Catching Up

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I have been a tad MIA for almost a month. After my last fiction piece, March became very interesting. Mr. “Mama calm down” guy ended up not working out, phew, so I never had to pull a Hela on him. Again, sigh of relief. But life got very busy. Work has been so busy.

But first, lets talk fun things. I have been writing some poetry for my Instagram account. I have a separate account that I post just poetry and snippets of poetry. One account I follow puts out prompts and I have been inspired. So I have had four or five poems that have come from the prompts and one or two others from just the inspiration. It’s felt really good to be writing again after a mid winter freeze that came after pouring out my heart in November and early December.

So I am going to include some of them right now. Since I don’t think I plan to publish any of these…

The first two images are one poem combined, the rest are all their own. Little things that are fun, meaningful, light. A little bit of everything. I have one poem that I started about my name as I am known as K at work. Well, I introduced myself to someone with my whole name. It was a weird and luxurious feeling. Almost kind of sexy. To a guy nonetheless, not that it went anywhere with said guy. But it was the principle of the thing.

I’m trying to stay motivated to write. It helps that I am making an effort to read it more and listen to it more. I am more inclined to write poetry if I listen to it. For those interested, you can follow my poetry Instagram account at k.andb.poetry

Now onto life. Chaos perpetuates. I sit here writing with nine fingers as last Sunday night I managed to slice off the tip of my left index finger. I looked up while slicing something, and part of my finger went with it. Shivers. Bleeding ensued, panicking boss, a super busy Sunday…. it could have been worse, it could have been better… Life goes on. My finger is much better and I have most of my nail, but it’s going to be a bit different for a while. And because of what I did, I was unable to continue working the same at work. Instead of crazy busy pizza line, I was in the back tackling prep, desserts, and *drum roll* working on expoing. So, what is expoing?

Expo or expoing
The Expo Station is the station between the line and dining room. Whoever works this station, whether it’s the chef, sous, or a front of house manager, is the expo. They call your tickets, garnish your plates, and, if the plating is complicated, plate the food.

https://www.browardpalmbeach.com/restaurants/kitchen-slang-top-ten-words-youll-hear-behind-the-line-6391915

So for the last three days I have been doing this. Expoing is short for Expediter. Though not quite as particular as actually plating things. I do garnish and sauce a lot of things. I know what goes with the dishes, so I am getting things ready as Jersey Boy and Will Turner are plating. Astro D got stuck doing doubles all week on pizza. But for once, I was so unstressed that I feel like I’m getting a mini vacation even though I’m working. And I expoed way back three years ago when I was working with Wildflower and Lucifer and our first chef. I loved it then even with the bullshit that was going on with the three of them. Jersey Boy is much easier to expo for than I thought. Plus I also dash around getting things for the line and pizza. Plating desserts, hunting down our GM and getting answers. As much as I love pizza, I love expediting almost more. Partly because I am liking less stress. A whole heck a lot. Personally, I wouldn’t mind being off pizza for another week at least. My only other wish is that I had had a chance to expo for Coffeeman.

And lastly, I am taking the managers food safety course in less than a month. I want to have the licence and knowledge for future job performance. I’m excited as I have wanted to know this for a while. I won’t be able to be in pizza forever. I’m almost 4-0…. gads, I’m almost 40! So I won’t be ultimate pizza girl forever, but who knows what the future holds.

So enjoy the poetry. And the update.

Kate

Calm Down, Mama – Chef Fiction

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This last week led to a new guy in the kitchen learning the ropes. But one little irksome thing kept happening to the point where I let it slide then, but won’t now. I do not need a guy telling me to quit yelling when I am just showing him the basics and my voice is normal level. Trust me, he was not doing it to the guys in back. And it started pissing me off. If it happens again this week, well, I’m going to pull a Hela on him.   Pardon the F-word in here a couple times. It’s the only way to express it. 

Photo by Margo Brodowicz on Unsplash

“Here, like this,” Hela said, showing the new guy how she wanted the pasta coated in sauce. “Then add a dab of butter, a bit of salt and pepper, and finish with the chili flake.”

“Okay, mama, no need to yell. I got this,” Sean soothed as if trying to calm down a child.

Immediately Hela slammed the saute pan down on the burner. Dima, who was watching Hela teach, glanced down at the smaller man and arched a brow. All around, the other stations got deathly quiet, everyone staring, while Gerrit eyed the situation from the other side of the pass. A ticket printed on a machine, but no one reached to grab it.

