.

I really don't think people realize how much work it is to get signatures, and how much it helps to get just one more, and how much time it would be for me to go back and find them in particular, as if they as one individual would command that much weight in the world of potential people who could sign for me.

I guess they're trying to be nice?

Instead, they come off as clueless, and the worst kind of clueless, the people-who-think-they're-being-nice-but-aren't, and who perhaps think they're a bigger fish than they are, when they're really just one voter among thousands.

With those type of people, I find that I'd always rather deal with an outright asshole, it's so much more straightforward.

My response, though, is always something like, "Thanks, but I probably won't be back here again during signature season, please keep me in mind for the election, please do call or email me with any questions if you or your friends or your family have any..."

[insert eyeroll emoji here.]

You know what's awesome?

The landlord and his girlfriend and his two kids, like a baby and a six year old, moved in upstairs this summer.

And, they've decorated for Halloween!

Strings of skull lights on the front fence, a glittery pumpkin cut-out on their door, garbage bags tied up to look like big spiders sitting on the front stoop, that kind of thing.

My family never did that when I was younger and I don't think I've ever lived in an apartment that had that, and it's kind of fun to have around, to be honest.

The best part is is that someone else did all the decorating for me, and I just enjoy it when I come and go from my apartment and I see it sitting all out there!

I never thought I'd admit to liking something like this, unnecessary objects from consumer culture, and all the consumption.

I guess "an old dog can learn new tricks," and "don't knock it till you've tried it."

A dream of an apartment, and friends.

The other week I dreamnt:

I'm in the foyer of a house, and up to my left is a white carpetted staircase that jags left up the wall and then around right to a second floor that I can see up above extending out to my right, and it's all carpetted in white with no railing but maybe a little copperwork as sort of an open doorway in the middle, all sitting smack dab crosswise on top of another door on the floor below, that's in front of me in the foyer and down a few steps.

I walk up the stairs to my left and then turn to the copperwork, and it makes a low doorway, and there's a gap in the floor not quite a foot across, and beyond that the back of a white chair is pushed up tight to the edge of the gap, and I can see that in the room beyond it's the end of one row of similar chairs and there's another row facing it, all over to the left into the room on the second floor that I could see a bit from the foyer..

I somehow lean through and push the back of the chair and move the chair away from the gap to make some room for me to get to the other side, and between the gap and my having to bend over to get through the door, I'm really really scared of falling, and I don't know why anybody would set up a door like that, where there's a gap in the floor right where you're trying to get through.

Next, I'm somehow through, and I see over to my left my one art school friend who wears women's clothes slouched down in one chair, and across from him my one Romance Languages coordinator friend, and they're laughing and joking and discussing some movie they saw about Zimbabwe, like everything was normal and they hadn't noticed the fright I'd been in, getting through the weird doorway.

Then, I woke up.

. . .

A person on the subway the other day late at night when I was coming home from work:

A (fatter) (very late middle-aged) (black) woman with a short bristly moustache and a beard, and a lot of full plastic shopping bags, who comes in and sits down two seats up from me and has a Haagen-Dazs container in her hands with the plastic peeled back, and she sits there leaning forward and she holds it out in one hand and every once in a while she brings it in to her mouth to lick the top of it, since she doesn't have a spoon and must be really hungry for ice cream.

Two happenings at the resthome, recently:

1) I had heard that this one woman with pretty bad memory and confusion and delusion due to dementia was a very good piano player, and she finally got her piano bench repaired, and so I could finally go hear her play like we had talked about a number of times and like had she been inviting me to.

She plays by ear, and so I asked her to play "God Bless America" and "We'll Meet Again" and "Blue Skies" for me, and she did, and then she was getting tired, so I asked for "Good Night Ladies," and she did that and segued into a brash version of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" before doing a joke-y close.

Very smart and very humorous, and very amazing.  I really really loved it, and so did the one (Mexican) (female) aide who came and joined us at the end.

The one resident kept asking me to bring my "fiddle," though, because I had once told her that I play double bass, and since I had told her that I didn't own one but I had borrowed them years ago from different ensembles that I had played with, she was saying that I should have rented one from the people who had come by recently (?), and then we could have played together.

"Next time you bring your fiddle and we'll play together," she was like.

2) This one (very old) man and I were in the elevator, and he's largely non-verbal and can be out of it a lot of the time, and he pointed down at my right shoe and how one loop of my shoelace was too big and lying on the floor.

"Be careful," he was like.

