My mother is reading Agatha Christie, again.

My mother is reading Agatha Christie, again.

She said that she had picked up a book of hers like she hadn't in ages, and it was good, so she got some short stories, which "are good because they're short stories," and then she started another book, and then what do you know, she caught the end of a TV special on PBS about the life of Agatha Christie, although it gave away the plot of the very book that she was reading (it was the doctor).

She also said that she read Christie years ago, before her and my father moved north and started "a new life" and had kids.

Somehow, I feel like my mother is lost, and unsure what to do with her remaining time, especially in the absence of any grandchildren and that role that she could step into.

What is it all for?

Several times in the past year, she has said something to that effect, that life is hard, and that that's life.

Her and my father's life is ending, and both of their children are still very unsettled with no clear futures, even as they age.

What is it all for?

Results of a jogging experiment from this winter.

During the worst and coldest part of this winter, I postponed my weekly jog for 3 weeks running because of the temperature and also because of snow and ice on the roads.

For like over a week, too, I didn't do my six-times-a-week high intensity workout, replacing it with ten minutes of stretching instead, since the air was so dry that I was fighting off a mild sinus infection and trying to keep it from turning into anything worse.

Then, one week the weather began to lift, and so I wanted to squeeze in two jogs that week, somehow, to begin to make up for the jobs that I had missed.

And, the only way that I could really do that with the days with the high-enough temps that allowed for jogging, was to jog on one afternoon before a dinner shift at work.

As it turned out at that dinner shift, then, I had more energy but I moved more slowly, and I was also a bit more out of it, and at one point I wasn't holding a tray with a few dirty dishes like I usually would, and the half-empty cup of crab rangoon sauce slid on a plate and over its mild rim and then spilled over onto the tray and down onto my shirt and pants.

The top of my upper leg muscles were also noticeably sore, too, though that might have been compounded by how on the previous day I had returned to my high intensity workout, which includes two forms of squats.

Three sets of recent (South Asian) customers...

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

1) There's these repeat customers of this (South Asian from South Asia) mom and dad and their two (Americanized) kids who are both (dark skinned) like the (dad) -- a (younger) (quieter) (quite passive personality-ed) (pre-teen) boy and a (teenage) girl who has big "roll her eyes" energy at her parents -- and, especially in comparison to the (quiet) and (passive) (dark-skinned) dad, the mom is just this (lighter-skinned) and perky and vivacious thing who's just sharp and quick, and after they try out a new appetizer that I'd recommended to them before, I come to the table to check on them, and after I ask them "How's the summer roll?", the mom throws out her hands and gestures to to all of their empty dishes and is like, "What summer roll?!", as she beams a mischievous smile (i.e., we ate it so quickly, it doesn't even exist anymore).

2) There's this gigantic group of (college-age) (South Asian-American) students who make a reservation for a farewell party for one of their friends, and we have two long tables set up, and it turns out that the women sit separately from the men, the way they trickle in.

And, I hear them commenting on how the tables are separated by gender, so, the next time I'm over by the women's table, I'm like, "How are things at the adult table?".

The guys's table is also very loud, and you can tell when their food is finally served, since they suddenly quiet down, since suddenly they're chowing down and they all have food in their mouths and can't talk anymore.

3) Two (younger) (college student age?) (South Asian from South Asia) customers come in and order three entrees -- including two more expensive ones -- and have a couple of Thai iced teas and have a long and leisurely meal, and the one who pays sets the credit card receipt tray over at the far edge of the table, so we can't see it as they sit there and we drop by to clear dishes.

(A $2 tip, on an $89 bill.)

A recent dream.

Recently I dreamnt -

I'm standing between slim boxy off-white pedestals with glass-tops like you see at museums as artifact cases, in a bare-ish space with highly-varnished light wood floors, and there's different ceramic and indistinct things inside of all them in that row of museum cases where I'm standing in between two of them with an off-white wall in back of me, and standing in front of me is this (short) (slim) (short-haired) (ashy-brown) woman who looks (Ethiopian) or (vaguely Caribbean) and who is in her (late 30s) and looks good for her age but who also looks older from her eyes and presence and also this like deep and unspoken intelligence that's the core of her character, and I know that she is the woman who deciphered the Indus Valley script from reading a five-character sequence as VOVEA through realizing that an old ethnonym became a later regional name for generic enemies, and I'm suggesting to her that maybe she should start working on Linear A, and you can tell from the look in her eyes that she's interested and might start and there's even a small chance that she may in fact have already started, but she is not saying anything either way...

And then I wake up.

. . .

(. . .)

Some stories of my parents, from when they were young

1) When they first met, my father was over 21 but my mom was underage, and my father's friend was playing drums at a bar, so he told my mother to keep her head down when they walked in and she'd be fine -- and she was!

2) During summers in college, three or four times my father worked in steel mills to make money, loading and unloading boxcars, and wearing gigantic protective gear when he was near the burning vats.

3) When he was like 7 or 8, my father found out at school that he could never be President because he wasn't born here, and it made him cry.

Three things that I do to help me wake up...

...if I can't get out of bed in the morning, because I just feel too sleepy:

1) I take off my sleepmask and put it in the drawer in the night-stand beside my bed (at first I thought that that was just a signal to myself and my mind, that it was time to start my day, but now I think that it makes my eye area less warm and comfortable, especially during the winter, and it's a goad to get me out of sleepiness);

2) I kind of stare at the curtain at the window to the side of my bed, to look at the light that manages to come through it, since that's typically the brightest part of the room (sometimes, though, with the way the sun shines in, I can look out my bedroom door into my living room, and it's very bright out there); and

3) I lie flat on my back and I stretch out my legs, and not only that, but I also stretch out my feet and turn my toes up as far as I can towards my ankles (there's just something about stretching those particular leg muscles, that makes me wake up, always).

[A new system for blogging.]

[I keep a page in my pocket planner with lists for blogposts, and then every 8 to 10 weeks I take like 2 or 3 afternoons to type the remaining ones up all at once, that I didn't feel compelled to dash off originally or in close proximity to actual time of occurrence.]