Hela pulled herself up to her full five feet three inches and stared coldly at Sean. “I highly suggest you refrain from telling me to not yell when I am talking to you calmly. I let it slide last week cause you were the new guy, but I can bet that you have not said the same thing to any of the guys. Do not do it again.” Her voice had dropped lower with each word till even Dima was backing away, shaking his head sadly at the new guy. Hela loud was one thing, but Hela quiet was a nightmare dressed like a daydream.

Sean put up his hands and backed up on step. “Okay, mama, calm down, I was just kidding.”

Hela’s eyes went wide and Dina flinched behind Sean. Oh, the little man didn’t stand a chance.

“Get off my line,” she growled. He didn’t move. Hela stepped into his face, his height and hers identical. “Get off my fucking line!”

When the man still didn’t move, like a wind up toy, everyone moved into action. Dima stepped around Sean and slid between him and Hela. Dina gave Sean a nudge backwards and there was Marcus, clapping his hand over the man’s shoulder to drag him off the line. Gerrit jerked a finger at Marcus and like a firing squad, the three men marched back to the Chef’s office.

Dina reached down and dinged the bell in Carlos’ code before glancing a Hela. She was practically vibrating, the anger dripping off of her in waves of heat. Her face had gone brick red and he could see her eyes were going glossy with unshed tears.

Carlos banged in through the swinging doors his mouth open to ask what.

“I need a Hela bitters and soda and a separate orange juice now,” he ordered, then seeing as Hela started to crumble, pulled her into his long frame and he felt her sigh. Carlos was out the door in a flash, banging them as he slammed through. “Boys, watch the line, do not fuck it up. I’ll be back in a second.”

Dina turned Hela towards the walk-in and marched her inside. They could hear muffled yelling coming from the office that faded as the door closed behind them. Hela stood there willing the tears to fade.

“Hela, breathe,” Dina ordered softly. She took a shuddering breath in. “And again.” She did as was told and he saw the semi relief hit her, along with the cold air. Her flushed cheeks faded a bit. “Stay here, I have to go finish that ticket.” He looked at her sternly and she nodded.

Dina slipped out the door and glanced back at the office to see Sean slamming out and ripping off his apron. The apron was wadded and tossed into the dirty towels bag before he slammed out of the door into the late afternoon sunlight. Marcus and Gerrit followed at a more sedate pace.

“Another one bites the dust,” Dina noted and hurried toward the line calling over his shoulder, “she’s in the walk-in. Carlos is getting orange juice for her.”

Marcus headed towards the doors and caught the drinks just as Carlos stepped back through with the two glasses. “I got her,” he said calmly. “You get the line,” he said to Gerrit.

“You sure?” Gerrit, while having figured Hela out, was still a little unsure how to handle her like this. This was the first time he’d even seen her yell.

“I am. You can talk to her later.” Marcus opened the walk-in and saw Hela organizing. “Come on babe, outside.” He handed her the orange juice first and let her proceed him out the door into the sun. She downed the juice and he handed her the second glass. She sipped it through the straw.

“Better?”

She nodded. “Thank you, Marcus.”

“Anytime. Are you going to be able to finish the line?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Finish your soda, and head back in. I’ll take over till you come back.”

Hela nodded again.

“Oh and the new guy,” Marcus said poking his head back out the door, “he’s gone.” He made a finished sign with his hand and slipped back inside.

 

One can dream the idiots are swiftly removed from the mix. Miss Holly, do not go repeating this. I’ll deal with said idiot this week. As Toni says(one of our ladies), “girl, you’re evil”….. I’ll deal with the little boys, the idiot men of my life. As Twin Bear used to say, “I am a strong, independent woman, who don’t need no help from any guy.” Damn straight.

Kate

 

Jazz and A Mood

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Jazz plays on my phone as I sit here and type on a quiet Tuesday night. Today is my parent’s 41st anniversary, though nothing of note happened today. Laundry spins around in the dryer, the rest neatly folded, albeit, not put away. Tomorrow marks the fifty percent opening the restaurant is going into after almost 3 months of closure, though we have managed with take out services.

