Three misplaced objects...

...in and around the one cottage that I now live in:

1) A pencil among the watermelon-rinds in the little plastic bag of vegetable-trash that I keep in my sink.

(I had been eating watermelon while sitting in an armchair and using a pencil to occasionally mark a book, and when I went to go set the pencil down, I must have accidentally put it among the plate of rinds on the end-table next to me, rather than on the table itself, and then not noticed when I picked up the plate of rinds and went to the sink and disposed of them.)

2) Two bars of chocolate in my bright orange drawbag backpack that rests on the coat-hanger rack by my front door.

(I must have put them in there rather than in my workbag without thinking, because they're next to each other on my coat-hanger rack... I spent forever trying to figure out where the chocolate went to when I got to work that day, and when I got home I looked in my kitchen cabinets and in the old canvas bags that I had gone to the grocery store with, in case I had accidentally left them in there, but I didn't find anything and I was just puzzled, and then like a day or two later I go to use my bright orange drawbag backpack and I take it off the rack and I open it and what do you know, the chocolate's in there.)

3) A yellow washcloth in the dirty utility sink next to the washer in the basement of the front house, where the common laundry area is.

(I had picked up two new washcloths at the one local secondhand store like half a year ago, and then one disappeared, so as best as I can figure, it must have dropped in that utility sink when I was over by the washer putting my batch of light clothes in, or maybe maybe it had dropped on the floor there, and one of my neighbors in the front house had picked it up and then put it in the dirty utility sink...  Whatever happened, that f*cker was gone for well over a month, maybe two, before I found it sitting in that dirty utility sink.)

Some work banter...

...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, like a couple of months ago:

1) On a weekday dinner shift that I usually have off, I walk in, and immediately my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker is like, "Why are you here?! Where's [first name of our one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker who usually works that shift]?!"

So, right away, I put on a very pained look on my face and I'm like, "Okay, what is happening here...?  No 'hi', no 'how are you ?', no 'nice to see you,' only, Why are you here?!"

2) Later that same night, there's a to-do about swapping around several shifts later that week because suddenly our one (younger) (taller) (Latino-American) coworker needs Sunday lunch off, so while we're standing around behind the counter, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker sees all that happening on her phone and so she speaks out loud to me and is like, "What are you doing on Sunday?"

And, immediately, I'm like, "Sunday?  I'll be in church all day, praying," and I immediately clasp my hands together and I look up and I speak like I'm talking to G-d, and I'm like, "G-d, I know that [first name of my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker] has a good heart, but she doesn't always show her good heart at work. Please, G-d, can you help her to show her good heart at work, when she says hello to people?"

Further anecdotal information on two declined career sectors:

1) The other week at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, I saw two semi-regular customers who are college writing instructors who I hadn't seen for a while.

And, I asked them how everything was going, especially with ChatGPT.

And, they said it's horrible, and one said they're now "ChatGPT police," even though that's not their job and they're not trained for it and they don't want to spend so much time doing it.

"Like what percentage of a class uses ChatGPT anyhow, would you say?", I was like.

"Anywhere from forty to seventy percent," said the one.

(And this is supposedly a top-flight university!)

He also observed that the writing that he can detect isn't very good, so perhaps smarter students are using it in savvier ways that he can't see, and anyways what you can see for pat essays is like C+ or at most a B- level, which is what you'd get for just trying to do the assignment anyways.

He also also said that it's the weaker students who use it, and studies have said as much, that people who self-perceive as weak writers tend to rely on the tool more, and that one time when he told a class that using that tool would get them a C+ essay, one student raised her hand and said something interesting, that she's a C- writer, so why wouldn't she use it to try to get a C+ essay.

The university is also giving them zero guidance on how to handle this or address it, he said. 

2)  The other week, I caught up with some college friends who live in a mid-to-big U.S. city in another state, and they said that eldercare had radically declined in the wealthier suburban community that they've been living in for the past few years.

Like, there was one "good place" in the community that had a great reputation, and it also had a rehab wing, and someone they know's father was in there after surgery and he was supposed to be in there for one full week, but it was really bad, like he'd call and call on his call-light from bed and no-one would come, and so after three days the family was like, "We have to get him out of there, we'll figure out how to do this at home, but we have to get him out of there," and they yanked him out and figured out a way to take care of him at home for the next few days, and, everyone who has heard about this is just shocked and is like, "That happened there?!", because they just don't expect that at the "good place" in a wealthier town.

