A Day's Work

This computer enhances my already-strong tendencies toward chair suck (which is a relative of couch suck, a malady coined by my brother, who noted how, when you lay down on the couch and later try to get up to exercise, say, or clean something, the couch just sucks you right back down again; bed suck is what happens in the morning, but only if you have a job where you don't punch a clock). I had all these things I was going to do when i got home from work today, and I've only managed one so far (return a phone call). I still want to make a quinoa and black bean thing for lunches, and I'll probably manage that one, but anything more ambitious is looking increasingly unlikely. (Yoga? Right out.)

I should try to keep track of and report what I do for a week, just so you get an idea and I have a memory of it. I started off today making cheese filling for these cherry-cheese or apple-cheese squares (some kind of par-baked pie-crusty base, then the aforementioned cheese filling, then cherries or apples, then streusel, then baked again); the recipe calls for 24 pounds of cream cheese, plus sugar, margarine, and something called 1333, which is apparently a cornstarch-like substance. I distributed the cheese filling among six sheet pans of pie-crusty base, spreading it to the sides, then I threw all six sheet pans in the freezer so Johnnie could throw the fruit and streusel on them later. I spread some cream cheese frosting on the carrot cakes. I started putting paper muffin cups into tins for the yellow and chocolate cake cupcakes, and then the owner took over for me so I could start depositing batter in said cups. After depositing about 50 dozen yellow cupcakes, I switched to the large cranberry muffins; again, the owner had put in the paper cups for me. There were maybe 20 dozen of those, and then I switched to the chocolate cupcakes. (Each switch requires putting new batter in the hopper--from a 60-quart bowl on a big chain and pulley--and resetting the machine for the correct amount of batter per deposit.) There were about the same number of chocolate cupcakes as yellow, I believe. I didn't do any of the baking, I just loaded up the trucks. Then I took apart the machine (which is a royal pain in the ass and must be done each time one uses the machine, so there're usually more than one kind of muffin or cupcake), washed the bits, and washed down the machine, then left everything to dry while I had some lunch. Everything I've described here took from about 7 to about 12:30. I ate lunch, put the machine back together, and started the croissants. I didn't have to put the butter into the dough today (i.e., laminate the dough) because Johnnie made a double batch yesterday. Johnnie thinks of the croissants in terms of pieces of dough, each piece weighing approximately six pounds. I've been managing to get about two dozen ham and cheese, chocolate, or almond croissants out of each six-pound piece, and maybe three dozen plain croissants. I sliced some cheese, got some chocolate batons, got out the egg wash, got out the almond filling, and set up a dozen or so sheet pans with parchment paper (Jackie was using the sheeter, so I was doing as much prep as possible). I made all of the croissants myself today (one piece each of ham and cheese and almond, and two each of chocolate and plain), as Johnnie was making something else; Brad rolled some of the plain ones, but mostly it was me. I cleaned up that stuff, then rolled six loaves of apple bread in cinnamon sugar. Then I punched out, a little after 3:00.

As this narrative probably makes clear, there's a lot of grunt work--it's pretty much ALL grunt work, at some level. Several things make it bearable (and even pleasant, in its own way). For one, everyone pitches in with something--as noted, the owner put the paper muffin cups in the tins for me, and Brad rolled some croissants, just as I smoothed the frosting on the carrot cakes and put the acetate bands around them for Johnnie. At least two people are needed to put batter in the hopper for the depositing machine, because the mixing bowls are large, heavy, unwieldy, etc.; one person guides and holds the mixing bowl, while someone else (usually me) stands on a bucket and scrapes batter into the hopper.

A second thing that makes it bearable is that, as I'm sure I've noted before, and as many have noted before me, there's a rhythm to any job, particularly any physical job, and, once you find that rhythm, you can get into the flow of it. You can think of nothing, or you can think of other things (though I doubt I could write a novel in my head, say), or you can talk to the people around you. There's not a whole lot of that, because the owner gets called to the phone a lot, and Brad is always doing something managerial, and the Hispanic guys don't speak great English and I speak no Spanish; the Hispanic guys talk to each other a little, but it's just as common for everyone to be doing his or her job without any talk.

