My kid, the hero

My son and I adopted two kittens on Saturday!

And that was basically the highlight of my weekend. There are few highlights in my work-filled life, as you can no doubt tell by reading this blog. My week pretty much starts Sunday afternoon at the restaurant and ends Friday night, again at the restaurant, interrupted only by time at the office and an hour or two of television and conversation with the kid when I get home. Save for the occasional dinner or drinks with friends and that little bank-robbing gig I have on the side, the only real highlights, the two things I look forward to with any sort of fervor are Thursday nights when The Office and 30 Rock are on, and Monday night, when I come home after my fourteen hour day and watch Heroes.


It's an exciting life, I know.


In order to catch Heroes though, I have to depend on my son to tape it. Yes, tape. We are one of the last families to still own and actually use a vcr. And because I have still not unpacked all the boxes from our move, I haven't yet found the remote control for said vcr. I did the responsible thing and packed all remotes in one box before the move. I even marked the box to avoid all of this hunting, but when I unpacked the box I found controls for the tv, my son's tv, the stereo, an air conditioner I no longer own, another stereo, an old dvd player that no longer works, my son's PS2, another remote for the tv, and an orb-shaped remote control with two buttons. I have no idea what it operates. But no vcr remote, which means I can't use the timer function on the vcr.


Thus, I am dependent on my son to turn on the machine and hit the record button at 9pm each Monday evening. This sounds like a simple enough task . . .


Last night the restaurant was dead so I was cut from the floor early, early enough to make it home by nine. But the kid was running low on deoderant (again, my life is exciting) and he'd used up all the ketchup and so had refused to eat anything in the house for two days, so I stopped at the grocery store on my way home. And I'd had to pick him up early from school yesterday because his "stomach was about to explode" which I think was code for "I want to go home and play with the kittens," but I bought it, and since he'd been "sick" all day, I ran through the drivethru because he'd said something about wanting french fries the night before. And I stopped to fill up with gas and picked him up a soda. Because he's my son. And I love him. And I do things for him. Because I care.


And when I made it home a few minutes before ten, I handed off all his goodies and settled into my chair, ready to stare at my favorite flashing lights. And he stared at me in horror when I asked him to put the tape in for me.


I just sighed.


He moped around the house for a few minutes, pretending to feel guilty for depriving me of my few moments of weekly joy. He even went so far as to pretend he wasn't interested in the fast food I brought home for him. I assured him that I wasn't mad (I wasn't) and finally convinced him to eat. After several minutes of silence, he offered the following excuse:


"It wasn't my fault," he said. "I was tired. And I fell asleep because the cats wouldn't get up from my lap."


I didn't buy it, but I told him it was fine and to stop obsessing. I really didn't want him to feel bad about it. I was annoyed, and I may joke around, but I don't want him to carry around a bunch of guilt. And it was, after all, just a tv show. I told him I'd watch it Saturday when they play it again. I would just have to avoid any spoilers online this week (I did not. I promptly logged in to tvguide.com to read a recap when I got to work. I suck).


So we went about our night, talked about his (half)day at school, about my night at the restaurant, about the newest video game he has to get for his sometimes-working XBox. But mostly, we sat around and watched the kittens play with a new toy I picked up at the grocery store. And there's something about watching ten-week-old kittens chase a feather on a stick and pounce on each other and roll around on the carpet that just makes everything all right. We sat in our chairs and stared at them, both of us grinning, mesmerized by these tiny, ferocious beasts, and the kid finally let go of his guilt.


Then he turned to me and said, "We could just watch them all day. We don't even need a tv."


And I must have had some stupid look on my face that reminded him about my forgotten recording because he blushed and looked down at the ground and said, "Well . . . "

dhf and the newbies

Turnover in a restaurant such as the one in which I work is high. Anyone who works in any sort of retail or service position will probably echo this statement. This is true for many reasons – the main being low pay and having to put up with unreasonable customers. These are two reasons I don’t want to wait tables, but unlike the college students still living at home and the suburban moms who are just working to get a few hours away from the kids, I have no choice. I wait tables because I need the money. I wait tables because my son expects to eat dinner every night. Spoiled brat.

Anyway, turnover is high. Of the original sixty or so servers I trained with before the store opened last February, I am one of maybe ten left. There are probably only four of us left working the night shifts. Servers don’t last at my restaurant. What this means is that every few weeks I show up on a Monday evening to work with a new batch of co-workers, of which only two, maybe three, will still be working with me in another three weeks. Some won’t last that long. Some won’t be back on Tuesday. One might even walk out mid-shift. You just never know.

Working with so many new employees, some who have never before waited tables, makes the job difficult. Although I’ve never been asked to directly train anyone (partly because of the hours I’m available), those of us who’ve been there a while are constantly placed in the position of coaching the newbies. They need to know how to ring in a salad with no tomatoes. They need help substituting hash browns for fried apples. They need to be reminded to put ‘out’ on their bread and soups so we don’t run it out again with their food. They need to be reminded to spot seat, spot seat, and spot seat. And all of this would be fine, it would be no big deal at all really, if it didn’t mean taking time away from my tables to help out.

This Monday was the same as most – one other server who started with me and one who’s been there a couple months but who’s waited before and is awesome, and five or six who have been there no more than two weeks. Mondays are usually a bit slower than the rest of the week and a nice break from Sundays, which are crazy busy with the pre- and post-church crowd.

But we got in a party of twelve and a party of twenty at the same time, right in the middle of our dinner rush. The manager gave the twelve top to two of the new servers and split the twenty into two ten tops, giving one to me and the other to the other more experienced server. I had three other tables including one in the smoking section at the time, so it was a little hectic, but things were going smoothly. Then another party came in.

Since I’m one of this particular manager’s go-to people (his words), he sat them at three tables – two of which were in my section and one in another newbies’. We only had two grill cooks in that night and they were slammed with the three big tables we had just put in, plus all the other tables in the restaurant, so I greeted the new table, introduced myself, and in order to stall a little and give the grill some time, told them I had a large order to put in and that I’d be back to get their drink orders in a just a few minutes. They seemed agreeable and went about chatting, and I headed to the kitchen to get salads and bread for my first ten top.

When I came back out to the diningroom, there was one of the newbies at my table, taking their drink order. Already. Then I checked the board, thinking maybe that the third table was in her section. When a party is sat across tables like that, and the tables are in different servers’ sections we can either split the party (and the tip) or trade the party for the next table we get sat in our section. It’s not even an unwritten rule – it’s in our handbook. Tables are like real estate. We own them. We keep them up. And once the hostess has rented them out for us, we take care of the tenants and collect the rent.

But the third table wasn’t even in this newbies’ section. It belonged to someone else. So when she came back to the kitchen with the drink order, I walked over to her and said, “That party is in my section, so I’ll help you with it. I already greeted them and we were trying to stall them to let the grill catch up.”

I thought this was reasonable. I thought I said this politely, as opposed to something like bitch, that’s my table, what the hell are you doing?

Apparently, I was wrong.

The newbie snapped. “Well, just take it then!”

“Uhm, no,” I said. “We can split it. [The manager] sat them in my section for a reason (because you’re new and can’t handle your four-tops, let alone a twelve), so I’ll just help you.”

“Just take it,” she said again.

I reiterated that I wasn’t trying to be a bitch, but two-thirds of the party was in my section and we could split it.

She rolled her eyes and agreed.

Then the manager asked why we were splitting the table when it wasn’t even in her section. I told him I didn’t know and he moved another newbie over to help me (the one who actually had that table), so the original newbie walked off in a huff.

The second newbie and I took the drinks out and started getting orders from the twelve-top. I took my two tables and she took hers. Then she handed me the order slip and as I stepped up to the micros to put it in, the first newbie and another told me my ten-tops’ food was ready and they started out the door with the trays. I grabbed the third tray, assuming they had checked to make sure everything was there and walked out to the table. I started passing out the food only to discover that I was missing grits for two orders and one sandwich had mayo when there wasn’t supposed to be mayo and two entire meals were not even on the tray.

I was, to say the least, a little irritated by this point. Not only had another server tried to steal my table and been an ass to me about doing so, but now they had sent me out to a table, a big table, potentially worth big tip money, with trays that hadn’t even been checked, making me look like a fool. I rushed back into the kitchen and called for the food I was missing. And I complained. Not at anyone directly. But I was frustrated, and I said, so all the new people could hear, “If you’re going to set up a tray, make sure everything is on it. Otherwise, don’t bother.”

And of course, we’re all expected to run trays, so not running isn’t an option, so what I really meant was, “Get your shit together!”

While I was rushing around getting the missing meals and a new bun for the messed up sandwich and grits and a manager to visit the table and pretty much anything else I could do to salvage my tip, a couple of the newbies said to each other, “I don’t see what the big deal is.” I was pretty frustrated but didn’t have time to argue, so I ran what I could out to my table then came back and had to enter the order for the second party.

