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.