Tag Archives: work

One Waitress Sunday

Posted on March 17, 2013 | 41 Comments

#3 got a job today. She officially starts training next week as a waitress.

#1 is already a waitress.

#2 has a job interview tomorrow for a potentially waitress-related position.

I used to be a waitress. Before I started pushing boxes and wrapping cables and making people louder, I served pancakes and eggs, meatloaf and midwestern spaghetti, and later, margaritas and fried ice cream. Waiting tables is hard work. Mainly because there are people involved.

I used to have these drowning waitress dreams. In my dreams, I would already be rushing around with five tables, and then the hostess would seat me a 20-top, a 7-top and an 11-top all at once. There weren’t enough menus. One of the tables would be upside down on the ceiling and I would have to climb a spiderweb to get up to it while pirates tried to unhook my fingers and kept trying to flip my tray. Each time someone ordered something I would go back to the kitchen only to find out we were out of it. Everyone needed separate checks at the last minute and there were six birthdays at six different tables, each one requiring that I make a labor-intensive free dessert with a complete absence of kitchen utensils, and then gather of as many coworkers as possible to sing the made-up Mexican birthday song.

I would wake from these dreams feeling like I worked all night instead of sleeping. I’d chase my hangover with a cigarette, the cigarette with a cup of double-strength coffee; I’d find a clean uniform shirt, spot-clean my apron, and put my SAS shoes on for another go-round.

There isn’t a single thing about this past life that I miss.

Every so often, even today, nearly twenty years later, I will still have a drowning waitress dream. Except now I will realize in my dream that this isn’t my job any more, and I untie my apron and walk out.

So given all the waitressing that is happening and is about to happen in my house, I’ve been racking my brain trying to come up with a useful piece of advice for the girls, and I think I finally have one:

Smile often, and pay attention to your tray.

Because at some point your tray WILL betray you. You are going to drop stuff. If you’re lucky, you’re only going to drop that entrée on the floor, the one that your customer has been waiting on for half an hour; if you’re unlucky you’re going to drop it ON your customer. A smile is your only defense at that point.

At the mexican place we served beer in these 23-ounce Pilsner glasses. I had a table of four who each ordered one. I served the first one to the lady, at which point the tray tipped and dumped all over her. Every. Ounce. That’s 69 ounces of beer, for those of you who are counting.

Will you believe me when I tell you that she had just come from the gym and had a change of clothes with her in a bag at the table, a bag that miraculously escaped the Beer Deluge? And that my manager comped them and they stayed and drank all night and left me a big tip?

I figured that was my allotment of waitress grace, and I should get out while I could. I quit shortly after that.

How about you- got any drowning ex-occupation stories? Any good waitress stories?

Here’s your picture: My mom’s entry for my Pi Day Pie contest. She didn’t win a damn thing.

My mom used to cook. She gave it up for Lent when I was 13.

My mom used to cook. She gave it up for Lent when I was 13.

Here are your links:

Continuing on with our waitress & other jobs theme, I first got introduced to the Ziggens when I worked a Glenn Campbell show. Glenn Campbell’s sound guy is the drummer for the punk-ish Ziggens and gave me a disc. I played it and fell in love, particularly with this song, which made such an impression on me that I never ask anyone in my family if they want scrambled or fried; I sing “How do you like yo’ eggs?“. Later I got to do monitors when the Ziggens opened up for Dick Dale, which ranks up there as one of my all-time favorite gigs. The Ziggens: The Waitress Song

What makes you ridiculously happy? Worth it for the mutant animal sculpture alone. 5 Bizarre Things…on Ironic Mom

I loved this one just from the title, but then there’s also this awesome sort of walking dead chicken picture. . .    I Spatchcocked A Rooster Eunuch on The Food and Wine Hedonist.

I’m lucky like this too: Doing Life Together and the Division of Labor on Scattered Smothered and Covered

Do you greet your loved ones when they come home? It matters. The Homecoming Dance on Spectator.

Happy Sunday.

 

 

 

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One Crazy Sunday

Posted on February 10, 2013 | 14 Comments

When we commute into the city for work, we’re usually on the reverse path of everyone else. People with more regular-type jobs are leaving; we’re coming in.

I like to imagine that a salmon swimming upstream to spawn has moments where it goes My God! Why am I doing this? Oh right. Happy ending.

Swimming the wrong way in a sea of people can be a pain when you’re not terribly tall, like me. And have demophobia that only gets triggered at a certain crowd capacity and/or speed, which is pretty much always reached in Penn Station and Times Square.