Later that night, too, he got done with dinner after everyone else had finished, and a few dining hall workers were vacuuming and cleaning up, one in her socks, and as I was escorting him out of the dining hall he noticed a pair of shoes under the table, where the one dining hall worker had taken them off and left them while she was vacuuming.

As soon as he saw that ,he stopped dead in his tracks and kept pointing over at them, and he wouldn't get moving again until she came over and put her shoes back on, even though she was saying, "[his first name], I took them off because my feet hurt!".

. . .

(People with dementia can be highly attuned to changes in texture and color and shape, so that's maybe how he noticed my [black] shoelace lying against the [fake brown wood] elevator floor, and her [white] shoes among the [brown] table legs on the [green] carpet.  People's brains can change differently, too, where they can still do some things very well, even as they can't do other things at all, it's all really fascinating.)

A crack of the one retired psychiatrist at the resthome.

The other day, I was working at the resthome, and I was assisting the one retired psychiatrist again, and he asked me to search in his closet for his knit cap, since he needed it at night again since the weather was getting cooler out.

I finally found it in his front coat closet, and it was this very thin tight-knit acrylic cap that fit close to the head, and after I dug it out and handed it to him he pulled it down over his ears and far down onto his forehead.

"You know," I was like, "In that cap, you look kind of hip-hop, [the retired psychiatrist's first name]."

"Don't mess with me, motherf*cker," he was like, without missing a beat.

. . .

A word confused by one of my (Tibetan) coworkers.

The other day when I was starting up my shift at the resthome, I was asking for updates on different people who I'd be working with that day, and a couple aides told me that this one (very old) man had gotten regular milk at breakfast instead of the soy milk that he's supposed to get, and that he's lactose intolerant.

"All day he have motion," one of my (female) (Tibetan) coworkers was then like.

I didn't quite get what she meant, so I asked her to repeat herself, and she said something roughly the same and I didn't quite get what she meant again and so I asked her to repeat herself again, and this happened a few more times before finally this one (filipino) coworker of ours broke in and started saying something about his bowel "movements," and I realized then that my one (female) (Tibetan) coworker must have mixed up the words "movement" and "motion" in the phrase "bowel movement," maybe because of English as a non-native language proficiency stuff from her growing up in India.

A dream of the weird.

The other week I dreamed -

I was in a basement, and off this paved hallway was a cinder block room, and crumpled up against the wall was this (very thin) (very pale) woman in a bridal dress, and it looked like there was a light powder over her and her dress and around the part of the wall that she was laying against, though you could tell it was all different things and not just one layer of powder over everything or anything like that.

Next thing you know, she eased up creakily and then we were out in the hallway and she was walking beside me, and I realized she was a constituent and she was telling me about problems that she was having in the neighborhood.

I wasn't ill at ease, but I never looked directly at her face, and I was mildly suspecting that it was skull-like, or at least sunken in where the flesh was close up against the bone, and her hair was blonde and stringy in this little bonnet that had some black base fabric that the light veil was tacked onto, almost country-like, even, and at that point her dress wasn't bridal anymore, it was full and black, like from some thick material.

. . .

Another tale of one of my (Tibetan) coworkers.

My one (male) (Tibetan) coworker goes gambling every now and then at this one casino across the state lines.

A few months ago, he won $25,000 on the slots, and he still hasn't told his wife.

The other day, then, he was saying how lately they've been sending him coupons where he can stay overnight there for only $25, and so he can get a free buffet.

"I like buffet," he was like.  "It's so good, you can eat whatever you want."

It's interesting, too, this one (female) (filipino) woman who works as a private aide was telling me the other day that this other (filipino) woman was so thankful to her for her getting her some work, that she took her out to dinner a month ago, and this one other time to a casino out in the suburbs.

I've never worked at a job before, where so many of my coworkers go to casinos.

Two tales from the resthome where I work.

1) This one resident who's a bit serious lives in room 420, and the other day she wore a (melon-colored) tie-dyed hoodie.

When I was escorting her back to her room the other week after dinner, then, I explained the "420" thing to her, and then I was like, "Between that and the tie-dye, you better be careful, or people might start thinking you're a pothead."

"Perhaps," she was like, laughing.

2) The other week, one of the front desk workers said that this one woman who works in the front office had taught him a new word:

"twatwaffle."

He was googling it, to see how it was used, and he asked me if I knew it.

Man, am I busy.

Between my campaign and my jobs, I'm so super busy.

