Hurry Now, Quick! Quick! The Wind Has Changed.

So lots is changing around the World.

First off, no more Pizza Jernt. Finally. I'm working 4 shifts a week at the bar. Eventually I'll figure out something to supplement that, but for now, I'm going to lay low and revel in the joy of having ONE job. I was so burnt out. Everything just sucked. I didn't have the energy to exercise, or eat right, let alone the sheer time it would have taken to do either of those things. I drank too much, ate to much crap food, smoked too many cigarettes. My hair was falling out in clumps, and I'm hoping now that I'm down to one "real" job, that will end and I'll have more time to take care of myself.

Secondly, I'm moving out of my apartment. Part of me is sad, because I truly loved my apartment. It was my first real grown-up feeling apartment, that I had for more than a month before a boyfriend moved in. Well, a boyfriend kind of moved in, but that's for later I suppose. In short, I was utterly drowning under the weight of my rent. 900 is alot of money to float by oneself when you're not making much money. I was in denial about this for awhile. I talked a bit about going back to Bourbon, going back to nightclubs, but the truth of it is, I don't WANT to. Sure, I sorely miss the money in nightclubs. The money all comes at a cost though. My sanity, my health, my social life, my family life, my outside interests... all of these things took a backseat to the schedule and demands of working in a high volume-high stress environment. For fucks sake, bar tending is supposed to be one of the most personally entertaining occupations on the planet. You work while everyone else plays, and the payoff is *supposed* to be liking your job, and cash at the end of the night. There needs to be a balance between the two, because I am here to tell you, that you can make all the damn money you want over the bar... if you hate where you are, the money can only calm your hate for awhile.

Thus, I join the ranks of the lower-paid and loving it.

My bills however, kept coming. It doesn't matter if you can sleep again at night. It doesn't matter if you don't have people spitting in your face, and you don't go to bed every sunday morning with Jameson on your breath and your underwear on backwards. The bills need to be paid, and I couldn't pay them.

At the risk of sounding, I don't know, all weird about this and shit, I guess I have to believe that people come into your life when they are supposed to. Allow me to explain.

When I got hired at the bar, I became fast friends with the couple that runs the kitchen. They're just awesome. In the coming months, they got to listen to the ginormous amount of crap that was swirling around me like I was the Pigpen of Bullshit. Fights with my then boyfriend, family crap, bills I couldn't pay, a tip jar not filled, fights with my then boyfriend because family crap was starting with bills I couldn't pay because my tip jar wasn't filled. The summer was a nightmare from start to finish. They had their own problems, and I think we honestly just ended up bonding over memebase because laughing at funny stuff on the interwebs was just about the only thing that was keeping us from LOSING OUR MINDS.

Around this time, good ole Sparky enters the picture. Honestly, I couldn't say that I paid much attention. We hardly worked together and I never saw much of him. Then one day he has the audacity to come into The Bar, not in his chef's gear. My first thought as he walked in with a collared shirt, nice jeans, boots and NO baseball hat: "are you fucking serious?". Who knew Sparky The Chef was attractive when he wasn't hiding under a black ball cap and and apron? Not I, as it seemed.

[Then lots of stuff happens that I don't particularly feel like getting into, mainly because I think I've thought about it enough, and don't want to anymore. It's done, it's over, and I'm truly not worse for the wear. I have accepted that stuff had to happen, otherwise certain things now might not be.]

After a few comments from both Sparky, and the occasional other coworker, I think to myself "Huh, I wonder if Sparky likes me?" Now being me, I'm female, and a have been working in restaurants and bars since I was a teenager. I blame that for my inability to truly notice when someone is hitting on me. It's not that everyone hits on me, mind you, it's that everyone around me is normally drunk and full of shit. I'm also not going to slip a note under the kitchen door that says "Do you like me?". Oh noooo. I'm going to take a page out of the mob's book and wait until I have enough Jameson to put down a common Irishman and THEN decide "It's PLAYTIME!". Or was it "CHARGE!"? I don't recall.

