Scholarly annoyance.

The big scanner just off the circulation desk room at the local university library is great for taking quick scans of huge oversize books... 

It has like this big moving arm up on top, that somehow swings out into the air over the book that you lay out below for it to capture, so you don't have to flip the book upside down onto a glass plate or anything like that.

But, if you have a book with glossy pages, all too often there's this line of brightness across the image that eradicates any of the text that was underneath, and it's hard to adjust the book so that doesn't happen, or so that it at least happens at a manageable level.

So, beware!

For this, books published by Brill particularly suck. 

Advice for sugarcoating your resume...

...if a potential employer presses you on why you left your last job, per the one (older) (white) (female) (townie) bartender at the local brewery:

Just say "it became a toxic environment," and leave it at that.

. . .

(She says that those words do wonders nowadays, and it says everything and people won't go into it, though of course I should first say like I was planning to do anyways something innocuous like "I'd been there a while and it was time for a change," this is just if they press you on it like they don't believe your reason, this is a good thing to say then.) 

News of a death:

Around the turn-of-the-year, since I haven't visited the one resthome that I used to work at for a while and since the one resthome resident who used to give me candy didn't look too good on my last visit -- walker, oxygen, sitting a bit out-of-it in a chair when I arrived -- I look online for an obituary and I don't find one, so I jot her a note about how I hope that she's doing well, I had taken longer vacations to see my parents and for a conference and I hadn't had a chance to come by recently, etc. etc. etc., all very light and cheery, since who knows where she is, healthwise, and in big letters, too, so she can read it, and I throw it in the local mailbox like a block away from my house.

And, like a week after that, I pick up my mail and there's a medium-sized envelope that was delivered and sitting amidst my daily newspaper, and I pitch it on my kitchen table and I don't look at it closely until I get home that night from something, and then I look at the return address label and it's my old (white) (gay) (Midwestern) (retirement-age) coworker at the resthome, so I get a feeling that she died, especially since the envelope is large-ish, and I open it up, and right there is my returned letter and a card from him saying that she passed away a few months ago with her nephew and niece there, and he tucked in his Christmas newsletter about him and his partner.

And, I remember that I had phone trouble the very day that I last visited her, so I look it up on my phone, and the last date that I visited was exactly a year to the day that I got the letter from him, returning my letter and saying that she had died.

A life regret:

If I had known that I would end up as a bohemian dropout, I wish that I would have dropped out sooner, like in the mid-2010s or whatever -- no professionalization or unionization initiatives in higher ed, no great attempts to recalibrate career sectors, just go be a waiter and be done with it, all the way back then.

That would have given me another 4 years of productivity, versus all of the time and energy that I put into things that just had no pay-off. 

Like, I've been on my current path for like what now, 5-6 years?

Imagine where I could be now, if I had had that extra 4 years head-start. 

Comment to landlord, and delayed response.

Earlier this year I made a preliminary inquiry to my landlord about potentially trying to put a bathouse on the property, to attract bats and maybe cut down on the local mosquito problem.

And, he was nice about it, but it was "a hard no," he said, because bats can get in the attics of old houses like the front house and just wreak incredible damage, there.

Like a few months later, though, during a mid-winter thaw when all of the snow had melted away everywhere, he came over to the property, and I saw him up on the roof of my cottage, clearing its gutters of leaves.

. . . 

(Mosquitos often breed in such spaces.) 

Job application preparation irony:

I use the wi-fi at the local brewery and have a beer, as I take an online certification about state intoxication laws.

. . .

(. . .)

Another angle on quitting.

Part of the reason I have worked in eldercare and then in restaurants the past number of years is because I want a pleasant, low-stress, and predictable job where I can have a steady income stream and clock in and clock out and preserve my time and headspace for writing.

Walking on eggshells around a boss is incompatible with that -- -- -- and so, as soon as he changed the balance of the workplace like that, I was out.

Done. 

Aftermath of quitting...

...like five days after I quit my one job at the one (Thai) restaurant where I used to work at, in the college town that I now live in: 

As I walk to the one local coffee shop to go have a late afternoon coffee and use their wi-fi, I glance down the storefronts on that street, and there in the window of the (Thai) restaurant is their bright pale orange Plasticene sign soliciting applications for servers and delivery drivers, which they haven't had up for a while.

An example of historically unpleasant behavior...

...by the (husband) (Thai) owner of the one (Thai) restaurant where I used to work at:

It's a busy shift and I'm coming back with dishes and putting them in the dish-tubs and the bell rings for food, and I go to wash my hands because they're filthy before I pick up the food, and the (husband) (Thai) owner is there and asks why I didn't come right away when the bell rang, when the bell rings you come pick up the food, and I say that I had to wash my hands first, and then he says why did I have dishes anyways when I needed to pick up food, and I say that I already was in the middle of bussing them when the bell rang...

