A memory of my mother...

 ...when she mentioned that years ago she had visited Naples, and I asked her if she had had the chance to visit Pompeii and Herculaneum:

No, but she had visited this local seafood restaurant, and everyone there was spitting on the floor.

Limits on staff meals...

 ...at the (Thai) restaurant where I work now:

A bit ago, I ask the one (Guatemalan) "diablo" cook if I can have the special limited-time salad dish since I know we can't have it but it really hits the spot and is there any way that he could please make one up for me, even a small one, and he says no, avocados are too expensive.

. . .

(I am not worth a dollar avocado!)

A local bar manager's story of how the pandemic set in...

 ...when she was managing a local coffee shop branch in the university's business school, in the college town that I now live in:

At first all of these (Asian) students came back from (Christmas) break wearing masks, and then they shut down a bit and the timeline for reopening was indefinite, and then they let PT staff go, and then a baker who swore over the phone at her, and then everyone, and then that was that, and now the business is closed.

On the collectivity of the (Guatemalan) kitchen staff...

...who always make up one big meal for themselves anyways, for their late lunchtime at the (Thai) restaurant where I work now:

One day I see they have these huge plates of French fries and super-crispy-breaded large slices of (whitemeat) fried chicken, that they had somehow cooked up using the restaurant's deep fryer.

My latest "diablo" joke...

 ...after something caught fire in the kitchen of the (Thai) restaurant where I work now and you could smell it everywhere:

I'm like, "!Cual diablo hace el fumo!" ("Which devil makes the smoke!"), and though I repeat myself, most of the (Guatemalans) ignore me, though it gets a smile out of the (young) (female) one.

On the one (indigenous) (Guatemalan) language...

...that I hear spoken by some of my coworkers at the (Thai) restaurant where I work now:

1) This one (new) (young) guy speaks (Spanish) very musically, like he says "Hola" and "Como estas" and he's hitting certain consistent notes with those phrases when he says them, and basically I realize that (Spanish) must be a second language for him and the (tonal) (indigenous) language the first, and I ask him, and yeah, that's the case.

2) The one cook who I began the "diablo" joke with says that a friend of his translates the indigenous language at doctors offices and the local courts.

3) When I ask the one (young) (female) (Guatemalan) coworker how you say "excuse me," she tells me something, and then the "diablo" cook guy laughs and corrects her and says something like how what she told me actually means "Get away!" or something like that, and I realize that her acquisition must be shaky from home or whatever and she's not entirely proficient in it.

Memories of a like 53-hour power outage...

...that happened after severe storms a few weeks ago in the college town that I now live in:

1) That lunchtime of the split shift, there's like 2 tables of 2 and like 18 takeout orders, since everyone is staying in because of the severe storm, and tips are so bad that we actually have to get tipped up to meet minimum wage. Too, I ask the owner with the tired face what our procedure is if a tornado happens and the town sirens go off, and basically we'd lock the front door and get any customers and staff into the basement, and I google the  Spanish terms on my smartphone and go over the protocol with my (Guatemalan) coworkers, and immediately when I mention the possibility of a tornado to one and say something about going somewhere they break in and are like "...a bajo" ("...downstairs"), or something like that, so right away I can tell they know what they're doing.

2) That night, it's like on the busy end of a busy Friday night even though we have one less person staffed, since word got out that we were open and everyone who lost power is coming in to eat, and at the end of the night we make just beyond the extreme end of tips for a busy Friday night, like $106, which along with basewage means that we were making like $28 bucks an hour (!!! - I really can make bank sometimes, at that restaurant, honestly).

3) The next day, I can't make coffee at home since my stove is electric, and I want to keep my freezer and fridge cold so I never open it, and so I eat honey on bread slices for a light breakfast to get something on my stomach, and then a bit later I go into the (Thai) restaurant to get their lunch special and a big iced coffee and to charge my phone, and my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker jokes and behaves extremely formally with me and keeps calling me "Sir."

4) At the local coffee shop, the (young) (white) woman who works there tells me that on the first day of the outage, she like a lot of people went there to charge her phone, and since they were so busy from all of that business, they made her come into work right then and there, so that they could handle all of the customers.

5) At some point, I realize with all the money I'm spending on coffee and eating out, it basically takes away like $30 of the money I made on the night that I made bank. And, too, I start dreading opening my fridge, to like open the door and not see the light go on, and I keep envisioning just opening it and there's all of this black mold everywhere, though when I talk with people they say my eggs should be okay and some people even keep their eggs out on their kitchen counters unrefrigerated, and they also say the black beans in vinegar might be dicy, and my big pack of tofu that's still sealed in plastic should be fine.

6) Finally I get a text from the electric company that my power is going on that evening, so right before work I open up my freezer to wipe out any melted ice and moisture so it doesn't re-freeze on the freezer bottom when the power kicks back on, and I open my fridge to check it, too. And, much stuff in there is still a bit colder than room temp, though I can see mold blossoming on occasional cherries.

7) With food, some cherries are gone and others past prime, and a tupperware of lentil soup smells bad, and my half-drunken kombucha bottle pops loud since the probiotics had probably started fermenting again, and the watermelon is fine and the eggs, though when I do go to open up the tofu a few days later it smells bad and I have to chuck all of it out, as I do with the vegetable scraps that I'd been keeping in my freezer to make broth with eventually.

8) The next day I clean my apartment top to bottom and go to the grocery store, so I can wake up the next day and have my life be normal again...  Thankfully I still had water -- what would I have done without that, too?! -- but even then I just want my life back to normal, and to wake up and have my life be normal again. It's like I need to recover.