Coronavirus reflection: Resthome resident socialization.

It's interesting to see how resthome residents have settled into a new normal of socialization, after communal meals and activities were cancelled because of Covid.

A number of them get together regularly now in small groups to play dominoes or to play Scrabble or to have an afternoon coffee and chat, and during election season I noticed that the one resident who's a retired school nurse would have this one retired (Swiss) psychologist over to her apartment every debate, to watch it together and talk.

Mail issues.

I've missed like the last three "every two weeks" copies of this one religion-affiliated newspaper that I subscribe to, and when I called up the place on the phone this week, they said that they'd been having this happen on-and-off all spotty like in different cities across the U.S., ever since the postal disruptions during the election.

The lady on the phone also said that her copy got delivered all late a few weeks ago, even though it's produced and mailed to her out of the very same city that she lives and works in.

Later that day, I saw a post office worker by my door and so I ran and opened it and asked them about the delivery stuff and whether there's been issues since during the election.

"Could be that," the (30s-ish) (black) (female) mail carrier was like, "Also you had a substitute carrier the past few weeks, and he was shitty, we got a lot of complaints."

Addendum.

When I went to go pick up my turkey at the resthome this week and take a Covid test before heading to work at my private client's, I ran into my one (edgy) (Ethiopian) coworker who was on shift and in uniform and walking across the lobby, when I walked into the building.

"What are you doing?", she was like, looking at me there when I wasn't working and all in my civilian clothes.

"I'm here for the turkey and for a Covid test," I was like. 

Then, after a short pause, I was like, "What are you doing?"

And at that, she laughed, since I said it in the same direct tone-of-voice that she uses.

On another note, I do worry about people going to go deerhunting this year after the holiday, it can be like a Thanksgiving thing where people gather from all over and be together, often in small cabins with poor air circulation.

My one (hippie) friend from Michigan is worried as well, that people will go and do it regardless of the Covid pandemic.

"People here have to have their deerhunting," she was like, "It's their holiday, too."

Thanksgiving excitement.

This year I'm really looking forward to Thanksgiving, quite unexpectedly so.

Usually I don't do anything or I go over to a friend's, but last week the resthome announced to us out-of-the-blue that they were giving us a turkey and sides as a thank-you, and to keep us from going out to stores during such a busy time of year.

So, I'm going to make it up at my one assisted living client's with disabilities, and then leave some leftovers there for her and her sister and her partner!

Usually they'd go to their aunt's, but that's cancelled this year, and she knows how to cook a turkey but can't really do it anymore or at least right now, given her condition, and her (lesbian) sister and her partner aren't good with cooking like that and don't want to risk trying to make a turkey.

Before this her (lesbian) sister was thinking that she'd just make a green bean casserole for her and her partner on Thursday and then bring some leftovers over for my client the next day, and she's still going to do that, but now there will be a turkey, too!

It was exciting to read about turkey preparation, and I'm going to chunk up vegetables and put them on the bottom of a cookie tray and lay the turkey on that, and I'll use the drippings to make gravy and maybe add it into the instant stuffing that the resthome gave us, too.

I also read up on sweet potatoes, and I'm going to make some mashed sweet potatoes with some brown sugar added in.

I'm also also going to use an oil rub and butter pats and some strips of bacon fat laid on top of the turkey to keep the turkey breast nice and moist while it cooks.

It was so much fun to chit-chat about prep and cooking techniques and ideas with my client, and she told me about how years ago she made up her first turkey ever and accidentally baked it upside down, only to have it come out with the white meat so incredibly moist, since all the fat ran down in the bird and settled in the white meat parts that are usually sitting out on top.

Years later, too, she saw some chef on TV or read about it or something like that, and they recommended doing just what she did.

"I guess I was ahead of my time," she was like.

Since her cat also now follows me around the apartment if I have a treat in my hand and will lean up on things in order to get the treat if I set the treat down on something, I joked that I could also set a cat treat on the oven when I go to open up the turkey to check on it on Thursday, and then BOOM close the oven door real quick...

(I also joked when I was behind the kitchen counter that has an overhang on the other side that extends out over the litterbox, and when her cat was using it, that I could start thumping my hands up and down on the counter real quick, to see what the cat does. "Oh no!", she was like, "The poor thing will never come out again," and I was like, "But it will teach her important lessons, about surviving in the wild." Later that night, even though I didn't do that, she thought she saw cat turds on the floor, but it was actually a couple of dryer lint pieces that had somehow ended up there after I'd done the laundry earlier that night.)

It really is such a ray of light in an awful year, especially since we had our first resident death last week, someone who was in their 90s and got it from a private caregiver who was in their apartment a lot and was asymptomatic.

