Tuesday, Sept. 06, 2005
The Weekend - Busy, but Boring
On Sunday morning I was up bright and early once again to babysit. Seven years ago, when I was just going into tenth grade I started babysitting for a woman my mom works with. Her son was only six months old at the time. Two - three years later, his dad offered me a job at his company which I am still employed at. The little six month old just turned nine years old last week and now has a younger sister who just turned four years old at the end of July. So, I've known D for basically his entire life, minus 6 months, and R for her entire life. I was one of the first people to visit her at the hospital when she was born. I rarely see them anymore because of my busy schedule, but every once in awhile I will get asked to babysit for them and I gladly accept.
Sometimes when I babysit the time drags on and on, but on Sunday the day went by so quickly. In the morning I was surprised to see that D made his as well as his sister's breakfast; waffles in the toaster, then buttered with powdered sugar on top. I was all ready to make it for them too. He has gotten so much more independent from the last time I've seen him. When breakfast was over, we must have filled up over fifty water balloons in the laundry room, getting everything, including ourselves, soaked. We took them all outside in a cooler and had a great time throwing them outside. My fingers hurt from tying the balloons.
Most of our time was spent outside. The only time we were inside was for lunch. Luckily D and R didn't have me make anything too terribly hard for lunch. They wanted soup from a can, some pepparoni's and carrots with ranch. I made myself a turkey sandwich. While I cleaned up lunch by unloading and reloading the dishwasher, D and R played with playdough at the kitchen table. They got out their McDonald's playdough thing where they could make pretend french fries, milkshakes and burgers out of the playdough. From a distance, the frenchfries actually looked real. And because the playdough was homemade, made out of flour, water, and kool-aid, they of course, actually had a little taste, spitting it back out almost immediately.
When the dishes were put away and they were tired of the playdough we went back outside. I was sort of glad that there were no more water balloons to fill up because we had used them all that morning. Even in the afternoon my jeans were still in the processing of drying off. D requested that we play baseball so I pitched while he hit homeruns and ran around pretend bases. R was catcher. D beat me in a round of basketball too. The older he gets, the better he gets at sports. Even at a young age he was really talented at sports. R is more of a girly girl. D informed me that when she had real t-ball games, she stood in the outfield and did cartwheels and tumbles. I wish I could have witnessed that. She sounds so much like me when I was her age.
It wasn't long before their neighbors came home and the kids were off running, playing with them. D was running around with the neighbor boy and one of his friends while I stayed in the yard with the neighbor girls and R. I felt out of place when they went in the house, so I stuck my head in the door and asked the neighbor's mom if she minded that they were over there. She said no, of course she didn't mind, and that she would send them back over in about twenty minutes. No sooner did I walk back into D and R's house did their dad come home. I explained that they were at the neighbor's and he was like,"Oh ok! Yeah, they love going over there." I was glad that he didn't mind they were over there. We said our goodbyes and as I was driving home, I realized that he forgot to pay me. It's happened before so I was concerned about it too much.
Sunday night I went to my waitressing job. As I walked through the front door, I immediately saw how busy the place was. Almost every booth in the place was filled with customers waiting for their meals, enjoying cocktails and chatting with one another. I clocked in, then found a manager to ask him what I would be doing that day. The original plan was that I was supposed to take tables that night, but as it turned out, I wasn't on the floor plan. To be honest, I was glad because I don't think I was ready. Everyone else had a whole weeks worth of training and I had one afternoon. After consulting with one of the managers, it was determined that I would shadow another waitress, Alicia, around for the night.
Shadowing Alicia helped me learn a lot about what the job entails. I followed her as she took orders, rang them up on the register and brought the food out to the customer's. I listened intently to what she said when she greeted her tables and how she answered the customer's questions regarding items on the menu, drinks, etc. A few times during the night I ran drinks out to tables and did odd little errands. When the tables were cleared, Alicia showed me how to put new paper on the tables and how the ketchup, drink, dessert specials, salt and pepper get placed on the tables after the new paper had been put on. Basically, it isn't that hard. The hardest part is learning the register and the items on the menu. Alicia left and I took my Menu Test #2 which I'm sure I failed miserably because I didn't study it beforehand worth shit. I'll find out the results when I go into work this evening.
This weekend seemed really boring. Since Phil and Rhonda weren't having anyone over to play cards on Saturday night, they rescheduled for Sunday evening instead. Adam now has to work on Sunday nights, 11pm - 7am, so we stayed in. Originally, I was planning on playing cards after I took him to work, but was unable to because I didn't have any money to buy in. I was counting on my tip money to play cards, but since I didn't wait tables, just shadowed, I obviously didn't have any tip money. And since Ben forgot to pay me, I didn't have any babysitting money either. So, Adam went to work and I stayed home, played Playstation, then watched tv into the early hours of the morning until I fell asleep - - without Adam lying next to me.
It was so nice getting to sleep in yesterday. Adam and I didn't do much of anything. Money was tight this past weekend. When I woke up yesterday I tapped Adam on the shoulder and whispered,"I'm hungry." He groggily looked at me and mumbled,"Honey, we don't have any money." I called my parents to see if they'd be willing to let us come for dinner but they had plans to go to a picnic. I did tell them that I'd catch up with them on Friday. Next, Adam called his grandparents to see what they were doing for dinner. They were grilling out. His grandfather already had a steak marinating and was getting ready to put it on the grill in a little while. Adam and I quickly went to the grocery store, bought two steaks, for each five dollars a piece. I had to write a check for them since we didn't have any cash, then headed to his grandparents' house.
We all actually had a really nice time. Adam made the steaks, his grandmother cooked vegetables, and his grandfather and I sat around. The meal was really good. We sat on the back patio and ate outside since it was so nice out that night. We left and went home after the meal was over.
The day before I had told Liz we would hang out, but I was really tired and ended up not calling her. I feel bad because it's been ages since we've hung out and I miss her, but I was exhausted. I took a nap for about two hours and tried to convince Adam to take one too since he had to work the 11pm - 7am shift but he ended up staying up and watching tv instead. I woke up to the sound of the Cops tv show theme. For a moment, I layed there, then slowly opened my eyes, wondering how long I had been sleeping. I was asleep for two hours, but it seemed like a lot longer. I woke up feeling really refreshed. Adam and I even cleaned the house up a little bit. We did the dishes, vacuumed, and took the trash out. We hung out for only about twenty more minutes until he had to go to work. Once again, I went to sleep by myself and didn't see him until this morning, a little after seven, when I was waking up to go to work.
Adam's schedule sucks. He worked last night until 7 am this morning, slept for about three hours, then went to his other job at 12:30pm and is there until around 7:30 pm. If he wants to, he could go home and sleep for another three hours before he has to go back into work at 11pm until 7am but he is contemplating whether or not he just wants to stay up. It's a toss up.
At my job today, my boss did pay me for babysitting which I knew he would. Tonight is my first night serving at my other job and I'm nervous so wish me luck.