I put in all the orders for the part of the party that I took, then picked up the sheet from the other newbies’ order pad to put in the rest. Only she hadn’t done any spot seating. And I couldn’t find her anywhere. But it had been a good five minutes since we’d taken their order, so I just put the plates in and figured we’d auction off their food at the table. Annoying, but better than going out to the table to ask and letting them know we hadn't put the order in yet.

Then I discovered that she’d written catfish for one guest, but hadn’t specified grilled or fried. This was slightly more important. I finally found her and asked her about it, but she hadn’t even bothered to ask the guest. So I had to go back out to the table and ask the guest his preference.

Back at the micros, I mentioned to the newbie that she hadn’t spot seated, to which she responded that she wrote down the meals in the order in which the guests gave them to her. I stared blankly back at her for a moment.

I told her why it is we spot seat. Guest one is always the first person to our right. Always. If I know what meal goes to the guest in each seat and I have to run another servers’ tray, I can just drop the food off ask if they need anything else and go back to serving my own guests.

Why is this important? Because in the fifteen minutes between ordering and receiving food, many guests have already forgotten what they had their hearts so set on earlier. Having it all written down on a ticket, in a format all servers recognize, saves a lot of time. Time which I can spend at my own tables, earning my own money, instead of helping other servers earn theirs and neglecting my own guests.

The newbies response?

“It’s no big deal. They’ll get their food. Who cares if it takes longer?”

My response: “That’s fine. But I won’t split anymore parties with you then.”

This apparently angered her enough that she followed me halfway to my table, asking me to repeat what I said. I ignored her, refilled my guests’ drinks, and walked her back to the vestibule where I reiterated, “If it’s no big deal for you to do your job right, then I won’t split a table with you anymore because it is a big deal to me to get it right.”

Of course, I said this in front of several other new employees as well.

And then I rushed back out to my tables to see if anyone needed anything, since you know, they were going to be paying me and all.

During my absence, all the newbies formed a dhf hate-club. They decided they wouldn’t run any of my trays, wouldn’t refill my guests’ drinks if they had a pitcher already in the diningroom, and I think they even ordered t-shirts for their new club. Then they all went in the back to smoke and plot my demise.

Okay, so I could have been much more pleasant. And I could have not let the frustration of so many screwups in a fifteen minute timespan get to me. I won’t argue with that. I understand that they are new. I understand that some of them are not accustomed to the quick pace. I understand that mistakes are going to be made. What I don’t understand, and what ultimately pissed me off, was their complete lack of concern for having made mistakes or any acknowledgement that maybe they should do their job the way they’ve been asked. Because, you know, we might do things for a reason.

Also pissing me off:

The ten-top with the missing meals left me a twelve percent tip and complained about me forgetting their food.

The second newbie never came back to the twelve-top after we took their order. I refilled drinks three times, got them more bread, brought them dessert and to-go boxes, pre-bussed the tables, and reset them after they left and I still had to split the tip with the newbie.

The other four tables I was working, who didn’t get spectacular service from me while I was trying to recover the ten top, and didn’t get refills as quickly as they wanted (since the other servers weren’t helping out) left me lighter tips. One completely stiffed me.

Making me feel better:

I work my ass off at the restaurant and will help anybody with anything (despite my apparent grouchiness). The newbies will come crawling back once they figure out they sparred with the wrong server.

You can't bring that sheep in here!

So the ACLU has become involved in the case of a 14 year old boy expelled from a Detroit school because of the length of his hair. The boy, Claudius Benson, and his mother argue that the cutting of hair is forbidden in the Bible. According to the article:

Benson’s mother said she strictly abides by various Old Testament provisions, including a passage in the book of Leviticus that forbids the cutting of hair: “Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of your beard,” Leviticus 19:27

The ACLU has filed a lawsuit under the claim of religious liberty and says that the school is violating both the religious freedom and freedom of expression of this young man. And I agree.

But that’s not really the point of my post today.

The mother’s argument got me thinking (this is always dangerous).

You probably think she’s either a) crazy or b)some religious zealot taking the Bible waaay too seriously. But what if she’s not? What if there really is a god and he’s not too happy about all these close-cropped people wandering around claiming to be his followers? What if everyone else has it wrong and this woman and her kid (and a few people stranded on deserted islands where they don’t have scissors) are the only ones he’s going to let pass through those gates?

So I did a little research (also a dangerous thing), and I picked up a Holy Bible (and no, neither I nor the book burst into flames) and found some really interesting stuff. If the literalists are right, pretty much everybody is an abomination unto the LORD and there are going to be a whole bunch of dudes with crew cuts standing around at the end of the world, shrugging their shoulders and saying, “What the hell?”

To which some fiery deposed-angel dude’s gonna respond, “Exactly!”

Now I haven’t had a haircut in nearly two years (mostly because of poverty), so I might escape the wrath there. But all those small town barbers, despite their weekly sermon attendance, they’re definitely goners. As are all the women under hair dryers in those big New York salons. Get used to the heat, ladies. And don't even get me started on skinheads (of course, they may have a few other issues to worry about).

And here’s (potentially) why a few others won’t make it to the promised land:

Leviticus 11:10 And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you:

According to the next couple verses, the Big Guy doesn’t even want you touching the abominable shellfish. All those folks at working Red Lobster? Better trade those aprons in for fire-retardant suits. Live in the bayous and have a taste for the crawfish? Prepare for a pain worse than a thousand of those suckers getting hold of a finger. Like the way those pearls look dangling around your neck? Learn to hold your breath because I’m almost certain inhaling fire and particles of brimstone tends to be a tad suffocating.

Again, I’m pretty safe on this one. I don’t like sea food much, and aside from a plate of steamed octopus I tried while in Japan, I don’t think the stuff has ever passed my lips. And I was really drunk when I had the octopus, which I’m pretty sure is a valid excuse. Plus, I found it to be an abomination too, and think I even implored Jesus to help me find a napkin in which to spit it out.

Then there are a few verses in chapter twelve discussing childbirth. Apparently, when a woman gives birth, a priest needs to be present. I have no problem with this – there were already five or seven people in the room while I had my legs in the air. What’s one more? So a woman needs to get a lamb of not more than one year and a pigeon or dove and give it to the priest:

Leviticus 12:7 Who shall offer it before the LORD, and make an atonement for her; and she shall be cleansed from the issue of her blood. This is the law for her that hath born a male or a female.

If you can’t afford a lamb the Bible says you can bring two turtles or two young pigeons for the offering as well.

Now here’s where I’m in a little trouble. See, I don’t remember a priest being there, and those damned nurses wouldn’t let me bring any wildlife to the hospital. Something about health codes.

I also came across a few passages about not oppressing an alien who resides with you in your land and not withholding the wages of laborers. Oh, and something about leaving the excess of your harvest for the poor because they need it and because “I am the Lord, your God” and he said to. And there might have been something about newlyweds not being sent to war for the first year of marriage, but I’m not sure any of those are really relevant.

The Kid in the city

My son has spent most of his life in the suburbs, the only exception being when he was nine and the two of us lived with friends in a row house in Oregon Hill, one of the older neighborhoods in Richmond, and not necessarily one of the safest (though it's been getting better). That year was his only experience living in the city - a year during which we were dirt poor and I was in the midst of my own depressive episode - and it is the only experience on which he has to base his opinions of city life. So for the past several years, whenever we discussed his inevitable move back to Richmond, and even last year, when the two of us lived in a house in the Virginia countryside, I heard nothing but complaints about how horrible it was going to be living in the city.

In response, I've taken it upon myself to teach him the joys of the urban lifestyle. He has, for instance, completely warmed up to the convenience of being able to call for food to be delivered to our door. Not just pizza or sweet and sour chicken, no, he can order burgers and spaghetti and black and bleu salads. Okay, not so much the salad, but he's excited about the options, nonetheless. He's even developed a platonic crush on the dirty, tattooed, Fu-Manchu sporting Birkenstock boy who delivers his favorite burgers. And he's starting to warm up to his new status as a city boy.

So yesterday I thought it was a good time for his initiation to another urban lifestyle institution - the laundromat. Now I know what you're thinking. Laundromats are everywhere, you say. What's so urban about a hot, stuffy, strip-mall occupying washeteria?

Well, I offer you this, in the kid's own words:

"I love the laundromat [ed. note: WTF?!]. You've got homeless guys sleeping on the plastic chairs inside. Snooty white people and hippies going to the health food place next door. Strange men asking to bum cigarettes. A crazy woman talking to her towels while she folds them. And some dude breaking up with his girlfriend on the payphone." And I think he would have added a bit about the college girls in their laundry day shorts too, but he never talks to his mother about such things.

Anyway, I think he's starting to warm up to the place.

