...with a (scrawny) (late middle-aged) (white) woman who's the only person working her small stand, who tries to convince me to get 6 banana peppers for a $1.50 rather than 3 for like a dollar:
Me: ""Thanks, but they rip me up."
Her: "Oh, don't worry, I get it."
So, I found out that my parents got COVID in mid-August.
I asked my mom on the phone if they were planning to get a booster shot, and she broke down and told me everything and said that they couldn't, till they were so many months out from their infection.
She said that they're careful but they didn't wear masks when an old neighbor came over to visit, and she was ten feet across the living room and my dad was five to six feet away from him, but the windows were open and their living room has cathedral ceilings, but that must have been where they got it, since they found out like three days later from the guy at the local auto parts store that on the way out of town our old neighbor stopped through and said he was going home early since he had somehow gotten COVID and wasn't feeling too well.
"That's the only thing we can figure out," my mom was like.
She said it wasn't too bad, just sore throat and tiredness, so it does seem like it could have been a lot worse for them.
I remember once recently asking on the phone if she was all right because she sounded tired, and I'm thinking now that that must have been when they were in the middle of their infections.
I really do think that they got off lucky, with this infection. My one professor friend who studies (modern) (Czech) literature is also fully vaxxed and boosted and also got it recently, and she was laid up like with a severe flu for more than five days before it started to abate, and she told me that she thinks that if she wasn't vaccinated at all, it might have actually killer her, it was that bad.
So, I finally picked up the coach cushions that were getting reupholstered for my mid-century living room couch, and I stopped off at the local farm and fleet store to get furniture markers so I could repair some scratches in my IKEA bookcases, though I didn't only do that, but I also restored the rubbed-down top of my one cheap coffee table, since the marker pack had the right colors and I thought "Why not?" and I tried it out and it looked better.
Between all of that stuff and the area rug that I got this winter, my little cottage really looks pretty decent, I do have to say.
Anyhow, the farm and fleet store was miraculous -- a shoe section where I got some good sandals on sale, and huge sections for pets and for yards, and then just huge shelves of prepackaged foods up by the registers, where I got like two pounds of standard trail mix and a fifty-cent slice of cooked fatty bacon wrapped in plastic and marinating in some curry sauce, made by some meat-curing place up in Minnesota (it was on sale).
"I love this store," my one former assisted living client with disabilities's (lesbian) sister said as we walked out into the parking lot, as I ate my bacon.
She says her aunt buys all her cleaning supplies there.
At the local farmer's market, I have been tending to buy my tomatoes from a family of white grizzled townies, who are all mostly women who all seem to wear slightly dirty t-shirts and have low-slung tits that just kind of jut out from their chests, only not really their chests, but lower down, like right above their stomachs.
Anyhow, a few times when I've been there, the one has made small talk with me about produce, and cooking.
When I complimented them on the tomatoes she sells, she said that the one is so good, that she just cuts it open and scoops out its inside with a tortilla chip.
"You should try it," she was like.
A few weeks ago when sweet potatoes were in, she pointed that out, and when I said that I really don't eat sweet potatoes, she said that they're so good, she just cuts them up and roasts them in her air fryer.
After that pepper spray coincidence, I texted some friends about it, including my one professor friend who studies (modern) (Czech) literature.
She texted back -
"It can be a beacon to all lost sailors."
. . .
After I got my first monkey pox vaccine shot, I went to go kill some time and read in a large city park before meeting my one former assisted living client with disabilities and the guy that she's been dating, so I could finally take them to this local tavern that's nearby them that serves nice burgers and that has a big patio, so that I could finally treat them for a long overdue treat that I had promised them and that I had been owing them for for quite some time.
Anyhow, as I was finishing reading, the top of my lower right leg started itching inside like I had a mosquito bite, and when I finally met them and we were going to the tavern, it was getting worse and worse, and after I removed my hand from there, it was like there was this light oil on it, and then I realized that my pepper spray that I keep in my back pocket sometimes must have been leaking, and so I pull it out and the switch had gotten put to on somehow, and the label on the side was already all eaten off by the oil, and so I turn around for them to show them my shorts, and they say there's a big oil spot all around the bottom of my right back pocket, and so I figure out that that must be what it is, and I start to try to figure out what I can do now about it, since we're already on our way to dinner.
So, after we get to the tavern place, I head to the bathroom and wipe off my thigh with toilet tissue, and then I wad toilet paper up and put it all around my boxer shorts, so it's there to soak up the oil against my skin and from my boxers and shorts, so it's not just all going on my skin all the time and hurting it.
(Later, after we had finished dinner and I was walking them back home, chunks of the toilet paper were falling out of my shorts, and when I went to pick them up, they were super soaked through with the pepper spray oil, in like this dull orangish-white color, only wet.)
Anyhow, after I came back from the bathroom and I sat down, I was like, "Yeah, so maybe it's the pepper spray, but maybe it's that the vaccine gave me baboon ass."
And, they laughed.
So, like three weeks ago or so I went down to the county health department to get a monkey pox vaccine.
The (early 40s) (large) (very black) nurse with medium length curls almost reaching to her shoulders had an accent and so I asked her what languages she speaks -- I always say that I study linguistics and that I like to find out what languages people speak -- and it turns out that she's from Central Africa from a country where there's some languages from the one language family that I do work in, but she speaks stuff from a different language family that's set up in that country.
And, I asked her if she could say a few words in her language, like "Nice to meet you" or "Good afternoon" or whatever, and she did.
Anyhow, before she gave me the shot, she started listing off all the possible side effects, and when she paused, I was like, "...and some people start to grow a tail," and at that she looked at me and just started laughing, and then she was like, "Oh, you should have seen the first Covid vaccine, some people turn into cows, into horses, into everything."
