A recent-ish afternoon:

1) When I call up my one (hippie) friend from (Michigan) to check in to see if she wants to do this one kind of super-tough crossword that we do together over the phone, like we had planned to maybe do that afternoon, it turns out that it's a bad time for her after all, since she was getting ready to meet her aunt and go to dinner at her grandparents.

"And I had the worst hot flash an hour ago that I'm still recovering from," she was like, adding that it runs in her family and that her mom had that stuff even earlier than at her age.

Then, to close off that bit of the conversation, she was like, "And I'm sure you can identify with being perimenopausal."

"Yeah," I was like. "I hate how my vag is dry and gets all torn up."

At which, not even missing a beat, she was like, "I wish my vag was getting all torn up."

2) When I'm finishing shopping at the local grocery store, I look at my cart, and the top is several packs of Lavazza espresso and a couple big bags of celery.

So, I immediately photoed it and texted it to a few friends, that here I was, having the diet of a supermodel.

I said the same thing to the (younger) (black) (female) cashier, too, and we both laugh about it, and then when I'm leaving the store, who comes out of a different cash register row but my one (newer) (female) (Guatemalan) coworker, who had come there during her break to get something for her cell phone, which she should have done yesterday, but she didn't, she said, since it was too cold out then.

And, she said that she knew it was me, since she heard my laugh.

So, I showed her the espresso and the celery and asked her what the word for celery is in Spanish (apio), and so I explained the joke to her by pulling out the objects and being like, "Mira, espresso y apio, tengo la dieta de un supermodel" ("Look, espresso and celery, I have the diet of a supermodel").

She seemed to appreciate that and laughed, so then I did the next stage of the joke, pulling out a gallon of ice cream that I had bought on sale.

"Y helado, quiero comer todo el helado, y vomitar," I was like ("And ice cream, I want to eat all the ice cream, and vomit").

She also appreciated that and laughed again, and we ended up walking the few blocks back towards downtown, and I dropped her off back to work at the alley that goes to the restaurant's backdoor.

. . .

(I love how I'm just this guy now, who sees a [Spanish-speaking] [immigrant] at the local chain supermarket in this semi-rural place, and she says hi and we chit-chat, and then we share a stroll together. What a life. It's very rich.)