if you want to be considered a decent human being...

...be nice to your waitstaff.

This actually applies to all restaurant workers, including kitchen staff, bus folks, hosts, and dishwashers.

Now, I know everyone has some story or other of a time when they really received poor service.  Food was wrong or disgusting or improperly cooked.  The host/hostess ignored you.  You had either the waiter who pretty much forgot you were there, or badgered you until you felt like you needed to get out of the restaurant right now!  I get it.  I, myself, have some unfortunate eating-out experiences.  What I am referring to, however, is the usual experience.  You are having a pleasant dining experience and something small goes wrong or you are in a bad mood or the food is not quite what you expected.  Maybe you are like this guy (though if you are, I would seriously not admit that): http://whitewhine.com/post/5307241091/thats-probably-the-first-time-waiters-and

I have been a server.  For quite a while.  I started working in my restaurant as a host the summer after my senior year of high school.  For the four summers after that (and several holiday breaks), I was back at the same restaurant, serving food, making alliances with kitchen staff, and taking over almost any time someone needed a shift covered.  Now, servers (or waiters.  Whatever you want to call us) get a bad rap from lots of people.  Some assume that we are stupid.  Some believe that we care only about our sales and our tips and could care less about the customers or their experience.  Some, even my hero, the venerable Anthony Bourdain, think that we do the easy, pointless work in the restaurant and should stay out of the way of the God-like cooks.  I would argue with you all.  I would say that waitressing was a strange combination of the most stressful and the most fun job I ever had.  I would also submit that, at some point in their lives, everyone should have to work at a restaurant just so they can understand that they should always treat restaurant workers LIKE FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS AND NOT BRAIN-DEAD SLAVES.

Hi there!  I'm here to be verbally assaulted by all your anger and frustrations tonight!

Here, in vague list form, are a few things that I have learned in my restaurant experience.  This may extend into a few separate posts.  Because I feel like this is really that important.

1)  This is the most important note and I cannot stress it enough.  A STANDARD TIP NOW IS 18-20% AND NOTHING SHORT OF TRULY ABYSMAL SERVICE ALLOWS YOU NOT TO LEAVE A GOOD TIP.  There are many reasons why this is so important. 

First is that if your server does not get tipped well, they could be making less than minimum wage for that shift.  If it was a truly bad night, they could owe the restaurant money after their shift.  See, waiters have to tip out at the end of the night.  In my restaurant, a server would tally up their total sales at the end of the night (the full amount that all of the food and drink they sold was worth) and then had to take 3.5% of that and give that money to everyone that was working in the kitchen, the dish pit, the host stand, and the bussers (including a little extra if any of them particularly helped you out that night).  If you go through your book and you have set aside the total sale amount to give to the restaurant and your remaining tips do not quite equal that 3.5% tip out percent?  You have to make up the difference out of your own pocket.  That means the huge table that ran up a couple hundred dollars on the tab and then gave me about a 5 or 7% tip?  They left me in debt at the end of the night.  They left me poorer for having gone into work that day.  Not ok.

Words cannot express the fire with which she hates you.

Another important reason is that in most states, the restaurant's hourly wage to servers is below minimum wage.  This is legal because they anticipate the the amount of tips we receive will push our salary to over minimum wage.  If we don't receive tips, we generally do not have enough to live on.

I'm sorry, but I don't care if you are older and claim that a 10% tip should be just fine because it was just fine back in _____.  I know there is trouble adjusting for inflation sometimes, but you don't pay less at the grocery store because you are used to a gallon of milk being just fifty cents.  I don't get to pay less for gas to fill my car even though I distinctly remember gas once being under two dollars a gallon.  Even if I agree with you that the menu costs are too high, you are not sticking it to the restaurant when you tip low.  You are sticking it to me and telling me that the energy, effort, running, and cheerfulness that I gave you while I served you was not enough to deserve the standard tip amount.

Also, it is completely irresponsible to go out to eat and realize you have exactly enough to pay for your meal and nothing left over for tip.  If you cannot afford to tip, you cannot afford to order those items.  I know I sound harsh.  I know I sound demanding.  But that is how we earn our paycheck and we work hard for it.  You would freak out if your office job suddenly started paying you a hundred or so less each week.  Tips add up quickly for us.

Unless your meal was about $1.40, this is not ok.