Really, though, I shouldn't write in terms of making it "bearable," because that makes it sound unpleasant, and it's really not. It's not an intellectual challenge, of course, but I knew that going into it. I like that the owner continues to try new things, is open to new ideas, is even willing to try new recipes; he, too, reads Food Porn Bimonthly (i.e., Cooks Illustrated). I like the opportunity to see the cyclical bits--we're doing heart-shaped things now, of course, given the proximity of Valentine's Day, and things in general will start to pick up in March. There are also King Cakes in March, I think. The summer baking for the farmers' markets sounds insane, and I'm looking forward to it (and dreading it); I'll maybe even get some overtime out of that. There are a ton of cakes through June, what with graduation at the nearby university and so on, plus Mothers' and Fathers' Days. What I want to do is start thinking about how my bakery would run--what products I want to have, what specialties I want to offer, things like that. My schedule has been wacky, though: last week, I spent nearly every non-working moment either sleeping or interacting intensely with someone. That particular brand of intensity is unlikely to continue at that volume (though one never knows), but I've agreed to do a freelance job, which will take substantial time and energy. And I still try to squeeze in handball and yoga, though I'm lucky if I manage once a week for each of them (which bums me out).

Ah, well. It keeps things interesting. Meanwhile, I have to go start on our taxes, which will be less than interesting, but the sooner we file, the sooner we get some money back. It's going to be strange filing a joint return--I've never done that before. Crawdaddy is more than happy to let me take a hack at it, so I'm going to do that. But it will still be strange.

Politics, Sausage, and Baking

Lordy lou, this has been an intense week, and not all because of work. Still, it's all good. Great, as a matter of fact.

What I've contributed at my job so far:

• big yellow sponges with green scrubby stuff on the back are useful for cleaning the muffin machine
• big yellow sponges w/o the green stuff, cut in half (so you have two sort-of-squares instead of a big rectangle) and then cut almost in half through the sponge (so it's kind of like a mouth) are very useful for wiping off the knife you're using to cut an Opera cake
• if the butter was too cold and didn't incorporate properly into the batter, you can torch the (40-quart) bowl rather than wait for the whole thing to come to room temperature
• the joconde for the opera cake should probably be a little thicker, so the recipe needs to be upped a little bit

Also, when I told the owner that the sour-cream crumb cake he makes is like the cake my mom makes, and that my dad has dubbed said cake "funeral cake," because my mom always takes it when someone dies, the owner was so amused he renamed the cake "funeral cake."

Other things I've learned:

• the 40-quart bowl is capable of leaping off of the mixer, while the mixer is running (I'm not making that up)
• lifting sheet pans full of dough all day will increase the strength of your arms and shoulders (and thereby improve your handball game, when you have a chance to play)
• if you torch the 40-quart bowl, the bowl will be hot, even if the batter isn't, so don't touch the bowl
• piping makes my hands hurt, probably because the piping bags are so big
• if you don't put the muffin machine back together properly, it won't spew out the right amount of batter
• and, finally, baking is like politics and sausage, i.e., you may like the result, but you don't want to see either being made.

Okay, it's time to make some dinner and then work on a new recipe (I'm going to combine the chocolate mousse from the world cupcake with the raspberry mousse from the raspberry cake, along with either a chocolate dacquoise or a chocolate sponge). I borrowed some cake rings from work, so we'll see how it works out. And sleep. I definitely need some of that.

Still Here

and, as Paul Simon once wrote, still crazy after all these years. I promise a longer post soon, maybe even today. But now--off to frost cakes and make croissants.

The Little Missus

For reasons that I won't detail here, I'm on a mailing list for people who might contribute lots of money to the Republican party. Needless to say, they are sadly mistaken about me in that regard, but I haven't written or called to tell them so, because examining the mailings are an interesting exercise. I can't really get all the way through them, but it kind of doesn't matter: my favorite part is that they address the mail to "Mrs. Emma Goldman." First, they have no way of knowing whether I'm married--the information they got from me only had my first and last name, so they merely assumed that I'm married, which I find bizarre. Why assume that about someone? Second, though, that is an incorrect form of address, as I learned from Miss Manners (who is an invaluable resource on this and many other things). One can be Emma Goldman, or Ms. Emma Goldman, or Dr., the Honorable, or the Reverend Goldman, or Rabbi Goldman, for that matter, even if one has taken one's husband's name. What one cannot be is Mrs. Emma Goldman. When you use that form of address, you also use the husband's first name, i.e., I'd have to be Mrs. Crawdaddy Goldman. But perhaps the Republicans have not read Miss Manners.

I've also had to stop myself from being too annoyed at my relatives, most of whom just assumed that I changed my name. I did not, and I've been saying since I was 15 that I would not, and they haven't bothered to ask, so it seems kind of . . . annoying. They mean well, and they're old, so it's not like I'm going to call them and yell at them, but it does bug me. It especially bugs me when my mother does it, because we had that conversation. She addresses things to me using my correct name, but the Christmas gift (a check) was made out to Emma and Crawdaddy Smith. I haven't told her yet that we haven't combined our bank accounts (and have no intention of doing so), mostly because I keep forgetting to mention it, but I'm sure she'll get bent out of shape about that one, too.

