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.
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