Two conversations with (Ethiopians) (2 of 2): Crimeblog article.

Later that same week at the resthome, I was looking at this crimeblog, and there was a kid with a(n Ethiopian)-looking name who got busted, and so I showed it to my one (cool) (Muslim) (Ethiopian) coworker and to my one (heavyset) (Ethiopian) coworker when I bumped into them during a slow moment during the second half of the shift.

"Oh my god," my one (heavyset) (Ethiopian) coworker said, after I told her about it and texted it to her and she had started reading it.

"If my son, I am so ashamed," she was like.

"That's an Ethiopian last name, right?", I was like.

"No, more Tigrinya, he is probably from Eritrea," she was like.

Later that night at the very end of the shift, my one (cool) (Muslim) (Ethiopian) coworker was in the office with my one (edgy) (Ethiopian) coworker, and she was like, "Show her that article."

I did, then, and then my one (edgy) (Ethiopian) coworker started telling my one (cool) (Muslim) (Ethiopian) coworker that she wasn't surprised, there's some Eritrean gangs, including in her apartment building, didn't she know that.

"No!", my one (cool) (Muslim) (Ethiopian) coworker was like.

Two conversations with (Ethiopians) (1 of 2): "Boss."

My (Ethiopian) coworkers at the resthome told me how to say the word "boss" in Amharic, so whenever my one (edgy) (Ethiopian) coworker is working in the supervisor position now, I call her that, in conjunction with basic Amharic phrases like "Hello," "Thank you," "Excuse me," and "You're welcome."

Usually, she says something like, "No, I am not aleyka, I am your friend."

A few weeks ago, her and my one (cool) (Muslim) (Ethiopian) coworker and my one (heavyset) (Ethiopian) coworker were sitting around towards the end of shift talking about something, and as I was coming up by them and greeted them each in turn, including with "aleyka," my one (edgy) (Ethiopian) coworker said something definitively and finally in Amharic and the two others of them gasped, and then she turned to me with a mischievous look on her face and was like, "Say that instead."

"No," I was like.

So, she said it again, and was like, "Say that."

"No," I was like.  "That's a word for an aleyka, it's not a word for me. An aleyka can say that, no problem, but if we say it, we get in trouble."

And at that, I pursed my mouth seriously and shook my finger and was like, "No no no no, I will not say that."

Two stories of Zoom:

1) This summer when we caught up, a colleague from my old doctoral university said that you can tell a lot about the undergraduates from their room backgrounds on Zoom, like how rich all of them are.

2) A few months ago, the one retired nurse resident at the resthoome asked me if this one other resident had a bedside commode, and I didn't know and I couldn't say anyways and so I told her that, and then she said that the other week during a discussion group on Zoom, that that resident had gotten up and walked a few steps over and seemed to start using a bedside commode, right then and there on camera, and some staffer had gone off frame and gone running to prevent her from doing that, but it wasn't enough time, he didn't get there until after it seemed like she had finished.

Skeptic magazine.

This summer, I began subscribing to the one major skeptic magazine here in our country, since some stuff that I had been reading up on had come out of that orbit of things, and so I had decided that it was a good thing to subscribe to in order to keep up on stuff.

The first issue wasn't the best, but it was still pretty interesting, and so I told my one (Mexican) coworker at the resthome about it, and I said that she could have all my issues when I'm done with them, if she wants.

"I think you'd like it," I was like.

"That's because I am one," she was like.  "My mother and my husband tell me that, all the time."

Two bits of niceness at my one assisted living job.

The other week at my one assisted living client with disabilities's, my client's (lesbian) sister had left a note saying that there was some good corn in the fridge, and to go grab a cob and have some if I wanted.

Later that week, too, I was home at my apartment, and while I was there she sent me a text with a picture.

She was at her sister's and had been cleaning her toilet, and her sister my client had joked that where was the cleaning seal across the toilet to show that the toilet was clean, so she made one up out of something, and then sent me a picture of it since she thought I'd get a kick out of it.

(I did.)

Two signs of nowadays:

 1) I spazzed out this past weekend at the economic freefall that we seem to be in, only to check in with multiple friends and find out that they were all feeling the same way, and that one had even had a deja vu feeling that very same day and had sat and thought about it for a bit and had realized that it was how she felt at one point in 2009, and she hadn't felt anything like it since then but here it was again.

2) The branch library by my house and the main one downtown both have big signs by their library return slots, "NO BALLOTS."

A Young Couple on the Subway:

Both seem college age, her (white) or (Latina), him (Latino), both in mainstream fashionable clothes, and his hand is on her leg, and she's leaning into him and they're talking and talking and talking and just totally into each other, and he breaks away to stretch, and as the sleeve pulls down his left forearm, it's just rows and rows and rows of scarred-over cuts, like easily dozens of them, and it's totally like it's to the point where it's really just overlapping white lines with no flesh color showing at all in between all of the scarred-over cuts, except at the edges where maybe sometimes they peter out at different lengths kind of like a fringe.