Why the FAA needs to manage the flight patterns of pigeons

Yesterday was a pretty crummy day all around. I was just feeling out of sorts all day, and having that why-is-this-happening-to-me kind of overreaction to everything. I, like much of the Western hemisphere, hate my job and was really feeling it as soon as I got to work. And I let everyone around me know it too, snapping at my least favorite professor when he tried to take over unjamming the copier for me that, "I can do it myself!" I was in this mood most of the morning and it just kept growing as I thought about how much I want to be teaching or doing something else, anything other than answering phones and ordering supplies and directing lost students.

Then I had to hike across campus to pick up a tablet PC from our tech guys, who I already have a secret feud with - secret, as in they don't know we're feuding - because of the fact that they've put some stupid software on our PC's that means we can't update or download anything. Anything. Like I can't even change the time on my clock because I don't have 'administrative privileges' to do such a thing. This of course means no iTunes, which means that my office music listening is limited to Yahoo! Launch, or worse yet, the radio. The radio?! I don't even know how to use one of those anymore.

Anyway, the tech office is located in the basement of the honors' students dorms, and aside from being a half day's hike away, the only way to get into the basement is to have one of the uber sharp RA's let you down. So I had to stand at the elevators with this kid (who by the way had the nosehairs of a decades older man and needed to learn how to prune those babies, lest things get caught up in there) waiting for the elevators to arrive and the students to empty out completely so I could take my ride down to the secret tech fortress in the basement alone. I shouldn't complain. This part only took ten minutes. Finally, one of the elevators empties, Nosehair directs a couple waiting students to the other elevator, he turns his key to unlock the secret floor, he hits the button for me, and I am on my way. Except the elevator doesn't go down. It goes to the top floor, where a group of students gets on. And then it stops on every single floor on its way back down to the lobby, where Nosehair stands, staring at the elevator, completely befuddled. And yes, I just used the word 'befuddled.'

Eventually I make it to the secret fortress in the basement, only to find that the tech guys don't know anything about a tablet PC for my department. I remark about how amusing that is, considering that they called to tell me it was ready just a few hours earlier. Two of them wander around the offices and labs, randomly picking up laptop bags and sort of looking for it and asking me who the laptop is assigned for and when it was dropped off, to which I respond again and again that it was a tablet PC, not a laptop, and I don't know when it was dropped off, only that I was told to pick it up just a few hours ago. After fifteen minutes of this buffoonery, I tell them that they can just figure out what happened and I'll come back later. Upon hearing this, they suddenly find my tablet PC in plain site, sitting on a workbench three feet from where I stand (maybe they do know we're in a feud). I get some bogus explanation that it should have been sitting on another table - the "pick up" table - to the left of the work bench, which would have indicated it was ready to be picked up. Then I find out they tested it and nothing was wrong with it; the instructor who sent it over was just plugging the cord into the wrong slot.

Over an hour after I left my office for a twenty minute errand, I made it back and was immediately met by two professors who needed manila folders (on the top shelf of the supply cabinet - "See? Right here.") and whiteboard markers (also in the supply cabinet). Then the dean's office called looking for the chair, who needed to sign a form, and blah, blah, blah until it was almost three-thirty and too late for me to take the lunch I had planned to take when I returned from the super secret tech fortress.

So at four-thirty, like I do four days a week, I closed my door and changed into my khakis and freshly-ironed oxford shirt to head off for a night of table-waiting. And as I walked to my car, I told myself I had to get out of this funk, that I needed to hustle at the restaurant and be cheery and wonderful and score some big tips, and I was just starting to feel a little better as I rounded the corner into the parking lot and out of nowhere a bird pooped on me.

A bird dropped its load on my clean, pressed shirt and all over one of my shoes.

The American dream ain't so dreamy either

At the restaurant where I work, there is a notable separation of employees by classification. For example, there are no female managers. Not one. Six managers and all of them are male. Three of the six are former servers, promoted through the company, and though the majority of servers who work for the company are female, and nearly half are black, all of our managers are male and, except for one, white.

Not surprising.

But what really hits me each day, whenever I have a moment to think about something other than who had a diet soda and which table still needs bread, is the status of the Hispanic or Latino employees in our restaurant. None of them are servers. And not one is a grill cook. Or a cashier. Or even a hostess.

A couple of the guys who are fluent in English work as back-up cooks. They make bread and soups and the foods that can be dipped out easily and slopped onto a plate – meatloaf, roast beef, macaroni and cheese. I often take smoke breaks with these guys, and one of them refers to me as “mi esposa” even though he already has a wife and family, with whom he was shopping when I ran into him once outside of work. On more than one occasion, he has made offensive and suggestive gestures with his tongue toward me, a practice which he quickly discontinued when I told him it wasn’t cool. He’s funny and adorable in a teddy bear kind of way, but obviously a cad.

In prep, the part of the kitchen where they make salads and desserts and “prepare” ingredients for back-up and grill, there are four different women, all women of color. Two are Hispanic and proficient, if not fluent, in English.

All other Hispanic employees work in the dish room. The men who have a basic understanding of English are bussers, but for the most part, the people in dish speak little or no English at all. Posted on the wall beside the bussing station is a Spanish-to-English translation chart, laminated, with the corporate logo in the corner, meaning that this set up is not unique to our particular location. Listed on it are basic terms and phrases that we might find useful, such as “caliente” = “hot pan” even if that isn’t the actual translation.

For the most part, dish employees tend to stay in dish and only converse with other dish employees in the break room, and though I know the name of every other employee in the restaurant within a few days of their employment, I seldom get to know the names of anyone in dish, even the men I sometimes tip out for bussing my tables so fast and helping me turn them over.

And it bothers me.

Without them, none of the rest of us can do our jobs. I can’t serve drinks. Prep can’t chop vegetables or make desserts. Back up can’t bake corn bread. Grill can’t plate food.

They are anonymous cogs in the machine of our restaurant. Separated from the rest of the employees in their little corner. Overlooked until we run out of clean glasses. And what they do in the dish room – sort out the dirty dishes in bus tubs, separate plates from wet napkins and half-eaten chicken and gum stuck to the insides of glasses by guests – I wouldn’t do again for anything (well, almost anything). They spend their entire work day standing, wet, elbow deep in the discarded bits of other people’s meals, and at the end of the day, when they go home to their families, probably in neighborhoods where they are separate too, do you think they wonder if this is the American dream they’ve heard so much about?

A GI party isn't as hot as it sounds

Years ago, when I was resisting brain-washing at basic military training, I often looked for an excuse to get out of the day’s planned activities – running, marching, standing in formation, being yelled at by TI’s, more marching. There were very few opportunities to avoid these things, but fortunately for me, my mother had gone through the same abuse-filled summer camp just years earlier, and before I left for San Antonio, had given me two exceptions to the cardinal rule of not volunteering for anything. Ever.

My mother taught me that a GI party, while it sounded fun, was nothing more than a complete and thorough cleaning of the dorms, followed by inspection, which no one ever passed thus followed by laps around the training field. So, for example, I knew before I arrived not to volunteer for the “bunny patrol,” which entailed lying flat on one’s stomach and wiping dust and hair from under bunks and lockers, not as the name seemed to indicate, standing outdoors and watching for fluffy-tailed mammals.

Two things that at first might seem distasteful, however, I should by all means take part in. The first, it seemed, was road guard duty at chapel. This conjured up thoughts of standing at attention all day beside a traffic barrier on asphalt in the southern Texas heat. I was skeptical, but followed Mom’s advice and volunteered. It turned out that being a chapel volunteer got you out of most of the Sunday GI party, since you spent much of the day at church, where the chaplains, unlike every other non-trainee at basic training, behaved like actual human beings, and treated you as such.

And the actual work we did consisted of spending twenty minutes of the very early morning standing beside a barrier, waiting for the base commander to arrive for chapel service so we could move the barrier and salute his car as it drove past. Once he arrived, we were free to come inside and have a soda or snack and sit in the chapel courtyard until the first service was over, until it was time to go back out and move the barrier and salute again. The rest of the day we spent standing at the doors, handing out programs to our fellow airmen as they arrived for the various denominational services. During each service, we were free to either join in – and some time I’ll post about that – or again, sit in the courtyard and chat with the other ushers. At about six, we all marched back to our dorms, to be greeted by our flight-mates who had been working hard all day, glared at us, begrudging the fact that they had volunteered for the wrong tasks.

The other thing my mother urged me to volunteer for was KP duty. I had watched enough Bugs Bunny cartoons and Bob Hope comedies to know that KP was usually a punishment handed down to screw-ups; nevertheless, I again took Mom’s advice, and when the day came that our flight was tasked with the duty, raised my hand. KP sucked. The actual work of it anyway. For one thing, those on KP duty had to get up at three, knocking out two hours of sleep, a precious, precious commodity at basic training. And we didn’t get to do anything glamorous like peel potatoes or spoon slop onto airmen’s trays either. No, we spent our time washing dishes. It was hot, physical, gag-inducing work, but the upside was that in between meals, after all the dishes were cleaned and set out for the next meal, we were allowed to eat.