My jobs are nice enough, but what with the commute and all, forty hours becomes fifty, every single week, and my job at the resthome is really physical where you're always running around all the time, so you get tired out a lot.

I've noticed that I've been putting "shv" (shave) and "nails" on my to-do list, so I can cross them out as accomplishments for the day for the days when I do them.

Sometimes, too, I plan on doing them at night, but I simply don't, I'm so tired.

I have to shave more, too, since I need to look cleancut for when I go out campaigning.

Addendum: I have to restrain my sense of humor.

I really do have to restrain my sense of humor when I talk with voters.

The other week, I was talking with some voter and we had really good rapport going and then they mentioned the neighborhood rat problem.

So, I put on a bit of a bombastic character voice and was like, "You know, what I say is, let's start up some more activities for kids like archery lessons, and then the city can sell them licenses, and then they can go out and kill the rats.  You keep the kids busy, the city makes a little money, and less rats, it's win win win!".

Then, the voter gave me a blank stare, and I thought "Oh shit," so I just gave an honest answer like I didn't even make the joke, and I thought to myself that I'll never do that again.

The things I do for the common good!

I have to restrain myself.

On some level, it pains me.

A neighborhood problem: Rats.

One of my volunteers couldn't help out, because of a rat problem.  Rats were in the foundation of her house, and her and her husband have a basement apartment!

Someone told me, too, that the local dollar store closed for renovations recently because of a rat problem, because someone moved something and a rat was just sitting there on the shelf.

I later told that story to someone when I was out campaigning, and they had heard it too, only they said someone pulled a bag of dog food off the shelf, and the rat came out and ran up their hand.

A resthome antic: A dementia impression.

The other week after assisting the one retired psychiatrist with a shower at the resthome, he was in his living room watching TV, and I was cleaning up his bathroom.

Then, when I passed him on my way out of his room with his dirty towels all wrapped up in a bundle in another towel, he turned to me and mugged a blank face and was like, "Why did you make a baby, and where are you taking it?".

Then, he chuckled to himself, and went back to watching TV.

A very weird and rare occurrence...

My lips are chapped!

My lips like absolutely never get chapped.

The other night they were mildly chapped, and I was eating a big salad with oil and a bit too much vinegar on it, and my lips stung a lot, and then after that they got hugely chapped.

I don't have any chapstick or anything, so I rub them occasionally, and now I'm trying to dab a bit of olive oil on them, that I keep out in a spoon that I can dip my finger into.

I think that'd work?

I really don't know the philosophy of how a person keeps their lips moist, with what works.

Two people on the subway, on successive days:

1) A (tall) (young) (blonde) girl with shorter shorts and wide hips, talking very loudly in her high-pitched voice about musical theater with some other young person, and saying how in high school she was always the "musical theater kid" who knew all the cast members on all the albums, but since she got to college, other people's knowledge has put her to shame, and that's okay.

2) A(n older) (black) man with a moustache and a soul patch, in a porkpie hat and a short-sleeved shirt and khaki dress pants, who every once in a while makes a loud smacking sound, about every ten to thirty seconds or so...

I think he's gone, but then many stops later other people who had sat down on the subway bench in between us get up and leave, and out of the corner of my ear I hear that sound again, and I glance up from my book, and he's still there.

A dog and an owner I met while out canvassing:

This young golden retriever that lay on the grass and licked my feet while I spoke with his owner, a (late middle-aged) (Chinese-American) woman.

I laughed and told her that that was the first time a dog ever licked my feet like that while I was out talking with voters, and she laughed and said that he licks everything.

I then joked that she should start a cleaning business, where if people drop food on the floor, she could rent the dog out to the people to go and lick the floor clean for them.

At that, she laughed again.

"Only five dollars, reasonable prices, not too much!", she was like, riffing on the joke.

A sight the other day when I was out canvassing:

a (younger middle-aged) (white) woman sitting out on the low slab of cement that led up to her front door like a stoop, while a big fat mostly black-haired pig was standing out in the fenced-in cement yard wolfing down a third of a watermelon and pushing it around the sidewalk as it tried to eat, the juice bleeding out like water and staining the walk.

He was five years old and named "Banjo," and had a few long thin black hairs coming out off the end of his tail.

A wonderful compliment by a constituent the other day.

The other day when I was finishing up canvassing, I was walking past this one stretch of street that I had been down by earlier, and I saw this (Chinese-American) husband who I had talked to out in this park opposite his house with his kids, and this similarly aged (Chinese-American) woman sitting on the steps of the house in a pink sweatshirt.

