A dream of a store.

Last month, I dreamt -

I'm in this very cramped and crowded discount clearance store with the white metal shelving and the tall anonymous pasteboard ceilings, and I'm looking at this shelf full of chunky portable radios that is so full or radios that it's almost more like a pile of radios or a heap or radios than a shelf of them, and I'm looking for a radio to replace my one at home that's broken and won't quite work right.

. . .

(The quiet end of the volume of my similar radio from home has been broken since forever, and lately now and then the volume will cut out sometimes when I go to change the channel or cue up a new CD, so at some point soon I probably will indeed need a new radio.)

"Day of the Dead" quip.

When it was my work shift nearest the "Day of the Dead" this year, I wished my one (skeptical) (Mexican) coworker a Feliz Dia de los Muertos ("Happy Day of the Dead").

Then, I was like, "Y porque eres una eskeptica, yo dijo, Feliz Dia de los Muertos para Siempre" ("And because you're a skeptic, *I* say, Happy Day of the Dead Forever"), and I tried to emphasize my phrasing so that the words "muertos para siempre" ("dead forever") strongly grouped together.

I'm not sure if it translated, but she was like, "Good one."

I also asked her if she did anything growing up in her village back in Mexico for the Day of the Dead. She said they did something on the altar in their home, and then went to the cemetery where all of their dead relatives were buried, to visit them.

My parents on the Trump campaign.

Something that struck me in the closing days of the election was how disturbed my parents were to see a bit of a Trump rally in their state on TV.

"There were three nuns behind him!", my mom was like. "Your father and I couldn't figure that out, what a lack of common sense," and she went on to say how there was swearing at his rally and he's a bully, too.

For her and my dad, it seems like in this instance it 's a visceral personal behavior issue first and foremost and not anything with his policies, though I know they've been appalled and disturbed by his "inhumane" child separation policy right along. 

And she made no mention of abortion or anything like that, as a buy-in for the nuns.

Cat progress.

After like a year of my giving her 2 treats every time I start shift, the cat of my one assisted living client with disabilities is finally starting to warm up to me.

Lately, she's started scampering towards me sometimes when I get on shift and start to open up the treat jar, and she's finally started understanding the game where I chuck a treat on the floor and she goes to chase it; she even comes out into the living room right away now, when she hears the treat hit the hardwood floor.

The other week, too, she walked up to me on my client's bed,and stopped there and let me pet her, even on her belly, only the second time that she's ever let me pet her at all.

(The previous time was a while ago when my client's [lesbian] sister was petting the cat, and I snuck my hand up in among her hands to go and pet her, which the cat was fine with for a few minutes, she's cool with that approach sometimes, they had been telling me.)

Addendum.

After that (Spanish) mistake at work, I texted and messaged people over my smartphone to let a few friends who speak (Spanish) know about it, including my one (Spanish) professor friend who I know from my university that I attended for my doctoral program, but then we got started talking about other things, like how his (pregnant) wife is.

(Good, but they're lying low because of Covid and because she's feeling beat out from late-stage pregnancy stuff.)

And, at that, I said that that meant they had less options for a gender-reveal party, but they could still do something at home, like maybe have people over for dinner and serve creadillas if it's a boy, or maybe something with eggs if it's a girl.

(I said this to bring up creadillas and poke fun at him for being Spanish.)

And, he messaged back -

Pescado o polla 

 . . .

Spanish mistake at work last month.

Last month at work at the resthome, my coworkers weren't ready to get their staff meal yet and the kitchen staff wanted to know what was up, so I called each of them in turn over the walkie-talkie to ask if they wanted the fish or the chicken, but when I finally got to my one (skeptical) (Mexican) coworker, I decided to speak in (Spanish) and was like, "[her first name], que quieres, el pescado o la polla?"

And, right then I was turning to go to the buffet that was set up for the meal delivery, and my one (Mexican) coworker from the kitchen was standing there and so was the one (Nigerian-American) kitchen manager who speaks decent (Spanish), and they were both just standing there looking at me and their eyes were both huge, and my one (Mexican) coworker from the kitchen finally spoke and was like, "No no no, [the Spanish version of my first name], no."

A small event at my apartment.

The other week at my apartment, there was this big fly buzzing around every once in a while, until suddenly it wasn't anymore.

Then, like the next morning, I go to pour out some water into the coffee mug on my kitchen table that I always use for my water, and as the water rises up to the top of it, there's something on it, and it's the corpse of the big fly.

I picked it out of there with my fingertips, and it felt surprisingly crunchy, like it was barely waterlogged at all.