Water outage.

Earlier this month, one boiler gave out at the apartment building of my one assisted living client with disabilities, so they had to shut the water off at her building one morning in order to try to fix it.

So, the night before, part of my duties was to fill up a lot of pots with water, in case the water was off for longer than they had said it would be.

The day after the water outage, I checked up with her on how that all went.

She said they fixed it quick, and the water was actually on, just no hot water, so it ended up just being really painful for her to wash her hands, the water was so cold.

So, I told her that the next time the water gets shut off and she needs to wash her hands, she should get some ground beef instead and rub her hands on it, then have her cat lick it off.

She said she'd consider it.

Tip from a jazz bassist.

The other week at the Hanukkah party at the resthome, they had a jazz ensemble in, and afterwards I told the double bassist that I used to play and that I'd been meaning to get back to it for a long time, like relearning it and joining a community orchestra or something, and that I really enjoyed watching him play.

And, he was like, "Go check out this pawn shop at [name of an intersection] by the [name of a theater]," and he clued me in to a nice bass that they had for $950.

"No way," I was like.

"It's really nice," he was like.

"Why is it so nice?", I was like.

"Probably because they don't know where it came from," he was like, as old people with walkers flowed through the lobby around us, making their way towards the second round of hors d'oeuvres.

 . . .

Long and short of it is, it was sold, but I talked to the store owners by phone and it's a legit music place that trades in used instruments and they have a guy who supplies them with double basses, so I told them what I was looking for and gave them my phone number, and they're going to get in touch with him for me.

I'm thinking that I have the money now and I'm turning 40 soon, so why not, $950 or so is cheap for a midlife crisis.

It would be fun to relearn the bass, and I can probably check out musical scores and CDs from the main library downtown, and play along to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony or Wagner or whatever.

Doesn't that sound like fun?

Addendum:

The next afternoon when I went to go into work, the tray with the peas in it and the peeled potato quarters and the carrot chunks and some more peas, too, all of that was still out on the pavement in the subway station near my house.

And, I noticed a few stray bean sprouts mixed in there, too, which made me think that this was somehow a tray of vegetables that a (Chinese) person had been carrying, though I couldn't quite figure out how bean sprouts would square with potatoes and peas and carrots all in a single vegetable mix.

Sight after working Christmas Day this year...

...as I come up out of the subway, to get my bicycle and bicycle on back to my house:

A metal tray with a few peas in it, and some peeled potato quarters and some carrot chunks and some more peas scattered all over the pavement near it, like someone had dropped a tin of vegetables that they had brought to or from someone's house that they had been visiting.

Sight after midnight mass this year...

...as I descend into the subway downtown at like 1:45am in order to go home:

A little metal packet of mayo sitting out on the turnstile box, right next to where you swipe your card so you can get in.

I found a glove.

The other week when I was working at the home of my one assisted living client with disabilities, I went to go take out the trash and recycling, and there I found a glove sitting on the pavement of the parking lot right outside the backdoor of the apartment building.

It was a black and kind of nice-ish ski glove type of glove, and it seemed kind of new, so I brought it back inside the building and I left it inside the small main floor foyer on a table that's between a couple of chairs that I've never seen anyone sit in, though sometimes people leave packages on the table for people to pick up.

I hope the person who lost the glove looks for it and sees it there, before a cleaning person or whoever sees it there and takes it away and chucks it.

. . .

[. . .]

Revelation of a (petite) resthome resident who used to work in department stores:

Her family emigrated from Germany because of increasing anti-Semitism, and she was there for Kristallnacht when they burned the synagogue in the town where she had lived in.

"Seeing the flames like that is something you never forget," she told me.

When she said that, she had been telling me that years ago they put up a plaque commemorating that and the town had invited her back, but she didn't even reply to the invitation.

"They didn't want me and they didn't get me the first time," she was like, "so why should I give them a second chance."

Sight leaving my one resthome job the other night:

A (laid back) (older) (black) woman in a wheelchair in sunglasses and with a big scarf wrapped all around her head and neck and shoulders, just hanging outside the liquor store as it's closing, singing "O Holy Night" at the top of her lungs to the pretty empty street.

And, she didn't seem insane, just bored, and maybe doing things in her own style.

Idea of some resthome residents, after a recent discussion group.

The other week I bumped into some resthome residents after they had attended the weekly discussion group, where the topic that week had been the impending legalization of recreational marijuana in our state.

They were saying that for the January discussion group, since that stuff would be legal then, that they should bring some in and smoke it while they talk.

Comment of one resthome coworker, about another.

I've noticed that at some point every resthome coworker of mine bitches about every other resthome coworker of mine, saying that they don't do their work and so foist it onto everyone else.

I don't think that's true, but people still bitch.

The other week I overhead my one (female) (Mexican) coworker bitching about my one (male) (Nigerian) coworker.

"Look at him!", she was like, to someone else.  "He has all those muscles, but he doesn't use them!".

People on the bus the other month:

1) A (young) (thin) (black) guy with crazy eyes talking on his phone so loud, talking about some nasty chick who doesn't smell like perfume, she smells like shit, and "fuck this" and "fuck that," all for a very long time until he finally gets off the bus.

. . .

2) After he leaves, a (younger) (fat) (bearded) (white) guy, who turns around to talk to people very loudly, saying how he was in prison for some crime but he doesn't do anything now, and he doesn't seem to be talking to anyone in particular, so the bus driver asks him to stop, or she'll go and make him get off the bus.

. . .

3) Like right after he gets on, the (older) (black) lady sitting next to me, who I had chit-chatted with on and off for the entire ride, who goes to get off the bus to go meet her friend for dinner, who after saying "Have a good night" is like, "And good luck with the other one."

People on the subway the other month:

1) A (fat) (moustachioed) (white) guy in a baseball hat and in a union shirt saying "brother" to a(n older) (black) guy who says he's a poet with a book on Amazon, and they both have loud voices like "that guy," and then a (younger) (black) woman with a soft voice butts in and asks the (black) guy why doesn't he vote and protest both, not just protest and raise consciousness about the system.

Only, this goes on for well over twenty minutes until the (older) (black) guy finally gets off the train, and then the (fat) (moustachioed) (white) guy and the (younger) (black) woman start talking about the (older) (black) guy and what he had to say, repeating his weirdest comments to each other.

. . .

2) A (younger) (white) guy with a (thin) (light brown) moustache who looks kind of white trash-y and maybe homeless, and he says "n*gg*er" to his (young) (black) friend that he's talking with, only to have a (younger) (black) guy standing near him say he'll hit him if he ever says it again.

After the (younger) (black) guy gets off the train, the (younger) (white) guy observes that he shut up because that guy was crazy, not because he was tough, because someone who was tough would actually have gone off and just hit you, and not have said anything about it first.

"Who says 'I'm going to hit you'?", he was like, "No one."

. . .

3) A (young) (light-skinned black) woman with richly-coiffed curly hair under a knit cap runs through the train car doors as they're closing and runs all "WOMP!" into the plexiglass panel by me separating the door from the bench-seats on the subway car, and then she recovers and sits down and begins super intently staring at her phone as she sits across the car from me and a little to my right.

And, after like ten to fifteen minutes, she pulls out a cigarette pack and starts hitting it against her thigh to settle the tobacco, only she doesn't stop, and the light rapid thwacking sound keeps going on and on and on, for at least twenty minutes.

At one point, I see a(n older) (black) woman in a public transportation worker's uniform farther up the car turn around to look at what the sound is, and later a (well-dressed) (young) (black) woman who comes in and sits a few seats down from me asks what it is and we shake our heads, and then even later a (scrawny) (late middle-aged) (black) woman who came in and sat down across from me looks over and sees that and shakes her head, which breaks the ice and I start talking to her.

"I'm here from Louisiana," she was like.

"And that's saying something, if someone up here behaves so crazy that you take notice," I was like.

"Humph," she was like, not necessarily in disagreement, and then she said that she was visiting her daughter in college, which she does a lot, since she doesn't work anymore.

Bad bus service in the far reach of the city.

The other week on a workday weekday, I went to go have dinner with an artist friend and his wife at their house in the far reach of the city, in a white-cop-and-city-worker neighborhood beyond a bunch of black neighborhoods.

First, when I got to the end of the subway line at like 4pm and I had to hop on a bus, I had just missed a bus, and it was *seventeen* minutes until the next one came.

When I asked her what was up, a (younger) (black) woman told me that they usually come every seven to eight minutes, but every once in a while one drops out, so that must be what it was, and then after a few minutes she goes and hops into an Uber that pulled up that she must have ordered to get to wherever she was going.

Second, after dinner I went to a neighborhood bar for a few drinks, and I could have hustled to try to catch the last bus at like twelve-thirty at night, but I was having such a good time, that I decided to stay out later.

And, the (later-middle aged) (white) bartender with a tam o'shanter (sp.?) said it wasn't even worth calling a regular cab, it could take up to two hours for one to show up, so she said I should just download a rideshare app and order a ride that way.

So, I did, and I paid Uber like $8 so I could get back to the subway line in that part of the city.

More buliding blocks of Tibetan.

Besides my like five or six phrases that I know in Tibetan, I now know how to say a basic "it is" and "it isn't" construction, and how to pluralize nouns with the a "tso" addition or ending or whatever to whatever noun I'm saying.

The other week I found out how to say "teacher" so I could surprise my (Tibetan) coworkers who help me learn things by saying "hello, teacher!" and "good night, teacher!", too, and then right afterwards when one of my two (Tibetan) coworkers who I was talking with taught me the plural, too, I had to get going to do something, so I was like, "see you later, teachers!", and I tried pluralizing the word "teacher" that I know.

That made them laugh and one of them was like, "Good!", and when I asked, she said I said "teachers" right, and that she was impressed.

