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Last month, I dreamnt:
I'm standing at my bathroom mirror and I look into it, and my hair is accidentally a peroxide blonde, and I suddenly realize that I must have used too much lemon juice in it the last time I rubbed some in before going out in the sun.
And then, I wake up.
. . .
This (shorter) (older) (dark black) lady with a (Caribbean) presence and accent who's at the dialysis place a lot of times and always calls the resident who I pick up there "Mr. Beautiful," as in, "Have a good day, Mr. Beautiful!", and, I always just kind of assume she's (Haitian) or something like that, but then one day I finally ask, and she's like, "Cubana," and I was like, "Eres afro-latina?!?!?!", and she said yes, and that she's from Guantanamo, and then she's like, "Guantanamera," and she begins singing the song.
And, for the rest of the day, it's in my head and I find myself singing it, and the one (Filipino) bus driver who picks us up from dialysis hears me singing it and tells me that he loved that song when he was a kid, he listened to it all the time.
1) The other week at the resthome, this chicken they made for dinner was absolutely amazing, like something you'd get at a restaurant; it had been marinated overnight, and it was just so moist and good, I'd have been happy if that had been served to me in a restaurant.
The one (Thai) kitchen worker said she did it with onion salt and garlic salt and red wine vinegar and olive oil, that was all.
And, there was fresh cut-up cilantro on top, too.
Just so tasty.
2) Also the other week at the resthome, I happened to bump into my one (skeptical) (Mexican) coworker in an out-of-the-way stairwell on the way to the dining room, and it turns out that she was going outside for a quick smoke.
"You smoke?", I was like.
"Yes," she was like, in her thick (Mexican) accent, "But not too often, only on days when I am stressed out."
And, she told me that she hides it from everyone and has for years, so I shouldn't tell.
3) Also also the other week at the resthome, I was chit-chatting with the one new (lawyer) resident about Jackie Mason since he was watching a documentary about a comedian and his obit had been in the paper, but when I did that, the resident just started going off about how he's a self-hating Jew and trafficks in stereotypes and is just not funny.
"So you don't like him at all?", I was like.
"Well, I like him better now," he was like.
A few weeks ago, I actually heard someone tell someone something about a mask, for the first time ever during the entire pandemic so far!
Across from me was this (younger) (bigger built) (mildly plump) (medium-complected) (black) woman who was in her public transportation uniform but off of her shift, and this (older) (unmasked) (homeless) guy comes walking and begging down the aisle, and when he's like seven or eight feet away from us, she says all loudly and distinctly, "We don't want you here," and that gives him pause and so he doesn't come over by us, and then I thank her, and in response she's all nice to me and uses just this down-trodden naturally resigned voice and is like, "I started doing that, it doesn't hurt to try."
...of my one (white) colleague from (Mississippi) and I think his girlfriend, when they were stopped on a weekend afternoon at a light by a freeway interchange in a (white) part of the city the other week:
A(n older) (skinny) (homeless) (black) guy is just walking down the line of stopped cars, punching the windows of each one he passes, and he breaks in the passenger window of the car just ahead of them, but their window doesn't break, when he hits it.
. . .
...the other weekday afternoon when I hopped on the last car of the train as I dashed down the stairs just as it had pulled into the station, and so I wasn't in the conductor's car like I usually ride:
A (shorter) (younger) (scrawny) (dark black) (like younger high school) kid gets on the train near me, and he sits on the seat but seems on the edge of agitated, and he pulls out a cigarette from a plastic bag he's carrying and put on his lap and he puts it in his mouth, only he doesn't light it up, and several times he reaches into his bag and then goes up to handle his cigarette and I keep expecting he's going to have a lighter he pulled out and light it up, only he doesn't, and then he gets up and leans his back against the door going to the next car, then he walks up the aisle past me to go stand by the door, and at that point he's looking at what I have and notices that I have my pepper spray out and ready in my hand, and when he goes to stand towards the door, he keeps looking at me to see what I'm doing, and I look him in the eye, and then, at the next stop, he gets off.
Besides the 2 big bottles of lemon juice the one (lesbian) sister of my one assisted living client gave me when they moved, she also gave me a decently large jar of mayonnaise that had been opened and hardly used but was past the "use by" date, if I wanted to risk it.
(I did - it was fine.)
Anyhow, the other week, I was making up my 2nd big batch of potato salad with that mayonnaise, on a day when I had had some lemon juice in my sun tea, and all of a sudden I stopped and thought to myself and was like, "Wow, they really have been feeding me."
