In 1995 I went to Lollapalooza and saw several mangy looking kids running around wearing tee shirts that said “Everything Is Wrong.”  I had no idea what this strong sentiment was in reference to, and I put it in the back of my mind, in the sort-through-later bin.  If I puzzled over every shirt I saw at an outdoor summer concert I would be unable to function–why is that fat woman wearing a tee shirt painted to look as if she is topless?  What does B O B refer to and why is it on the back of a shirt? Why is that idiot wearing a black turtleneck in 85 degree, 90 percent humidity Ohio summer heat?  I digress.  I later watched Moby perform on this tiny little bandstand and was entranced.  Who the fuck was this guy and where did he come from?  And, HEY–Everything Is Wrong is his album.  Right on.  I listened to that cassette until it snapped (yes cassette you fuckers, on my Walkman).  And now, sixteen years later, I am here to tell you Moby is right.  Everything is Wrong and I hate everyone.

I know, you think this is just another waiter whining and bitching about their chosen profession, how all diners suck and blah blah blah.  No no my friends, I do not just hate my guests. I hate everyone.  I hate my family and my animals and perfect strangers.  I hate the police and the librarians and the people who invented human rights.  I hate customer service and automated voices and fucking phone trees.  I hate flies and bugs and ….. ok, I don’t hate dragonflies.  And I don’t hate my cats.  Or my son.  BUUUUUT, I hate everyone else because they are either the reason I know everything is wrong or they are the cause of everything is wrong.

My parents raised me in a strict household, where we did not watch mindless television or eat worthless fast food.  When I did not know what a word or idea meant I was taught to LOOK IT UP, in a dictionary or encyclopedia.  My brother and I played outside in the woods and built forts and caught insects and chased snakes and fell out of trees and rode our bikes HELMETLESS for god’s sake.  We grew up on a farm, working in the field or milking twice a day or weeding the garden.  We hauled wood in the snow.  We chased cows in the mud.  Are you getting it?  We learned a work ethic and a sense of responsibility.  If you fall out of the tree no one pushed you, unless it was your cousin and then that shit just happens so get used to it.   If you worship models in Seventeen then you better do your chores to earn your allowance to spend on said “fashion”–not pout in your room because no one else in your class has to get up at 4am on the weekend.  I went to undergrad on a full scholarship, where I had to maintain a 3.5 to keep my tuition.    I used to work at least two jobs when I was single, for money and to keep myself busy.  I also discovered that the world was packed full of idiots, which I would not have known if my parents were lousy parents, so I hate them.  Women who couldn’t change a tire, or fry an egg or clean a toilet.  Men who couldn’t wash their own shirts, or make coffee, or bait a hook.   Customer service meant stopping in the conversation long enough to reach for your money–no eye contact, no smile, and do not get me started about the inability of most cashiers to make change.  So I chose booze.  Wait, what?  See I could either go crazy in my new world of adulthood with the never ending stupidity of life or I could numb myself to it, or at least that is what I thought.  And really, it is aMAZing the things that do not bother me when I am drunk.  The person in the Home Depot vest doesn’t know where paint is at the Home Depot, oh well.  My guest wants a salad with everything on the side,including the salt and pepper, no problem.  I forgot to make my car payment, oopsie.  See I do stupid, stupid shit too and I hate myself, and it is always related to alcohol.  I take responsibility–my choice of numbing my brain down to idiot level is NOT, and never will be,  a good choice.  I clearly need another method, but currently I am consumed with hate for all of mankind to think rationally and this post is not about my alcoholism (although it is wrong and therefore on topic).

My latest stupid shit is getting a DUI and having to spend the next 18 months in a Safety Center hell, a DMV delight contrived to make you suffer so much you think twice before drinking and driving again.  These Monday night meetings have sent me over the edge.  I was holding on to a slim cord of hope but no more.  I hear stories of police idiocy  and courtroom horseshit and I am incensed….but no one seems to care.  Everyone in my group is a multiple offender and only one guy even seems upset that his rights were violated.  THIS is why I, guess the word, HATE, the expression “it is what it is.”  No no o onono oo.  You have a felony for spray painting graffiti on a wall when you were 18?  Fifteen years ago?  That does NOT give anyone probable cause to search your vehicle.  A DUI while in a wheelchair?  ”Hey, oh well, whatever.”  I just want to shake these people or stick an icepick in my ear or maybe both.  And I hate my husband, because he has been telling me this for years and I just skipped along in the misty belief that he couldn’t be right.