It was just pluralizing a noun using a simple ending I was taught, but that's cool, if she's impressed,  I'll take it.

Odd sight the other day at the bank in my neighborhood:

I'm at the main counter and I see a familiar guy walk in to use the ATM and our eyes meet, and then I recognize that it's the city's police chief, who lives in my neighborhood and who I've never actually met but who I still recognized anyways, and I think to myself for a second after he goes to use the ATM that I should have waved in a friendly way or something at him, since I at least knew for my part who he was.

A sight at an older wooden bar the other night at around 2:30am:

A (taller) (skinny) (white) guy gets up from a (middle aged) group sitting by the window, and on the way to the bar to go get more drinks for everyone, he stops and does a quick breakdance in the middle of the floor.

My new breakfast lately:

A bowl of lentils and a big side of celery sticks.

I really dislike most breakfast foods, and I've always liked savory more than sweet, some things like ice cream and certain breakfast pastries excepted.

As I've always put it, you know the people who like breakfast for dinner, and have a big stack of waffles at like 8pm at night?  I'm the opposite of that, where I'll have a big bowl of chili in the morning.

So, for years I've done stuff like having toast with butter, or hummus on toast, or something like that.

Since I want to watch my diet and I need to up my protein, I decided to do lentils, with a pack of leftover ramen noodle flavoring added in; the lentils are a lot of protein but not too much carbs, and the flavor adds salt and a little something extra, to make it extra tasty.

And, since it's getting colder out, a big bowl of microwaved steaming lentils in the morning is really hearty and tasty and warms you up when you get up in your cold apartment and eat it.

The celery is decent, too; it adds textural variety to the meal, and is surprisingly filling.

Sometimes, too, lately, I've had celery with mustard on it as a snack.

Got to watch my weight!

"Welcome to middle age."

Sight on the subway the other week:

A (middle-aged) (black) woman sitting a few seats down from me with her phone out and on selfie mode, looking into it and putting on her lipstick.

Great idea of my one assisted living client with disabilities!

She tied a long yellow string to the back of the seat of her wheelchair, so that her cat goes nuts trying to pounce on it when she goes and wheels around her apartment.

She had told me that and had showed it to me, and I thought it looked nice, but once she started to wheel around her apartment, I could see why a cat would go nuts over it; the string moves around in a very natural way in slow spots of motion, and it turns naturally, too, in big broad curves, as she goes around her apartment and turns her wheelchair. 

It's really almost like a living thing, when you see it.

How you feel when you're tired.

It's funny how you feel when you're tired.

The other week I didn't sleep too well, and then the next day when I was at work at the resthome, I felt like I needed a haircut and a shave and that my nails needed clipping, and I noticed a little bit of fat around my belly, too, so I felt like I needed to lose like 3 or 4 pounds.

Sometimes when you feel tired like that, you just feel gross, and you just feel so nasty all at once, but then you clip your nails and shave and sleep in the next day, and bam, you're back to normal.

It really is all like that, you just need a little bit of scrubbing up and some sleep; sleep really can do wonders.

New habit of some (black) people on the subway train:

Having an earbud in and holding their smartphone out in front of them to talk on speakerphone, loudly so that the whole train can hear them, even if the train is really really quiet.

I've honestly seen young, old, and middle-aged (black) people doing this lately, as well as a(n older) (Arab) guy like last month when I went on a three-day trip somewhere by train train, but before this I don't think it's been a thing at all and I can't remember seeing anyone do it.

It really is funny how habits originate and can spread.

A nightmare of last month or so:

Last month or so ago I dreamnt-

I'm on the top of a bunk bed, and I wake up and get up on my knees and I look out a window onto a field, and I see some people trying to rob or murder someone, so I yell and yell to help them and that stops the robbery, but then a few other people emerge from the grass on the field, and the next thing I know they're in my room, and my bunk is very close to the ceiling and is like right under this diagonal-like ceiling section like from a staircase up above me, and like one or two of the criminals are suddenly inside with me and are like here and there trying to get up onto the top bunk of the bunkbed where I am in order to hurt me and kill me out of anger at the stopped robbery or murder or whatever it was, and when I turn to one and fight them off, the other one creeps up behind me, so I turn to them only to leave my back vulnerable again, and that keeps happening, over and over and over, where there's always someone right behind me about to violently hurt me.

And then, I wake up.

. . .

Bedbug bites.

The other day, I woke up and got out of bed at my normal time, and I could feel bedbug bites rising all over me, like one on my lower back and like one on my buttock and then one on my upper back right under my right shoulder, and later another on my lower back, at least.

It had been an abnormally warm night, and at some point I'm guessing I must have kicked my quilt off and it had draped down to the floor and then they were able to crawl up it and onto me.

The thing is, though, is that it's been simply months since I've had anything, and I had over a year of nothing after I moved in to escape bedbugs from my last apartment, so it's clear that that first infestation must have been permanently and definitively snuffed out.

I really do think that after that they must have gotten reintroduced somehow and are now at home in my two-flat, first with my previous upstairs neighbors, and now with my new ones.

Thankfully my new apartment is so much easier than my last one; the past few times there's been bites, I just do laundry and keep spraying rubbing alcohol for a few days, then nada.

The walls and floors are so new, there's nowhere for them to hide, so the rubbing alcohol must kill them easily, when any of them make their way down to me.

I was smart, too, to keep all my laundry in plastic bins, so I don't have to go through the rigamarole of taking all my laundry out of my closet and washing it, every time this happens.

I've been living out of plastic bins with my clothes for like easily two years now, seriously.  Thankfully it doesn't bother me that much.

Interesting observation in a higher ed article that I read the other day.

In a higher ed article that I was reading the other day, this guy who transitioned to another professional sector not only said that he met with envy from many professors who had gotten some of the few remaining "good" jobs, but he also said that he was just as productive as many of them, since he continued to write, and what with all the administrative duties and overwork of tenured professor positions nowadays, he could squeeze in as many reading and writing and research hours after work and on weekends as they could probably get out of their workweeks, too.

Years ago when I decided to not pursue any academic jobs, that was my feeling, too, and it's interesting to see it finally getting acknowledged in the higher ed press.

And, it's like my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the brother of the brother-sister pair) said a while ago when he was getting disenchanted with academia, that the position at the end of everything isn't all that good to reward all the years of hard work and abuse that might lead up to it.

He also had observed that most of the people are pretty awful too, and that at one point recently he realized that he really didn't want to be like any of his advisers and that they were all just awful people with miserable lives, and that that's when he realized that he was just done with academia.

He also said recently that he came across some of the people who had moved on and had gotten some of the "good" jobs, and they're spitting out versions of papers still saying the same thing that they said three years ago, and it's just pathetic, whereas people he knows who left and aren't in academia at all anymore have continued to learn lots of new things and just engage and change and grow.

"I really feel like I left a cult," he was like.

He added that if you ever try to explain to people on the outside the politics of a disciplinary subfield that so-and-so's students don't like so-and-so's because of this one thing that happened years ago, that it all just sounds crazy.

"I really feel like I left a cult," he was like, again.

Concern of a friend from the neighborhood's evangelical sister:

"Incest babies."

I've met her once before years ago when she had visited once, and I saw her again at another party recently when she was in town visiting again, and me and her started talking about cult memoirs.

(She seems to read fundamentalist Mormon "escaped wife" polygamy memoirs, since they seem to confirm to her that mainstream LDS Mormonism is somehow false.  She said she reads Muslim memoirs like that, too.)

Anyhow, when we were talking about the escaped wife memoirs, she mentioned how you can just look at some of the wives and the kids and tell that they're "incest babies," since if you know what to look for, you can tell it.

She then said that that happens, too, with a lot of "urban" families, where guys come through and get all these women pregnant and they all have his kids, then those kids meet and have kids, but they don't know that they have the same father, so they end up having incest babies.

. . .

A recurring bad dream a few times this past month:

I'm teaching freshman writing again, only I forgot that I'm doing it, and I suddenly realize that I've missed teaching a few classes that I should have been at, and I wonder what the kids at school thought when they came to class and I wasn't there, and I can see them assembled in this miniature auditorium in my mind, all of them there without me.

And then, I wake up.

. . .

A sight the other day at like 2am in a very rich neighborhood in the city...

...as I go from one bar that's closing to another bar that's open later:

A homeless person curled up in lots of blankets beneath an umbrella in the entryway of a Barnes & Noble, with laying out beside them on the pavement a paperback of Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now."

Texting with my one art school colleague who wears women's clothes.

The other week I texted my one art school colleague who wears women's clothes and was like -

Btw I had realized that we've seen Stormy Daniels and Madonna together.  Good things come in threes, who's next...?  [emojis of the woman symbol, a flexing arm, and a shiny heart]

- to which he replied first with this text -

Right?!!! That is pretty untouchable twosome

- and then this text -

Too bad Toni Morrison is dead

. . .

Resthome happenings (2 of 2): Chicken leg.

The other week at the resthome after a really nice dinner and everyone had pretty much left, this one resident who can worry quite a bit but is sweet nonetheless went around with a leftover chicken leg that she had put on a small plate and covered with a napkin.

"Would you like it?", she asked everyone, and then she explained that it was perfectly good and she would take it herself and eat it later, but she can't, and she would just hate to see it go to waste.

She offered it to me but I was full and so refused, but after she offered it to some other people and they didn't want it, she still seemed concerned, so I was like, "Okay, I'll take it," and I grabbed the legbone through the napkin and picked it up and started eating it.

"Thank you," she was like.

Then, she was like, "I would eat it myself, it's still perfectly good, but I can't, and I hate to see it sitting there and have it get thrown out."

Resthome happenings (1 of 2): Cat in a box.

So, this one resthome resident who had had a cat had to go and move into a more traditional nursing home, and since she couldn't take her cat with her, people had to scramble and try to find a home for her cat.