Life is in a melancholy phase. Work has been…. challenging. Why is it jazz fits every mood? If you are feeling melancholic, jazz is somber. If you are feeling upbeat, it seems like all the high notes are champagne bubbles popping on your tongue. Romantic? The slippery slide of a trumpet’s not gliding down your back like a lover’s finger.

Jazz, currently Miles Davis’ “‘Round Midnight” slinks out of my speaker is hitting the somber notes. The gray mood I am in. The early work week blues.

I’ve been as uninspired as any writer with writer’s block. My dad asks if writers really get writers block. Oh darling, yes, every writer hits a block. Maybe the ideas are there, but they just don’t come out. I have ideas. So many ideas. I scribbled down several poetry prompts weeks ago. So many things to write about. Redacted words in a post…. you know all those black lines? Like a form of blackout poetry, only about the actual aspect of blocking out the bits I don’t want to talk about.

There’s something about an untidy relationship, untidy thoughts… I’m not sure what that was in reference to, other than I …. Oh, now I remember, something about my grandmother and the fact that my mother and her had an untidy relationship.

A cup with three houses and snow falling on it.

Dishes being stacked and the sun ticking its way quickly westward.

And then so many thoughts about work. Lines I’ve scribbled down here and there. Work. I’m in that phase of where I could just shove my workplace off a cliff. Actually more the people I work with besides Miss Holly and Golden Oldie. Everyone else could take a swan dive off a short pier and I would be completely, one hundred percent happy. Give me a perfectly good dessert menu that I came up with. Me, so it’s all on me if it makes a go. I should be ecstatic. Yeah, well, I’m not. Tomorrow begins the work week and I am just not ready. I should have taken a few days off this last month when it was more quiet. Now that opportunity has passed me by.

I think I’m more annoyed that I’m blocked again with what to write. I can’t seem to even force myself to sit down and write in my journal. Piffle.

Side note of nothing related to any of this, but my family has taken to watching Miss Scarlet and the Duke, All Creatures Great and Small, Grantchester, Home Fires, and for my mom, sister and I, Downton Abbey (which I’ve gone through most seasons but the last. Total introduction of that drama for them) We are in a British, all things Masterpiece frame. It’s rather delightful. I’m in love that Sidney Chambers of Grantchester loves jazz.

So I end on that not. Jazz, what’s not to love about it? Play to me, Count Basie, play…

Kate

Booze, Nooky, Hades, and an Existential Crisis

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It’s a metaphor. Well, the Hades part is. Maybe.

I didn’t fall asleep till after 4:30 in the morning just the other day. I was listening to music on my mp3 player, trying to fall asleep, when a song by Lauv came on. There wasn’t anything special about the song, but Lauv was introduced to me by my coworker Alex. Suddenly I’m thinking about him, which one thing after another led me to a memory of Lucifer and Wildflower that left me reeling. There, in the wee hours of the morning my heart is racing and I’m remembering slamming out of the kitchen so mad and frustrated that I finally burst into tears outside. I had other coworkers come to find out if I was ok, a manager, a general manager, and finally my big boss and owner of the restaurant. To the point where I was asked if I needed someone to talk to Lucifer. This memory still pisses me off, and I was laying there seconds away from texting Coffeeman, because I was freaking out….. two plus years after it happened. It happened in 2018…. Time has passed, so why does this still get to me?

“What is it about this job that lends itself to freak out moments?” I write later on the whiteboard at work. “From dreams that leave you tossing and turning, to middle of the night panic attacks.” This comes after finding out Astro D has spent the night with wild dreams as well. (mine were panic inducing, to some point) This writing on the whiteboard leaves both Jersey Boy and New York Babe (our bar manager) stumped. “I’m having an existential crisis,” is all I tell Jersey Boy who shakes his head and wanders off. Trust me, he could not handle a K having an existential crisis.

This made my mind go in so many directions

A month ago I was talking to Scarlett St. Clair about a line she wrote for her upcoming novel, A Game of Malice, and her character of Hades, god of the Underworld.

Scarlett: He’s pretty intense right now. LOL
Me: he’s got a lot going on right now. Sometimes this is all that eases the stress…

Long ago TomCat ended a particularly brutal night with the statement, “I need a shower and sex.” I laughed at the time, but later on as I became more and more responsible for bigger things, I started understanding this line. And I used it on Scarlett to explain Hades intensity.