Thanks to the wonderful Crawdaddy, however, she might be beginning to come around on the whole career change thing. She has been distinctly non-supportive about this whole venture from day one. She asked me as recently as a week ago whether I was going back to the old company, for example, and she's nothing but upset that I'm going to be earning so little (and, by the way, not have a Big Important Title; my mother, bless her heart, is into status markers a little bit). I try not to let it bug me--and it surely hasn't stopped me--but it's my mother, fer chrissakes, so a little support would be nice. Last week I explained, for the umpteenth time, that life's too short to do work that I hate, but she had on her "not listening" voice. She called yesterday while I was at work, though, and C talked to her for awhile, and she brought up the subject, saying something to the effect that I'm serious about this, aren't I. C said yes, she is, she loves it, her boss loves her, it's great, and I love seeing her so happy--all the stuff he's been saying to me all along. When she called me today, it was with the express purpose of finding out how the job's going, so maybe, just maybe, she's beginning to resign herself to the fact that her daughter is doing this wacky thing. I'm not holding my breath entirely, but you never know.

Tomorrow: another day off! I'm finding that I don't mind working on Saturday all that much (though I'm sure I'll mind it more the first time I want to stay out late on a Friday), not least because I'm home by early to mid afternoon. Sunday isn't all that much changed, and then I have off on Monday! Though tomorrow I'm going to go give back my extra unemployment check, seeing as how I got paid Friday, and I expect THAT will be more fun than a person should be allowed to have, if my previous experiences with the state unemployment offices are any indication.

The Road to Carnegie Hall (a.k.a. Practice, Practice, Practice)

I found out yesterday what I'm getting paid ($8.50/hour, going up to $9 in March), plus got a ton of really positive feedback from the boss, who thinks I'm really, really good. I'll just tell you one thing (because I've got a LITTLE modesty, hidden somewhere): he said it was clear to him that I had the skills to do this well. I pointed out that it had only been a couple of weeks, but he said that when someone's got it, they got it--and when they don't, you can tell, too. And that the three previous people he's had there from my school weren't nearly as good as I am. Plus I got an actual paycheck today, so that's cool, too.

After work yesterday, out of which I got at about 2:15, I actually played handball, which completely rocked, and then S and I headed to a bar, where B soon met us, followed not long after that by another friend of S's (C was with his mom, who had her pacemaker battery replaced on Wednesday and is apparently doing fine). We hung out for a little while, and S and his friend left, and B and I continued to sit there. Until about 1:30 am. Even though I had to get up at 5 for work. By the time he got me home and I got upstairs and got to sleep, it was after 2:30, and the alarm (which I reset for a few extra minutes of sleep) went off at 5:20. Luckily, I have many long years of practice at this functioning-on-little-sleep thing. I skipped breakfast (though I still made the thermos of tea [it's not really a Thermos, because it's made of stainless steel rather than glass, but I don't know what you call thermoses that aren't Thermoses]), I jumped in the shower first thing, I didn't bother with the contact lenses today, and I quasi-napped on the train to work. At work, I moved with deliberation, despite the fact we made twice as many croissants today as on other days (I think Johnnie had had a few last night, too, so we were both, as they say, crudo, which apparently means "raw," but is also slang for "hung over." I wasn't hung over so much as exhausted, but I just plugged away and got through it--something else I've learned from years of practice.

Tonight C and I went to a local Asian joint--the place we had our first date, as a matter of fact, lo those many years ago. We've become fond of a particular waiter; he's very good, and a sweetheart, and we overtip wildly, and he always comps us a couple of desserts. When we went in after Christmas, we left a card for him, with $20 in it--nothing extravagant, obviously, but we like him. Tonight, he brings me a bottle of wine (which, of course, I did not finish), and we got three desserts--and then he came up to us afterwards and said the whole meal was comped. He said his manager is a nice guy, etc. (when I inisisted he take $20, which he actually tried to refuse), i.e., he went to his manager and asked to do this for us. I told him it was wonderful and we really appreciated it and he can't do it again. But it sure was sweet.

And now, campers, I'm extremely tired, as you might imagine. You can practice getting by on three hours of sleep all you want, but eventually, people, you still need to sleep.

Hot Underwear

Did I go to yoga tonight? No, I did not.

One of the young women who works in the front of the bakery is a trip and a half. Several of the employees are quiet, subdued, etc., but not Marlo, oh NO. She comes into the back and just chatters away, sometimes in a foul-mouthed fashion. She abuses everyone, though in such a well-meaning way it's impossible to get truly upset. (She's the one who kept telling me to smile.) She'd already mentioned having kids; today I found out that (a) she has four, and (b) the youngest is 8 and the oldest is 18, at which point I asked how old she is (36). So that was sort of interesting. She then mentioned going to "group" tonight, so I asked what the group was: "DV," she tells me, and then says "domestic violence." Apparently one of her boyfriends or husbands beat the everloving shit out of her--broke multiple bones, etc.--for which event he is serving time in prison. She got the hell out of that relationship--went to a shelter, she said, and so on, so good on her, even though she had to leave all her stuff behind.

