...when I was filling water at a table of two normal-seeming (lower middle-class) (middle middle-aged) (white couples):
"...and he had them live in the barn."
"Like a furnished barn?"
"No, just in the barn..."
. . .
(I really wanted to interrupt and find out what the story was there.)
My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker was telling me that our one (younger) (techie) (Thai) coworker represents the rising generations, to her:
He wanted to learn programming, so he just went and learned it, and then got a job, and he never really interacted with universities.
She said that's just more and more common, and a friend of hers who teaches in (Thailand) says in her program that she teaches in, there's always 50 seats, but they can only fill like 20 of them.
"Because education does not get you anything, now," my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker was like.
...at the one (Thai) restaurant that I now work at:
1) A (well-dressed) (well-mannered) (grad student-age) (male) (South Asian) student comes in to inquire about work, and when I offer an application, he seems surprised, declines, and leaves.
(Did he expect an informal economy allowing him to work off-the-books, so he could get income without any paper trail that would violate the terms of his visa?)
2) It's clear by now that many (Chinese from China) students expect to seat themselves, but more than that, to sit at the table, raise their hand to call over a waiter, and then place their *entire* order at that point (including dessert), and to raise their hand at the end when they need the bill and want to leave, after which they occasionally take it up to the register themselves.
(I assume this is how you behave in restaurants in China?)
The younger generation is starting to say the word "iconic" a lot, to mean something that's highly memorable.
Like, I saw someone describing a very striking photo from social media like that, and then I read an interview with Olivia Rodrigo, where she uses that adjective to describe a big pop album from like 10-15 years ago.
One of the most unexpectedly positive things to enter my life over the past ten to twelve years was being forced to read a Balzac novel back when I was teaching freshman writing in a highly-structured introductory curriculum.
If I hadn't have done that, I don't think I would have ever read a novel by him, necessarily.
And, it's like someone once said about him, the best thing about him is that there's always more.
It really is like you just pick up some random-ass novel of his that you've never heard of before, and it hits all the sweet spots with taking some characters from some social class, describing how and where they live, putting them in some situation, and then you're over and out.
Often, my most favorite parts are where he just spends pages minutely describing shit that really have nothing to do with the plot per se, like what the interior of a whore's apartment looks like in Paris, or the details of some card game that some upper-class provincials have played and have joked about for over fifteen years.
He also has these amazing insights into situations and characters, that I often find myself photographing and texting to friends.
They're just delicious -- it's like he's an inveterate people-watcher -- and like my one (professor) friend who studies (modern) (Czech) literature has said, they're probably so much better in the original (French).
The latest novel I'm reading is very weirdly structured, though -- we're a third of the way in, and we're just getting to a chapter where they introduce the title figure, and it's like an entire chapter where someone relates their back-story in a huge detailed monologue.
Even that, though, is endearing to me; it's so nice to have eccentric structures.
The other week I dreamnt -
I'm somewhere in a sunny kitchen in (Australia), and I'm not there but it's like a movie playing inside my head, and I watch two (middle middle-aged) (white) women just talking, and they're drinking mugs of tea, and one goes to set one teabag up on or pull one teabag down from rows of used teabags on the counter, which is like a wall of them over two feet high and like four feet wide, just neatly sitting up on the counter and filling up the space right up to right underneath the hanging wall cabinets, all for some reason having to do with conservation.
. . .
(When I make tea like rooibos or rooibos chai, I often use the teabag three or sometimes even four times, before I throw it out.)
So, I've noticed that vintage jigsaw puzzles with non-digital photography of stuff with different colors and textures and little bits going out of focus here and there can be very fun and satisfying to do.
Also, a lot of people have very scatological tendencies and very scatological senses of humor.
So, I was thinking the other day that a good way to maybe make some money would be to start a line of jigsaw puzzles of different shits, like spattered toilet bowls or big heaping piles or like a Turkish toilet at a roadside gas station somewhere in Anatolia, where it's all stained around the ceramic part that they have marked out for your feet to stand, and there's bits mounding up out of the middle.
It would have the colors, it would have the textures, there would be some variety with depth of perspective thanks to spatters and mounds and sub-mounds, and I think there would be a bigger audience for it than you think.
Bingo!
Is that money I hear?
So, at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, there's a new guy in the kitchen, this one (young) (Afro-Latino) (Ecuadorian) guy who you can just tell is very ambitious, and who is always behaving like he's standing outside of himself and is totally aware of everything that is always going on at once.
Like, he seemed preternaturally amused when late on one dinner shift I saw my one (evangelical) (Guatemalan) coworker standing against the ice machine and d*cking around on his phone, and I was like, "Menos telefono, mas trabajo, senor" ('Less telephone, more work, sir').
He also was cuing up salsa music to listen to while washing the dishes, and when I was back in the kitchen he asked me if I liked salsa music, to which I told him, "La mejor musica es marimba" ('The best music is marimba," i.e. the music that [Guatemalans] listen to), at which my one (shorter) (younger) (female) (Guatemalan) coworker just gave me a look and nodded, solemnly and knowingly.
He then said something about bachata, and my one (Guatemalan) coworker who we started the diablo joke about pretended to act dumb and was like, "Horchata?".
So, I started making jokes on that, and being all like, "No quiero bachata, prefiero horchata, soy un gordo" ("I don't want bachata, I prefer horchata, I'm fat"), to general mild amusement.
I think that will be my new joke anytime that someone mentions bachata music, acting confused and saying that I want horchata.
For years now I've greeted people in (English) with a phrase like "Happy Monday!", just using whatever day of the week it is, and with my (Guatemalan) coworkers at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, I've been doing that some, only in (Spanish), which as an added bonus helps me practice the names of the days of the week.
And, believe it or not, my one (shorter) (younger) (female) (Guatemalan) coworker has recently begun saying that greeting of mine back to me in (English), and is trying to learn and remember the names of the days through it, too!
It's like she's retrotranslating back into the original language that the whole thing started in.
To encourage her -- she and some others want to know more (English) -- I told her about Duolingo and told her that it's free and that it's just a few minutes a day and it can teach her everyday phrases and stuff like the days of the week and numbers, and she seemed really interested.
And, I showed her my profile on there to show her how the app name is spelled and what it looks like, and she got very excited when she saw that you make a cartoon avatar that looks like yourself.
Hey, whatever works.
After George Santos got thrown out of the U.S. House, the one (gay) (Brazilian) visiting student in (STEM) who I know immediately emailed me that he saw the news, and he wrote something like, "I guess he will have to buy his own OnlyFans now."
And I wrote back and said something like, "No, now he has no money, and he will have to **start** an OnlyFans account!"
And, I mentioned something about how he could dress up in drag for it.
And, he replied back and said that's a good idea, because Americans love fetish and he will make a lot of money.
. . .
(**That's** his go-to stereotype about Americans?!)
