...when she tagged along with her mom on a slow afternoon lunch shift at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, and she asked me about the word puzzle that I was doing behind the counter, this huge elaborate thing where there's a grid and you have to fit puzzle pieces of words into it:
Her (after she looks at it and tries to figure out how it works): "That game is not for fifth-graders."
The tall thin tube of sea-salt in my kitchen cupboard always gives me sticky fingers, after I touch it when making my breakfast in the morning; I touch it the very last thing after toasting bread and slicing raw onion and then opening and cutting an avocado, and usually there's a little bit of avocado on my hands from me taking the seed and licking and gnawing the last little bit of avocado off of it, but that also then gets transferred to the salt-tube, now, afterwards, and my hands also get sticky from that now, too, as I can feel if they're fairly clean when I go to get the salt-tube out of my cupboard to go put it on my avocado toast that I tend to make for myself in the mornings, usually, now.
I had picked up another watermelon the other week at the local supermarket -- my third of the year! -- to keep "in a holding pattern" on my counter till enough space had cleared out of my fridge, to where I could rotate it in and refrigerate it and start eating it.
It all looked good and I *think* I had carefully examined it for any nicks or anything that could compromise the rind, but like three or four days after I bought it just when it was about to be transferred into the refrigerator, I moved it on my counter in order to get at something else on my counter, and when I touched it, I noticed a small soft spot developing by where the vine-stem had connected, and then another a few inches beyond that.
So, I threw it in the fridge right away and I cut it open within twelve hours, but what do you know, too late, the flesh was already a little vinegar-y from spoilage, and I had to throw out the whole thing.
(I slid each half of the medium-ish watermelon into an old orange bag, and then carefully carried it out to a dumpster in the alley behind my cottage, so watermelon-water didn't drip on the floor as I walked it out.)
It really kills me when I have to waste food like that... I mean, it's just a $6 watermelon, and if losing a $6 watermelon is the worst thing that happens to me this week it's a good week, but still, that food waste really does kill me.
Like a month ago at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, it was getting towards closing time, and when I suggested putting Max Martin songs on Spotify, my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones suggested putting Abba on, instead.
So, we did.
The first one that cued up was "Knowing Me, Knowing You," which my one (Chinese-American) coworker who just graduated from college didn't know, although he knows a lot of other Abba songs.
Still, though, he liked it, and was like, "Why can't people write songs like that anymore?".
I've been noticing lately some strange reactions from people when I start mentioning my intensive work on the one ancient language that I've been working on intensively for the past number of years now.
Some people think it's great, or they think it's funny how I've really gotten into that even though it's not the explicit subject of my graduate study ( = reaction of a [woman] I know from college), or they compliment me and say I'm a "polymath" ( = reaction of a [woman] I know from the past and from graduate school and who's now in a tenure-track job in a pretty different field, who's asked me smart questions about why I think the field is underdeveloped).
Other people, however, just balk, probably since it's too weird, like they don't even want to talk with me about it, and they start looking at me suspiciously.
It's like "a bridge too far," in my past decade-plus of roaming around like a velociraptor in Jurassic Park and tinking at fences looking for a weakness where I can burst through.
It's like they think there's something wrong with me for not having turned anything I've worked on into anything recognizable where I can "level up" to a profession or a decently-recognized achievement, and now they're blaming me and acting like it's some erratic fault of mine, as if I just flightily dip into everything I do rather than sound it out and sink huge amounts of time and energy into various directions.
Like last month when I caught up with a (woman) who I know from my master's program who got into editing, I was saying something about how everyone is kind of enmired in sh*t jobs with no obvious way out, and she agreed and was like, "There's a lot of dissociation going on," which observation I passed over at the time, but I've thought back to a number of times since.
Like, there she is, apparently professional, but still in her same big rental apartment from a number of years ago, with no condo or down payment for a house, though of course I don't ask about that.
(She does have a big apartment and she does take periodic decent vacations, so I honestly wonder if that sucks up some money, but on the other hand, it's probably not that much money, and to fixate on that would be more my looking for some sort of personal failings in her, to explain her overall financial profile.)
And, here I am, with skills to excel in any number of better-paying jobs, but no sure paths to them, and it would take ungodly amounts of time and energy to even make an attempt at that, with no decent chance of success, so I don't bother, because I'm kind of done with that sort of draining risk-taking and empty promises that just sucks up months and years of your life.
It really is like dissociation, where you just keep doing what you're doing and you try not to think about the larger picture of not being at the minimum level that you should be at, with a profession and some sort of recognizable life.
It's not everyone my age who's like this, by no means a majority, but it's definitely a noticeable chunk of very smart and very skilled people, especially those who aren't partnered and combining income that way, and it's "a vibe."
The other week at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, my one (younger) (female) (Guatemalan) worker was saying something in (Spanish) about how my newer occasional greeting to everyone -- "Hola, mis buenos" ("Hello, my hotties") -- "sounds good" in (Spanish).
Another time after that, too, I came in to work on a (Sunday) morning and there were several (Guatemalans) around in the kitchen but not her when I came in through the back-alley door, so I didn't say the greeting, but then when I went out into the main dining room, there she was, coming out of the bathroom, so I tried to say something in (Spanish) about how I wanted to say that greeting but I didn't say it because I didn't see her, and when I said that, she gave a sly look and said in (Spanish) something like "Of course not, because I wasn't there."
The week following that, too, she asked me to take a selfie with her for social media, and she showed me one she'd taken with the (newer) (older) (female) (Chinese-Thai) cook in the kitchen, because she said she was sending pictures to her mother in (Guatemala), and she wanted to show her a picture of her "gringo" friend from work.
