A Great Summer Day

I don't really have much to talk about; my heart is just full (a happy full!) after a really pleasant summer day. I feel like this summer is shaping up to be so much of a better summer for the kids than last year was. This time last year, we in the middle of Week 1 of about three straight weeks of temperatures over 100. It was weather that would make even Satan say, "Okay, that's a bit much." We slept in the living room at night because the sweltering heat was too oppressive in the bedrooms; by day, it was too hot to even go swimming. Widfires were raging in the area all around us, I was exhausted with newborn Cici, Adam was juggling a full-time job with marathon training, and we were broke after dealing with Cici's hopitalization and then traveling to New York for a family wedding. It just wasn't a very exciting summer for the kids, I'm afraid.

But this year has been so nice! The weather has been much more temperate, so the boys have been spending hours outside every single day, digging in the dirt, climbing trees, and watching the birds and bugs. They have a weekly standing playdate with my cousin's kids. They have a schoolroom with interesting activities. And Cici is actually cognizant of what's going on! So she's getting to explore mud and grass and all that good stuff. Today, all three of them were playing in the sprinkler all afternoon and into the evening. Nobody, not even fourteen-month-old Cici, looked for me for over an hour, which is unusual-- they were all three just having too much fun!

Not to say that it's all roses. I have been struggling all summer long with the laundry hydra. Wash one load, two more spring up in its place! It still feels like Adam is a bit scarce. But otherwise, we are having a good summer.

Daddy's home!

No Name, Just Call Me Uncle

It has been much more difficult getting back into the blogging habit than I was hoping it would be. From being too busy with life to having a painfully slow internet connection for uploading pictures to having an awful camera that 1) takes crappy pictures and 2) only connects to the computer in the most inconvenient way possible, to getting interrupted every two minutes when I do finally decide to bite the bullet and blog... It's been a little disheartening. I suppose I could go without posting many pictures, but it does make posts a lot more fun!

I'm having some severe seasonal allergies today, so I'm feeling a bit whiny.

Anyways! What's been going on around here: the giant project that has been consuming most of my free time for the past several weeks is constructing a Montessori-style classroom for the boys. This entailed a massive cleaning (the room had formerly been a disastrous catchall/sewing room that had accumulated all the loose stuff we didn't have a designated storage space for), lots of woodworking, and many trips to the Dollar Tree. I also bought and pored over John Bowman's ebook Montessori at Home!-- at $10.95 for a 535-page, exhaustively comprehensive book stuffed with instructions, I consider it one of my best buys of 2016 so far!

We started actually doing work in there on Monday. My goal was just a half hour for three days out of this week, as we ease into a more structured day, which we did. Hopefully, I'll be able to post some pictures in a bit here. The boys really seemed to enjoy it, although it quickly became obvious to me that my biggest struggle is going to be making sure there is a good assortment of activities that will engage both the boys at their respective levels. Well, I'm going to wrap things up here and look for some allergy meds now.

I'm still alive!

I have been a total blog slacker for the past month. At first, I treated it as a little summer vacation and mentally settled on a chaise with a margarita on my virtual beach. However, when I started getting emails from bloggy friends, asking if everything was okay, I knew it was time to return from the virtual resort.

I was truly touched by the emails I received, asking if everything was okay. This little blogging community is truly what makes writing here worthwhile!

Pictured here: the inside of my heart

Everyone is in excellent health, and nothing too earth-shattering has happened lately. My absence has just been a combination of a few things: I've been struggling with finding my place in this new town. I'm subscribed to waaay too many blogs, and just got burned out on following everything. I've been selling some diapers on a swapping site, which required me to get involved with the forum there. Kind of boring reasons, which is probably a good thing.

But I'm back now, and have a snarky little post all set up to publish tomorrow evening. Thanks for reading, even if I do run away sometimes. :-)

Highlights from our crazy cross-country move!

