#amusing anecdotes

Part 2!

Top 5 amusing anecdotes. Hmmm. 

1. I’ve been taking paratransit a lot more this year and I’ve had some interesting drivers, from the young black man who nervously but daringly engaged me in a conversation about racism and gun violence to the gregarious guy who was driving several of us all over town and chatting about music and the various tragedies of the day (this was shortly after the Vegas shootings and Tom Petty’s death) to the guy who joined me in ranting over the loss of state funding for the paratransit program that is going to make it more difficult for both drivers and riders. 

But the most interesting was this older white lady who started right in laughing and joking with me and we found we aligned pretty closely on political lines pretty quick. We were discussing the fact that so many politicians want to deny the fact of global warming as she was setting something up on her phone’s GPS. Suddenly, the lovely voice on the phone said “I don’t know what to do about - people who don’t believe in global warming.” We both looked at each other and just cracked up laughing saying - we don’t either!! This lady was something else - told me half her life story in the 20 minutes it took to get me to my appointment. I hope I get her again sometime. 

2. This has been overall a very difficult year for many reasons, not least of which has been the diagnosis and treatment of my bestest friend’s breast cancer. She lives alone and in a different city as me and we both have health issues which make visiting one another difficult in the best of times, but when it dawned on me that she was going to need help after her surgery and that no one else was going to be available, I decided to make myself available and saved up those spoons and went and helped care for her for a week.

One of the things she needed help with that week was - okay this is gonna be about gross bodily functions here so skip to number 3 if you’d rather not read this part but - after a mastectomy, the body still keeps pumping blood and lymphatic fluid and stuff to the area the breasts once were so they install these tubes and drains for all of that to have a way out of the body. And the drains need to be milked, which is kinda grody but whatever, bodies. So a few times a day we’d have to milk the tubes coming out of her and measure what came out and what it looked like, etc. She got real tired of this real quick and I had to kind of be a cheerleader/drill sergeant about it. 

So one night as we’re emptying the drains she was skipping the milking part of the process and I was encouraging her to milk it and she just stopped and stared at me and yelled “YOU MILK IT!” - which caused us to both explode in giggles and is now one of our many running jokes. Sometimes you just have to laugh about this stuff. 

3. While playing Sims awhile back, I suddenly noticed that the Grim Reaper had moved into one of my empty houses. I thought this was hilarious enough that I started playing as him, got him a job, went to the park and made some friends, started teaching him various skills. IDK if it’s something I’ll come back to or not, but weirdly enough he picked this one ginormous house with many floors and a crapton of furniture and stuff that I’d made for a household of 8 so he’s just kinda rambling around in there by himself playing guitar and video games for now.

4. Oh! And this summer my roomie and I saved a baby bird that he had found right outside our apartment. It took the entire day, several trips out to the wildlife rehab place, and a great chunk of time watching lil birdie in the DIY nest we built tied up in a tree hoping it’s parents would come feed him (they didn’t, so the rehab place kept him and hopefully got him fed up and re-entered into the wild eventually). 

But in all that time sitting outside, I got to know some of my neighbors, including the dog owners across the way who informed me that their doggie loves our cats and gets excited whenever they’re in the window and a friendly if somewhat socially awkward guy who lives upstairs who kept me company for a lot of the time. 

Friendly but awkward guy quickly turned into creepy neighbor guy a few weeks later however, when he got drunk, sat down right outside my bedroom window at ten at night, and started trying to chat me up. He was all “remember the bird? and our conversation about the books?” And I was like - “uh, yea, are you drunk?” - to which he laughed and replied “toooootally.” Eventually my large male roomie came to my rescue and just as Awkward/Creepy? guy was saying “just tell me to go away” - roomie said gruffly “yea, go away!” and slammed the window down. 

That one incident I could maybe just excuse as not understanding social cues very well combined with the drunkenness, but a week or so later he started knocking on the door at 3am - repeatedly - until finally I woke up large male roomie to maybe do something to make him stop, but by then he had left on his own. We still think he probably didn’t have bad intentions - likely saw my light was on and figured I was awake and ??? somehow it was okay to knock on the door at 3am???? But still. I’ve been wary of him ever since. 

I was informed of this by my girlfriend of 5 years, who I did not realize was my girlfriend until about a year into the relationship, and from a discord full of lesbians.

This is largely due to me being dense as fuck and being unable to parse if I am flirting, which I never believe that I am.

I have been taught a litmus test to see if I am flirting, and it's rather good I'd say!

"if you read what you just did in a fanfic, would the characters wind up kissing/fucking by the end of it?" If the answer is yes, then I am flirting.

I have two stories that I can tell, that from using this litmus test I have realized might have been me flirting in the past.

A few years ago, I decided that I was going to go do some airsoft shit, because that's fun

Because I was alone the organizers were just gonna pair me up with random teams, which makes sense other people that went alone were also paired up

One round, I was waiting in a room with my rifle covering the entrance, and this girl about my age comes in, trips, and drops her gun and starts scrambling towards it.

I did what I thought was the natural thing to do in the situation, which was to step forward, put the barrel of my rifle under her chin, tilt her head up to look at me, stare her down with eye contact, and say "be a good girl and stay down."

She made a very high pitched keening noise and I left.

According to the litmus test, that was flirting.

Later in the day I got paired up with the team she was with and she just sorta followed me around, and I didn't understand why at the time, and eventually we went our separate ways.

Never got her name, she never got mine. I think those were the only words I spoke to her.

The other story happened last night

I had a bottle of wine, and I was looking at my gf, and I uncorked it with my teeth and downed the whole bottle without breaking eye contact.

I was very confused when she was flustered by this.

Then I used the litmus test, and I was flirting according to it.

My brother and me.

I have been wanting to go see my brother for awhile. I’d planned on going this summer. I had to wait because I’d used my travel funds already this year going to New Mexico at the end of February and the first week of March. When I returned home I was not home more than a day before I rented a car and went to Kansas to pick up my grandchildren and bring them to Nebraska during…

Grandma Peachy’s Stuffed Toy Hospital

I was going to write a totally different “Monday Morning Musings” piece today but I just wasn’t into it, so to speak. While standing outside with my daughter my hand found a puff ball in my coat pocket. I determined that it was probably from a toy and had been put in my pocket with the intention of repairing some child’s stuffed toy. I don’t remember the incident that put the little white puff…

Adventures in Rhubarb – a Culinary Slam-Dunk

I’ve had this excess of frozen rhubarb in my freezer for a year now. The last two years my neighbor kept bringing me rhubarb from his garden. He isn’t there now and this year I didn’t get any more because he was in an accident in April and until last week was in a skilled nursing facility. He won’t be coming home, he lives with his daughter now. I’ll miss him. Still there was an entire shelf in…