Smoke alarm problems.

The other morning at 5:40am, my smoke alarm started beeping, since its battery had begun to run out.

I had to set up a chair on my bed and stand on it and take the alarm down from the ceiling to get it to stop beeping, all while sleepy, so I could go back to sleep again.  The chair wobbled, too.

That night after work, I replaced the battery and put it back up.  I wanted to put it off, but I was superstitious that if I did that, that that would turn out to be the one night I would actually need my smoke alarm.

Three sights on a recent subway ride:

1) A(n Asian) grandmother with a baby carriage and a(n adorable) grandbaby, who wouldn't sit in an open seat near where a (black) person was sitting, though she sat down after a few people got up and left a big space to sit in, which made it unclear if she didn't want to sit in a tight space or next to a (black) person.

2) A (young) (black) guy who seems well-kempt and has a big roll of (white) plastic bags in his hands, who comes onto the train and walks up and down throughout the car peeling a few bags off and laying them on empty seats, and then he goes back and retraces his steps and picks a few up and then drops the roll and walks to the end of the car and goes onto the next train, only to return like 10 minutes later and find the roll and pick it up and pick up some but not all of the bags as well, tearing off a few new ones, too, and throwing one onto the floor and kicking it somewhere else.

Eventually, he goes onto the next car, roll in hand.

3) A (white) man in a (red) t-shirt, standing on a roof and smoking and looking around at taller buildings than him, though it's totally not a porch and totally just a roof, with no obvious means of entrace or exit, you can see as the train runs elevated a few buildings from the building where he's standing.

A tale of the resthome: Cheap residents.

The other week, one of the aides was talking about how cheap some of the residents are.

If people wear "pull-ups" (the less shaming word for adult diapers), often they have these little super-absorbent pads that get stuck into them, that are cheaper and can be pulled out and replaced if they're wet, instead of replacing the entire "pull-up."

Anyhow, one resident was so cheap, that she would take the used pad and cut out the wet parts with scissors, and then combine the dry parts from previous pads and reuse them.

. . .

I honestly wonder if that worked.

On the minimum wage increase.

Minimum wage is going up like a dollar where I live.

But, that would only matter at one of my jobs where I work 3 days a week, which is like 7.5 hours by the time you take time out for a break each day, which then comes out to like 22.5 hours a week in all.

And, $22.50 a week means like $90 a month, or $1170 a year (and both of those figures are before taxes!).

It's nothing to sneeze at, but honestly, my gas and electricity bucks have gone up like $30-40 a month in total since my wages have been pretty much flat, so if my rent goes up any, that raise will be completely wiped out.

Isn't that sad?

And to think of how much I work.

A tale of the resthome: Birthday parties of years past.

The one (retired psychiatrist) resident who I work with a lot at my one resthome job was telling me the other week that years ago a friend of his had a 'high school prom'-themed birthday party for some big even-numbered birthday of his like forty or fifty or something, and everyone agreed that he had to go as the prom queen.

So, his wife helped him with the costume, and arranged to have a dress made.  But, since he's big, she had to go to the department store downtown, and order fabric from the curtains department.

The ins-and-outs of a 40-hour workweek.

My 40-hour workweek isn't so bad, since my jobs are pleasant, and when I have a downtime I can catch up on news or even read some.

Sometimes, though, I have a "split weekend" where my two days off are not together, so I might have a day off and then work a few days more and then I'll have my 2nd day off for the week.

It's manageable and overall my work right now is so much better than my other jobs I've been having before this, but it's surprising how much less it feels like days off when your days off are split up and you don't have them two in a row.  Going back to work right away the next day after your day off makes the whole thing not feel like as much of a day off as it could be, somehow.

Addendum, to a death.

I almost forgot -

The night before that one resthome resident died, she was spending a long time after dinner having her tea, and since I had some downtime, we sat and talked.

She kept talking of a "bubble" in her throat, and she said she had to wait for the tea to go down.

She also didn't feel like her carrot cake, and gave it to me.

Normally I wouldn't eat it in a situation like that, but it seemed right, so I took it and ate it, and thanked her.

She was pleased.