Chow time at basic on a normal day meant standing in line, at attention, and waiting to get into the chow hall. During this wait, any number of TI’s might approach you, ask a question from your Airman Training Order (the military bible which you were meant to memorize), and send you to the back of the line if you answered incorrectly. Or worse. Once you finally got your food and got to your table, you stood at attention behind your chair until the table was full, and the last airman to arrive announced that you could all be seated. Once seated, you were required to drink three glasses of water before picking up a fork (this was to prevent dehydration in the San Antonio heat).

The food, for the most part, was under-seasoned, and all condiments and other yumminess – like ice cream and beverages other than water – were located in the center of the diningroom, where we were welcome to venture once we’d polished off our water. The problem with this was that the path to the condiment and beverage bar went right past the Snake-Pit, the appropriately-named table where the TI’s sat and dined and randomly called upon airmen out of their seats to answer questions from the ATO, and just in general, humiliate us. Few were brave enough to get up.

Besides the fear of the Snake-Pit was the fact that chow time had a limit. A flexible limit that was often set according to how well the flight had performed that day or whether or not the TI had gotten any the night before. Sometimes, all we had time to do was drink our water before the TI called our flight back to attention and we had to bus our trays, throwing out all the food we might have actually liked to eat, so wasting time by getting pepper or a glass of milk was too big a risk to take.

Thus, spending a few hours scraping off plates of barely-eaten food and wet napkins seemed like a fair exchange for three leisurely meals. And ice cream.

Billie Holiday - Strange Fruit

Just a bunch of random stuff

Not having anything intelligent or even mildly entertaining to say today, I present instead a series of outtakes – snippets of things that, for various editorial reasons, were not included this week’s presentation. Enjoy. Well, probably not, but whatever:

My apartment is still filled with unpacked boxes. I know it takes a while to unpack, but I’m getting tired of going home to bare walls and cardboard everywhere. And since I get home so late, I don’t really want to piss off my new neighbors by pounding nails into the wall and being altogether noisy moving stuff around at eleven-thirty at night (even though the dog upstairs barks when I put the key in my door and then proceeds to gallop up and down the apartment for about an hour). The kid has done a little bit of work, but mostly in his own room, and I’d prefer to set things up myself (he and I have entirely different aesthetic senses – he likes black, and skulls, and anime, while I . . . do not). I finally hung some curtains last night and put up a couple of shelves, but I think this disarray is contributing to the general malaise I’ve been experiencing lately.



Of course, this could also be partially due to the fact that I’ve been sick and pushing it a little hard with work and, despite my so-so efforts, have stopped quitting smoking. It wasn’t so hard the first few days, when I was mostly sleeping and when I was awake, coughing enough that the fear of more coughing outweighed my craving for nicotine. But now that the cough has subsided and I’m back at the restaurant, where everyone smokes and there’s really no other way to get a break, well . . .

For the first few days, I only bummed a cigarette here or there. And I’ve only had two or three each day. But yesterday on my way home, I stopped at the Sev to buy my own pack, and before I could even pay, some guy popped out of nowhere and said, “Want a free pack?” Then he ripped a coupon off his pad and pushed it toward the cashier who put a second pack in my bag, while I paid and the guy scanned my id and apparently signed me up for some RJ Reynold’s mailing list, though I’m deeply suspicious it was something more sinister. Anyway, I got my change from the cashier, retrieved my id, and thanked the man for his contribution to my inevitable cancer. He laughed. I wasn’t joking.

Damn free packs of cigarettes when I’m trying to attempt to quit smoking!



My son refuses to wear a pair of jeans more than once. This, despite the fact that he gets dressed at the very last minute before school and once he arrives home from school, a mere six hours later, strips down to his boxers. Maybe I’m alone on this one, but I don’t thinks it’s such a big deal for him to wear the jeans once more before washing them. I mean, they’re denim, and barring any spills or . . . well, other stuff . . . I don’t see a problem. Regardless, he does. And since he gained a couple inches and lost a few pounds over the summer, none of his old jeans fit him, and he only has the three new pair I bought him for school. So last night I ran to the store on my way home from work and picked up a couple more pair so I could get away with not doing laundry until Saturday.

My real point is this – there is no way he could do the reverse for me. I mean, first of all he wouldn’t. He can’t drive and is to afraid of getting lost to take the bus anywhere. And anyway, I couldn’t in a million years send him to the store with cash and ask him to pick up a pair of jeans in my size and expect that they would fit. “My size” would depend on the brand, the cut, the weave of the denim, etc. So why is it that I can pick up any old pair of 36” x 32” jeans and they all fit the kid the same (ie, they all hang off his backside in exactly the same no-ass-to-speak-of sort of way)?



So Wednesday night at the restaurant we were really short-staffed: there were only six servers on the floor (there are usually ten, sometimes twelve on busy nights) which meant that we each had seven tables, plus a couple in the smoking section. In the middle of our dinner rush, one of the newer servers asked another server if she’d watch his section while he had a cigarette. Most of the managers don’t allow us to take smoke breaks during dinner rush, and definitely not when we’re so severely understaffed, but the kid got pissed off when the female server told him she couldn’t watch his section. I was standing at the Micros, putting in an order, and I heard him grumble something to her and she responded that she had seven tables on the floor and just got sat again. She wasn’t smart about it; she just flat out said she couldn’t right then. So he headed to the back anyway, and as he walked past me, he said over his shoulder, “You can suck my dick, bitch!”

I wheeled around, and lucky for him a manager was standing behind me as well. I exchanged looks with the manager, who then took the kid by the elbow and said, “Come with me.” I went about taking care of my table, but when I came back into the kitchen, there was the kid still working, so I took the manager aside and told him how completely inappropriate that was, how it was much more than breaking our ‘no profanity’ rule, how it pushed the boundaries of sexual harassment, and how I thought it constituted a verbal threat against a female co-worker and that more needed to happen than just an informal talking-to. And I meant, like writing him up or something.

They ended up firing him for it. I feel slightly guilty. But only slightly.

So then we only had five servers on the floor. And minus the slacker, things actually ran a lot smoother.



I’m in charge of ordering supplies for the department at job #1, and rather than have fifty professors stop by my office asking for stuff, I have a sheet posted on the outside of the supply cabinet for them to write down anything they need and can’t find in the cabinet. I also check it every morning and restock anything that’s getting low – pencils, chalk, notepads, etc. – from the supply closet down the hall. I keep ten boxes of whiteboard markers of assorted colors in the cabinet, yet yesterday when I was in the workroom, I watched as one of the professors opened the cabinet, took one of the ninety-five markers from the shelf, then closed the cabinet and wrote on the supplies to be ordered list “lots of whiteboard markers.”

Uhm, what?

A post where I probably piss people off

So the other day at the restaurant I was talking again with the two grill cooks who are afraid of me. I couldn’t tell you what we were talking about, something mindless I’m sure, as they are pretty simple guys, a year or two out of high school each and not much life experience, so other than the restaurant, we have very little in common. But at some point one of them referred to me again as, “You feminist, you!” He was trying to get a rise out of me, as he does several times a week now, but I generally brush him off.

But he wasn’t willing to let me ignore him this day, and asked me something along the lines of why was I a feminist, what was it I wanted when, after all, I had all the same rights as him.

I sighed. Heavily.

His friend chimed in by rewording the same question, then the two of them stood staring at me, waiting for my response. I just shook my head.

Where to start?

First of all, these guys are grill cooks. And I mean no disrespect to grill cooks – or maybe I do – but they aren’t college students working as grill cooks in order to pay tuition, nor are they two guys who love to cook and are using this as a stepping stone toward a life in the culinary arts or toward owning a restaurant. They aren’t well read. They aren’t well-educated. And they don’t even care to be. They’re just two guys, fresh out of mom’s house, looking to work at the highest paying menial job they can find and make enough money for a nice car and beer.

And that’s cool. No judgment there. Well, just a little.

But the thing is, how do I explain a concept such as feminism to these dudes?

So when they ask me – no – tell me I shouldn’t be a feminist because “women have the same rights as us,” I know that they have no concept of feminism other than the ERA, and from previous conversations with each of them, I know that they are fond of regurgitating rhetoric learned from high school gym coaches, local newscasters, and their pastor, but they have never given much thought to anything.

And by thought, I mean critical thought.

Lest my moment of silence in the face of their question be seen as victory on their part, I ask them if they know what the leading cause of death is for pregnant women.

They do not.

I then ask them how many women are victims of sexual crimes.

Again, they don’t know.

I ask them how likely is it a woman will be a victim of violence in her lifetime.

I tell them the odds.