That one (gay) (Brazilian) visiting student in STEM was saying that in (Brazil) there's a certain amount of men who like men in women's clothes, but it's not a thing thing, whereas in the U.S., with some guys it's their THING and they go wild about it, in a way that just doesn't happen in Brazil.
So, at least for the time being, his perspective is that the U.S. has a fetish culture in a way that Brazil doesn't.
He was also telling me that he bought a bra and stockings to make pictures to meet those type of men on a certain "gay dating app," and when he sent them a picture of him wearing that, they went wild, and it's like you just couldn't keep them away.
"Yeah baby, you are so hot, I want to f*ck you," he was like, imitating in a voice what they had written him on that certain "gay dating app."
"And they had such huge d*cks," he was like.
I'm noticing that I'm getting more snubs and snippery from institutional academia, and am treated even more dismissively than when I was a graduate student, even though I'm doing more and better work now.
(Maybe at that point in your life-cycle there's an understanding that you **might** become someone, so people are nice to you, whereas there's no such expectation now, so people feel more free to treat you like you're nobody.)
Like, I had 3 major areas I was dipping my toes in this fall:
1) There was this one major one that I really wanted, where I'd get paid to live in the EU for a time and complete a major project. And, even though I had good emails with the one PI and he loved my project -- as did a prof from the local university in town who I had coffee with, who said it was interesting and he hadn't seen anything on it, and about which I wrote to an Ivy professor who I knew from years ago, where he was also interested and hadn't seen anything, and I could tell he ended up googling me afterwards because he seemed a bit offput and confused in his email that I somehow don't have a position somewhere, given my ability to put my finger on that major topic and gap! -- and, even though me and that PI had ballparked which 2 cycles of applicants that I might fit into, and he said to write a CV from scratch because I don't have one and to include my popular writing, as soon as I did that, radio silence, and when I sent a follow-up email, a cold email with no mention of the next cycle or anything, just *totally* different from the emails we had exchanged.
(Some institutional academics can hate anything fun, so if you not only write something popular but make it fun and it's on a quirky topic, it instantly makes them draw back and resent you, or worry how it might be judged by the small-minded people that they're around. I tried to minimize that, but on some level, what can you do, that's where you've been putting your energy, and enough of it is academic that you have to include at least some of it.)
2) Another major one I wanted, where this field-shifting project that I was preparing anyways and was SUPER sexy and accessible happened to fit into a call for proposals that would get me a free flight and hotel on an international trip that I could maybe have extended and taken a vacation around, I wrote and submitted, and the organizer assured me that proposals were considered on "merit" and that proposals from independent scholars would be fully considered, but then later it's turned down and there's this smarmy email about the number of proposals (okay, fine) and a wish for "continued success" (f*ck you, Mr. Tone Deaf), and then later later on a professional listhost the final conference line-up comes out...
And, my proposal is as least as good as the top half, and better than the bottom half, but the thing to note is that it's all scholars with current institutional affiliations.
(Isn't it refreshing to note how "merit" perfectly aligns with the people who got those jobs? Ah, the system works!)
3) Because I had my materials like the CV and writing sample together and a job ad for an Ivy came across my desk, and because my one article that I've staked out and is undergoing peer review changes MAJOR MAJOR stuff across every language level and affects material taught on the very first day of classes and in later grammar units and also has implications where I finally explain a script quirk and do so by re-reading some cr*p that had been implausibly interpreted in the first lines of a super-famous text that everyone reads, I decided to take a few hours and write a letter and statement and whatever and submit, because, why not, it just costs you the time, and the writing sample might catch someone on the committee's eye who had a clue.
And, not even a Google of me from everything I can tell, I probably didn't even make the initial cut.
(The job seems miserable anyways, but if I could somehow make it and negotiate a fat salary and no course duties, that could be awesome.)
. . .
It's really like you're frozen out of the system. You can find places to present and publish, but other than that, nada, even though you're doing better sh*t than tenured profs at major programs, and even though you point out those accomplishments in guarded and considerate ways to minimize p*ssing people off, it's like you're just ignored.
I think I'm not going to pull any punches any more, like omitting flagrant mistakes from major scholars and lightly passing over major inadequacies in the field. Like, I won't be a d*ck about it, but if being delicate about that stuff and effectively not broaching it doesn't get you anything, why not just say it.
I also wonder how much I have to do **before** they have to pay attention to me. Like, it's increasingly seeming that just multiple, multiple aspects of the one ancient language that I've been researching are askew, so how much do I have to make progress on it and straighten it out, before people start to take me seriously and give me some respect and maybe some resources?
My guess is that they can always just collectively ignore me, though, and many will try to.
The other week at the (Thai) restaurant where I work now, I was chit-chatting with this one (early later-aged) (white) woman who I recognized from there or from out around in town, and me and her and her (older white guy) dining companion were chit-chatting, and somehow she got to talking about how she had family over this early fall and fried up a bunch of fried green tomatoes for them, in those home deep fat fryers like were around in the 50s.
"I don't know if you know them," she was like.
She also said that she crushed up some Cheetos and used that in the breading for some.
1) With this one word search that I did a bit ago, the theme was "Cities in India," which made it hard since you didn't know most of the cities beyond like "BHOPAL" and had to keep constantly looking at the wordlist and then looking for particular words.
Then, at the end, I couldn't find two final cities in the grid, and then I realized that they both had an internal - R - N - sequence, but since those two letters were printed lower case in small print in the newspaper that printed the word search, the rn ( - r - n - ) looked like an m ( - M - ) and so I couldn't find the dang words because I was looking for the wrong thing.
2) I've always shied away from doing jigsaw puzzles of commercial properties, but I have to admit, this one that I was doing this month of Looney Tunes was quite fun, what with the crisp lines and blocks of color and then you get to see Bugs Bunny and Sylvester and others forming out of it, as you complete it.
So, with that one (Romanian) joke -- which my one (Romanian) colleague cannot tell without really uncontrollably laughing and cracking up as he tells the punchline -- as best as I can figure, it's all about this dumb guy who found himself s*cking d*ck.
(I think the worst [Romanian] profanity is a noun that translates as "mouth-f*cking," so perhaps it's related?)
Anyhow, for the life of me, what I can't figure out if it's implied that it was truly a sex party, and Bulă somehow found himself s*cking d*ck there for that long, or if it **wasn't** a sex party, but Iţic was crafty and told him it was, and Bulă ended up going and s*cking all of these guys's d*cks.
The use of stock characters for humorous set-ups is very striking, in any case.
On my recent back to the city that I used to live in, my one (Romanian) colleague told me one of his favorite jokes, involving this one stock character Bulă who is coded as good-natured but stupid and this other guy Iţic who is coded as normal or smart and sometimes as Jewish.