. . . 

(Just stuff like that...  When I told that to the one (older) (white) (female) (townie) bartender at the local brewery, she got this displeased look on her face and is like, "He was talking to you like a child," and I said yes, but it was only every few months or so in very very short interactions where you didn't even need to respond most of the time, you just nodded and went along with what you were doing...  Sometimes, I added, he didn't even make any sense, like once when I was working on a two-person lunch shift and we were absolutely slammed, he said that to manage tables we had to divide them so one person helped one table and the other person helped another, which made absolutely no f*cking sense and would actually have been more inefficient than what we were doing, the problem is that there was such a glut of people that 2 servers couldn't handle it all at once, sometimes restaurants are like that...)

Addendum addendum.

Like earlier last year, the (husband) (Thai) restaurant owner said something in the back to my one (Chinese from China) ex-coworker, and he was upset afterwards, and you could see tears actually forming at the edges of his eyes, he was so angry and so distraught from what the boss had said to him.

And, I didn't get into it with him, but I said that the boss was sometimes like that and that I just let it roll off my back, etc., but multiple people were **shocked** when I told them that story, when I was considering quitting and ultimately did quit.

It was just that abnormal to them, where I had been normalized into accepting and excusing that behavior from an employer, although perhaps in that particular case it was in part due to my not observing the actual interaction between them and not knowing exactly what went on, although that said, there's no reason anyone should come away feeling like that after an interaction with someone. 

Addendum.

With people who are bullies, you should never engage them on the level of the content, because what they think and do is ultimately only very loosely if at all connected to what you do, and they'll invent and distort reality to fit and justify their chosen behavior.

But, as I have always told other co-workers, if all of us were that stupid like the (husband) (Thai) restaurant owner assumed during his occasional corrections of our behavior, that restaurant would never be able to function, at all. 

Prehistory to quitting (1 of 2): November.

As more prehistory to my quitting, during the cold snap in early winter it was the same weekend early afternoon shift that can be slow, and it was slower than usual with dine-in although there was a lot of takeout orders, and suddenly 3 different tables came in all at once, first one and then like five minutes later 2 others.

And, my coworker was in the back doing takeout -- only one of us can be in the kitchen at once, and at least one person has to be outside -- and I went to help one table, and then the table right next to them that I had checked on a few minutes earlier wanted help right then so I took their orders, too, which actually turned out to involve a lot of special requests etc. that we had to talk through, and then I went to the front to return menus and type both orders in, and then something happened where it turns out that one of the rarer and stupider delivery apps where you have to actively confirm the order by hand had had an order for an expensive dish waiting for like 6 minutes, and the phone rings and it's the (husband) (Thai) restaurant owner and he was mad because he had looked at something and seen the cancellation, and he was mad that I wasn't behind the counter to confirm it and so the customer had cancelled the order.

(For some reason, the order later reappeared and it went through as normal, so who knows what that whole thing was about.)

So, he said sharply in so many words that I was fucking off by the front host stand and I had to explain to him that I was helping customers by typing in orders at the host stand -- "But there were no tables," he was like -- and then I had to explain that we suddenly had 2 tables and it was one of those things where they both needed help at once -- -- but, "Why did you go there and not to the back," he was like -- and, I explained to him that I was returning menus from the customers to the front host stand like we usually do, so I used the computer there --and, he didn't say much, then, but, he still seemed displeased and he said that I should stand at the back more during that particular shift, to help out with takeout orders.

And, that was reasonable, so I said that I would, and I did that from then on, during that particular shift.

Prehistory to quitting (1 of 2): August.

As prehistory to my suddenly quitting, like in August before I went to go visit my parents, I was picking up an exceptional amount of shifts and I worked a huge number of days in a row, including 2 doubles, and including one evening when I was supposed to be off but the (Thai) (husband) restaurant owner wasn't feeling well and they asked me if I could come in and I did that as a favor to everyone, as one more favor before other people started picking up extra because they had to cover for me on my vacation.

And, like 2 days before my vacation I was getting stressed from all that I was working and I didn't feel like being at work again and I was in the middle of all of these arrangements because I was heading out of town for 2 weeks, and the (Thai) (husband) restaurant owner sees me discreetly checking my phone for an email, and he immediately and sharply gets on me for doing that, with no recognition whatsoever of how much I had been working for him during the past week or that just 2 days earlier I had even come in on my day off as a special favor to him personally.

And, that really rubbed me the wrong way, and my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker could see how pissed I was and she tried to calm me down, but I said that I was finished bending over backwards to do favors for them, and from then on I was doing my minimum number of shifts each week, no more working extra for people, that I'd swap shifts around if people wanted me to, but no more extra.