Oh, to quote The Matrix seems so….expected but those Wachowski boys hit the nail on the head in so many ways with this film.  I would love to put a piece of video here, but writing is my prowess, not embedding video.  Let me just say that my Morpheus has slowly fed me the red pill for years, and it finally took hold this week.  Morpheus describes “a splinter in your mind, driving you mad” and that is how I feel.  I  cannot stop seeing all the lackadaisical, non-logical, ambivalent shit everyone seems to do.  Everyone means 95% of my world, so if you believe you are in the five percent then you probably are.  I mean you were smart enough to find my blog weren’t you?  Anyway, here is a short list of things splintering my brain today:

Why did I just see two people cross the street two feet from the crosswalk?  You are jaywalking, you are potentially causing an accident and you are TWO FEET from a crosswalk that lights up and everything.  What, what are you discussing?  Dancing with the Stars?

Why did I have to stop for a woman with a baby stroller stopped in the middle of the street on her phone?  Was God on the phone, or Ed McMann?  In all honesty I would stop for Ed too, but I would get my damn baby off the street.  Not only is Ed dead, so wow what a phone call, but also what good is the Publishers Clearing House money if you and baby are dead?

Why is everyone so fucking defensive?  Is simple eye contact too much for you to handle?  All I asked was if you were interested in non-alcoholic drinks aside from soda.  I don’t drink either bitch.  Please, change your meds or just stay in your house.

When did the simple art of listening become such a task?  Here’s a lesson…..I ask you a question and you listen to  my question, then respond.  My 21 month old baby can do this.  My chicken can do this.  I cannot get my mind around this.

Why does my dog not understand no?  Anyone?

Finally, why do I have so many fucking flies in my house?  Although this week, these flies may distract me from the idiots of the world long enough to make it through another day.  So, similar to  my parents and my husband, Flies, I hate you but maybe I really love you.

No I hate you.

“If you build it, they will come.”  I request media on tipping, and the universe provides.  How cool is that.  A week after I wrote my original article, a local radio station queried “On what do Americans spend 40 billion dollars a year?”  Answer:  tips in restaurants.  If we go back to the Department of Labor numbers, one percent of Americans are waiters.  The 2008 Census tells us there were 303 million people in this country–2010 census numbers say we are at 310 million (seven million in two years?! ye gods). Let’s go down the middle with 306,500,000 and divide one percent of that by 40 billion dollars (radio source unknown) which gives servers an average tip income of, wait for it, $13,050 a year.  Hello poverty level.  I used to make $50,000 a year in tips; I know many people who still make that money.  I’m going to say someone’s numbers somewhere are incorrect.  The DJ did say that tips are the way waiters pay their bills but only after he repeated “40 billion! Wow!” Unfortunately, the average radio listener hears FORTY BILLION DOLLARS and thinks we are taking home bank.  Not the best media.

Last Sunday, American Public Media’s program Marketplace Money did a piece on, you guessed it, tipping.  Tess Vigeland lead with this:

“How much do you tip? 15 percent? 20? 25? What started out as a way to reward good service is now pretty much a given.  You tip even if the wait staff pours an entire bottle of wine on your head. So if your gonna (sic) tip no matter what, at least you’ve got all kinds of gadgets to help you do the math these days.”

The piece then went on to discuss the confusing tip charts found on credit card receipts, tipping out of guilt, and whether to tip before or after sales tax.  An interesting piece, and I was thrilled to hear it on NPR, but Ms. Vigeland’s opening did not sit well.  ”Even if the wait staff pours an entire bottle of wine on your head.”  I believe she was trying to make the point that one tips regardless, and used an extreme visual to emphasize that point but it came across as a bit disrespectful of the profession to me. Perhaps I am oversensitive.  My partner says “However she said it, she’s right–you tip fifteen percent when you walk in the door, no matter what happens.  If service is exemplary, you tip 20 or 25 percent.  That is PART OF THE EXPERIENCE.  You do not go out to dinner to create your own drinks, alter the chef’s preparation or stiff the service staff.  If you want to do that, stay home, pop a Natty Light, over salt your mac and cheese and kick the dog.”  Tipping is part of the experience of dining out.  It is not part of the experience of a salad bar, walk-through cafeteria, or Starbucks.  Tip jars enrage me.  The definition of a waiter is “a man whose occupation is to serve at table, as in a restaurant” (freedictionary.com).  Can you imagine the horror on people’s faces if you walked up to a table, slammed your jar down and said “Hi, how ya doin’?”  Yes, a jar is needed at a bar because the barman is running up and down the wood and needs one location to place his tip money.  But I digress.  The who, what, where, when, why and how of tipping is murky and mysterious.  I hope that through word of mouth, print articles, radio and internet that we (professional servers) can teach the dining public how it is done.  Perhaps we should start our own rubber bracelet campaign–ours will be white with wine stains, stamped with dollar signs and 86s.  Who’s with me?