First, someone from a suburb came and got the cat, but then brought her back because of an allergy to her fur.

Then, a supervisor had a friend who was looking for a companion cat to her cat, and she brought the cat over there, but then the cat didn't work out, and they had to bring her back.

Now, she's living with the new resthome resident who's worked in communications, since he's had cats before.

The first day I got there and the cat was there, his closet door was open and you could see boxes of supplies, and a taller thin box was open and the cat was just sitting in there on the remaining supplies, visible from the mid-point up and just calm as all be and just looking out at the world from her place in the box.

An odd message from the universe to me:

A big sign that says "STOP BULLYING" in an empty storefront in the jock-y entertainment district here in the city, less than a week after I had finished up a quiet and time-intensive long-term project against bullying, and I was up there randomly for a concert.

How often am I up there?

Not much.

How often do you see a sign like that?

Never!

It really is like a message from the universe to me, telling me that I did the right thing.

A dream of packages.

Last month I dreamnt:

I'm in the social hall of the resthome sitting on my knees and opening up some packages that had come in, and a few small boxes have a few (German) chocolate bars that were shipped to me by one resident's daughter, whose name I can see on the address label when I look at it on the upper box flap.

. . .

A dream of lateness.

Last month I dreamnt:

I wake up and I look at my bedside clock, and it says "5:10pm."

I suddenly realize that I'm late for work and I can't believe that I slept so late, and I'm next outside in my kitchen looking at my cellphone where I had left it in to charge, and I see that I have a few missed phonecalls from the resthome, and that they must have been calling me to see where I was and why I wasn't at work.

And then, I wake up in a panic, and my bedside clock has a time like around 10:30am.

Later, I got woken up again with a similar dream, and the actual time that time was around noon.

Announcement of a (black) (female) subway conductor the other day...

...to someone who must have pulled the emergency 'open' handle to open the doors, after the car had started moving again:

"I'm gonna need you not to pull my doors again in my life, thank you."

Ethiopians and country music.

The other week I mentioned a (punk) concert that I was going to to my one (edgy) (Ethiopian) coworker, and I joked that she should go with me, but she was like, "No, I don't like American music," and then she corrected herself and was like, "Except country."

I asked her why, and she said because it sounds like music from her country.

I'm guessing that's why she and my one (new) (Ethiopian) coworker both like it?

It's very odd, I wonder how broadly this phenomenon goes among (Ethiopian) people.

Bedtime banter with the one resthome resident who wants to die.

The other week at the resthome, the one resthome resident who wants to die had just laid down in bed and was about to go adjust herself and scoot upwards in the bed and onto her pillow, but before she did that, she looked at it and was like, "To me, that's a mountain."

"That's okay," I was like, "We know you're from [name of the Central European mountain town she was born in], we know you can handle mountains!".

And, that got a grin out of her.

Business stories of a new resthome resident.

This one new resthome resident worked in communications, and his wife did, too.

He told me that sometimes they would go seek accounts together as coworkers, and then at the end of the meeting after they had closed the account, they'd each give the customer their home phone number so that they'd have it in case they ever needed it, and the number would be the same, and that's how they told the customer that they were married.

He said that that arrangement of working together mostly worked out, except for when customers didn't know at first and would hit on his wife.

Neighborhood changes.

Like three different long-term places are suddenly closing down in my neighborhood, a bakery and a restaurant and a pharmacy, and that's after a long-time liquor store and grill closed down a few months ago, too.

I think two if not three of the places are run by older people who've run their businesses for decades and have decided that it's time, but still, it's kind of sad.

I'm really sad since I liked a couple of the specialties from the bakery, and I would try to get all my pharmacy stuff from that pharmacy.

Sigh.

Changes.

Vinegar Stories (2 of 2): Potato salad.

The other week at the resthome, my one (new) (Iraqi) coworker gave me the potato salad from her staff meal plate.

"Here, you have it," she was like, and then she mock shuddered and was like, "Ugh, too much vinegar."

I think it was a German-style potato salad, and I didn't half-mind it.

I sure ate it all, in any case.

As I like to say, my favorite kind of food is 'free.'

Vinegar Stories (1 of 2): Eraser.

The other week, I was sitting at my kitchen table in my apartment and I had just finished eating a big bowl of salad, and when I went to go pick up a big rubber eraser for some reason, it ended up falling into the bowl and it got vinegar all over it.

So, I dried it off right away on my jeans, but there was still moist spots all over it, and so I left it out on the edge of my kitchen table to dry.

It was dry by the next day, but I still haven't tried to use it again yet, to see if it will still erase things, or if it will just smear the pencil marks all around and create big black smudges on the page wherever I try to erase.

How bad people are doing, financially.

My one (male) (Tibetan) coworker had stopped working at the resthome because of problems with the childcare schedule for his new baby and his wife has a better job, but he found new jobs with better hours and now works the desk at some hotel somewhere, and drives rideshare besides in his random spare hours.

So, as soon as I found out about it, I texted him the website for an app that pays you to play certain music while you drive rideshare.  It's like three cents a minute or something like that while a passenger is in your car, but three cents is three cents, and that could be up to like maybe another $1.80 an hour, which can really help with combatting depreciation on your car and can maybe get you more towards a living wage, so why not do it, especially if you have someone in your car anyways.

Imagine that, that's how thin the edge is on making it, where you try to help out someone you know like that, so they can maybe get another buck an hour on average, occasionally.

And, people will do it.

A dream of decay: Print.

The other week I dreamnt:

I'm outside a house where I live, and it's snowy but the snow is melting and dripping dirty snow from the roof, and all of the melting snow water falls into lines under the eaves and kicks up dirty drops from there, and some of the drops are flying inwards and spattering the siding on the house.

And, propped up on a chair outside the house is a print that was given to me by the one resthome resident who wants to die, and I look, and even though it's kind of roughly thrown in between sheets of paper that look like crumply sides of a paperbag, I pull it out and there's black smears across the front of the print, and I know that I can't remove it and I can't fix it, and that the print is ruined forever.

My father is there, and I show the print to him, and he asks what did I expect to happen with my leaving the print outside the house on a chair, and I say I didn't expect it to snow so soon.

And then, I wake up.

. . .

My worktrip preparation for Germany has included...

...double-checking the Lufthansa site for carry-on baggage measurement , because you know that if any airline is going to get all strict about that, it's the German one.

It was funny, too, because they said that if you didn't check your bag at the appropriate point and tried to carry it on and it was too large and they had to check it later, they'd charge you more, because you knew.

How German!

Baby reconnaissance.

The other week, my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the sister of the brother-sister pair) was telling me that her nine month old got bit a few times at daycare by some other kid.

She said the second time that it happened, there was four little tooth marks on her arm, so the next time that she picked her up from daycare, she found herself looking into all of the other kids' mouths to see if she could see who had four teeth in a similar position, to see if she could figure out who did it.

"Jaded."

The other week I caught up with a college friend and someone else who lives in the same town, a guy who I know from my Ph.D. program, and it turns out that they went to high school together, or rather were a year apart in high school and vaguely knew about each other from that period in their lives.

Anyhow, the guy from my Ph.D. program was interested to know the biggest different between me then and me now, and my college friend said that pretty much a lot was the same with me, only now I was a bit more "jaded" about the world, where I was still enthusiastic to go out and engage things and learn about random stuff, but I was just "jaded" now, somehow.

I think, for example, when he was quizzing me about city politics and whether they were really changing, I pointed out how it seemed to me that wealth inequality and social tension would continue to increase for the foreseeable future, given the magnitude of the problems and the lack of any real major solutions on the table, not to mention how the stuff being sold as the most progressive thing possible like the push to raise the minimum wage a buck or two was actually just barely making things tolerable, in terms of being able to make ends meet for like 90% of the population.

Anyhow, later that night I mentioned that to a bartender I know who works downtown, that a guy who knew me for a long time had observed that I was now "jaded," and he was like, "Buddy, they call that 'life.'"

Addendum (2 of 2): Amharic.

I'm very interested to see what Amharic is like, when that phrasebook finally comes in.

Amharic is from the same language family as Hebrew and Egyptian and from phrases I've learned from coworkers I've already noticed a few similarities here and there in the way that the language works - like, for example, it has separate male and female forms that go with the word "you" - but I wonder what else I'll notice, when I get to see the grammar written down about more extensively.

It's kind of silly, but it'll be fun, and that kind of random residual knowledge never really hurts anything.

Addendum (1 of 2): Spanish.

The one little phrasebook that I loaned my one (pensive) (Tibetan) coworker was Spanish-from-Spain Spanish and not Spanish-from-Mexico Spanish, but I pointed that out to her, and told her that words and a little grammar might be different here and there.

I remember that I saw that in the phrasebook when I bought it, but I like the series, so I decided to buy it anyways.  I had the one for French when I travelled in West Africa years ago, and it was extremely handy.

Resthome Coworkers and Languages (2 of 2): More for Me.

After my one (pensive) (Tibetan) coworker asked me for Spanish language book recommendations, just for the heck of it I decided to find some cheap (Tibetan) and (Amharic) phrasebooks online, so I could take them into work and have fun with them.

The (Tibetan) one arrived right before I was bringing in the (Spanish) ones for her, so I took that in, too, and I had a lot of fun with her and another (Tibetan) coworker who were working that day.

I already knew a few of the greetings, but I was able to look up topical sayings like "The weather is windy" and "This room is cold" and they got a kick out of that, and they also helped me with my pronunciation.

Later, too, at the end of our shift, I saw both of them sitting down, so I pulled out the little phrasebook and asked them in Tibetan if they were tired, which made them laugh.

From everything that I can tell about Tibetan, its pronunciation and grammar seem easy, though all the words are short and seem alike to me.

Resthome Coworkers and Languages (1 of 2): More for them.