(For example, a G-rated Bulă joke has him as a schoolboy and his teacher asks him where he put the math book, and he says he filed it away in the library just like she asked, and she says she can't find it, and he says it's right there in the horror section.)
So, Iţic comes up to Bulă and is like, "Let's go to a group sex party."
And, Bulă is like, "Okay."
Then, later, Bulă comes up to Iţic and is like, "C'mon, we've got to get organized, I've been s*cking d*ck for a half hour now!"
. . .
(Let that one sit.)
...on a recent short trip back to the city that I used to live in:
1) My one (Romanian) colleague asked me if as a server I ask people "Are you still working on that?".
"Only in America is having a meal work!", he was like.
(I do indeed ask people that.)
. . .
2) My one (lawyer) friend from (Missouri) picked up a one-or-two-evenings a week job as a hostess at a local restaurant, and when I mentioned that that's a good way to get out of the house, she said that it was that, but it's also a way to make some spare money, since she did just finally pay off her student loans, but she had a few splurge vacations, and inflation is really upping her expenses and her income is flat.
She also said that people are afraid to go out at night more, and that there's a lot of people having close run-ins with crime, like her plumber was telling her that he was almost carjacked in this one (hipster) neighborhood that he was doing work in.
(Upon my return home to the college town that I now live in, I read that there was a major drug-and-guns bust like 4 blocks north of where my train arrived into town, right around the time I was there, and also the one night that I spent in the city, there was a reinauguration of one ultra-scary way to roll businesses that had been around a few months ago but had seemingly stopped.)
. . .
3) When I went out to eat sushi with my one art school colleague who wears (women's) clothes, he ordered gluten free because of his rheumatological condition, and when we were discussing the menu, he gestured to the mark "(GF)" after certain items like the chicken teriyaki and was like, "I noticed that they mark this and it's so nice, they have a lot to offer."
"Is that gluten-free though?", I was like. "'cause maybe you're getting the chicken teriyaki, girlfriend!"
And, he laughed and was like, "Yes, it's both of those things, I am one of those white b*tches."
. . .
...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:
1) When my one new (taller) (Thai) coworker goes to give me some herbal candy in a small yellowish-tan plastic canister that has nothing but (Thai) writing on it, I take it, but then I'm like, "I need to be careful, I know how Thai women are, you are going to poison me and take my money!", referencing this one famous female Thai serial killer case that's been in the news.
She laughed, and then later she offered me another one and was like, "Do you feel anything yet? Is it working? Eat more."
Still later, too, I told her that she lies, she didn't come here because her (Afro-Brazilian) husband cheated on her, she came here because she killed him for his money and she couldn't stay in Thailand because the police are looking for her.
And, she laughed.
2) One night when my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones wore a very textured white sweater rather than her standard black top, I asked her how she could wear that, since curry would spill on it and get it all stained.
"Because I don't work, I tell you to work, and you do everything," she was like, pointing her finger in different directions like she was indicating different tasks to me.
1) A (late 20s) (white) (blonde-haired) app delivery driver is waiting and waiting and one item keeps not being ready yet, so he finally cancels the order and leaves.
And, before he finally does that and goes, we chat some, and he says for some reason customers from our restaurant in particular don't tip the app driver that well, comparatively, and if it's an order that's like 7 miles away, if they do that, he actually loses money on gas with what the app pays him, which is actually just like a couple dollars per order.
"What a racket," I was like. "I feel like the internet has destroyed so many jobs, and it's just like nothing but sh*t like that nowadays."
And, he agreed, though he also said that he does this for spare cash since he took a pay-hit to work at a non-profit and do counseling there for $55K a year, versus the six figures that he could be making elsewhere.
"It would really suck if this was all I had," he was like.
2) When I deliver (five) crab rangoons to a (white) couple, I position it between them and say they'll have to fight over who gets the fifth.
"Her," the guy was like, pointing to his (husky-looking) woman. "She's pregnant."
And, we chat more here and there during their meal, and the woman says that she's never been a watermelon person, but with her first kid, she craved it, and there were times when she actually sat down and ate an entire watermelon at one go, just a whole watermelon, at once.
3) When a table of three (older) (lower-class looking) (white) people go to order, one woman asks me if she can sub out something from a sampler platter and sub in egg rolls, and I actually don't know if that's possible, so I go to say my standard line, "I don't know if we can do that, but I can go check," and as I say "I don't know if we can do that...", she leaps in and cuts me off and is like, "Well, can you go ask?".
And, I do, and my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones goes and calculates in her head, and finally she says that she can, but it will be two egg rolls and not one, and it will cost two dollars more.
So, I go back to the table and tell the (older) (white) woman that, and she's like, "I'm not paying that," and she just goes and orders a plate of fried dumplings.
Sometimes lately I shy away from telling customers in large groups that there's an automatic 18% gratuity on the bill; though it says that there, sometimes they don't notice, and they leave more of a tip again.
The other week that happened with a (South Asian) guy who left $20 on the $189 ticket price that he must have glanced at, and somehow I felt that was karma.
A (short) (wide-eyed) (light brown-skinned) (African) man, who always whacks the handicapped door opener every time he enters or exits the (Thai) restaurant where I work now, and so lets just absolute floods of cold in the door, every single f*cking time he goes in or out of the place.
...for a curry for delivery, verbatim:
Please make it with NO EGG, NO MEAT. This order is for a pure VEGETARIAN.
. . .
(One is forced to wonder if they meant degree of vegetarianism, or are obsessed with their personal bodily purity. Perhaps the first, and the second meaning is what they truly think, and it bled through, though not in the manner of actual blood, but more like sap or stalk-secretions or oat milk, definitely not blood.)
(People really do have different definitions of vegetarianism, though, where people self-identify as such but can permit eggs or fish or oyster sauce, or one but not the other, or neither. Like last month or so I took a phone order from a [trans] man where I had to ask for clarification when they said something like "Make it vegetarian," and when I did that, they started lecturing me on the different true meanings of "vegetarian" versus "vegan" or some shit like that, and I had to politely tell them multiple times that people mean different things and I always have to clarify, but it's like they were devoted to setting me on the one true terminological path, and they had me briefly trapped on the phone.)
(Still, though, these people are much better than the gluten-free folk, who are the total whackjobs.)
The other week I baked a few more sweet potatoes and ate them.
Only, these were sweet potatoes that I had bought at the store -- not at the farmer's market -- and I only ate two of them -- not five.
And, afterwards, I didn't shit a mat.
I think they were much less fibrous than the homegrown ones?
That seemed to be a key difference, beyond the difference in sheer amount of sweet potatoes consumed.
Perhaps they were a different varietal, as they say.
An autumn menu!
Like...:
1) Crab rangoons, only you make them with turkey and have a cranberry dipping sauce;
2) Cranberry fried rice, like the pineapple fried rice with cashews, only you do cranberries and walnuts and maybe bits of turkey fried in; and
3) Turkey satay (that's kind of a joke).
