Oh. My. Holy. Jesus.

I had just reached that particular point in tiredness when one says "to hell with the second half of that 40 in my fridge, it's time for bed!"

I'd taken off my glasses and gone to use the bathroom and, as I was coming out of the door, I happened to glance up toward the ceiling of the livingroom and I thought to myself, "Hmmm... what is that dark spot up there on my wall?"

I put on my glasses.

This... was a bad idea.

For the dark spot lurking on my wall just below the ceiling... was the biggest motherfucking cockroach I have ever seen.

Black as midnight and larger than some of the mice my cat has slaughtered, I watched, awestruck, as it slowly made its way along the wall to the corner, and then began to descend.

My first instinct was, of course, to grab my camera from the coffee table and attempt to photograph this minion of Satan, lest the world at large think I was exaggerating.

Unfortunately, due to exhaustion (and the first half of that 40 of Budweiser, now happily at rest in my stomach), I failed in this endeavor, and as my unwelcome guest came closer to disappearing behind the cabinet of my secretary desk (and allowing my imagination to relegate it to such locations as, oh, let's just say, my face), I realized that something had to be done.

Go ahead and substitute "thrown" for "done" and you can imagine what happened next.

I searched frantically for a launchable item that could thwart my enemy without damaging my walls or, more importantly, the glass-fronted cabinet of my desk (really, my own foresight in the presence of such menace amazes me). After discarding both a J. Crew flip-flop and a Nike Air-Rift sneaker as being too bulky, I settled on an American Eagle ballet flat (though let it be known that mine was pink), and took aim at my foe.

To my credit, considering that a.) I'm exhausted and tipsy, and b.) my hand-eye coordination, when it comes to projectiles, is lousy, I came remarkably close to exploding that roach with a single act of footwear.

Unfortunately, I was about an inch shy of my target, the shoe now lies atop my cabinet (where it will most likely remain until I move), and the roach has tumbled to god knows where, and at this moment is most likely making himself at home in one of my sneakers.

Rest assured, no shoe will be donned unchecked for a very, very long time.

In the mean time, my day-off plans for tomorrow, which previously included only "loaf on couch like vegetable," and "wash aprons," have now been amended to include "get lazy ass to hardware store and buy screens for damned windows to insure that this ballet of fuckery never happens again."

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to chug the rest of that 40, jump at the tiniest flicker of every shadow, and have nightmares about roaches the size of my face wielding ballet slippers before holding my cat hostage and demanding reparations.

Damnit. I never had this problem in Brooklyn.

Perspective.

17 YEAR OLD COWORKER

I hope it's not busy tonight.

ME

I hope it is. Me and my bank account need it to be busy.

17 Y/O

Right.

(Beat)

So are you saving for anything in particular? Or just because?

ME

(Pause)
Um... my rent?

17 Y/O

Oh.

ME

My $100,000 in student loans for grad school... my credit card debt...

17 Y/O

Uh huh.

ME

Yeah.

(Pause)

Getting old sucks.

(Beat)

So... you going to college in the Fall?



----
To those using readers, sorry about the blank post. Clearly, I am a wee bit tired.

Really Universe? REALLY??

I.

Am.

So.

Motherfucking.

ANGRY.

Irate. Upset. Apoplectic.

The word Homicidal comes to mind.

I just got a call from the egg donation clinic. The results of my pap are back and I have motherfucking HPV... again.

I had it for four years. I had lots and lots of sections of my cervix painfully removed in a process called a colposcopy. It finally went away and I've been clean for the past 2 years. And now, one of the two men I've slept with since my last exam (neither of whom rated above "average" in the sack) has given me the gift that keeps on giving... in the form of painful and expensive testing, and even more delays in the donation process which now pretty much DEFINITELY won't be happening until after camp, even though I really need that fucking money NOW because my job sucks and we're barely scraping out $100 a day in tips after working 14 hour days, and we're not even getting that money until our paychecks which means it will really be about $75 after taxes which is way less than I was making sitting around on my ass on unemployment and REMIND ME WHY THE FUCK I WENT AND GOT A JOB AGAIN BECAUSE REALLY IT'S NOT SEEMING LIKE SUCH A GREAT IDEA RIGHT ABOUT NOW?!??

So now I get to spend tomorrow--my one day off this week that won't be spent in a cloud of exhaustion--going down to the Egg Donation clinic to sign a release for my charts, then going to the sliding scale clinic they recommend and signing up for a card, then going to their gyno department to make an appointment for the colpo (so I can spend another day off getting chunks removed from my cervix as opposed to doing something I'll enjoy).

And since there is no HPV test for men--apparently, we are the only ones who get to suffer--I don't even get the pleasure of calling The Contender and saying "Go get tested, Asshole!"

I would really REALLY like some good news right about now.

Battered

Holy hell am I tired.

It seems that, lately, the universe has been conspiring to make me a bad blogger. First, there was the whole hospital thing. Now, there is The Job That Ate My Life... to say nothing of my feet, knees, and hips. Ow.

Everything hurts. I've tried three different pairs of shoes, but after walking around on a hard tile floor for 14 hours straight, shoes don't make a lick of difference. My new Earth Shoes left my feet feelings lightly less battered, but the strap happens to rub directly across the spot where I cut my foot open on the bar refrigerator, so until that heals, they are temporarily shelved.

