Vaguely related thoughts after volunteering at a soup kitchen

Ugh, the food doesn't really smell all that good.

It's really hard to understand homeless people when they try to tell you a story. They pause dramatically in the middle of sentences, and mumble a lot. Mostly what I got from this one lady was that her mom had cancer, and as she (the lady) was hitchhiking home to see her mother, the trucker knew that her mom was sick. Except that it turned out that there really wasn't a trucker. Or maybe he was an angel, and disappeared? At any rate, she ended up at home with no idea of how she got there.

A lot of people drink coffee.

Even their young children.

I'm not a people person. I find it very difficult to remain calm and pleasant when some man is gripping me by the hand and telling me he struggles with alcoholism. No, I wasn't in danger, yes, I realize that he just needs someone to talk to and validate him (perhaps some counsellors and doctors, too), but I'm not good with that kind of thing. Same way as I really don't do well going to nursing homes to cheer up the old folks.

Hey, the water in the mop bucket is the same color and cloudiness as the coffee I've been serving to all those people. Don't know whether that says something about the state of the floors or the state of the coffee. Don't want to know.

I'm glad I have a home. Also food, and a shower.

Sad that those people do not, and that about 85-90% of them happen to be of the same marginalized ethnicity. Like, there were maybe two white people there.

Working there for an hour is possibly more stressful than knowing you've got two 10-page papers due in the next two weeks that you haven't started yet. Possibly.

I'm tired.

Oh yeah, and I kind of felt bad when my roommate and I went home and made ribs, garlic bread, rice and corn for dinner. We had leftovers.