When I moved to California over a decade ago I was taken to In and Out, and told to order my burger “animal style.”  This “style” is not listed on the tiny In and Out menu but there are many surreptitious ways to order, all spread solely by word of mouth.  Why can’t we utilize this method in the world of service?  A waiter’s number one complaint is ignorant diners–why can’t we educate the public in a similar fashion?  Why can’t we spread the good word of TIPPING to any and all that will listen?  According to the Department of Labor, in 2008 only ONE percent of Americans were waiters.  We do talk for a living, but even if that one percent told 50% how to tip properly it would not disperse like burger secrets, because the information stops with the “teller.”

When you say In and Out to anyone, they say oooh, animal style, protein style, 2×4, 4×4….telling covert tales to all that will listen, in every arena.  At work, at the doctor’s office, at the gas station.  When I discover my in-laws tip by doubling the tax, I teach them the proper way to tip.  But they do not go to their next golf outing and say hey, how do you guys tip?  Guess what insider tip secrets I learned.  I’ve overheard women in the movie theater sharing personal hygiene details that NO ONE should share (much less overhear)  but never have I heard one say to the other “You know my daughter’s a server and she says that no one knows how to tip properly.  How do you tip?”  I listen to NPR daily, and hear stories about every little interest group in the world.  I have never heard, in over ten years of listening, a story about leaving a gratuity.  Several years ago waiters country-wide frothed and spat when Oprah said she did not tip on wine–she later apologized.  Last year she was accused of telling her audience it was “OK to tip 10% during the recession” but that was just hub bub.  Oprah.com says she never said that and that she “believes in generously compensating waiters and waitresses.”  I’ll bet she gets grrrrreat service in Chicago.

I looked on the internet for guides on proper tipping in the United States and found very little.  The great and powerful Wikipedia says to tip 15 to 20 percent before tax, as does EmilyPost.com.  Before tax, my electric friends?  I pay income tax on my total sales, so I should get tipped on my total sales, which includes sales tax.  Mr. Peter Post says 90% of his audiences claim to tip 20%–simply because it is easier.  We have the degrading arithmetic skills of the US working in our favor, so there’s that.  Ultimately it is rather difficult, really, to be upset with guests who do not know how to tip.  No one talks about it and the entire business of service and gratuity floats in a grey mist of shame.  I would never ask my vet or my mechanic or my hairdresser what their “day job” is, but I have been asked that  many times.  I have friends who put their kids through college with their server incomes, yet our profession is not seen as a career.  Americans seem embarrassed to be “served” and cover that embarrassment with anger or condescension or indifference.  People frequently are unaware that the federal minimun wage for tipped employees is $2.13 an hour.  In California we make minimum wage, but tips are how we pay the bills.  I cannot call PGE, tell them that I loved the electricity they sent me this month, and think my statement is settled.  Many guests will tell me how wonderful I made their experience, and leave a tiny  tip.  The bill is not paid and my hands are tied.  In the PGE case, my customer service representative will still ask …”and do you have a credit card on file?” but I cannot ask a guest why they left me ten percent after raving about my service.  It is considered poor form to tell someone they left the wrong amount of money.  I had a table that I loved leave me NOTHING and I knew it was an addition error and I did not know what to do.  Fortunately one woman came up to me and said “Did we leave you anything?”  and I told her no.  However, if they come up and say “Did we leave you enough?” do you answer that honestly?  Enough, as in the grand scheme of the world enough?  As in I need a root canal enough?  Or enough in the twenty percent enough?  I’ve used that response before to great effect–humour is always the ultimate agent of ease.  But does that person go to the gym and share that tale with the person on the next stepper?  ”Hey we went to X Bistro and our super waitress told us that twenty percent is the new black?”  Sadly no.

TO BE CONTINUED…….