If you do not tip the server because you did not like your food, also not cool.  The server did not make your food.  If it was badly made, you should tell the server and they will talk to management and try to fix it.  I bent over backward to fix things and make customers happy if they got a bad order of food.  If you ordered something that you do not like, read the description of the dish next time.  Occasionally management will still give you something new, but do not count on it.  We really want you to enjoy eating out.  Really.  We want you to love your meal and be excited about eating there.  We are not working against you.  I promise.  But you have to work with us a little.

Also, if you are just cheap, it will come back to bite you.  We talk amongst ourselves.  We know when you are bad tippers.  There are ways to expose someone who consistently tips poorly.

*The worst tipping offenders are the men who hit on waitresses and then leave a bad tip.  The worst example of this I heard of was a friend of mine who was relentlessly flirted with by a customer and, after he left his table, picked up his check to find that instead of a tip, he had left her a note saying "meet me at (bar downtown) after your shift to pick up your tip.  :-)"  Yes, there was a smiley.  My friend, being a total bad ass, went to said bar after work, found the customer, and reamed him in front of the entire bar, saying something to the effect of "You NEVER, ever keep a waitress's tips hostage to blackmail her into coming out with you.  If not for the sheer pleasure of exposing you as a complete ass, I would not even be here.  There is nothing in the world less attractive than a cheap, lonely bastard who literally has to pay women to come out with him."  The man was embarrassed, the bar cheered, my friend got a substantial tip (and had a few drinks bought for her by other bar-goers).  Moral of the story?  Don't ever do this.  Ever.

In summary, just give the server an extra dollar or two if you are undecided about how much to tip.  An extra buck on your tip is not a huge deal for you, but it makes an enormous difference to your waiter.

2)  Be aware of what is going on around you.

I cannot tell you how many times we would be ready to close our doors, have about five minutes to the actual closing time, and have people walk in and ask "Are you guys closed?".  Now, of course, we have to go with the closing time posted on the door, so usually we would say something like, "Well, our closing time is actually in five minutes."  Instead of realizing that the restaurant is about closed, these people say "Whew!  We got here just in time.  We are HUNGRY.  Lots of food and lots of drinks!  And since it is so close to closing, we can sit anywhere we want!"

No.

Just, NO.

You have no idea what it does to a restaurant when people do this.  The kitchen, which had started cleaning up for the night, has to get everything back out and then re-clean after these people finally leave.  The servers have to have a brief and furious battle over who will have to stay to wait on these people who may not be leaving for another hour or more.  The server that has to stay also will be unable to do their closing work until the table is gone.  If closing time is at ten?  That server will be lucky to get out of there by eleven-thirty or midnight.

 Why would you do this to us?

People that come in at this time always stay too long.  They will be long done with food and will sit at their table, talking and drinking, for long after, somehow oblivious to the fact that the kitchen staff and their poor server are literally sitting around the corner just waiting for them to go away.  I worked two jobs last summer.  When I was stuck waiting for a table like this to leave, I could think of nothing but the seven o'clock shift at the hotel I had waiting for me the next morning and wondering how many hours of sleep I would be allowed that night.  Please.  For the love of God.  Don't do this to people.  If you are thinking, "I know it's late, but any business is good business, right?  They will be grateful for us coming in and giving them money,"  you are wrong.  We would much prefer that you spend your money elsewhere and allow us to end our shifts and go home.

Another example of being aware comes with seating.  If you have to wait for a table, that means the restaurant is full.  If a table opens up and you are not immediately sat there, it means that that particular server just had other tables filled in their section.  They will be unable to give you prompt service and their full attention if you insist on being sat there RIGHT NOW.  That is why the hostess you are yelling at is not just dumping you there.  Because they know the over-run server needs a few minutes to calm the tables that just sat down before they can get to another one.  They also know that if they ignore those precious few minutes, the server will either yell at them or have a nervous breakdown.  There is a fine balance to working a full restaurant and any time you "insist" on something, it is likely to disrupt that balance.  If the balance is off, you will not be getting the quality of service that you expect.  I promise that we never make you wait just to annoy you.  There is a reason.

There is also the chance that, if you decide to seat yourself, you will be ignored.  This is not out of rudeness, but confusion.  When a hostess seats a table, they usually tell the waitress so she can go get them drinks and such.  During busy stretches, table ownership and section boundaries shift so much that the servers have no idea who each table belongs to.  You may be ignored purely because no one has any idea who should be taking care of you. 