Since I assumed that she was his wife, I went up to her and introduced myself and explained that I had met her husband earlier, and we chatted a bit.

She had a *ton* of policy questions for me, and we talked a while, and then she dug into my professional background a bit more.

After all of that, she was like, "You're very brave," and thanked me for running, and said that she has the same beliefs but simply wouldn't go and take the risk like that.

Wasn't that amazing?

No-one's ever told me that before, and I thanked her very warmly; it really is a lot of time and energy and risk, and very few people seem to see it.

It's nice to see that that's appreciated.

Random thoughts on my academic preparation.

I'm much happier working in the resthome where I'm at, and not being walking on eggshells among the corrupt and malfeasant in academia, while investing 80-hour workweeks over years for no money and no certain career or even a certain offramp where you can make ends meet as you try to transition out and transition into a more stable career.

But, the other day I was thinking about all the languages I know, and how many hours I'd spent putting into learning Greek and Latin and Hebrew and whatnot.

So many hours, over simply years and years; the courses, and the summer courses, and the mornings at my kitchen table a few times a week, with texts and language aides and study cards that I'd make up.

I enjoyed it and I'm glad I did it, but it's simply odd, that it's not being used somehow.

I honestly have these file folders with texts of Eusebius and Origen that I'd read in the original, on something vaguely related to my research interest but more just something I was interested in in order to help me master the language.

It's so strange, that it's just locked away in there.

Maybe one day I'll go back.  If I ever turn my dissertation into a pop book, the project after the next project after that will involve the languages, "should I live so long."

It's not obvious any more that I'll have the ability to get around to those projects, though I more probably will if I lose my campaign, since I can see how my resthome job dovetails nicely with long days off at home where I sit and rest up and read and write.

In a way, it's the academy's loss, that they don't have a home for a competent person of good will.  Just sad.

A (foreign) coworker's observation on one resthome resident.

One (foreign) coworker was saying that she thinks this one resthome resident with mid-stage dementia can be really obstinate, since he had been very controlling of his wife in his marriage.

"People here knew him and his wife, they say he always told her what to do," she was like. "He is the same way with us, he is used to being in charge."

"I didn't realize that," I was like, since he has pictures of her everywhere in his room, and it had seemed like a happy marriage.

One day when I was in his room with him, too, he led me over to his bureau to show me some pictures on top of himself in World War II, and I pointed to a picture of his wife as a young bride.

At that, he looked over there and smiled, and blew a kiss towards her picture and waved at it.

Life is complicated.

The Secret Lives of Constituents: Public parks.

The other week when I was finishing up gathering signatures to go get on the ballot, I was walking back to my bike and stopped to talk to a (middle-aged) (white) guy out on his porch who I had talked to earlier that day, and then I met a(n older) (white) woman walking her dog who I got to sign my petition, and then I finally walked back up to my bike, and there across the street in a park was another (older) (white) woman, just out there standing in the middle of the park with two little dogs and looking at her phone.

So, I started walking over and called out to her from a distance so as not to spook her, and she looked up and said hi, and then she said we had met a while ago when I was out knocking doors in another part of the neighborhood.

Then, I got closer and recognized her, and I said I was gathering signatures to get on the ballot now, and she agreed to sign my petition.

And, after that was done, she laughed at herself, and she said she'd been out there for an hour just staring at her phone and playing Pokemon Go, while her husband thinks she's out just walking the dogs.

"He's probably wondering where I am," she was like.

Then, she said that the park was actually a Pokegym, and since it was controlled by Team Red and she's on Team Yellow, she could go there and take on super tough Pokemon.

"Look," she was like, and she showed me her phone, and there was like a huge dragon on there, and something kind of robot-looking.

Then, she started scrolling through her Pokemon.

"I don't even know what all of these are," she was like.  "You have to really know the Pokemon to know their powers, but I just do trial and error, I learned this whole game trial and error."

Then, she fought the one monster more, and it died, and a Vulpix showed up on screen as her reward.

Her first Poke ball didn't catch it, so then she showed me how you could feed it a raspberry and use a stronger ball and you'd probably catch it, and she did.

"Some days I wake up at three in the morning and I turn my phone on, and there's all these Pokemon in my living room, just waiting for me to catch them!", she was like.  "They're not usually there, but they are in the middle of the night."

She then told me that some people told her that the aquarium downtown is a good place to play, but she hasn't had a chance to go down there yet to play.

"This whole thing sounds like a lot of fun," I was like.