I was telling the (wife) owner with the tired face about this, and she said we'd need something with sweet potato, and we both immediately agreed that the thing to do would be sweet potato tempura slices, which is something that the (Japanese) actually do.
I really do think that if they hyped this "limited time" menu for a few weeks and then ran it from mid-Oct. to mid-Nov., that people would really get into it.
My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker says that a classic (Thai) comfort food is pieces of soft pumpkin put into a small omelette, and you serve it with a side of rice, and that her mom made her that a lot back when she was a kid.
"See!", I was like.
The one owner was also saying that for dessert, there's a variation of sticky rice with custard where you make the custard with pumpkin, and that's actually a thing in (Thailand) that you could do for that menu, too, though often they put it into the little scooped-out gourds, which is a lot of work.
I really do think that people would go for this stuff beyond what we already do, which is advertise more heavily our pumpkin curry, which you can always get anyways during any time of the year.
I ran the ideas by a few tables of (white) customers who I was chit-chatting with, and all of them were like, "I would eat that," when I mentioned stuff like my idea for turkey rangoons with cranberry dipping sauce.
"Yeah," I was like, "It's like the dishes where people are already combining turkey with cream cheese."
1) My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker says I shouldn't drink water with ice because of my sinus infection, because water with ice makes people sick.
"Asians think that," she was like, and then she said that's why (Indian) customers don't want ice in their water.
"No, it's because they think that ice costs more, and they don't want to pay," I am like.
And, she laughs.
2) When I tell my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker that I'm staying away from this one table with a (white) (tight-bodied) (yuppie) couple and their 2 small kids because the husband was very unhappy with me once, she was like, "Really?".
"Yes," I was like, and I laid out for her the whole situation, where you can tell that he's very unhappy in the marriage and with kids and the wife probably forced him into it, but she's blank-faced and a little naive and can't see that she did that and that he resents that, and she can't see his unhappiness, and that he'll probably divorce or cheat on her, if he's not already cheating on her.
"Really?", she was like.
"Oh yeah," I was like, and I said that you could see it in their faces, and that also once he gave me attitude over a soup substitution because I said I had to go check in the kitchen about that -- "We come here every week," he was like, even though we do have rotation of kitchen staff and that means nothing! -- and that once beyond that when the restaurant was strangely packed, the only open table was one where the high chair was in a high traffic area, and so I asked them if they could move tables in five to ten minutes when one out of the way opened up, and the guy was very, very unhappy that they would either have to wait or to pick up and move after five or ten minutes.
"Who does that?", I was like, "This was about his child's safety, and he turns it into a chance to have attitude?".
And, when I was laying this all out for her, I realized that I'd seen this couple only 2 or maybe 3 times and I had had only the very briefest of interactions with them, but I had keyed into what seemed like their story and I could talk about them just an exceptionally disproportionate amount.
And, to think that just a few weeks prior to that, I had mentioned when texting a friend that I doubted my people sense, and wish it was better. I immediately thought of that right after I just gushed out and told her all of this stuff that I was thinking, and that she hadn't seen or hadn't occurred to her.
3) One day between lunch and dinner shift when two (Guatemalans) come out to have their shift meal at tables in the back of the restaurant, it's the one guy named Angel, and the other guy who I make the diablo joke about.
So, of course I pointed to one and then the other, and was like, "Angel," and then, "Diablo."
4) My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker says that the (wife) owner with the tired face showed her a picture on her phone that she had just taken of a car in the backlot that had gotten its window broken in, where the police were showing up to take a report.
"It is the homeless, they are always hanging out there," she was like.
5) My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker tells me that she wants to focus more on her hobby, which is writing.
"Like fan-fic?", I was like, and she nodded.
And, she tells me that there's this one app that's popular in (Thailand), where people read fan fic and maybe vote on it and if a lot of people like yours, you get some money, and she's made money off of it.
"How much have you made?", I was like.
And, she made calculations in her head, and was like, "Fifty or sixty dollar," and then she added, "It's not much, here."
1) When the one (skinny) (silver-toothed up front) (Guatemalan) kitchen guy comes out to do something and quizzes me on reciting numbers in his native language -- a few of them have been teaching me for a few weeks -- I am tired because of my sinus infection, and I say something like "One, two... Four."
And, he just stares at me, gives a quick shake of his head, and flings his finger out to point to the front door, like, "Get out of here!".
2) Around the Thanksgiving holiday, a(n early middle-aged) (white) (lesbian) couple is in with their (stringy) (blond) (white) daughter, and they mention that she's home from her freshman year of college, and of all the places in town to go eat, she decided to come here.
"So have you taught them that new beer pong game that I hear the kids are doing?", I was like, to her.
"That is so funny," muttered the one (very thick eyebrowed) (lesbian) mom, to herself.
3) The one (Guatemalan) kitchen worker who I started the diablo joke with got a very short haircut, and my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker tells me that he looks like a Buddhist monk.
4) When I leave work one night, a car going towards the intersection rolls down its window and I hear the word "Diablo!" come out, and I can see in silhouette three of the (Guatemalan) kitchen workers sitting in the car.
Like every time that I do a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, I sort out the edge pieces first, and then when I first do that and go to assemble them, I look at them and they don't seem to be very many, and I always find myself thinking stuff like, "Is that all of them?" and "Did I miss gathering some?" and "Are some missing?", although invariably when I go to assemble them, it really is all of them, or at most maybe like 1 or 2 weren't picked out from the non-edge pieces.
It's like some optical illusion, where the human mind is bad at estimating how many small pieces are necessary to line up in order to hem in and enclose some large space.
All my life I've been prone to allergies and sinus infections, though I haven't had a sinus infection in like 3 years, because I've been wearing masks so much for COVID.
But, I came down with a sinus infection towards the end of last month -- the air in my apartment dried out, and before I realized what was happening and I went to humidify to compensate, it harmed my sinuses and weakened them -- and, even though it was a medium-to-lower-strength sinus infection, though, with no associated constant sharp headache or anything like that, it lasted a heck of a long time.
Like, usually with that level of infection I'd rest up and major symptoms would subside quickly and the entire infection would completely go away within five days or maybe a week, but this one lasted for like six or seven days with major symptoms, and hung on in my nose for days beyond that.
So, I think it's either a factor of aging, or COVID weakened my immune system, likely the latter.
For the first time in my life, too, I actually had my voice break from post-nasal drip, when I tried to talk in my normal register.
And for like three or four days, I'd cough so much at night that it actually interfered with me getting to sleep or woke me up in the middle of the night, and once I coughed so hard that I actually pulled one of my lower right abs, from the way I was lying in bed right then.
