The Stuntwoman

                                           7//23/13 - "The Stuntwoman"

     Blogger's Note:  Time.  I nearly titled this post "Time".  As a matter of fact, I just went back up and deleted "Time" and wrote "The Stuntwoman."  Listening to Mason Jennings Radio on Pandora in hopes of finding inspiration for a post that I initially had no subject for, I thought I might write some creatively-stretched reason for the fact that I missed my promised post last week.  But as my fingers hovered above the keyboard, I found no heart to pulse my hands into action.  And the folk-rock music strumming from my desktop speakers was tugging me in a different direction.
     This subject is way overdue, so I've been hiding it in the dark recesses of my mind, back there with my job frustrations, my addictive past, and my MILF collection, until I could find the time/place/reason to dust it off and showcase it on here.  I had been hoping that somewhere along the journey of our "How We Met" story that this particular star would twinkle incidentally and an excuse for its lag would miraculously reveal itself.  And maybe, as I had just finished editing a couple of my last post's type-o's and redundancies, that is, in fact, what happened.
     Anyway, I'm sorry I'm late, but here you go...

     I don't do my own stunts.  This show's too dangerous to risk the stress and bodily injury that goes with the territory.  When the water starts getting too choppy, when the accident is a bit too messy, when the job starts to get too stressful, when the boo-boo actually smarts...
     ...I call in my Stuntwoman.
     No job is too big; no job is too small.  Sometimes Amelia cries for a reason that can't be ascertained and despite all our attempts to determine the cause, we come up empty.  I yell, "CUT!"  The production crew pauses as I swap places with my Stuntwoman (Amelia likes to stay in character, so she continues wailing), and Joanna takes over the job as the show resumes.  When Roman's fever starts getting above that comfortable mark and it's the middle of the night and a wet towel I'm using to purge the heat isn't helping, I frustratingly wave away the cameraman and cue in my Stuntwoman (of course, Roman keeps the stage make-up on during the transition, because it's too much work to re-do.)  And my Stuntwoman never fails to deliver.  (I hired the best in the business.)
     Sometimes my Stuntwoman likes to change the script, because she thinks she can do my job.  I think it's very arrogant and presumptuous of her, but sometimes she likes to improvise.  If my car starts to get knee-deep in discarded fast food packages, if the office has too many empty beer cans decorating it, or if my work uniform has been discarded (momentarily) on the bathroom floor for too long, she thinks she can just ink through the scene and change my part.  I usually just roll with it, because I don't like to argue or seem unprofessional on stage.  She's lucky to have me...
     Sometimes, between episodes, the whole damn show can be pretty stressful.  Believe it or not, I have some anxiety issues.  When the lights go out and the curtains close, my Stuntwoman sticks around.  She reminds me of my role.  From her script-book she reveals a picture of the cast to remind me where I am and what I'm doing.  The writers really like to toss us into choppy waters sometimes.  When the plot starts getting dicey and one too many villains have been written into the story, she'll grab Roman and Amelia and we'll all get into character and practice the comedy scenes.  Which is really great, because I'm pretty sure this show is supposed to be a comedy.  Those piece of shit writers can really fuck it up sometimes; we may look into hiring a different crew if they keep adding too much drama.  (A couple of weeks ago, they added a laugh-track for a test run... talk about stupid!)
     Behind all of our smiles and laundered costumes, our Stuntwoman abides.  From off-camera, she feeds us when we're hungry; she holds us when we're crying; she laughs at us when we're silly; she assures us when we're doubting.  The luckiest day of her life was when I hired her for the part.  And I suppose it wasn't a bad decision since ratings are up.  But, if ever they should fall, if or when the whole damn program gets cancelled,  I suppose I'll just sit with her amid the hollow echoes and dusty props onstage and reminisce.  On that episode that Roman climbed onto the coffee table, looked at us defiantly, and peed everywhere (it took three takes to get it right!).  On that episode that I swore up and down that Amelia was smiling at me, but my Stuntwoman just insisted that she was pooping!  On that episode that Roman dropped his sippy cup in the middle of a quiet crowd at the zoo and yelled "FUCK!" (he improvised that line; we thought it'd be censored for production, but they surprised us and kept it -- we made sure we never used that line again, though).  On that episode that Joanna stepped onto the balcony, stage left, wearing her wedding dress and a smile meant for me.
     And fade to break...