My one pensive (Tibetan) coworker asked me for advice on learning Spanish, since she also works in an upscale grocery store in food prep and her coworkers there largely speak Spanish in the kitchen.

First off, since she used to be a teacher back in India, she's very educated, so I quickly quizzed her on English vocabulary like "carnivore," which she knew, so I told her that it would be easy for her to memorize words like "carne" for "meat" because of similar vocabulary in English and Spanish due to Latin and French words in English.

Second off, I told her that I had a few good books that I'd bring in the next time that we worked, so I did, and she's currently looking through them and thinking about getting copies.  One is a nice little phrasebook that's set up well, and another is a larger, clear grammar, in case you want to dig in deeper on any particular aspect of the grammar.

Isn't it kind of cool, that this (Tibetan) woman from India who knows Tibetan and Hindi and English, is now learning Spanish?

What a wonderful world we live in.

Secret Pleasure of Texting my Coworkers.

You know what I love?

Texting coworkers from my one resthome job about shift changes and whatnot.

It's supercool that I work with people from all over the world, and we're known to each other, and I have texts from (Tibetan) and (Ethiopian) people right there on my phone.

That's really what living in a city should be, but I didn't have that before, working in academia.

Crack of the one resthome resident who wants to die.

The other week, the one resthome resident who wants to die ordered dinner in her room just like she has a lot of times before, only this time she ate the most I've ever seen her, all the soup and all the salad and all the entree and all the dessert.

"Wow, you ate a ton," I was like, when I went to go help her clean up.

"Yeah," she was like, "I'll be a well-fed body."

Sight exiting the subway the night before the other afternoon:

I'm walking up the steps from my local subway stop to street level as I'm on my way home from work, and I see something flicker around the metal steps that have gaps underneath each step, and then it happens again and I look closer at what's now on top of the step, and it's a mouse.

Sight exiting the subway the other afternoon:

As I'm in my scrubs and am walking out through the turnstile on my way to work and am eating a banana, there's one other guy in the station lobby, and he had just walked through the station door and was walking towards me and he was also eating a banana.

We both looked each other in the eye for a second,  as we were both chewing.

He was like white and in his 50s and he was that kind of fat gray bald guy with glasses, and his clothes were not too shabby, and his shirt flannel.

Trip to Michigan (4 of 4): Train station farewell.

When I was waiting at the train station with my mom when I was going back, we were near the sliding glass doors that opened up onto the platform, and this (older) (black) lady was near us in a tasteful black hat and a fur-collared brown coat.

"Oooh!", my mom was like, when the doors slid open and some cold came inside, "It's getting so cold out."

"And the sad part is," the (older) (black) lady was like, "It's not even that cold yet."

Trip to Michigan (3 of 4): Chili on chili fries.

At the one hamburger place near the train station, I remarked how much I liked the chili fries, and the counterwoman said it was a frozen chili sauce that you could get now at different supermarkets if you knew where to look.

And, she went back in the back and pulled out a five pound tube and came back out with it, to show me what it looked like.

"Beef hearts," I was like, reading the ingredients.

"I know," she was like, shivering, "Yuck."

But then, she was like, "But it tastes so good."

I then told her that years and years ago that I had read that that was the secret ingredient in the chili sauce, but I wasn't sure whether to believe it or not.

"It is," she was like.  "I try not to think about it."

Later, at the nearby supermarket where I picked up a couple of the small tubes, this (old) (blonde) (pale) (blank faced) lady who worked there saw me getting the last two tubes from the fridge rack and without me inviting any sort of interaction with her she raised her finger and pointed to them and called out to me and was like, "That stuff is good."

"I know," I was like, and I explained to her that I was bringing them back to the city I live in so I can have them ready for people as presents.

She didn't say much to that, so I was like, "Because wouldn't that be an awesome present?".

"Yeah," she was like, nodding, all pale and blank faced.

Trip to Michigan (2 of 4): Bankteller.

Back in Michigan, my mom ran a banking errand for my uncle.

She told him that the teller was asking after him, since she hadn't seen him for a while.

Trip to Michigan (1 of 4): Creaky door.

So, I recently went to Michigan to see my uncle and my mom.

At my uncle's house, the door to my room was super super creaky, and I hated opening it at night since the house was otherwise dead quiet and the noise might wake up my uncle and my mom.

So, I pissed into my empty coffee thermos, rather than get up at night to go use the bathroom.

Basically, I'd unscrew it, put my dick in, and pee down the inside side so it didn't make too much noise, and then I'd cap my thermos back up and get back to reading my book or going to bed or whatever.

Before I left to head back, I dumped it out in the bathroom, then once I got back, I poured boiling water into it to sterilize it and clean it before I used it for coffee again.

It wasn't ideal, but it worked.  And yes, it's a little gross, but it's been sterilized now and you can't taste anything, so so what.

What would you want me to do, disturb people?

Confession of a Neighbor.

I forgot -

A few months ago, I was coming home from work and ran into a neighbor of mine who's an optometrist, and we ended up going out for drinks and then tacos and then hanging out in her backyard until like 4am listening to music.

When we were in her backyard, at one point she told me that she used to listen over and over again to Madonna's "Erotica" album back when she was going through puberty, and not only that, but she used to masturbate to the title song.

"That's weird," I was like.

"No it's not," she was like.  "At that age, anything with sex makes you horny."

Banter with the one resthome resident who wants to die.

The other week at the resthome, I was assisting the one resthome resident who wants to die, and my thermos fell out of my pocket and landed on the floor with a big metallic CLANG and then rolled off and away under her TV set bureau.

"Ugh," I was like, imitating her, "Look at me, I drop everything."

"Yes," she was like, "But you can pick it up again."

. . .

Knowledge gap of one (Tibetan) coworker.

The other week at the resthome, we were getting our staff meal after the residents were served, and the choice of soup was tomato or gazpacho.

"Gazpacho, what is that?", my one (older) (Tibetan) coworker was like.

. . .

She's in her sixties and has lived long enough in the U.S. to buy a house, but she simply must run in different circles from those that gazpacho is known in.

A person on the subway the other week at like 1am on a Saturday:

In a car with a lot of (younger) (white) and a few (Latino) kids all dressed up and coming from some EDM concert, a (scrawny) (30-something) (strung out) (white) guy with a huge smudge of blood on his face by the right corner of his mouth and also with large and open but somehow clean gashes in his arm like from a knife, who's speaking loudly and harrassing this (young 20s) (hipster) (possibly gay) (black) guy, asking him over and over again for just one cigarette.

"My life is like this!", he was like, pointing to the open gashes on his arms. "A cigarette would make me feel better.  Just one cigarette, man, that's all I'm asking!".

And, he said variations of that a few times, with erratic and sometimes long silences in between.

Eventually, he got off at a stop somewhere near downtown.

"I'm glad he's gone," someone said into the quiet of the car after he got off and the doors had closed.

And, everyone let out a breath and began talking.

"I didn't know what the fuck was going on with him," the (young) (possibly gay) (black) kid was like.  "And then he showed me those cuts in his arms!".

. . .

(From a distance, the cuts seemed healed over like there wasn't any bleeding or anything, yet it was like the skin had been pulled back on each side in a pointed ovalish slit, like from a clean cut where the skin had burst open but had never been pulled together to heal, or something like that.  It was weird.)

A new (Ethiopian) coworker.

So, this past month a new (Ethiopian) coworker started up, who's younger and thin and very dark and very very quiet.

So, me and her were talking some when our one (older) (stockier) (Tibetan) coworker was in the room, and for some reason our (Tibetan) coworker burst in and was like, "She likes country music."

And, we began talking, and it turns out that when she was in college in Ethiopia, she came across Don Williams on YouTube and became a country music fan.

I mentioned Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash, and she didn't know their names, but then she mentioned some name that I hadn't heard of.

"You should go to Nashville," I was like.

"What?", she was like, so I wrote the word out on a piece of paper and explained it to her.

"But she have baby!", my one (Tibetan) coworker was like.

"Are you married?", I was like.

"Yes," she was like.

"Do you have family here, or does your husband have family here?", I was like.

"Yes," she was like.

"Then your family will take care of your baby, go on vacation with your husband," I was like. "Tell him you want a vacation, and make him arrange the money and the hotels and the childcare."

"Easy to say, hard to do," my one (Tibetan) coworker was like.

Then, she was like, "You take care of the baby," and laughed.

I then talked more with my one (quiet) (new) (Ethiopian) coworker, and it turns out that she's only been in the country like three months.

Afterwards, I realized that I had forgotten to tell her about the new Ken Burns documentary series on country music.  I'll have to do that the next time that I work.  Maybe she'll watch, and if she does, I'm kind of interested to hear what she says. I wonder if she's realized yet how white it is?  Though, my one (edgy) (Ethiopian) coworker talks about herself and (American) black people as something different, so maybe she doesn't think about things quite that way.

Conversation with two housekeepers at the resthome.

The other week at the resthome I delivered mail to the door of one resident who's on hospice, and afterwards in the hallway I saw two housekeepers standing there, one (Mexican) and one (Tibetan).

"How is she doing?", the one (Mexican) housekeeper asked me.

"I'm not sure," I was like, "Her one hospice aide answered the door."

Then, I was like, "I can't believe she's dying."

"Why are you surprised?", the one (Tibetan) housekeeper was like.  "People die."

Then, when I didn't say anything, she was like, "You don't know, I could die today, I could die this afternoon, I could die tomorrow, people die."

She didn't seem morbid at all, and she was even was a bit chipper in her voice.

I'm assuming she was channeling some Buddhist stuff.

Tiered healthcare.

Two summers ago, I was catching up with a guy from the neighborhood who I know and I was saying how much I liked working in assisted living, and the subject of private nursing homes and Medicaid reimbursements came up.

