Goodbye winter. (probably not)

I have found that the worst part about working in a restaurant, are the ensuing restaurant night terrors that plague you upon sleeping. It's like work is inescapable. I go to work all day long. I come home, sluice the grill baste smell from my skin, and the sweat stank from my feet, and crawl into bed. I then pass out, and suddenly I'm back at the food hell. It's like it never ends.

The dreams are always supremely frustrating. They generally involve either an unmanageably large section, or I'm serving a table that I forget about for like an hour. Or the people whom I serve are nuts and ask for outrageous things.

Today I returned home from the most useless lunch shift I have ever worked. I decided to take a nap until I was back on at 6. I woke up sweaty (because my comforter is too hot, and my room is not yet the frozen hell that it shall shortly be as soon as this infernal state finishes fast forwarding through fall and plunges us into a premature winter.) Sweaty and pist, because I had just been yelled at by a woman ordering the gargoyle gumbo. She was upset, because I offered her a salad, and she hadn't had enough time to consider whether or not she really even wanted to consider considering a salad. At which point I woke up and groaned. Because even in my dreams, I can't escape work. Because similar scenarios really do occur. Because people who eat in restaurants are ridiculous and expect way more than for what they are actually paying.

Dance monkey, dance.

I also don't make any money at my job. This is apparently the down season. In theory, it really picks up in October, so I guess we're all just hanging in there till then. So for the last two weeks, I have just had the attitude that, "Hey, I'm getting paid to hang out." Only by keeping that idea at the forefront of my thought process, have I been able to not be pist all the time. This is a pretty big step for me. Usually I get really pist off at work when I don't make very much money, or the situation isn't going my way. It is pretty revolutionary that I am keeping a positive attitude throughout all of this. Perhaps Fish is turning over a new leaf, or swimming through a new shoal, if you will. Maybe the long winter of pessimism is finally being dissipated by the warm spring currents of positivity. Tiny green shoots of positive thought are fighting their way to break free of the frozen ground of negativity that so often plagues my life. At least usually it is humorous negativity and pessimism. Either way, perhaps things are going to look up from here (probably not.)

In fact, I made 11 dollars at lunch today, and $20.87 at dinner. And I wasn't even mad. Seriously. Put that in your "Fish is nothing but a whiny pessimist" crack pipe and smoke it.