Niceness at work.

Last month, we had an afternoon "quarantine concert" at work, where some (jazz) musicians came and set up a tent in front of the resthome, and residents came and sat out in chairs outside at an appropriate distance apart, or opened up their windows and sat right by there so that they could listen to the concert.

There was an ice cream cart, too, so everyone could get ice cream or a popsicle if they wanted some, and since some neighbors whose houses and apartments were nearby the resthome came out and sat outside on their stoops to listen, the one (intense) (Israeli) worker strolled over there and invited them to come have some ice cream, too.

Ant massacres.

The one resthome resident who I always joke with lives on a really high floor of the resthome, but a handful of rooms there get ants sometimes, including hers.

This year, she told me that the ants were back, and I was surprised to suddenly realize that there was a bunch of them by her front bathroom, and later I found some in her back bathroom and by the wall by the closet near it as well (her room has two bathrooms since it's a suite that they made from collapsing two separate previous individual rooms into one).

I made sure to leave a message for maintenance to spray, but I also took some toilet tissue and killed a shit ton of ants, easily like 30 or 40 or so or maybe even more.

Like four days later, too, she said that they had come and sprayed, but they were back, and so I again went and killed some ants, like maybe 40 or 50 or more this time, and then I went and left a message again for maintenance as well.

I also made sure to come back later and check everywhere and kill any more stray ants that I saw before I left for the night, so I maximally cleaned out the area before leaving when my shift ended.

I'd personally hate it if I was in my room, and there was all these ants there that I knew were there but I couldn't go kill.

A coworker's reaction to a cult memoir.

At the resthome, my one (Mexican) coworker is a pretty voracious reader, and our taste overlaps a little bit; we both like true crime, although I like cult memoirs, while her taste shades off into thrillers and romance novels.

The other week, she was saying that she was out of books since the library was closed, so I offered to loan her something, and I tried to think of something that might interest her, although the only thing I could think of was a memoir from a Mormon Fundamentalist woman who was able to escape that group with all of her children, something that doesn't happen too often since they live in remote areas and marriage and then especially kids traps women into households for pretty much like ever.

She agreed - "Is this fiction, or non-fiction?", she was like, and was open to it when I said it was non-fiction - and so I brought it in the book for her on the next shift.

Then, like after a week we worked together again, and so I asked her what she thought about it.

She said that it had been busy and she only read part of the first section, where it talked about the night of the escape, but it was good, so far, it was interesting.

Like the time we worked together after that, I asked her again what she thought about it.

She said it was a bit boring, it was all about how they were growing up and the author was in fourth grade, and everyone was molested.

She also said that it was a lot of work, to remember all the characters.

She then went into some long explanation of the rearrangements and emotions when a new wife came into the author's family, just sentences and sentences and sentences and I couldn't really catch what she was talking about because I had read the book so long ago, and she ended it all up by saying, "...and the, eh, fourth wife, she moved into the daughter's room, because the new wife is in the bedroom with the husband!"

And you could tell she just found that weird and kind of appalling, that the wife had to move into the daughter's room.

Resthome joke: Bedtime routine.

The other week at the resthome, I was helping the one resident who used to work in advertising with his pre-bedtime routine, and so I pulled out the moisturizing lotion that we use on his legs.

And, after I put the lotion on his one leg, I asked him if he wanted lotion on his other leg, since it had been sore for him recently.

"Of course," he was like, "It's only fair! If you do one, you have to do the other one."

Second languages.

The other week at the resthome, I was walking by the dishwashing room and the door was open after dinner and there was my one (Mexican) coworker who works in dining who I speak Spanish with and this one (tall) (lanky) (young) (Ghanian) kitchen worker.

And, they were both talking (Spanish), and it was clear that he was finding words and putting them together and he must have just started studying Spanish somehow.

(He goes to a local community college.)

From what little I could hear, it seemed that he was strongly giving tones to the different Spanish words he was saying, probably because I think Twi is his first language, although I don't think he does that when he speaks English.

A few months ago I had seen them both pass in the hallway and she said something and he had cried out "Mucho! Mucho! Mucho!" in a performative voice as he walked by pushing a cart, but I didn't think it was an actual interaction, just more a joke of him faking that he spoke Spanish and saying some basic word he knew.

(...it's quite interesting, one of my [Tibetan] coworkers was wanting to study Spanish, and now this kitchen worker seems to have started.  Two people from quite different parts of the globe who ended up coming to the U.S., and they speak English everyday, and they're open to Spanish, too. It's really kind of cool, when you get down to it, that someone from Ghana and maybe someone from Tibet can interact with people in Spanish. I wonder how often that that happens...)

4th of July observational humor.

A few days before the 4th of July this year, I had seen on Twitter someone saying that with Donald Trump in the White House, we should have that holiday be a day of fasting and humiliation.

So, the next time I was at work, I shared that observation with a lot of the resthome residents.

The one resthome resident with a good sense of humor got a big kick out of it.

And, the one resthome resident who's a retired music professor was quite straightforwardly like, "Makes sense to me!".

Coronavirus handwashing practice.

To properly wash your hands, you're supposed to do it for the length of two "Happy Birthday"s.

I usually sing that for myself, and I also encourage the one resthome resident with a good sense of humor to do it whenever I'm assisting her and she's around and needs to wash her hands.

We did the basic "Happy Birthday" for a while, and then I began changing lyrics, like saying "Dear [her first name]" or "Ms. [her last name]" or "Ma'am" (a slang word that I use for all women and that she dislikes and that I sometimes accidentally use for her).

Lately, I've been saying the name of the day, like "Happy Monday to you," or the time of day, like "Happy bedtime to you," and after I say her name, she breaks in and is like, "...and [my first name]," and she ends by singing, "And many more...!"