The Living

Yesterday was a day of Removal. My mom had a tumor the size of either a volleyball or bowling ball removed, as well as her gallbladder, as it was filled with stones. Meanwhile, my next door neighbor The Smiler had one removed from her brain that was the size of either a walnut or a baseball, depending on who you ask. Everyone seems to be doing fine, as far as I can tell.
Big theme of injury and illness around here. The Babbler's mom was telling me the other day that she has fibromyalgia, and hasn't really been able to eat lately, there was Gringa 1's bike accident of two weekends ago, Hazel just got back from New York, where apparently three friends of hers went to the hospital in the three weeks she spent there. While she was away, one of the girls who is a bike messenger met her end under the wheels of a truck, here in town. Actually, the last four people there are all people who ride their bikes in traffic for a living, so the odds go rather severely up.
Every now and then at their parties, I remind them that their occupation is not a revolutionary choice, but in fact that they're risking their lives for the very corporate beast that they claim to hate. Makes me popular.
I've had jobs that risked my limb (nearly had my arm taken off in an industrial mixer I was cleaning), and maybe my life (taxi driving, auto parts delivery), definitely ones where I was risking a lawsuit or at least a good beating (security guard), jobs where I could make a mistake that costs thousands of dollars (my first job, hand inserting advertising fliers into newspapers), jobs where I was certain that all I was doing was fleecing the elderly (my short time spent telemarketing), a job in which I was well on my way to 'white lung' (baking), then there's dispatching taxis, processing fish, modelling for artists, various weird office jobs, working in a greenhouse, shipping/receiving, years of every aspect of work in restaurants, marketing/fliering, box office, exhibit design grunt, AV tech, market/political research, proctoring (in which one hands out tests: final medical exams, law boards, and makes sure the testers don't cheat on them), debris boy on a demolition site, janitorial stuff, processing applications for college, stagehand, "lighting director", food critic, barista and of course, washing more dishes than I even care to think about.
Did I leave anything out? Probably. This would be a much longer post if I went through and told you a story about each of them, and they all have a story.
Ne'mind. I'm goin' to the beach. See ya.