Saturday, November 21, 2009

Don't Eat Yellow Snow

Today on my Facebook I posted "Amber Stubbs...hates people." And it's true. They're not nice and they're irritating and I hate them.

OK, I only hate the kind of people who STIFF WAITRESSES!!!!! That's right. I got stiffed. Not once, my friends. But twice. Last night, due to an error on my part that caused ZERO inconvenience to my guests, my manager had to buy their meals. To the tune of $40. (BTW, if this had happened at Rib City I'd have had to pay the $40 and then been fired.) So instead of being grateful they got a free meal and leave a generous tip they left me nothing. NOTHING. I hate them.

Then today I had a table of three. Their ticket was $50. I should have known they were gonna be trouble when the dude asked if there was free refills on the flavored lemonade and I told him they were $.50. So he then asked if refills were free on iced tea and when I told him they were he went with that. Then the jack-a** asked if he could get an extra hamburger patty on his cheeseburger and when I told him sure, for a little extra money he went with the standard one patty.

It's always so exciting, as a waitress, to open the little black book to see what treasure lies inside. I like to wait til I'm all the way in the back before I open it. It's kinda like Christmas. Minus the gifts. And the tree. And the family. And the kids chucking their socks over their shoulder and diving in to get another gift. (Quick! What movie is that from?)

So imagine my surprise when I opened these people's little black book and found that they left me a big, fat, freaking ZERO. I hate them, too.

But that's not all. See, they only signed their credit card receipt. They didn't fill in the tip amount or the total amount. Not gonna lie...I was sooooo tempted to fill in a $20 tip and total it to $70. Not only did they not stiff me but they left me a 40% tip!!! DAMN THAT CONSCIENCE OF MINE!!!!! I couldn't bring myself to do it. I guess $20 isn't worth going to hell over. Or worth getting fired over.

I think I'd have a better chance of talking my way out of hell than finding a new job right now.

So here's a tip for you: Always fill in your tip amount and always fill in the total amount on your credit card slips. You might not get a server as scared of Satan as I am.

So, people? Tip your server. Tip her/him well if they deserve it. But for the love of all that is good and holy, please don't stiff them!!! Seriously, who does that???

People I hate. That's who.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Oh. My. Heck.

OK, so I'm about to tell you something that I KNOW you're going to have a ton of advice about but trust me, I know what I need to do about it. I just don't have the energy to deal with it right now.

Harley sleeps with us now.

It flippin' sucks. I hate it. It started probably 3 months ago when he got really, really sick. He was having way high fevers and we just put him in bed with us so we'd get some sleep. He recovered about a week later and for the next week-ish we worked on getting him back on his routine. Which we pretty much had accomplished until my dad died. Then for the next week or so we were back and forth to Tooele. Sleeping at my mom's with him in bed with us. I spent the night out there several times without Tavis, and long story short, he sleeps with us now.

So now he won't nap in his bed, either. Before, I'd put him to sleep then lay him down in his bed which was hassle enough but now if I even breathe like I'm going to stand up to take him to bed he wakes up. So I either hold him through his naps or I attempt to lay him on the couch.

As you can well imagine, by the time I've spent the entire night with him, all morning, held him for 2 hours while he naps, spent all evening with him, I'm MORE than ready for a little alone time. So I've started staying up waaaaay too late. It's the only time of day where I don't have anyone clinging to me or talking to me or climbing on me. So I'm staying up til like 2:00 in the morning!!! Not. Good. Especially when I've got to get up and get my older kids off to school by 8:30.

This whole story is not the point of this post. No, here comes the point. Last night while I was staying up too late I was sitting on the couch and at 12:15 am the entire sky lit up. Like noon-day. It lasted for about 5 seconds. I could only see out my back window but I saw the ENTIRE yard. It was literally as if the sun had been turned on.

I. Was. Terrified.

I seriously felt all the blood run out of my face and upper body. I went all cold and just froze. I didn't know what to do! Should I get up and see what's out there? What if it's something I don't want to see? So I went upstairs to my room (which also looks out over the back yard) and looked out the window. That way my tough husband could save me from whatever it was that had just lit up the night. But I saw nothing. I was kind of expecting to see a helicopter with a spotlight but, really, if it had been a spotlight there would have needed to be like 100 spotlights to make a light as bright as this one.

So I go back downstairs and ponder what I'd just seen. While I was sitting there, the windows started shaking. (By now I'm ready to pee my pants.) I'm not a huge believer in UFO's but I'm also not an un-believer. I have no reason to doubt there are life forms out there other than ours. Then I thought maybe a transformer blew. But my power was still on and so was my neighbor's. So I post it on my facebook. Ask what the crap was that thing???

And this morning I found out. It was a meteor! I didn't know we were supposed to be having a meteor shower but apparently a lot of people did. How cool is that??? I actually got to see it! Stuff like that never happens to me! I always miss the cool stuff.

So I'm going to try to post the story on here but I'm not holding my breath on it working so go here and you can see the 2 minute and 50 second story.