[details spared to protect the innocent]

I think it goes without saying, that by the end of the night, I could fill out that "do you like me" note my damn self and answered correctly. Things moved at lightening speed from there. Sparky is now My Boyfriend.

The K&C own a home, which we have so dubbed The Home For Wayward Adults. Sparky lives there. By the end of the month, so will I.

So, I'm moving in with my boyfriend of not-very-long, and I feel OK about it. Mainly because of a very long conversation with The K about it. This isn't The Boyfriend trying to march me into his quarters to keep me closer at hand- it's my friends are saving my fucking life. (OK, the boyfriend is the catalyst for all this, whatever...anyhoo...) They are not charging me rent. I was able to quit the Pizza Jernt. I HAD A REAL FREAKING DAY OFF. Not having to save up to pay rent has allowed me to get my hair done today. I nearly doubled over in the stylist's chair sobbing, from the sheer joy of feeling dye and scissors in my hair. I hadn't been able to spring for so much as a trim since February.

On top of all this, The K&C and Sparky are opening a second location, and that has meant stress, sleeplessness, bad moods, incredible joy, excitement, and a bevy of emotions that are probably rendering my sweet boyfriend more bipolar by the day. He will find a balance eventually, I'm sure of it. Being as how I'm not being asked to pay rent, I've thrown myself into being as helpful as possible. I have to admit it's hard to be so involved with something, and yet, so uninvolved. I'm just operating in the background. I'm getting better at keeping my thoughts to myself unless specifically asked, and trying to get used to the idea of hardly ever seeing Sparky unless I go down to the other shop, or he comes into The Bar. It's not my name out there, it's not my business, it's not truly my stress. These are my friends though, and it's hard to not get emotionally invested.

Everything is just so damn new I guess, the only option I have is just to accept things for the way they are. The old rules don't apply, and the person I was this time last year... she doesn't exist anymore. Frankly, I think I like this Me, better.

Praying For Rain

"Sir Edmund Hilary and two experienced sherpas couldn't find this place with a GPS and a well-marked map."

-Craig
www.beerfooddude.livejournal.com

Hopefully this isn't too poorly writ, I'm trying to finish this quickly.

Here at the bar, to be refered to henceforth as The White Elephant Tavern, we do good things. The kitchen is amazing. Our Yelp and such reviews are consistenly positive. The bar end of things are good as well. There isn't one bartender here that doesn't know their shit or that's afraid to listen to yours over a beer and a shot. The problem is our location. To describe it as off-the-beaten-path is an understatement. Lifelong residents of our fair city have problems finding it. It's at a point where three large neighborhoods all convene, and the streets don't make any kind of sense... the ones you can still drive down without killing your car at least.

I've had several conversations with another employee about the labor of love this place has become. There's few enough employees here that you quickly begin to act as family, with all the up and downs and joys and pains of course. This bar has become the metaphorical "house we grew up in" and we love it in spite of itself. We want the bar and kitchen to succeed...not just because it's money in our pockets, but because it SHOULD succeed. You want your loved ones to do well, and it's painful to watch them, and a good thing, to fade or stagnate.

There's a hope, that good days are to come. The drought will end. The crops will grow and flourish, and we will reap the rewards of hard work, patience, and the ability to plant for another season. We try to put the thought out of our minds that maybe the good days won't come, that the seeds that have been sown will only amount to shriveled up weeds in the dust.

Truly, I'm just a bartender. I have no financial stake in this place other than the fact that it's where I show up 4 days a week, hoping to walk out with more money than I came here with. I can say fuck it and go find a job someplace else... but I don't want to. I want to be here, at this bar, with people who have quickly become a fantastic motley family. I want to make good drinks and serve good food, and I want everyone involved to go home tired but happy with money in their pockets.

I hope that's not too much to ask.

Work ALL the Jobs!

Working two jobs can suck. It's an inevitability that when working two jobs, you can't give 100 percent to both, and forget about your life. Fortunately for me, the bar is set pretty low. I sling pizza and serve beer and bbq. As long as I stay upright and don't forget to ring stuff up, I'm pretty much golden. I have no pets, my children are out of state, and my boyfriend is usually bogged down with his own activities. As long as I stay upright and don't forget where I live, I'm pretty much golden on that front.

