A cottage door-step surprise…

…on the first day of the new year, when I step outside to go to the basement of the front house and go do laundry:

A big brown jagged hunk sits there on the concrete slab in front of my cottage, and at first I think that it's a brick like maybe some prowler with bad intentions had put it there, somehow, but then I look more closely and it’s a dry and gnawed-up hunk of brown bread that had become vaguely block-like in shape, one presumably dropped there by squirrels who were “over it,” and so I kick it away with my flip-flopped foot and it flies towards the fence on the other side of the backyard before coming to rest under the edge of the woodpile there, and as it does that my flip-flop comes off my foot and shoots up in the air, tumbling end over end as it falls like six-to-eight feet away from me on the pathway that leads around the front house towards my cottage, as I start hopping in short stunted hops on one foot to go over to it, to fetch it.

Addendum.

A bit after this, I was talking with the one (thin) (bald) (jittery) (older) (Jewish-looking) local business owner who comes in for lunch regularly, and I mentioned how weird and even unemployable and low-life a lot of app delivery drivers are, like people who couldn’t get a job anywhere else, and how many of them come in smelling like marijuana smoke and stuff, to the point that I can smell it under my KN95 mask that I always wear at work, which is really saying something.

And, he was shocked that Doordash actually has automated driver report commands that specify things like intoxication and stealing orders and stuff, like that just goes to show you how often it must happen at places, he was saying.

A slammed evening at work.

Like a week or two before Christmas this year at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, we got totally slammed on a weekday night when it was just 3 of us working, from the moment we walked in.

And, I had picked up some specialty chocolate on sale at the local co-op and I had brought it in as a treat for everyone, and it wasn’t until like more than 3 hours into the shift that I even had a chance to open it, it was that busy…  In fact, it was so late by the time that we opened it, I wondered if we’d even have time to eat it all, since there was still some left on the plate that I had set out for the kitchen workers by the time that we starting to do our end-of-shift tasks for closing.

(“Don’t worry,” the one [older] [Thai] cook lady was like, when I pointed that out, meaning that she’d take anything that was left.)

And, even though it was busy, I was having a good time and chit-chatting with customers, like a table full of professors who were there for a business meal and who I was trying to convince to get dessert.

“What, no fried banana on the [name of the local university]?”, I was like.

But then, it wasn’t until after the rush that I found out that we actually had had two different orders stolen by two different app delivery drivers, including one by a guy who was shamelessly doing it right in front of me.

One was some UberEats guy who was waiting an incredibly long time for his order because the kitchen was so backed up, and when he finally got it, he canceled the pick-up from his end and walked out and kept it, and it wasn’t until some other UberEats driver showed up and wanted the same order that we realized what had happened.

The other one was a lot more insidious, this one (mid 30s) (dark-skinned black) (male) Doordash driver who I had seen sitting around waiting, and who when I came back to the counter was carrying a big take-out bag and asked me for a fork and napkin and so I ran behind the counter and got him one…

As we pieced it together later, when he first came in, he walked past the edge of the counter to the unpaid orders that customers place over the phone, and he was looking at that ticket when my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker saw him doing that and was like “No, go sit down, that’s not your order.”

And, he waited and got all three of his Doordash orders, walked them out to the car as we confirmed them gone, and then he came back in and waited some more, until we were all busy and no-one was by the front counter, at which point he walked over and picked up the huge order whose ticket he had looked at – it was an expensive one, too, with stuff like seafood fried rice – and then he just stood there like it was his, and when I ran by he even asked me for a fork so he’d have something to eat it with, since I’d never have imagined that he took the order like that, it only briefly crossed my mind that maybe he was being too weird and conscientious about the app order, every once in a while we get app delivery drivers like that, but I immediately thought that maybe he could just be a customer who had been waiting for his own order, too, and so rather than checking if a fork was in the bag, I immediately ran behind the counter and got him one since that was quicker and I needed to be onto the next task.

We immediately blocked him as a driver afterwards – Doordash lets you do that, although I don’t think UberEats does – and my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker said we should maybe even put a photo of him on the front door saying he stole, just like they do at H-Mart.

“But then I would have to put a picture of you on the front door,” I was like. “SHE STOLE MY HEART.”

Later, too, at the end of the night, I gave her like five dollars in quarters for her laundry and she gave me a five dollar bill, and I asked her why she didn’t count the quarters that I gave her, to make sure that it was really five dollars.

“Because I trust you,” she was like.

“We trusted the Doordash driver, too,” I was like.

Restaurant people:

1) The (college-age) daughter of the (Thai) restaurant owners at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now had joined a sorority a while back, and when I ask her how that’s going, she says, “Expensive,” and she then explains that it ends up costing like $5,000 a year in totalled continual costs, which she hadn’t expected.

2) When after a day at the campus library I swing by a grocery store in the student part of town to pick up some avocados – I had run out and I needed some for my typical morning breakfast, but I didn’t have time to go to the usual grocery store near my house – I walk in and right there like two aisles in is this (early 50s) (white) couple who I know from the restaurant, who live an hour away but come through town once a week for something and so often come in to our restaurant.

“Oh, it’s our friend from the restaurant,” the wife says.

And, it turns out that their daughter has some big concert coming up and she has like four solid days of evening rehearsals, and they’re schlepping her over everyday, and they have never even been to that grocery store before, they just went there to get some shopping done while she was in rehearsal, and I say that I’ve been to that particular store before ,but otherwise it’s pretty rare that I go there, too.

“Isn’t that funny,” I was like.

And, I said that they should probably just rent an Air BnB or something and stick their daughter in it all week, she’s probably old enough and prices wouldn’t be too bad what with a lot of the students out of town, and they said that her choir teacher actually had said that she could stay with her family during those rehearsals, and maybe they would do that, for a day or two, but they weren't sure yet.

I then excused myself to go get my stuff, since I had to run that errand quick before going to meet a friend for dinner nearby. 

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.