Very cool.

Monday, November 16, 2009

She Came Back to Bite Me

So I got to work on Saturday and not long after I got there one of the girls I work with spilled a drink on a customer. It made such a mess that they had to move to a different table. Now, I don't really love this girl. She's kinda b*tchy. So naturally, I thoroughly enjoyed her misfortune. When my friend, D'Laina, got there a couple hours later I told her the humorous story.

"Haha, Lame Girl spilled a drink all over her table and they had to move. Haha..."

Remember my last day of training? Well the table I was headed to that night was table 7. And on Saturday I was given table 7 for the first time since that fateful day.

As I walked toward my table of four I was remembering the day I slipped and dropped all the drinks all over the place and how bad that sucked and how bad it would suck to do that again. I got to table 7 and began distributing their drinks. As I was setting down the second to last drink I literally thought to myself, "I wonder how this guy feels about a drink in his lap". Seriously. I really did think that. I don't know why I thought that. I just did. So I leaned across the table to set down the second to last drink and in so doing, I tipped over the last drink on the tray. It went all over the guy!!! I'm not kidding! Why would I have been thinking that? And then it happened!! Of course we all freaked out. He jumped up with water in his lap.

D'Laina came up to me and said, "really, Amber? And after you were just making fun of Lame Girl."

She helped me clean the guy up. One of the bussers helped, too. The guy was way cool about it. Kept telling me not to worry about it when I apologized 9 million times. D'Laina said that when I walked away his wife asked if he was OK and he said, "ya I'm fine but my balls are frozen."

Ba ha ha ha!!!!! Oh my heck, that's funny!

So the moral of this story is this: Karma--she's a b-word. Trust me. I work with her.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Eee Eye Eee Eye Ohh

When I first started at Outback one of the girls that trained me was telling another girl something that went like this: "I was so tired when I got home last night all I could do was harvest my crops and go to bed."

I was floored! This girl sooooo is not the farming type! So I said, "holy crap! Where do you live???" I knew she lived with her sister and sister's family somewhere near me. Don't get me wrong, there are farms around me. But this girl? Uh...no.

She then informed me that she was talking about Farmville on Facebook. And the second she said "Farmville" EVERYONE started talking about it. Talking about their strawberries and eggplants and cows and someone sent someone else an elephant (something no farm should be without) but they didn't really have room for it so they just built a pen and put the elephant in it. These people were literally speaking a foreign language. But it was only foreign to me. Everyone else knew what they were talking about.

So my friend D'Laina asked me if I farmed and the look on my face must have indicated that I didn't so she said she'd "neighbor" me. You see, you want neighbors. You need neighbors in order to expand your farm. Plus, everyday you can go to your neighbor's farms and help them do things like pull weeds, rake leaves, scare away raccoons or foxes, get rid of gophers and then you can fertilize some of their crops. All of these good deeds gets you coins and you want coins to buy more crops or tractors or make your farm bigger. You can buy houses and barns and butter churns and ponds and yes, elephants. The list goes on and on and on.

So of course at first I was all aboard the "mocking train". This was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever heard of! You buy crops, wait a certain amount of time depending on the crop (four hours for strawberries, three days for cotton) and when they're fully grown you harvest. When you harvest it makes you more money. Typically, the longer you have to wait to harvest, the better the return. And as you plant and harvest you earn "experience points". These points advance you to the next level opening up a whole new set of things for you to plant or buy or give as gifts. You can even buy a hot air balloon.

One day Harley was wanting to see the "bird" on Tavis's computer. So Tav told him to wait a minute and he'd pull it up for him. I asked what bird he was talking about and he said he has a duck on his farm that Harley likes to look at.

Again, floored!!! My husband is Farmvilling!!! Of course I spent a few days mocking him. Then I reluctantly joined him. I've found my new addiction. Forget blogging. Forget solitaire. This is what I live for now. I get so excited when I log on to FB and see I have new gifts waiting for me or even better? A new neighbor request. That's better than Christmas! (Especially since we'll be so poor this Christmas, that FV gifts will be the only gifts we'll be getting. Hope the kids don't mind getting a virtual bird bath.)

So as if blogging wasn't enough, I've entered another popularity contest. First you have to have a fair number of FB friends. Only because those friends then need to be your neighbors. Tavis knows first hand how this contest works. He's not huge into FB so he doesn't have a ton of "friends". And of those non-tons of friends only a handful of them farm. So he's got tons of money but not enough neighbors to make his farm bigger. I have enough neighbors but not enough money. (Story of my freakin' life, I tell ya.) Although, make no mistake, "if this was the real world of farming, he'd have all us us whipped!!!"

So, MB, when you ask me, "harvest your crops, wth???" Now you know. If you don't Farmville you really should. It's tons of fun. And if you do, you really need to neighbor me. And if you're not my FB friend then you need to remedy that, too. Although as I type this I'm thinking of the 10-12 people who comment here and I'm pretty sure I'm FB friends with all of you.

