this thing is messing with my MIND!

in other news...

the first two days of my job were pretty good. this is what i do at work: first i dish up all the food for the people on our two alzheimer's wings. this involves holding a large pink plastic bowl on my outstretched left fingertips while i whack a big suction-cup-on-a-handle onto a 180-degree metal plate and slip it onto the pink plastic bowl. then i cover it with a clean ceramic plate, read the resident's card, and dish up the food accordingly. more about this part later. then i wash dishes for almost an hour, then i go have a cigarette with everyone else.

then i spend the first part of the afternoon dishing up the salads and desserts for the evening meal and making purees for the different diet levels of the residents. here's where the card comes in. everyone has a card with their likes and dislikes, allergies, religious info (like no fish on fridays or whatever), and the card specifies small, medium, or large portion of regular, ground, or puree consistency food. there are also different thicknesses of purees--nectar-thick, honey-thick, and pudding-thick.

this job is kind of funny sometimes. i make something called pureed bread, which is not really pureed at all, but a slice of bread dunked in butter with thickened milk poured over the top, and the bread absorbs the thick milk and i sprinkle cinnamon sugar lovingly over the tops and stick them in the fridge. more on this later. anyway, there is also something called liquid bread, which really is just bread and milk in a blender. i give those poor people cinnamon sugar too. except for the lady who's allergic to it.

then i get a half hour for lunch and a sociable coffee/cigarette break. the people i work with are friendly, and some of them are surprisingly intelligent, which makes me realize how prejudiced i probably was coming in. after this "lunch" break, it's time to dish up supper. so i do the same as above, with the plack-thunk of the suction cup stick and the scalding metal plates and all. but supper is even weirder because i have to dish out soup, which is composed of dead animal juice and other things that might get on my hands. gross. i wear gloves a lot and try not to inhale when there are meaty fumes around. anyway, i do the carts for the alzheimer's units and then i go upstairs to "the feeders," and the nurses there take the plates i dish up for those who can't really feed themselves.

the most amazing thing about all of this is that my manager in the kitchen knows all of the residents' names-nearly 200 people--and their diet. that's a lot of information to know. i like her. she's nice. and she's fair.

now about the pureed bread which is not pureed, my lovely plates of raw french toast. after dinner it's the dish room, and i wash nearly every one down the disposal. along with a good half of the food we dish out. it's enough to make me cry. every time i pour an opened, full carton of milk down the drain, i think of the film _three kings_, and the scene of the people trying to drink milk from the sand beside a gushing tanker truck.

not to be overdramatic. after that, i clean and sanitize many many items. after we have all cleaned and sanitized things--and i must say it's a fairly smooth operation, so it's not torture--i go home.

i think i am pleased. and i certainly am tired. to bed, i said.