The problems start to surface when you come face to face with the reality of balancing two workplaces: Neither job gives one shit about the other. You can be employee of the god damn year, the minute you utter one thought aloud about not being able to do whatever for one job because of another... FAIL. You could be trying to come in a little later because you're in the middle of curing fucking cancer, your other boss probably doesn't care. It's not his problem. He needs you at 5pm. You should know this going into the situation. However, that knowledge does not make you feel better when one job conflicts with another and you have to figure out WTF to do.

So this is the situation I find myself in.

After I left my job at The Death Star, I was forced to take a job at a pizza restaurant. Now, despite the fact that I have since been totally mislead by this place, it was there when I needed whatever little positive cash flow I could get. Little positive cash flow is exactly what I got, so I had to take a second job, thus, The Bar. I thought to myself "You can do this. No worries."

That's when I came face to face with another reality of working two jobs: Conflicts between jobs are going to happen. In my case, it's because one job nearly refuses to give me a set schedule (cause who wants to work the same exact shifts every week?! crazy lady!), and the other job decided they needed me for another shift. (You LIKE dead lunch shifts right?!) So now, I'm looking at 4 shifts at each place. 4+4=8 shifts a week. Seven days in a week. This means that at least one day a week, I get to work one place then go to the other. This should be easy, but starting at the bar and then leaving and going to the Pizza Jernt is not an option, because the latest shift at there starts at 6. The Bar shift ends at 6. Unless I figure out the secret to human teleportation through the fax machine, this is a conflict.

*side note: I'm pretty sure that beer truck almost drove through The Bar. this would have killed me and solved all of my problems. I figured beer will one day kill me, I just had never imagined it could be by a beer truck while I'm sitting on my ass drinking coffee*

So what does the Pizza Jernt do? Insist on scheduling me at 6 at least twice a month, if not just once a week. So my options are to be late, or to see if the bartender relieving me on Thursday (my manager) will come in early so I can get to the other place on time. FAIL.

During all of this though, I can't help but feel like I'd rather soak myself in gasoline and juggle lit cigarettes than deal with that tomorrow. (Adding to this nightmare is that whole broken car thing... so I have to cab it from one dead shift to the next. W.T.F.) I mean how hard is it to say, OK, she can work Sunday, Monday, Friday Morning, and Saturday. That gives you 7 possible shifts to choose from. AHHHHH.

Enough with my fruitless bitching!

On another note: things I have done today:

Made the Barenjager Box into a JackOLantern:



Tap O Lantern:

Yesterday I played with chalk!



If things go the same way tomorrow, everything in the bar will have a face.

I just gave the thermostat a face:

First Things are Usually First...

I'll spare you the whole "I've been wanting to start a blog again for awhile" crap, and I'll politely skip the events surrounding my life that may require some sort of outlet before I explode and leave someone covered in brain bits. That of course would insinuate I believe that my life was remotely interesting, dramatic, and worth writing about (THIS BITCH IS CA-RAY-ZEE!!!), because honestly, it probably isn't.

The best I can hope for is that someone will find the at-some-point-when-i-get-around-to-it printed editions of my blogs and use them to write a eulogy of some questionable sort. I'm sure no one will know anything about the crazy lady in the nursing home with no friends, no family, and singing "you are my sunshine" to a bottle of jameson that's long since been empty. The crazy lady, that even in her indistinct babbles, appears to be using run-on sentences.

Some things that should be said:

I bartend four days a week, and wait tables elsewhere another 3 or 4. These are called The Bar and Pizza Joint, respectively. If you figure you know where these places are, good for you. These jobs take up the majority of my time, but hey, things could be worse. I generally can drink on the job and work with people I love. I think it's a win. I live in an apartment I can't afford, with a car I can't really afford either. I drink Jameson and PBR but I'm not a hipster. I simply enjoy the subtle burn of irish whiskey and beer that many thought to be extinct. I forget to capitalize the word "i" unless the spellcheck does it for me, and I speak/type local slang like it's the Queen's English.

I think that's all the introduction I need. Cheers.