 ...so, instead of alerting the hostess after a reasonable amount of time, we decided to be completely awful.

Also, if your waitress is walking by you with her arms full of heavy plates of food, that is not the time to stop her and tell her that you want a drink refill or are ready to order.  She will be able to take care of you as soon as she drops off the hot, heavy food she is carrying.  Wait a few more seconds.

Hint:  this is heavy

And don't ever, ever, ever try to get your waitress's attention by snapping your fingers at her.  You can wave an arm if necessary, or call out her name or "ma'am", but no snapping.  When a customer did that to me, I made shocked eye contact with him and immediately turned around and walked away.  I know it was not professional, but it would have been even less professional for me to slap him for treating me like his dog.

3)  Do not try to involve us in your personal issues.

I have had tables try to get me to take sides in their arguments.  I have had tables glare at each other in complete silence for the whole meal.  I have had tables ask me why I think they are still single, try to get me to set them up with my fellow waitresses, engage me in long debates about politics or whatnot, and lecture me about how the government is pumping toxins into our food to make us stupid.  Please do not do any of these things.  It is wildly uncomfortable and there is no good way for me to get out of the situation.  My entire job description is to give you a light, fun, enjoyable experience and I cannot do that with almost any of these scenarios.

4)  DO NOT bring your small children and then allow them to do whatever they want.  We brought children crayons, a coloring sheet and fish crackers.  We brought out high chairs or booster chairs whenever needed.  That is the extent of what we did.

I understand that it can be difficult to keep an eye on several children at once.  Things get spilled.  Stuff happens.  That is not what I am talking about.  I am talking about looking on while your child throws things at other tables.  I am talking about laughing when your kid unscrews the top of the pepper or salt or Parmesan cheese shaker and dumps the contents all over the table or floor (yes, both of those things have actually happened to me).  YOUR WAITRESS HAS TO CLEAN THAT.  It was rare for us to have anyone there whose sole job was to bus tables, so all of us were very much in the habit of cleaning our tables ourselves as quickly as possible.  Letting your child run around the restaurant while you sit in your chair drinking or talking is not acceptable.  Your kid will be running directly in front of waitresses trying to get to each of their tables quickly while carrying heavy trays of very full drinks or very heavy plates of extremely hot food.  Not only is this irresponsible, it is dangerous.  Your child could be injured along with the server and whatever poor customer she spills hot food on when she falls.

 Your special snowflake is a homing-device of danger to me.

If you cannot control your child for the duration of one meal, hire a babysitter.*

*note:  the restaurant staff is not your babysitter.  They are there to perform an entirely different job.

5)  I really do want you to be happy.

Some people seem to come in determined to have a miserable meal, confident that I am the enemy and must be destroyed.  I tried so hard to make people happy when I worked.  I had my happy smile pasted on my face at nearly all times.  Even if I was in pain, having a miserable day, had another shift coming up, had not slept for a few days, or was in severe emotional and mental turmoil, I did my damndest to be sure that each customer I saw thought that I was thrilled to be there, overjoyed to see them, and more than willing to bring them anything they wanted to make their experience better.  And usually, I would actually do ridiculous things to make them happy.

Our restaurant served pizzas, salads, sandwiches, and pastas.  We had no fries or burgers.  Therefore, we did not stock ketchup.  For the dipping of cheese covered dough, we had marinara sauce, pesto, olive oil, or alfredo, but no ketchup.  When a child at my table panicked about being unable to dump ketchup on her plain spaghetti noodles, however, I yelled to my manager that I would be right back, ran to the market just down the street, and bought a bottle of ketchup.  Most of my fellow waiters would have done the same.  We want people happy.  I was overjoyed to see the relief on that mother's face when I returned to the table with a bottle of ketchup.  We really do love it when people enjoy themselves.