His company had done PR work for some nursing home chains, and he was saying that the trouble is that some private homes do indeed give better care, but those ones forego Medicaid reimbursements, so it's only richer folks who are in them and who get those staffing levels, which I think is true, I don't think he was lying.

Anyhow, like last month I visited my uncle when he was in the hospital for minor surgery, and his place was very chi-chi and he even had a menu where he could order his meals from the kitchen and they'd make it up fresh and bring it to him within like forty-five minutes.

It had stuff like chicken sandwiches and "Catch of the Day" fish and meatloaf and mac 'n' cheese (with a heart healthy version!) on it, and that shit was just insane.

He also said a nurse had told him that the staff there was trying to unionize.

I wonder how much money that place took in, and in any case it seems like another example of tiered healthcare.

Somehow I don't think I'm going to get that level of care there or at the place I work at by the time I get old (if I get old! - people do die young all the time, and you never can tell who will go), unless something changes radically with the economy and social service provision.

It's been straight to the bottom with me.

A lovely sharing of photos.

Last month, my one client with disabilities and her (lesbian) sister went to a local Climate Strike march, which I didn't go to, and afterwards they showed me these photos that they had taken of all the best signs.

It was wonderful, since I always love to look at fun signs at marches.

"And look at the ass on her," the one (lesbian) sister was like, pointing to a woman in the background of a photo of another person holding a sign.

"So that's why you wore sunglasses," I was like, "So you could check out women's asses and not come off as a perv."

"No," she was like, "But it is a side benefit.  Look at her, she's gorgeous."

A memory from a recent trip to Wisconsin:

A locally made Tex-Mex sausage stick, sold at a bar in the same town.

You bit into it and it tasted kind of like a pop taco made with hard Ortega taco shells, only with more of a green pepper taste in it.

A New Sign of Hopefulness with a Cat.

My one client with disabilities adopted a cat with a troubled past a few months ago, and slowly but surely it's been blossoming under her watch.

The other week, it not only walked up on the bed near her, but it came very close to her right up into her face, and then it stopped and licked her lips.

She was very, very touched, and she shared that story with me soon afterwards.

An old story of a cat dying.

The other week on the phone, my mom vaguely referenced how you can't have a worse pet death story than the one that happened to the reference librarian back at her old job that she retired from a few years ago.

"What was that?", I was like, since I honestly didn't remember.

"She was having a Tupperware party and she went down into her basement for something," my mom was like, "And her cat was down there, dead."

At that, I didn't say anything.

"Her cat died in the middle of the Tupperware party!", my mom was like.

Resthome Wisecracks (3 of 3): Dropping Things.

Sometimes when the one resthome resident who wants to die drops something, she says something along the lines of, "Look at me, I drop everything, I'm so terrible."

So, the other week when I was helping her before bedtime, I hung up her shirt to dry on the shower pole in her bathroom, and then I turn around and the next thing you know, her shirt falls to the floor and made that soft ruffle sound that clothes do when they fall or get thrown onto the floor from some decent distance.

"Ugh, look at me, I'm so terrible, I drop everything," I was like to her, devilishly.

And, she chuckled, and was like, "At least I'm not in it."

Addendum.

(The leftovers were creamed spinach, and she said she used to make it at home and that she likes that recipe a lot.  I asked her if her parents used to make it back when she was growing up, and she said yes her mother did, she was a good cook.  I then asked her if her family had a garden back in the [German] spa town that she lived in before the War, and she said that they didn't, that they lived in an apartment building on the fourth floor of a six-story building with an elevator, she said, and one that they used to call a 'villa,' since it stood independently and there were no other buildings connected to it.)

Resthome Wisecracks (2 of 3): Leftovers.

The other week, the one resthome resident who wants to die wasn't that hungry at dinnertime, and didn't like the menu options either.

So, I reminded her that she had some leftovers from a couple days earlier in the fridge.

After I took them out, I showed them to her and was like, "It was only Monday, I think they're still good."

"They seem good," she was like, "But if they kill me, that's okay too."

Resthome Wisecracks (1 of 3): Speed.

The other week when I was going to assist the one resthome resident who wants to die, she dropped something on the floor.

"I'm declining rapidly," she was like.

"Or not fast enough," I was like.

Respect at a (Mexican) restaurant.

During my bike riding daytrip last month, I stopped off at one point for a late lunch, and I went to this (Mexican) restaurant and ended up ordering posole, like I most always do when I see it on the menu and they have it, that shit is so good.

When I did that, the (Mexican) waitress asked me if that's really what I wanted, and I said yes.

Then, she left and got it.

Later when the meal was almost over, she asked me if I liked posole.

I said yes, I really like it and I almost always order it.

She seemed pleased at that, so my guess is that she doesn't see many (white) people ordering it.

She also asked me if I liked other (Mexican) soups, and I said that I don't like menudo, which she really didn't give a reaction to, though I also didn't mention any others since to be honest I don't know any others.

A dream of shaving poorly.

The other week I dreamnt-

I'm looking in a mirror, and down by my Adam's apple I see all these long blonde hairs, and I realize that I must not have seen them and I'd been shaving poorly for a while, where they never got nipped off early on and they just grew and grew and grew, only they were so light, I couldn't see them unless the light and the angle was right and I was looking for them or looking at my neck to see how the shave was.

And then, I wake up.

. . .

Bikeride through an affluent suburb.

Like last month I took a bike riding daytrip, and for a good part of it the trail went through an affluent suburb.

Houses were big, cars were nice, the school system was probably very good.

It was something else to think that people live like that, and that their kids live like that and grow up and get used to it and end up wanting it too.

All the houses were so big and historic and sterile, it's hard to think that there's life going on inside of them.

Baby developments.

My one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the sister of the sister-brother pair) and her partner have had a baby this year, and it's fun to see the development every time I go over there to hang out with them.

Last time I went, their baby had started crawling, and she particularly liked shoes and sandals, where if she saw some near her on the floor, she'd make a beeline and start crawling over towards them.

Her onesie also was slightly too big for her, so sometimes, too, her one leg would slip out from inside the legging and she would continue crawling with her one leg inside the onesie, while the empty fabric leg would just trail behind her.

She also doesn't like her stuffed toys right now and throws them aside, but she's fascinated by a big clear plastic lid left over from a take-out salad, where she'll pick it up and look through it and wave it around, and sometimes she'll hit it to make it make a sound.

My friend was also telling me that her baby was up and playing at midnight the other week, so her partner took over and picked her up and zoomed her around like an airplane and whatnot since that usually tires the baby out, but instead it just tired him out after fifteen minutes, and the baby was still going strong.

More British inanities: On rat prevention.

My one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the sister of the brother-sister pair) is getting quite a lot of fun out of these crazy condo association listhost emails for the condo that she and her partner just bought.

A few times ago when I saw her, she read out a huge part of some latest email where people in her building were talking about the local rat problem.

One person told an anecdote about a rat jumping out of the bushes and almost attacking a small dog, and some random phrase in the description was put all in caps, which she enjoyed a lot, since the capitalization was so weird.

Some person also told everyone to plant mint or buy mint oil and spray it by their garden boxes, since rats hate mint.

"That sounds like an old wives tale," she was like. "If rats really hated mint that much, wouldn't everyone just plant mint across the whole city, then bang, no more rats?".

British perspective on jams.

I greatly enjoy listening to two (half British) (half Sudanese) friends talk to each other about something they come up with themselves; it's like listening in on children talking, usually about inanities.

Like last month, I overheard them talking about jams, and how someone they knew complained about how their marmalade wasn't sweet enough.

"But marmalade should be bitter," the sister of the brother-sister pair was like.

"Exactly," the brother of the brother-sister pair was like. "If you want it sweet, why are you having marmalade? You should be eating apricot jam instead."

A person on the subway:

A (young) (goateed) (dreaded) (very dark skinned) (black) guy in a red t-shirt and whitewashed jeans that were carefully shredded and very fashionable, who pulled a silver laptop out of his bag and held it half open and was doing something on there when it began to emit a loud "BEEP" like every ten seconds or so for like a minute or two, finally forcing him to close it, though not until well after people began looking at him out of the corner of their eye.

Text from a former coworker.

My one (male) (Tibetan) coworker gave notice last month and stopped working at the resthome, since his wife has a better job and it makes sense for him to stay at home and do childcare with their new baby.

Like a week-and-a-half after he stopped working, though, he texted me out of the blue, saying he missed everyone and to send his regards to all of them.

How often does that happen with jobs?

On the economy in Britain.

Like last month my one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend (the brother of the brother-sister pair) was telling me about what the economy is like back in London, where he recently moved back to.

He was saying that he hates it when people are anti-immigrant and xenophobic and all, and though it's not really where he's going with it, it's quite striking how many Spaniards and Italians and Poles there are everywhere in London, all quite young and all university-educated and all working coffee shop and bar jobs.

For example, he said that the waitress or bartender down at the pub near him where he's living is a recent Polish university graduate who got her degree in chemistry, "and now she's in London, working at the pub."

"It makes you realize just how systemic the problem really is," he was like.  "This is Italy, this is Spain, this is Poland, these are all really well-developed countries and there should be jobs for them at home, it's not like they're from the Sudan or something."

He also said that he had a very hard time finding a place to rent because of his fluctuating income and because everywhere you go they need proof of income, but he finally found a house full of people like him and now he lives there, five people living in a house that's actually meant for four.

He also said that the one out of them who's doing really well and has full-time work is a graphic designer, and the other week she asked everyone if she could sleep in the dining room for a month or two and sublet her room, since her income just barely covers her expenses and she can hardly save, and it would make her feel better if she could have around two months of rent set aside in her bank account for an emergency.

"And she's the one who's doing well," he was like.

