May I Inspect Your Nuts?

I don't think I've ever written about one of the jobs I've had. For approx. 3 days, many years ago, I was a nut inspector.

Yes, that's right. I inspected nuts. Macadamia nuts, to be precise. For one of the companies that makes tins of chocolate-covered macadamia nut candies that schools sell for fund-raising. I found out the hard way that I'm highly allergic to raw macadamia nuts & macadamia nut oil.

I stood at a conveyor belt with a few other people... first step was to inspect the raw nuts. We visually inspected them, looking for discoloration, bruising, mold, we had to feel the nuts for softness or mushiness, making sure the nuts were whole and not crushed by the shipping or shelling process. We even had to smell a random sampling to make sure the nuts smelled fresh and hadn't accumulated any odors from the machinery. The nuts were dumped into bins & were washed, blown dry by a cool fan and sent to be roasted. After roasting, the nuts were inspected again for discoloration, uneven roasting, burning and of course, for wholeness.

After three days of feeling nuts with my bare hands, I looked like I had poison ivy rash. We couldn't wear gloves because we had to feel the nuts and gloves may have masked something, as well as transferring chemical odors or flavors to the nuts. We also couldn't use any kind of lotion or nail polish because it might have contaminated the nuts, and no rings or bracelets that might have fallen into the nuts or damaged them through contact.

The best part of that job was after the roasted nuts were dipped in chocolate or made into various candies... we had to taste-test them ;)

Funny Thing, Memory

Thought & Memory are Odin's ravens... Hugin & Munin or something like that... someone's writing a book called Thought & Memory and of course I always think of Odin when I see the title.

Anway, I am full of thought & not so much memory. Friday after being fired, I was waiting for Rob to come pick me up. I probably looked like a bag lady - had my purse, a bookbag, and two plastic grocery bags with my personal belongings from work. It was sprinkling rain & there's really no place to sit & wait for someone by the RJC... I found a service ramp across the street next to the secured parking lot & plopped down to play Tetris...

I heard a 'caw!' echo across the buildings & looked up to see an honest-to-goodness raven fly overhead. It was huge. At the time, it seemed like the most important thing in the world - for those few seconds of watching the raven fly past the building behind me and out of my view, my social self-consciousness of being thought of as a panhandler, my lost job, my future security, all gone - all that mattered was that raven.

It's nice to have little moments like that here & there.