Why are alcoholics, drug addicts and miscreants of all shape and size drawn to the restaurant business?  As a member of this comprehensive collection I know why I got into it — great money, good times and a pro-drinking environment. It is a non-traditional job–no getting up at 6am to battle through commuter traffic to sit in a cubicle and slowly fade away into retirement. It is a night job–all day to fight off the hangover and all night post-service to drink.  You always find at least one other person to drink with every night so you can see your drinking as social.  Drinking is encouraged for knowledge sake so one could  (and one does) go to work with alcohol on your breath as well as drink at work and no one would care.  In fact, drinking at work has the potential of increasing your income.  Alcohol gives one a neural buffer, so stupid questions or demeaning attitudes are less annoying.  Lazy co-workers less irritating.  Guests often want uber-personality tableside, and alcohol definitely greases the entertainment wheels.  Servers make a minimum of twenty dollars an hour and really, we only work hard in spurts.  Alcoholics and addicts are statistically smarter than the average bear, and serving is a challenging occupation.  I get paid to eat, drink and charm and I enjoy it.

In the Napa Valley, restaurant staff  frequently have field trips to wineries and distilleries where we drink together in a “learning” environment with our managers and co-workers.  These outings are the height of hypocrisy.  In Cleveland, for example, we would rent a bus, go to a Cavs game, and hope to stay coherent until the final buzzer.  Everyone got hammered, hooked up, went out afterward, etc.  No pretenses.  In the NAPA VALLEY however, we are going to learn about wine and wine making, NOT to get wasted.  Riiiiiiight.  These field trips reveal the highly functional alcoholics of the herd (although if you are Hi-Fi, you already know your clansmen) from the amateurs.  I love watching the amateurs.  At the winery excursion everyone has their guard down and drinks more than they realize.  All restaurant people are devious, but most are only first level bullshitters (alcoholics have levels of deception that challenge KGB Cold War operations).  They talk big talk about their gardening and their families and their wine knowledge and no one at their table will ever know the difference.  But I work with them every day and I hear one or two things that make me wonder about these “perfect” lives.   Add a bottle of wine and a convivial atmosphere and SHAZAM:  I discover my general manager has no restaurant experience, NONE.  His parents bought the restaurant for him after his married failed.  I knew he was an idiot who tried to machismo his way though his blunders.  I did NOT know that he knew nothing about service or food or business, until he sipped and didn’t spit.  KAPOW: I see Linda, perfect wife and mother of three, “accidently” sitting next to the new manager, both over involved with the tour guide’s every word, swirling and sipping.  At the end of our winery excursion she tells her ride to go, and gets in his car.  TADAH:  Peace love hippy Tom brings his wife, who tells everyone she thought he was gay when they met and that if they didn’t have a second child soon she was divorcing him, oh hahaha.  They leave two bottles later and I can see them viciously fighting in the car.  In vino veritas.

The “learning” aspect of these trips encourage attendance, even if you have to work later that night.  This is where even experienced members of the tribe fall.  Once I start drinking I find it very hard to stop.  Tennessee Williams refers to a switch being flipped and it is true:  those pleasure centers are activated and all sense of reality fades.  If I am going to a wine tasting that includes a wine soaked lunch I cannot go to work:  I know I will continue to drink until I can’t stand and that will be my night.  I have pulled it off–I am not the super fucking hero of alcoholics, making great plans and following through.  But I did quit long enough to shower and drive to work, where I continued gulping secret drinks to get me though the shift.  I, however, am a server.  My manager tried this technique and lost her job.  She went to said outing dressed for work (clearly planning to drink through the”get ready” time), drank post lunch until she passed out (at an employee’s house) and when shaken awake–”you have to go to work”–she vomited for a good ten minutes.  She finally pulled herself together to go to the job, where the GM looked at her and said “You smell like shit.  Go home.”  Her job was posted on Craig’s List by the end of the night.  The entertaining coda to this story is that while she was a lush, she was a good manager.  She knew food, wine and people.  The staff liked her.  The GM who fired her was aloof, judgmental and hated by many servers.  He embezzled thousands of dollars from the company and disappeared.  He and his boyfriend were professional cons.  The owners were shocked.  I think it justice:  they should have, by California law,  offered the good manager help, not kicked her to the curb.  She should have sued them for it, but she was too ashamed to even return for her coat.  I think it perfect that they get embarrassed and defensive about THEIR choice when he fucks them over.  Anyone want to drink to hypocrisy?

I love the English language.  I have studied French, Italian and German and while they all have beautiful sounds they cannot compare to my native tongue.  English is the hardest language to learn because it has no real rules.  The Romance languages have tenets based on time, place, speaker, “speakee”, gender and, I think, phases of the moon.  English laughs at such constrictions.  English is so mutable that the same sentence; even the same word; has different meaning based on who says it and how it is said.  English is all about time, tone and tonsils.  Example: President Obama says he is black and that is quickly determined to be the acceptable word to refer to people of color darker than the umber crayon in the Crayola box.  President Bush (either one) says Obama is black and he has a public relations nightmare.  I am an expert on the politics of presentation, as I have been paid to speak to everyone and their brother for the past, oh, twenty years.