He also said that his younger aunt is something to hear, since she got a job without finishing high school and now has a great retirement and 2 homes and all the hip surgeries from the NHS that she wants, and she says stuff like that the problem nowadays is that young people don't work or save etc. etc. etc.

First off, he said like he always does, that a lot of time it's just not worth it to talk to people from a certain generation, since they just don't get it and so there's no use even talking about it.

Second off, he was like, "If I was their generation, I would just be embarrassed," he was like. "It's like honestly, just shut up already and get out of the way."

An odd guilt at work:

I feel really guilty when I can't pick up an extra day at work when someone at the resthome asks me to, since for some reason I feel like I should be able to help everyone out whenever they ask.

I wonder why that is.

Fun cat interactions (2 of 2): Sweet cat.

Last month when I visited my uncle's when my uncle was getting minor surgery, I got to hang out with his cat some, this black cat with white furry legs and paws who's very sweet and very much likes people.

When I was lying down on the couch and doing a crossword, the cat actually climbed up on my chest and sat down on the crook of my arm on the hand that I was writing with, which made it a bitch to keep writing, though I tried my best to continue.

Later, she got up and stood on top of the fatty part on top of my solar plexus, and she shifted her weight from one front paw to the other and back again, just over and over and over.

Sometimes, too, you'd also just be going around my uncle's house, and there the cat would be on its belly on the floor in front of you.

When I got back after my trip, I was telling this to my one client with disabilities and her one (lesbian) sister, and they said that cats can sense when someone is used to cats, and that's probably part of why the cat got much friendlier with me on this trip than it had been in the past, even apart from my uncle being gone for a bit and the cat being alone most of the time.

My one client's (lesbian) sister also said that that shifting weight motion is called "kneading" and is a holdover from when kittens press their mother's belly to get more milk, and that they do that with people they're really affectionate with and like, so you can really tell that that cat really likes me.

Fun cat interactions (1 of 2): Scaredy cat.

Last month, I went like I always do when I go on shift at my one client with disabilities's house, and I went to go give her new and somewhat shellshocked cat a treat, to try to get her to understand that I'm nice, and to draw her out of her shell some more.

So, I picked up the treat jar and started softly shaking it so she could hear it and know what was coming, and then I walked into the bedroom and knelt down and leaned over and looked to see if she was there in her usual spot beneath the head of the bed and she was, only when I opened the jar and put a treat in my hand, she got up a little and stepped forward, which she hadn't done before, since she usually just continues sitting there and watches me to see where I set the treat.

So, I just held the treat in my hand for a bit and sat all still, and after like eight or ten seconds she came forward and ate the treat out of my hand.

That was totally unexpected and totally cool, since you can see that the cat is adjusting to people, and much sooner than anyone has expected.

Supposedly, like 2 owners ago she had owners who were neglectful bordering on abusive, so she's tended to be very wary of humans since then and likes to hide in her little found dens all the time.

Belated Eid update.

One of the fun things about my one (cool) (Ethiopian) coworker is that she's (Muslim) and celebrates all the (Muslim) festivals, so I get to ask her about them and find out what they're like for her.

So, what with Eid happening in August and all, I got to ask her what she did for that day.

She said she went to mosque in the morning, and then her and her husband went to her husband's aunt's house, since she had like 25 or 30 people over for the holiday.

"How was it?", I was like.

"Great," she was like.  "I don't like to cook."

Then, she laughed.

On minimum wage.

Even though the city where I live has done pretty decently in raising minimum wage, the current wage doesn't cut it, and even local "progressive" initiatives to bump it up a dollar next year and then another dollar the year after that don't really cut it.

Just think about it: for someone who works 40 hours a week, for 4 weeks a month, the first year's raise works out to something like $160 extra a month pre-tax, then for like 12 months that's something like $1900, only you have taxes, so say it's maybe $1500 after taxes, only bills have been going up like gas and electricity and health insurance and rent so maybe you owe $10 more for utilities a month and $30 more in health insurance and $50 more in rent, so that's like $1000-1100 gone right there, so after all is said and done with, you're talking maybe your being up net like $400 a year at best, which isn't enough to set aside for an emergency, even pretending that you don't have a lot of shit charged up on your credit card right now.

Even if you fast forward one more year to the next raise, at best maybe you get like $1000 to set aside then?

I have no f*cking idea how we dig ourselves out of this low-wage hole that we're in, but minimum wage increases like are on the table right now make things barely tolerable from year to year, without really giving anyone anything to work with and get security out of it, let alone get ahead.

What kind of irks me is how the most leftie local politicians we have speak of this kind of proposal like it's some great thing to push for, and yeah it's nice, and yeah it's necessary, but it's not really all that.

But, I guess that so many politicians just come from a different class background, and though a lot of their hearts are in the right place, they're probably just really out-of-touch, having never lived it, or having few friends who are in it.

Sigh.

And then you wonder why there's so much unrest and dissatisfaction in the country nowadays.

On wages and employment.

The other week, my one (pensive) (Tibetan) coworker introduced me to this new (Tibetan) coworker of ours who was following her around and she was showing her what to do, and she asked me if she looked like anyone in particular.

So, I looked at her a while and then I was like, "Are you guys sisters?", and it turns out that I was right.

Anyhow, her sister works full-time at an upscale grocery chain here in the city, and she's training at the resthome so that she can occasionally pick up a weekend afternoon shift and make a little extra money.

We were talking, and she was saying that not only does she make sandwiches and wraps and that I should stop in to see her if I was by her grocery store chain location, but she was also saying that she has worked there a long time, to the point where she's full-time now and gets a decent raise every year, so that she's at something like $15 or $16 an hour.

Which, is more than I make at the resthome job, and which makes sense, since her (pensive) sister is doing her best to get in full-time there at the upscale grocery store chain.

Recently, I realized that my job is one of the fastest growing in the U.S. and that's probably why I got into it sideways finally after applying for jobs for over a year-and-a-half.

Although it uses 'active listening' skills like you use with students, it really is separate from my training to be a college-level teacher, and by no means does it make full use of my skills or even have compensation enough to give me the minimum stability that I expected to have after preparing for a teaching career for so long.

Statistics say that average pay for what I do is like $24,000 a year, which is nothing, but at least it's a job I could get and at least it's a job in which I can pretty decently easily get forty hours a week of work, thanks to the expansion of health insurance under Obama, not to mention our aging population.

Though, I'm not looking forward to the next decade progressing, and I spend more and more of my day wiping baby boomers' asses.

New public transportation experience:

The other week when I was coming home from work on the subway, a (middle aged) (black) woman got up from the end of the car and moved some seats down, and then when I looked at her and then over to where she had been, I saw like a small roach crawling on the wall over at the end of the subway car.

So, I watched it a bit, and when the roach finally got onto a part of the floor where I had a clear angle, I got up and darted in with my foot and I killed it.

Resthome interactions.

The other week at the resthome, I was escorting the one resthome resident who wants to die, and we saw my one cool (Ethiopian) coworker, who's Muslim and wears a veil.

"How are you, [the resthome resident's first name]?!?!?!", my one (Ethiopian) coworker gushed, and it brought out a big smile on the one resthome resident who wants to die's face.

Right after we left, too, the resident told me, "She's so nice," and it made me think how wonderful it is to see interactions like that between people of different cultural backgrounds, and how America should always be like that.

Repartee with the one resthome resident who's ready to die.

A lot of times when people ask the one resthome resident who's ready to die how she's doing, she just says, "Wonderful," and then sometimes too after a beat she says something like, "I'm not a good liar."

So, the other day when I went in to help her and saw her for the first time that day, she greeted me, and then she asked me how I was doing.

"Wonderful," I was like, which made her laugh.

Then, I was like, "And how are you?".

"Very wonderful," she was like.

Rosh ha-Shanah punning.

Yesterday at the resthome, I heard myself telling a resident, "The rabbi's gonna blow the shofar at five-thirty in the dining room," and as I said it, I realized that the way I say it, "shofar" sounds exactly like "chauffeur."

British dialectalism: "Kitchen roll."

The other week I was at the new apartment of my one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend (the sister of the brother-sister pair) to help her and her partner out setting everything up after their move, and at one point when I was in the dining room and she was in the kitchen, she asked me to hand her the "kitchen roll."

And, I looked around the dining room table, which was pretty much the only thing in the room at that point, and there sitting on it was some paper towels.

"You mean paper towels?", I was like.

"Oh, is that what you call them?", she was like.

Hieroglyph interpretations.

The other week, I was showing my hieroglyphic flashcards to my one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend (the brother of the brother-sister pair), and I was telling him my whole schtick about how fun and comforting it's been to start learning Egyptian (I forget that Donald Trump exists for hours at a time!).

"Hmm," he was like, and then began improvising off the pictures that he saw.

"The prince stomps on rat," he was like, for the sign combinations that mean "East" (a bud that can look like a rat, a foot, and then a row of hills that sort of looks like a crown).

And, for the sign combinations that form the inflectional ending "-kwi" - a dish, a quail chick, and a little man - he was like, "Always give water to quail chicks."

LOL.

British humor.

It's quite funny to think of Egyptians chipping away at stone forever, to tell each other to always give water to quail chicks.

And a prince stomping on a rat is like a ridiculous riff on ancient history and what people commemorate.

I could never make original (British) humor, but I can sure recognize it when I see it.  It can just be so weird and ridiculous.

Nicknames in Ghana.

In Ghana, there's a thing where men and women get a name based on the day of the week that they're born on, like "Kwame" and "Kweku" for boys, and other names for girls and whatnot.

Lately at work at my one resthome job, a few of my (Ghanaian) coworkers had necklaces with that name on their neck, and since it wasn't their name that they used at work, I asked one of them about it.

She said that they all have "Christian" names now, but that the day name is their second name, then there's their family name, and that the day name is what's used at home.

