On getting sick.

For like three weeks I’d hear people with this certain cough on the subway, and I’d get the fuck away from them and wash my hands as soon as I got to work.

Then, I felt super tired for a bit, so even though I was cutting down days at work to campaign, I ended up not going out knocking doors, but instead sitting at home and resting and maybe doing office and writing work for my campaign, so I could fight whatever it was off.

And, I did, and then I didn’t and I felt like crap at work, and then the next day I woke up sick, and now I cough like the people on the subway, except for after I take generic Nyquil at night so I can sleep, because then I wake up in the morning and hack up deep green pieces into the sink, and neti pot out giant strands of green onto the porcelain.

It’s tough.

The tickle in my throat wakes me up at night, and then I end up sleeping in a ton and I don’t want to disrupt my sleep, so I end up with an off sleep schedule.

Sigh.

I should be campaigning more.

Reflections on my campaign.

What I’ve realized more and more is how money sorts people out into viable candidates or not.

I know everybody knows that already happens, but it's even more than I thought it'd be, and as a candidate you have to come face-to-face with the details and the expectations in person on pretty regular basis.

Not only does my not having money mean I can’t self-fund or go full-time, but it also means my family and my social networks are that much less successful when I hit them up for fundraising; they might be able to give me like a hundred dollars at most, whereas a lot of other candidates’ family and friends can give them a thousand bucks or even like five thousand bucks at a time.

Looking at how everything has come together, an extra twelve thousand dollars in the fall would be the difference between a plausible campaign and certain victory, since that money would have let me hire a full-time campaign worker, and that would be enough for me to win, I think.

Though, we’ll see how I do anyways.

It really does make you think, though; twelve thousand a year was around what kept me from being a standard successful student in the higher ed track where I could hit my goalposts on time and go on the tenure-track job market, and now that same twelve thousand is what’s keeping my campaign from a standard staffing measure that's expected even at this low level of the game.

It’s funny, too, different people I know from unionization stuff are doing campaign work now, and they’re very blithe and like, “The going rate for a campaign manager now is three thousand a month.”

What bothers me when they say that is there’s no recognition of how those wages come from cleaving to the rich in a broken system.  They should be saying that same thing, with a different awareness.  It’s really crazy to me how people just accept how wealth is affecting who can do stuff or not nowadays.

I mean, three thousand a month is more than I make personally, that's just kind of wacky to face these expectations from others, even those who seem like you.

My birthday this year.

For my birthday this year, I got a card in the mail, and it turns out that it’s from the head of the one assisted living home where I work!

I guess she sends one out to each employee on their birthday, as recognition and a thank-you.

Isn’t that nice?

I’ve never had that happen at any other workplace.

Between nice coworkers, staff meals, and this, I really do work at a nice place.  So much better than higher ed!

Antic of the one retired psychiatrist at the resthome.

Lately, whenever I've been assisting the one retired psychiatrist at the resthome and I have to put my hands anywhere in the "below the waist" area by the butt or the genitals, as soon as I do that, he puts on a surprised looking face and is like, "Ai!" or "Oh!" in a very high-pitched voice.

Memories of the lead-up to New Years Eve.

A few days before New Years Eve this past year, I was at one of the local chain drugstores and was chit-chatting with the cashier, and after she mentioned that she worked Christmas, I observed that that sucked, but it was probably better than working New Years Eve and dealing with all of the drunkos.

"Though you guys probably don't get it too bad since you close at ten," I was like.

"Oh yes we do," she was like, and she said that starting in the evening on New Years Eve, they start getting people coming in who are already drunk.

"Wow,"  I was like.

A (black) woman on the train.

The other week I was going in to work on the subway, and I was talking on my phone with my parents when I stepped into the car from the platform, and then I kept talking as I made my way to this open corner seat at the far end of the car, and when I sat down, I noticed a (younger middle-aged) (black) woman sitting opposite me and also talking on her phone, loudly.

She had a black tights and a shiny synthetic maroon jacket on, and a pink bobble cap with sparkles put in in the little spaces between where the threads intersected, and her glasses were black with these pinkish shiny floral swirls on the frames, and her hair was dyed a bright pink, in waves of shades that could become almost a blonde-ish at times.

She had a gym bag with a leopard print sitting on the floor by her feet, too.

Later, this one younger and this one older (Chinese-speaking) woman got on the train, and the older woman noticed a clump of two black gloves one folded into the other sitting on the floor of the train car, and the older woman turns to her and is like, "Excuse me, are those yours?"

And at that, the (black) woman gives her a side eye and just hunches up her shoulders at her, without even really acknowledging her.

Like five minutes later, though, another guy gets on the car and sits on my side, and he sees the gloves and also decides to ask the (black) woman if they're hers, and this time, she looks down, sees her gloves, and picks them up.

(Honestly, like what the hell.)

After she got off the car soon after that, too, I shook my head and said to the two (Chinese-speaking) women on the other side of the car, "That was weird."

"She was very rude," the older woman observed.

My mumbling produces a misheard phrase.

The other week when I went to go work at my one assisted living job with my one client with disabilities, her sister was leaving and she gave me a few short instructions on stuff to do, including finishing up the laundry but making sure that I didn't put this one red polo shirt into the dryer.

She got distracted for a sec, and then when she turned her attention back to me, I made sure I repeated back to her her instructions about the "red polo shirt," but I mumbled and she got confused and asked me like "What...?", and then I said the stuff about the "red polo shirt" again, and then she was like, "Oh, I thought you said 'Polish herb.'"

We both chuckled, and then I laughed and said that the Polish herb must be when you smoke up and then go get those really cheap microwave pierogis to go and eat.