I believe that English is all about tone and time–I mean time of response as well as Greenwich Mean Time.  If someone asks you a question and you answer too rapidly you sound rote.  If you answer too slowly you sound deceitful.  If you and Goldilocks answer JUST RIGHT you win the perfect bowl of porridge as well as the listener’s trust.  If you whine you sound manipulative.  If you command you get twenty sit ups as well as the listener’s attention–but not too commanding or you are “telling” the person what they want.  I am fortunate because I can mimic any accent or style I hear.  As Dale Carnegie wrote and said show interest in the listener–which I believe can be done through your voice.  This includes the GMT–an aged matriarch requests a martini.  She wants gin, splash of vermouth up with an olive and she doesn’t want to hear any questions about how she’d like her drink presented to her.  She doesn’t care or even know about all the ridiculous “tinis” we now have in the drink world.  A man with a heavy Southern accent asks about your iced tea.  Tell him–”oh honey,  you know you’re in California where they don’t know about sweet tea”  with a slight lilt in your voice.  Then laugh and tell him you have sweetener that will fix that right up.  Your guest is forty-something, female, covered in gold, manicures and expensive clothes and already hates you because you are younger and thinner–she asks to see your “martini list”.   Just wink and tell her about the secret “martini” everyone loves (its a cosmopolitan).  Then flirt with her and give her overweight condescending husband short shrift.  He’ll be excited because you aren’t impressed with his money and she’ll love the attention.  Unfortunately many people believe a whining tone in their immediate response will get them power over the situation.  I had a couple come in and they looked young.  She wouldn’t look at me when I asked about their choice of beverage but he asked if I knew the percentages in the Bordeaux blend we had by the glass.  If this means nothing to you, imagine I walked into your house and asked “What percentage of allergens does your filter remove from the air?”  Your response, unless you are a total dork and then I wouldn’t be in your house, would be “I don’t know.”  It would also cause you to do one of two things:  think about those allergens and why you don’t know OR wonder why in the name of god I asked that question.  I did the latter–and asked for his ID.  He was 23.  His age and his question made me wonder who the fuck he told his date he was.  We were sold out of one item on our menu.  It was about 40 minutes before close on a busy Friday and it’s a rare night that we don’t sell out of something.  He and his date took a long time mulling the (short) menu and then he said “Every time we come here you are sold out of something we want.”  I could have apologized.  I didn’t.  I said “We’re only out of one salad”  in a calm voice.  He turned red and ordered some bread.  I told the manager what happened, because I thought he would ask for the check and complain.  But no–he attempted tone and time and failed.  His choice was to make a scene–the waitress was a bitch–or accept his failure.  They ordered dinner, had a nice time, and left a decent tip.  I hope he/they come to the restaurant earlier next time, smile at the server and order a glass of cabernet.

Me and Marshall go way back (that would be Eminem to the masses).  He is from Detroit, I am from Cleveland.  Well, neither of us are ACTUALLY from those two cities, we both just claim them as the largest known metropolises (metropol-i?) to the po-dunk small towns where we suffered through adolescence.  I grew up in Windham, Ohio and he in Warren, Michigan.  We are both members of the infamous GenerationX.  He and I are both older than our peers.  We both enjoyed sex, drugs and rock and roll to excess, both went to rehab and now we both use our vast experience in “the life” in our creative work.  We both have adorable little blond children, and we both enjoy the short bleached hair look from time to time.  I told you we went way back.  So when I feel guilty for posting so infrequently, I think of my friend M & M.  He took a three year hiatus, and why not?  He has a nice pile of work to recline on, giving him time to kick up his heels, pop some Vicodin and play with Haley.  Those three years gave him material and my past year and a half has been packed full of adventure as well.  I turned 40, moved to the ghetto, gave birth to a brilliant son and earned my yoga certification.  I turned 41, moved in with the in laws to escape Black Mold invasion, moved again to the hot, hot central valley, got fired, got hired and lost ALL the baby weight (stress diet anyone?  fuck Weight Watchers).  What to relate first?  How about PREGNANCY:  What the fuck am I doing?

