Ep. 27: Overshare

She stops by to pour him coffee, and one thick hand instantly finds the small of her back. She wriggles away and moves to another table.

At breakfast, the server clearing dishes finds his hand cupped around her bicep, caressing it as he asks her how she manages to stay warm in short sleeves. She yanks her arm free and scurries away.

At Halloween, workers dressed as hippies or witches or cats. He eyeballs one costumed lady and tells her, "well, you look sexy."
 


Getting the picture? This guy has no idea where the line is...that, or he doesn't care where it is and intentionally crosses it.


I was on my break the other day, hiding in a corner of the coffee shop, considering myself safe, when he wheeled his way in and said hello. I figured we'd each say a few words and he'd leave. But no. He stayed for 40 minutes. At one point during that time, he thought it would be funny to leap from a discussion of his children into a sex joke involving him and his late wife. And I didn't know it was a joke at first, so I was extremely uncomfortable and hurried to change the subject.

Still. Joke or no joke, talking sex with a stranger and one of the opposite sex is just awkward, especially when there is a client-employee dynamic at play.

This is why I am dubbing him Overshare. Sir Overshare? Mr. Overshare? Oversharington the Third? Anyway...

Crossing. The. Line.

He's still pretty new at the facility, so most of this information is just starting to travel. The combined stories make for one creepy picture. And I wonder what is next and when we're all going to start drawing that line for him, since he can't apparently find it on his own.

--
People are people, no matter their age. Some will be kind, curious, rude, condescending, bitter, or funny, and so on. I’m an “old people chef,” and this is my journal.

Moon and Stars

 

"Looking at the stars always makes me dream." -Vincent Van Gogh

The stars have been on my mind lately. Maybe it's because I'm planning this backpacking trip and I keep imagining laying down in my tent and watching the crisp stars blinking in the black sky. Feeling comfortably small in comparison to everything else that exists. Feeling that everything insurmountable to me is as tiny as me, and not so important. Forgetting all that and instead being engulfed by constellations and cool night breezes and chirping unseen crickets.

There's this great Psalm (8: 3,4) by David that describes part of this feeling:

When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and stars,
which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?

David was a shepherd before he was a king, so I imagine him sleeping under the stars with his flock nearby many times. He was in awe of how the Creator of such an immense and vast and beautiful universe would bother with tiny, short lived, treacherous, broken people.

It amazes me too, that of all the unworthy things that were created, people are still God's pursuit.

What a love.

Missing Summer

Although I grew up in this state and though I find beauty and challenge in the snow and subzero winter weather, come January I am ready to skip to spring and summer. I long for mid to late April, after the blizzards are mostly behind us and the longer days mean snowmelt and warmer, sunnier weather. So I'm looking back on summer garden pictures and pining for those days...

 

 

black dirt and sprouting plants

 

 

 


rampant cucumber vines

 


smiling marigolds

 

 

 


 


soft and fuzzy mullein leaves

 

 

 


peppermint and lemon balm

 

 


hops climbing our arbor

 

 

 

 

 

 


sun through the trees



Man, am I missing green.

 

 

 

 

Snow Day

The plows have been moving snow all morning, since at least 4 a.m. The streets are clear for now, but light flurries keep drifting down and disappearing into the soft white roads and driveways and lawns. The pine trees by our house are dusted with snow and hanging heavy from it. What better way to spend the morning than sipping a cup of coffee by the window, wearing cozy slippers, and watching the snow and the cold on the other side of the glass.

We had snowfall and 40 mph winds yesterday. Visibility was awful. Schools were canceled. The evening cook called in to swap shifts with me, since she couldn't even see the end of her driveway. So today I am free, unexpectedly. And snow is to thank. I think for the first time in my adult life, I actually have a Snow Day. Now if only I had a toboggan...

=)

Ep. 26: Crankster Gangster

Sometimes ordinary people suddenly become characters. You've seen them day after day, heard their words and noticed their mannerisms, not really thinking anything unusual, until suddenly they morph. They suddenly are in costume according to their character, and what was frightening or boring or 2-dimensional before is suddenly rife with comedy and interest.

Crankster is one of those people. For the longest time, she was this cranky woman, barking about butter and toast and the size of the juice glasses. Then one morning, the steam rising from her cup of coffee became the haze of smoke in a 1920s speakeasy. She was leaned back in her chair, that glass of orange juice now a snifter of brandy in one hand, swirling slowly as she skeptically appraised the people and objects in the room. A smoldering cigar rested lightly on the fingers of her other hand, and she kept switching back and forth from cigar to brandy to cigar. Pinstripes and a jaunty hat completed her ensemble, and with each hoarse laugh, the stripes moved along her rolls and curves. She was no longer an old, cranky lady whose piercing gaze I avoid. Crankster was now a gangster, the head of some streetwise group of organized criminals. What was fear in me now turns to intrigue.

How did she come to be the haughty-eyed, gin-swilling, heard-hearted, pin-stripe-swagging creature that sits before us today? Surely at some time in life she was an innocent child, playing in the mud, curly blond hair bouncing as she beat her friends in softball again. Now that victory and that glory and that innocence survive only in the unconvincing laugh and the swirl of swill in her glass.

The eyes tell another story.

I've stopped asking who Crankster is, and I ask instead who she has been.

And now I not only fail to fear her. I couldn't even if I wanted.