Right when I was coming down with this, too, I was emptying the scum out of my soapdish in my bathroom from this new circle-shaped bar soap that I'd gotten on sale at the local grocery market co-op, and for some reason the soap scum wasn't normal, but these huge, huge slimy strings that would just hang there heavily, and would stretch out between the dish and my hand, and just wouldn't break at all.
I almost feel like that was foreshadowing.
I walk so much at work, that the soles of my sneakers are starting to wear through a bit.
And, when the (Guatemalans) pour soapy water all over the floor in preparation for a thorough mop at the end of a night shift, water can come up through my soles and soak my shoe-pads and socks, if I have to go in back to bag a takeout or something!
I really need to get off my ass, head to the local mall, and get myself some new shoes.
I was just thinking more about linguistic strengthening the other day.
Like, nowadays to agree, everyone says "one hundred percent," to convey in a fresh way complete and total agreement.
Like end of this summer or early fall, though, I was chit-chatting with my one (skinny) (skittish) (undergrad) front neighbor, and when he went to verbally signal agreement, he was like, "One thousand percent."
It seems that at least for some people, "one hundred percent" isn't good enough any more!
It is still so amazing to me how easy the Healthcare Marketplace works in the college town that I now live in.
Providers are the same, rates are pretty much the same, and you just estimate your yearly income for the next year and you're good to go, and you're with all the same people you had before, and all on practically the same basic highly-subsidized plan that's like the thing that they try to herd everyone into.
None of those narrow and eternally-churning networks that undermined basic healthcare access, that I was increasingly facing for years in the city that I used to live in, before I moved.
In terms of healthcare access, my life there had become increasingly unsustainable, in ways that it hadn't before and during the first few years of the Affordable Care Act.
I really don't know what people with economic profiles like mine do there... I guess not get basic care because it's frustrating and you have to fight for it and waste enormous amounts of time, and then flame out in healthcare crises that tend to be associated with bankruptcies?
Just, what a mess.
It's just appalling that our federal government is shoveling so much money into subsidizing basic plans in major metros, when functionally they're not basic plans at all, but much less.
It seems like a mini-trend lately where instead of "thank you," people say "I appreciate you" or "We appreciate you."
It comes off as much stronger than a simple "thank you," like you're actually being noticed and thanked.
I wonder if that will eventually catch on and stay, and eventually weaken.
...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:
1) A(n older) (shorter) (white) (shuffling) (wide-eyed and unblinking) (seemingly developmentally-disabled) app delivery driver comes in and there's a long time until the order is ready, like he doesn't know the system yet and left too much time to come get it, and then his car won't start, and he comes back in and asks us if we have cables and can jump him, which we don't and so we can't, and then he has to call up the app and get on hold a while to figure out what to do, and eventually he comes back in like twenty minutes later and hands us back the take-out, and eventually like twenty minutes beyond that another driver comes to take it away, and later we can see him through the front windows, and someone else has come with cables to come and jump his car.
2) The one (middle) (Thai-American) daughter of the (Thai) restaurant owners comes in in a sports jersey from her high school, and it has her name on the back, and the (Thai) last name is sooooooo long, like (Thai) names tend to be, only it looked even longer since it was crammed onto a jersey and she's so petite.
"It would be cool if they started your last name on your left arm, ran it across the back, and finishing it on your right arm," I was like.
And, she laughed, and she said they actually had to shrink the font in order to make it fit on the back.
3) When it turns out that it's the birthday of my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones -- the owners bring in a(n ice cream) cake for everyone -- I say that I should give her the word search puzzles that my mother clips out for me and mails me so that I have something to do at work, and which she does sometimes too, only she says that I can't give her a gift that someone else gave me.
4) When a (young) (South Asian) couple who are just friends finish up eating like 8:45pm one night and are lingering at the table in order to wait for a bus and I go to clear some plates, I notice the bill sitting out, and since it doesn't seem signed, I remind them to do that before they leave, only for the (woman) to say she did sign it and she shuffles the paper to show me, and I see one dashed-off mark on the signature line at the bottom and no numbers at all written above it, like meaning she just signed quickly and left no tip.
So, I do what the (Thai) owner suggested, and was like, "Oh no, was everything okay, my manager will see that and wonder if the food is bad or if I did something wrong," etc. etc. etc., and both of their heads snapped back and they seem surprised and like they caught on, and they assured me that everything was fine as I can see the thoughts forming in their head like they're beginning to get a clue, and when I left the table I could see them picking up the bill and starting to write on it again.
(As I see when I return after they leave, they eventually left $4 on the $46 tab, which is much better than the initial $0.00.)
5) My one (tall) (new) (Thai) coworker tells me that she came here to stay with her mother because she broke up with her husband of five years who cheated on her, and he was a (Brazilian) (minor league) (soccer) player she met back when he was a customer who came into the bank where she worked.
. . .
(On another occasion we talk more, and it turns out that like all of his [soccer] friends of his that she met he's [Afro-Brazilian], and his family lives in a dangerous area of Rio, and that she noticed from him and from when they visited that all of the family members there were in broken families or families where people had cheated, like he had "three moms," and that everyone there was encouraging their kids to play soccer, since they saw that as the way you could make it big and make money... I told her that maybe it wasn't so much that [Brazilians] cheat, but maybe it was a celebrity culture thing, for people who got into sports, and she didn't disagree, but she also said that she can't stand [Brazilians] now.)
...a bit ago at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:
1) A (young) (clean-cut) (shinily dressed-up for everyday) (hispanic) couple come in, and the one guy is confused about what type of curry he wants and he can't speak enough (English) to the point where he can explain what he had before and wants now, and so he picks up his phone right there and puts it on speaker and calls a friend who explains it to him in (Spanish), and it turns out that they're friends from church with my one (Pentecostal) (Guatemalan) coworker, who's working in the back and who answered his phone for them, and whose name on the phone is some (Spanish) nickname that's very different from what we call him at work.
Later, too, I notice that their order of crab rangoons has one extra one in it.
And, still later, when I ask how their food is, I explain in (clear) and (simple) (English) that if there is a problem with the food, it's because of my one (Pentecostal) (Guatemalan) coworker and we will have to punish him, and I gently hit the fist of my one hand into the palm of the other while I stand by the table, and the (guy) of the couple chuckles.
2) I bring in some meat sticks that I had bought from the local university's meat science program, and I cut them up and leave them on a plate for everyone.
They're only okay but they mostly go, and when I try to pass around the last ones to get rid of them, the one (younger) (female) (Guatemalan) coworker has a light bulb go off and she takes the final piece and walks over to the deep-fryer and fires it into a basket, and she deep fries it before eating it.
And, she says it's much better.
"I wish we had know that earlier," I tell my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker, and she tells me that our one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones tried microwaving it, and it was better that way, too.
3) When we do another puzzle that involves countries and capitals, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker says that the (Asian) countries are easy for her and my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones, but other countries, not so much.