Then I ask them how likely a person is to be a victim of terrorist activity, in this country. I tell them the cliché – that they are more likely to be struck by lightning than die by an act of terrorism. And then, I ask them how much money we are spending to fight terrorism, compared to how much we aren’t to fight violence against women. And then I ask them why we were so willing to sign the documents to rush to war against a small oil-rich country, when we are so unwilling to sign the documents endorsing the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). And I tell them ours is the only developed nation to refuse to sign.

They don’t even know what it is – few do – a fact which only reinforces my point, that our culture places more emphasis on reactions to a hyperbolic fear of terrorism than to the very real threats in our daily lives, one of those threats being acts of violence committed against women, because sexual assault and domestic violence are still viewed as "women's issues."

The grill cooks’ response to my rant: “Well, that’s why women shouldn’t go out alone at night."

“Uhm, yeah," I mashed out my cigarette in the ash tray (yes, I was smoking!) and said, "That’s why I’m a feminist.”

You should check this out

One of my uber-cool friends has started a poetry journal. And no, not her own personal journal of poetry (though her poems rock and that would be fabulous too), but a literary journal. And she (and her co-founder) solicited some really great poets for their first issue. Here's the link:

http://www.diodepoetry.com/

Go. Read. NOW.

All five of you.

Compulsory education - almost no child left behind

So I spent much of yesterday finding ways to look busy enough that people wouldn’t bother me. Or at least that those who found it necessary to bother me would excuse themselves for interrupting (my trying to look busy-ness) and move along quickly once I barked out an answer. I hate being bothered. Especially at work.

But really, I was waiting all day to hear from my son who started his first day at his new school. Finally. School here in the river city started almost two weeks ago, but because I didn’t sign a lease on the new place until the last minute and therefore couldn’t prove residence to the new school, to any school, I couldn’t register him. Apparently, they don’t just let you ship your kid off to whatever school you find convenient – you actually have to prove that he belongs there, and this requires more documentation than it does to say, ship him off to war. Or get him a credit card.

So when I finally had a lease to show and knew which school the squirt would be attending, I requested his records from his old school be sent to his new school and I went to the new school to fill out paperwork and hand over the myriad of documentation required to register a child for free public indoctrination in the state of Virginia. This included a birth certificate (to prove he was indeed born in these United States and is entitled to a free government brain-washing, er, education), his last report card from his previous school (despite the fact that this very document will be included in his school records), the aforementioned lease or proof-of-residence, his social security card (to ensure that the correct serial number is recorded on the microchip to be implanted in his brain), and a copy of his shot record (to ensure that said microchip planting has been accomplished).

Failure to provide ALL of these records results in the inability of said child to attend school, which is by the way, mandatory (but only in the you-must-send-your-child-to-school-or-we’ll-charge-you-with-truancy-and-neglect kind of way, not in the we-the-government-must-provide-your-child-with-an-education-without-burdensome-complications kind of way).

Having submitted all such documentation to his school last year, I assumed this procedure would be relatively quick and painless. I found out of course that you can never underestimate the ineptitude of a government institution. Especially one meant to serve the public directly.

I showed up with said son on the first day of school, documentation in hand, assuming his records had arrived in the week and a half since my request. Again, underestimating. No such records and no child in school. I filled out another form, this time with his new school, to be faxed to his old school in order to request the records again. The woman in charge of enrolling new students said she would call me as soon as they arrived and I could bring him back then and she’d register him for classes. I assumed this meant his records would be faxed or emailed in a nice, tidy pdf document to his new school. I have to stop assuming.

After the second day of school had come and almost gone, I called the enrollment woman at his new school. She didn’t know if she had the records yet and that she’d have to call me back, and after taking my name and phone number, she hung up and was not to be heard from again until the next afternoon when I, tired of waiting to hear from her, called her back. Once again, she took my name and number and said she’d call back.

At this point though, I was on to her game and called his old school myself to inquire about his records. This required two phone calls and an email before receiving the response that his records had been sent on Tuesday (the first day of school, the day the request was faxed – not the day I originally requested them a week earlier). But apparently the school system is unaware of the wonders of modern technology, and my son’s records were instead sent via United States Postal Service. And not the one with the shiny new trucks and aero planes, but the one with the Conestoga wagons and foot messengers.

Still, by the fourth day of school, I assumed the records would have arrived. They were, after all, only being sent from one county to another. Forty miles. Another stupid assumption.

Monday morning I got the kid up, made the kid shower, brought the kid to work with me, and in between coughing fits, called the enrollment woman at the new school to say I was bringing the little monster in as I was sure she had received his records. She was not so sure and said she would call me back.

She did not.

Apparently, her phone only works for incoming calls.

By noon, I was suffering from full-on respiratory fits and dragged the kid home to our new, underfurnished apartment where I passed out on the floor until well past the time I could call this woman back. For the next three days, I made a phone call in the morning, only to be told she hadn’t received the records the previous day and would allegedly call me to let me know if she had them now. She seemed unalarmed that my fourteen-year-old was missing out on the first weeks of the school year, and seemed to imply by her nonchalance that I should be unalarmed as well.

Meanwhile, my bored yet happy not to be in school son kept me from squandering too much of my sick time on napping and complained about how he didn’t want to go to this school anyway, about how he didn’t have any clothes to wear, about how he wasn’t going to make any more new friends here, and about how the world had yet to bend to his glory.

Friday, certain that I was enjoying myself more than I had a right to, and desperately in need of nicotine, I dragged myself to work and left the child alone. I drafted a very pointed letter to the enrollment woman, detailing my every effort to resolve this records situation and get the kid in school, and I faxed it off.

Within twenty minutes I received a phone call. The records had apparently been placed in someone else’s box and that someone else had no clue what to do with a set of school records for a new student, so there they had sat. But now everything was fine, and he could come in on Monday. And by the way, he could just come in alone, there was no need for me to be there.

Like I was going to miss my chance to sit in her office and make her uncomfortable. Right.

Upon hearing the news that he would be starting school on Monday, the kid smiled and hugged me and thanked me profusely for all my hard work.

Okay, so he said something along the lines of, “Screw that. I’m not going.”

Of course, he assumed I cared what he thought.

I did not.

So I spent most of yesterday waiting for his phone call, waiting to hear about his first day, about how his teachers were all stupid and his classes were all stupid and the other students were all backward and completely unworthy of his time. What I got was this:

“Hi, Mom. I’m home from school. It was okay. My friend came over. Hope that’s okay. We’re going to the community center. I’ll call you later. Love you. Talk to you later. Bye.”

I didn’t even get a chance to respond.

Burn, Philip Morris! Burn!

Sorry for the long absence, but I grew up in a polygamist sect and I had this little court thing to attend. You’re right, incredibly insensitive of me. Especially when the truth is that I’m just lazy.

So, much has transpired since my last pseudo-post before the big end-of-summer holiday. For one, I spent Labor Day weekend at the beach. That’s right, the beach! And I know what you’re thinking, what kind of fool goes to the beach on Labor Day weekend? Isn’t it just full of all those amateur vacationers trying to squeeze a few moments of desperate fun/relaxation out of the last bits of summertime? Isn’t it crowded and noisy and just entirely unpleasant?

Hah! I say. First of all I say this because my last vacation was almost two years ago: I traveled to Iowa to spend a week with my son over his spring break. In March. In Iowa. Iowa. Let me recap: I traveled from Virginia, where the average temperature nears sixty degrees in March, to Iowa, where it is known to snow well into April. The weather did not disappoint that year, and while the folks back here in ol’ Virginny were enjoying days spent reading under early-blooming dogwoods, I was enduring a full-on blizzard, a term which, by the way, was first used by an Iowa newspaper to describe and Iowa snowstorm sometime in the nineteenth century. That was my last vacation.

The friends with whom I spent this summer, seeing how much I’d been working lately, insisted I come along with them for their weekend at the beach, and though at first I balked – I really should have been moving in to my new apartment, not to mention I missed out on a Friday night shift at the restaurant and my son was flying back on Labor Day – they convinced me that a free (did I mention they were paying for everything?) weekend at the beach was deserved by me.

So I went. And for three wonderful nights I got my own room in their suite, complete with surfside balcony and privileges on their oceanfront balcony. We played in the ocean with their kids, we flew kites, we ate at all their favorite restaurants (including one really plush one overlooking the sound), we took afternoon naps with the balcony doors open, and I sat in the hot tub and took a sunrise stroll along the near-deserted beach. That’s right, I said deserted. See, we skipped the commercial, big-resort, boardwalk baloney of Virginia Beach and instead headed to the Outer Banks. And I have to say, for Labor Day weekend, it was under-crowded.

