A dream of something off, but not badly off.

Last month I dreamnt:

I’m in my apartment and reaching into the upper right corner of my refrigerator to grab one of the 2-3 cartons of eggs that I usually have there from doing so much shopping ahead of time nowadays, what with the pandemic and all, and I pull one out, and when I set it on the counter and open it up, there’s just one giant brown egg sitting right in the middle of the container, actually so big that the carton top wouldn’t fit over it, and the bottom is kind of crushed and flared out from its weight, though that’s just normal to me, and nothing I remark on at the time. But, the egg itself strikes me as weird and unaccustomed, and then all of a sudden I remember that the last egg that I got out from a carton in the fridge was like that, too.

And then, I wake up.

. . .

A resthome revelation, about politics.

The other week, this one (young) (thin) (pretty) and (usually make-upped) (Filipina) caretaker who I see sometimes and whose name I tend to forget bumped into me in the resthome lobby, and she had some fashionable black jean jacket on worn open, and between it I could see a t-shirt with a National Geographic cover on it warning about global warming.

So, I asked her about it, and she started telling me about how concerned she is about global warming, and how she has been ever since she read about how it affects people who live on islands, like in her home country of the Philippines.

A day at the resthome:

1) The (seems very young) (Filipina) caretaker of a(n older) and (incapacitated) resident was decorating the entrance to her room for her birthday, taping a sign with a joke about old age on her door (something like "Age isn't anything but a number, too bad yours is SOOOO big!"), and around the top of her door hanging these special birthday lights that were individual letters spelling out G – E – T – L – I – T – G – E – T – L – I – T.

2)      After I brought up a package for her, the one (older) resident who loves purple called me in and had me open up a box of Lotus Biscoff cookies and gave me a little sleeve of cookies from it, since her daughter had just brought her a lot, since she likes them and they used to be her husband’s favorite; a long time ago she had given me one dipped in chocolate from a Tupperware in her fridge, which was okay, but these were different, and I liked them plain, but I *loved* them dipped in my strong dark coffee, the next day when I was at home and I had some in the morning waking up over my coffee.

A nice moment leaving the subway the other afternoon…

…to go downtown and run an errand:

As I leave the train car and begin walking up the escalator, I hear someone saying “Ride safe!”, and I turn and glimpse a(n older) (middle-aged) (Asian-American woman) passing by and nodding at the (younger) (black) conductor as he starts going back inside his window and closing it so he can drive up the train to the next stop.

Weird life coincidence: Ursula K. Le Guin.

In the last stages of my doctorate or just afterwards, I got absorbed in Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Left Hand of Darkness."

Then, last month or so, when I was assembling my final documents for my upcoming dual citizenship application, I had to mail one of them off for a special U.S. State Department cover letter, and the stamps that they gave me at the post office not only had Ursula K. Le Guin on them, but the scene behind her was this huge, unexpected, and unexpectedly good section from that novel, where two characters have to cross a glacier, and that weird feat just ends up lasting pages and pages and pages, and it's just really good, though you never expected a section of the novel like that, or would expect a section of a novel like that to be any good at all.

That part struck me as weird and unexpected and good at the time, at a very weird time in my life, and then it resurfaced, all these years later, also at a strange moment.

Life can be funny like that.

A perspective on moving.

When I went to go check out this one college town that I might potentially be moving to, I was talking with this one (younger) (white) (townie) waitress for a bit at this one tavern with good burgers that's been around since the 1970s, and that had set up an outdoor patio seating area that was run well enough that I felt safe sitting out there.

Anyhow, at one point she was saying that her cousin and his family wouldn't mind moving there, too, even with some of the problems that they've been having recently, but he can't, since he's a mortician and he has the market cornered in this one (black) (urban) (deindustrializing) part of this one decaying metropolis in that part of the country; he's one of the only people working there, so business is good, but if he moved to the college town, there'd be too much competition, and no way to establish himself.

"And it's awful to say," she was like, "But with like, you know, gangs, all the people dying is good for business."

Aging parents.

This summer my one lawyer friend from Missouri was saying how awful it is to see your parents getting older, and it's something that you just don't want to think about.

A few months later, I was calling my parents and talking to them about arranging a hotel room for them, and my mother said to make sure it was a room with separate beds, since they're both "restless" and "have to get up a lot to go to the bathroom."

She also mentioned that my dad has yet another doctor's appointment, "since he just isn't feeling well."