Like, they both thought the capital of Australia was Sydney, and I had to say it was Canberra, but they knew Jakarta for Indonesia down cold.
1) A(n odd) (Middle Eastern-looking) (native English-speaking) (lighter-skinned) (graduate student-aged) woman comes in late with this (curly-haired) (vaguely Middle Eastern) guy of the same age, and I tell them that it's late but eating in is still doable if they order meals that are quick to prepare, and especially he seems like he wants something elaborate but they do order the simpler dishes and eat, but they take their time and talk in (English) forever, and even after we close and shut the sign off and bring her a box, they are still sipping their beer that they've been sharing forever, and I go to pick up the credit card bill that he had paid and signed for and it's like less than a $2 tip to round up to $40 on like a bill that's $38 and change, so after doing one more thing, I go over and am like, "Sorry the restaurant is closed now," and they seem surprised, and the woman asks if they're the last table.
(They are, and I tell them.)
(I swear, some of these student-types want a late-night diner type of place, and act as if they have one even when they don't.)
2) The next night, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker picks up a bill from where a (young) (codependent-appearing) (South Asian from South Asia) couple were sitting, both on the same side of the table, and where they had each gotten an entree and shared a dessert and on top of that had gotten one entree to go, and while she walks towards me holding the bill and some stuff from the table she's bussing, she just rolls her eyes and goes HHHHHHHHHHH and shakes her head, and I know the tip is shit, and we pass each other and do our jobs, with no more interaction than that.
(Later when I look at the bill, it's $1.10.)
3) At a table towards the end of the night, this one (perky) (East Asian-American) mom comes in and says she's so happy to see the staff wearing masks, and she's there with a (younger) (East Asian-American) (college student?) (son?) and his (Middle Eastern heritage?) girlfriend, and at one point she wants two straws if they're pre-wrapped, and the mom and the maybe-girlfriend want no spice in their food but the maybe-son guy wants some, so I say that I can bring the chili out for him to add in separately if he needs it, and I do, later on when their food is brought out, without him asking me.
"No thank you," he's like when I do that, "I think I'm good."
"Come on," I'm like, "This is your chance to be macho."
And, the mom just cracks up.
4) Towards the end of the night, a group of six (American-born or -raised) undergrads of various races including (white), (East Asian), and (South Asian) come in and I encourage them to order quick because it's the end of the night, and they do, and later I hear that they're talking over their phone to the projected seventh member of their party, and one of them is like, "Sorry, but I don't know if you want to come, it's getting kind of late and the restaurant is closing," all considerately.
And, they eat in a reasonable amount of time and leave in a reasonable amount of time, all without lingering overduly, all considerately.
And, as I go to bus some stuff from around them right before they leave, they're debating whether to wait for a bus or walk back to campus, and the one is really pushing to walk back to campus to get some exercise after they all ate so much.
"You know," I was like, butting in, "It's really safe out here, but I'd still be careful, our food is good, that sometimes people get mugged for the leftovers!"
And, they all look at me quizzically, and none laugh.
. . .
(I think that undergrad kids who grew up in the U.S. and have experience working at service jobs are more considerate than international students or graduate students, who often come from wealthier and more-privileged backgrounds.)
1) The handle of a long-time reusable canvas grocery bag got detached and I can't really use it for groceries anymore, so instead I start using it to put around my workshoes or my boots, whenever it rains out and I need to carry a pair of shoes into work to have something to change into...
My other reusable canvas grocery bag that I carry in is still fine and I carry my takeout dish for my shift meal in it, as well as puzzle magazines, usually, so it seems like a good idea not to have shoes with their dirty bottoms just throw in there as-is.
2) Like a month or so ago at work, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker tells me that she actually prefers to be the one who mops at the end of the night, rather than sweep or spot-clean the bathrooms. Although it seems like the most work, she likes to pop in earbuds and listen to music and wind down while doing that, she says.
3) I'm fairly sure that I received the new and overdue issue of a magazine that I subscribe to since I remember that I picked it up from where I usually keep it and set it aside on my table, only when I go to look for it, I can't find it there, and it doesn't turn up in my (small) cottage over the course of the week, so I start to suspect that I had a mundane and hyper-realistic dream about receiving a new magazine issue, and did not in fact receive one in real life.
(It never turns up, and I have to contact the company to send me a new one... They say they had a lot of problems with that issue, and then like ten days later, I get the both the overdue one and the replacement copy in the mail within a day or two of each other.)
. . .
1) When I go to mail a bereavement card, I open up my waxen envelope from the Post Office where I keep my stamps, and the first thing I pull out is a bunch of FREEDOM stamps, so I go digging further until I find a few stamps with stylized elephants on them, which are much less objectionable.
2) During a puzzle craze at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, we start collectively doing this one puzzle where you copy-sketch a bunch of disassembled squares into a grid and create a picture, and the first time we do it, it's over the course of one shift, and it's me, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker, and my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones.
And, I make them sign it in a blank space at the bottom, since I say that's what artists do.
And, when we go to say bye for the night, I say in (Thai) my standard good-night farewell, only I substitute out "Van Gogh" and "Picasso" for their names, respectively.
And, since in Thai you say "Nong" for someone younger than you and "Pi" for someone older than you, I joke whether I should say "Pi Picasso" or "Pi-casso" to my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones.
And, my one (older) (Thai) coworker says good night to me, and calls me "Da Vinci."
...also from a bit ago, at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:
1) I open my fridge before I'm due to go to work that day and no light goes on, and I get worried that maybe the fridge failed and I'll have to deal with getting it repaired and stopping food from spoiling, but while I'm out in my living room after that, I hear the fridge kick on, and so I know that it's just the light that went out, and not the whole entire fridge that failed
2) When I ask my one (tall) (young) (Mexican-American) coworker about how some concerts that he went to were, he starts retelling me the story about how he got throw into a mike stand at one concert where his girlfriend was singing, only this time he says that he has a scar on his back from it.
3) My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker is extremely tired, since she was up until 4am binging a (Korean) law drama on Netflix.
. . .
When it was getting slim pickings at the farmer's market in the college town that I now live in right before the close of the season, I got like quite a number of sweet potatoes to cook because I needed something to buy and they were there, even though they're nothing that I usually cook with.
And so, one night when it was getting cold, I fired up the oven and baked some, and I ended up eating like three or four or maybe even five right away, with butter.
That night, then, I just found myself squatting on the toilet forever, and I felt a little full, but it wasn't explosive or painful, but it was like the shit just flowed out of me in a solid stream, where you could feel it moving through the pipes inside of me at an even pace and then out into the toilet bowl, only it wasn't liquid at all, it was solid, but not in a painful or obstructive way.
And, sometimes it would stop, and then it would start again.