The reason I mention her is that she is the spouter of my new favorite phrase, even though I disagree with just about every aspect of it. She's been saying that adultery is the worst thing ever (today she elaborated that she doesn't do married men--she'll go out with men who have girlfriends, who are living with someone, who are engaged, but not men who are married). She thinks it's worse than killing someone, that the deity will forgive murder before s/he'll forgive adultery. Of course, I don't believe in deities or in hell, and I disagree on the adultery thing, for that matter, even though I haven't told her that. She just thinks it's the worst thing ever: Those who commit adultery, she says, are "going to hell in a gasoline thong." Which just cracks me up.

Pavement on the Road to Hell

What I intended to do, but couldn't manage: a yoga class. What I'm supposed to be doing now: checking to see how the gingered sugared pecans for C's sister are coming along, plus making a yellow-split-pea-barley stew for lunches, so I can take a break from the curried cauliflower already. (Today I had C's leftover cassoulet from ten days ago and some of the tomato bread that Brad gave me last week, but I don't have anything else in the freezer, so it's cook, eat a stale Clif bar for lunch tomorrow, or I don't know what.) I want to make a black bean and quinoa thing, too, but I suspect the energy for that will not be forthcoming tonight.

The bad news is that I still don't know how much I'm getting paid. The good news is that the owner thinks I'm doing "terrific" work--he said he sent an email to Chef Bob telling Chef Bob how wonderful I am. That kinda made my day, if you want to know. The owner's wife will talk to me tomorrow about pay details. Really, though, the fact that he likes my work is pretty cool, and C and I figured that, although we really can't get by if all I'm making is minimum wage, that would serve as a spur to get something going for his sister's store.

The larger dilemma w/r/t that is how to balance what I want to do with what will make me some money. As B and I discussed the other night, I'm really not that excited by the prospect of baking without gluten; there's a whole bunch of stuff that I love to do, particularly breads, that you just can't make well. But that really does seem to be an unfilled niche, Whole Paycheck's foray into that arena notwithstanding. I keep reminding myself that I don't have to solve every problem all at once: If I manage to even make a little extra income this way, that's fine. I'll worry about the rest of it later, when I have a better idea whether I can afford to open my own place. If C doesn't get a job in a timely fashion, for example, or if he gets a job but it doesn't pay very well, then we're just well and truly fucked, and we're going to have to come up with some other ideas.

But I don't want to think about that tonight. I have to find my pate a fruit recipes (I've talked the owner into making/selling some for Valentine's Day), and I also have to solve an Excel problem for the bakery (I don't HAVE to, but it would rock if I did, and I think I can). And one of these days I have to help update their website, which badly needs copyediting and, it turns out, pictures of the food the bakery actually sells.

Late Nights without David Letterman

Well.

As I said to C this morning, I got home from the hockey-watching and beer-drinking too late to get up for school, were I still in school. You may remember I got up at 4 am for school, so, yes, I didn't manage to get in until 4:30 this morning. Not a lot of alcohol was consumed, but it sure was late. (It would have been even later had the local restaurant that serves up smut and eggs after midnight on Saturdays still been open, because we went by to acquire said items; they were closed, though.) It was fun watching the hockey, too: B is a pretty good player, it turns out, and I want him to teach me how to skate, maybe next Monday. It made me long to play handball, however, and I've got to figure out what I'm going to do about that. Yoga is all well and good (and I even made it to a class today), and I'm getting a certain amount of physical activity with the job--at lot, even, some days--but it's just not the same as playing handball. I'll figure something out, somehow.

As I was getting ready to go out last night, I realized that one of my big fears has not been realized, and I have C to thank for that. That is, in part because of the many years I spent by myself, I was used to doing as I pleased, when I pleased, and with whom I pleased. Last night's outing would not have been all that unusual; not necessarily a frequent occurance, but not unusual, either. Long before I met C, I worried a little about that: I really wanted to be able to hang out until all hours of the day and night with various friends, some of them male, and perhaps even with the occasional lover, and I thought perhaps I'd have a hard time finding someone who would be okay with that. I didn't know how much I'd have to, or want to, sacrifice, though I was pretty sure that some things would change.

And, of course, they have. If I hadn't been working on Saturday, I certainly would have gone to visit C's family with them--though even there, C is usually pretty willing to accomodate either handball or a yoga class when we're making those kinds of travel plans. That is, I'm not always available for such outings, and, really, I recognize that our relationship has to come first enough of the time to keep the relationship alive. But do you have any idea how happy I am that I ended up with someone who really does not care what I was doing last night, and even would have been okay with my not coming home at all?