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One thing no one, I mean not one person, not your best friend or some random chatty idiot,no one tells you when you get pregnant is that you lose your mind.  Not all of your mind and not every minute of every day, but enough that you start praying to whatever supreme being or Nordic god or voodoo mother fucker that you can think of to PLEASE let you remember your new zip code.  Really.  Just that.  We moved during my second trimester from 95608 to 96507–wow, just flip the numbers and add one.  Unfortunately I could never get it straight in my head if the 956 was the new or the old, which slows down and fucks up more things than you think possible.    I tried to pay for gas at a pump with our debit card and it rejected me because I invariably put in the old code or some merging of old and new.  However being clearly pregnant (rather than maybe she’s fat or maybe she’s pregnant months 3 through 5) helps because almost all gas station attendants are men who see the pregnant lady and (rightly) assume she’s nuts and they just turn the pump on.  New zip code + driving= use cash.  I went to drop off a tire and couldn’t tell the nice man where I lived.  I call my pals at Progressive and have to hang up because clearly they need my zip code to recalculate my car insurance.   I am fairly certain I asked my baby daddy seven thousand times “what’s our zip code?”  Finally I had to accept that I was either beginning a slow slide into Alzheimer’s or that I was full of baby and hormones and fuck knows what else. and was not going to remember all sorts of shit.  My solution?   I wrote the zip code on my arm a la Memento.  Sharpies rule……….

I was restless last night and the baby was on one so I threw “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” in the player.  I love this movie and can still keep an eye on Crawly McCrawler–listening to the dialogue rather than watching the flashing pictures.  Kirsten Dunst’s character was stoned and reveling in the memory cleansing process, how it allows messy adult brains to return to baby-like status, all fresh and clean.  This pure, unsullied state of a baby applies to his palate as well.  Babies are taught what to like and dislike as much as they have natural preferences.  They are curious about everything in the world as each minute something new happens in their brain.  I watch my son’s face and it is in constant motion, reacting to and absorbing EVERYTHING. I remember the first time I tried coffee as a kid–my parents drank it every morning and it smelled pretty good.  WOW was it nasty. My parents did NOT say “you won’t like this” but they did laugh at the face I pulled.  One Saturday morning I dug through the pantry looking for alum because Bugs Bunny gave some to Daffy and it made his head shrink (I ate the alum and was quite disappointed).  My mother simply asked how was it and left it at that.  When we went out to dinner I have cloudy memories of who ordered for who.  My little brother and I both sat still, shut up and ate what was served to us.  Is this style of parenting gone?  Now I see moms tell their children “No honey you don’t like beans / vanilla / chicken” fill in the blank all the time.  How does mom know?  I know I have some days when the thought of eating chicken turns my stomach, and others when all I want is a nice garlic-y hen roasting in the oven.  And I’m old enough to vote, drive and drink.  Maybe today little baby Joey wants to chew on some carrots, but tomorrow he only wants yogurt.  And maybe little baby Joey will eat what MOM TELLS him he is eating when they go out to dinner, rather than the other way around.  Yes children should be active participants in their diet–but when I told my mother I wanted to be a vegetarian she looked at me and looked at dinner and said “I’m not cooking just for you–eat what you want” and my vegetarianism lasted one meal.

Anyway, back to the virgin palate.  Who created the first “kid menu” and why is it packed with deep fried shit and nothing else?  We feed our baby tastes of everything–he has had shiitake, toro, oysters, ice cream, salmon, stinky cheese, olives and pickles.  And he has eaten it all with a look of fascination and wanted more.  I am a huge believer in the exclusive breast milk for at least a year, but that does not exclude allowing the baby to join in one of our favorite pasttimes.  Now of course he demands that he get a taste of whatever is being eaten–but demands it of Dad since he is the one who started the whole process.  He yells, which is not quite the response we want, but at least he understands what is going on and we all “eat” together. I will never tell him he doesn’t like something.  Nor will I order him some nasty kiddie meal (well except McDonalds because all kids should eat some Micky Dees in their lives).  Why do people think that the kiddie menu is the only way to go?  Why don’t they share the adult food or order sides or something?  And the faces you get when you DO NOT have a kid’s menu, as if your restaurant should be so ashamed at overlooking the poor defenseless children.  It boggles my mind.

