Job Loss + Tourism = Special

Not too long ago, I found myself texting a certain boy I know this message: “If you stop getting paid before I get fired, I’ll cook for you.” And that my friends, is what we call, a low point.
I lost my job, not ( so they say) because I suck, or because I did anything wrong (this I’m relatively certain of - even though I did steal the occasional avocado for my own cause) but because, basically, they wanted to save money. I can understand that, a pastry chef is a luxury (also their words) but I think a worthwhile one. I mean, everyone likes delicious things. I was upset at first, but now I’m on my way to becoming accustomed to the life of a stay at home mom with no kids. I’ve accepted that whatever treachery led to my untimely exit from my job is probably for the best. Especially because the other day I looked in the mirror and all I saw was… a rested version of myself. I used to wake up in the morning to the sound of my shrieking alarm and think, ‘Ugh…’. Recently I wake up and think “What should I do today?”. I think that’s a vast improvement. And then starting on Friday… I began waking up thinking ‘What the f**k is Aunt Polly doing?!”
Allow me to explain. When I told my mom that I was being fired, sort of kind of, but not really, she asked how she could help. Quick on my feet for once, I asked if she would come help me work on my house a little bit. At some point, she decided to bring her Aunt, my great Aunt, Polly. Polly has been cleaning houses, and cleaning…everything, as a profession, for longer than I’ve been alive. Polly is wonderful. She is as wonderful as she is bat-shit-crazy. When I woke up this past Friday, she was raking my front yard in her housecoat. This is awesome on several levels: 1) She was raking my yard at 8am; 2) The woman in question is 65 years old; 3) No one does that much yard work in my neighborhood - least of all at 8 am; 4) The fact that she not only owns a housecoat, but brought it on vacation with her. Today, I walked into the kitchen to find her on the counter vigorously cleaning the window panes of the glass front cabinets. She then blithely proceeded to dismantle the outside windows with a speed and grace that clearly meant years of practice at messing with other people’s houses.
There’s also the tourism. I’m a self proclaimed bad tourist. At some point in the tourist-ing day, I inevitably begin thinking: “Oh great, another freakin’ statue”. Aunt Polly is the precise opposite, which makes me feel…. Like laughing my ass off, and like I’m being a bitch, simultaneously. She began singing “The battle hymn of the Republic” as we went up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial last night. I snorted with laughter, and disguised it as a cough. All of this is made more difficult by the fact that my mom and I would have totally just painted my living room, and then blithely spent the rest of the week drinking delicious frozen alcoholic beverages, alternating with delicious iced coffee beverages, and getting spa treatments.
Right about now, I’m not sure what the moral of this story is - but I have a couple of ideas.
Option 1) If you lose your job, try and think of it as vacation on the cheap - on your sofa - while you wait for your life to shake out the next good thing.
Option 2) Not everyone is cut out for tourism in their home city, but showing your relatives around is the right thing to do - especially when they weed your yard, and compulsively clean your home for no reason.
Option 3) Everything is more fun when the right amount of alcohol is involved.

Back-log-blog....A loathe letter to Restaurant Week

Restaurant week, oh restaurant week, how I loathe thee.  Let me count the ways.

Allow me to explain - for those of you not in the hospitality industry, or perhaps not in the hospitality industry in a city that participates in restaurant week, restaurant week is a special time of year, that happens twice a year, that means a whole bunch of people descend upon restaurants of all kinds, and strike terror in the hearts of pastry chefs ( and chefs in general) everywhere.  At my particular establishment, we endured 2 weeks of this lovely extravaganza because numbers have been flagging since about mid-December.  So we prepared a small selection of appetizers, entrees and desserts ad nauseam for the entire time, for the bargain price of $20.11 at lunch and $30.11 at dinner.  

The important part to remember however is who eats at restaurants during restaurant week.  They run the gamut from the best (the simply inexperienced diner), to the tight budgeted ( the poor student who doesn't usually eat out otherwise), to the worst ( people who are just truly cheapskates and then expect amazing feats of service and cuisine).  Pretty much all restaurant week diners fall into one or more of these categories.  They oftentimes mispronounce things, like the names of wine, ( a past favorite is pinot noir pronounced "peanut noor".  It was then consumed through a straw.) or the varieties of fish ( salmon pronounced saal-mun, and of course ordered extra well done).

I've had all sorts of strategies in the past for restaurant week.  Viewing it as a challenge helps, timing yourself to see how long it takes you to pipe 100 meringues can be interesting, a couple of times, some sort of hard liquor comsumption is generally helpful... but then generally it comes down to one thing for me - the certainty that unless I get a new job in the next 6 months, I will be doing this again, in 6 months time.  At least it's predictable I guess.