It was an interesting trip to Virginia. We were too cheap to get the cats properly sedated, so we opted to dump a mountain of catnip into each cage and hope for the best. And it actually worked-- Meatloaf and Mel were so high, they had a trip within a trip, kind of like Inception for cats. My folder of carefully selected CD's somehow got packed into the U-Haul trailer, so we endured the 24-hour trip with two CD choices: Phantom of the Opera or some album by Muse. I'm pretty sure we deserve a medal just for that. Somewhere in Arkansas, we hit a sparrow, but we didn't realize it was lodged in our grille until halfway into Tennessee. According to Adam, that poor little bird had "a 700-mile funeral procession".

But we made it here in one piece, and I am in *love* with Virginia! Or, more accurately, I'm in love with the washer and dryer in my apartment. It's been quite an adventure. Wait... what? There's no slot for quarters? The machine will fill with water even if the lid is up?? What is this new-fangled "clean-rinsing" detergent? Needless to say, our clothes are the cleanest they've ever been while I try those babies out! I've actually been having some stink issues with the cloth diapers since moving here, so that's not cool, but I have some Rockin' Green samples coming in the mail and am planning a nice long soak for them soon.

So that's about it. I moved to Virginia and got a washing machine. Life couldn't get any better! At any rate, it feels good to get back into blogging and to wade through my giant mass of unread emails. And maybe unpack a box or two.

I leave you with a picture of Oscar (on the right) and his cute little cousin...

Yeah, she's totally grabbing his ear. You'd better watch out, little guy, because I hear that those Virginians can be pretty crazy. :-D

So what did I miss this week? What's going on in your neck of the woods?

*Happy Dance*

ADAM IS HERE! ADAM IS HERE! ADAM IS HERE!

*dances a jig*

We will now resume our regularly scheduled broadcast.

I Made Baby D Cry It Out Tonight

And it wasn't pretty. And it's definitely not something I'm going to make a habit of, but two weeks into this single parenting gig, I am SO.TIRED. Tired of constantly nursing, tired of eating my meals cold, tired of hearing Baby D scream at me all day, but mostly just plain TIRED. I haven't slept well in three nights because Baby D has been waking up constantly, all night long, and refusing to settle, even after I feed him. And the days! My normally placid baby has been yelling at me from sunrise to sunset for over a week. He's not napping well, either. I've actually started wearing him for at least a solid hour every day, during which time he blessedly never makes a peep, but he is a giant baby, so even my muscles are tired. And the second I set him down, BOOM! He starts the shrieking again.

So tonight, I thought, all right, he can scream at me either here or in his bed. And it was really sad. :-( I picked him up and rocked him until he dozed off a couple times, but as soon as I laid him down, he was awake and wailing again. But tonight, I was too tired to care.

I have no idea how single moms keep it together! At least I'll be reuniting with Adam sometime before the month is out-- granted, I still do almost all the childcare anyways, but Adam takes care of ME. Several friends have offered to babysit Baby D, but there's the issue of feeding. I have a cruddy little hand pump, and it takes forever to pump a significant amount. So I can't complain too much, because I could drop Baby D off if I was desperate enough, but pumping is the last thing I want to do after nursing Mr. Crabby all night long.

Okay, time to wrap up this moan-and-groan post! Thanks for letting me have my whine with my cheese... Just keepin' it real here. Not every day, or every week, for that matter, is great at the Downright Domicile. :-P

It just went from worse to worse

I ran errands on Wednesday. When I returned, the computer was DEAD, and resisted all resuscitation efforts.edu I suspect foul cat play. I do have Wii internet, but it is horrible and forces me to point and click one painstaking letter at a time. UGH! So I'll be scarce until I rectify this computer situation. Oh well, I guess this means I'll actually have to be productive and pack up the house already! I'll be checking email and blogs from time to time, so I'm officially in lurker mode now. Don't have too much fun without me!

25 Things You Probably Didn't Want to Know about Me

First off, let me say that my readers are awesome! You have helped jump-start my brain for new blog post ideas. Thank you, thank you. So here are 25 things about me, as requested.