Tales from the Back

I don't have a lot of brain cells to rub together right now . . . last night C and the Kid dropped me off at B's house on their way to see C's family (they'll have Christmas again, with the Kid, tonight). B and I watched some college hockey and ate some of the train wreck cake (the one from my exam where I screwed up the glaze--it's been in the freezer, and it was still pretty good) and then watched the HBO Lewis Black special, which was extremely funny. I'd been practically falling asleep on B's couch, and that woke me up, but then I really had to go, and he was nice enough to drive me all the way home. Tonight I'm meeting him at this place on the west side where he plays hockey to watch him play and then drink beer with him and, presumably, some of his teammates. I'm planning on some yoga tomorrow, but whether I make it to the 9:00 class or the 12:15 class depends on the aforementioned beer-drinking outing. Luckily, I managed a nap this afternoon after I got home from work. I got out of work just early enough for said nap, but not early enough to catch a train to C's family's house and not early enough to play handball.

Not much was happening around the bakery, really. Saturday is kind of Cake Day, given the number of cakes people want for various birthday and other parties on weekends. Brian showed me how to set up the cakes, he put a first layer of frosting and piping on them, and then Ashley the Cake Lady finished them. If I get any better at the piping stuff I could presumably do some of what Brian was doing, as well, but I was content to do the setup work today. He seems like a nice enough guy, and he was a little chattier today, so I got some scoop on various issues. One of the youngish black women who works in the front of the store during the week calls him "Red," short for "Redneck," which she claims he is. I can't tell whether that's true, or even exactly what she means by that--she's pretty entertaining, except for her insistence that I smile, which is well and truly driving me batshit. She means well, and it's a small place, so I really can't give my standard answer to that ("Fuck off and die") without causing a good deal of trouble. I'll have to figure out a way to jolly her out of it, I suppose, though that annoys me, too.

Johnny was putting together a huge cake today--a full, filled sheet cake, i.e., two full sheet pans of cake with filling between them. Obviously, there's a party tonight, for two of his nieces, apparently, who are three years old. By the size of the cake, there will be a huge household of people somewhere. It seems a little over the top for three-year-olds, but I know how that goes. Employees get a discount on the cakes, I think--20% maybe?--so it makes sense that he'd be the one bringing the cake.

I put in a uniform order this week, too (to the tune of $120, so I do hope I'm getting paid): a few more pairs of pants and some jackets, the latter of which will have the bakery's logo and my name on them, which is pretty entertaining. The quality isn't as good as the stuff we got for school, but this way I'll have enough clothing to get through the week without doing laundry in the middle. The day the manager (Brad) was doing the ordering, we were looking at the jackets (which all have to be gotten from the same source, because there's only one place that has their logo on file), and I told him I probably need a small, maybe even an extra-small. He's saying no, I probably want a medium like he gets, I want some room to move around, etc. I knew better, but I said, well, okay, take off your jacket, and (probably to the amazement of the coworkers) I started to take off mine. I wear a heavy white t-shirt under it (I got a bunch from L. L. Bean for school), but they probably didn't know that. So I put on his jacket, and, of course, it swims on me.

As I told him today--because he ordered me size medium pants, too, which I'm sure are going to be WAY too big, even though I told him I wanted smalls--I'm smaller than I look. This is especially true since I lost weight last year, but it's always been the case that people don't do a good job judging my size. I'm pretty strong, and, as my yoga teacher pointed out, I'm solidly built, but I'm really not big. I always FELT big, mind you, in part because my sister was so small, relatively speaking; she was my height, more or less, but willowy, plus she was a dancer and a gymnast, and therefore flexible. I always felt square and sort of lumpy and blockish next to her, and, since we were so close in age and grew up together, that was my main point of comparison. I should probably say something insightful about body image here, but I'm mostly thinking that I need to eat something and take a shower and so on and thus need to get moving. Insight on body sizes will have to wait for another day.

No Clever Title

And I continue to produce away, getting my hands into just about everything. The manager--a guy whom the owner hired to run the place while the owner was practicing for a competition--seems like maybe he doesn't hate me after all (not that I really worried about that): yesterday and today he sent me home with loaves of bread. Yesterday was a sun-dried tomato and garlic and herb thing, and today was an absolutely gorgeous loaf of sourdough (I'd post a picture, except that the Kid and his father and I have polished off about half of it). One of the things that's kind of nice is that I start at 7:00 and don't usually break until after noon, which means there're only a couple of hours between lunch and heading home. The down side, though, is that I don't always get out at 3:00--yesterday I made the mistake of chatting with the manager, during which time he got a call that required pies . . . which I had to make. I didn't mind making the pies, but I would have liked to get to handball. It looks like I'm actually going to have to give up handball, unless I can get out by 3:30 on Tuesday and/or Thursday, or unless I can talk S into playing with me once in awhile. I'm kind of bummed about that, as you might imagine, but I don't know that there's anything I can do about it at this point. I need the exercise, too, despite the 7-9 hours/day on my feet and the shlepping of full sheet pans from hither to yon and back again.

