Gift to my one client with disabilities.

My one client with disabilities has a pretty dirty sense of humor – being down with that was a prereq for the job! – and we always make jokes about this that and the other, from bestiality to golden showers.

Also, whenever I get a bag of potatoes, I sell some to her and her sister, since it’s cheaper than by the pound but they would never go through a whole eight pound bag of potatoes by themselves.

So, whenever I find a potato that’s somehow shaped dirty, I throw it in for free, to make her laugh.

The most recent one kind of looked like a double-sided dildo, so I reminded her to wash it gently with soap and water after using it, since if she accidentally mixed up ends she might come down with some nasty infection.

Charity drive response of one rest home resident.

The one front desk manager at the rest home is having people collect hard plastic caps to give to him so he can give them to his friend for this one charity drive project that some kids are doing, where if they collect four hundred pounds they can be melted down into a park bench or something.

At first it seemed like a school project, but more recently the front desk manager said that he found out that it was actually for two Girl Scout troops.

In any case, the other day I was picking up some caps from this one retired engineer rest home resident, and we started talking about the project and I started saying that I was wondering what four hundred pounds of them would look like all together in one place, since that would just take up this huge amount of room.

“Four hundred pounds,” I was like, “That’s a ton.”

“No it’s not,” he was like, “It’s four hundred pounds.”

. . .

I had to pause a sec to analyze the joke, and then I was like, “You got me, [his first name], that’s funny.”

“Oh, no it’s not,” he was like, "It's really not that funny."

Comment on a nasty hotel.

The uncle of my one client with disabilities died, and on the way back from the funeral, her and her sister had to go find a hotel, the snow and the roads were so bad.

She said they had to look at several hotels before they could find one that had a decent price and was decent enough, and that one they stopped at was just weird with a minivan out front that had its door open and it just looked nasty, and they googled reviews on their phones and everyone who wrote a review was talking about roaches and bedbugs and stuff and was saying stuff like how you couldn’t pay them to stay there.

“It was scary gross,” she was like, “Just scary gross…”

“You mean like the NPR host?”, I was like.

. . .

(That made her laugh.)

Observation of a (Nigerian) coworker.

The other week I was talking with my one (Nigerian) coworker at the rest home, and I asked him about what he missed about Nigeria.

He grew up in Lagos though his parents moved from a village for work, and he said it was the people outside all the time talking and catching up or playing football or other games, and here you just don’t get that, you go to work and you go to school and you go to church, and maybe in the summer you go to the beach.

Though, he admitted that they played a pick-up game of soccer with his church at the beach this summer, and it was great.

Our one (Mexican) coworker was with us when we were talking about that and she agreed with him about that difference, and she said that the same sort of things would happen back home in Mexico in the village that she grew up in.

“People play soccer, and they are so serious, they lose, one says to another, you cheat, and they fight”, she was like.

A dispute on (Mexican) Spanish.

My one (Mexican) coworker at the rest home sometimes lets me talk to her in Spanish, and the other day I was telling her about going to see a film and I used the word “la peli,” but she didn’t know what that was and she corrected me to “la pelicula.”

So, I broke into English and told her that I had just seen a (younger) (Mexican) friend use that word on Facebook for “la pelicula,” so I had assumed that it was okay.

She still hadn’t heard of it.

So, I had to take out my phone and google “la peli” to show her that it was okay to use that in some Latin American cultures, and of course it was.

I wonder if she’s been here so long that maybe with the media she watches and her being off the internet and the people that she talks to, she isn’t necessarily plugged into the words that a person from the same country who’s 40 and under might say?

I told that to her, and she thought that it could be the case.

Severe cold.

With the severe cold that my city is experiencing, my parents were emailing me a lot to leave the faucets running, which I did in fact do.

.

They also said to open the cabinet doors below my sink, so that more heat got around the pipes.

They also also said to do that without telling my landlord, since he’s young and has a lot on his mind with his family and whatnot and he might not be taking the proper precautions.

But, the first morning of severe cold, I could hear him in the basement and then later the hot water was much hotter than usual, so I’m guessing he probably turned up the heat there and in the hot water heater so that the building we live in could deal with the cold better, so what my parents was worried about wasn't much of a thing at all, it turns out.

Lunar New Year's Addendum.

When we were talking about that stuff, my one (Tibetan) rest home coworker also told me about Tibetan New Year, which is celebrated on the same day as Chinese New Year, so I made sure to write particular phrasing for that on the card, just like I have started trying to do for people from Vietnam.

She said that after special prayers in the morning, everyone goes and eats sweet rice that has cashews and stuff in it, and then in the afternoon everyone hangs out together and does something fun like bingo.