I then asked her and another coworker who walked up what would happen if there was a family with a few kids of the same sex all born on the same day, like let's say the family had seven kids and there were five girls and three of the girls were all born on Saturday.

She then said that they'd then all get their same day name, but people might call the oldest "Queen [the day name]," the next one "Mama [the day name]," and stuff like that, to keep them separate.

Later, the (Ghanaian-American) manager said that she was the first one at work to get that kind of necklace, and afterwards everyone else began imitating her.

A sighting of the reclusive cat.

The other week at the resthome, I bumped into the one resident who has the cat who likes to hide and who we couldn't find that one time, and he invited me to come into his apartment and see his cat, since she had been out lately and I could probably see her.

So, I went in with him and walked in, and he laughed and said wouldn't it be funny if his cat wasn't there at all again and I thought he was crazy, and I said that that would be hilarious if he was just some crazy guy who had a cat carrier and bowls out and whatnot and everything and who every time people came by he said his cat was hiding, and he got a chuckle out of that.

Then, we finished passing through his apartment's main room and went into the second room, and there his cat was sitting on the couch in there and she was looking at me as I walked in, then she hopped off, slowly walked forward, looked at me, and then turned around and went back to where she had been sitting.

"That's all you're going to get," the one resident was like, laughing.

Comment of my one (Tibetan) coworker, about perspectives.

The other week at the resthome, we were short-staffed, and my one (athletic) (Tibetan) coworker and my one (blunt) (Tibetan) coworker were talking for a while and then were saying that we should go to the head of the resthome and ask for a paybump for that shift.

I demurred, and then they spoke in Tibetan with each other, and then my one (blunt ) (Tibetan) coworker laughed heartily, and then she asked if I was born here, and I said that I was.

"Look at you, you are white and you are born here, and you're afraid to talk to the boss," she was like.

At that, I shrugged, and demurred again some more.

Idea for a title for an ad seeking an adult diaper fetishist.

If I was ever seeking an arrangement with an adult diaper fetishist, my personal ad would have the title:

SPOILING FOR SOILING?

. . .

A tale of children with animals (2 of 2): A snake.

After that story by the one resthome resident who wants to die, her one (Ghanaian) private aide said that back when her sister was a baby, her mom took her sister to visit their grandmother in the village, and she was playing on the floor and they left her for a second and then they came back in, and she was just sitting there playing with a big snake that was just going around and around her, and she was laughing.

"And my mother, she jump up and down, she scream, because she does not know what to do to make the snake leave the baby!", the one (Ghanaian) private aide was like.

And, she said that while her mom was doing that, the snake just slithered off, and her sister was just sitting there all as happy as could be.

Neither her mom or her grandmother had ever seen a snake in the house like that, too, or a snake behave like that at all.

"They know fear," the one (Ghanaian) private aide was like, "And my sister, she did not fear."


She also said that years later, her sister was on a trip and there was someone who had large snakes that you could take a picture with, and she went right in there and did it, and was like, "I love snakes, I loved snakes as a baby," and she laughed, because she did, and because she still didn't have any fear of them, she just loved the big yellow snake sitting around her shoulder, and she took a picture with it.

A tale of children with animals (1 of 2): A puppy.

The other week, the one resthome resident who wants to die was telling me and her (Ghanaian) private aide that back when she was a little baby back in the 1920s, her parents bought her a little white puppy and would wheel her around in the perambulator with it.

And one day, they opened up the perambulator, and she had smothered it.

"Did they ever let you get a dog again?", I was like.

"No," she was like.

. . .

Since then, too, when I see her and she asks me how I'm doing, a few times I've been like, "Eh, I could be better, but at least I accidentally didn't kill a puppy today."

She laughs at that.

A dream of food.

The other week I dreamnt:

I have the blue-lidded tupperware container that I keep my garbanzo beans in that I eat for breakfast, and I'm standing there with it open in front of the refrigerator, and I'm scooping out the last of the beans from the very bottom corner of the container, and the beans are getting finished and done, there's just a very little bit left and I keep eating them...

And then, I wake up.

. . .

A dream of journalism.

The other week I dreamnt:

I'm talking with someone about the failed ownership of the New York Times and how it's being sold, and I know both the current and the future owner of the company as random people from my past...

And then, I wake up.

. . .

Two people on the subway the other day:

Two (teenaged) (Asian-American) girls in t-shirts and shorts and drinking boba tea, and they're talking about GPA and what level looks good enough to where college application people don't pay attention to that anymore, since GPA doesn't do anything by itself, but if it's too low, it hurts you.

And, one of them talks way too loud.

They're also from the suburbs, it turns out, too, since one of them mentions what she had told someone about meeting them while she's here for the day in the city.

A Tinder stalker.

So, my one librarian supervisor friend went on two dates with a woman she had met on Tinder, and that woman turned out to be a stalker.

My friend didn't realize that at first, and so at the end of the second date she gently let her down and suggested that they be friends, and she said that she liked people who know their goals and their values.

So, like a week after that, they hung out in a group as friends at something-or-another, and this woman is there, and she hands my friend a list of her goals and values.

"Here's my goals and values," she's like.

And, my friend started reading the list and it was like:

- Marry [her first name].
- Buy a house with [her first name].
- Have a baby with [her first name].

And so on.

Eventually, the calls and the contact got too much, including at work, and so she contacted the police, and they were like, "Are you [some woman's first name]?", and then when she said "No," they'd be like, "Ok, are you [some other woman's first name]?", and so on, and it turned out that the woman had had 23 women request 'no contact' orders about her.

Anyhow, I'm also friends with my friend's one cousin and she came into town from out-of-state to go testify at the 'no contact' order trial about some stalking stuff that had happened during her last trip to visit, and so she was there when my one librarian supervisor friend was narrating this whole ordeal to me and some other friends of hers when we were having a night out and went to a comedy show and then grabbed drinks.

When that narration had finished, my friend's cousin just raised her finger up and very matter-of-factly was like, "Don't swipe."

We all laughed, and she just shook her head and her finger and was like, "Don't swipe."

Good news from Ethiopia.

Last month, I was really taken by the story of the mass tree-planting in Ethiopia, where even government offices shut down for the day so civil servants could go and plant trees.

So, of course I shared the story with my (Ethiopian) coworkers at my one resthome job.

My one (edgy) (Ethiopian) coworker had heard of the story, and she was like, "But there is no plan, how many trees die because no plan, they plant them here, they plant them there, no plan," and then she shrugged and was like, "Africa is like that."

A sleepy mistake at my one resthome job.

The other week I was running around a ton to replace my laptop and my smartphone, so I was exceptionally tired one day when I got in to my one resthome job to go start work.

And, I went to go get out my earpiece and plug into a walkie-talkie, and when I couldn't find my earpiece in my little plastic bag that I put into my satchel to carry it in, I realized that it was because it was already in my ear, I was that tired!

So, I laughed and told my coworkers who were there, who were my one (Filipina) coworker and my one (older) (Tibetan) coworker, since I thought my mistake was pretty funny and I thought that they would get a laugh out of it.

"That is bad," my one (Filipina) corworker was like, and then she gestured to our one (older) (Tibetan) coworker and was like, "She is more than sixty and she doesn't do that, imagine how bad you will be when you are her age!".

On great coworkers.

Since there's no nurse right now in my department at the resthome, another nurse from another floor has been subbing in, and the other week she came in and asked all of us on a shift for our opinion about how things are run and how they're doing, and my one (Filipina) coworker and my one (older) (Tibetan) coworker both told her that we're busy with a lot of work but everything goes fine since we always help each other out if one of us is busy.

Later, too, we were all talking about that kind of thing since the meeting had gotten us to talking, and my one (older) (Tibetan) coworker said that she appreciated our "teamwork."

Conversely, I was emailing back and forth about this one higher ed article with my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the brother of the brother-sister pair that I'm friends with), and he wrote:

was it in the second [short essay] that the guy spoke of camaraderie? which university did he work at?! the closest thing to camaraderie I ever saw was somebody offering to comment on a paper. otherwise it was just each to their own (neurosis). 

. . .

On the pharaohs.

The other week at the resthome, I was chitchatting with people about this one book I was reading on the history of ancient Egypt, and I really got into a conversation about it with the one (Bulgarian) private aide who's so nice and who it's always fun to talk with.

She is kind of fascinated by ancient Egypt, too, and I was saying that a lot of times the primary sources that we have are bad for understanding what actually was happening, since the pharoahs would just put up stereotypical inscriptions saying how bad the world was when they took over and now how everything is great since they've been in power and that there's been no one like them in history, etc. etc. etc., and though they all lived at different times and stuff, they all say pretty much the same thing... -

"All the pharaohs are Donald Trump!", the one (Bulgarian) private aide interrupted me and said, busting out laughing.

A dream of hieroglyphics.

The other week, I dreamnt -

I'm in a bright but somewhat functional room like a cinderblock kindergarten classroom, but with white drywalled walls and wooden bookcases and those industrial tables with metal legs and like plastic tops, and there's high tall windows on the walls letting the early afternoon light in, and I'm at the edges of the city's (lesbian feminist) chorus, who are gathering in a circle around a purple and white quilt and are starting to sing some old familiar song of theirs, informally.

Someone next to me tells me that this is a song of theirs that they've sung for quite a long time and that they all know, and I as I look at the quilt, I can see it's got a very thin purple border and is full of purple hieroglyphics on a bright white linen, and as I look closer I can see the mouth and wave symbol making the Egyptian word for "name," and then besides that it's like a smartphone, and the person next to me tells me that they all know hieroglyphics, but they just don't use the old ones, they also add to them to so they can use them now.

. . .

