Addendum: "Quality Street."

At the retirement party, they had a tin of chocolates out, some Nestle brand called "Quality Street."

Like I told the one (Ghanaian-American) kitchen manager who's cool and who's also (American black) and who I sometimes speak Spanish with, "Quality street...  Like yo' mamma."

At that, she just rolled her eyes at me and shook her head in patient tolerance.

Then, I saw the one (Mexican) kitchen worker who's cool and who I talk Spanish with, and I gestured to the box and was like, "Quality street, calidad de calle...  Como tu puta madre!" ('Quality street, quality of the street...  Like your whore of a mother!).

"Ai, [my first name]," my one (Mexican) kitchen worker friend who's cool was like as she laughed a bit,  and then she was like, "No good, no good," shaking her head, as she continued to smile a cat's grin.

Resthome retirement party.

The other week, a longtime resthome worker retired, this (relatively old) (shorter) (white) woman who might be ethnic, and they ordered in some Popeye's chicken for everyone for lunch and got a cake, and all the staffers in my unit got a free lunch that we got relatively hygienically and then sat down at separate tables to eat at.

They also had some flower bouquets in vases, a photo album, and a large portrait of the worker, which I assume was some kind of gift to her.

(I really don't know her.)

Anyhow, the lunch was ending just when I got on shift, and my one (Tibetan) coworker with an inappropriate sense of humor told me to go eat right after I ran into her right after I clocked in, so I hustled over there and got some food and sat down and ate my chicken and coleslaw and just kind of chilled out while I did that.

For the first time in my life, I noticed Popeye's Cajun seasoning packets, and I used a couple of them on my pieces of chicken.  They were quite good, and tasted mostly like salt and onion.

I also liked Popeye's coleslaw, which I've never had before and which seems to have little chopped up bits of pickle in it.

Too, some of the (West African) kitchen workers had set up speakers and were playing (West African) music, and the one (middle-aged) (thickset) (bearded) (Ghanaian) kitchen manager got out his phone as this one (younger) (Ghanaian) kitchen worker who believes in juju got the portrait off the table and held it in front of her, then she turned around and stood still, then she started dancing by shifting her (big) ass back and forth in time with the music as the kitchen manager recorded it on his phone, and then she turned around and started dancing and smiling with the retiring worker's portrait held in her arms directly in front of her, her shoulders shifting in time too along with her ass.

And, I wasn't sure if this was a tribute to the retiring worker or if it was something for Facebook or if it was something that was between the two of them, and I couldn't figure out a way to find out about it.

I guess I'll never know.

Another dream: Book.

A couple weeks ago I dreamnt -

After the coronavirus crisis passes and we're finally able to see people again, I finally see my one (retired lawyer) student who takes Ancient Greek reading lessons from me, and he's holding a partially open brown paper package containing a secondhand hard cover American intellectual history book that I had just ordered.

"I just ordered that book!", I was like, and then he lights up and we start talking about it and we realize that we should discuss it together after he reads it.

. . .

(I actually had ordered that book in real life, and it had arrived in a brown paper package the week of the dream.)

One dream: Building.

Last month I dreamnt -

I've seen a newspaper advertisement about buying an $80-90K studio apartment condo, and I'm in a big long 3-story brick building that's like an old industrial building, but inside there's bare earth and hills and even grass and greenery in some places.

In the large central room that's a major portion of the exact central interior, there's a sunken pool in the center and a high ceiling going up several stories, and it's very light apart from shadows cast from the walls, and there's high hills around the edges where you have to walk and creep on some small paths that have been worn in, and now and then there's these large thick fragments of glass, and someone I'm with points out that they're panes of glass that have fallen off the wall and shattered there.

I know I'm in Milwaukee, and I emerge into a finished lobby with light colored tile and some office-like tables and chairs, and on an end-table there's a binder advertising the building's luxury condo conversion.

. . .

Coronavirus treat.

A while ago my one assisted living client with disabilities gifted me a can of Campbell's steak-and-potato soup, since she had been having the other one that she had bought and had discovered that it has mushrooms in it.

So, it sat in my pantry for like two or three months, till I finally opened it up the other week.

It was such a treat!

I simply never buy anything like that, and it was such variety in my diet,  since I can't go out for food anymore.

I put it in a big bowl and ate it all at one time while I sat on my couch.

Profanity about that man in the White House.

The other week at the resthome, I stopped by to check up on the one resident who I have a running joke with about being a partier, and she was all worked up because she had watched a Donald Trump press conference on TV.

"And then he said," she kept saying, in between saying a lot of the horrible things that he had said at the press conference.

Then, finally, she was like, "What do you think?"

"You want to know?", I was like, and then I let loose with what I really think.  "He's a f*cking sociopathic moron," I was like, "and it's just horrible that this f*cking moron is running our country, pardon my language, I'm sorry if it's inappropriate."

"No need to apologize," she was like.  "It's not inappropriate; in fact, it's inadequate."

. . .

I later told what she had said to my parents and to my one assisted living client with disabilities, and they all very much agreed with her perspective.

Coronavirus synchronicity.

Since I can't go out to write at bars right after work anymore, and since I'd be shutting down by the time I got home and showered and cleaned myself up and tried to write, now and then I've been staying after work to use the computer in the library of the resthome, to try to work for a few hours right after work while I'm still hyped up from all the running around I have to do at my job since it's such active work all the time.

Anyhow, a few nights I've managed to work till almost like 1:30am, and the resthome resident who's a retired nurse has seen me in the hallway there, since she's a night owl and goes there some nights to do some exercises of hers.

"You're here late," she remarked the first time that she saw me.

And, I was just pooping out and I talked with her, and I realized that if I really push myself, I make it to around the time when it'd be closing time at the bar, only I'm working at the resthome instead.