A perspective on moving:

I was texting my one former assisted living client's (lesbian) sister about how time seems to move slower in the college town that I live in, and she totally agreed about that.

I also was saying that the city had been good for many things for many years, but lately it had been rush rush rush, and when I look back, I have absolutely no idea, what was that good for?

"Stress," she was like, texting. "It was good for stress hormones."

A thought on moving:

How horrible would it be to be a nomad, having to pack up and move all the time?

Two omens, before moving:

1) Like a month before moving, the laundromat near me burned down, with the entire building gone.

2) The week before moving, I heard that the (short) (weirdly-eyed) (dark black) (soft-voiced) (foreign-accented) (homeless) guy who you'd see around the street leading to the resthome, and who would stand in traffic lanes a bit south of there staggering around asking money of cars and even bicyclists who passed by, and who my one (former) (older) (white) (gay) resthome coworker said lacked fingers on one or maybe both hands, the week before moving, I heard that he got struck by a car early in the morning, at that busy intersection. They had posters up near there saying that he had died, but then it turns out that he was just in critical condition, so someone went through with a pen and added phrases like "He lives!" on there, to show people that he was still alive.

Three omens, upon moving:

1) I find a classical radio station, and the piece that I'm listening to and sounds vaguely familiar ends, and it turns out to be Wagner's overture to "Rienzi," which I had just heard a few days earlier back in the city that I used to live in.

(It turns out that the station that I had tuned into was broadcasting the exact same syndicated radio show that I had heard just a few days earlier, back on the classical radio station that I used to listen to in the city that I used to live in!)

2) Two volumes with the world's oldest papyri were already sitting there at my new apartment waiting for me when I arrived with my U-Haul (I had ordered them a few weeks earlier, but I had assumed that shipping from Cairo would be much slower than it was).

3) In a not-good omen, on my first trip to the grocery store near me, my receipt for like $90 worth of groceries indicated that I had enjoyed exactly $6.66 in savings.

Resthome CPR training.

Before I left the resthome, I had to undergo my every-two-years CPR refresher.

There was like twenty of us from all different divisions of the resthome, and like 85% of them were women and most of everyone was (foreign born), so when I looked around the room right before I sat down, I was like, "Of course I love this line of work." 

One of the first steps in CPR is to first tap the person to check if they're actually awake and okay, so when people were going up to the front of the room to tap the dummy and be like, "Are you okay, are you okay," a few times someone would put on a voice and be like, "Yes I am" or "No I am not," and then everyone would burst out laughing.

The instructor also cued up the Bee Gees' "Staying Alive" on her phone when people were practicing on the dummy since it has a beats-per-minute that roughly matches how often you should do compressions, only, the first time that she cued it up, she didn't say what was happening, and this whole row of (older) (filipinas) started doing disco moves with their arms as they were just sitting in their seats around the table.

The instructor also had this really good tip; she said that if you had to move around or hold up breasts or large rolls of fat in order to place defibrillator pads, it's good to remember that you can always use your forearm instead of your hands and fingers, since that depersonalizes the interaction (which might be more a matter of consideration for onlookers than the CPR person themself, since presumably they'd be unconscious at that point, though I'm assuming this applies to other non-CPR interactions as well).

Two variations on an exchange at the resthome.

Before I left the resthome, the one resident who moves slowly started saying something like "You're getting everything!" when I'd ask her for her bracelets and glasses at the end of the night when I started her getting ready for bed.

So, once I was then like, "So, can I have your wallet and credit cards?", which she found hilarious.

Then, a time or two later, I was then like, "So, can I have your number? Wink wink wink," which she also found hilarious.

A mystery of my aching balls.

So, like a month or so ago I pulled my back, and then like three or four days into that, my balls really started aching, too, especially the (larger) (right) one.

I first started thinking that maybe it was some testicular cancer or something, and then I thought that maybe it was a weird nerve thing involving my back, and then my one (white) (townie) coworker at the resthome said that maybe it was a UTI, since "guys get them too," and that got me thinking that maybe it really was a UTI from my taking a few baths a few nights in a row to soak my back in hot water and make it feel better, since maybe while I was laying there a long time in the hot water it came up my dick and did something all up in there.

Then, like the next day, I started doing my stretching exercises that I had been doing a lot of to help loosen up my back and make it feel it better, and when I knelt with my knees tight together and leaned forward to lay over the front of my knees and feel my back muscles and vertebra get all loose, I suddenly felt my balls ache, especially the (larger) (right) one, and then I suddenly realized that my yoga pose was making me lean on and crush my balls.

So, I kind of repositioned with my legs apart so my balls could sag down and I wouldn't be crushing them, and I kept doing that,, and after a day or so without that they began feeling normal again.

Problem solved!