Finally when it was done, I got up to wipe my ass and I looked, and it was one of the oddest shapes of shit that I've ever seen in my life, it was mildly orangish-brown though that wasn't what was abnormal, what was abnormal was how it was mostly flat and extending pretty much all across the bowl, but then in the middle, there was like this mound of shit going up like three or four inches high, just sitting out on the flat part of shit that I guess I had pushed out first.
And then, when I went to flush the toilet, the water shifted and bubbles came up around the edges, like as if it was a mat in a peat-bog.
...one day a bit ago, at the one (Thai) restaurant that I work at now:
1) After a (fatter) (middle-age) (short-haired) (white) (lesbian?) couple pay for their meal, my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones shows me the money they handed over to pay the bill.
"Forty-four dollars," she's like, "All singles."
"Maybe they're a waiter," I was like.
"Or stripper," she was like.
2) After the close of shift when I take the unused (miso) soup back to the kitchen with a towel around it to hold the hot metal pot, I deposit it by the dishwashing area and then turn around and the one (Guatemalan) cook who I started the diablo joke with is halfway across the room doing something, so I stop and stand there and in front of everyone I take the towel and kind of whip it so it just about snaps his ass, which he sees out of the corner of his eye, and without changing his pace or doing anything, he starts muttering something in (Spanish) about diablo...
3) After everything is finished and I get my tip money and it's time to go home, my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phone is like, "Time to go home," but I say, "What if I don't want to go home, what if I want to stay here," and she's like, "Fine, I go."
Then, she's like, "You can drink wine," and she points at the shelf that's above the work station where we keep this huge row of wine bottles like the opened reds and the whites before we chill them.
After posting about British NHS politics -- everything that's covered is an issue, since everyone pays! -- I came across 2 more bits about this in 2 different places:
1) In this one new-ish memoir of a (British) (gay) (trans) man, he has a line about how "the NHS still refuses to fund trans fertility treatment, such as storing gametes (the freezing of eggs and sperm) before starting hormone treatment."
(I can see how this would set off a certain type of [British] person who questions hormone treatment -- not only do you have to fund that unnecessary treatment for kids, but then you have to go and fund fertility treatments for them too?! Madness, they'd say.)
(The memoir was okay, apart from a few bits like how his gay lover appreciated the spontaneity of his having a vagina, since it self-lubricates and since you don't have to plan time ahead of time to douche the sh*t out first before you go and f*ck it.)
2) In a hard copy of the Daily Mail that my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the sister of the brother-sister pair) had brought for me from the UK, there was a major NHS outrage story right on page 2, setting up a "what would you rather have, more doctors or more DEI administrators" angle.
The end of the article presented competing perspectives --
A source close to Mr Barclay said: 'NHS cash should be spent on frontline patient care and not wasted on woke backroom bureaucracy. 'The Heath Secretary has got rid of dedicated diversity staff from the department – now the NHS should do the same.'
Sir Julian Hartley, chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents NHS trusts, said: 'Equality, diversity, and inclusion can help create an NHS-wide culture where leaders feel equipped to deal with all forms of discrimination.'
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents healthcare organisations, added: 'We clearly need to do more to assist Mr Barclay's understanding of the contribution that a focus on equality and diversity makes to our staff and patients.'
-- but you can tell where their sympathies lie, even apart from how right next to it they had an accompanying story about declining maternal healthcare.
. . .
Somehow, no-one ever talks about this kind of thing as a consequence of setting up a national centrally-funded healthcare system.
When he leaves and passes me as I'm chaining up the patio furniture outside the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, a (young college-age) (pretty short) (Asian-American) guy who was part of a big (Asian immigrant family) group is like, "Hey, there's a note on my seat for the other server" -- i.e., my one (taller) (newer) (Thai) coworker -- and then when I go there next to go clean the table, there sitting out on his seat is a used paper napkin holder with writing on the inside, saying --
You're really pretty call me :)
[cell number removed]
. . .
(When I gave this to her back in the kitchen, she quickly read it and threw it out right away and said right away that she likes tall men, which made me tense up since she was speaking right in front of my [very short] [Pentecostal] [Guatemalan] coworker... She also said that he's too young for her, and when I asked her how old she is, she said she's 28.)
1) One night I get home after work after dinner shift at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now to my one back cottage in the (college town) that I now live in, and it's dark, and at a sound from the big tree by my cottage patio, I turn, and there's a possum scurrying up onto a main overhanging branch.
2) One morning I open up my bedroom blinds, and the leaves on the tree outside my window have turned an extremely bright yellow overnight.
With all those bubble-wrap envelopes I've been saving from used books and CDs that I've ordered, I finally figured out a use for all of them -- I used them as packing material in place of bubble-wrap, to put around something fragile that I was mailing!
As they say, it "worked like a charm."
...from a few months ago at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:
When I deliver or ask about this one certain food, I call the rice paper-wrapped vegetable appetizer thingies "early autumn rolls."
. . .
(They're usually called "spring rolls.")
1) She cuts out word searches with themes that remind her of me or that she thinks I'd think are fun, and mails them to me in big batches so that I have something to do in spare moments around the house or at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now.
2) She calls "kombucha" "kombuchi".
...about the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:
With that one (old time-y) (semi-secret) fraternal organization that has the second story storefront above the restaurant, they have a big neon sign in their window up there, and they also have a colorful painted logo on the glass door of the staircase going upstairs, that's right by our entrance.
Like this summer, some customers on the patio were asking me if the group was still active, and I told them yes, and that often on Wednesday nights you can smell the cigar smoke from upstairs.
And then I was like, "And a lot of times you can hear babies crying, but they sacrifice them pretty quickly, so it doesn't bother us too much."
. . .
...last month at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:
I'm opening a bottle of wine just as the one (older) (Thai) cook comes out from in back and strolls by with his water bottle to go fill it, and when he sees what I'm doing, he all deadpan non-chalantly puts it down and holds it over like I should go fill it with the wine.
...the other week at the (Thai) restaurant where I work now:
1) My one (Pentecostal) (Guatemalan) coworker was wearing a hat from the local (state) university and a shirt that had something about (California) on it, and so I pointed out to him that he seemed confused, since he was wearing clothing from two different states in the same outfit.
2) A table of four (forgettable) (South Asians) leave $4 on a $67 bill, but a (lackadaisical) (froofy Farrah Fawcett-haired) (black eyeglassed) (late 20s) (South Asian) woman who was very very quiet leaves $5 on her small takeout order.
Also, on another day, a (younger) (South Asian) couple with a small baby with a(n incredibly blocky wedge-shaped head almost exactly like the husband's) comes in and we have to get a high chair out, and the (slim) (ashy-skinned) wife gets soup and says her husband will try some and then maybe he'll get some soup then, which he doesn't but we have to go check about, which then makes me joke that if she gets up, she should be careful because he'll eat all her soup, and their meals have chicken in them which makes me think that they're maybe (Pakistani) or (Bangladeshi), and at one point their baby pokes a hole through his styrofoam cup and so we have to go get a new one for him.
