Religious affiliations of resthome residents.

Like a few weeks ago I was talking with the one retired school nurse at the resthome, about the one quiet engineer guy resident who had recently died.

He was a very straightforward and by-the-books person, but he was actually part of this fringe (Jewish) group where members did everything themselves in the traditional form, but without rabbis and without distinction among the sexes, and they were very proud of themselves for making local history for being the first to have some female cantor or something like that.

"I always thought that was really cool," I was like.  "I just didn't expect that from him, it was a little outside the box, but once he told me about it, I just thought it was really cool, and it was just so cool how he was actually a freethinker like that, I wouldn't have necessarily have expected that from him, from other conversations we had had."

"That's the kind of place you would go, if you were a Jew," the retired school nurse was like.

The President's incomptence has f*cked directly with my life.

So, the other week my paycheck from the 1st two weeks of January came in, from the job where I assist my one client with disabilities.

And, even though it's under the new contract, the $.50 payraise wasn't on there, so I looked up the terms of the new contract that we had voted on and I noticed the words "Pending federal approval," and then I called my union's information hotline.

And, it turns out that even though everything went through all of these steps back in December, the final approval has been sitting on some desk under some executive branch department waiting for some signature somewhere, since some use of federal funds is involved.

"We never thought it would already be March," the guy on the phone was like.

And, it turns out there's no backpay, so that with every paycheck that comes in until whenever it gets signed, that money is permanently lost to me.

Honestly, what the fuck.  I make like $24K a year and pay through the nose for health insurance and already can't afford to save for retirement or a major medical emergency, and last year I got stuck with a $1400 tax bill due to Trump's tax scam, and now the mess that he's made of the government is actually permanently taking money out of my pocket?!?!?

That's just fucked up.

Yes, it's like $35-40 per month and for just some indefinite period, but that's a lot of money to me, and it's simply uncalled for.

What an incompetent asshole.

I wonder if he's doing this purposefully, as part of some revenge he's doing on someone.

The last Republican governor we had did that with disbursing some payraise to us, though ultimately my union sued and we got all of the money disbursed to us as backpay, which I guess we can't do now.

These guys have so much fricking money, and it's honestly like they can only get off now by taking away what little other people have.  My last tax bill was honestly like docking me more than a thousand dollars to directly transfer it to the megarich, and now this.  Honestly, like what the fuck.  It's just in-your-face and depraved. These rich people are simply out of control.

Drollness of my one (Mexican) coworker.

At the resthome, my one (Mexican) coworker is a really good worker, and all the residents love her and everyone always wants to work with her.

So, like last month I was telling her how great it is to work with her, and I was like, "I wish we could clone you."

"Everyone always tells me that!", she was like, seriously.

So, like a week or two ago, something happened where I made that comment again about cloning her, and then I added, "But we're lucky we can't clone you, otherwise we would all be out of a job."

"That's true," she was like.

A prank I pulled the other week...

...on my one client with disabilities:

On all of the food that I had tupperwared up with post-it notes on them like usual (e.g. "pasta," "sandwich," etc.), I put a strip of post-it note that added, "+ corona virus!", and on the tupperwared cat food too that's marked with a picture of a cat, I put, "+ corona virus?".

And, right in the middle of the fridge so you saw it the very first thing when you opened it, I positioned a full piece of paper that I had put the word "BOO!" on, and I surrounded it by pictures of all these little viruses wearing these little crowns.

Visit (4 of 4): Middle Eastern restaurant.

During my visit to my uncle's the other week, my mom and I went to this one (Middle Eastern) restaurant we like.

Although I usually get some hummus or baba ghanouj with a sandwich, this time I got their cilantro chicken special, which was huge and came with a side of cinnamon-flavored rice that filled up half of the plate.

Afterwards, too, I used the last pita to wipe off the dish, and then I finished off my mom's salad and did the same.

When the (Lebanese) owner came to pick up the dishes - she was this pale-skinned lady who was on the short side and seemed tired but nice and yet somehow like she had a lot of energy, too - she was like, "That's good, I am happy always to see a clean plate," and she picked up the dirty dishes and went to go take them away.

Then, I licked my finger and picked up the last crumbs from off of the wax paper in the basket where the pieces of pita bread had been.

I had already used some pita bread to wipe up the small plate where the crushed white garlic sauce had been.

Visit (3 of 4): Bureaucracy levity.

During my visit to my uncle's the other week, my mom and I went to go take care of getting some official government forms.

We had to go in to the nearby city, and it turned out that the office was in this big building right in the heart of downtown that's right by a famous statue, and we ended up in a 2nd floor clerk's office full of mostly (black) people.

After we got our forms straightened out, we had to go to a separate window and pay sixteen bucks and come back with a receipt, so my mom pulled out a ten and a five and a one and gave it to me and asked me to go pay the bill and then come back.

Somehow, though, when I was walking, the middle bill, the ten, brushed against my coat and fell onto the floor.

"Hey, you dropped something," a (late middle-aged) (black) guy who was going the other way said to me.

"Oh, thanks!", I was like, and I turned around to pick it up just as some (older) (black) lady started pointing to the floor and was like, "Whose money is that?"

"Looks like mine!", shouted out a (late middle-aged) (black) lady with a vivacious face who was sitting next to her, as she started laughing and mimed going to pick up the ten from the floor.

Visit (2 of 4): Anecdote from the veteranarian's.

When I was visiting my uncle, my mom said that she had gone and taken his cat to the vet's.

She said that when she walked in, there was this tall old motorcycle guy in a leather jacket with a shih tzu with him, and when he turned around, his jacket said "ASSHOLE".