The Valentines

Valentine's day used to bother me a lot more than it currently does.  But it still rankles a bit from time to time.  I am quite good at being single, have been known to show up to all kinds of things alone, and in general ascribe to the methodology that it's far better to be single than with a less than ideal mate.

But...

If there's one day to make you feel as though you've gotten the romantic short end of the stick, it's valentine's day.  It's not necessarily easier if you have a date either - because unless the couple in question are really on the same wavelength, valentine's day can ( and often does) lead to hurt feelings, mis-communication, and plenty of other things that are apt to kill off all those happy feel good endorphins you should be feeling. 

 

So this year, my tactic is to blithely ignore the niggling thought that I will be sleeping alone on Monday night, remember that I'm not really that romantic of a girl, and attempt to ignore all the chocolate covered strawberries I have to make.  I mean, it's really the valentine's day cheese factor that bothers me anyway.  All of those " Every Kiss begins with Kay"  commercials and hopelessly happy people giving each other jewlery and stuff just doesn't seem that realistic.  I mean, can't we get a romance paradigm shift here people?

To illustrate my point - the commercial with the guy who doesn't know what to write on flowers and chooses:

"Dear Kim,  your rack is unreal."  Fantastic.  I wouldn't mind getting that card attached to flowers actually. I mean, you'd certainly get the feeling that the guy was honest.  Not to mention, any girl who tells you she doesn't want to hear that she's got a great rack is lying, or a crazy femi-nazi...  I also think people should try different ways of showing their undying love.  Anyone can take you out to a fantastically coreagraphed 5 course tasting menu at the hot spot in town, but personally, I feel that nothing says I love you better than pulled pork sandwiches.  I mean, if you can blissfully stuff your face with someone without worrying about how you will appear, or whether they will still think you're hot afterwards ( or perhaps a long time afterwards... depending on how much you eat) then that's love.  I mean, the only way you can pile on more love after that is, obviously, ice cream. 

Anyhow, those are my somewhat scattered thoughts on Valentine's day.  For me, love = calories.  Preferably calories high in saturated fat.  Happy love day.

Inexplicable

There are many many inexplicable things in life.  Why, for instance, certain people feel like it's ok to play guitar hero in the middle of the night when their roomates are sleeping, or whether or not it's called something besides jaywalking if you run across the street while not in the crosswalk, or who, if anyone, buys those wierd comemorative coins that they advertise on late night tv.  However, in this instance, I speak of why that guy that found you so charming for those first one, two, three, even up to say, five or six dates, will just not call you back.

So just recently this particular inexplicablility, if you will, happened to yours truly.  Now ladies, and I suppose this can go for guys as well, I am one of those girls who knows all too well that girls can be crazy.  So I try not to be.  In the early days of dating, rare is the time I will call more than once in a row without a response.  Or even text for that matter.  Because everyone knows that reciprocity is key at this point.  So when all of that goes well for a while, and you sit on your hands, and you stare at your phone, and you wait for them to call you and when they do, repeatedly, get back to you, you start to think,  Hah!  Not an asshole!! Sweet!  I am totally going out with this guy again.  Then it happens, they say something, or they do something, or they think something, or perhaps you do something, in my case this is generally without knowing it, or sometimes not even being able to figure it out after the fact and for whatever reason... poof.  They're into the ether. 

My question then is what the f**k happened?!  You were pursuing me goddamnit!  You were wanting to take me places, wanting to fix things at my house, asking if I'd meet you at the bar with 10 of your closest friends, and telling me it was hot that I was independent and then poof.  Did you suddenly remember that in fact, you do not like tall brunettes? Did you wake up one morning and decide to devote your life to the priesthood?  Were we moving too fast and you suddenly realized you'd left your cojones behind somewhere along the way? Did it freak you out that I was simply honest with you, and told you I liked you, and that I truly like dive bars, enjoy watching football, can tolerate documentaries, and wouldn't mind cooking for you occasionally? Did the fact that I curse and have friends who are boys make you feel threatened? Or were you simply not as interested as you appeared? Did you suddenly just get lazy and think - nah, too much work to try and keep dating this girl?  Is there some other weird thing that has very little to do with either of us going on here?   Are you actually, this very moment, stuck in a snowbank somewhere?  Well, I will most likely never know the answer to those, or the other inexplicable questions.  But I'll live.  It's happened before, and not to sound defeatist, but it may in all likelihood happen again.

But for you, Mr. Noncall,  here is what I fear for you.  I fear that someday, perhaps a long time from now, perhaps only a month or so, you'll look either at the empty sofa next to you, or your less attractive, less awesome than me girlfriend, or your bed/car/boat/life that could have been better, or at least more fun with me in it, and think....shit.  Shoulda maybe called her back.