What you should know about your server is that they are in a job where they cannot retreat to a cubicle when they are having a rough day and don't want to be around people.  They have to spend the day faking happy and patiently dealing with complaints, requests, demands, and orders.  They have to steal bathroom breaks in the very few moments where all tables are happy.  Even on a great day, a day where no one yells at you, your food all comes out on time (and with the correct ingredients on it!), no one stiffs you on a tip (or, worst of all, takes off without paying!!!), and you have friendly customers, you will be exhausted by the end of the day.  Your waiter is on his or her feet all day.  They are groveling in the kitchen to get an order re-made, trying to keep several tables and all of their food orders straight in their head along with what time each table came in, refilling drinks, making salads, totaling bills...basically, multi-tasking like a pro.  Please, be nice to them.  It will keep them sane.

At least, for a little while.

to that poor, long-suffering guy...

...I feel he was not sufficiently warned.

This entry is dedicated to Tyler (I frequently refer to him as "the boy".  It's habit.  I don't know why).

I had a total epiphany the other day about just how strange his life must be now that I am consistently in it.  Seriously.  He gets to deal with some exceedingly odd behavior and applaud me for nearly insignificant achievements.  I mean, I change what kind of person I want to be on nearly a daily basis.  One day I am quirky and wildly unique, the next I am a bitingly sarcastic wit, and the next I am some deep, brooding, artistic soul.  In reality (for the person I am living with), these translate into one day listening to music that is not popular for good reason and pretending to like things like vegan tempah/hummus/free-range sardine salad, the next trying way too hard to be funny at occasionally uncalled-for times (like pretty much anyone from a bad sitcom), and the next growing unresponsive to normal conversation prompts and instead launching into a monologue about some new form of soul-searching that I think I have made up, but actually comes from a book my entire class read in college.

Or, you know, high school.

Tyler comes home to me standing on our futon in the middle of the living room belting out "Phantom of the Opera" lyrics to our tv screen.  He has encountered me wearing things around the house that even hipsters would never put together (and he has seen me wearing clothing out in public that even he says should have been destroyed by fire long ago).  He makes gourmet meals for us all the time and then has to heap excessive praise on me for successfully making soup.  He copes with the risk of me transforming into a weeping, irrational, harpy-beast with one glass of wine (It's usually either harpy-beast or giggly Calli.  Giggly Calli is much more fun).

I did try to warn him that I was strange before we got married.  I really did.  I told him I was messy and disorganized, that my moods are mercurial even to me, that I get alternately clingy and isolated.  I warned him that I can cook about three or four items successfully and one of them is grilled cheese (ok, not always successfully.  One of our pans still has a bread-shaped scorch mark on it).  He knew that I watch strange tv shows and musicals, that I read A LOT, that I eat strange foods (since we have been married, there has not been a single time where our fridge has not been stocked with pickles), and that the concept of attractive clothing confuses me.  I think he was just unaware of the extent of the strangeness.  Maybe he chalked my descriptions up to my tendency to exaggerate (news to everyone, I am sure).

He has bravely borne it all.  The only expression of frustration I receive is the sigh-and-head-shake combo and even that is infrequent.  I feel as if I would not have that much patience or that well-developed a sense of humor if I had to deal with me.  Maybe it's his baby-sitting experience.

Unlike me, his natural reaction to this is not complete terror.

At any rate, I am issuing a thank-you.  Thank you, Tyler, for not outright laughing at me when I am confused by grad-school conversations and sit to the side, my head cocked at an angle like an overwhelmed puppy.  Thank you for making me delicious meals and pretending that the few meals I make are equally brilliant and delicious.  Thank you for giving me completely undue praise whenever the (extremely) rare cleaning mood strikes and I guilt myself into cleaning up my extreme mess.  Thank you for letting me sing loudly when I feel like it and not reminding me that the neighbors might think we are killing cats in our apartment based on the noises coming through the walls.  Thank you for encouraging me to go make friends when I feel like sitting in the house and drowning in back episodes of a new (to me) tv show like alias or buffy (and thank you for not mocking me too severely for watching things like alias or buffy).

You are awesome.

Now it is Buffy time.

I will call only one name...

...or say only one word, and that word will be WHY?

Well, that is really directed at no one but myself.  It is my own fault I watch the show, it is my own fault I am mired in its shallow waters, and it is my own fault that I feel such a sense of shame about it.  I am talking, of course, about America's Next Top Model.

Why?

The show is ridiculous.  Really, it is.  In its many, many cycles (they are currently on cycle 16), they have yet to produce someone that is actually a "household name" or even "easily recognizable".  They are producing "Another Average Model", not top models.  But the false advertising is just one of its many silly parts. 