Today I am off, and while mentally I really want to go downtown to meet a friend and her husband at the Big Apple BBQ street fair and gorge myself on assorted sauce-drenched meats, physically I just want to glue myself to the couch, order take-out, pay someone else to do my laundry, and watch CSI: Miami until I go cross-eyed. So which do I appease, body or soul? Considering that the BBQ will involve lots of walking around, not to mention standing in lines, it seems that the desires of the two are mutually exclusive.

I'm off tomorrow as well, but I have to get up mildly early to go do my hours at the Rep Co, which I shifted to an earlier time slot so I can go join my friend at the Ballet in the afternoon. This also means that anything productive (laundry, washing my cat-hair-laden bedding) should probably happen today.

Something's gotta give, and soon. Granted, this job is only temporary until camp--and if I come back to them afterward it will most definitely be on a part-time basis--but can I really stick it out through July 22nd with this brutal four-double-shifts-per-week schedule? If the restaurant keeps getting busier and we start pulling in $300+ per day, I'll be able to convince myself that the financial aspect makes it worth it... but right now, when I'm making more or less the same amount of money as I was getting from unemployment? It makes me want to kick puppies.

If, you know, I could lift my leg.

Working Gal's Blues

Working for restaurant owners who themselves have never worked in a restaurant is a mind-boggling experience.

They wander aimlessly across the floor, completely oblivious to the fact that, directly behind them in the narrow pathway between tables, is a server with about 30 things to do, who desperately needs to get around them.

They choose the most inconvenient places imaginable to stop and have a conversation with contractors/friends/fellow-owners. In the only doorway to the kitchen, for example. Or directly in front of the service bar.

They'll try to hand a glass bottle of water to one of those friends, reaching across the open doorway, and after three servers burst through the gap between them, laden with trays of food, they still haven't quite figured out that it is not a good place to hang out.

They ask you to get them sodas in the middle of a rush.

They decide to hold your credit card tips until your paycheck, utterly oblivious to the fact that the chief reason anyone gets into this line of work in the first place is money. Caah-in-hand, unseen by the IRS, MONEY.

They spring this information on you unexpectedly a few days into the first week of business, allowing you no time to budget for the fact that you won't see more than a few random dollars for two weeks, because in a neighborhood filled with high-rise office buildings, everybody pays on credit cards.

Chances are, having opened a restaurant for the hell of it, being able to afford to do so, and therefore being entirely unfamiliar with the concept of getting by day to day, paycheck to paycheck, they don't have the slightest idea of the financial crunch this move puts on all of their employees.

The employees without whom, it must be said, their business would be entirely unable to function. Because the idea of these individuals donning an apron and carting around trays of french fries is laughable.

Not to mention working four double-shifts, currently clocking in around 14 hours each, per week.

Then again, at least they're actually paying us, which is more than I can say for the last restaurant by which I was "employed." (Can you call it "employment" if they're not paying you?)

All I can say is: business had better pick up, and the money had better get exponentially better, and SOON. Because now that I've taken a job, I can't go back on unemployment (because restaurants never "downsize"). If this place bombs, I am screwed.

S.C.R.E.W.E.D.

And that's a terrifying thought.

Older and... Wiser?

I'm not as young as I once was, in more ways than one, and not all of them bad.

I am off work today, thank goodness, after working two VERY long days at the new restaurant for our soft opening--where we have a limited number of "invite only" guests eating free food while we practice not launching french fries at people, and the kitchen tries to get their shit together. Now, a 13+ hour day is long by anybody's standards, but DAMN have I been feeling it... in my muscles, my bones, and especially my feet.

In essence, my body HURTS. And that makes me feel old.

On the other hand, watching some of the young girls (21, 22) that we're working with, I am damned grateful for the maturity that experience and life in general have given me. There are downsides to an all-female floor staff, such as the tendency to gossip and create drama at every opportunity, but what really gets me are the freakin' tears.

One of the women training us is French, so let's call her Elle, and all of these children have decided that she is rude and evil and they bitch about her behind her back every second they can, simply because she doesn't pat them on the head and tell them they're pretty every time she offers some constructive criticism.

Something that became particularly apparent to me during my studies abroad last Summer is that, as a whole, Americans expect to be coddled. We want our hands held and our asses wiped and god forbid you offer us any sort of criticism without softening the blow with a compliment (or twelve).

So when Elle corrects someone's service technique, or tries to show them a more efficient way of doing something... they cry. Or bitch about it and petulantly not do what they were told. Let's forget the fact that she is a.) just doing her job, b.) from an entirely different culture that has an entirely different approach to interpersonal relations, and c.) speaking a language that is not her native tongue. None of that matters in the slightest. She isn't treating me like a delicate flower and therefore she is a bitch.

It's really ridiculous.

Now, don't get me wrong, she rubbed me the wrong way for a day or two as well, but then again, EVERYTHING was rubbing me the wrong way. And in the end? I got over it. And now I think she's lovely. That may have something to do with the fact that she clearly likes me as well--most likely because I'm not incompetent--but that's beside the point. It's a fucking job people. Not high school. Or day care. We're not here to make friends, we are here to get paid. Period.

Fortunately there is another "old hand" on the staff, with whom I instantly bonded, who also takes all of the lunacy in stride. I'm sure a day will come for each of us when we totally lose our shit--because it's the service industry and that's just how it goes--but until that point in time, I'm just going to keep my ass out of the drama... and hope my feet don't fall off.