1. I am totally fine with drinking unpasteurized milk and eating eggs fresh from the chicken coop, but I will not get within ten feet of that scary Amish Friendship Bread stuff. At least with the eggs and milk, you know exactly where it came from!

2. I don't share this little tidbit very often, but I was homeschooled all twelve years. Oh, I'm plenty proud of my education, but you'd be surprised at the prejudices people have against homeschoolers.

3. I have read The Bronze Bow every year since middle school. I don't even know why, because it's not my favorite book; it's just something I do. :-P

4. I own a coffee pot, a french press, and an espresso machine. You might say I like coffee! But I still limit myself to one cup a day.

5. My guilty pleasure: watching anime. But it has to be GOOD anime-- so I don't watch much. :-P

6. Foods you will never see cooked or consumed on this blog: mushrooms and green peppers. EW.

7. I liked Adam for an entire year secretly until he came around and realized what an awesome catch I was. ;-)

8. In high school, I went vegetarian for one month, and that was the best I've ever felt in my life!

9. When Pavarotti came to town on his final concert tour, I got to play violin in his orchestra! That was the coolest thing ever!

If you squint reeeeeeally hard... I'm still not in the picture. :-(

10. I am first-born through and through. Responsible, high-achiever, people-pleaser, can take charge if I really have to. Since my mom is also a first-born, that makes Baby D at least a third-generation firstborn. :-P

11. I am embarrassingly good at Mario Kart.

12. I was HUGELY inspired by St. Francis of Assisi as a teen. Even now, I love finding info about him.

13. I am a Francophile. I've been studying French since age 14, and I am chomping at the bit to go to France!

14. I am most seriously grieved by what happened to Littlest Pet Shop and Polly Pocket toys. Remember when those things actually looked like animals and actually fit in your pocket? Sigh.

These look like animals.

These look like aliens.

15. Most people start using mama cloth pads after cloth diapering their babies. For me, it was just the opposite! I started using cloth pads in college, and the difference in comfort was so phenomenal, I knew I couldn't put my future babies in plastic, either. :-P

16. Don't laugh, but I have always wanted to learn how to belly dance. Stop laughing!

17. I was briefly a church organist. I don't know how to play the organ.

18. I have also been Superintendent of Canned Foods at the county fair, but I don't know how to can. It is amazing the things you can do, even if you're a complete ignoramus!

19. I have no desire to quilt. Okay, maybe the crafter in me has a teensy weensy desire, but I just don't have the patience to cut a piece of fabric into zillions of tiny shapes,  just so I can sew it all back together again. I really admire beautiful quiltwork, but I just don't think that's an activity I would enjoy!

I have to admit, though, this is pretty darn cool.

20. The first thing I ever cooked was a fried egg, when I was eight years old. My dad must have gotten sick of making PB&J for me, because he called me into the kitchen and gave me a cooking lesson!

21. I never had a cavity in my life until I went to college and started drinking juice on a regular basis. That stuff is not that great for you!

22. I had a very real fear of Borgs (from Star Trek) all the way into college. I just knew there was one in a dark corner, waiting to assimilate me!

23. Despite being quite tall (5'9" on a good day), I am TERRIBLE at basketball.

24. I hate hate HATE promise rings. Invented by greedy jewelers who just couldn't squeeze enough money out of the engaged and married folk, these rings make an underwhelming statement of love: "I promise to promise to get married!" Seriously, if you're going to wear a ring on that finger, just commit already!

Look at me! I love to create really awkward situations when you ask if I'm engaged!

25.  It took me an entire day to come up with all these things. Gee, I need to learn how to skydive or something.

Time to ask YOU a question!

Okay, it's time to break out of this blogging malaise and bring you something besides bread posts. The problem is that nothing's been happening here since that snow storm last week. The roads are pretty horrible because Oklahoma doesn't know how to handle that white stuff falling from the sky, so I've been snowbound, and things have been booooooooring around here.

This is a Google Image result for "malaise".
At Downright Domesticity, the buck stops here!