"It is!", she was like.  "Just don't start until you're done with your campaign."

Comment of one 97-year old resthome resident...

...when I said bye to her the other night when my shift was coming to an end, and I said I'd see her on Friday:

"Maybe, but at my age, I'm not making any plans."

. . .

Crack of one resident about this past week, with the Supreme Court drama.

This past week, I was leaving work for the night and this one (younger) resthome resident was outside having a smoke, since he's a bit of a nightowl.

It was raining a bit, so I stood outside with him and talked a bit until the rain died down some so I could walk to the subway station, since I had forgotten my umbrella.

Anyhow, we talked for a while about the whole Supreme Court thing, and at some point I made the comment that politics was stressing me out and I just needed a break from it for a little while.

"Well," he was like, "You're not going to get it."

One resthome resident is really ready to die.

One of the resthome residents is really ready to die, and the other week she was in a lot of pain and was talking about it again.

We spoke some, and she said her children understood and were at peace with her wanting that, so I said that was a good thing.

Then, she got very nice and thanked me for being her good friend, and she then gave me a sort of a benediction, and she ended by saying that she hopes that I get everything that I want in life.

So, I thanked her very seriously, then I was like, "And you know what, right now one of the main things that I'm hoping for is what you're hoping for, that death comes for you soon," and I started laughing.

She started laughing, too.

Anyone else, I wouldn't say something like that, but it's true, and we have that vibe where I can say that.

The morbidity of it is kind of ridiculous, though.

Comment of a resthome resident, the other Shabbat.

The resthome residents have a range of observance, from some people who go to services all the time, to others who can't wait to get shrimp and either sneak in take-out or can't wait until they can go out for dinner and order it.

(The kitchen keeps kosher, with separate meat and milk meals.)

Anyhow, if I'm working a Friday evening shift, I always try to wish people "Shabbat shalom" or "Good Shabbos," especially the more observant residents.

So, a few Fridays ago, I was at a table and wished the (older) (well-dressed) (Jewish) ladies "Good Shabbos" in turn, and then as an afterthought I wished the one retired psychiatrist it, as well.

As soon as I did that, he was like, "[My first name], why the f*ck did you say that?  You're not a Jew and I barely am one."

The best part was that he just said that in a normal tone of voice, and there were special guests all around and everyone was all dressed up, and there was table clothes and everyone was waiting for the candles to be lit.

Later, too, after dinner, I was helping him to transfer back into his wheelchair, and he was like, "Good Shabbos, motherf*cker."

. . .

I broke an egg on the way home from the supermarket.

The other week when I got home from the supermarket, I was unpacking one of my grocery bags and I realized that I had carried the eggs wrong, and one at the corner of the carton had gotten its side crushed in from pressing against my arm or my side or whatever as I had been carrying it.

That part of the carton was soaked, so I took out as many eggs as I could from that part of the carton, and I put them in the empty slots of a container of eggs that I had in the fridge that I wasn't done with yet.

Then, I carefully tore the cardboard carton halfway down, so that one half was dry with eggs in it, and the other half had the wet part that I was going to go throw out.

On top of all of this, the yolk and some of the white was left in the bottom part of the one broken egg, and I manged to boil that and eat it, so I even saved half the egg.

Basically, when I was boiling up some water to put some pasta in, I floated the bottom part of the egg on the top of the heating water, and it stayed there for a bit like a boat and then water got in it and the egg sunk, but the yolk and the white stayed inside it and they congealed and cooked up instead of getting all stringy in the bubbles and currents of the boiling water, and that little bottom part formed like a little teacup bowl with a bit of egg in it, that I could get at by peeling the sides of the egg away.

I wouldn't normally do that with a broken egg, but it wasn't like that when I left the store, so I knew that the egg wasn't spoiled or anything, and I wouldn't get sick from eating it.

Observation of a very old resthome resident, who wants to die.

One of the resthome residents really really wants to die, since she's so old and she's in such decline.

It's not a depression thing, more of a tired / pain and an it's-just-time thing, and her kids know her attitude and are okay with it, and she has a "Do Not Resuscitate" order, too, and now it's just a matter of waiting.

The other day we were talking about random stuff, including a lot of politics, and then she mentioned again that she just wants to die already.

"And I want to take him with me," she was like, meaning Trump.

"In that case, [her name]," I was like, "Please go quickly!".

She got a kick out of that.

Addendum.