I also started looking around at like 1-2 places for potential jobs to replace or taper off shifts at the (Thai) restaurant because it was starting to feel like I was tired of it because I had been there too long, but soon I got busy with fall conference preparations and everything fell by the wayside, and the lesser amount of shifts each week gave me distance from there and it started working for me better again, to keep working there.

A very sudden and unexpected end to my job...

...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I have been working for more than 3 years, at the one college town that I now live in:

I get in on a Saturday afternoon and when the (husband) (Thai) restaurant owner shows up, it's like his very very occasional behavior that he does to everyone where he doesn't know what's going on and he acts like you're stupid and he says that you need to do something other than what you're doing at the moment or why aren't you doing that etc. -- all very momentary things done very very very occasionally to everyone, that people roll their eyes at -- but it's like he shows up and he's controlling and he wants to show me that I'm not doing my job, with his first interaction being his asking me why I'm not standing behind the counter when my coworker is there behind it and I'm hovering by the edge of it looking to see when customers lay down a credit card so I can take their bill up, and later at the slow part of the shift when there's one table (paid up) and no work and everything is done he sees me briefly and discreetly looking at my phone and he gets on me about that, and like oftentimes happens on that slow weekend afternoon shift when my one (older) (Thai) coworker is done eating her shift meal I go and eat mine from off of the top of the ice machine just inside the door to the kitchen and I have my phone out to look at something and while I stand and eat he passes by and he asks me why I'm doing that and why I'm not outside, and after I clock off at the end of shift and I am standing behind the counter with more Diet Coke in my travel coffee mug and I'm looking at my phone there to check a text message while I'm waiting for someone to get out of the bathroom so I can use it before I go, he passes by and sees that and he asks me to come into the office, and without yelling at me he says that he knows I work mostly with the tables but why am I not helping out more with takeout -- on a shift where everything was done! -- and that I have a problem with my phone and that it looks bad for customers if they look in the window and see me and that he knows that I need to eat but if I'm there and my coworker gets a call and someone walks in the door I won't be there to help them, and looking at your phone while you eat makes you take twice as long, and it's like he's just assuming the worst and not looking into facts and making up all of these hypotheticals to make it so I'm not doing my job, when it was a slightly slower-than-average shift where nothing exceptional happened and everything got done, and at most he saw me look at my phone once during an exceptionally slow period.

Like, made up stuff and just blown-out-of-all-proprotion stuff, and it just took me by such surprise that I just nodded and let it pass by like I would when he did stuff like that in small ways -- and where would you even begin with something like this, where it's like they're vigilant to invent reasons to go after you? -- and after I left I was upset and I talked to my parents and various friends and the (young) (female) (white) bartender with (pussy hat) energy at the local brewery -- "That's toxic," she was like, about his micro-managing counter-standing comment that he began the interactions with, and she said that she would quit that job -- and so I decided to sleep on it, and the next morning I realized that I had tension in my shoulders from thinking of being around the (Thai) (husband) owner, so I sent him a workplace app text that it had stopped working out for me to work at the restaurant and please mail me my last paycheck and my tax documents, and I texted my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker that I wouldn't be coming in to work in 2 hours because I had left, and then I deleted the workplace messaging app, and I immediately felt better, from knowing that I would not have to walk into that restaurant and see him again.

It's like I suddenly reached my limit, and my body was rejecting the idea of the employment there.

I didn't quite realize what had happened at first, but it was like a latent bully suddenly escalated their behavior and I didn't quite see it at first, since it was similar to what had gone before, albeit that it was of such a heightened nature that it caught me off guard and I immediately knew that something was off and that something was different.

And, I mean, I had noticed his behavior early on in my employment there and I had *never* liked it and there was always a certain amount of coolness between us, but I had been able to manage it for a period of multiple years, until suddenly I couldn't.

Just very, very surprising behavior from someone who you've known a bit for a period of over 3 years, but what can you do...  It was his decision to act like that, and as the one (young) (female) (white) bartender with (pussy hat) energy at the local brewery put it, you're an employee, not a punching bag, and I'm not there for him to take his issues out on me by targetting me and playing "gotcha!".

Once someone goes to that level with you, it poisons the relationship and you can't be around them. 

Mysterious apprehension methods for a local postal thief.

Earlier this year like mid-winter, I went to go get my mail and check to see if a small package from my mother came in, and since the package wasn't there yet, again, I called out to my one (West African) mailman who was up the street to see if he had delivered it yet, which he hadn't.

"Okay," I was like, "I had thought it was probably just late, but I wasn't sure, because maybe it was like a package theft off my porch or something."

And, I told him about the recent package thefts at my one (Chinese from China) coworker's building where the guy even had the postal key, and he immediately knew what I was talking about, and he said that they had pictures of him and were sharing them all around.

