Wednesday, February 25, 2009

ashes to ashes, wednesday to wednesday

Winter will never be over, but I'm over time; in the new eternal now I'm opening up to space. Can a woman blog without a room of her own? The disparate contents of my winter include apples months from the tree and as many texts as I can muster. When they pile up too much, we'll use them as wrappings, burn them for heat; a thousand and one things. At work the general manager logs in to OpenTable and gleefully calls out, for my benefit, the gaping openings that evening at my former place of employment. While my new restaurant is not, we are reminded, "recession-proof" per se, it is surely "recession-resistant." In the cramped kitchen carrying plates I warn "behind, behind," even when I am in fact in front or on the side of someone. A French guest murmurs "merci" to ever-jovial Jermaine, who responds, "derriere!"

In these lean loanless times I can't think of a thing to give up for Lent; the state of the seas being what it is, even Fish Fridays seem decadent. At Whole Foods I helped a shrunken old man reach the last tin of sardines in the back of the shelf, which made me feel better about having picked up a container of grapes, walked around eating out of it for half an hour, and then put it back as if I had decided not to buy it.