You really don't think about it until you type it out (or at least I don't?), but "deodorant" is really like "de-" and "odor" and maybe like an "-ant" suffix from Latin, where it's the thing that takes the odor off of you.

I dropped the top of my deodorant in the bathroom.

It fell and then bounced off the wall and then skittered, and it ended up on top of a small black floor tile, some of which appear every know and then between the much bigger white tiles, that make up most of my bathroom floor.

An exploded pen, and an interaction afterwards.

The other week, I was commuting in to work at my one private client's house, and I took a pen out of my bookbag in order to write up my to-do list for the coming week.

All of a sudden, then, I notice a black smear on the back of the envelope that I was using for my list, and I lift up my pen to look at it, as I notice that my hand is all smeared up with the same black ink from my pen, which I guess had gotten cracked up somehow and broken in my backpack, to the point where all the black ink would leak out.

So, I set it down on the floor of the subway car so I wouldn't get dirty anymore, and so I could pick it up carefully when I got off to go and throw it out, so some employee for the public transit company wouldn't have to go and do it like I was some slob or something.

And, so I could use my phone to read news articles and whatnot, I rubbed my hands all together, to spread the ink out so that it would dry quicker, so I could use my hands until I finally got to my client's house and I could go wash my hands there.

Finally, when I did get there, I washed my hands, but little bits of ink remained on my nails and on the side of my right hand, where I guess I hadn't washed carefully enough.

When I saw my client, then, I raised up my hands and was like, "Just so you know, my pen broke on the ride here and I got ink all over my hands, I wasn't finger-f*cking a chimney sweep or anything like that."

. . .

She liked that joke, she has a dirty sense of humor.

Uneven cuticles.

It drives me crazy sometimes how your cuticles look after you press them down.

Especially on the cuticles on my index fingers, they look uneven.

My pinkie and thumb cuticles are tough to push down, too, but that's a separate matter, and more about the odd angle that you have to come in from in order to go push them down.

Two people on public transportation:

1) A (young) (black) guy with his head wrapped in one of those shiny doo-rag scarves, and sunk in his phone, who gets up as soon as he sees a(n elderly) (black) lady with a cane get on board, to give his seat to her.

2) A (middle-aged) (black) man with weird orange sunglasses and an orange backpack that he scoots under his seat, who strikes up a conversation with the woman next to him in too-loud a voice, and who seems off, and who towards the end of his ride lets out a loud belch as he's sitting there sprawled out and staring straight forward, and is like, "Excuse me," in his too-loud voice.

A playful resthome resident.

One of the resthome residents is this short and well-dressed distinguished-looking guy who's a hundred and one years old, and he displays dementia and has lost much of his verbal capacity, but a lot of the time he can be quite quick-witted and playful, non-verbally.

For example, I have to walk with him and escort him to and from the dining room, and one day when he was one of the last ones out, I was a bit ahead of him and so I turned around and walked backward, just to f*ck with him.

He was amused by that, and then all of a sudden he stopped and mugged looking around me, like something was coming up behind me and like I was going to trip and fall and get hurt somehow.

LOL.

Another day, he was eating slow too, and I had escorted the other residents who I was supposed to assist that day back to their rooms, and I came back to get him, and he was still at his table, leisurely drinking coffee.

He had been folding a (cloth) napkin, so I took another one and carefully folded it into ever smaller triangles, until you couldn't fold it any more, it was so fat.

Then, next thing I know, he takes that napkin, fiddles with it and with his, and all of a sudden he's holding both of them up in front of me as two overlapping napkins, one pointing up and one pointing down, and together they form the Star of David, and he's chuckling gleefully.

So, after he set those down, I took the two napkins, unfolded them one time, put them together again, and held up an even bigger Star of David in front of him, which made him laugh again.

Then, I put the napkins down, and when I went to unfold them another time to get even bigger triangles, he laughed pretty hard, and was like, "Oh boy!"

One time, too, I was assisting him in this short hallway with a cement floor, and my one (male) (Tibetan) coworker was passing by, so he stopped to say hello for a bit, and when the older gentleman was walking by this one stain on the cement, my coworker pointed to it and was like, "Hey [his first name], did you do that, did you do that?!".

At that, the resident paused, took his hands off the walker and turned, and mimicked like he was waving his dick and pissing on the floor.

At that, they both chuckled, and my coworker then explained to me that one time the resident had gotten confused and he had thoughten that he had pissed on the floor when he had seen that, so they both go and joke about that now.

That gave me the idea of more risque humor with him, so that very same day when I took that one resident into the dining room, there's these little round half-dome plastic lids where the kitchen workers set out sample plates of what's being served that day.

