July 28, 2005

• What Time IS it?

  
  

  Okay, I may officially be approaching that magical point of "worked too much and look at the poor thing now."  I'm starting to not remember whether it's morning or night much less which day of the week it is.  Someone made a comment yesterday about getting an appoinmment wrong and for a long long moment, I thought that it was August already.  I knew when I started out this summer that I was setting a pace I couldn't maintain long term, but I thought I could at least make it through a few weeks. 

  
  

  I am in the steepest part of the downhill stretch now.  Past the halfway point and knowing that the boys are going to be back here on the 9th.  Red letter day that one.  I've missed them terribly. 

  
  

  One of the servers from work got married last night.  (So of course I picked up her shifts for yesterday, today, tomorrow and Saturday evening.)  See what I mean about that steep slide?  I've worked every day since my return from Iowa and more than half of those days I worked double shifts.  But I'm almost at the end of my ability to do that not only because the boys are coming home, but I'm tired. 

  
  

  Counting down the days until the end of this life's season makes me think with trepidation about what may be coming.  Though I've been pleased this summer to exceed the goals I set for myself in terms of finanaces, I know that when the boys come home and I'm no longer picking up night shifts and weekends the pace of depositing will drop to a slow crawl.  It's been an issue for me always to just take a deep breath and appreciate where I am rather than worrying about what might be around the corner.  And the unknowns that await me over the next couple months are little anxiety monsters that creep about and whisper frightening things in my ears.

  
  

  Some of my anxiety has always been channeled into a tendency to anticipate and think ahead which has resulted in good things.  I tend to be ... prepared.  But the obvious flip side is that it keeps me unsettled and uncomfortable about the future rather than enjoying today.   

  
  

  I know that I could drop dead tomorrow and then I'd have to deal with the question of whether I've chosen to spend my last days in a way that best expressed the life I wanted to live.  Well, I do feel that much of my potential is still far too much potential and not nearly enough actualized reality.  I have too many books in various stages of incompletion, too many poems that haven't gotten beyond the few lines I've jotted on an index card, too many books that are still on my wish list at the library instead of having been read.  (I did read the newest Harry Potter though ...)  I was planning to reread Atlas Shrugged this week, but picking up all these extra shifts means that if I'm not at work, I'm asleep. 

  
  

  I had both an unpleasant and an uplifting encounter at work last night.  The unpleasant one occurred when I poured a glass of wine into a glass with a chip in the edge.  In the dim light I didn't see the chip, but the guest sure did.  And it was bad.  The gentleman in question went straight to my manager and railed about what a horrible server I was.  Of course, I poured a fresh glass, we didn't charge for the wine, and basically did everything possible to make it right, but still it was a rough moment.  And it was a rather large ticket.  So not having a tip on what amounted to about 1/6 of my total sales for the evening really hurt when it got time to pay the bussers and so forth. 

  
  

  On the other hand, I had another table right beside the first one that was simply wonderful.  It turns out that the gentleman there had been involved in publishing and we talked for several minutes about writing, about growing up in the south and about what it's like to move to this region (and whether it's better to live in the Colorado Rockies or the New Mexico version).  They told me that they eat out all the time so they know what is good service when they receive it and that they had received excellent service last night.  On their way out, they left a compliment about my professionalism. 

  
  

  That went a LONG way toward soothing the sting from the wine glass incident. 

  
  

  With six shifts in the next three days, I have every hope of being into overtime again this coming week.  (Our week starts on Thursday).  And then my boys will be home the week after that.  So the long summer of working extraordinary hours is coming to a close. 

  
  

   

  • 9:18 am
  • 11 Comments