So let me ask you: what would you like to read a post about? Any burning questions you have about what goes on at the Downright Domicile?


Now, sitting here thinking of what crazy things some of you might ask has given me a few ideas for what to post next. Hooray! But I still aim to please, so please feel free to put in your request!

Odds and Ends

It's time for some housecleaning of the website variety! So here are a few announcements:

~I put a Linky at the top of the blog for January's Use It Up, Wear It Out event. If you are wanting to clean out some of those odd ingredients that have been sitting in your pantry forever (can of lima beans, I am looking right at you!), I would love to read about your creative cooking experiences! The Linky will be up all month, so you can post whatever whenever.


~Speaking of which, yesterday was a stroke of Providence. I suddenly remembered that I had stashed all my money from playing Christmas gigs a couple years ago as an "eat out" fund-- which I promptly forgot about. A regular squirrel, I am. :-P So I was able to restock on some basic food around here. Now I don't need to get as, um, creative as I originally planned, but I will still be raiding the pantry and writing about it!


~ Unfortunately, as I was taking pictures for a post the other day, my camera slipped and broke on the hard kitchen floor. Here is the last picture it took:

So my posts in the near future are going to be a little bare of pictures, which is great news for anybody using dial-up, until we fix this camera (if that's even possible) or get a new battery for the other one.


~ I haven't forgotten about the cloth diaper tutorial. I'm still designing, tweaking, and testing. Not to mention, I'm without a camera right now. But let me tell you, this diaper is going to be AWESOME. What I have in the works is a reversible one-size fitted/pocket diaper. One side is flannel, and the other side is fleece, both with absorbent layers sewn inside. The idea is that you can wear it as-is with the fleece on the outside for daytime use as an AIO, or you can stuff it with an insert for extra absorbency, wear it fleece-side-in, and put a cover over it for night-time use. Yeah, I'm pretty jazzed about this one. :-D I hope it all works out all right!

Well, I think that's about it. Stay tuned for a bread post later!

On (or out of) the Town

This post is coming half a country away from where these posts usually come. We are visiting Adam's family for the rest of the month! Of course, Baby D is not getting any attention at all. :-D

 Visiting with great-grandma

So anyways, posting might be a little scarce for the next couple weeks. Don't think that this is a good opportunity to break into my house and take all my stuff. Well, you can take the dirty dishes and the laundry I didn't manage to do before we left, but Meatloaf and Mel would be so happy if you'd leave everything else for them to destroy while we're gone. I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving!

Earth Day Question: Am I a Hippie?

Happy Earth Day! Today is the day to celebrate all things crunchy and environmentally friendly! Being raised in the stereotypical "Those-radical-leftists-are-hyping-up-the-environment-of-course-there's-no-problem" house (we all know one), I've never celebrated Earth Day. Even after realizing that, yes, there are negative things happening to the environment that we need to reverse, I still don't celebrate Earth Day, because I see the environmental trend as very... trendy.

So, I do my small, quiet things to be a little better to Mother Earth without all the hoopla. Some of these things make my husband exclaim, "You're a hippie!"Read my list of preferred activities and see what you think:

1. I use GladRags products as opposed to disposable female products. I once wrote a post about this here.

2. I make my own household cleaning products, face wash, and shampoo.

3. When I have the time and the means, I like to make my own prepared food from scratch: yogurt, bread, breakfast cookies, etc.

4. When shopping, I purposely seek products that are not packaged in plastic.

5. During said shopping trips, I will bring reusable bags if I remember to bring them (so, pretty much never. But at least, when I get to the checkout counter, I promise to remember next time. That counts for something, right?).

6. I recycle old newspaper by using them instead of paper towels when cleaning windows. It leaves a lint-free, streak-free finish every time!

7. And last, but not least, I own a pair of Birkenstocks.


So does this make me a hippie? I doubt it, since I also make fun of Fern Gulley. That pretty much negates any hippie points.