"And I can't say much," he was like, "But if you see posters for the public, don't believe what they say, but they are investigating this and they know exactly what is happening."

A Great Hunger.

Every once in a while, a great hunger seizes me, to read the one ancient language that I've been studying for quite a while now and have made myself into quite the expert in.

That hit me again just after the turn-of-the-year, and for like days on end I'd live to just pull out this one famous ancient text and a standard translation of it and do an initial read-through without consulting dictionaries, and I'd do that for like an hour or an hour-and-a-half every night, just getting fully and irrevocably absorbed in it until I had tired myself out and mentally could not read anymore.

It's like you forget the world... The best form of escapism. 

An unexpected return.

The biggest result of my counter-top popcorn air-popper?

I am buying locally-grown popcorn again.

For, it pops entirely in the air-popper, in a way that it simply would not when heated on the stovetop in oil.

Christmas revelations:

1) When I was on a quick trip back to the city that I used to live in, I was able to catch up with my one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend and her family, and she was telling me how her kids’ religious education is going, like how she’s exposing them to different religions and holidays and ideas, and how their one (nice) (female) (Kenya-born) (evangelical Christian) babysitter is also permitted to talk to them at an age-appropriate level.

And, a few weeks ago at dinner, her oldest daughter said something about Jesus being dead, and her middle son who’s like 4 or 5 just stopped everything right then and was like, “What, Jesus is dead?!”, and it was just the biggest news in the world to him.

When we went to go play Legos, too, I was looking for ideas about what to build, and his first suggestion was a cross.

2) When I was hanging out catching drinks with the one (nerdy) (worked-out) (Brazilian) (visiting PhD) student, he told me that his participation with (Afro-Brazilian) religions is really recent, and only goes back like this year.

After his partner died in a car-crash, he said, he actually was in another car crash where this motorcycle veered into his lane and his car and the guy flipped off the motorcycle and was hospitalized with severe injuries -- right then I almost wanted to say that it sounded like he was cursed, but something told me not to say that -- and anyhow he was absolutely hysterical and he was so distraught that he could cause other people a death like the one that he had just suffered, that he had even thought about going and killing himself, if the man passed away from his injuries.

And, out of nowhere, without him talking to anyone about this, this girl he knows gives him a call, and she says her uncle had called her and told her that she needed to call him immediately, and this uncle guy who doesn't even know him at all is in a(n Afro-Brazilian) religion, and that’s how everything started, with his friend the guy’s niece even getting into it through him.

We also did a few things over Christmas, too, and at a zoo he was drawn to the wolves howling, and at a museum he was drawn to the medieval armor, since his orisha bears attributes of war.

During various ceremonies, too, he said, he has had various spirits ride him, and some spoke and designated him as their child, although he says there’s a lot of stigma in (Brazil) against this sort of thing, since it’s (black) religion.

Some odd customers all in one night…

…during this one night during the week before Christmas this past year, at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:

1) A table of four where it’s one (lower middle-class) (white) mom and her daughter and her boyfriend and some relative, only the daughter is trans and has this very flat female forehead and long straight female hair but also a scraggly blonde-brown beard, and the family relative seems not all there and orders a Mello Yello and then returns it because he doesn’t like it, and then when I ask, the mom specifies that nothing is wrong with the soda like the syrup is running out or the carbonation is wrong or anything like that, it’s just that he doesn’t like it, and so I go and I refund the soda for them.

2) A table of four where it’s like two (lower middle-class) (white) parents and their two (adult) (white) (nerd) sons, and one has long (trans?) hair and noise-cancelling headphones, and they speak so softly that I have to ask them “No ice?” after they say something after ordering a Thai iced tea – “I said, ‘A Thai iced tea would be nice,’” they repeat for me, then – and the other is (fat) and (hairy) and has a huge tablet out on the side of the table and is looking at something with video games and then like a chat message board, throughout the entire duration of the meal.

And, as I’m inputting their orders up by the host station, suddenly the mother is at my side, and I stop what I’m doing to ask her if she needs assistance, as I wonder if they decided to go and make a sudden change on their order or something.

“Are you open on the twenty-fourth?”, she’s like.

3) One table asks for boxes when they’re not even halfway done eating (!), and then when they leave, they hit the automatic handicapped door opener thing, and then after they pass through and turn around and see that the door is still paused open, they go and try to start pushing it shut.

4) A (mid 30s) (white) (lesbian) couple sit down, and when I take an order from the (fat) (arm-tatted) (butch) one, her voice is way too low, like she’s just starting on testosterone.

5) A woman at a table vaguely near the front door suddenly gets up and scampers over and without asking us at all starts trying to draw shut the thick ceiling-hung curtain that we pull open and maneuver around to keep drafts from the front door from bothering diners, when the weather gets like that.