Of course, all of that joy and wonderfulness came to a too abrupt end, and I had to be back in the RIC Monday evening to pick the kid up at the airport and then rush off to my evening shift at the restaurant. Of course, I didn’t realize I would have to go through the gate to pick up the unaccompanied minor, and I had a purse full of lighters. Now I know that last statement makes me sound a bit sketchy, but allow me to explain. I lose things. All kinds of things. Especially the kinds of things that can be stuffed into pants pockets and apron pockets and purse pockets and you get the idea. So I am constantly leaving the 7-Eleven in the morning with my nicotine, only to discover that I’ve left my lighter on the windowsill at home or the pants I wore last night. Consequently, I end up owning at any given time between five and ten lighters.

And since the friends I was staying with have two adorable little girls, impressionable little girls, I had to be very careful not to leave any such dangerous flame-producing tools lying around, and all of them (the Bics, not the girls) ended up in the bag I was carrying all weekend at the beach and then to the airport, where I had to go through the stupid security checkpoint to pick up the kid, and where I had to pause to throw out six cigarette lighters from the bottom of said bag. The scary thing is, when I got to work later and was digging through the bag for a pen, I found a lighter I had missed. A lighter the Transportation Security Administration workers and their high-tech bag x-raying machine had also missed.

So, as payback for enjoying myself for a few days, last week was incredibly busy with work and moving in to the new place and work and registering the kid for school and shopping for furniture at thrift stores (okay, that was fun) and turning on utilities and more work. Then Sunday I came down with a cold, which turned out not to be a cold, but the bronchitis and all I have to say to that is, “Screw the bronchitis!” Okay, in an email to a friend earlier, I used the F-bomb, but I’m practicing restraint. I’m trying anyway.

And the worst part of it is, and you all knew this was coming, I have to give up smoking.

Fuck giving up smoking!

I said I was trying.

Stupid pulmonary inflammations!

So I spent much of this week, sitting in my half-furnished, half-moved into, entirely unpacked apartment, staring at undecorated walls and the kid’s sour mug, and praying for the Philip Morris plant on the south side of town to catch fire and send tobacco smoke spewing into the air and for a freak wind to blow it north west over my apartment. Not that I would be able to inhale anyway with all the hacking and wheezing I was doing. But a TSA bypassing girl like me can dream.

What up, Iowa?

Y'all seen this?

Iowa court rules same-sex couples can marry

That's right, people - former red state goes magenta!

I am so proud of my home state right now I could just pack up my things and move right back there . . . Wait, no.

Letters of praise

To the administrator who is too afraid of his own employees to effectively administrate:

When my friend scheduled an appointment with you to complain about her supervisor, my former supervisor, you must have been blindsided. I mean, the supervisor had gone through seven assistants in six years, but I was there for almost three years, so it must not have been so bad. And she was often abusive in department meetings, so much so that most people, including your own boss, refused to participate in those meetings, but come on, she couldn’t be that awful. And while she may have had a reputation on campus as a legendary bitch, well, reputations are often built on rumor, not fact. So when my friend came to you, and told you how it had really been working for her, how the woman had driven me away, how she was now abusing the new assistant, how she was ruining my friend’s career with unfair and overly critical performance reviews and personal attacks, how she wandered into the office hours late each morning, reeking of beer, what were you supposed to do about it? Deal with the supervisor? Ask her to change her behavior? Tell her to check into rehab? Ask her to step down? No. Not at all.

You did what any suit would do when faced with such a problem – you offered to reassign my friend to another department. And for not sugarcoating anything, for teaching my friend a cold, hard lesson about life and telling the legendary bitch who has been making my friend’s life a living hell that my friend, herself, requested the move, well, for that, sir, I salute you.


To the couple who came into the restaurant ten minutes before close last night:

I know what you were thinking: they’re not closed yet. Oh, and look, honey! There are no other cars in the parking lot! We’ll be able to get right in, and it will be quiet and romantic, and we’ll be able to sit and talk. But I also know what you weren’t thinking: Oh, they close in ten minutes. It will take us at least ten minutes to order because I don’t know what I want – Do you know what you want? And then it will take them another ten or so to cook the food and we’ll want salads and soup and that will add another ten and then we’ll want coffee after dinner and we’ll talk about our mundane lives for at least another twenty minutes while the waitstaff cleans up the place and then glares and plots our imminent demise, possibly by food poisoning, because by the time we finally get our overstuffed asses up and pay our check we will have held them up at least an hour when, since there are no cars in the parking lot NOW, it probably means they could go home to their beds just a few minutes after closing time, so maybe we should go to the Ihop down the street. They’re open all night.

For thinking the first thing, and not the second, you are my heroes. Thank you. Come again.


To the graduate student who was the last one admitted to the program, after everyone else had turned it down, and who nevertheless thinks she is the shit:

You are my favorite. I know I shouldn’t have favorites, but I do. Could this be because I have only seen the others one time each, and can not distinguish one from another, so you, by default, must be the favorite? Could it be that in the two weeks since you first stepped on campus, you have visited my office no fewer than twenty-nine times, and each time you make yourself at home, dropping your book bags on my floor and sinking back into the chair on the other side of the desk, ready to hang out like we are old friends? Or could it be that you keep me on my toes, that you apparently stay up into the wee hours, thinking up new and interesting ways to ask the same question again and again and again? Could it be because you were the only one with sense enough to complain about the unlockable drawer in the fourth generation desk in the makeshift GTA office space in what was formerly a hallway, when obviously we have so much more to offer you? Perhaps it is the fact that you helped me to be a better employee by going to one of my coworkers and then another coworker and finally my boss when I did not give you the answer you wanted.

Or it could be that today, while walking down the hallway with your employment packet in my hand, I found myself unable to stifle a sneeze, and when I had to use your paperwork to block the spray, I had a secret moment of perverse joy in an otherwise crappy day. For that, I thank you. Really.

Conversations I wish I could finish otherwise

So it's the first administrative week and the first week of classes, which basically means it's the week that the former occupants of hell escape their fiery grave and drag the brimstone up with them. Okay, it just means the faculty and students are back and the "livin is easy" summertime is over. Either way, I've been busy. Very, very busy.

The first three days of this week I spent helping the faculty get ready to teach. They spent most of their days in meetings, while I spent mine stocking up on supplies, setting up copier codes, retrieving forgotten copier codes, issuing keys, ordering keys, ordering name plates, retrieving passwords, setting up mailing lists, setting up mail boxes, processing last minute hires, re-setting up mailing lists and mail boxes, and moving furniture. Then yesterday, classes began and the students returned. A partial transcript follows:


Lost Student #1: (standing in front of door with signs reading “2079” above and beside it) Can you tell me where 2079 is?
Me: Right behind you.
Lost Student #1: Thank you.
Me: No problem.


Mother of a student: I want to know why my daughter didn’t get into your graduate program.
Co-worker: I can’t give you specifics. I can only tell you that there were many qualified applicants this year.
Mother of student: Well, what am I supposed to tell my daughter?
Co-worker: I imagine you’d say what you normally say to someone who is disappointed.
Mother of student: Well, how many international students did you guys let in?


Really Lost Student: I can’t find my class. It says it’s in 2083, but it’s not there.
Me: Okay, do you have your schedule with you?
Student: (hands over schedule) It says Math 131 in room 2083.
Me: It says this class starts at 9:30.
Student: Right. I went in there, but it was a statistics class.
Me: It’s 8:45 now.
Student: But the people who are in there are from another class.
Me: Right.
Student: They all just looked at me when I walked in there.
Me: That’s because they were in the middle of class.
Student: But my class doesn’t start until 9:30.
Me: Right.
Student: So there’s another class before mine?
Me: Right.


Lost Student #2: I’m looking for 2079.
Me: Right behind you.


Lost Student #3: Can you tell me where room 213 is?
Me: Sure. Do you have your schedule?
Lost Student #3: (irritated) It says “Temple 213”
Me: This is Oliver Hall.
Lost Student #3: Then why am I in here?
Me: I couldn’t tell you.


Lost Student #4: I’m looking for my math class.
Me: Sure, what class.
Lost Student #4: I’m not sure.
Me: Can I see your schedule?
Lost Student #4: I don’t have it with me.
Me: Do you know what course it is?
Lost Student #4: No.
Me: How were you going to get there?
Lost Student #4: (looking through notebook) I wrote down the room number. 324.
Me: That’s not in this building. Did you write down the building?
Lost Student #4: No.


Co-Worker in charge of Science Day tables: Can I help you with anything?
Student: No. I already know everything you’re talking about.
Co-Worker: Great! The line for the Nobel forms on the left.


Me: Can I help you?
Lost Student #5: Room 2079?
Me: Right behind you.


