Some recent life tidbits:

1) Even though it’s a large, well-known insurer, my new ACA insurance plan company is extremely disorganized, where they don’t release in a timely manner the first premium bill that you’re supposed to pre-pay so that you “lock in” your coverage for the upcoming year, so I go ahead and set up my out-of-pocket premium information in the system and look up my amount due through the government award notification letter about my subsidies, then I pre-pay that amount so that they have the money in advance and the bill gets paid whenever it comes due, or so that I have evidence of attempted payment in case something gets messed up and they try to say that I didn’t pay the first premium in time and they attempt to deny me coverage.

2) When I tell my mother over the phone about how I read in the local newspaper that a famous Olympic athlete had attended church services at a church a few blocks from my cottage that she and my dad had passed by and seen when they had visited me over a year ago, she immediately asked if he was Catholic.

“No, Methodist,” I was like.

“Well, we’ll forgive him for that,” she was like.

3) After his Thanksgiving party, the one (gay) (Brazilian) (STEM post-doc) who I know saves the turkey carcass for me so I can make broth, after I tell him that it’s worth saving for that purpose and he should do it.

4) When it’s a snowy day and I go into work, I forget to take my indoor shoes with me, so I have to wear my light snow-apporpriate boots all shift, at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now.

5) As I eat my post-shift soup there – it’s better if you eat it there, it’s one of those dishes – my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker comes by with a specialty chicken dish modified with potatoes and a lot of spice that a regular customer orders, and she asks me to try a piece, and I do, and she asks if it’s warm, and I say no, and she says that the guy ordered it and said it wasn’t warm, and so they reheated it on the skillet and brought it back to him and he tried it and he said it still wasn’t warm, but she doesn’t believe him.

“It’s not warm,” I was like, bluntly, and we couldn’t figure out what happened, but I kept affirming that if I was him, I would send it back, too, since it’s not like the dish is usually like.

So, since I already had one mistake to take home that day, we left it out for the next person who would come on shift at 5pm -- our one (Chinese from China) coworker -- and I said that I would stop through to potentially pick it up afterwards, if it turned out that he didn't want it (he didn't).

A story of a life milestone, and turning-point.

A few months ago the one (gay) (Colombian) (STEM) grad student who I know from around town had his dissertation defense, and his family came to visit him for it, to see it.

And, his mom had visited him here before, but not his father, and it ended up being this whole thing for his father, where he saw this giant campus all at once and then this professorial gathering where his son had to speak on his work, and it just made this gigantic impression on him, and like during the entire dissertation defense he was crying, to the point where my friend tried not even to look towards that part of the room, it was so distracting.

“In my entire life, I never thought that I would have a son who did something like this,” he said that his dad told him, and after that his family went on without him to go visit his aunt and her family in Texas, and his uncle told him that his dad just could not shut up about his dissertation defense when he was there, it was like he would just go on and on and on and there was nothing else that he would talk about, just only that.

And, he also said that after that, his father started relating to him differently.

Like, he was looking for things to do with his parents, and they don’t like museums, but they like to eat, so when he took them to see some monuments in a fairly nearby big city, he made sure to take them out for ribs afterwards, and he somehow got into a fight with his parents because they each wanted to order a whole thing of ribs and he said that that was too much food for them, and somehow it became this whole big thing and they all started arguing and everyone got mad at him.

And, because he later got ashamed at the fight, he went and apologized and he said that he hoped that he didn’t ruin everything – “You did,” his mom was like – “She’s not a person who comforts,” he said – but, his dad on the other hand was relating to him like an adult, and he’s always been known to have a temper, and he said something about how sometimes you get mad and you get carried away, and it was okay, and he was just relating to him like an adult, now.

“So did they eat all of the ribs?”, I was like.

“Yes,” he was like.

“Wow,” I was like. “Then what were you arguing with them for? Maybe you did ruin it.”

A kitchen happening in my one small cottage that I now live in:

A raw onion that I had been using for my usual morning toast-and-raw-onion-and-avocado breakfast sat out on the refrigerator rack and it was almost done, it was like just one thick ring that was left, and when it gets accidentally knocked off from there it falls to the floor and the onion’s internal rings decouple from one another so like one small one is here and one bigger one is a bit farther over and then one even bigger one is even a bit farther than that, as if it bounced and skittered and left a small ring wherever it hit, until no more were left to decouple and everything had settled down to a rest.