6) When a table of three walks in – two (older) (shriveled) (college town-ish) (educated) (white) parents and their teenage daughter – I ask them if they're dining in or picking up and they say quite normally that they’re dining in, but when I then ask them how many, they suddenly don’t speak, and the wife just silently holds up three fingers.

7) When a(n early 30s) (alternative/yuppie) (white) woman orders a vegetarian dish, I ask her if it’s okay that there’s oyster sauce in there, and she’s like, “Is that vegetarian?”, and I tell her that for some people it is and for some people it isn’t, and then she’s like, “I want vegetarian,” so again I’m like, “For some people it is vegetarian, and for some people it isn’t,” and then she thinks for a few seconds, and declines the oyster sauce.

. . .

(That wasn’t the only stuff that was happening all night. I also got various coworkers to try on my holiday hat with reindeer antlers.)

An exchange, around planning.

When I was making plans to go back to the city that I used to live in and I was feeling out maybe hanging out with my one (professor) friend who studies (modern) (Czech) literature, she said that she was available on this one day, but it depended on what time her ex-husband picked up their daughter, and you couldn’t always plan around that since he’s “late and unreliable.”

“Sounds like the manuscript tradition of the Acts of Peter,” I was like.

Workplace drama.

So, a few months ago on like a Friday night, this (skinny) (mid-20s) (mustachioed) (light-skinned hispanic) guy with vaguely (hipster) clothing comes in through the front door and tells me quite normally that he's picking up, so of course I send him to the back counter, and after he leaves, it turns out that he was all weird and just super super quiet when he went back to the back counter, like he was practically whispering the woman’s name that he was picking up the order for, to the point where my one (older) (Thai) coworker who’s a whiz at the phones and my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker had to ask him to repeat the name like two to three times, before they could finally hear what it was and give him the right order.

And, after he leaves, our one (younger) (taller) (skinny) (Latino-American) coworker comes over, and it turns out that the order was for his (cool) ex-girlfriend.

“I wonder if that’s her new boyfriend,” he was like, groaning.

So, we go and take the receipt and plug it into the system, and it kicks up her name and some guy’s name, and as he starts googling the guy to see who he is, we open up the order history for his (cool) ex-girlfriend and we can see that they’ve ordered together like three times, where she always eats the stir fry that she ate when she was with him, while the new guy was trying around a few  different dishes before finally arriving at eating the same thing as her.

And, I start making jokes like he should have left a note in the bag for her, and at first I say that he should be like, “I didn’t spit in the food,” but then I say that he should have bought a mango sticky rice and tucked it in there for them with a note to his ex being all like, “Enjoy this dessert, I thought you needed something sweet,” at my saying which our one (chubby) (Thai) coworker broke out in a smile and was like, “Yes, yes, that’s the one, you should write that.”

Our one (younger) (taller) (skinny) (Latino-American) coworker then had to go out on a delivery run, and then when he came back I told him that he had left one investigative thread undone – “I’m telling you this, to help you as a journalist,” I was like, since he has a history of working on student newspapers -- and when he wasn’t sure what that investigative thread was, I pointed out that they had both their names under her phone number, and so I pull up the order history under the guy’s name, which he hadn’t looked at since we had only pulled up hers, earlier, and it turns out that they had ordered together under his name like 3 times starting like 6-7 weeks after the break-up, before she shifted the ordering back to her name for the like 3 times extending through the order on that very night.

“September?!”, he was like, “September?!”.

And, he then stated his disbelief that she had started dating the guy so soon after their break-up.

“But when did you start dating that girl you’re seeing now?”, I was like, and he did some counting in his head, and he was like, “Yeah, I guess it was around then, too,” but then his mind turned back to the situation at hand and he still couldn’t believe it, and he was like, “September?!”.

I then suggested that he send our one (chubby) (Thai) coworker to go do pick-up in his name at the bar/restaurant where his (cool) ex-girlfriend works, and he liked the idea, but he said that he would send his current girlfriend instead.

“But what if they fight?”, I was like. “Who would win in a fight?”.

And, he said that his (cool) ex-girlfriend would win the war of words, but his current girlfriend is a boxer and she’d win any physical fight.

“Then she would win,” I was like. “In a situation like that, words ain’t shit.”

. . .

(Oddly, after this he let us in on a coworker backstory, too, that the one [white] [female] [townie] delivery driver was in the same boxing club that his current girlfriend is in, and she was even a national amateur champion or something.)

A New Year’s greeting exchange.

I texted the one (gay) (Brazilian) (STEM post-doc) who I know and his one (nerdy) (worked-out) (Brazilian) colleague a New Year’s greeting, in the one obscure language that they both know that I have been studying for potential dual citizenship purposes -

[“Happy New Year!” in that language]

and then I texted –

(That’s “Happy New Year1” in [name of the obscure language].)