I also still have no idea what I'm going to be paid. The manager has referred to me as "the intern" twice now, and interns don't always get paid, so that's kind of a concern. I really want to have the conversation with the owner rather than anyone else, but the owner was busy Wednesday afternoon with a meeting and left town yesterday morning. I wouldn't care all that much except that I have to call the unemployment people (or, rather, the automated system) and report on whether I've been working and getting paid. The owner specifically mentioned getting paid--when he said that we'd discuss that after I'd worked there for a week, and again when he said he paid people for 20 minutes for lunch--and I've been punching in and out, so I haven't been worrying in a major way, but still. It'd be nice to know. I wouldn't mind the feedback, either.

It does seem that there are some lines of . . . tension is a little too strong, but something like that. I can't quite figure out all of them, but some of it is Anglo/Hispanic, I think. I think Johnny is trying to figure out where I stand on this, i.e., do I align myself with the manager or with the other guys? Me, I just want to get along with everyone there. It's the tiniest bit strange being the only female in the back (there's one woman who decorates cakes, but she works in a different space), but I'm basically ignoring it and being one of the guys. If something's too heavy for me, I ask for help, and, of course, I'm still learning the various machines and such, but I've been assuming I can do whatever I'm asked to do, and it seems that my coworkers are making the same assumption, by and large. Next on the list: learn Spanish. Which, if I can focus on it, I can do on the train in the morning, i.e., for about 40 minutes/day, and then get Johnny to help.

Look for the Union Label

I started off reasonably well--I reviewed a spreadsheet detailing my pay for last year (hey, only about $15k less than I should have received), took the needlepoint off to get it blocked, went to a yoga class, and returned some jeans to the Levi's store (I'll get back to that in a minute). I'm also supposed to have done my laundry and made something with the cauliflower sitting in the fridge, not least so I have something to take for lunch this week, but MDD got hold of me. I'll motivate sooner or later, I suppose, just not yet.

Anyway, I bought the jeans online, at Levi's online store, and I thought I was getting basic denim 501s, on sale for <$30/pair. Silly me. The ones I received, in a color called "custom," or something like that, were pre-worn-out, complete with patched holes and frayed hems in the back and so on. (They were also a size too big, I think.) And you know, that's just wrong, on so many levels. In general, I prefer to break in and wear out my own jeans, thanks so very much. I'll make an exception for something you get in a thrift shop, but can someone explain what the fuck is the point of the jeans I received? Luckily, there's a store in my city, so I didn't have to mail them back. Then, when I went to exchange them (I hoped for just plain old 501s, in some basic denim, like on the website, also for about $30/pair), it turns out that what I want is actually about $46/pair. Umm, no. There are some other options on the website, but I'll be damned if I can figure out what the colors listed are supposed to be, and the site does a damned poor job of explaining. How very annoying, on top of the fact that Levi's closed their last U.S. plant. Union Jean Company features American- (and union-) made clothing, so maybe I'll get a pair from them and see how they fit.

Yes, folks, I prefer American-made clothing, and, even more, union-made, but those things are getting harder to find, especially as everyone wants the bargains they think they're getting by shopping at Wal-Mart. I won't bore you with my anti-Wal-Mart rant; suffice it to say that it's pretty much the same rant as everyone else's. I'm not as consistent about buying American-made stuff as I'd like to be, but I'm pretty damned consistent about avoiding Wal-Mart. I don't impose that choice on others, though I will, if given an opportunity, try to explain that it is not in one's best interests to shop there, even if one appears to be saving money in the short term.

Finally

Only took me ten years or so, but here it is:

Corporatespeak

Flea's post from the other day made me think again about my various job choices over the years. As I noted in the comments section, I've never had a corporate job--working for Burger King at the drive-up window probably wouldn't count as "working for a large corporation" in the sense I mean--and I've come to realize that I'd probably suck at it. If you go by number of employees, the three biggest organizations for which I've worked are two universities (as adjunct, i.e., part-time, faculty) and a non-profit substance abuse treatment organization. The more interesting case, for this discussion, is the non-profit--or, as I refer to them, the junkies and alcoholics. And that tells you a lot of what you need to know.

