A bar patio, during quarantine.

On my way back from the beach the other week, I discovered that this one bar that I don't particularly like has a back patio, and I've now been there twice...

I was going to meet my one librarian manager friend to go walk her dog, when I noticed that the bar's sandwich board out front had switched from advertising carry-out to saying that they had a back patio.

So, I had gone to check it out, and it was set up in the back parking lot with tables spaced decently apart from everyone and the employees wore masks, and since you were sitting like at least ten feet apart from people in open air, the arrangement seemed very, very safe, from what I've read about the coronavirus; groups of mostly (black) people were mixing among themselves, but you didn't have to be anywhere near any other customers, when you were just sitting out chilling with a beer out there.

Each of the two nights that I was there, too, customers helped break down tables and carry in chairs after last call ended.  It was all very much a feeling of solidarity.

Otherwise, we were all just sitting out in a big back parking lot under the night sky, with rows of cars beyond us, with people occasionally going off by the dumpsters to stand there and have a cigarette.

I texted my one (Spanish) professor friend who lives down the block, to tell him that we'd reinvented the plaza.

I said something like, "Estoy a [the bar's name]. Venga aqui. Estas casado pero no ya muerte" ("I am at [the bar's name], come here, you are married but not yet dead").

A swinger, on Jerry Falwell Jr.

This week right after the new Jerry Falwell Jr. pool boy scandal news broke, I Facebook messaged the swinger guy from the swinger couple I know, to give them my condolences that Falwell was giving such sexy, big-hearted, open-minded people like them a bad name.

He wrote back and said that it was just a shame how Falwell discussed it, calling it an affair.

He said it would have been so much better, if he had just been honest and said that he and his wife had an "open marriage."

A Perspective on Cats from 2 (Ethiopian) Coworkers.

Last month, the one resident who's a retired advertising executive had to move to a different department, and so like a week after that news came down his cute cat that everyone had been checking in on was gone, though no-one quite knows where it went to.

"Is she gone?", my one (edgy) (Ethiopian) coworker asked me, after I had gotten the key and gone into the room to double-check if she was there or not.

"Yes," I was like, and I said that she wasn't there, and neither was the pet carrier or the litterbox or her one food dish.

"Then who took her?", my one (edgy) (Ethiopian) coworker was like.

"I have no idea," I was like. "Maybe the wife or the daughter, or [the name of one of our coworkers who liked the cat]?"

"Or [the name of an office worker at the resthome], she like the cat. She is a good cat," she was like, "Not like that cat in [the room number of a resident who passed away this winter]. That cat more like a wild animal!"

And at that, my one (cool) (Muslim) (Ethiopian) coworker chimed in and was like, "I am very afraid of that cat! So big, so black, you go in the room, and it sit there and stare at you. Very scary!".

"Like a wild animal," my one (edgy) (Ethiopian) coworker agreed, and she said that it had even scratched the resident who owned it out of nowhere one day.  "Not like [the name of the cat of the one resident who's a retired advertising executive], she is a sweet cat."

Summer reading plans of a coworker.

Last month, my one (cool) (Muslim) (Ethiopian) coworker asked me if I had heard about the book that Trump's dead brother's daughter wrote, and I said yes.

"I want to read it," she was like.

I then asked her if the niece wasn't a psychologist or a psychiatrist or whatever.

"Yes, something like that," she was like.

I then told her that just that day I had heard that the one resident who's a retired college professor had ordered it and it was on the way in the mail.

"Maybe you can borrow it from her," I was like.

"Maybe," she was like.

A(n Ethiopian) coworker on coffee, the DNC.

 A few weeks ago, my one (cool) (Muslim) (Ethiopian) coworker put on some coffee in the office at the resthome, and she started saying again how much she loves coffee.

I asked her if she likes espresso, and she said she didn't know.

"Can I buy that at Starbucks?", she was like.  "I will try."

I also asked her if she likes cappuccinos, and she said that she didn't know what that was, either.

This past week, then, I asked her if she was watching the DNC, and she said yes, and I asked her if she had watched the speech of the kid who stutters, and she was like, "Oh, yes!", and she had the most vulnerable, compassionate look on her face when she said that, and you could just tell that she really loved that speech.

My late night hours the other week:

The other week, I got home from work very late at night, and there was one ant and then another ant and then a third ant in the hallway by my bookcase, and I killed them all, and then I looked further for other ones, but there weren't any more.

And later, before I was going to bed, I turned on the light in my bathroom, and I saw a sizable but quite thin little black bug skitter around by the base of my flouride (sp.?) rinse bottle, which sits on some paper towel on some built-in shelving in the lefthand wall in my bathroom when you walk into it.

And, the next morning, I woke up, and I had a bite on my right lower back like from a bedbug, and in the alley by the garbage was a child's mattress with the sheet on, and some child's toys in the bin next to it, in particular a large plastic dollhouse that didn't seem to be broken.

My early afternoon last month:

Watermelon seeds were in my morning shit when I got up, but they were a little bit bleached, probably from something happening to them from having gone through my digestive system overnight.

Then, on the subway going into work, a (young) (black) woman with a child was down the car, and her face mask had pink and clear sequins all over it.

And, I was doing a crossword, and as I was on the city's subway system, a crossword clue I was doing had to do with the city's subway system.