Translation at Methodist and Open Door food

November 7, 2023:

Ok first things first, when I woke up I was randomly feeling very depressed. I decided right around then that I’d try to talk myself out of it. I did, and it worked. Came to a few “important realizations” too. It was stuff like it being ok to “make a life here and never leave this place.” Today at Methodist I also met a new guy who’s gonna be volunteering. His name was Ary and he was from San Luis Potosí, en México. I kind of felt like he could become the new Angel, after Angel left to go back to Mexico a few weeks ago. It’s very useful to have a native Spanish speaker working the computer, and frankly that’s part of the reason I like to be there instead of one of the older ladies. I’m not a native speaker, but at least I can communicate.

Speaking of being on the computer, I’ve got a picture of me on the computer too. Jodi took it when she came by to vote at her voting location, which was Methodist. Then, I took a break and we had a great talk. I told her a few of my important morning realizations too.

Alright, I never finished this and it’s the 8th now. I was just planning on putting the photos in and writing the rest the next day, but I didn’t even get to publishing the photos. So I’ve got that photo Jodi took of me at the computer and a picture of the volunteers trying to facilitate people getting food upstairs, because voting was using downstairs yesterday. It was interesting to see all of the work that happens with the people getting the food, which usually happens downstairs. In a way, it felt better to have it all happen upstairs because normally we have no idea if they’re out of carts or they're too busy downstairs when we send people down.

The other interesting thing that happened yesterday was that a woman, Terri, said she liked my gold earrings, which are kind of a new symbol of things being good for me post-TBI. I told Terri that I’d gotten them to replace a pair that had been really important to me, and then that when I got the new ones, I realized the old ones hadn’t been that good in the first place. Even at the time, I thought that statement was a huge metaphor for my life. I started writing down what I was thinking immediately because I didn’t wanna lose it.

I also met a new woman, named Rosalinda, who usually works downstairs but is also a Spanish-speaker even though she’s white like me. Speaking of Spanish, yesterday I learned that the word for ramp is rampa and the word for voting is votando. Like, we’re in a voting location is “we’re in a place of votando.” I also got the idea to start taking my notebook notes in Spanish for a while. I didn’t do that all day yesterday, but I did a few pages.

After being at Methodist, I walked home and drove to Open Door. Italia was closing yesterday. I learned she graduated from Northwestern after being an AVID student in high school. We talked to the lady Delores a lot, who’s retired. Delores used to work in in construction contracting. It’s funny, I even wrote down that I felt like Italia and Delores would qualify for a picture in the new way I'm saying only important conversations merit selfies, but I was fine doing just the pictures I had of things at Methodist in the morning.

I went home, and had my meds at 8:45pm, since I forgot to set an alarm for 8:30, the time I took them in the morning. Also, I just realized I never mentioned the morning meds either lol.