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.