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My lost weekend
By Betsy Richter | 6:30 pmSo what did I do on my second-to-last kidfree weekend of the summer? I slept. And took drugs. And slept some more. And then took more drugs.
Oh, and in between the sleeping and the pill popping, I ate Hunts Snack Pack lemon meringue pudding cups for sustenance. To be specific, my evenings went something like this:
- Woke abruptly from very vivid dream because the hole where the tooth used to be started throbbing like a mofo
- Crawled out of bed, swallowed yet another Tylenol 3 with codeine, grabbed pudding cup from refrigerator
- Shuffled over to computer like Artie Johnson’s little old man character (my hair looked pretty close to his stylin’ do, I must say), ate pudding pop slowly (trying to avoid the yawning chasm that used to hold said tooth) while checking email and/or reading blogs
- Once the codeine fog settled in (10-15 minutes later), shuffled back to sleep.
- Rinsed and repeated same every 3-4 hours or so
And the dreams! In one, I had a raging, screaming argument with my sister (not only did I win, but I got the last word in via some rapier-pointed statements that left her uncharacteristically humbled and silent. Note to self – there is no need to try and re-enact this in real life.) In another, I acted out some non-existent relationship drama. (Note to PK (short for 'Pirate King') – if you got slugged and/or kicked and/or elbowed this weekend, I blame it all on the drugs..)
But the one that sent me over the edge this morning, shaking, sweating and resolving to kick the codeine already? The mother of all waitress dreams.
Waitress dreams, you wonder? If you’ve ever waited tables, I’m quite sure you’ve had waitress dreams. They’re related to the ones where you’re in school, set to take a test, and you’re quite sure you know nothing. Or you’re in the classroom and you’re buck naked, minus even a Number Two pencil. Or something like that.
In waitress dreams, you keep getting tables. You keep taking orders. No one ever gets their drinks, no one ever gets food. You just keep getting more tables, taking more orders…
I hate waitress dreams so much that I will force myself to wake up from them. And sure, it’s a sign that I’m under some kind of stress (although I’m surprised it managed to break its way free of the yards of cotton candy-like batting the codeine had been wrapping around my brain.) Got it, message received, make it stop already.
But in this dream, I ran into one very whiny diva – out to have lunch in the Big Boy restaurant I was waiting tables in, no less. She first asked for a liquid cornmeal beverage (??? – I have no idea where that came from), and rolled her eyes in disgust when I said we didn’t have any in the house. Then, she got annoyed that we had vanilla soy milk, not regular. Finally, she deigned to order a diet cola – but ONLY if it was sweetened with Splenda and could I drop everything I was doing and go check on this very important fact RIGHT NOW?
It was that point that I forced myself awake at 5:45 am. Reached for the bottle of Aleve instead of the harder stuff. Stumbled for my desk in order to get the undone stuff obviously haunting my subconscious done already.
For some people, it’s the hallucinations about spiders that send them scrambling back towards the light. Others fear rodents, reptiles or bugs. Apparently, the best way to scare me straight is to brandish a serving tray and black waitress apron at me.
Just don’t ask me to kick the Hunts Snack Pack lemon meringue pudding habit any time soon…
Topics: Boss Lady | 1 Comment »
October 15th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Yeah, waitress dreams…always guaranteed to wake from them in a cold sweat, only to realize it’s time to get up and go to work for some of the real thing. I’ve got 28 years of them racked up. You are absolutely correct. Not once have I ever managed to deliver something to a table. Sometimes because the cash/computer looks like a juke box, sometimes because I had to ford a river between the kitchen and the restaurant. Once because of a nuclear holocaust. That’s a combination of two of my recurring dream themes. It was fun checking out your site. I’ll be back.
Little Sue