I'm trying to decide on one thing to add this year to increase my eco-friendliness, so I'm looking for ideas! What do you do to help the environment?

Where's My Piece of Cake?

I like a good party.

And let me tell you, things are looking festive over at 5 Minutes for Mom! So I decided to get my groove on, grab a party hat, and join in the fun! Welcome to my blog!

So, a little about myself. I am a recent college graduate who is trying to help my husband follow suit. Any semester now! I am five months pregnant with our first baby, and am thrilled beyond words to be starting a family.

Here we are last year at Six Flags. I love my husband tons and tons!

I am a musician by trade. I trained for most of my life to be a violinist, but an unfortunate wrist injury in college caused me to pursue voice for the past few years. Nowadays, I sing with the city Opera chorus and work a day job. Eventually, I'd like to turn my focus more towards orchestral work and resume playing with the local Symphony, and teach private lessons, as well.

This blog mostly centers around my earnest and sometimes amusing attempts to get my domicile under control. I am particularly interested in being frugal, environmentally kind, and crafty (as in, make a huge mess of the house do crafts).

Here are a few of my favorite posts:

The Church of Google

Fun Things to Do in Oklahoma City

Cat Attack!

It's ALIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!

And any one of my Works for Me Wednesday posts.

*******************

Now, what would a party be without party favors? Let me tell you which ones I'd love to win!

1. USC61- A Sleepy Wrap baby carrier

2.USC58- Golden Canyon Heritage Candle

3. USC33- $50 gift card to Lindt Chocolate

4. USC22- Cushie Pushie breast support pillow for nursing moms

5. US57- beginner yoga kit

6. US7- Tupperware Prize Pack

7. US9- Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Balls

8. US49- $25 Starbucks gift card

9. US18- Goody Basket for Mom

10. US68- Scentsy Warmer with 3 scents

****************

Thank you for stopping by and joining in the fun! Now, to go find that piece of cake...

A Riddle for Monday

My office has a day-by-day calendar that includes bits of random trivia or puzzles on the back. On Saturday, there was a riddle. I thought about it all weekend, but couldn't come up with the answer (maybe I'm just a little slow), so when I changed the page today and saw the answer, I was astounded! So I will pass on this little riddle to you:


Three brothers share a family sport:
A non-stop marathon
The oldest one is fat and short
And trudges slowly on
The middle brother's tall and slim
And keeps a steady pace
The youngest runs just like the wind,
Speeding through the race
"He's young in years, we let him run,"
The other brothers say
"'Cause though he's surely number one,
He's second, in a way."


Can you figure out the answer? No googling allowed! ;-)

Quick! What can I post in four minutes??

I just walked in the door from a very long day. Church, in which we forgot we were bringing Sunday School snacks until twenty minutes before church.

Then a three-hour-long opera rehearsal. I was this close to getting the sluttiest part in the opera. Thank God that didn't work out. :-P

Then a Super Bowl party at a friend's apartment! Since he has a wood-burning fireplace, he and my husband had the brilliant idea of starting a fire.... and roasting hot dogs in the apartment! It actually worked!

One more minute till midnight! So I will say this in closing: I was rooting for the Saints all along. I'm not a football fan, but I've been to New Orleans and found it to be a magical place; thus my reasoning behind choosing them. Now time for bed!

Confessions

Wow! Has it really been three months since I last posted? Sure enough, I have been on Blogger almost daily, reading other blogs and gleaning information and insights into life; but, to be very honest with you, I have not had much material to blog about lately, because...

....My Downright Domestic moments have been few and far between these past few months!

However, that is all changing. Opera is over till January, so there will be no more craziness in that direction for awhile! Also, Adam just turned in his two weeks' notice (school all day + work all night = a questionable academic future), so there won't be any more one-car, schedule-juggling insanity. Of course, on the flip side, this means that I need to somehow squeeze more hours out of my boss, or, preferably, get a better job.

(Honey, you can graduate anytime now!)