     

Chapter 2 - The Pollock and the Donkey

                                                      7/14/13 -  "Chapter 2 - The Pollock and the Donkey"

     Blogger's Note:  Well.. I'm late.  Dang it.  But fret not.  I vow to get back on schedule this week with a post on Thursday.  I was having trouble cranking this one out.  But, at last, I have...
     I went back and changed the title of "The Tea Monster" to "Chapter 1 - The Tea Monster".  I wanted each chapter of our "How We Met" story to be easy to find.  So, if you're just tuning in, I'd suggest scrolling down to a couple of weeks ago to read Chapter 1 before reading this week's post if you'd like to know what's going on.  Well, that's really all to say this week... let's get to it...

     "You'll be seeing some new faces around here today," Rita, our supervisor, was wrapping up our morning, pre-shift huddle.  Our department listened to the routine checklist of the day's promotions, bus schedules, and motivational suggestions.  "Our property is testing a new program that hires foreign exchange students.  They are each assigned to a different department to gain some applicable work knowledge and practical language skills," she continued.  "We may be getting a couple of these students in the buffet."
     She wrapped up the news feed with a "team cheer" as we scattered to our separate departments.  Passing through the dish room, Matt and I headed to our station.  Here, I saw the first of these "new faces."  A young, Hispanic looking fellow wearing a friendly smile nodded as I passed by.  I smiled back, happy to see someone new.  My jokes and pranks had worn thin with the regular crew; here was a potentially whole new cast of victims
     Upon reaching the drink well, Enrique, one of the buffet Sous Chefs, was topping off a drink from the soda machine.  He looked up when we arrived.  Enrique was a rather tall Puerto Rican, three times my size and ten times my ego.  He was the kind of person that could "throw a football clear across those mountains."  When he wasn't frying chicken, he was hanging out with Albert Pujols (one of his personal friends he assured us).  He would've been a professional catcher in the Major League if not for some mysterious injury that he got in college.  If you meet Enrique in a narrow hallway, you have to squeeze to one side because he's too important/big/in-a-hurry to move any himself.  He has this slow and heavy accent when he speaks that makes each word ooze from his mouth like thick syrup.
     "Went golfing yesterday at Silo's," Matt started our morning ritual off with a bit of casual conversation.  "I hit a beautiful 300 yard drive off the tee on Hole 5 and set myself up for a birdie putt."
     Matt was addressing me, but Enrique responded.  "That's nothing," he began with his cliché slogan, pausing to take a sip of Mountain Dew.  "There was this one time that my brother and I was playing golf and he bet me that I couldn't reach the green on a Par 4 and I took his bet..." he paused here to chuckle.  The effect, meant to be dramatic, gave Matt and I time to exchange a quick glance.  "I hit it four hundred and thirty-five yards.  And... it landed right on the green.  I just putted it for eagle.  My brother couldn't believe it.  I didn't take his money though; I would not feel good about taking his money, you know what I mean?"
     He finally lumbered back to the kitchen, wearing a smug grin.  Matt and I just sighed and got to work.
     We continued through the rest of the morning in typical fashion:  waiting tables, cleaning the station, rolling silverware.  That afternoon, after I returned from my lunch break, I noticed a new person near the Hostess Station.  Shirley, one of our hostesses, was talking to a younger girl that had her hair tied up in buns.  Her name tag, I could see as I got closer, read "JOANNA."
     "Try to rotate sections," Shirley was explaining as she grabbed a couple of rolls of silverware from the basket, preparing to seat some guests.  "Talk to them, tell them your name, and keep them smiling."  She demonstrated the "proper" technique as she sat the two customers.  "You can follow me for a couple of hours until you think you're ready to go it alone..."
     "I'm pretty sure I got it," Joanna replied dryly in a charming, eastern European accent that I couldn't quite place.  The sarcasm might have been misguided or condescending coming from someone else; but, from her, it felt real.  Shirley, usually one quick to recoil, simply laughed.  Apparently, she, too, had the same reaction as me.
     The afternoon proceeded routinely.  I left the new girl alone initially while she was getting her feet wet in her new role which was uncharacteristic for me.  Until, at last, she led a lone elderly man to a table in my section.
