|
Summer
Time Blue's
There
is one mad case of summer time blue's floating around. The General Motors
Factory is on their last legs of a two week shut down, the metal plant is
laying off everyone or cutting their hours, stupidheads are winding up in
the emergency room for bottlerocket injuries, and even one
shallow-end-of-the-gene-pool swimmer did a swan dive off an overpass in
front of a semi over an argument with her boyfriend at Ponderosa. Our
annual fireworks were scheduled for the Sunday after the fourth and canceled
due to severe thunderstorms and most likely won't be rescheduled unless we
need Labor Day Oooo's and Ahhhh's. Who schedules fireworks for a Sunday
night anyway? Back in my day (said in my best
grandfather-about-to-go-off-on-World-WarII-and-rationing voice), we
celebrated the Fourth on the fourth and liked it!
At
work, everyone is grouchy and pissy and just grr-grr-grrrrrowly. I'll admit
it, I'm one of them. I've snapped on a few hostesses lately, gotten a
little irritable with co-workers who only wanted to know what time it was.
I'm tired of scorching heat and making plans to have them canceled by rain
and falling tree limbs. I'm tired of having a pool of sweat in my bra one
minute, then have to dig out my cableknit sweater the next. I'm just
generally tired. Who can sleep around here when it seems as if lightning
may come zapping through your window and singe your eyebrows off? Hey, it
could happen.
It was
today as I worked a lunch crowd and had to place an order with the crusts of
a sandwich pre-removed before serving, and a steak cut into bite sized
pieces for another guest, that I realised people are not only whack-o, but
Goddamn lazy on top of it. Back in my day (said in my best
grandfather-about-to-go-off-about-six-foot-snow-and-one-room-schoolhouses),
we had the finger strength to cut our own crusts off our sandwiches and if
steaks were too difficult to cut into bite size pieces, fuggit… we'd stab it
with a fork and eat it like a corndog. God didn't give us bicuspids for
mashed potatoes and icecream, my friend. Rip that meat and eat it, do
finger push-ups or what have you, and let me do my job waitressing without
having to explain to the kitchen why there are so many directions for a
grilled cheese sandwich! I had one woman try to tell me, after I refilled
her iced tea twice that she was dying of thirst. Sure, it's an expression,
but she meant it. She stated that she seriously thought she was dehydrated…
as she ate her barbeque ribs and French onion soup. Stragglers in the
Mojave never had it as bad as this poor creature.
Tonight, to break up this rain, sun, rain, sun monotony and to escape with
my children into a small period of sanity, I'm going to pull a What About
Bob. You know the movie with Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss and the
babysteps to sanity? Well, I'm going to babystep to the playground and let
them ride their bikes far away from pesky neighbour kids with criminal
histories. THEN, since rain and hail and blech are eminent, we'll return
home to babystep to making fajitas. After eating, the sun will again shine
hot and humid, so I'll babystep them out the door to play with the dog
whilst I babystep with the remainder of my Guiness left over from the
non-existing 6th of July celebration and watch the Yankee's game.
Sure,
this may not be long term healthcare, but it beats chucking myself off an
overpass in front of a U-Haul. It's the survival of the fittest this
summer. |