Tyra has swung back into the realm of normal human in this season, but in previous cycles she has exhibited behaviors that made me seriously believe she had some mental-health issues.  The "goddess" theme in cycle 12 was very what-the-crap.  The talking about herself for every possible situation...ok, that hasn't stopped.  The cycle where she wore a jumpsuit to every single judging panel?  Why?  And every cycle gives us another few moments of her doing some completely over-the-top "acting" thing that is supposed to have a point but never does.

Is...is this fierce?

The judging itself is 100% arbitrary.  They will tell one girl they are letting her go because she doesn't want it enough and another girl that they are letting her go because she wants it too much.  They constantly criticize girls that are not loud and crazy by saying that they have no personality (because apparently that's why models are famous.  personality.  not their bodies or anything).  They will fawn over hideous pictures of girls they like and pick apart great pictures of girls they don't like.  If you are strange-looking, congratulations.  Victory is coming.  If you are what the rest of the world would call "pretty" or "beautiful", you are in some trouble.

But really, none of that matters.  The judges know which girl they like early in the competition and once they decide who they want to win, performance has nothing to do with it.  This works great in situations where that person is actually skilled and likeable (Naima, Ann, Nicole, Danielle, Caridee...), but is infuriating when the person is average or obnoxious (Whitney, Saleshia, Teyona, Krista...).  Yes, I know, it is stupid to get even remotely invested in a reality show, but no one likes it when the bad guy wins.  We like to pretend that talent actually matters.  And you wouldn't think there would be any form of talent involved in getting dressed up pretty and standing in front of a camera, but I promise you, they will find a way to make it look like the most difficult thing these girls have ever faced (and for some, depressingly, it is).  Apparently, you can suck at being a human prop.  I swear, if Tyra tells girls to "smize" one more time...

Here is a brilliant diagram of what Top Model thinks makes a good model.  Thank you, cracked.com.

It's sad because it's true.

Then we get into the madness of what happens in the show.  Any given cycle is a crap-shoot of contestants.  You never know whether you will be watching likeable human beings or shrieking harpies trying to consume one another's souls.  Several cycles feature nearly no one for the audience to cheer for (I am looking at you, cycle 14).  All cycles will feature a resident bitch and several catfights.  And the structure includes the obligatory reality-show confessional booth where people say shockingly stupid and bitchy and just outright awful things to the camera, apparently forgetting that THEY ARE ON A TV SHOW AND PEOPLE WILL SEE WHAT THEY ARE SAYING.  You would think they would have some vestigial desire to be remotely likeable, but apparently not.  Every cycle you will hear someone with the "I'm not here to make friends" line.  While this may be true (it is a competition in theory), that does not excuse becoming the most-hated person ever.

The show also features various challenges.  Some seem to have a point (teaching them creative poses or how to conduct interviews), while others are clearly ridiculous gimmicks.  The worst offenders are the runway challenges.  Runway challenges have included:  walking a runway with a live roach attached to your body, walking on a foot-wide runway on water in a giant plastic hamster ball, walking a sped-up moving-sidewalk runway, walking a runway blindfolded, and walking a runway while giant pendulums are swinging at you.  It's like they are asking for some kind of injury settlement.

 This happened.

The photos range from cool to creepy to why-would-you-do-that?  I will let you pick the category on some of these:  being fake vampires in a bathtub full of fake blood.  Taking a picture with live snakes or a live tarantula on your face.  Taking pictures while covered in bees (yes, bees.  Those bugs that sting).  Taking pictures while dressed and made-up as a person of a different race (this has happened more than once).  I could go on so much longer, but that would be boring for everyone.  There are weird ones.

One of the more hilarious challenges is that each cycle, the girls have to shoot a Covergirl commercial.  They sometimes get prompters, they sometimes have to memorize scripts, but whichever case, I know there is no way it is nearly as difficult as they make it.  People completely break down, freak out, panic, sob off their makeup, go into curse-laden rants, etc.  I try to feel sympathy sometimes.  I understand stage fright.  I understand being dyslexic and having trouble memorizing.  But, seriously.  For the vast majority of contestants, it is not.  that.  hard.  It's just painful to watch sometimes.  Really.

 Stop it.