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OK ok ok ok ok oKAY…I’m back.  My baby daddy and several of the voices in my head have been telling me to get back into the swing of my blog.   AND I have a new fan who was gracious enough to list me as one of his favorite sites on his blog and he probably would like to represent a site that creates new material.  AND when people ask me what I want to be when I grow up it is still a writer.  I have not published anything since I turned forty and discovered I was pregnant, and in case you haven’t been keeping score, that was last March.  On one hand, I have a whole lot of shit to share as the past fifteen months have been chock full.  On the other, all that hub bub gives me reason galore for NOT writing.  I have to …(fill in blank, end with word baby) I can’t write.  I have to…(fill in blank, end with word man, dog, cat, chicken, garden, house, food) I can’t write.  I have to… (smoke a bowl before I go crazy) I can’t write.  All of which is just bullshit.  Where is that nineteen year old who could do anything?  Who could work two jobs, date four guys, maintain a social network that shames Facebook, keep a perfect golden tan and never have any roots?  I know she is still in there.  Let us see if I can channel some of my old super power……….

Remember the expression earth mother?  These were the women of the late sixties/early seventies who didn’t drop acid and protest Vietnam.  They took care of their husbands and children and ran their homes on a budget.  They washed clothes with Borax and hung them on clotheslines, filled the kitchen with heat and steam from baking their own bread and canning their own beans, macramed plant hangers, sewed the kids clothes, forbid television except as a treat and drank Red Zinger tea.  My mother and my best friend’s mother were earth mothers.  We ate carob chip cookies and zucchini bread and Hamburger Helper and packed our lunches and we hated it.  Our mothers were dorks.  We wanted to be like the “cool” girls who lived in town, who ate school lunch everyday and wore Jordache jeans and got to watch The Late Show with Johnny Carson.  And here I am thirty years later, tattooed and pierced and beyond cool and I’m a fucking earth mother.  No carob chips or Helper, but everything else….yeah boy.  The only problem is that Red Zinger tea is almost impossible to find.  Celestial Seasonings is still rocking their cardboard box of string-less, staple-less teas, and their selection of Zingers quite large.  One may imbibe Lemon, Cranberry Apple, Raspberry, Tangerine Orange, Wild Berry and the ever odd Acai Mango but good old RED ZINGER….good fucking luck.  I have become quite the Kombucha mixologist, and my favorite tea for said purpose is Red Zinger.  Unfortunately it simply does not exist in a 70 mile radius of my home.  Really.  The closest purveyor of Red Zinger tea is a Walgreens on Market Street in San Francisco.  No store in Sonoma, Napa, Marin, Solano, Yolo, Sacramento,  Mendocino, Colusa, and at least ten other Northern California counties carry Red Zinger.  In Southern California Albertsons is the only store waving the Red banner.  I can order it on line but the shipping for a seventeen dollar box of tea is $10.05  (yes I could/should order a case and be done with it).    My question is what the fuck?  How is it that the original flavor, one that cannot be found anywhere else, from any other tea producer, has disappeared from the shelf.  Do artsy lesbians know about this?  An early lesbian ground breaking cutting edge pick your cliche film featured a character who invites her date in for a post prandial drink…of tea.   I do not remember anything else about that movie but the shot of her and her date standing in the kitchen gazing at shelves full of tea boxes, every flavor possible including grand dame zinger. 

Red Zinger is made of hibiscus, rosehips, peppermint, lemongrass, orange peel, lemon myrtle, licorice, and wild cherry bark.  Is there a world shortage on wild cherry bark that I am unaware of?  Do bored trust fund baby liberals protest the ravaging of roses for their hips?  Has the American Society of Horticultural Science put lemon myrtle on its watch list?  What then?  It saddens and frustrates me that Red Zinger has been replaced with some noxious acai mango concoction.  Maybe I’ll dress me and the baby and the dogs in little sandwich boards and protest the dearth of the red one at my local grocery store–exercise for me, socialization for the baby, change of venue for the puppies and some excitement for my neighbors.

I found myself in a restaurant dream last night.  Normally these are nightmares, but last night was more of a short film.  I am a big believer in dream interpretation–where else can your unconscious unwind and have a drink?  In vino veritas–we shut off most of our incoming data when asleep and allow all that crazy shit we carry around to cut loose–in dreamo veritas.  Images in your dreams have to be drawn from somewhere, and I am not certain I believe in Jung’s collective unconscious.  The sounds and smells that do enter our sleep and are reflected in our dreams–an alarm or a baby crying or cigarette smoke–do not need interpretation.  I do not think that my server anxieties need examined either–you can’t get to your table or no one understands you or you are expected to wait on fifty tables at once–pretty simple.  What is interesting to me is whether people in other professions have work-related dreams.  Last night I dreamt of an old Cleveland boss of mine, one I really liked and who fired me for stealing wine.  He was so pissed and betrayed that he wouldn’t even fire me himself–he sent one of his minions to do it.   This was many years ago when I was deep in my selfish drunken party life and I am not that person AT ALL  but I still feel terrible (yes, I stole the wine).  So my fellow Freuds, shall we examine Fraulein Showy’s dream?