(I told this dream to the sister of my one assisted living client with disabilities, and she quizzed me a lot on what I saw, since she's trying to figure out whether to quit or to stay in the [lesbian feminist] chorus that she's been a member of for years and years...  She says that it doesn't matter that I had the dream and not her since it's someone close to her, and she pulled out a divination guide and began looking up the particular hieroglyphics that I could remember seeing on the quilt, to see if those could provide clues and unlock what the dream might mean for her.)

Crack of my one assisted living client with disabilities.

Right after I got my new laptop - to be honest it's more like a notebook with an attached keyboard, one of my friends who's into computers said - I was behind on the news, so one night I was going to head to a local bar with wi-fi to catch up on stories after I got out of work with my one assisted living client with disabilities.

And, oddly enough, around the time I had to clock out, I had to go take a shit, which was weird for me, since I'm usually just a morning and "before bedtime" shitter.

So, I clocked out, and asked her if I could use her bathroom, which of course I could.

"And if there's ever any questions about hours," I was like, "You should realize that I didn't try to shit on the clock and get another ten minutes in."

(She laughed at that.)

After I took my shit, too, I pointed out how I would now look thinner and hotter right as I was going to go to the local bar.

"Bonus!", she was like, raising her hands in the air in that one "raise the roof" motion.

Laptop and phone problems.

My laptop was broken for over a month before I had to go get a new one, and towards the tail end of that my phone started going too, and to tell the truth I'm pretty proud of myself and how I handled that, since I can get pretty worked up over deadlines and all my writing projects pretty much just stalled out for all that time when I didn't have a laptop.

I did manage to snag a few hours of writing at some public library branches here and there, but otherwise I just read books and focused on studying a new language, and my attitude was that whenever the situation would get worked out, it'd get worked out, and it did.

The only time I really got mad was when I pulled out my old laptop and tried doing word processing on there, only to discover that a huge section of its keyboard didn't work... I think I got ticked off because I had forgotten about that and gotten my hopes up, only to have my expectations ruined.

"No expectations," those are key words to live by.

Exchange this past month with the one resthome resident who wants to die:

Me (getting ready to leave her room): "I have work off the next few days, so maybe see you on Friday."

Her: "I hope not."

Wish of a(n elderly) (Jewish) resthome resident.

Last month, my city's new mayor very publicly slapped down one of the Trump family, and I ended up talking about that with a number of the resthome residents.

"I wish she was Jewish," said one (elderly) (Jewish) lady.

She then added that it's always great to see when someone does something great, and they're (Jewish) besides.

"We need more people like that," she was like.

A day at my one assisted living client's, which frequently involves plastic.

Before I leave my house, I pack up some strawberries as a snack, dumping them from their big plastic carton into an old grape bag that I had saved from a while ago, so it's easy to carry them and then wash them when I get there, while all the while I reuse some old plastic and so am very satisfied with myself.

Once I get there, they tell me that her new cat has discovered her kitchen counter and had chewed through a plastic bag of kitty treats that had been up there, so they're now being kept in a hard plastic container, which is also being kept on the very same counter.  I now have to be very careful when I set food out there to cool, because the cat could sneak up and get into it.

Assisted living training (2 of 2): Cleaning a vagina.

At that same assisted living training, they gave a presentation about cleaning male and female genitals, and they had a blown-up picture on a stand that they would point to and then demonstrate on with a dry washcloth.

For cleaning a vagina, the presenter clarified that you wipe top-to-bottom on outer folds, each in turn, then top-to-bottom on inner folds, each in turn, then inside, and there you "scoop like ice cream."

"Why did you have to say that?", one (black) lady in the audience was like.

"I didn't say it was ice cream, I said to scoop like ice cream," the (black) lady presenter was like.

"Still, I don't want to think of that, I want my ice cream!", the first (black) lady was like.

Assisted living training (1 of 2): Toe fungus.

The other week at an assisted living training, one (older) (black) lady who was attending was somehow asked about something from her job as part of the presentation, and then she went off topic and began talking about how peroxide is good if you've got toe fungus, you just put it in a spray bottle and spray it all over your feet once a day, and it clears up really quickly.

As she explained it, she had really bad toe fungus, "and the Lord told me to share it with my neighbor."

"I was like, 'What?', since why would they want to hear about my nasty toenails falling off, but I went and did it anyway," she was like.

She then said that her neighbor was like "you're doing what?" when she told her about how she was treating her toe fungus, and so her neighbor clued her in about putting peroxide in a spray bottle and using that on it.

Glimpses of other lives.

Last month, I had glimpses of two paths in my life that didn't happen (I prefer to say it that way instead of "paths that I didn't take," since in many ways a lack of family wealth made each path difficult if not impossible to follow, rather than something that I had choice over).

The first was a committee meeting for a board that I was asked to join.

The agenda somehow wasn't much, but it still took almost two hours, even though by the end of it everyone was just cracked out and ready to leave.

That would have been my life, in government!

It made me so happy that I spend my days walking around and talking with people, at my assisted living jobs.

The second was a text from a colleague with whom I'd collaborated on a paper before I chucked it  along with trying for any academic jobs.

He had picked up the research and moved it forward in a slightly different direction, and I'd read drafts and shared my perspective and comments, and he'd gotten a "revise and resubmit" from a major journal.

So, he did that, and the editors seemed fine, and then Reader #2 raised some new points that weren't raised in the first round of feedback but could have been given then and incorporated in the revision, as well as making some quibbles that really weren't true but sounded like they were devastating, alongside their making a flatly inaccurate statement about the paper (that it failed to mention one text, when that text was actually mentioned in a footnote).

And, the editors backed out and turned down the paper, after all of that work.

What a crazy disorganized process and a waste of time!

Academia really is appallingly inefficient.

It's like a friend said who's now a tenure track professor but had done a post doc with a VA hospital research project, that that kind of weirdly timed feedback that causes wasted effort simply wouldn't be tolerated in granted projects in the VA system.

The more you look at it, the more that academia looks like a bunch of disconnected elites who play their little games with each other, with very little sense of mission of education and research.  The big players are insulated by wealth, so they play games that take up time and fill their days with bullshit.

It really does make you wonder why we push public funds to it, when this kind of stuff goes on.

Joking with the one resthome resident who wants to die.

A lot of times, the one resthome resident who wants to die will say stuff like "Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere" or "I'll be here" when we talk and I reference the future somehow, like when I say "see you next Monday" or something like that.

Anyhow, then, I had to help her the other week, but then I got called away for something urgent, so I turned the joke back on her.

"I'll be back in ten minutes," I was like, "So don't go anywhere!".

She got a kick out of that.

Reminsicence of the one resthome resident who wants to die, and her (Bulgarian) private aide.

For some reason, me and the one resthome resident who wants to die and the (Bulgarian) private aide who comes in sometimes to help her started talking about hunting the other week, and the one resthome resident who wants to die began reminiscing about her youth in Central Europe.

Venison was a delicacy, she said, and if it was ever on sale, her mother was sure to get some, and would cook it up for the family.

"Like steaks?", I was like.

"No, a roast," she was like.

Later, the (Bulgarian) private aide said that her uncle married a Slovak woman and lived in a rural area there, and that they did a lot of hunting, that everyone did in that region.  When she went to visit, in fact, they had an entire room full of meat from hunting, all of it smoked.

She clarified, too, that she visited them twice under Communism, not after.

"As for me, Communism wasn't so bad," she was like.  "We are a small country, it was different there, it was more quiet."

Relaxation of my one (male) (Tibetan) coworker.

My one (male) (Tibetan) coworker has been tired because of his new baby, though he clarified that it's more from the work and the interrupted sleep than from being actually physically tired.

He was saying, too, that he was so tired the other week, that he asked his wife to give him a massage, and so "she got out coconut oil and gave me massage, it was so good," he was like.

"You better be careful," I was like, "Because you'll end up with a second baby."

Noise on the subway the other day:

Two (black) people directly across from each other on the car, each with a kid, each with their cell phone out and on loud with some kind of music with a louder beat.

The woman started hers up after the man had his on, so you wonder if she got the idea from him.

The man got off with the stroller and the woman with the toddler like at the same stop, but they didn't seem to be together.

Two disappearing cats (2 of 2): Old cat.

The other week, one (affable) (independent) resthome resident was saying that he couldn't find his cat, so I asked if I could go help him find him for him.

"You can try, but you might not be successful," he was like, and he then said that his apartment was small and very clean, and he simply has no idea where his cat goes.

So, I go into the apartment, and there sitting out is the cat carrier that he had brought out to take his cat to the vet and which had scared it and made it go into hiding, and otherwise his apartment wass on the bare side and very, very clean.

And, I look everywhere, behind stuff and in things and whatnot, and even at the fabric beneath the bed and sofa to see if it was broken and the cat had leapt up into the furniture and was resting on an internal beam, and no, I simply couldn't find the cat at all, it wasn't anywhere.

"I told you," he was like.

Like right after I left his apartment, too, I bumped into my one (male) (Tibetan) coworker, and I told him about the situation, so he went off to go to the apartment to go help find the cat.

Later, I saw him, and though he hadn't believed me at first that the cat was hard to find, it turned out that he couldn't find it, either.

It was pretty astounding, that a five pound cat could hide so effectively from three people looking for it.

I saw the resident later, too, and he said that the cat had briefly come out for dinner, but then had slipped away again and went and hid.

Two disappearing cats (1 of 2): New cat.

My one assisted living client with disabilities is providing a home for the cat of a friend of a friend of a friend whose owner will be in the hospital and then rehab for a while, so the cat has someone to be around while her owner heals.

The cat is very hide-y and has found like four or five spaces where it goes all the time, and it will slip from one to another without you even necessarily realizing that it's left its first place at all.

'Ninja cat,' she calls it.

Too, one of the cat's hiding places is behind the flat screen TV, which she gets to through a hole in the back of the cabinet where the wires come up from to go and connect to the TV.

You have a shine a flashlight below the TV to see if you can see fur, to see if she's there.