But you may ask me, "Calli, if you get so annoyed by the show, a show clearly designed to exploit the shallowness and vapidity of the fashion industry (which you also consider pretty much worthless), why do you watch it?"  And to that I would respond, "Largely, because I can't stop."  That's right, my friends.  I am addicted.  I feel shame, of course.  Embarrassment.  Frustration.  But I can't stop.  I must know what ridiculous thing will happen next.  I must know if there is anyone involved that I might actually be a fan of.  I must be there to yell at the Tyra on my tv screen as she turns every possible situation into something about her (hello, narcissism).  And I must talk with my friends about how ridiculous the show was tonight and can you BELIEVE what they did and how this person acted and who got eliminated?

It's stupid, I know.  But it's my guilty pleasure.  I know it is shallow.  I know that, very possibly, it is actively killing my brain cells.  But I don't watch other reality shows.  I don't watch jersey shore because it makes my soul vomit.  This is my pathetic little rant-session.

Speaking of which, I am going to watch the next episode right now.

 Don't worry, guest judge.  We don't get it either.

You are welcome.

I bequeath unto thee...

...an awesome way to waste time.

If you know me, dear reader, you will know that I like music.  I like it a lot.  And now, in the age of technology, I get to enjoy the videos to go along with all of my favorite songs.  Some of them are artistic and well-thought-out, some are pretentious, some are silly, and some are just several shades of strange.

Today, I am listing some of my most-watched music videos and the reasons why.  And believe me, there are reasons.

The first is a silly and entertaining song.  The music video to it can best be described as a renaissance fair on some bad form of acid.  Here is the "safety dance" by men without hats.

I would like to point out some of the awesomeness.  Observe the midget who dances along throughout the entire song.  Observe our singer's strange interactions with said midget at 0:23.  Observe the facial expressions on the hippie-girl at 0:40 which clearly demonstrate that she is suffering some kind of facial seizure (no doubt a side effect of some bad crack).  Observe our singer's overly-serious facial expressions at 1:06.  And the dance itself, demonstrated at 1:18 and continuing onward, seems to be some extremely aggressive mutation of the classic fourth position in ballet.  Always entertaining.

Next comes the totally freaky "Total Eclipse of the Heart".  For your viewing pleasure, I have included both the original version and the literal version of this ode to creepiness.  I highly recommend the second one.

I don't even know what all to hit on here.  What about how we see at the end of the video that she is apparently an authority figure of some sort at this school and seems to be having elaborate fantasies about the underage boys there?  There are tons of shirtless shots and I don't know what to say about the glowing eyes.  O, overly-dramatic music videos.  This music video is the equivalent of the poetry that middle-schoolers write when they are trying to be insightful that consists of them just listing every emotion they have ever felt.

Here is a music video that is mildly scarring.  The darkness has decided to let you know that they "believe in a thing called love".  I do sincerely apologize if any of you require therapy afterward.  But I still think it is funny.

Battling space crabs with disembodied singing heads in the background?  A vastly over-estimated sex appeal?  A furry towel-creature?  Mannequins in compromising positions?  Space-squids?  I don't even know.  They must have been having some kind of fun when they made this thing.  Or been some kind of high.  Maybe both.

I am going to veer into nostalgia territory.  I both apologize and submit a "you are welcome" for the following videos.

First, the backstreet boys would like to rock your body.  And they feel that the most effective way to do this is with bad acting, thriller-mimicking, and transformations into various halloween-type creatures.

I love all the ridiculousness of this video.  I love that there are random mummy-girls and the terrible facial expressions and cheesy dancing.  I love the truly terrible acting at the beginning and the end.  I even love the awful nineties clothes they are wearing at the beginning.  O, backstreet boys.  This music video does, indeed, rock my body.

For good measure, I am going to throw in the larger than life video.  They like doing the costume thing.  How nice would it be if things really had gone all futuristic at the year 2000?  I want a hovercraft-surfboard.  For real.

While we are on the subject of boy bands, I will be bringing up n*sync.  I was not sure whether their little puppet video was funnier or the one when they are ken dolls.  So I just posted both.

Both ridiculous.  Both hilarious.  And I thought both were totally awesome when I was younger.

Also, the second one does a great job of teaching us that important life lesson: Barbies are evil.  And they will ruin your life.

