Food stories (2 of 3): Knishes and blintzes and yellow foods.

Also at the resthome like a month ago, they had a food meeting for residents, and the one resident who likes to tell jokes suggested that they make knishes for everyone, and the one (Balkan) kitchen manager took notes and said she'd look into it.

And, like a week or two later, I show up to work, and I see that on the menu for lunch that day that there'd been knishes!

So, I asked around, and it turns out that people liked them in general or thought that they were okay, and I got a bit regretful that I hadn't gone down to the kitchen right away when I had gotten onto shift to see if they had any left over that I could have tried.

Then, that night there was cheese blintzes, and a lot of my coworkers gave me all of theirs or one of theirs, since they didn't tend to eat all of them that they were given, they were so rich.

I also remarked that the foods that day for that particular meal were all very yellow, since the food was either blitnzes (yellowish crepes!) or a vegetable lasagna (light yellow cheese on top!), and dessert was either lemon meringue pie or canned pineapple, and the one (Ghanaian-American) kitchen manager was like to me, "Because it's spring!", when I pointed out how everything was color-coordinated.

Towards the end of the night, too, I was assisting the one resident who likes to tell jokes, and I asked him if his mother made knishes at home.

"No," he was like, "My grandmother."

Food stories (1 of 3): Hot sauce.

At the resthome, the one (Ghanaian-American) kitchen manager and I joke around sometimes, and like half a year ago when I saw her collecting some hot sauce bottles and she was walking around the back dining room with like 5 or 6 of them in her arms, I put my hand to my forehad and was like, "[Her name], just when I thought you couldn't get any hotter!".

Which, she chuckled at.

So, like a month ago, she was sitting out eating when I was finishing up my staff meal, and for some reason she had a bottle of Cholula and a bottle of Sriracha out on the small little table where she had set out her tupperware that she had brought in from home.

So, I made some perfunctory joke about hotness, and then I was like, "Cholula, Sriracha, [Her Name]... Which one is hottest? Five chili peppers!".

And, she rolled her eyes and laughed.

A weird Saturday afternoon subway ride last month...

 ...where:

1) Trains were like every 15 minutes because of some trackwork up the line.

2) Many, many people were waiting on the platform, including a(n older) (black) couple where a woman was sitting down and the guy was dancing around and holding out a subway sandwich for her to eat, holding it right up to near her mouth and she nips out to get it, smiling and laughing all the while, but in a (crazy) way, since both of them have (crazy) eyes.

3) On the pretty crowded train, there's a (young) (black) guy with (crazy) eyes and his mask pulled down, half-talking and half-singing and saying you can't kill him, who a(n older) (short) (very dark-skinned black) lady in a public transportation agency uniform says "Please!" to and steps away from him, when he sways nearby to her and starts talking loudly to no-one in particular, but accidentally into her ear.

4) After I go stop by the library downtown, I'm waiting on another platform with many, many people waiting, and there's a (20-something?) (big) (slovenly) (fat) (black) guy in a dirty (white) t-shirt and dirty (very light grey) jogging pants, just standing there smoking, and then up the platform I pass a (young) (black) guy who's keeping a coat wrapped up and around his head, and who buys a cigarette and then lights it up, from this (older) (black) guy who goes like six feet away and starts dancing, though there's no music around and he doesn't have headphones on.

5) On the next and still pretty crowded train, a(n older) (Indian) woman is talking so loud on her phone in whatever language she speaks, so you can hear her halfway up the car, and then a(n older) (black) lady comes on for a few stops without a mask and starts talking to herself, though when she leaves I notice she has a red and blue and purple patterned light fabric scarf pulled up over half her face, and then later there's a (young) (black) woman just standing around and talking on her phone very loudly for like three or four minutes, and then later after that there's a(n older) (white) lady halfway up the car holding her phone out from her and talking so loudly that you can hear pretty much everything she's saying, about her sister in (Ohio) and fishsticks without that much meat in them.

Some random cat stuff:

1) A bit ago, my one assisted living client's (lesbian) sister's cat all of a sudden nipped me without breaking my skin when I was petting him, and then the (lesbian) sister pointed out that when his tale thumps, it's not a good sign (she calls it "thumpy tail").

A while later, I noticed that he starts getting really itsy right around when this is about to happen, but he's also purring, so it's not a negative thing, but more that he's getting excited and riled up, and so you have to break off whatever interaction you're doing and go and let him settle down a bit.

"That's right," my one assisted living client was like. "It's almost like he's a little kid."

2) Like a month ago, my one assisted living client had pulled the plastic out of a big empty tissue box and then given it as a toy to her (lesbian) sister's cat. Then, I realized you could put a cat treat in it, and it'd keep her sister's cat occupied forever, what with him trying to get the treat out of the tissue box by putting his paw into it, or knocking the box around and flipping it over until the treat flew out and he could get it.

Also, if you put it on this mini-rocking chair that they have, the chair would shift around, too, and so the cat would have to steady himself as he tried to figure out how to get the treat out of the box.

"You're like a cat enrichment expert," my one assisted living client was like to me.

3) After this, I went to go pick up the empty tissue box and set it up on another box in my client's living room, and suddenly out of nowhere my client's (lesbian) sister's cat jumps out from behind a curtain and onto the box next to the tissue box, and it honestly scared the f*ck out of me, it happened so quickly and so suddenly.

I assume that he thought that I was maybe putting another treat into the empty tissue box?

Ice cream story (2 of 2): Near my residence.

