Bill is telling a story about a bus-driving friend of his and the bus driver’s dentures. It took place before I got my own prosthetic teeth. A long time ago I asked if he mentioned that his husband (me) wore dentures and Bill said it was before that. Bill has quite a few tales of his bus driving compadres which he has worked into his play ‘From Where I Sit’. He’s been working on it for a while and has some really good songs in it as well.

Today is Friday. I finally made it. It was a long four days. Schlomo was out for 3 of those 4 days and his Legume was not on the premises. That reduced the amount of stress. Also reduced in the office today was communication. According to Bill, since I am a Virgo I am all about communication. And when communication breaks down I struggle to keep it together.

Like I predicted a number of posts before, they ended the work from home option. Not totally though. If you want to work from home you can only do so on Fridays. So a good number of people were working from home. I found out the hard way twice. When some people showed up.

They just pop in off the street, most without an appointment. I asked if they had actually spoke to someone and most of the time they did but do not remember who it was they spoke to. So I log into the system and do some detective work and twice today they person that they needed to see was working from home.

I have to treat everyone equally, offering coffee, tea or water and showing the utmost respect. Today I had a bickering couple and I had to raise my voice and tell them they were in an office and not on the street. They quieted down and I was able to find someone who figured out they had no contact with anyone from the firm.

No matter, they were given leads to begin a process that will determine if anything could be done to help them. They were soon on their way only to have someone else arrive wanting to see So & So.

Once again I send a message and find So & So is also working from home. More detective work only this time a higher up was able to step in and help while this cantankerous person sat and brought up things that I had just told him a minute before.

This all has the potential to bite me on the ass next week. All it will take is someone to complain about whatever I did that was found to be so offensive and perhaps even terrifying enough to claim that I am scary to them.

As far as I know, no explanation is needed, just say that I frighten them and they won’t have to do their job properly. And to the powers that be, that is OK.

Today is Thursday and feels like a Wednesday sort of. It actually has hints of a Thursday-ness to it. Tomorrow is Friday and that is the prize I have my eyes on.

I am back to typing on my desktop keyboard rather than dictating like I have done the past 2 days. I do dictate notes, and ideas into the phone but that’s it. Granted I can spew forth over 500 words in about 15 minutes, but hunting and pecking takes time and there are the distractions of TV and life in the apartment with the man I love, Bill. And he’s a lovely distraction.

Things have cooled down temperature-wise. I guess that is something worthwhile with regard to the so-called end of summer. I’m a stickler for the proper date for the autumn equinox on September 22 and not a moment too soon.

Leaving the apartment this morning and being close to 2 grammar schools it looked like a parade of parents marching off to drop their children off at the schools. No children crying, screaming and clinging to their mother like I used to do up until senior year of high school. I went the other way as I always do unless the bagel shop is closed for vacation.

3 years ago it was nice. It was during the pandemic and there were a lot of days where I was the only one in the train car headed into Manhattan or back to Hoboken. Now it gets crowded again and the youngsters have no problem letting their bags take a seat next to them. Then I show up and say excuse me which gets them to move their bags.

Sometimes it’s accompanied by a heavy sigh and a dirty look. Sometimes there is muttering under their breath. It’s mostly women that do this but every now and then it’s a man. The other day there was a heavy set man on the way back to the mainland.

I sat next to him and on the other side there was an empty seat. The heavy-set man could have easily moved an inch or two in the direction of the empty seat but he decided not to, in order to make me uncomfortable, which I wasn’t. Some slight discomfort which faded as the train left the station.

His attempt amounted to nothing and made him look a bit stupid with emptiness beside him and trying to squeeze me on the other side. I didn’t care, I was finishing ‘Happy Go Lucky’ by David Sedaris.

All summer long I opted for humorous books and so it fell to David Sedaris. When I was picking up ‘Happy Go Lucky’, I noticed a book by Edna O’Brien, ‘Girl’. I had read about Edna O’Brien as she had passed away a week or so before. Impulsively I added that to my books I was taking out.

And tonight I started reading it, knowing nothing about the book. I was hoping for more lighthearted fare. This was not that. It’s a book about the kidnapping of young girls in Nigeria by Boko Haram. Hair-raising, not light-hearted. In for a penny, in for a pound.

We’ll see how long I can last with that.