To cap off this blog of just terrible nostalgia, I am posting Britney Spears.  I give unto you: the ridiculous (and oddly prophetic) "lucky", "oops, I did it again" (how does she get into that body suit?), AND the song that gave boys everywhere an inappropriate school-girl fetish, "hit me baby one more time".

You guys are so welcome.  You are also welcome to judge me for the things I find entertaining.

Rock on.

Good Lord, that hurts...

...and I wish it would stop.

Today's blog follows my trials and tribulations, successes and failures at that land of mystical machines, pulled muscles, and inferiority complexes: the gym.

The gym and I have a strained relationship.  I will commit to it like it is my best friend for about a month and then suddenly, with no warning, I am gone.  I think to myself, "I have been so good.  Surely, it is no problem to skip today.  Besides I have something else to do."  Or perhaps something less positive, more along the lines of, "I have been working out for a month and nothing is happening.  If anything, I think I feel more chubby today.  I hate you, gym, and I am never speaking to you again!"  Or maybe it is something far less dramatic, like "O, I love this show!"

Though I often quit on the gym, I am occasionally provoked.  The gym is occasionally mean to me, the abuser in an abusive relationship, if you will.  Sometime the gym throws several tiny, beautiful girls with not an ounce of fat on their bodies directly into my path.  Sometimes these tiny girls get on the treadmill next to me and don't even go as fast as I do, but they still remain tiny.  Sometimes I see someone doing a new weight-lifting exercise and I decide, "Hey!  They are in great shape!  If I do that, I will be in great shape!"  And using the ever-popular "the more it hurts, the quicker I will be skinny" mentality, I often end up injuring myself.  Last week I remembered being in good shape when I was in soccer so I decided to do some of the old soccer exercises.  This was a mistake.  My thighs did not respond to my commands for four days.  It was unfortunate.

However, this time, I am trying so hard to be positive.  I really want to make this relationship work, gym.  I want us to be allies.  And, damn it, I want to be in good shape.  I know this is shallow and silly, but swimsuit season is coming and I refuse to believe that I have lost my potential to be hot.  I am irreversibly pale.  A toned form is the only thing I can possibly have going for me in summer.

I have been working so hard.  Ok, not as hard as I should because my workouts are tempered by strange forms of laziness.  I work out in the afternoons after I get off work because I am too lazy to do it before work.  I also usually go every other day which equals out to three or four times a week.  If I don't find a random reason to skip (but we're meeting people later and I won't have time to shower!  my hair takes so long to dry!  the kettleballs laughed at me last time!), I am there every other day. 

I am also not the most dedicated of healthy eaters.  Let's take this week, for example.  I was doing so well.  I ate veggies in creative ways (I made a vegetable curry!), we had lean meats or no meats, I got a veggie sandwich at subway (see?  sacrifices!)...but then the weekend came.  Tyler was out of town Friday night and I decided the only thing that could comfort me was a cheese pizza.  This might have been fine if I had not eaten over half the pizza that night.  Then today I had this soup from safeway that is just so delicious, but has enough fats in it to virtually equal drinking straight cream.  Why do I do this to myself?  I try so hard and then sabotage myself and whine about how I am not getting skinnier.

No more messing around, body.  I have been reading fitness and health magazines.  I have been watching labels on my food (and I'm going to pay attention to them this time too!).  I am going to use a kettleball without inflicting serious damage on myself.

The only other real issue I need to get over is people looking at me when I lift.  Last time I was at the gym, I was using the kettleballs for the first time.  There was a diagram right on the wall of some exercises to do.  I know I was doing it correctly.  But there was a guy standing directly behind me doing nothing but staring at me while I did those squat-things.  It was creepy.  I couldn't tell if I was doing it wrong, if he was checking me out, or if he was considering beating me to death with a kettleball and hiding my body in the sand of the volleyball pit.  I wish he had been aware that I was facing a mirror and could see him the whole time.  Seriously, don't look at me funny when I do these things.  With lifting, I am already half-certain I am doing it wrong.

I am not afraid of you, gym (it sounds like I am talking to a person.  My occasionally-abusive on-again-off-again boyfriend, Jim.  Anyhow).  I am coming to you tonight and I will be sweaty and gross and not as toned as the skinny girls you throw in front of me.  But I will be healthy!  I will be strong!  And, at the very least, I will reach that mystical point where I am not just seldom self-conscious, but never self conscious!

Your move, gym.