That is, even though it was a fairly large organization, as these things go, it had grown from mom-and-pop size (as many such organizations do), and it had survived that transition to become somewhat professionalized, by which I mean there is a central office, there are executives for the organization, there's a hierarchy of management, and so on. They probably employ about a thousand people now, though I don't know for sure. They're large enough such that they can pay people decently (for that field, and for human services in general), which also means they have the occasional corporate mentality.

The most striking example, while I was there: For obscure reasons, HR or management of some kind decided to have a required "sensitivity training" session. Rumor had it that someone had said something racist, or had claimed someone had--so the solution was to make everyone go through this daylong session that first surveyed people on their "style" and "personality" and then had people discuss all that shit. I complained pretty bitterly to my boss, and basically said outright that I wasn't filling out any personality profiles--I find that crap really invasive (which already eliminates me from the ranks of most corporations these days). He and his boss were both managing to get out of it, so I didn't feel bad when he (wisely) decided that I was too busy to go to this thing. (One of the reasons I love that man--he's now become a close friend--is that he ran interference for me in these ways.)

The advantage to that organization, though, is that many of the employees, and, especially, many of the people at the management level, were themselves in recovery from an addiction. Many of the top people had been heroin addicts back in the day, but had been clean for 25+ years when I knew them. The negative side of that is that many of the behaviors you see in addicts don't get completely smoothed away by recovery; thus, you get people whose pathologies aren't as well-disguised as they may be in the non-addict world. The positive side of that, however, is that, as I've said here before, in order to break an addiction, the first thing you have to get is honest. That means that the bullshit in the organization, though not eliminated by any means, was (a) reduced and (b) of a particular kind. I loved those guys, and I got along well with most of them, in ways that I probably would not have in another "straighter" organization of similar size. If I had stayed there--and sometimes I wish I had--I probably could have made decent money and even gotten promotions and such, i.e., moved up the management hierarchy. I didn't want to stay there without my boss, though, so who knows.

I asked my new boss how many people he employs, and he said about 20 full-time, which is what I'd guessed. As I've told you, my interview lasted maybe a half-hour (not counting this week's "audition") and mostly consisted of the recommendation from Chef Bob. No personality tests, other than how well I've been getting along with the people who work there. No drug testing (though I suppose he might throw that at me). (I wouldn't fail a drug test, mind you, it's just that I find them, too, incredibly invasive, except for people who do things like drive trains and buses and airplanes--they should be tested daily. Truck drivers, too, but then you'd probably have to pay them more.) No elaborate interview system, with people who have a list of what-if questions. It's been pretty simple and straightforward: Can you make a laminated dough? Can you scale the ingredients for the recipe? Can you adapt the recipe to make 75% of the amount? Can you get along with the coworkers?

And this is more my speed. C tells me that he sometimes sits in meetings and imagines I were there, having to hear the corporate bullshit being spewed. The very idea makes him laugh, because he knows I'd be breaking out in hives, or, more likely, profanity. To amuse himself, he sometimes spews a couple of such sentences, making sure to use the latest buzzwords, just to watch me fulminate.

I've come to realize that my objection to this shit isn't merely aesthetic, or even personal: I find it destructive to the very things I think are important about work and about life. But that will have to wait for later, as it's nearly time to head for handball (yay!).

So Nu?

In the past four days, I have worked for about 36 hours. I have had a total of 80 minutes for lunch breaks. I have had a hand in mixing or portioning (via machine) five kinds of muffins (chocolate, lemon poppyseed, cranberry pecan, blueberry, and bran); I mixed up oatmeal raisin cookies and portioned those and some chocolate chip cookies; I made a bunch of chocolate and vanilla shortbread cookies, and dipped part of each one in chocolate; I've had something to do with sweet dough several times (coffee cakes, cinnamon rolls, etc.); I sliced and bagged several trays of buns; I mixed and portioned (by hand--literally--we pick the batter up with a hand and squeeze it into the pan) banana bread; I added some stuff to the German chocolate cake filling; I lugged a 50-pound sack of cake flour up the stairs today (on my shoulder); and each day I've had a hand in the dough for the plain, almond, chocolate, and ham & cheese croissants. I've at least rolled and turned the dough each day, and Tuesday and today I cut them and egg-washed them and so on (with a lot of help from Johnny, who's the really nice Hispanic guy who's teaching me how to do the laminated doughs). I'm sure I'm forgetting a half-dozen things, too. I'm also going to get Johnny to teach me Spanish--he apologized today for how bad his English is, and I pointed out that it's better than my Spanish. I've tried very hard to help whomever rather than just stand around, and I hope people are noticing that.

I don't know whether I'd do everything the way it's being done at this place--I might use more butter and less shortening, for example, if I thought I could afford to do that, but that remains to be seen--but the products are good, they're made by hand, and they use a lot more "good" ingredients (real fresh eggs, fresh buttermilk, butter) than many places. Though I haven't done anything with the breads (except help the boss put some in the oven yesterday), they really seem to know their shit when it comes to bread. In short, I'm already learning a lot, and I absolutely love this place.