“In my world, it’s like the perfect stress reducer,” I tell her. “…And it actually works… not that I dabble in much more than showers these days…… The adrenaline runs high even after hours of work, so trying to wind down is killer. Hence why I am a serious night owl. Chefs turn to drugs, alcohol, and sex to wind down. It’s funny in the gloss over version, but it’s actually a much deeper issue under the surface. Hades actually personifies a lot of the inner stress and depression that exists in this world. Part of the reason I love him. It’s also why we have sick, twisted, and sex related jokes.”

“Hades is definitely a good metaphor for that,” she replies. “How insane, I had no idea honestly.”

The cooking/chef world is unlike any I thought I would ever join. ( See Note at the bottom of this post) And there is the strangest amount of adrenaline that comes from being in it. New Year’s Eve had me making pizza till 1am, then having to clean up and close down. While I went into work later than usual, I still had all this prep to do, a service time where I was busy with making more pizzas, then winding down for two hours, to start it all up again. I didn’t get to sleep till 5am on New Year’s Day. The adrenaline kept me wired for hours. It is so hard to just let it all drop out of your system. And a crutch of alcohol, or drugs, or sex, is like the only thing that kind of kills all the mental crap going on. I do not dabble in much more than alcohol, but usually at a controlled rate. I don’t like hangovers, and I have to be careful. But to feel pleasantly buzzed after a chaotic night is relaxing.

Sex takes a massive edge off. Probably because it is its own form of a high. Ironically, all the things I mention are also all highly addictive. So is the adrenaline of a service rush. You want to talk let down, have a quiet night when you were expecting busy. New years….. I was running on such a high. From getting glammed up, to having a bunch of fun orders and the speed of getting them done before midnight, then fireworks. I was on cloud 9 till suddenly I mentally crashed and groaned at the smeared eyeliner and mascara.

Most people I talk to do not have a clue about the world I am in. I don’t expect them too, but it can be an insane world. One of the reasons I love Scarlett’s character of Hades is he is a metaphor. His scenes are incredibly appealing to me, especially the vulnerable ones, because he has his highs and lows and frustrations. He doesn’t sleep well. He is up at all times of the night. He’s addicted to whiskey. He’s addicted to Persephone and sex… Not that that’s a bad thing with her, but he is addicted.

I know chefs that go to bed at 3am and are up by 8am. Burnt out is an understatement of what is going on with them. We all get burnt out at some point. Right now I am exhausted. An instagrammer I follow was asking how my new year was going and I said I was trying to be more mindful and healthy, but I am 3/4 of the time exhausted. Cut back hours and I am more tired than when I was working a 40 hour week. There is a lot of mental instability right now with shut downs, and take out, and attempting to maintain products with no pattern to sales.

And this is why even though I am not the executive chef, I have middle of the night panic attacks. I was panicking before work today because I forgot to let Astro D know that we had blown through a specific weight in dough. The two of us are pizza first and foremost, so that is where we back and forth problems. The oven was being a bitch today. The dough was needing to be rerolled. The dough was over proofing. It was too big. And so on.

Existential crisis might be hyperbole, but at the same time, here it is 3:30 am and I’m drinking wine in bed while I write this. Mulled, but wine nonetheless.

Maybe I am Hades….

(Scarlett said I was when I showed her my glass of whiskey at 3am a few weeks ago)

Kate

Note:  I recently started following Culinary Love, a platform for discussion about the culinary world. From taking care of our cooks to discussing the hard things like depression and addiction. I haven’t delved into the whole blog, but I follow one of the chefs who was part creator. I highly recommend checking it out if you are interested in finding out more about methods to dealing with depression, and if you are a non service industry person, a good resource for finding out some of what our world is like.

Click the image below to take you directly to Culinary Love . Or click the link right there.

 

A Quick End of Year Recap

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It has been ages since I’ve sat down to write a blog post. I honestly can’t remember the last time I wrote a blog post. Can I blame Rona?  Lol, everyone is blaming Covid for something. I really can’t blame that on anything other than getting a little bit of time off from work right around Thanksgiving. Long story that is not worth repeating.

I’ve actually stayed incredibly healthy this year, much to my surprise and delight. I was fighting a mini something the last couple weeks, but healthy vitamin dosing, fresh fruits and vegetables, clove and orange tea…. and plenty of water, I think have kept whatever it is at complete bay. Whew.

