Happy Birthday to my "little" brother! in Not-So-Hum-Dingers

Well hello there, my friends, how are we all doing?

FIrst off, I want to wish my younger brother, Nick, a very happy 29th birthday. He’s grown into quite an awesome man, and I’m beyond excited about him and his wife expecting their first baby in April of next year. I love him, and I wanted to put that in here even though he’ll (probably) never read it.

Twenty-three days since my last entry, and things haven’t been all that different. I’ve been awesome at my job, as usual, and have felt like a pretty good father/husband to my beautiful family.

A long-time diary friend has said she misses my entries, so I’m going to try and do something to fix my lack-of-words-typed-into-this-place.

Things with work have been pretty awesome. I really like all of my coworkers, even though none of them seems to be able to step up and wash a dish correctly (which even though it’s my job, I feel like it’s a “bottom-rung” type of job that everybody working there should know how to do well). I was taking our household garbage out this afternoon and I could see this big black soot spot on the bottom of one of the stainless steel pots that hang right above the sinks where the dishwasher works (right in front of my face if I was there working).

I just don’t understand how somebody can half-ass their way through a job like that. A tiny part of me can understand wanting to get out of there and enjoy the rest of your weekend, but being so carelessly lazy like that is just puzzling to me.

The good news is that their mess will still be there tomorrow, and if it still gets done with the same lackluster performance tomorrow I’ll be there Monday to fix it all up just like every other Monday. But the beauty of this coming Monday is that it’s the last day of 2014 that I’ll have to work at the restaurant because Sezzie, Ashley, and I are going down to Australia for a nice, long, Christmas-time vacation.

That’s right, Sezzie’s parents have been so unbelievably generous and we’re flying down there (leaving Tuesday, landing on Thursday, that still kind of messes with my brain and its funky way of feeling the passage of time/time-zones) for six weeks of being a family down with the Aussie side of our family. We’ll get to hang out at the house that Sezzie and her brothers grew up in, and just exist in the southern hemisphere for a good stretch of time.

I’m a little scared for what my absence from the restaurant will do, but it can’t be much worse than going in every Monday to what looks like the work done by somebody far off of some sort of spectrum. I tried showing Drea how dishwashing goes, but her California eyes didn’t seem to grasp the gravity of the work. I make it a point to not stop moving when I’m at work, there is always something to be done. If I’m not washing dishes and loading them into the dishwasher then I’m out there clearing/wiping tables. If there aren’t any tables that need clearing then I’ll cut up some home fries. If there are already a lot of home fries cut up then I’ll wash the surfaces in my work area, or the walls around my work area, or even the spots on the floor where the mostly-daily-moppings don’t really get clean.

My point is it’s not just taking dishes from the dining area and throwing them into a dishwasher and calling them clean because a machine that’s called a “dishwasher” did its thing on them for three minutes. The dishwasher is a glorified shower-in-a-box. The real key is to get the dishes good and clean, load them into the machine in such a way that everything will be bombarded by all that hot (up to 190ºF) water and come out good and sanitized.

Then once everything is clean it needs to be put away in an orderly manor so that one can navigate their way to what they’re after without much of a fuss. I go in every Monday to a whole lot of chaos and disorder, but thankfully my brain won’t let my body stand around in that much of a maelstrom without doing something about it.

It’s a process that I’ve gotten down to what feels like an art-form to me.

I take it seriously because it’s my livelihood and nobody else seems to think it’s important. Part of me worries what being away will bring, but the last few times I’ve done it I’ve come back to a heap of praise and some beneficial compensations. The first time I went down to Oz to meet Sezzie’s family and stay with them for six months (!!!) I had been working for a little while but I didn’t really set my roots into the work and there were other waitresses there who could do dishes pretty well. I came back from that and was given a more consistent employment schedule and grew. The last couple of time I’ve gone away I’ve come back to more appreciation, and sometimes even a bit of a raise in pay.

Really though, I’m just really excited to get to see the Oz-family for such a good stretch of time, and I’m going to do my best to not even think about what’s going on at the restaurant while I’m down there. I don’t think it will be too difficult because it’s so much fun being there.

Only a couple more sleeps!!!