So: last night. Last night the place where C and I got married was having a "King's Day" celebration, with Chef Fred from my pastry school serving the king cake (if you find the bean, you're crowned king/queen). I twisted C's arm (okay, not that much) into going down there for dinner. I asked our server if Chef Fred was still there, and he went to check and came back and said that it wasn't Fred, it was someone named Bob? Well, of course it was Chef Bob who hooked me up with this job, so I told the server to tell the chef that a graduate was out there and to come say hi and so on. He did come out, and I got a big hug, and I told him how ecstatic I am with the job. He was really happy for me, and we had a nice little chat before he had to go cut king's cake; he said he'd come back to the bakery to visit. (He stopped in on Wednesday and left a note but didn't come into the back, much to the dismay of my boss and of me, for that matter.) It was just really cool to see him and to be able to tell him how well this is working out so far.

Next week I work Tuesday through Saturday (so no handball on Saturday, which sucks, especially since I haven't played in about three weeks, maybe longer). I don't know what I'll be earning yet, though; the boss headed out around 3 today to do some car-pooling or something, and he seemed to be in a rush, so I didn't want to stop him for that question. I'll catch him next week some time.

Illegal

Or it should be, anyway. The amount of fun I'm having, I mean. But I'm also working about 9 hours/day, and, the last three nights C and I have been self-indulgent. I'll write a longer post (especially about tonight), but I need to get some sleep right now. I don't have to do my laundry, though, because C actually volunteered to wash my chef clothes for me.

Another First Day

Y'all want to know how it went, don't you?

Well, only my boss can evaluate it in a how-did-I-do sense, but I (a) enjoyed myself thoroughly and (b) worked my ass off. From 7 am until about 3:20, the only time I sat down was to pee. (As a result--of the standing, not the peeing--my left foot is excruciatingly painful right now.) I had a hand in (sometimes quite literally--up to my elbow at one point) chocolate muffins, red velvet cake, puff pastry dough, croissants (plain, almond, chocolate, and ham & cheese), and various sweet pastries (raised sweet dough topped with fruit and/or cream cheese filling and/or nuts and/or streusel). I'm obviously not very fast yet, especially with the big machines, but no one seems worried about that. I didn't do anything by myself (which was more than fine with me), and I can't quite figure out how tasks are allocated. One guy seems to do all of the baking. Another guy does the ordering and so on. The owner has his hand in everything, and he probably had me doing the most stuff today, though he'd occasionally assign me to the guy who does all of the laminated doughs (and big sheet cakes and so on). There are a couple of other guys who weren't there today for one reason or another. The only other woman in the back is in a separate room, decorating cakes. Everyone in the back speaks Spanish except me, and two of the above-mentioned guys are Hispanic; their English isn't great, but it's a hell of a lot better than my Spanish. (I'm going to have to learn it; no doubt about that.)

It really is a perfect place for me.

Two things occurred to me. One is that I haven't punched a time clock since the last part-time job I had before I moved here, so that's a little entertaining. I don't really care one way or the other about that one. The other thing is that I realized that a bunch of my nervousness can be chalked up to starting a new job AND a new career simultaneously; most people don't do that a lot, while it seems that I do that every time a start a new job.

No, the needlepoint isn't done yet, and probably won't be tonight. I'm hoping to see my husband at some point tonight. We've had the Kid with us since last Wednesday, so we were definitely looking forward to seeing each other tonight, maybe even going out for a bite. I get home from work, however, and find out that there's a Scout meeting tonight, and that the guy in charge called it today. I was sorely peeved; C isn't all that great at saying "no," at least not when the reason for the "no" is me. If it had been work, for example, that was in the way of the meeting, I suspect he'd have been more willing to say no. If he can get out of the meeting in time there may still be hope, but I won't know for another hour. Meanwhile, I'll do some chores so I don't have to do them later.

Quickie

I got off my sorry butt and went to a yoga class today. I had serious trouble getting to sleep last night, in part, I suspect, because I've gotten so little exercise in the past two-three weeks. (Some general anxiety about (a) starting a new job tomorrow and (b) my old company collapsing under the weight of its debt probably contributed, as well.) And I think I have to find/create a way to do at least a little yoga each day. My hips tighten up terribly, as do my hamstrings--and, thanks to class, my plantar fascitis feels better right now than it has in weeks.

Meanwhile, there are two eight-year-olds running around the house at the moment; they're going swimming soon. I should be able to finish the needlepoint today, and I have to make some cheese bread rolls for C's lunches. I will post photos when those chores are done.