Oh yeah, I am SO ready for those days of bon-bons and daytime television. ;-)

Anyways, I have been progressively acting a little more Domestic every week. In a nutshell, I have:

• Baked that infamous artisan bread with great results!
• Decided what I'm making for my womenfolk relatives this Christmas. I'm super excited about this and can't wait to share it with you!
• Accomplished a lot more baking around here-- bringing muffins to work, taking scrumptious pumpkin scones to Sunday School... Adam says I'm already halfway to being a grandma.
• Started tackling the Bedroom Mess Monster. Oh, my word, y'all. I am seeing parts of the bedroom that haven't seen the light of day since we moved in 1 1/2 years ago!
• Last night, I pored over cookbooks and put together a meal plan, in which we eat the same dinner (or loose variation) on the same day of each week (Spaghetti Sunday, Baked Potato Thursday...). This was highly successful in our early marriage, so I'm hoping to be able to implement this again.

So that is what's on my plate right now. I will be keeping this blog updated on all that's going on above, so stay tuned!

Houseguests: the Final Installment

Well, as of yesterday, our houseguests are finally gone. And it wasn't the best of partings. :-(

Adam beat me back home by five days, since I went to Pennsylvania to be a bridesmaid for one of my best college friends (and it was a beautiful wedding! Pictures to follow!). When I talked to Adam on the phone throughout the week, he informed me that our guests were treating him particularly coldly. They were barely talking to him or even acknowledging that he was there. I thought maybe they felt awkward because I wasn't there (they were more my friends, music department and all), so I decided to wait till I got home to worry about it.

And then I got home.

And then I REALLY worried about it.

In my absence, and in the name of "cleaning", they had: rearranged furniture and cabinets, broken dishes, taken steering wheel covers and decorative features off our car, torn a hole in our nice new couch, filled the linen closet with dirty towels, locked our kitties in the bathroom repeatedly for no good reason, and gave us a record electric bill, among other things. And and AND! They had taken anything they perceived as "junk" from the living areas and just chucked it into our bedroom, so I got to walk into a DISASTER room with a bed when I got home.

In spite of all this, I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they had merely been trying to clean our house as a favor, albeit in a foolhardy way, so I let it be.

But.

They were extremely cold to me, as well. Adam and I would walk in the house after work, and they wouldn't even say "hi" to us. They avoided conversation with us, and would huddle somewhere and whisper amongst themselves.

So, seeing that our friendship was rapidly disintegrating and that they were grossly overstepping houseguest boundaries, I finally broke the news to them that they needed to go. They left yesterday with a terse, "Thanks for letting us stay." No hugs. No smiles. No indication that we had a friendship of several years under our belts.

I'm really sad and perplexed. Sad because in saving them from the gutter, I destroyed our friendship. Perplexed, because there is no reason why that should have happened. But, I also feel a calm. I did the right thing by helping out friends in need, and I know that God is watching.

But losing my friends for no reason? That just sucks.

Entertaining Angels Unaware

This has been a very unusual week in the Domestic household. Last Wednesday, on the way home from work, Adam got a call from two college friends, asking if they could spend the night at our apartment.

On the way there, I repeatedly thanked God that I'd done a little cleaning that day! However, I soon found out that there was really no need to worry about that.

On the way back home, I learned that their summer was a sad story of broken promises, sickness, and life's curveballs, which had left them basically wandering the streets and sleeping on sidewalks for the past month. They were glad to just have a place to sleep without fear of someone calling the police on them!

We were pretty much the last people they decided to call for help. They had tried everybody else in the city they could possibly think of, and... no one would take them in.

Why? There were several excuses, but the main reason that people turned them down was because one is a guy and the other is a girl.

Evidently, it's easier on a person's conscience to let a couple of friends wander the scorching streets and go for days without food than to look after their well-being in a potentially compromising situation.