- to which the one (gay) (Brazilian) (STEM post-doc) replied back –

Vai dar teu cu

And –

That’s HNY in guarani

- to the great amusement of his colleague on the conversation.

. . .

(I think that means “You’re going to give up your ass” in Portuguese.)

The jigsaw puzzle preference of a (well-dressed) (local) (older) (white) woman…

…who I meet at the “take one, leave one” jigsaw puzzle exchange table at the local public library, as we both look through what puzzles are set out there:

Her favorite ones are the ones with gridded squares like rows and rows of movie posters, she says.

. . .

(. . .) 

Addendum.

Like the next time I wear the reindeer hat to work, a(n older) (thin) (spectacle-wearing) lady who seems like a(n educated) (liberal) and who is in there with a man who appears to be her (husband) and whose face I vaguely recognize compliments me on it, and when I tell her that I made it myself, she says that I should do the same thing for other holidays, like one for Valentine’s Day and then one for Saint Patrick’s Day, etc.

“That’s exactly what I was thinking!”, I was like.

Build-up to Christmas this year…

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

1) The (Thai) (wife) restaurant owner with the tired face buys hunter green paper napkin rings to mix in with our typical maroon paper napkin rings, so that together they’re red and green and look like Christmas.

2) I debut my homemade Christmas hat, which is the same one that I put horns on for Halloween, only now I put on big brown construction paper antlers like a reindeer, since my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones said during Halloween that I should do that for Christmas.

Only, she seems super apathetic about my hat, which I remark on to a number of people, since she was the person who had encouraged me to do that, and then she goes and bes apathetic

“That’s because she’s jealous,” says the one (Thai) (wife) restaurant owner with the tired face.

3) A big table of like 6-7 people including a high chair come in, including this (older) (scrawny) (bearded) (white) man who seems both intense and vaguely out of it, like he waves for us and says that they’re ready to order, and he like takes offense when he orders a vegetarian dish and I ask if fish and oyster sauce is okay in that dish.

“It’s under vegetarian,” he’s like, confrontationally.

“Different people have different definitions and preferences and we try to respect them all, that’s why we ask” I was like.

“So is there any sauce at all?”, too, a (younger) (white) woman at the table asks, when she orders a similar vegetarian dish but wants it without fish and oyster sauce.

(The answer is yes, because we substitute for those if they’re in there… Somehow, we’ve never fielded that interpretation of the option before, though! So malleable is language.)

Later, too, when the kid in the highchair drops some food, the old guy looks at him all exasperated and is like, “Why did you do that?!”, which makes me wonder if he has some sort of early-stage dementia, since all of his behavior is so inappropriately calibrated to all of the audiences I’ve seen him interacting with, although the woman who might be his daughter seems odd, too, so who knows, it might just be a weird family.

4) At one point this (plump) (grad student-age) (darker-skinned) (South Asian) woman with big fluffed-out hair sits at a small table at the back, and I ask her to move to the waiting area at the side since it’s getting busy and tables are filling up and we might need that table for dine-in customers soon, and she seems confused but moves, and then later I see her sitting at another nearby small table with a menu and dine-in stuff set around her, which makes me realize that she must have slipped in without being seated and assumed that people sat themselves, and then eventually we must have realized what was going on and some of my coworkers must have brought things to her.

(She leaves a normal 15-18% tip on her meal.)

5) My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker says that she’s tired from working so many days in a row, and I point to my antler hat and act like I’m a reindeer and am like, “You’re tired?! I had to drag around Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus all day in their sled, and they were heavy!”

A cold snap (2 of 2): Another day.

1) When I walk into work, it’s a new month and I have to get my new timecard ready, and when I go to put it in the timecard rack right there by the ice machine, there is my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker’s new timecard, and by the part where you fill in the month, she wrote -- -- -- “last month Dec.”

2) My one (older) (Thai) coworker who’s a whiz at the phones said it was just a slow-to-normal lunch shift that past Sunday, but so many people wanted hot water with their meals instead of normal water that we actually ran out of clean mugs that we could give them (we have like 18-20 or so).

A cold snap (1 of 2): One day.

1) I wake up early and shovel before going in to work a double shift, and by the time that I come back around to my cottage from the front of the house, there’s a thin layer of snow already back where I had begun.

2) My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker calls in over the phone to order a duck soup and have it out and hot waiting for her so she can eat it before her shift starts, and I don’t recognize her voice over the phone, at first.

3) During my hourlong break, I want to go somewhere and get a hot coffee but it’s so cold, and so my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker who just got on shift says she’ll make me some good coffee with her various coffee contraptions that she’s brought into work, and so I just sit at a table at the side of the restaurant during my break and drink the coffee that she made me, without going outside at all.