New Graduate Teaching Assistant: I need a key to my desk.
Me: Those are hand-me-downs from years ago. We don’t have any keys. I'm sorry.
New GTA: One of the old TA’s gave me a key for the top drawer.
Me: That’s great. But I don’t have any other keys.
New GTA: But I need one for the bottom cabinet.
Me: Maybe another graduate student has one. We don’t have any. They’re old desks. I don’t even have keys to my own desk.
New GTA: But I need to lock up my purse.
Me: Why don’t you use the drawer you found a key for?
New GTA: I want to lock it in the bottom drawer.
Me: I don’t have any keys for that.
New GTA: Then what do I do with my purse?


Lost Student #6: Where is room 2079?
Me: The door behind you.
Lost Student #6: Oh. Well they should put up signs!
Me: Like that one?
Lost Student #6: Oh.


Student on phone: I need to speak to Professor Smith.
Me: We don’t have anyone by that name here.
Student on phone: Professor Smith?
Me: Do you know what department he or she works in?
Student on phone: Physics.
Me: You’ve reached the Math department.
Student on phone: Right. (Sighs) And I’m looking for Professor Smith.
Me: In the Physics department.
Student on phone: Right!
Me: Let me transfer you to the Physics Department.


Me: (to coworker) I may have to strangle one of my graduate students.
Co-worker: (without looking up from her desk) Do what you gotta do.
Me: Maybe a couple of other people too.
Co-worker: Your call.
Me: Just needed permission.

You're all invited!

So last night when I left the office to head to the restaurant, all I could think about was tonight. Thursday night. My weekday evening off. And I was pretty excited about it. One more day of work and then I would have an entire fifteen and a half hours before I had to be back again. The thought of those fifteen and a half hours is what generally carries me through my Wednesday nights, especially since by Wednesday I have already logged in forty hours of work and my old and highly abused body is plotting a coup.

"Body," I say, "if you will just bear with my one more evening and then one more day, I promise to reward you with rest. And Hostess cupcakes."

And my body generally calms down, calls off the resistance fighters, and helps me finish the work that will pay for the bed to rest in (and the Hostess cupcakes. Orange. Creamy middle).

But last night, when Body and I met at the negotiation table, I may have been lying. I don't believe I will be resting tonight. No, I will be going out. You see, I have been invited to a party. Oh, and not just any party - no. I have been invited to College Night at Tiki Bob's Cantina:


Yes, Ladies and Gentleman, I received this exclusive invitation yesterday. I, and the other 232 people whose cars were parked along Cary Street, received this Guest Pass for Free Cover at Tiki Bob's. Free Cover! Do you know what that means, people? I can walk right in to Tiki Bob's Polynesian beach oasis for nothing. No charge! So my seven dollar Corona, will only cost me seven dollars. And while I'm drinking my Corona, if the picture on my guest pass is any indication of the fabulous time to be had at Tiki Bob's (and why wouldn't it be?), I can take in the beautiful blue skies and matching blue waters lapping at the white sandy beach and I can hook up with hot bikini-clad chicks, who are no doubt going to be at College Night at Tiki Bob's Cantina in Downtown Richmond.

And here's the best part. You can come with me! Yes, one of my lucky readers is invited to join me for College Night. How is this possible? Well, my good friend CL, who passed along this invitation, was kind enough to give me not one, but two Guest Passes. That's right, bitches! Two Guest Passes. So not only can I get in for free, but I can bring a friend.

Wait. There's a problem.

The pass is for Tuesday.

Gotta work Tuesday. Damn. Guess I'll be sleeping tonight after all.

I have no title for this blog post

So I suck. I haven’t written anything in several days. Why? Because I suck. Because classes are starting next week and things have suddenly gotten very busy at work and I don’t own a computer, so I can only post at work where I am obviously too busy to post since they actually expect productivity in exchange for the packing peanuts (who knew?) and I would stay late to post only I can’t because I have to leave for other work; therefore, I have not posted.

It really stinks too because putting little meaningless nothings up on the web has been forcing me to write each day and I’ve been getting some revision in as well. Re-crafting (ha!) some older pieces I’ve been meaning to get out there, to submit, maybe someday be lucky enough to get published.

I used to have a computer. Actually, in the past seven years I’ve had three. I brought a pc with me to Virginia. Once I started school though, I realized how much time I preferred to spend writing [in bars] sitting on the campus lawn, surrounded by my fellow [drunks] students, and I used some of that financial aid money to buy a laptop. And the laptop and I were happy. We were inseparable. Most nights I fell asleep, fingers still on the keyboard, laptop on my knees. And in the morning, when I woke, there he was, lying on his side, screen all aglow with a mystifying screensaver. It was love.

I sent the pc back to my son and even set him up with an online account so we could email, but his deadbeat father used the account for porn and when the computer wasn’t powerful enough to find enough porn for him, he traded it in and got another computer for himself. So when the laptop crashed a couple years later, after the funeral service, I didn’t even have the old pc to fall back on.

I’m sure this fascinates you.

Anyway, a friend of mine, who got a ridiculously high-paying job teaching in the Middle East, got herself a new computer and loaned me her old laptop. It wasn’t my laptop, but we were still happy.

And when I moved into a new apartment after possibly the worst year of my life, and thought things were looking up, and decided to take a break from unpacking and walked to the 7-Eleven for cigarettes, I came back to find that my door had been kicked in, and the borrowed laptop was gone.

Along with my backpack. And all, yes all, of my backup disks.

Every single word I’d written during graduate school. Three and a half years worth of work. All gone.

Okay, well, I have some of it. Pieces of things backed up on my network drive at school. And I still had one disk with an older version of my master’s thesis. But all of the best stuff, all of my fiction, all of the work I’d done during the height of my productivity, while I was losing my apartment and sleeping on people’s sofas, and living out of a duffle bag, when I was feeling most alone, when the laptop and the words I could type into it were my only comfort, all of that was gone. Probably discarded by the bastard who took them, since all he wanted was a bag to carry away my computer. And he probably got very little for that.

I haven’t been able to regain that writing momentum. Partly because of work, partly because I’ve been struggling to get a foothold on things in my life for awhile now. Those are both just excuses. The other excuse is that every time I sit down to write, every time I put a pen to paper or my fingertips to keyboard, I face not only the blank page we all face but a hole where all the words I’ve already written, the words I’ve convinced myself were so brilliant I can never recreate them, have been sucked into nothingness.

So I’ve been really excited about posting here sort of regularly. Even if it’s trivial or silly. At least I’ve been writing something.

I'm so tired . . . But I can't sleep

I am tired. I know this phrase is uttered hundreds of thousands of times a day, but still I’m going to add it once more. I am tired. Twice more. This morning, when the alarm went off, I actually cried. Okay, I whimpered and whined. But then, as I managed to untangle myself from the blankets and sit up on the edge of the bed to greet yet another day of work followed by more work, there were tears in my eyes. And I let them go.

If it weren’t for the fact that I am staying with friends and would have felt embarrassed by doing so, I would have gone into a full-blown, exhaustion-fueled crying fit right then and there. But I practiced restraint. Wiped the tears away and got myself on my way and out the door and into traffic with the rest of the world on their way to work.

I’ve been working, between the two jobs, an eighty hour week for about six months now, but it feels like I have been keeping up this pace forever. And it seems unfair. I am pouting today. Resentful of all the time I have to sell to others. Resentful that I can’t even keep enough of my own time to get a proper night’s sleep. Resentful that during my lunch hour, when the rest of the world is eating and making inane conversation with co-workers, I lock my office door and take a nap because I need the recharge before heading into the next nine hours of work.

There are others out here. Others who sell more of their time than I do. Working three jobs. Working two jobs and going to school. And raising families. When do they find time to rest? How do they go on?

And why is our time of so little value that we have to exchange so much of it just to squeak by?

Our dance

Sometime in 1997, I wait on the other side of a heavy dung-colored door. Someone has to come and let me in. To only let me in and not let the crazies out. My son is at home with his father. I know that my mother wants to see him, but I wonder what it does to him sometimes, coming to this place where men with beards alternately shout obscenities and weep for their mothers. The nurse leads me down the hall and puts me at a table to wait for my mother. Around me in the dayroom, the patients twirl and glare.

She wears cotton pants and two cotton gowns – one facing the back and one the front. The last time I saw her, she was in my apartment with a homeless man who was wearing a pair of her shoes. She wore a cowboy hat. And a feather boa. It is difficult now to find anything strange. She smiles when she sees me, stepping out of her room and into the bright, clean light of the hallway, but by the time she sits at the table with me, she is in tears.

“Hi, baby girl,” she says. Her hands lie cupped in her lap and her shoulders hunch forward. This is barely the woman I grew up with.I swallow hard.

“Hi, Mom.” I want to reach over and squeeze her hand, but I don’t. She already seems so frail, I am afraid that this gesture will be her undoing. Instead I hand her one of the tissues I brought with me. While she wipes her eyes and nose, I try to find something to say.

“Brought you some movies,” I finally tell her. “Sleepless in Seattle. Moonstruck.” Her favorites. She watches them over and over. Her doctor tells me it is comfort for her, something familiar to grasp in a world that seems to be spinning away from her.