Frankly, I was appalled, yet painfully aware of all the other times I have withheld help from others in much more minor, but still present, need. When Adam and I were talking about this the other day, he reminded me of this Bible passage that I often forget:

Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’ “Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’ (Matt. 25;34-40)

So now, a week later, these friends (who are platonic, by the way) are still here with us, because we told them that we want to keep them until they find another place to stay. They have one lead and are waiting to see if that will work out, but until then, it's the four of us and two cats in our little apartment!

Since Adam and I are poor college folks ourselves, I'm trying to figure out a way to feed two additional people without breaking the bank. Any ideas?

Dreams

Today, I sang for a special little concert that the university music department was putting on for an accreditation committee. I also played violin for an original composition by one of the composition majors. That was really funny, because there was a flute player onstage, a clarinet player playing from backstage, and me, playing from the back of the auditorium. Don't you just love twentieth century stuff.

I love performing so much! I really look forward to the day when I can do what I was born to do (and no, it's not waiting tables!).

Adam hasn't been feeling well today, and when I came back home, he was still in bed. And I unwittingly woke him up from the most amazing dream. He dreamt that he somehow won $500 million dollars. He then decided that we'd live like we were making only 50k a year (funny how this is pretty much exactly what he'd do in real life), and he wanted to get a new, but used, car, and he wanted me to quit my job and be a stay-at-home wife. 

I was so sad to wake him up from that! I was very tempted to say, "Go back to sleep, and let me dream with you!"

Well, I'm going to go do the laundry, and maybe play the lottery today. ;-)

Mercy

The other day, I showed up to my voice lesson exhausted, running there in between shifts at the restaurant. It was supposed to be my day off because of slightly important things, like, you know, attending class so I can earn a degree already; however, the restaurant decided I had slightly more important things to do, like, you know, serve to Coke to crabby businessmen. So much for the arts!

My voice teacher is an operatic baritone who has sung all over the world and has made many appearances on NPR-- and yet he is so humble and is very fatherly to me. We were talking about restaurant work and how crummy the pay is. I bet you didn't know that restaurants just assume that waiters will make enough tips per hour to make minimum wage, so they get away with paying the waitstaff next to nothing. My restaurant pays me a whopping $2.15 an hour to be there! It had been a grueling weekend, with me working doubles for several days and then finishing that off with a ten-hour workday. I felt more dead than alive. My teacher, who has been through all that (starving musician and all :-P), sympathized with me, didn't push me too hard, and wished me a good evening at the restaurant when I left to go back to work.

At work that night, I went to the kitchen to get something, and dragged myself back out... to see my voice teacher sitting in my section! (he told me later that he asked the hostess, "Could you seat me in Maria's section?" and she replied, "Which Maria?" Tee hee, work is so hilarious sometimes!) He ordered a good-sized meal, chatted with me whenever I passed by, and left me a $10 tip for a $12 meal! I was very touched, to say the least. I suddenly had more energy for the rest of the night.

It was a little thing, stopping in for dinner and leaving a few extra bucks, but it meant a lot to me.

And then, last night, I waited on some truly horrible people.

It was a combination of me still being new to the job and them just looking for someone to be ticked off at, I think. They said hurtful things to my face and then left angry, mean writings on the receipt (and, of course, no tip). And then there was another table that I waited on hand and foot (and believe me, they had me running back and forth from the kitchen nonstop). They ran up quite a tab and then... left no tip. Nothing anywhere. It's quite amazing what tips will do to a server's ego. Not to mention the pocketbook! I was exhausting myself and not even making minimum wage. So there I was, so tired, and suffering thoughts of failure, shame, and financial worry.

I went to the restroom and had a meltdown for a few minutes. I wanted to just leave that crummy restaurant with all its crummy hours and crummy customers. 

And then I thought of my teacher from a few nights before.

And I received the strength and the will to go on. I could forgive those not-so-nice people and give control over to God. Not everybody that goes to restaurants is horrible (just most of them :-P), and I am a good waitress.

Moral of the story? Be kind to people! You never know when your actions will help your friends long after the fact, even if it's as simple as cheering them up on a Monday night in a restaurant. If you made it this far in my ramblings, good for you!