SMELLY BLUE DIGITS

The boss made a mistake, and forgot to give my order to the kitchen. I'm sure it was just an oversight, as besides the woman in the kitchen, he was the only one working. No, she wasn't in the kitchen because of any sexist ideas about who does what, and where women belong, but because he was English-able, she speaks Cantonese only, the customers are a mixed lot, and often include foreigners such as the couple speaking something European who were also there, and myself.
Well, I can get what I want by ordering in Cantonese.
Except when no one tells the kitchen.

I had spent the better part of the afternoon listening to the finest Mandarin on the internet. Slurry err sounds and all. Learned a new word, too. Rhotic (兒化): to make urry sounds when speaking. Largely as a diminutive suffix, but some other variants of Mandarin use it differently. The computer was on for background noise while I restored the rim of a briar pipe, and my hands were slowly turning blue. That being caused by Raynaud's phenomenon.

Stop whining. It's a lovely pipe.
Smokes like a dream.

Which brings me, indirectly, to the point of this essay: enough cold weather already! Can we finally have some Springtime? I need to be able to use my finger tips, because in addition to restoring smoking pipes, I also use them for other purposes. Eating, food preparation, packing tobacco into my pipe, calligraphy (書法), responses to pruritus, pen-use, rhinotillexis, etc.


From three till six-thirty PM, I couldn't feel my finger tips.


Soaked them in hot water to get the circulation back when I returned from lunch. They tingled like billy-o when blood flow restarted. Since the coronary stent and new medication at the beginning of February, Raynauds has been a constant issue, but it's probably just the weather. It's been cold these past few weeks. Years ago I would flap my dead-looking fingers at coworkers after my pipe break in the morning, pretending I was turning into a zombie, or needed fresh blood to stay alive.

Raynauds has been off and on for over a decade.


Yeah, I've got gloves. Fuzzy black gloves.

They add to my image as a refugee from an Edward Gorey book, perhaps someone who dies in a snowdrift, will be defenestrated or exsanguinated, crushed to death by the Willowdale Handcar. Outside the old glue-factory.
At the abandoned orphanage.

Ever try handling two bags of groceries (one of them with lovely dumplings for late night snacks), an umbrella, a pipe, a pipe tool, and matches while wearing a pair of black grannie gloves? I need at least two extra hands.
Or warm weather.


Next winter, I might cover these paws with bacon grease for three solid months. That should provide not only insulation, but some excitement, as dogs with agile hot hot hot tongues will flock to me.

"Yeah, he smells funky, but the hounds love him."

When I get to work in the morning, it takes around an hour for circulation to return to my digits. And today is a work day.



This post was inspired by pissyness.
Stream of consciousness.
And zombies.




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