A sign of punchiness.

Last month at my one assisted living client's with disabilities, I woke her up from a nap in order to give her her meds, and I unscrewed a water bottle that she keeps to refill and I gave it to her at the same time that I handed her her meds bottle with the top popped.

Then, while I was talking with her in a low voice so as not to wake her up too much, I tried putting the pill bottle top on the water bottle, and the water bottle top on the pill bottle.

Conversaton with a (Nigerian) coworker.

Last month at work, I stayed after my shift at the resthome in order to send off some emails on their desktop in the library that they have there.

Afterwards when I had finished and was heading out through the lobby to head out and go home, I bumped into my one (bulky) (Nigerian) coworker who works nightshift, who has hanging out there in the lobby and talking with the receptionist in some downtime between her duties.

"Hey [her first name]," I was like, "What's new?".

"New York, New Jersey, New Orleans, that's what's new," she was like.

We then chit-chatted some, and it turns out that she can't swim, and that back in Nigeria her parents were "traders," and they traded dried goods like beans and rice to the north of Lagos. 

"No vegetables," she was like, "They did not have refrigerated trucks like they have here."

Resthome staff meal: Tongue.

 Last month at the resthome, the dinner was either pasta or tongue.

"Do you want tongue?", the one (Thai) dietary worker who was passing out entrees was like.

"No," I was like.

"Okay, pasta for you," she was like, "That is four for pasta."

 She then said that only my one (Mexican) coworker would eat tongue.

Blogging list desideratum:

 "crumpled corners"...

I had that on my list as something to blog about, but I'll be darned if I can remember what it was.

Another Mundane Dream of Something Wrong: Cauliflower.

Last month I dreamnt -

I'm stirring a big pot of pieces of cauliflower that are starting to boil in water mixed with soy sauce, and I turn one big piece over and I see underneath the soy sauce watermark that that chunk is actually half rotten right through, not just a few spots here or there or anything, and I stare and I wonder how I couldn't have noticed it and ended up putting it in the pot, since the soysauce watermark wasn't on it originally to disguise it back when I was chopping up the cauliflower.

And then, I wake up.

. . .

(The week of the dream, I was making a big pot of vegetable curry, and 1 of the 3 heads of cauliflower that I was using had a section of it that was rotten, the first time I'd ever seen that on a cauliflower.)

Addendum.

I remembered, the reason that me and my one (cool) (Muslim) (Ethiopian) coworker were talking about visas and immigration is because I was studying German vocabulary on a smartphone app and was showing her the ridiculous words that are close to English, when we both had some downtime and were hanging out on some armchairs set up in the hallway on one of the floors of the resthome.

"So close!", she would say, after many words like "Die Hand" for "the hand" and "Der Arm" for "the arm."

Then, "Das wetter ist kalt" I was like, and I was like, "That's an actual sentence in German, The weather is cold, isn't that crazy," and I added that I think you can something like "Ist das Wetter kalt?" if you have a question, with words and word order just like in English.

"So funny!", she was like, and then she said that she'd have to remember that sentence to tell her one friend who lives in Germany.

"You have a friend who lives in Germany?", I was like.

She then said that her friend got married young and had a kid and left her husband because he was no good, and somehow she figured out how she could go to Italy, and she wanted her to go to Italy with her, but she didn't, and now she's in America, while her friend went to Italy and then eventually ended up in Germany.

"Where in Germany?", I was like, and my one (cool) (Muslim) (Ethiopian) coworker said she didn't know.

(Later she looked it up on Facebook, and her friend lives in Frankfurt.)

"What is better," she was like, "Germany or America?".

"Right now, Germany," I was like.  "If you can, go there."

I then told her about the difference in access to healthcare and wages and whatnot, and then she said that her friend works the same job as us but is on salary at a better wage and has vacation and everything.

"I will think about it," she was like.

Coworker aspirations.

The other week, I was talking with my one (cool) (Muslim) (Ethiopian) coworker at the resthome, and somehow we got on the subject of visas and immigration.

"Are you a citizen, or do you have a green card?", I was like.

"Green card," she was like.

She then said that she's not sure if she'll become a citizen, because she wants to maybe go back to Ethiopian= one day.

"You can't be an American citizen and an Ethiopian citizen at the same time?", I was like.

"No," she was like.

She then said that she wants to go back one day and open up her own pharmacy and stay there for the rest of her life.

I responded normally to that aspiration, but then I was like, "You know, when you do that, everyone will talk about you. 'Look at [her first name], such a nice woman, but she went to America, and she came back and now she sells drugs.'"

At that, she laughed and gave me a look.