(They left $20 on their modest bill.)
(Not all [South Asians]!)
3) The one (younger) (female) (Guatemalan) coworker reappears and starts working again after I had gotten told it was her last day and she was moving to her uncle's in California, no explanation given for her reappearance.
So, I told her several times "!La perdida ha volvido! ('the lost one has returned!') and "!Nuestra favorida volvio!" ('our favorite returned'), which she liked, especially the latter.
I also told her that the one (Guatemalan) guy who we started the diablo joke about had cried every day after she left, and she was like, really?, like she thought what I was saying was true and I wasn't just kidding.
4) The one (Guatemalan) guy who we started the diablo guy about has been trying to teach me a limited range of greetings in his (native) language, and when I said that I needed to find a grammar book of it, he said that he could get me one, but he'd have to call his friend in (Guatemala), and when I asked him more about it, he said that it was basically what they use to teach it in local schools there, and you could only get it there.
(I told him that that would be awesome, and I'd get it if it wasn't too much, and I'd pay him back for the book and for shipping. I mean, why not get it and d*ck around with the language, if I see native speakers every day!)
...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:
1) After the (husband) boss accidentally added meat to a vegetarian dish and messed up the order when he was helping out in the kitchen for some reason, I grabbed that and ate it as my staff meal for that shift.
And, later, I told my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker, "This is important, to get the boss to like you -- eat his mistakes!".
(She liked that.)
2) There's this one (new) (taller) (Thai) coworker, parts of whose facial structure strangely resembles my one (professor) friend who studies (modern) (Czech) literature, to the point where if I see her out of the corner of my eye at a certain angle, I viscerally confuse them.
And, when I was doing some word searches that my mother cuts out of the newspaper and mails me so that I have something to do during downtime at work, she asked me what it was and I showed her, and she helped me out with the word search.
And, later, I showed her how in that particular puzzle type the leftover letters spell out a word with the same theme.
"Oh!", she was like, and she had this look of just utter pleasure on her face, like that was the best thing ever.
1) I once heard the response "God's going to get you for that," and I was quite taken with it (and why wouldn't you be?!).
2) Way back ages ago at the resthome where I used to work at, the one (older) (West African) lady from (Ghana) was telling me about how she did a big holiday weekend barbecue with all her family and friends, and so I asked her what they made. Basically, it was some kind of spinach dish, and jollof rice, and a bunch of different meat, and that was how they barbecued.
One thing I used to do occasionally with my one (skeptical) (Mexican) coworker from the resthome where I used to work at is joke that she was a cat burglar art thief who was going to go sneak into museums and pilfer masterworks after she got off of shift.
(For some reason after she changed out of her workclothes at the end of shift and we would all wait for the clock to turn to a certain number so we could clock out, she almost always wore a completely black outfit, like very dark black pants and a tight-fitting very dark long-sleeved t-shirt with a high-ish almost turtleneck-like neck.)
"No, I am going home," she would say to me.
"See, that's your alibi," I would be like, and she would just go "Eh!" and make a swatting gesture with her hand at me.
One time she also broke down her jigsaw puzzle tips for me, on what you do when you're stuck: you have to switch what your eyes see and group by color, or look for very specific edges.
She was very intense and driven like that.
. . .
(Her memory really is a blessing.)
1) Where I live now in the college town that I now live in, I was going to go get my mail from out front and I saw across the street a(n older) (shorter) (fatter) (white) woman with (big) (frizzy) (pulled-back) (grey) hair going up to the steps of the house of the one (aging) (hippie), and so I called out and over and asked her if everything is okay, since I hadn’t seen her in a while.
“She passed in January,” she was like, and she walked over and talked a little, and she said that it was all very sudden and all very odd, she had a spot on her chest that didn’t look like anything, but it had dug in back behind and become sepsis, and there was no going back from that.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I was like, and I said how I had opened a bottle for her once when she saw me out reading and walked up the driveway and asked me to do so – “Thank you for helping her out,” the woman was like – and I said that I hoped that it wasn’t too much pain for her – it wasn’t – and that I always saw people over there and it seemed like she had a good team around her.
“She did,” the woman said, just staring up at me with this broad smiling face, lost in her thoughts.
. . .
2) Right after I moved from the city that I used to live in, I got an email from the one retired school nurse at the resthome, that my one (skeptical) (Mexican) coworker wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t breathe and went to the doctor’s, and it was pancreatic cancer that had spread and was advanced and was interfering with the musculature around her chest that helps her to breathe.
And, she had said that she had wanted to work as long as she could, but already within a week she was at home, and she wasn’t able to work again but all the workers had taken up a list and gathered money for her and they had sent that along, and of course I said that if they did that again, to let me know, since I’d also send some money, and even if it was going in right away and someone had to contribute money for me and cover me that way, I could send a check or something to them later and pay them back as soon as I could, though no-one ever did.
(I'm not sure if they ever took up another collection.)
Since she also checked and the resthome could forward a card for me, I sent one, something "Thinking of You" and a little lighthearted about how I was doing and how I had heard the news and had thought of her and I think of her every time that I do jigsaw puzzles, since we both liked them and we got yelled at once for doing one in the resthome common room to the point where we did too much of one once one late evening and a resident had noticed the next morning when she got up and so she snitched on us and word got back to the nurse in charge of our unit and she had to say something to everyone, though I think she knew that it was just the two of us.
And, that made me feel better, knowing that I had put that energy out into the universe there at a very, very bad time.
Then, like two months later, the card came back in the mail to me, with a big official and threatening- and definitive-looking bleeding dark red ink mark on its pastel yellow envelope, no known occupant and no known address and that it was unable to be forwarded.
And, immediately I thought that something must have happened with her money and her insurance and her apartment, and she had had to move back to her family village in (Mexico) for end-of-life care or whatever, and that it was a private tragedy that happened quickly and no-one knew of, so of course I said nothing to the retired school nurse or to anyone at all.
Then, a few weeks beyond that, I get another email from the retired school nurse, and it was the news that she had passed, and she knew that week that she was going to pass, so she took the time to cook this special peanut candy for everyone and had sent it in with her (diabetic) (American) husband who she had met through taking care of his mother years ago, though she couldn’t come in person to give the candy to everyone, it was already too late for that.
That was her way of saying goodbye, and, as it turned out, the forwarded card situation had merely been a mistake, fortunately, though I was never able to talk to her again, even though I had reached out, and I really don’t remember the last time that I saw her.
That Thanksgiving when they gave out the turkeys and trimmings to all the staff like they had started to do during the first year of the pandemic, they did so in her memory.
And, that was how she died.
Everyone thinks it was too soon.. . .
