An evening observation the other day:

A (white) (lanky) (late high school? college age?) (shaggy haired) kid is skateboarding down the north-south street near me, and all of a sudden the loud skateboarding sound that a skateboard makes suddenly stops.

And, I notice that he's hopped off his skateboard and is walking across the east-west street that the front house where the cottage that I live in is on, since it's paved with bricks as part of this faux-ish historic district that kind of consists of the blocks where I live.

And, as soon as he reaches the pavement on the other side, he hops on his skateboard again, and the loud skateboarding sound that a skateboard makes suddenly starts up again.

Two remembered anecdotes about a child being cute.

The other week I just remembered these anecdotes, from the last time I hung out with the family of my one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend (the sister of the brother-sister pair) --

I was playing a lot with blocks with their one 3 year old daughter, and after we had used all of them to make this big pile, her dad asked her what we had built.

"What did we build?", she asked me in a big whisper.

"I don't know," I was like, "What do you think it is?"

"Is it a church?", she was like.

"Yes, I think so," I was like. "That does look like a church to me."

"Okay," she was like.

"So tell him it's a church," I was like.

And, she turned to her dad and was like, "It's a church," using a normal voice.

"Loved that sidebar there," her dad was like.

Later, too, she was preparing desserts using her plastic foods and she offered me some plastic ice cream, so I helped her put them on a wagon and I told her that we were making a dessert cart that she could take to her parents.

So, she scooped up a big armful of nothing and said they were flowers for mommy, and then she went and got a plastic hamburger and put it on the dessert cart, "Because Daddy likes hamburgers."

A joke that my mother appreciated.

The other week on the phone I was telling my mother that I had picked up from the local library a nice cheap hardcover sale book as a present for the (lesbian) sister of my one former assisted living client with disabilities since it's about this band that she's a big fan of, and that I figure, if she likes it, she likes it, and if not, she can always just throw it in one of those free little book boxes that are around and someone else can enjoy it.

"Yes," my mother was like, "Those are nice."

Then, she told me that the one by the park where she takes walks has been empty a lot lately.

"Maybe someone is using them for firewood," I was like.

She got a kick out of that.

A story of the local economy, from my postman.

The other week my sitting out on the front porch of the front house and reading overlapped with my (West African) mailman delivering mail, and so we chit-chatted a bit like we always do.

When I told him I was getting ready to apply for jobs again, he told me that I should consider applying at this insurance office up by the highway, since they really need mail.

"I was filling in, I was delivering mail there, and I see this woman on the sidewalk, and she is smoking and crying and crying," he was like, "So I ask her what wrong."

And, he then told me that she can't find anyone to work the office, she's hired multiple people and trained them, and the longest that someone's stayed has been six days, and she's working so much to make up for that and it's just getting too hard for her.

"She tell me," he was like, "She is in the shower and she is washing her hair, and then there is hair in her hand, her hair is falling out from this!"

"But how much is she paying?", I was like.

"Fifteen an hour, all the hours that you want," he was like, "And a two thousand dollar bonus if you stay."

"Well," I was like, "That doesn't sound like that good a job, especially since you have to be on a computer all day and it sounds like there's too much work to do."

And, we both agreed that places just want to get their hands on you and work you to death, but not give you much in return, and that's the way that the world is just working nowadays.

"It's like my healthcare job," I was like, "Eighteen dollar an hour was nice for the unit that I was in, but then they wanted to change my job and put me in emergency situations with tougher work for the same money, and it's just not worth it."

I am continually astounded...

...by just how QUIET my new neighborhood is.

It's a lot of houses with yards that aren't too big, but somehow it's just quiet, and the park near me is too, like where you sit out, and it's just birds, and the occasional sound of a car in the far distance.

It's like, how many years did I lose from my life by living in the city all those years?!

The (lesbian) sister of my one former assisted living client with disabilities observed something similar like half a year ago, and I do have to say, I'm starting to agree with her.

A small pleasant moment in my cottage:

I have my screendoor locked with the window portion up to get in the cool night air, and as I glance up at it while doing something in my living room, I see a single firefly light up just a little bit beyond it, like up towards the top of that sliding window part of the door, just to the right of center.

Some current events comments of my one art school colleague who wears women's clothes...

...in his sometimes-vein of trying to be both truth-telling and shocking at the same time:

"Fags are filthy and spread disease."

"Fags are gonna bring us all monkeypox."