I usually try to tag a mark– some person bigger than me who appears to be going my way, behind whom I can fall in, while they make the path. This is much easier when I’m with my husband.

Because when I’m by myself sometimes I guess wrong. I tag the wrong mark and find myself pinned up against a wall, unable to make it to where I need to be without just ramming into a crowd of people willy-nilly. That isn’t taken too kindly here, and isn’t terribly effective given my size.

I finally figured out how to clear a path all by myself. How to get a seat alone on the train or the bus, how to get space around me on the subway, how not to get shoved accidentally down to the LIRR instead of the C train at Penn Station.

Look crazy.

Do you hear Patsy Cline? I totally hear Patsy Cline.

Do you hear Patsy Cline? I totally hear Patsy Cline.

The woman about to ram into me as I was exiting the elevator stopped dead in her tracks and let me pass. Nobody rushed at me when I was getting off the subway. I lead the way with CC behind me through Penn Station and I felt like Moses.

I saw people looking over their shoulders as I passed by. Observed people whispering as they passed me. But nobody blocked my path for once, and I had the added benefit of not being able to hear what they said. BECAUSE I HAD FOXES ON MY EARS.

This is how it begins, isn’t it? How we start to not give a crap what we look like or what we say in public as we age. It’s only a matter of time before we’re wearing fuchsia leopard print flannel pajamas in public while sucking on a long, empty ebony cigarette holder, being trailed by about a hundred and fifty cats.

I can’t wait.

Here are your links.

Richard Van As and Ivan Owen teamed up to create a robotic prosthetic hand, intending to post the design in the public domain so that anyone in need of one could make it. They recently completed their design and the recipient was a young boy named Liam (at a cost to his parents of $0). This is such an excellent project which is still in need of funding- their intent is to assist anyone who asks with parts and supplies as well as expertise. Please check out coming up short handed (the Robohand blog)

One of my friends shared this link with me and I think it’s an important and well-written piece: So You’re Feeling Too Fat to Be Photographed on My Friend Theresa’s Blog

Hmm. I’m sensing an encouraging theme here. Jen e sais quoi wrote this piece recently encouraging her friends that are going through a very rough time. Since I have several friends in a similar place, I’m including it here. You Are Not Alone.

Okay, I guess I’m late to the party, but I had never heard of Sam Gordon before. You neither? Sweet! I saw a clip of her during the Superbowl. She’s this 9-year-old girl from Salt Lake City who just finished up a season of completely kicking ass on a boys’ pee wee team. She’s got some crazy stats, and can also take a hit. Here’s a link to Kavitha A. Davidson’s article and the video on Huffington Post.

Finally, I know we got a little snow here on the east coast this weekend, but in Brazil, it’s raining spiders. (ummm, Darla? Are you aware of this?)

Happy Sunday

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If You Would Like to Break Into My House. . .

Posted on November 18, 2012 | 10 Comments

If I really get on a roll writing today, a bunch of things won’t get done.

That’s been the theme of the last six months for me. It seems like CC and I had a month’s reprieve from being in production at the same time (read: a shitload of overtime for both of us) and then it kicked back up for him.

Huh. I just checked the calendar and there’s no “seeming” about it, that’s actually how it happened. Nice to know I’m not crazy. About that, anyway.

He’s been out of town a lot. Like, for weeks at a time. Many. Weeks. I’ve been running the household.

I can hear many of you married moms going, “So?” or “I wish my husband would go out of town!” and the like. Well this is a very risky post for me, not only because I am revealing online the absence of my husband

-I interrupt this post to inform you that I am, indeed, armed, and while I’m not as good a shot as him, I am decent enough and I use a bigger gun

-but it’s also risky because I am revealing the fact that my husband does everything to run the household. If the women in my town knew exactly how amazing he is, they’d be plotting against me, five kids or no five kids.

He does all your typical man stuff. But he also cooks and cleans and does laundry and makes the kids’ lunches and lets me sleep in. He can sew, and he can wire the furnace into a generator when the power goes out. He has power tools and one of his greatest joys is teaching the girls how to use them. He grocery shops, which I totally suck at.

And most of this year, he’s been working like ninety jobs’ worth of hours out of town and I am trying to fill his shoes here at home, and every day I sit down at my computer and think, if I really get on a roll writing today, a bunch of stuff won’t get done. Because while my husband can get a tasty meal for seven on the table in twenty minutes, it takes me half a week of planning to make that happen. If I don’t plan to run this household, I’m screwed. Or they are, depending on how you look at it. Not a damn piece of it comes naturally to me.