I’ve spent the fall writing emotional poems, things all my friends say I need to publish. I agree, and over the start of December I started looking at some places. Which now that I think about it, have January deadlines! Yikes! I will say one thing, I hate the submitting process. Not the actual sharing my work, but all the little intricate issues of submitting. A different format for each submission, a different guideline, or in my case, different poems go to different places. Not every poem is perfect for every publisher. Some of my “New Yorker” poems I wouldn’t dream of submitting to the little no name place. Or vice versa. I have some little poems that I just don’t think would catch “New Yorker” status. They are fun, they are even good, in my opinion, but they are not great.

I’m in a writing slump as of the last two weeks. Even my journal has been slightly empty. Ironically I received 6 new notebooks/journals for Christmas. Ha! Of course I would be in a writing slump.

Work has consumed me. In my sleep, in my life, and this is with reduced hours. Then to top it off, Mixologist Man has left our fine establishment for love. Damn love! He had to go get engaged and move back east to be with his guy. I don’t harbor any ill feelings to his fiance, but I do. You took my best guy away from all of us. How dare you….

I kid. I really do. While Mixologist Man will be sorely missed from my nightly work life, I wish him all the love. I joke at the ‘damn love’ because what have I spent my December watching? Every Hallmark Christmas movie I can get my hands on. To the point where I am now almost disgustingly sick of Hallmark Christmas movies. Not quite, but there are still two days left of December. I mean, I can watch a few more, right? I mean tonight I watched one of the best Christmas pen pals movies. Oh my gosh. I want a Christmas pen pals thing in my town. I NEED it to happen. (it was a lifetime movie, but close enough to Hallmark) It was brilliant.

Can you tell I am still in a love, Christmas, and all things ooey gooey? What can I say, the Mantovani Orchestra is playing Hark The Herald Angels right now and the Christmas tree is still glowing in all its glory, and will be for the next month. I am still floating holiday poems in my head and reading holiday books.

Life is weird, and glorious, and sad, and happy, and all so strange. But I am glad I have my family, and the holiday season, and everything else.

I hope all you lovely readers had a decent, joyous, or even excellent Christmas. I hope you get to enjoy your New Years…. I was suckered into working the late shift. My first time in the three years I have been with my job. Jersey Boy was way too good at slipping me up in a conversation on whether I like mornings or nights.  There might have been some serious, albeit good humored, swearing involved.

Belated Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and lets home 2021 is a little more hopeful…

Kate

Smoke Scent Mornings

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Photo by Giammarco Boscaro on Unsplash

It’s the hint of sulfur and magnesium that tickle my nose in the mornings. The sharp pine scent, the waves rippling on the shore of the lake. But it’s the smell of a fire being started in a stove, that ‘sweet’ fire smell I associate with the mountains, that always brings me home. I feel most at home in the mountains. There is something that calls me more than I can explain to anyone. While I love the Bay and living in San Francisco, I crave the mountains more than the ocean. I can’t explain it, especially to anyone I work with, though Phaedra understands it best. Even she doesn’t understand it as well though. She likes the city. I like the quiet. I feel I live in the wrong place. Like people always say they living in the wrong century, or time period? For me it’s mostly the location. Location is everything. If it wasn’t so, why do they always talk about it with businesses?

I have always wanted to own a cabin on Pinecrest. Call it a crazy dream. Call it a fantasy. Call it a thing to add to a dream board. But clearly it can happen. If my sister, my baby sister, can marry a man who owns a cabin on this very specific lake, then why can’t I dream of it as well? I mean, yeah, she’s pretty darn lucky to have met Roger, but it’s not impossible. Roger could have a charming brother. He doesn’t. But he could.

I started this book about Pinecrest Lake a couple years ago, taking a book I love and massively tweaking the storyline to be how I would have rather it had gone. This is just a little blip of thought I started typing the other night when I smelled wood smoke, and the smell of a lit match…

Kate

Notebook Keepsakes Amid Disaster

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California and Oregon are currently in fire zones. Just about every place is being severely affected by the burning or smoke. Towns completely destroyed by fire, people displaced. Having a fire go bag ready is almost essential if you live anywhere in the west.