And, I explained to them what I had seen and how rapid wage-growth from the bottom had destroyed the wage premium and destabilized the frontline jobs that make those kind of institutions run, and they said it makes sense, and would jibe with what they heard.

A work-exchange.

Like last month at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, the day after I got back from a short weekend trip to catch a concert and see some friends, I brought in these honey ham sausage sticks that I had bought there, as a treat for everyone.

"Gluten free," observed my one (taller) (newer) (Thai) coworker, looking at the package, while my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones tried them and enjoyed them, too.

She also looked at my new haircut that I had gotten just before I left, and she said I need to arrange my bangs a little differently so that I look better.

"What is this?", I was like, "I buy you good food, and then you tell me that I'm ugly?"

"Because I'm your true friend," she was like.

Killing the Demon-Tree.

At my current cottage in the college town that I now live in, it has been one of my great pleasures to go after the seedlings of the (invasive) tree of heaven, which are everywhere around my cottage. 

Since I learned about them, I've been pulling them out religiously, apart from the several large trees on the property and adjacent to it that are way too big for that, now -- although, in fact, my landlord had one of those pulled out a a few years ago, by a professional tree company.

After that happened, though, the stump next to my cottage kept sending out shoots right by it and then out into the lawn through its root system. That first summer of the removal I got all of them, but they still came back the next summer, but now, during the third season after that tree's removal -- GONE, with no sign of life from the stump and in the area of the lawn around it.

I have starved the demon-tree, and killed it!

I mean, on the property there's still seedlings seeded by one of the large trees and whatnot, but I at least got one of them.

In the aftermath of this victory, part of me now looks across at my neighbor's lawn and sees all of the seedlings growing there, and I just want to go over there and pull them out and tear open the trunks of the what are by now small trees, so that they lose water through the severely-split wood and die. 

It's kind of mean to do that to a plant, but, I mean, these are just not nice plants, and they need to be gone.

"Salvage."

The past year or so, the word "salvage" has become pretty important to me, and I find myself using it a lot.

Like, "What can I salvage of my life, at this point?"

It's like recognition that it's too late to start again in so many areas, both because you can't rewind history with hindsight and choose paths that had better chances of panning out, and because many sectors aren't the same, where maybe you could have hung on if you had started earlier, but you would be insane to wholeheartedly throw yourself at them now, because even apart from your being older, they've worsened so much, it's not like anyone would have the same chances and traction if they started now, versus them starting in the conditions of those sectors at a point like ten or twenty years back.

In some ways, it's like a mid-life crisis, but in other ways it's not, because it's like your life just never began.

I've also found myself thinking a lot about death, lately...  You just never know when your time is up, and I just wasted so much time over the past 20 years, going in seemingly promising but hugely time-consuming directions that proved ultimately fruitless.

I mean, pollyannas could point to this or that thing, or a feel-good life lesson like it made you who you are, but most of them have just never experienced that type of massive career displacement and sector-shifts, and it just rings hollow.

It's also interesting to think of my living conditions, like this quote in a newspaper article about economic differences over generations sent to me by my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the brother of the brother-sister pair). 

I can't remember the details, but some seeming professional was like, "Look at my apartment, I'm living the same way that I did ten years ago."

That's my case, too, even though my economic situation was made easier by moving -- I'm still renting, no job that allows for huge huge savings, no big yearly vacation like some people...  Just a tiny apartment, some savings and fun here and there, but it's just like the same me, from ten or twenty years ago.

It's like I've never grown up.

A compulsion with being helpful.

So, I always collect quarters to exchange for dollar bills with my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker, since she needs quarters for the washer and drier in the apartment where she lives.

And, not only do I always collect quarters and keep them in stacks of 4 on my kitchen counter until I have accumulated around $5 that I can give her, but now I go out of my way to create change combinations that will give me quarters back.

Like, if I'm doing a transaction at a store and I owe them like something plus eighty-five cents, I'll slide them an extra dime, so that they give me back a quarter in change that I can then go and keep for her.

The other week, too, I had to print out something at the local library, and when I dug in my pocket, I not only had the exact change for the fifteen cents that it cost to print, but I also had five spare dimes, so I fed them in the change machine, too, hoping that when it refunded my unused money that I had inserted, it would convert those extra five dimes into two quarters.

Which it did!