Adventures of a rookie waitress, and other stories

i have just been expelled from the kitchen by my husband on the grounds that my assignment for the evening is to update our faithful readers regarding the goings-on in the life of the Family Bing. so here are a couple of highlights from the past week or so. first of all though, i would like to preface tonight's edition by saying, entirely of my own accord and not at all at the bidding of anyone else (least of all a certain co-habitant of mine), that my husband is a most helpful, considerate and altogether exemplary husband. he helps out in the kitchen without complaint (and, sometimes, even without prompting), occasionally asks what sort of music I want to listen to, and only leaves the shower curtain open after showering about 80% of the time. really, who could ask for more? (please note that i actually do think Matt is a wonderful husband, and am only ripping him because of his cheeky request that i sing his praises to you all- in fact he has just done the dishes and is now making tea for us both.)

for our storytime tonight i'll take some episodes from a little volume i'm working on called 'Adventures of a rookie waitress' - an illuminating story of a young married woman in an unfamiliar town who selflessly puts aside her own dreams and aspirations and becomes a waitress to put her brilliant but mentally unstable husband through graduate school. the first excerpt is taken from her first day on the job at a formal dining club, preparing for a group lunch:

"at first glance, my assignment seemed simple enough: go around to all the tables and fill up each water glass with ice cubes. how hard could that be? no problem, i thought. eager to show my new coworkers how easily i would catch on, i grabbed an ice bucket, and- heeding the advice of one of the waiters- i surrounded it with a napkin to make the job a little less cold. after filling it up with ice and locating the nearest scoop, into the dining room i went, confident and in high spirits. to my shock, however, this apparently simple task was considerably more difficult than i had expected. those tricky little ice cubes evidently preferred to go everywhere other than into the glasses, whose mouths were deceptively narrow. this problem was compounded by the fact that people were already starting to trickle into the room and mill around, making a quick retrieval of the rogue ice cubes with my fingers a serious faut-pas. so i was forced to make an utter fool of myself, chasing the little buggers around the table with the plastic scoop, trying in vain to capture them without making a mess of the painstakingly arranged settings and making good-naturedly sheepish comments such as 'ha-ha, it's hard than it looks, isn't it?' or 'oh dear, they really don't want to go in there, do they?' to anyone who noticed my plight. the real piece-de-resistance was the one ice cube i actually managed to drop right into the sugar bowl, so that the finger retrieval was in fact the only real option. this i managed, as far as i could tell, without attracting too much attention, and retreated as fast as my little legs would carry me back into the kitchen, my ears no doubt the colour of the tomato-basil soup the party would soon be tucking into. to make matters worse, i could now feel the early stages of carpal tunnel syndrome setting in to my left wrist, which had had to clutch the heavy ice bucket to my side for the duration of the humiliating episode."

the second story details the hazards of table clearing:

"i felt that perhaps i was starting to get the hang of how to stack the dirty plates and cutlery so as to achieve the balance necessary for a safe transit to the kitchen, when all of a sudden things went awry. as i was leaning in between two ladies to pick up a plate from the table, the cutlery which i had piled on the plate i held in my left hand shifted (it remains a mystery to me why they picked such fat-handled knives, as their disproportionate shape causes them to fly around madly on a plate at the slightest movement), and i, inexperienced as i was, overcompensated in my attempt to regain balance and sent half of the cutlery crashing to the floor. one of the ladies took pity on me and bent down to help me pick up the fallen silverware, whereupon one last knife which had been hovering on the edge of the plate, contemplating whether or not to follow its companions in their plunge, made its decision and plummeted to the floor, barely missing the poor woman's head on the way down. shaken, the woman looked up at me and said with an uncertain chuckle, 'maybe i'd better leave that to you or i might get hurt!' 'yes,' i agreed, cursing the day that i took this job, 'that would be advisable.' "

stay tuned for more...