Stump.

The other week I was going out to the back alley from my cottage to go put something in the neighboring apartment building's dumpster -- my one neighbor was bitching a bit ago about small bags with vegetable scraps, I think, and so why use my own trash for that? -- and as I went up to the dumpster to throw something in it, something scuttled at the tree line right behind it, and all of a sudden a squirrel jumps out away from me at eye level, and I notice that in the treeline there's this gigantic rotting stump the height of a man that I had somehow never really noticed before.

Like a week after that when I was walking through the alley, I stopped and looked at it more, and even stepped onto the edge of a neighbor's yard to peek around and look into it, some.

There's just these huge decaying chunks tumbled into the inside off from the ring of edge around it, almost like a miniature collapsing volcano crater.

It's really an attractive place for an animal to be. I know that if I was a squirrel, I'd want to go hang out in there.

Restaurant rudeness.

The other week at the (Thai) restaurant, there's this big order of appetizers etc. that comes in like a half hour before we close for the afternoon, but the person isn't showing up, and when we go to call their phone, there isn't any answer.

"I wonder what's happening and if she knows that we close at [the hour that we close for the afternoon]," I said to the wife from the (young) (Thai) couple, since we were just standing around waiting for her, with nothing else really to do, even as the kitchen was closing down behind us.

"She knows," she was like, and she said that when you go to order online, that pops up, and also the customer made sure to specify to pay in cash, which rarely happens and which means that we have to wait around for them and we can't just leave the order outside the door like if they pay by credit card and go and do that.

So, we wait, and like more than forty minutes after they placed the order, and more than twenty minutes after we'd usually close the doors, this (very fat) (young enough) (black) woman shows up to pick it up, and uses some card to take like fifteen bucks off, and tips two dollars, and then leaves.

"How rude," my coworker was like.

"How much was the order?", I was like.

"More than thirty after the card," my coworker was like.

"Don't worry," I was like, "She's really fat and she ordered a lot of deep-fried appetizers, she won't be around for long."

Different familial norms.

With the two of the (Central American) guys who are brothers and who speak the one rarer (indigenous) language a lot, it's very striking to me, what a strong family ethos they have.

There they are in a windowless kitchen for so many hour a day for so many days a week, together, working side-by-side.

You wouldn't see two Americans like that.

Restaurant prank (2 of 2): Me.

The other week at the (Thai) restaurant, the kitchen was pretty empty except for one (Central American) guy by the stove, and I headed over to put my lunch order in his queue of stuff to cook, and I had to walk into the little area where it's usually busy and we're not supposed to go, except for maybe when we give them our personal order to cook after-shift like I was doing just then.

And, just as I was turning around, there's a tap on my shoulder and it makes me jump.

And, it's another one of the (Central American) cook guys, who was coming back from somewhere with something and who I hadn't seen or heard approach, who decided to prank me and scare me by coming up behind me and tapping me on my shoulder all of a sudden.

And, as my head whips around to look, there he is, laughing, though not at me, but with me.

I have to admit, he really got me!

What a friendly thing to do; and we hardly talk at all.

Restaurant prank (1 of 2): Husband.

The other week at the (Thai) restaurant, I was working with the wife of the one (young) (Thai) couple, and her husband came in and sat at a rarely used corner table and drank a pop and watched videos on his phone for quite a while.

As the lunch rush was dying down, we were passing by and I caught her attention and then I whispered to her, "That man at L3 is so strange, I think he's drunk, and he just tried to order twenty-three beers."

And all of a sudden, her eyes got all big and scared and you could see the gears start whirring and she was like "L3...?", and then what I just said clicked, and she started laughing.

Later, she told me that he was in between classes, but he doesn't like going to the library, so he comes instead to the restaurant, sometimes.

When our shift had ended and we were all going to leave, too, he was ahead of her heading out the door, and I was like, "I am so glad that man is leaving now, he is so strange, ten minutes ago he tried to order forty-seven more beers," and I got her to laugh again.

My right toenail.

It's like a dark blue-ish purple from underneath, probably because the shoes I wore to present at that one conference that I went to recently were a little too tight on the one side, for some reason.

When I was clipping my toenails the other day, then, I was really interested to see what would happen.

When the nail on that foot got clipped away, though, there was nothing odd about the nail, and the skin that I could then see underneath where the nail was also looked normal, too.

I've never had a toenail look like that before.

A surprise at the (Thai) restaurant:

It turns out that the kitchen workers aren't (Mexican), but rather from a (Central American) country and they all speak a(n indigneous) language to some degree, that I've seen mentioned in the paper and in job ads for translators for the local hospital and school system.

And, one of the fry-cooks is even more comfortable in that language than in (Spanish).

"I had no idea," I was like, to the wife of the one (young) (Thai) married couple.

"You never hear him speak with his brother in that?!", she was like.

It's really mind-blowing to me, that here I am working at this little restaurant kind of in the middle of nowhere, where I unlock the door onto main street and pull out and set up and unwind a patio umbrella every morning etc. etc. etc., and then there's this relatively rare language just spoken daily like twenty feet away from me, all this chattering that's been going on in the kitchen all this time and I had absolutely no idea at all about it.

Like, what the f*ck.