Here it is:  Boss is launching a new restaurant, and it is huge.  There are at least two floors and outside seating and it is very elegant.  Boss is very friendly with Showy, laughing and joking.  All of the people in the dream are from California –maybe one guy from Ohio.  I am running around–everyone is running around–trying to set up for our opening night.  My hair is wet and a mess and I am clearly not dressed for the evening and Boss’s assistant tells me that I am lucky no one is in the restaurant yet because he wouldn’t let me be seen with my hair looking that bad.  Next I am ready and wearing a black slip dress where all my tattoes are exposed and someone tells me that only I could get away with that outfit.  I look at myself and think am I waiting tables in this?  Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward come in and ask for Walter. I wake up.

First, I found a picture of us a couple days ago, so that is where his image came from.  And I have always wanted him to forgive me and he was really cool to me in the dream, so there is my wish fullfillment.  His restaurants are very glamorous and multi-leveled and the dream restaurant was as well. When I worked for him the aspect of having tables on multiple floors became an ongoing nightmare element that still happens from time to time today.  I worked outside in hellish weather in Cleveland (can you apprehend 90% humidity? in a tie?) and in California patio diners are frustrating at the least, so courtyards, terraces, verandas–any al fucking fresco dining will show up in the Showy server nightmare.  The bad wet hair was because I took a shower before I went to bed and looked in the mirror and thought yuck–my man shouldn’t have to see me like this.   Robert Redford came into Tra Vigne a lot and Walter always waited on “Bob”.  If you don’t see the Redford/Newman connection….  Tattoos still carry some stigma, and in the Napa Valley almost no one wants a server with visible tattoos.  And there we have it.  WOW.  Ve have discovered all zee inner vorkings of patient S.

Do surgeons dream of solo operations, of cutting into patients with pencils, of  forgetting basic anatomy?  Do teachers dream of entire classrooms screaming, of losing their way to school, of lesson plans in Greek?  Do architects  dream of blueprints dissolving, of losing their sight, or of foundations collapsing?  Philip K. Dick’s novel poses the question to a future electronic age.  Maybe I’ll never know.

TODAY’s REC:  I find it quite ironic that I hate when people ask me what I recommend at work, yet I offer these up unsolicited.  Don’t dwell on past bad behaviours because today is a new day!

Good evening.  I have just finished another lovely shift, serving food to the masses of the unwashed, and I want to let any and all know, fish and chips are a culinary icon.  I know, I know, who can believe the state of California even allows deep fryers.  And what crazy kooks are eating bottom feeders like cod and haddock and pollock.   And chips…aren’t those usually found in a bag marked Lay’s?  Well my uneducated and ignorant diner, fish and chips have been around since the early nineteenth century in grande olde Englande.  Fish and chips are traditionally cod or haddock–almost two hundred years of traditionally.  Yet when I told my guest that the fish used in the fish and chips was cod, she said “Interesting” as if I had said dead puppy.  The strips of fish are fried, as are the “chipped’ (slab cut) potatoes.  Mr. Dickens cites a “fried fish warehouse” in Oliver Twist, published in 1838.  Yet just last week, an elderly gentleman looked in horror at his plate.  “I didn’t know it was FRIED” he gasped.   Batter is the standard coating, and yet my lovely Atkins dieter demanded no batter and a side of steamed vegetables.  Pretty please, with a cherry on top, order something fucking else.

I had a boyfriend who swore if you dipped an old shoe in tempura batter and fried it he would eat it.  Me and my permanent guy threw the  first of what we know will be many fry parties this summer.  We deep fried shiitakes, chicken, pickles, oreos, ice cream, zucchini blossoms, bananas, shrimp, and candy bars (alas, no fried Twinkies).  Deep frying is dirty and dangerous–and a huge vat of boiling oil will definitely learn a dog or a child.  Deep frying is deeply satisfying.  You drop your little piece of food  in the pot and watch as it swirls and twists, changing from pale cream to golden brown, slowly rising in the oil.  Deep fried food is greasy and salty and so good.

The Brits don’t have much to offer in the culinary landscape but the steadfast fish and chip far outweigh any foams or towers or other nouveau bullshit the local California cafe offers.  How anyone cannot know how or what or who makes up this dish is beyond me.

TODAY:  Do one thing and don’t ask for rewards–make a fresh pot of coffee at work, or put out  flowers or wash the dishes.  When someone comments, just shrug.  Examine how hard this is or is not for you to achieve.