Friday, June 19, 2009

Be Prepared

Giving you no time, instead of it all

When all of one's friends (or so it seems, at times) are leading wildly successful and busy lives pursuing academia to great and glorious heights, it's easy to feel as if one's own life is lousy and dead-end in comparison. I've recently fallen into the trap of comparing my life's apples with my friend's oranges and quite frankly, it's been unnecessarily psyching me out. Despite living a live of suburban American ease and first-world luxury, a lot of things have been piling up that are putting my head in a goofy place. Including, but not limited to:

-Envy of my friends' continuation of education
-June weather just now breaking 70*
-Massive and inconsistent changes in the bar
-Realizing my local circle of friends is quite limited
-Mom hinting at exasperation with my presence in her home
-Boyfriend running away to the Middle of Nowhere for ten months

Collectively, it's all becoming a bit much and I'm feeling the tremblings of a slow freak-out creeping upon me. It's all very well and good to go with the flow as I tend to do, until I realized I've got half a dozen different rivers flowing in completely different directions, some of which have currents that run much more strong and deep than others.

I'm not good with emotions. I prefer them to be bound and gagged and locked tightly in a rubber-padded room where no one can hear them scream. Unfortunately, in a very short amount of time, I'm going to have to deal with Very Big Emotions as my heart is packed haphazardly into a leather duffel bag and transported 450 miles away. Because of my intense discomfort with acknowledging feelings, I don't often take time to analyze them properly, and it's come as a great surprise exactly how entwined my life has become with Alex "let's go save the world" Durbin's.

The more I attempt to compartmentalize, rationalize, and prepare myself for our imminent separation, the less prepared and rational I become. I'm realizing that I may not be as strong or solitary or independent as I fancy myself to be, and the prospect of freaking out is, well, freaking me out.

I'm probably going to need a lot of hand-holding and head-slapping in the near future as matters of the heart jump out of dark alleyways to mug my logic and reason. If you, Interested Party, have any busy-work projects or Valium to share, don't hesitate to hit me up, as the kids say.

This turned out way differently than planned,
Catherine

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Lord, What Fools We Mortals Be

We think the thoughts whether or not we see them through

I'm not one to suffer fools lightly. Among my few and delightful character flaws, this one stands out rather prominently. It often brings out more peripheral undesirable qualities, like aloofness, condescension, and uncontrollable eye-rolling.

Working at a restaurant has exposed me to a wide variety of fools, and unfortunately I've learned very few coping mechanisms. Typically if the foolishness gets to the point where I can no longer keep a corporate-mandated smile on my face, I just run away and get a manager. I've learned to be alert to the signs of an on-coming eye-roll and I believe I've managed to contain them until out of the line of sight of the people causing them. I've not learned to stop myself from sighing in frustration, though.

It's not necessarily that I think myself smarter or better than people (most of the time), it's that despite my chillaxed demeanor, I'm a stickler for rules and regulation. I was probably a bureaucrat in a past or future life. If a scoop of ice cream costs 99 cents, then it costs 99 cents for everybody, all the time. If a coupon states it cannot be used in conjunction with any other specials or discounts, then so be it. If placing a high-chair at the end of a large booth is a fire hazard (and a clumsy-server hazard), then no one is allowed to do it under any circumstances ever. If servers aren't allowed to stand around in the bar, then I will kick them out every time. If a new policy is put into place about not eating "dead" food or "stealing" smoothies, then I will abstain and refuse to be an enabler in said activities.

It kills me when my customers ask me to bend or break rules, laws, or policy for them. If I were a good corporate drone my immediate reaction would be a concerned nod, an offer to see what I could do, and at least meet the "guest" halfway. Tragically, I have a backbone that bristles uncomfortably when faced with rule breaking and I'm unprofessionally brusque with some people, if only to prove the point that what we're doing is an exception. I'll get all stony-faced and say something like "Well, technically no, because of The Rules. I'll talk to a manager to see if we can do something this one time though." I think if I could learn to say that with a smile, I'd get better tips from the cheapass tables who are swindling the system.

Although upon reflection of that last sentence, probably not.

Is it wrong to be a goody-two-shoes and potentially a tattle-tale? I just like consistency, really. I like for my world to make sense and be aligned in neat little packages that I can enforce with an iron fist.

Get off my lawn!
Thrine