Some subway passengers the other day:

 A (short) (old) (paunched) (Latino) guy in a plaid shirt, who comes in and stumbles down the aisle as the train kicks up, and then grabs a bar and steadies himself and sits down and readjusts his facemask to make sure it goes over his nose, and behind him is a (taller) (fatter) (broader-built) (Latino) guy with a(n indigenous) nose and (longer) (graying) hair that needs product and is fluffed out in back apart from a bit of it that's desultorily pulled back into a braid, and now and then he talks loudly to the (old) guy in (Spanish).

Then, a (very dark-skinned) (middle-aged) (homeless) black guy enters the car from another car using the between-the-cars rickety pathway that you're not supposed to use, and he sets himself up and announces to everyone that he needs money or snacks or whatever you can give, and the (younger) (Latino) guy goes to his pocket and pulls out a wad of cash wrapped with a rubber band, and he pulls out a dollar to give to the homeless guy.

Like fifteen or twenty minutes later, then, a(n older) (very dark-skinned) (homeless) guy with his facemask hanging down around his chin comes through the car dragging a big black garbage bag full of boxes of toothpaste, and he goes person to person trying to sell it as he comes down the car till finally the (younger) (Latino) guy calls him over.

"Six," the homeless guy is like, pulling out a big economy carton of two huge tubes of toothpaste, but the (younger) (Latino) guy shakes his head and is like, "Five."

"Okay," the homeless guy is like, and again the (younger) (Latino) guy goes for his rubberbanded billfold, and he sorts through some twenties till he gets to the singles, and he counts out five and gets them to the guy, only he drops one on the floor and has to pick it up in the process before he gives it to him.

Later later, a (fat) (young) (very dark-skinned) (black) girl comes on the car and sits down near me, and she occasionally rocks back and forth some, and when she sees some (shaved head) (jacked) (white) guy standing nearby wearing a tricked-out mask with canvas bits and a big ventilator hanging off each side of it, she says "I need one of those" out loud, to no-one in particular.

Like five minutes after that, too, she pulls out her smartphone and fiddles with it and sticks it in her hoodie pocket, and it plays some modern country music song that I vaguely recognize the sound of.

Farewell to a coworker.

The other day my one (edgy) (Ethiopian) coworker said that my one (cool) (Muslim) (Ethiopian) coworker quit, and she wouldn't say why at first, but when I pressed her she said that she said something about having to take care of her aunt.

"Or maybe her husband earns more money and she can stay home?", I was like.

"She have no husband," she's like, and then when I press her, she says that she never presses for information about anyone's personal life, they usually talk about other things, but she doesn't have a husband.

"But she told me she has a husband," I was like, and I was thinking back to her stories about how he's tried to cook and he burns food and you could tell from her face that she thinks it's cute.

"She say that, but it not, in their culture, you are married, or nothing," she was like.

She then asked me who he was and if he lived here, and I said that I thought he did, since he has a lab job at a hospital in a nearby city, and that I thought that they lived together.

"No," she was like, "They can't."

She then said that some nights when she didn't want a ride home after work there was some guy picking her up, and she asked her who he was, a boyfriend, and she told her, "No, a friend."

Now I wonder if I should have looked for a ring, if (Ethiopian) (Muslims) even do that.

4 scenes from the resthome:

1) For my one (white) (townie) coworker who likes to doodle and sketch, I pin up a drawing puzzle on the notice board in our office so she can pick it up the next time she's on shift, since I had been telling her about those type of puzzles from the puzzle magazine that I subscribe to and I had said I'd leave one for her the next time I worked, since I thought she'd like them and she should try one out.

2) My one (edgy) (Ethiopian) coworker asks me why I don't want to work extra shifts like 6 days a week or like 50 or 60 hours, and I say I'd rather have time than money, and she says she'd rather have money than time.  She also adds that she has to send money home when she can, and she asks me if I support my family.

3) An older resident who likes to tell jokes bought us all ice cream from Dairy Queen, as a thank-you for how hard we're trying to make things easier for them during the pandemic.  I ask for a second one from the box of Blizzards that he had brought in, and he's like, "Sure!".  When we're talking, we get on the subject of how he's originally from New York City, and I ask him how he met his (dead) wife; in the 1950s, he went to a singles camp with a friend, kind of like a Catskills things but for singles and in Connecticut, and at limbo night the second week they're there he starts talking with a girl behind him and they hit it off, and when he encourages her to go under the bar, he touches her butt.

4) The (shorter) (youngish) (Mexican-American) activities director lets me print out a few short things in his office, to save me a trip to the public library and exposure to any germs there.