4) The (new) (stoic-faced) (female) (Guatemalan) kitchen worker is coming back from the restroom and she pauses to look at these wrapped presents that we have up as like holiday decorations, and she pretends to take one for herself and walk away with it.

And, it’s the biggest one, so I remark on that in (Spanish), and she just smiles and is like, “Si” (“Yes”).

5) A very jovial (early 40s) (bearded) (South Asian) customer who’s visiting from out-of-town and eating out with his friend wants raw ginger with his tea, and so I say that we can do that for him but we request that he only put the ginger in his mug and not in the thermos, and I remind him of that again when I bring out the raw ginger, and he pretends to be confused and puts on a straight face and is like, “What, I need to put the ginger in the thermos?”, just to mess with me.

6) The one (smiley-faced) (Guatemalan) kitchen worker comes up to me and wants to know how you translate the phrase “Which one?” into (Spanish), and what it means.

7) By the end of shift, I’ve been at the restaurant all day, and I’d only been outside once, to take out the trash to the back alley dumpster as part of our end-of-shift duties.

8) At night in my cottage after I turn my lights off, I hear a loud crack from my nearby window like something could have snapped or possibly someone walked up outside and did something, and I leap up out of bed and go check that the front door is locked at 1:30am, including the outer screen door with its loose latch, and then I stay up a bit and look out through various windows and screens far away from the noise but from where I can obliquely see towards there, to make sure that everything is okay and that it’s not what I fear that it is.

Household hazard:

A small crumb-like object sitting out on my dining room table where I eat, and when I pick it up and put it in my mouth to try it, it somehow turns out to be a pebble.

. . .

(. . .)

Two recent dreams…

…that I had this past early winter:

1) Me and the one (lesbian) sister of my one (former) (assisted living client) with (disabilities) and I have second row tickets to see Paul McCartney at a smallish half-empty theater in town, and we’re hanging out towards the back with her girlfriend before the concert starts, since her girlfriend had only decided to come later and at that point that was the only ticket that she could get.

And, as we’re sitting there and talking, lights come up from behind the still-closed curtain, and you can see silhouettes of a band strewn about on raised pedestals coming through as music quietly strikes up, and as that happens, we both instantly stop talking and raise our heads and turn them towards the stage, and without even saying goodbye to her girlfriend, we just silently get up and walk towards the front of the house, to take our places.

2) I’m lying half-asleep in my bed in my bedroom in my little cottage in the one college town that I now live in, and my cat is lying next to me on the blanket and feels heavy there, so I shift positions and make it leap down onto the floor, where it runs around the room several times at high speed like a crazy person.

. . .

(I don’t have a cat.)

A challenge met with victory.

A few months ago at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, I was getting some snacks out of the one snack-bin that we have now, and there was all these new kinds of candy in it.

“Oh, there’s new candy!”, I was like, and as my one (older) (Thai) coworker who’s a whiz at the phones stood there, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker told me that they both had bought some new ones and put them in there, since the last time that I had worked.

And, “Do you know which candy I bought?”, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker was like.

“Yes,” I was like. “It tastes sweeter.”

And, my one (older) (Thai) coworker who’s a whiz at the phones smiled at the sexiness of that line, but my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker just let it go by and she was insistent, she wanted to know which ones did I think she bought.

“The mango gummies and the Hi-Chews,” I was like, quickly and without stopping to think.

And, I was right.

“How did you know?”, she was like.

“Because we’ve worked together for so many years now that we’re like an old married couple,” I was like.

Addendurm.

That last convo really made me down on ever teaching college again – the student debt is just appalling – but then like right after that I saw several times that in-state schools are free for families under a certain income line, and that made me feel better, because it really does make college accessible and that would not totally pervert the student-teacher experience by making it somehow predatory and rapacious…

I had been thinking about this a lot lately, too, because during my recent conference this fall I caught up with someone who I know from grad school who had transferred to the conference’s host university after getting tenure at a low-level state school in another state, and she had been talking about how at her last school the graduation rate over 6 years was horrible and you’d get all of these poorer students that came in thinking that college was a path out and up, but instead they just got a lot of debt and not even a degree where they could hope to recoup anything like that.

That conversation really made me realize once again how people who get tenure often lack certain moral sensibilities, where they have to be okay with just horrible horrible situations going on around them, as long as they get a personal job out of it.

Which, is really not me, and is really not for me.

Two experiences of the younger generation…

…overheard at bars earlier this winter:

1) At a student-ish bar with a good weekday burger deal that I stopped through after using the campus library, two (white) (college-age) (off-shift) workers were sitting a couple of stools down from me, and the (man) was telling the (woman) about how during their recent Christmas party when they had the bar closed down for that someone went out in the back alley to smoke and they found a (homeless) man on the ground “tweaking,” and that the woman he’s usually around with and with whom he shares a dog was nowhere to be found.