Oh! Gotta go! I've got bell peppers that are THIS CLOSE to being ready to harvest and I don't want them to wither!

Monday, November 2, 2009

Mr. Quirkster

Do you have any quirks? Things that you do that make you just a tiny bit OCD? I only have one. Maybe two. The first is that every night when I go to bed I have to fix my pillows. I sleep with three. Two I lay on and one I hug. I have to fluff them up and make sure the opening of the pillow case is facing the outside of the bed. Then I stack them up. And I lay on all of them. I lay there on my back for a few minutes then I turn on my right side, grab my hugging pillow (which was on top of the pile, of course)and drift off to night-night. This happens every night.

The other is that I'm really disorganized. My house isn't always clean. Well, it's not always tidy. It's clean. Toilets are clean. Clothes are clean. People are clean. But it's usually cluttered. I'd like to blame it on my 1 year-old but really? It's always been this way. So, my quirk. When I do laundry I have to hang Avery's clothes on only pink and white hangers. Hayden's go on red, dark blue or green hangers. Harley's go on light blue hangers. And you must not deviate. I came downstairs one night while Tavis was (miracle) hanging clothes and I very nicely said, "actually, Harley's clothes go on these light blue hangers". Well he freaked! "You should be grateful you're getting any help at all!!!" And he was right but still, I'd rather do it myself than look at Avery's shirt hanging on a green hanger.

So why am I asking you about your quirks? Because I met a woman a while ago that was so damn weird that I just have to share this with you.

I went to a Relief Society get-together. It was "cookies on the lawn". Basically, bring cookies, sit in a circle with a bunch of women, eat cookies, gab.

So this woman arrives and she's got a plastic baggie on her right hand. On her other hand is a Wal-Mart sack and hanging off that arm is another Wal-Mart sack (kinda like a purse). And inside that Wal-Mart sack is another Wal-Mart sack and a cel phone. Well of course she sits right next to me. (I purposely didn't sit by my friend so I could meet other people, which left an empty seat next to me.) People, the smell coming off this woman was unlike anything I've ever smelled in my life. It was thick. It got in my lungs and just about choked me. It jumped into my nose and clung there as if it was afraid it would be forced to live with her again. At this point I grabbed my freshly washed hair and smelled it for the remainder of the night.

So I asked a friend who was on my other side, "what the crap is up with the bags?" This woman is in the RS presidency so I figured she'd have some dirt on her. (Pun?) She said she was new and had OCD. YA THINK????? I asked her, "does part of her OCD include an aversion to WATER?????"

So I told her, "make no mistake, I'll be getting to the bottom of these bags before the night is over. Because I'm just bold enough to say, 'what's with the bags?'"

Well the night progressed and one gal in the RS presidency said that she wanted to go around the circle and introduce ourselves, mostly because not everyone knew me. (I hadn't been good at going to church or these gatherings) So the first woman goes. "Hi, I'm Blah Blah* and I live down there...we've got the yard with all the trees in it...we've been trimming them...etc."

So like five more people go then it's my turn then it's Bag Lady. She says, "hi my name is BagLady* (yes, one word) (and without even taking a breath she continues) and I had that same thing happen to me with the trees like you were talking about. I was outside with my daughter and right when we came in a branch broke off our tree right where we'd been standing."

Wow. That was a mouthful. It was almost like she'd been ready to BURST waiting for all these other women to go so she could tell that story. So I ask, "is your last name Lady?"

BL: "No."
Me: (.........okaaaaaay.....)
BL: "Just BagLady. Bag if you're in a hurry. BagLady if you've got a little extra time."
Me: (......okaaaaaaay......)

So on we go around the circle and BagLady has a freakin' anecdote (DeNae, is that the right spelling for that word?) for every single thing people say! You'd think that someone with this apparent social disorder would be a little more reserved but NO!!! She yapped through the whole go-in-the-circle thing!

Finally it's cookie time. She walks over to the table which was right next to Blah Blah who asks her, "so...what's with the bags?"

Me: (Booo-yaah! Now I don't have to ask!!!)

BL: "Oh...I'm just crazy."
BB: "No you're not. What is it?"
BL: "OCD"

So then she comes and sits back next to me and proceeds to tell the other gal all about her condition. She went through a major chemical change during the birth of her youngest child. TWENTY-ONE years ago. She said she was genetically pre-disposed to mental illness because her grandmother had basically gone crazy when her grandfather died. See? This is where the story stops being funny. Because I really don't want to make fun of a real illness. Clearly, she's sick. And the saddest part about it is that she knows she's sick. She's got like 5 kids. I wonder what they think about it? How do you watch your mom go through this? How do you not say, "mom, what's with the bags?"

But the question I have is: Is a Wal-Mart sack really cleaner than just, y'know, washing your hands?

So tell me. What are your quirks? Are you "just a quirk or two away from full-on dementia"? (That's one of my favorite lines from Seinfeld. Elaine to Jerry)

*Names have been changed to protect the clinically insane.