Like, I made cookies. Chocolate Chip and a few White Chocolate Chip. They were really good too, because I added cinnamon. Because I add cinnamon to everything. The kids were not impressed, but I knew that when they got hungry enough they would eat them. Particularly since there wasn’t much else to eat in the house. The next day I was outside engaged in a life and death struggle with the power washer  power washing the house. The puggles were on the couch at the window watching me. They disappeared. I figured they just didn’t like water aimed at their faces through the window. But actually they were gettin’ busy.

What was wrong with these four?

 

That’s two dozen cookies that you don’t see because they’re in dog bellies.

I like what you did with the cinnamon

 

 

 

 

 

 

I feel guilty enough for both of us.

Here are some other highlights from this week:

I never restocked the refrigerator after we had to dump everything from the power being out for a week. We’re still eating out of the pantry.

I entirely forgot to pick up two of my children from school on Thursday. Never even entered my mind.

I managed to get an entire month behind in paying my babysitter. I may have to take out a loan to get current.

We now have to bring the dogs with us on our upcoming road trip and board them when we get in Indiana, about a 12 hour drive, because I couldn’t get all the details squared away in time. Though in my defense, Jack had a strong hand in it by spontaneously developing an upper respiratory infection the night before he was supposed to get shots.

What’s that? Road trip? Indiana? Why, yes! Which is why again I say if I really get on a roll writing today, a bunch of stuff won’t get done. There’s a lot to get done to prep five kids and two dogs and me to head out. We can’t wait! We get to see my whole famdamnily, and CC has Thanksgiving Day off  so I get to retrieve him and bring him back to my mom’s.

Maybe when I get back I can restock the refrigerator.

*****

Meanwhile, back in New Jersey and New York, cleanup efforts continue. I got to see a former co-worker of mine yesterday who lives on Long Beach. We saw pictures and videos of the sea busting through his foundation, of the water rising up to the ceiling. His neighbor drowned in her home. And though he lost nearly everything he owned, including all the years of custom work he had done on his place, he said he sees so much good coming out of it. Before, he said, nobody would speak much to each other on the street. He only knew a few of his neighbors. Now everybody knows each other, they ask how they’re doing; they pitch in and help out.

More train lines are back up and running. Oddly, it made my commute worse, as there are now no trains between 10:14pm and midnight to where I’m going. I’m sure there’s a valid reason for it. I mean, the freaking land that many of the tracks are on washed away. The people along those lines were scrambling every day to try and find a way into work, and many of them still are. A friend of mine who also commutes explained it to his little boy like this: You know how you have your toy trains on your train table? And sometimes the tracks get moved and you have to put them back so the trains will run? Well, here, the train table washed away. He said his mouth dropped open.

And say what you will about Snookie, but she and her guidos/ettes raised a million bucks for their shore town. She was also at the telethon we performed on, early in the morning, answering phones. In Snookie-shoes.

Keep those positive stories coming. We all need them. I opened up the Sunday paper last week and just wept.

By the way? The gas rationing thing totally worked. Granted, getting more stations on line with power and more gasoline helped. But in a week we went from waiting in a line after midnight for two and half hours to no lines.

******

Here are your links:

So my babysitter (the one I owe all the money to) informed me that I really should investigate whether there was a seatbelt law for dogs because she saw something posted at the pet store.

She has sugar gliders. I love her.

Me: That’s stupid. I’m not getting freaking seatbelts for the puggles.

Her: Yeah but I heard it’s like a $250 fine if you get pulled over.

Me: If we get pulled over I’ll have #4 shove them down inside a sleeping bag.

I dutifully googled and the first hit I got was this article: Christie Says No ‘Stupid’ Seat Belt Law For Dogs In New Jersey

I love it when I quote Chris Christie without even realizing it.

This is funny. REALLY funny. The Hater’s Guide to the Williams-Sonoma Catalogue. Thanks Michelle for the link.

From the Star-Ledger: New Jersey’s Unsung Heroes of Hurricane Sandy

I just spent an hour looking for an article about gratitude that conveyed what I feel about it (that’s the equivalent of two loads of laundry started, for those of you playing along at home). I found it: Giving Thanks from Woman’s Day.

And let’s close this Sunday post out with a link I found on The Bloggess to a 1984 video clip from the Today Show about a toaster possessed by Satan. It Makes Good Toast.

******

PS: If you are, in fact, going to break into my house, could you please throw a load of towels in the washer? They’re going to moulder while I’m gone. Help yourself to the lemons in the fridge. There’s like, forty in there. Lemons are unfazed by power outages. They’re lonely.

Happy Sunday.

 

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