Me and him have joked with those before, where one time they were both empty and I gestured to them both like something was there, and he paused like he was thinking them over and deciding between them before pointing to one of them and being like, "I'll have that one."

Also, another time I took them and clapped them both together in front of me like I was some monkey at the circus or with some organ grinder, and still another time I took one and held it up like a bell and I struck it and made bell sounds like "BONNNNGGGG," at which he pulled out his backscratcher from his bag on his walker and went to go strike it like he was hitting a bell.

Anyhow, this time I took the two round half-dome plastic lids by their little handles on top. and I put them against my chest like I had breasts.

He paused and laughed, and then he paused and made his eyes go half shut and he stuck his tongue out and shook his head back and forth, as if his head was between two breasts, and he was going crazy licking them.

LOL.

I didn't quite expect that reaction.

It goes to show you, dementia can change people's capacities, but people are themselves just the same.

One (Jewish) resthome resident on Sukkot.

This one (Jewish) resident of the resthome where I work for my one job was saying how she's always liked Sukkot, and how it's a festival to celebrate the harvest.

"It's a happy festival," she was like.  "We don't have too many of those."

Tibetan hello.

One of my (female) (Tibetan) coworkers, the really nice one who was anxious about the body of the one resident being taken me away so soon, taught me the typical Tibetan greeting the other day, and she said that I should go and surprise the other Tibetan who was working with it.

So I did that, and that (male) Tibetan coworker was surprised, and pleasantly so.

I asked him what it meant, too, and he really couldn't explain.

"It's like 'hello' but better," he was like.  "It's like all the good things."

Once, too, a few months ago, me and him had been talking about Tibetan names, and he couldn't really explain a lot of them either and he used explanations like that, like that the name is "something really good," so I ended up googling them, and the names all turned out to be all of these Buddhist concepts and stuff.

I find it interesting that when all of that kind of stuff meets the limits of my coworker's vocabulary, he explains them all by saying that they're "really good."

I wonder how much of those names and sayings are like that on a conscious level for Tibetans, every day, and how much of it is like when you meet a woman here and her name is Hope, since you don't really think about that name at all as a concept unless you're asked about it, it's all like background in your mind.

A dream of things off.

The other night I dreamnt -

I'm looking in my bathroom mirror, and for some reason my eyes hone in on my nostrils and I start looking at them.

After a few seconds, my right nostril I see in the mirror is all clear, but I look at my left, and it's full of tiny hairs from the edge and the top of the nostril, all sticking out at like an eighth of an inch long.

And, I realize that I had forgotten to trim that nostril with my nosehair scissors.

Then, I wake up.

. . .

Score at the drug store!

Like a month ago, I came home from work after a long day at the rest home, and I had dinner and read, and it was getting near midnight.

And, I was hungry for ice cream.

So, I went to the local 24-hour drugstore, and wouldn't you know it, ice cream was on sale, 2 quarts for $8, and even though they mostly still had plain vanilla and a really crappy caramel flavor, I was able to find Mint Chocolate Chip and Cookies and Cream in the back of the freezer, since I was looking for those 2 or maybe some Rocky Road.

I got that and a big bottle of wine, and then when there was a line at the automated checkouts, a (younger) (pudgy) (male) (hispanic) clerk opened up a cash register, and I went there and he was chatty, and we chit-chatted as he rang me up and I put the ice cream and the wine into a cloth bag.

"Look at that," I was like, at a pause in the conversation.  "So much happiness in one bag, and only sixteen dollars."

"A bag of happiness," he was like, "That's so funny."

On rice.

Towards the end of this past summer, I noticed that every now and then I'd crave a bowl of rice with soy sauce in the morning, so in addition to my usual breakfast, I'd cook up some jasmine rice, douse it with soy sauce, and wolf it down last thing before I left the house.

I'm thinking now that maybe that was a response to all those 90-degree days and hot nights where I was sweating a lot, and I was needing to replenish my salts.

On another note, I've said it once and I'll say it again, if I was Asian and a drag queen, my stage name would be "Jasmine Rice."

A grandmotherly quirk.

My one homecare client said that if her grandmother was alive, she'd have used swear-words about Trump, even "sh*thead."

To her, 'sh*t' was her worse word that she could use, even worse than 'f*ck.'

"That's weird," I was like.

"Yeah, isn't it?", my one homecare client was like.

Food stories from the resthome (2 of 2): A spicy chicken wrap.