But how to take it all with you? Obviously you can’t. And this is where I’m actively contemplating how to deal all my notebooks and journals if I had to leave. I can’t take them all with me. Currently I think I would have 10+ that would ‘need’ to go, but that is too much. So, do I start transcribing them to my laptop? Which is a #1 essential for all the documents on it and pictures. Or do I just take the most important and let it all stay here and hope for the best. The thought of transcribing is horrifying. Do you know how much I have written in ten years? Gad, it’s nauseating to think about. It’s like right now I’m trying to get a collection of the original poetry off the shelf podcasts and the amount of time to download all of that is nauseating.

I remember I read about this one writer/artist who had all of her journals and notebooks in a closet that happened to have a leak in it. Over time, the water dripped and dropped, splattering and moulding the journals till they were practically illegible but for brief bits. Can you imagine? That is heartbreaking. I can’t even fathom the heart wrenching feeling of lost words. But she took it as another form of expression and created art with it, or showcased pages with the running ink and few words still there.

But my notebooks contain novels yet to be finished. Do I know the bulk of them? Sure-ish. I just realized there is some I can’t remember. So much has been written down. Poems I’ve never transcribed, stories, flash fiction, writing group stories.

But I don’t have time to transcribe. So what do you pick? Who do you choose as most important? I have whole journals devoted to Boris (the lying cheating bastard…. 5 years of him lying to me and now he’s dead and I can never confront him with it) okay, maybe those could go. >insert rolling eyes< But then there is other things. I can say honestly my last two journals are where I have had a lot of growth and change. Poetry and work and life changes that were massive. So two is easy. Notebooks though. That is not simple at all.

What would you do? If you had to have a go bag of essential things, and I’m not talking clothes, necessities, etc. I’m talking the mementos. The writerly things. What would you take?

Kate

Midnight Reader – Flash Fiction

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The door slowly opened, a crack of light, a two inch strip of yellow, illuminating the carpet up to the bed. Carefully, so as not to wake the lump under the covers on the bed, he snuck in on tip toe. He nearly let out a shriek as his bare foot connected with a small Lego.  The sharp cornered piece of hard plastic biting into the soft flesh of his arch.  He hopped and hobbled, trying not to bang into the desk, then the chair.  He caught the back of the chair as he started to lose his balance and the swiveling piece of furniture nearly upset his balance.  Quick moves on his part had him catching himself and stopping as a soft snore and breath from the body.  He didn’t move a muscle as the lump shifted and sprawled out, an arm sliding out of the covers and dropping the book off the side of the bed with a soft thud.  He waited for a moment, or five as the blanket covered lump shifted and grumbled about homework then went back to sleep.  With a quick dash, he scooped up the book, and circumvented the Legos and bits of erector set metal pieces to make it safely to the door again.  He glanced back once to see if there was movement.  Nothing. he was safe!

He propped himself under the covers, a large maglite flashlight in his palm.  He clicked on the light and flipped the pages.  He was looking for a mark…. There! Just a tiny dot and dash where he’d left off.  Knees hunched, pillow at his back, he shone the light down at the pages, and with a fingernail caught soundly between his teeth, he began to find out if the heroine was going to make it out of the forest on her own.

He nearly let out a shriek as the bed shifted and the covers were jerked back from his buried form.

The woman groaned.

“Jack, why don’t you just ask the kid if you can borrow his book while he’s at school,” the woman asked, shaking her head.

“Because, this is way more fun,” Jack replied. “Now quiet, woman, she just had to make a pact with someone,” he shushed his wife.

She just rolled her eyes and clicked off the light before diving under the covers with a flashlight and a copy of her 8 year old’s slightly sticky copy of a very popular diary of a wimpy sort of kid. She just had to find out what happened after a week wait while the book traveled with her son during summer camp.

I just thought, how fun when a clandestine moment happens when a parent reads a book their kids are reading. My dad would read to us growing up… Robert Peck’s Soup books. And my Mom read us the Happy Hollister books. Oh we had so many books they read us. But what if they read some of ours late at night…….. I just remember how much fun I had reading Laura Ingalls Wilder under the covers with a flashlight. Reading till 9pm.  Scandalous at age 8 or 9.  I still love to read under the covers. I now use a Kindle……

Kate

Where Does The Time Go

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Summer is more than half over and my writing life took a sharp turn south to non existent. At least here. It’s not like I’m not writing, but I haven’t pulled out my laptop to type but for some poetry a couple weeks ago. My journal is almost full after another year and a half. (my journals always take a year and a half to fill) and I have been writing this and that. Noting about life other than random observations. I feel like life is so heavy that I can’t write about life. Notes to become poems, or thoughts, but rarely anything deep.