Back this spring on a very warm day, I strolled up to the one ice cream store near my house to go get a two-scoop cone like I sometimes do, and there was a (younger middle-aged) (black) couple in the store, a (balding) guy with a moustache and a beard and a big belly and a (slightly taller) (bigger framed) (darker) (chunkier) lady with upswept curls, which all in all was very odd since the neighborhood that I live in isn't especially black.

And so, since they were trying samples from a ton of flavors and it looked like they hadn't been there before, I decided to be all chatty and nice, which is usually like I am anyhow, anyway.

"Have you tried the Zanzibar chocolate?" I was like, pointing to the flavor that I was wanting to order that day. "It's really good."

Then, all of a sudden, I was like, Oh fuck, and though the lady was like, "Yeah, I tried that, it's good," I was like, Oh shit, I have to say something else now so they don't think I meant that.

And so, I was like looking around the cooler for some other flavor discovery that I had recently made, and I saw the one new flavor with bananas in it, and before I even thought about what I was doing, I pointed it out to them and I was like, "That one's good, too," and as soon as I said that, I was like, Oh fuck, not again, and so I scrambled and pointed to this other newer flavor that I like that has coconut in it.

And then again it hit me how what I was doing could come off again and I was like, Oh fuck, as the lady replied that she didn't care for coconut, though fortunately not in a way like suspecting me of anything, but more like she just didn't like coconut.

But by that point, though, I was panicky and so I was like, Please, please let me find a flavor that doesn't come off like that, and so I saw this raspberry cheesecake flavor that I'd never tried before, and so then I thought about raspberries and then I thought about cheesecake in turn and I realized that it was probably okay for me to recommend it to them, and so I mentioned that fourth flavor to them, even though it was a put-on for me and it was something that I'd never actually tried before.

"If you like cheesecake, that's worth trying, too," I was like.

"Interesting," the lady said, and at that point the (short) (white) (fatter) (early 30s) counterwoman chimed in and was like, "And when this tub runs out, we don't have any more for a while, the replacement tub is blueberry cheesecake!"

"Really?", the (black) lady was like, and they want on chatting from there, and I was like, Phew.

Then, the (black) couple said they weren't sure what they wanted and that I could go ahead of them in line, and so I ordered a two-scoop cone like I usually do, this time with Zanzibar chocolate and something with salt or caramel in it or some shit like that.

"How's it going?", I was like, to the counterwoman, when I got up to the cash register at the end of the long cooler.

"All right, I'm tired, but everyone is tired today," she was like.

"Really?", I was like, "Me too," and then I mentioned how on my days off now I don't get on myself for sleeping in or anything like that, since we're in the middle of a pandemic and you have to go and cut yourself some slack in the big scheme of things.

And, she said that she didn't think that the coronavirus was really a natural thing, but it was put out there by the government to cut down the population.

"But that's just me and the way I think," she was like, "You don't have to believe it."

Ice cream story (1 of 2): Resthome.

Like a month or two ago at the resthome, some of my coworkers weren't eating their staff meals and so had abandoned them and ceded them to me and left, and then desserts got delivered afterwards and it was mostly chocolate ice cream and one little glass bowl of canned pears, and so when the ice cream was just sitting out, I asked my couple (Tibetan) coworkers who were sitting there if they wanted some more ice cream to eat after they had finished the bowls of ice cream that they were eating and they didn't, and so I went and I ate the last 2 extra bowls.

And then, my one (Filipino) coworker shows up because he had heard there was ice cream, and I had just finished eating it.

"There's some pears," I was like, gesturing to the little glass bowl of canned pears.

And, I made a silent resolution that if this ever happens again, I'll call my other coworkers to let them know that dessert is delivered.

A little bit later, I was escorting the one resident who's super chill home after the meal, and all of a sudden she was like, "Those peas are lonely," and I was like, "What?", and then she repeated herself, and then I realized that by the foot of the dish-clearing cart by the foot of her walker as it was standing there there was just these two little lone peas just sitting out there on the floor tiles.

Much later, right before leaving work when we were all changed and in our street clothes, my one (Tibetan) coworker with an inappropriate sense of humor emerged from the stairwell that goes to our staff area, and her anti-Covid mask was black and had a fist on it and "FREE TIBET" on it like in an anarchist spraypaint letter template font.

Resthome resident memories (2 of 2): Pre-Civil Rights Act segregation.

At the resthome, the one resident who's a retired college professor remembers going from New York to Florida to go visit family back in the 1950s, and the train that she boarded in Manhattan was segregated.

When she got to Florida, her uncle wasn't there yet to go pick her up, and she saw a water fountain sign that said "Colored," and she assumed that it meant that the water was colored and so she really wanted to try it, and when she went to go do that, this conductor who had taken her under his wing until her relatives arrived saw that and got all worked up and tried to intervene with her and stop her from drinking the water.

And, her uncle and his second wife ran a restaurant where (white) people could sit and eat but (black) people could only get takeout from this window on the side of the building, and she asked them why they did that, and her aunt said that that was just the way they did things down there.

After getting back from that vacation, then, she wrote a school essay, "Why the United States is Not a Democracy."

"Wow," I was like. "And how old were you?"

"Thirteen," she was like.

"So why did you think that the water was colored water?", I was like. "That seems kind of naive."

"It was," she was like, "But how should I know? My school at home was mixed white and black, we all drank out of the same water fountains, why would I ever think that they separated something like that?"

"Hmm," I was like. 

And then, I was like, "That really is a mature essay for a thirteen year-old to write, where do you think you got that?".

"In Hebrew school," she was like, and she said that it was the 1950s and they did a lot of Holocaust education about how Jews were treated in countries in Europe.