2) At the local brewery that I go to, two (college-age) (white) girls are talking about their friend who graduated who’s attempting to move to the city that I used to live in, but the best that he can find for apartments is $800 for part of a 4 bedroom, and the best job that he can find in his field is $13/hour, which really won’t cover the apartment and his student debt at all.

Winter workout.

Because of a burst of snow and icy roads earlier this winter, I wasn’t able to go out for my weekly jog even with my winter weather gear, and so instead I googled high intensity workouts that I could do indoors and I found this great one that only takes 25 minutes.

Only, the first time that I did it, I could only get through 1 of the 3 main reps, it was so high intensity, and I actually felt slightly sick afterwards, it was such a shock to my body.

Like, it was amazing, it totally made me feel like a track athlete throwing up in a trashcan after being pushed to their limits, even though the main workout was just 30 seconds of activity followed by 30 seconds of rest for 6 different activities, ideally repeated 3 full times.

The next time, too, I was able to get through 2 of the 3 reps, and after that, all 3 of 3 reps.

What I love about it too is how it makes all of these muscles feel sore that I usually am not aware of, which means that the exercises must be hitting groups that I usually don’t.

And, after one of these workouts, those muscles are sore like that for like days.

What a great workout. 

A coworker backstory, both recent and far distant.

So, it turns out that my one (tall) (skinny) (techie) (Thai) coworker returned to the restaurant because he was laid off from his local programming job during a recent downsizing.

And, he had had a good severance package for like a year, but he put out over 700 applications and wasn’t getting any bites, so he decided it wasn’t worth it to apply to tech jobs anymore, and so he sought out other non-tech jobs that were easily available to him.

He said he’s also working at a bike shop, but that’s more so because he gets a discount there, like for this amazing carbon fiber bike he got, at the mention of which he pulled out his phone and showed me this super specialized bike with an aerodynamic frame and special pedals and whatnot, etc. etc. etc.

“I hadn’t realized you were into biking,” I was like.

And, he said that he used to bike semi-professiionally in his late teens and early 20s, like he would place in races and make money and stuff, and at one point he was eating upwards of 5,000 calories a day.

Then, he showed me more pictures of the bike,and how it was carbon fiber this and carbon fiber that and whatnot.

“You really like carbon fiber,” I was like. 

Then, I was like, “After the Singularity happens and we can upload our consciousnesses, you know what I think your body will be made out of ?”

“Carbon fiber,” he was like.

“Exactly,” I was like.

Two winter sights…

…during an early winter snowstorm earlier this year in the one college town that I now live in:

1) The bookbox out across the street from the local library is gone, leaving just a stand with ragged nails sticking upwards from a large squarish flat board that forms the very base of the top pedestal.

2) By the pathway to my back cottage, there’s sheets of discolored snow towards the house, and there’s just enough of it to make me look closer and realize that it’s not from some animal pissing, but rather dirty water dripping down from the roof and trickling down through heaps of snow that had fallen off of the roof, creating sheets of like light beigish-brown snow on the top.

. . .

(At the local public library, the deskworker there wasn’t aware of the bookbox issue, but asked around and found out that it wasn’t vandalism or something, but rather a precaution that people take whenever there’s a huge snow and there’s a risk that ploughs or something will go by and the snow they kick up will take it down inadvertently.)

Another day…

…at the one (Thai) restaurant that I work now, as of several months ago:

1) My one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker comes in with her two young daughters after they got let out early from school, so I go back to our odds-and-ends workbox where we keep pens and scissors and corks and stuff  and where I had put a bracelet that I had made with her youngest daughter at an event that we went to a few weeks earlier, and I slip it on so that I can wear it over to their table.

And, the youngest one notices it immediately, that I was wearing it like I had told her that I would, and she just lights up and is so excited. 

2) I think that I hear someone playing the marimba that’s part of our holiday display up towards the ) of the restaurant, only I look down the length of the restaurant and I don’t see anyone there, and it’s only when I go and help the table next to that display and a woman there is spooning ice cubes out of her glass and the metal of her spoon hits the side of the glass and makes a ringing sound, it’s only then when that happens that I hear that same ringing sound and I realize where that sound must have been coming from, all that time.

3) A group of three (late middle-aged) (STEM?) professors including one who looks very (Romanian) share a meal, and then when one of them pulls out “the T-card” and starts talking about what can get included as a professional expense, I’m like, “Oh, is that for the tea?”, referring to the tea that two of them had ordered and were drinking, only they hear that and they’re like “No,” and they don’t hear my joke at all.

4) A (fatter) (middle-aged) (white) woman with a pudgy face and glasses and curly curly blonde hair just loves our homemade salad dressing, and she is all smiles about it and just beams her big round face up at me and is like, “I could drink it through a straw.”