Can we do over 2020? Not like actually all the crap that has gone on, but can’t we just chalk this up to a no go year? That being said, I feel like I have gotten places in my writing I might not have gone before. Nathan and I were texting the other day and he commented that one of my poems wasn’t my usual norm. Ha ha, he hasn’t seen my notebooks. But he is right. I sometimes spew off this super long poem with no stopping and no breaks and no punctuation and it’s like I just let a balloon spew out its air, whizzing around the room. Like I couldn’t contain it and I had to just throw it all out in a rush.

I bottle up my thoughts, opinions and emotions a lot, but when I let them out, usually it’s in a rush, a dumptruck of thoughts poured out on the ground. No organization to them. Sometimes cluttered and rarely making sense. Sometimes poems get like that. I can’t contain the box they are in. Personally, I’m rather fond of those kinds. At least of my own. I usually make the point I want without censoring myself. I’m rather proud of some of those poems.

Now what do I do with them. Again, Nathan asked if I was going to get any in print. I want to, but where? It’s all I can do to write the poems. I don’t have the oomph to hunt for journals to submit. Does anyone want to be an assistant and do the research for me? Pretty please? Darlings, I’d pay you in endless gratitude and the option to have me bake you a goody if you happened to be in northern CA and stopped in at the restaurant.

And that ^  is why I can’t get writing done. Work. I am swamped at all points. My day is so busy from the minute I walk in till I leave. I have a boss on my station in the morning who doesn’t believe he needs to do the prep and leaves most if not all of it for me to do, along with, yes, I am still full force making all the desserts. And I have had an entree added to my station that is adding in time. I fire ribeye steaks in my oven and I have gotten pretty decent at it. But for an already taxed station to adding that in. Well, let’s just say my life is one constant busy.

Even on my days off I’m thinking work. Or pestered by work. I want a weekend where I don’t have to think about work. It would be different if I was the chef in charge. But since I’m not, nor am I being paid to be, I want to not think about work.

And now dishes and lunch are calling me. Forget writing again.

Kate

 

Metros and Oceans

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Photo by Elia Pellegrini on Unsplash

Dona always says she likes to listen to poetry, not read it so much. Most of the time I disagree because I read way more poetry than listen to it. I get my doses from Poetry Off The Shelf and a few other places where I hear poems, but for the most part, I consume it, eating it up mouthfuls at a time from the page. I eat it up like I do cold cereal, a little sloppy at times, sometimes way too big of a spoonful, and there will be a drip of milk somewhere.

But every once in a while I come across a poem that I hear read and it hits you and stays with you for days, or years. Currently I have one poem that has been with me for at least two years. On the Metro, by C.K. Williams. I heard it on Poetry Off The Shelf, of course, and it was read in such a way that I listened to it. Over, and over, and over. I never take it off my mp3 player, and I can honestly say that next to Billy Collins’ Tuesday, June 4, 1991 and Ada Limon’s How To Triumph Like A Girl, it is at the top of my list of favorite poems that I just cannot live without. Though honestly, I can hear the readers voice dripping out of the speakers and it just might far be the best poem I’ve ever heard read.

I love how the words just pull you in and you picture exactly what is happening and it’s all so real. Not a lot of poems do that for me, though many of Ada Limon’s do. I want to feel like I am a fly on the wall.

Well, today was another day where I heard a poem that was just so astoundingly perfect. Another episode of Poetry Off The Shelf and just an amazing poem by Jack Spicer. “Any fool can get into an ocean . . .”. Just the title alone drags you right in. But you must hear it read right. Both links, if you click on them, should take you right to the reading of the poem. You can search the Jack Spicer poem on The Poetry Foundation website, but I prefer the reading on the Poetry off the Shelf version.

Any poem that involves a goddess kind of drags me in. Blame it on all the Greek myths. Anyways, I’m totally understanding why Dona says she wants poetry read out loud. I’ve fallen in love with a few more poems lately since I started listening to a Poetry Unbound podcast and even going over already listened to episodes of Poetry off the Shelf.

I urge you to take a gander at these two poems. And let me know what you think. I’d also love to know of any poems that you need to hear outloud. Share them with me. Youtube has some great poems to listen to as well.

Kate