Today’s glory is somewhat clumsy. I slept well so that was good. Bill was getting his act together for an overnight road trip and I puttered around getting ready for my day. I am once again at the really big fruit stand and I will be here today as well as the next two days.

I don’t like it and I don’t have a say in the matter. As long as I keep telling myself I have a good job as if it were a mantra I think it will help get me through the day. Although I just had an encounter with people asking me for something that I did not know where it was.

Keys, keys that were labelled as something. And each time I picked up a key they pointed out it was not the key. I was frustrated and more than likely let them know how frustrated I was. I am working with Violet who had somehow vanished before these twenty somethings showed up.

Violet would know where things are, and I do not. On top of that there’s a new computer in which everything needs to be updated for my use. This is the equivalent of starting a race a few seconds behind everyone else. And I know it’s not a race. Yancy was hovering around making sure I did this or that and that was nerve-wracking

But what will probably get me in hot water are the twenty-somethings who may have been offended by my frustration and the curt tone in which I expressed myself.

Bill is on the road; Mike is coming over tonight so that he can catch a ride share to North Bergen to get his elusive Real ID. The ride share would be cheaper to North Bergen from Hoboken than it would be from Jersey City. Or so we would like to think.
So at the really big fruit stand, I seem to mirror whatever someone else is feeling. If they’re frantic, I take that on. If they’re pleasant, I am pleasant too. I’ve been like that my whole life I think. And sometimes it works and sometimes it gets me into trouble.

I could have sworn I was in trouble but I may not be, though the day is still early and I have only been here for 2 hours and change. The password is so damn simple and I couldn’t remember it. Now I do

I am sitting in a concrete park in midtown. There are 2 people doing what I guess is tai chi. To the right of this man and woman are 8 Asian people, 7 men and 1 woman also doing Tai chi. Is it meditative? It doesn’t matter, I need to get back to my desk.

I was able to get a key made but won’t know if it is a success until I get home.

I got back to the fruit stand and handled things by the seat of my pants until Violet returned. After her remergence, I contacted Yandy and told hime my situation. Within minutes everything was taken care of and I was able to be productive on a very slow afternoon. But the weight of passwords was taken care of.

I also found that I would be at my usual fruit stand rather than the 2 more days I dreaded. Where did I get that idea? Yancy knew nothing about it. I’m not crazy. Or am I?

Mike is not coming over. His parole officer called telling him to stay home tomorrow. He asked me to cancel his appointment and set a new one. It did just that for August 13, 11:15 AM.

Jimmy Chile walks fast. I say Rita’s lines about ‘walking too fast’
The agency that placed me at the fruit stand had its representative, my counselor, host a dinner for people like me. Jimmy Chile is like me in the sense that he is not working for the fruit stand, per se, but a paid contractor. As is Violet, and a few other people that I have never mentioned before.

Jimmy Chile and I work a lot together, and so we decided to take a subway up to Times Square, where the restaurant was. Bill has taken some of his passengers before, leaving me to think it was a tourist trap. And having been there, I would have to agree with myself.

Jimmy and I walked to the subway, whereas years ago, when walking with Rita, Rita would complain that I was walking too fast. Now I am saying Rita’s line, trying to keep up with Jimmy Chile, who did make a conscious effort to slow his walk.

The unusual suspects were at the dinner along with my counselor’s husband, with huge guns to accompany his muscled body. The food was served in gigantic portions, designed to be shared by two or three or four, as it was in our case last night.

It was satisfactory, and when I was not eating, I kept my mouth shut. There are more authentic Italian restaurants in Manhattan. This one kept repeating on me before bed. I didn’t drink, though most everyone else around me had the wine.

I try not to eat after 7 PM, so this was out of the ordinary for me. And I am rarely in Times Square, hanging out after work when I just want to go home, but this was an opportunity to prove and to show that I am a team player, willing to break bread over a lackluster meal, which was on someone else’s dime.

It was not a bad time at all. It was the first time we had met the counselor in person, since all other meetings were online. She was nice and pleasant, encouraging us to be more ambitious in our careers, which personally for me is something that is a foreign concept, ambition. I’m 63 right now and could be forced to retire in 2 years, so exactly where would that ambition get me?

I walked to the bus terminal with a gent named Hongki (for real). I rarely go through this depot, although Bill does whenever possible. He gave me the lowdown on where to go and how long I would have to wait and of course, Bill was on the money.

After a wait of less than 10 minutes, I was second in line. I sat in the back of the bus staring out the window while everyone else stared at their phones. As I approached my bus stop, I hit the buzzer above me, but it didn’t work. I got up and stood by the back door and hit two other buzzers, but they were not working either as the bus rolled past the stop I had wanted.

I moved to the front and told the driver the buzzers were not working, and he insisted that they were. Of course they were. I make it a habit of standing around a moving bus and then complaining when the bus driver cannot read my mind.

I was home before Bill, and when he arrived, I told him the story. It turns out he had the same driver, Adam, who drives laid back with his belly on the steering wheel. Bill disputed my side of the story, saying there was no way the buzzers were not working, and that fat Adam more than likely did not activate them.