A conversation about mortality.

The other week at the resthome, the one resident who's a retired school nurse was saying that she's stopped certain preventative screenings for cancer, since her philosophy is now, is that if it's her time to go, it's her time to go.

"I'd feel better if I wasn't in a wheelchair, but it's tough," she was like, and then she added that with her online high school graduating class reunion that she's organizing, some of her classmates repair their own windows and even go on their own roofs for stuff, even though they're in their 80s.

"Well, whenever you do end up going, you'll be missed," I was like.

"Thank you," she was like.

And, I was also like, "Though I do think you have a problem with a biased sample, you only think you're doing so bad because you're only comparing yourself to your classmates who are still alive."

And, she laughed and was like, "You're right."

Two sets of observations on the weather:

1) "It keeps you waiting and then it hits you hard," the one resthome resident who used to be a building contractor said about our city that we live in and the hot weather that we've been having lately.

2) "[Our city] has HAF-CAF weather," my one assisted living client with disabilities was like, pronouncing 'HAF-CAF' as 'half-caff' - "Hot as f*ck, cold as f*ck."

Knowing me.

On my schedule where I keep track of my reading and writing hours and whatnot so that I hit my weekly quotas, I also log my weekly yoga session and my 10-minute coronavirus workout that I began last year.

I had begun it in order to stay toned and hopefully to come out of the pandemic better looking than when I went into it, and I tried to make it daily, or perhaps it's better to say seven times a week, since if I miss days, I double or even triple up on the other days to make sure that I get in my seven sessions a week.

And, I've done that for over a year now, and I'd like to keep it up, but seven times a week is just too much.

So, on the side of my schedule where I mark new goals, I put something like-

NEW GOALS:

BE OKAY WITH 6X A WEEK WORKOUT

- since my goal isn't really to bump down my number of workouts per week - I know I can do accomplish that number, since I'm already doing more! - but rather to be okay with doing less.

Knowing me, that's something I have to strive for.

A memory of my father, of the polio epidemic.

In discussing the pandemic, my dad mentioned something about polio in the 1950s, so I asked him about that.

He didn't say too much, but it turns out that he knew multiple kids who got it, including a decently close friend of his who afterwards always had to walk around with legbraces.

"He used to walk like a Nazi," my dad was like.

Two (English language) peculiarities...

...that I noticed in the speech of my one (edgy) (Ethiopian) coworker:

1) "You can do it," in a context where she as supervisor was suggesting a new duty on my list and effectively commanding me to do it.

(Is this some weird translation from Amharic, where there's maybe a verb tense overlap between possibility and the imperative and whatnot?)

2) "Grown already?", she asked the (pleasant) (loud-voiced) (very old) resident about her grandchildren, when making small talk about her family and her grandkids and the resident had just told her how many grandchildren she had.

(Could this be a direct translation of some phrase that's used in Amharic, to distinguish older children?)

Life connections.

A few months ago, my one assisted living client with disabilities said it's no coincidence that I do puzzles, and that I also like thinking about problems with the historical evolution of the Egyptian language.

"It's like a good puzzle," she was like, meaning the hieroglyphics and how they evolved and trying to figure out what exactly the language was like lying under them.

I think she's right!

More knish reactions.

Like last month or so ago, I asked the one (shorter) (retired department store worker) resthome resident what she thought of the knishes that they had served up recently in response to a resident request.

"I thought it was good," she was like, in a polite way. "Big!"

"It came from a family recipe," I was like.

"Maybe," she was like, and then she explained that that's more an Eastern European dish, and her family was Jewish from Germany, so the cuisine is completely different, and so she doesn't really have a reference point for them.