“I have a vcr in my room.” She sniffles. I think of my son, catching his breath as he tries to calm himself after a good cry.

“The nurses told me when I called.”

“You called?” I can tell by the way her voice goes up at the end that I’ve made a mistake.

“You were sleeping.”

“Oh. Okay.”

But I know it is not okay that I called and did not speak to her. I know that she sees this somehow as an indication that I do not love her. It doesn’t matter that I called to check on her. It does not matter that I am here now.

"I’m thirsty,” I tell her as I stand up.

“Do you want anything? A soda?”

She shakes her head. “I have tea in my room.”

“I’ll be right back.”

I walk across the dayroom to a vending machine and dig for change in my pocket. I feel the eyes of the patients on me. Coins clank as they fall into the hopper, and I glance around the room, smiling uncomfortably and nodding as I make eye contact with the others in their cotton pants and hospital gowns. One woman bursts into tears and a man wants to know what the hell I’m looking at. I press my selection and try to concentrate on the banging sound of the can as it falls through the machine.

I keep my eyes to the floor on my way back to the table.

She has stopped crying completely, this stranger who inhabits my mother’s body, and I hesitate for a moment as I try to choose whether I should move to the chair on the other side of her, where my back would be to the room, or if I should sit down where I was. I decide on my first seat. It is better to make eye contact, no matter how uncomfortable, than it is to turn my back on them. On anyone.

“Was the boy sleeping?” she asks about my son.

I lie and tell her yes.

“Does he ask where I am?”

“He knows you're at the hospital. He wanted to buy you a teddy bear.”

My mother smiles. But her eyes don't show it.

“Maybe I will bring him next time.”

“Next time,” she says and the smile leaves her face. “How long am I going to be here?”

I close my eyes and bite my lip. Sometimes I think I will never get the hang of it - this dance we do so often. My mother listens too intently to what I have to say, hovering around every word, attempting to uncover what is yet unsaid. I shuffle my feet, try to stick to the choreographed steps, and hope to keep her from whirling too far away.

Friday grab bag

I have nothing much to say today. The week has been spent working job #1 and then rushing off to job #2 and then to my friends' house to crash in their guest room before waking up too early and starting it over again. I am definitely burning the candle at both ends, and the wax in the middle is almost gone.

So in lieu of saying anything important or even interesting, I offer the following snippets from my week:

The director of the graduate program (a math professor) asked me for the numbers on our grad students. I sent him an email that read as follows: The number I have, including the two new GTA's and the six new admits, is thirty-six. He responded with the following: Could you break that down, please, into how many new and how many returning? I thought I had. I guess doing the subtraction was too difficult.

One of the servers I work with is an ass. Okay, maybe not just one. But this guy's an arrogant, sexist ass and I knew it the moment I met him, though I tried to give him a chance anyway. You know, not being too quick to judge lest I become a hostile jerk. He's done nothing to reverse my opinion in the last six months - he's always bragging about how much money he's made in tips, he calls the women he can't get along with "bitches", he never runs his own trays of food, he steals other people's tables, etc. Wednesday night, he completely earned my opinion of him. First, we were both walking through the server aisle, him behind me, and he actually said, "Behind you" in this big, commanding voice that meant he wanted me to move out of his way. I did not. I continued to walk down the aisle - I was working too. So he said it again. I stopped, turned around, and asked him if he honestly thought his business was more important than mine. His response, "Well I have to get something over here." I said, "And I don't?" Then he raised his fist at me. I mean, he actually raised his fist, elbow in the air, fingers clenched tight. And not in a playful way (Just so you know, I would have taken him out). Later, right before closing, he and another male server started to talk about the "two really hot chicks" at another server's table. When his own table's food came up in the window, he was out in the dining room, coming up with reasons to ogle the women. I set his tray up for him, but I didn't run it, as I was trying to finish my sidework so I could go home at a decent hour, and well, why should I do his work when he's out in the dining room being a pig (the women were maybe in their early twenties - he's in his late thirties). Of course, when he came into the kitchen, he complained about someone setting up his tray and being too lazy to run it out for him. I told him I set it up and called him on his piggish behavior. No fist this time, just a dirty look. Ass.

Monday morning, the fire alarm started going off in my building at the university, and I stayed in my chair for a good thirty seconds before I actually got up and left. Embarrassed to admit this, but I will anyway - I actually worried for a moment that maybe it wasn't a fire or even a drill, but that it was possible a mad gunman had pulled the alarm and was just waiting for everyone to step into the halls. Paranoid.

Another server I work with is a high school history teacher. We were talking about my search for a decent school district, and this conversation only added to my depression over the apartment hunting. We both criticized the SOL's and he said that he had to return for teacher orientation in a week or two during which all the teachers had to go to meetings and workshops where they would meet with some sort of teaching efficiency experts who would tell them what exactly they needed to teach their students to get them ready for the SOL exams. To quote him, "For example, last year we had this guy come in and tell us, 'These are the things your students need to know about George Washington: he was our first president, he was a great general, and he's the father of our country. If you teach them anything else, you're just wasting their time.'" Lovely.

And finally, I was out on the second floor walkway for a smoke break when I heard a barrage of random, yet progressive profanity firing up from the courtyard below. I peered over and found two homeless people sitting on a park bench, shouting obscenities into the air. Even more amusing - both of them were wearing bright purple hats. I took a picture with my camera phone, but they kept turning around, and lest they turn their verbal attack toward me, I had to snap it in a hurry, so the resolution isn't very good. Regardless, here they are:

I'm taking the cookies with me . . .

So I came into the office this morning feeling groggy and depressed. Well, on my way to depressed. I wasn't awake enough to feel much of anything. And then one of the professors came by my office and dropped off a plate of cookies she'd baked for me. Okay, so she hadn't baked just for me, but she was making cookies and she decided that she would bring a plate to me. Still an awfully sweet thing to do.

What is it about a plate of cookies from someone you hardly know that just makes you feel all warm and wonderful?

Since I didn't post yesterday, and I really have nothing worthwhile to post today, I thought I would put a picture of my cookies up, but then I discovered that I forgot my cellphone today.

Damn!

So, instead, you get the next best thing - an artist's rendering of my cookies:

Okay, so I pinched the cookie image off the web and Photoshopped it. Perhaps I should actually draw my own cookies:

Yes, they have smiley faces on them! How could a plate of gifted, smiley face cookies not make you smile yourself? I haven't eaten any of them yet. They're too adorable. Besides, if I eat these cookies, I will look like this:

(Yes, that is a proportional drawing of my clown feet. Oh, my hands too. I have giant hands. Like in that Seinfeld episode. Man hands. I could crack a lobster with these babies. Not that I would crack lobster: I don't particularly care for lobster. I mean, for eating lobster. I guess if I didn't like actual lobsters, then going around and cracking them with my giant hands would seem perfectly logical).

Of course, because I am neurotic this way, I am also concerned that if I do eat the cookies, especially here in the office, there's a chance that the phone will ring or a student will stop by just as I have taken a bite (shoved an entire cookie in my mouth), and in an attempt to keep from speaking with a mouthful of cookie and running the risk of a: sounding like a snorting warthog when answering the phone or b: spraying wet cookie crumbs all over a student, I will swallow too big a bite, choke on the sugary goodness, and die due to the fact that a: I am on the phone, mouthful of cookie, with a blocked airway and unable to communicate my need for an ambulance or b: the student who is in my office, in a rushing attempt to administer the Heimlich manuever, will trip over my giant clown feet, run smack into the corner of my desk, and be rendered unconscious, thereby leaving me to suffocate because of the cookie lodged in my throat. Then I will look like this:

So, you see, were I to consume these smiley-face cookies, I would die a terrible death. My obituary would read that I died because of an affinity for sweets, they would have to buy a giant-sized coffin to bury my fat ass, and all the people who made fun of my in high school would get a good laugh at my expense. Yet again. And because of my past transgressions, and the fact that I am a smoking, lesbian-loving, radical feminist, socialist hippie, I would, according to my grandmother and minister uncles, end up in hell:

And no, that's not a tiny devil in the corner, that's a lobster because as we all know, lobsters are unclean and have no chance of entering heaven when they pass on.

So I would die, humiliated, and suffer eternal damnation. All because some horrid professor stayed up last night, plotting my demise (probably because I didn't order the right kind of chalk or scented white-board markers), and baked me cookies, knowing that I would be unable to resist temptation.

Well, cookie-baker, I have news for you! I can resist your cookies. I say NO to the cookies. I will not taste . . .

Oh, wait, I just remembered I left my cell phone in the car!

Hold on while I upload the image . . .

Wonderful, smiley-face cookies baked just for me:

(Oh, and for the record, this is what I look like now, without eating cookies:)