One of the sandwich wraps I had that day had chicken in it that was surprisingly spicy.

"What is the spice on that chicken?", I was like.

"I think it's kuh-joon," one of my Tibetan coworkers was like.

"What?", I was like.

"Kuh-joon," she was like.

Then, the one RN called out from her back office, "It's pronounced 'Cajun'!".

. . .

The tortilla on that wrap was red, too, I think to indicate that it was the spicy one.

Food stories from the resthome (1 of 2): Odd smell.

The other week at the resthome, I came into the office to start my shift, and there was a lot of food out that was left over from some lunch that people were putting away, and underneath that major food smell was a slightly odd stomach-turning smell, kind of a bit like vomit.

I mentioned it, but no-one else could smell it.

Later, I realized that it was under-ripe honey dew melon on the fruit tray.

If you ever smell under-ripe honey dew melon, it kind of smells like vomit.

The events of a night at my apartment.

At 4am I wake up, since there's footsteps going up the stairs that go above my bedroom, though the upstairs apartment is currently vacant because the landlord is redoing it.

Later, I dream that I had just gotten to work at the resthome and am looking through my backpack for my work shoes that I had thought I had put in there, but I can only find informal shoes and sandals, including one pair where the soles of both feet are rubbed away so it's almost like the front half of the sandal isn't really there any more.

I put on the sandals to wear them for work, and I hope for the best.

. . .

A subway passenger sitting next to me the other day:

This (youngish) (thin) (black) woman in a tracksuit and with these long thin sleek braids has her phone out to Facetime with "WIFEY," but they only talk every once in a while, since the woman on the other end is putting on makeup and going around the house getting ready for work or something, every once in a while repositioning her phone so the woman I'm sitting next to can keep on watching her, even though the angles are bad and oftentimes the phone's in way too close.

Occasionally, there's crackles out of the phone from the other end, like someone's crumpling up paper close to the mike.

A t-shirt I saw the other day...

...on a (pot-bellied) (bearded) (white) guy who was standing on the subway platform waiting for a train going in the other direction, as my train pulled up:

REAL MEN EAT ASS

. . .

When I told the one retired psychiatrist at the resthome about it, he just found it distasteful.

"You know," he was like, "Some things just aren't funny."

He's endlessly amused by how I went to go see Stormy Daniels, though, and always asks me for any new Stormy Daniels news that I've come across since I last saw him.

A resthome happening:

A resident with dementia has one shoe off and one shoe on, and keeps trying to put the one shoe on the foot that already has a shoe on it.

When I try to guide him to go put it on the other foot, he keeps insisting on doing what he's doing.

I have to call someone else to come in, to reset the situation and try to get him to put his shoes on right so he won't walk around without one shoe on and trip and fall and hurt himself.

Remnants of the shattered bowls.

The other day,  I was cleaning my one lefthand kitchen sink basin around the drain, and there was a long white sliver, from the one shattered bowl.

A few days later, I saw something white out of the corner of my eye on a window sill in the kitchen, and it turned out to be a chunk of shattered bowl, it had flown that far and ended up just sitting there.

When I picked it up, a small piece of clear glass must have been on it, since it stuck in my one fingertip and made me bleed a lot, and I had to pull it out.

The white bowl shards whacked the one glass bowl with such force that not only did it break that one bowl, but it must have carried away some chunks of glass with it, too.

A resthome coworker (2 of 2): Us.

The other night when me and my one spacey (African-American) coworker were going home, we were paused at a stop, and there was a train pulled up on the opposite side of the platform, and it was packed and in the middle of it there was a (young) (African-American) guy standing in the middle of the car facing away from us, and he had his shirt off and he was looking down and starting to unbuckle his pants, just as our train started pulling away again.

"Did you see that?!", she was like.

"Yeah," I was like, and I told her about the other night when I had seen some guys walking up and down between cars, and one of them had propped open an intercar door behind him with an empty bottle that someone else had to go and reach down and get out so the door would close between the cars, though it didn't stop the train from moving since it was a door between cars, not a door between the car and the platform.

. . .

I was so tired that same night with the shirtless guy because so much had been going on at work, when I got home that night I was taking a plate out of my cupboard and it accidentally knocked a bowl out and it fell in my sink and shattered and a piece of it hit a glass salad bowl that I use a lot, and that cracked and a big piece fell out of it, and there was cheap porcelain and glass everywhere, and I was so tired and yet I had to go and sweep it up right then, since it was everywhere.