     "...and my name is Joanna.  Enjoy your meal."
     I arrived at the table to read the drink order just as she was turning to walk away.  "You did that wrong,"  I prodded.  She stopped and turned to look at me rather blankly.  As our eyes met, the first thing she said to me was:  "You stupid."  Yeah, she missed the verb; but, that was ok.  I liked her.  I smiled charismatically but said nothing.  She walked back to the Hostess Station after a moment, and I thought to myself, 'bitch just called me stupid.  Charming...'
     The day continued on in typical fashion.  During one particular slow stretch, I noticed Joanna in the back rolling silverware by herself.  Having no customers on our side of the buffet, I decided I would join her and meet the new girl.
     "Having fun?" I began as I approached.  She replied with a casual, "pfft" layered with a warm smile.
     Matt was busy filling salt and pepper shakers at tables near us making strange, velociraptor noises that were eerily realistic.  Joanna cornered her eyes in his direction and then back at me, as if to ask 'what's that about?'  I replied with only a smile.  The clicks and screeches of long-extinct dinosaurs provided our romantic backdrop.
     "So where you from?"  I asked.
     "Poland," she answered.
     "Yeah?  The other new people don't look like they're from Poland," I conjectured.
     "They're not."  So she wasn't going to make this easy.
     "Elaborate," I fired back amid the predatory ticks and shrieks emanating from our co-worker.
     "Most of them are from South America," she resolved.
     "So you're the different one?" I prodded with a friendly smirk.
     "I am their supervisor," she explained.
     "So why are you working in here?"
     "Once the paper work is done there is nothing to do but sit in hotel room.  I may as well make extra money while I am here."
     "You're staying in a hotel room?  That sucks, huh?"
     "Yeah, but I am lucky.  The students are three to a room.  I have my own room."
     "You got a car, too?"
     "No."
     "Well, what about food?  Your laundry?"
     "I walk."
     "The nearest laundromat is a mile from here.  The grocery's even farther."
     "You Americans are afraid to walk.  That is not far."  I considered briefly that I might should be offended.  After assessing my injuries, I decided I was ok and continued.
     "What do you do for fun?"  I prodded.
     "Drink vodka," she said that as if rehearsed.  I liked it.
     Matt, finished with his salt and pepper-filling duties, joined us.  The velociraptor between us shrilled with a cocked head and an argumentative posture.  Joanna laughed out loud at this, and I couldn't help but notice how much her smile illuminated her whole face.  She looked like a different person suddenly.  She looked lovely.
     "That must be lonely," I sympathized.
     She shrugged with a dismissive shrug, so I let it be.  I changed the subject.  "What's Poland like?"
     "We ride a donkey to school,"  Joanna's casual response hooked me for a moment.  Unaccustomed to being the prey of sarcasm, I flopped around on this line of spurious information like a fool.
     "Really?"  I asked cautiously.  The velociraptor's clicks slowed to a halt as Matt, too, turned to the Polish girl with the Princess Leia buns.  After a very brief moment of silence, Joanna laughed.
     Feeling foolish, I grimaced as Matt commenced the audio track for a Jurassic Park tour.  At last, I, too, laughed.  "Ok, ok.  You got me," I admitted.
     "It's not much different from here, really," she gave in, still smiling as she rolled the last set of silverware, "except better music..."
     "Joanna, can you come help seat while Mandy takes here break?" Shirley called from the Hostess Station.  Joanna picked up the pile of rolled silverware and carried it to the Hostess Station.  Matt and I dispersed as well, heading to the station to prepare for the dinner rush.
                                        (to be continued....)
   
Continue our "How We Met" story:
                                       Chapter 3 - Another Day
   
   
   
   


      

The Trouble of Being Roman

                                                             7/5/13 - "The Trouble of Being Roman"

     Blogger's Note:  I love my job.  I really do.  But one of the biggest "con's" of working in the entertainment industry is that when everyone else is on holiday, we're working overtime.  Holidays are the busiest time of the year for casinos.  My work schedule was a little different this week to cover the increase (and much appreciated) business, thus the delay in posting my blog this week.
     Also, having time to sit at my desktop and ponder and write a blog was much easier circa 2013 P.A. (that's pre-Amelia).  There's not much time to relax these days.  Even when Amelia is sleeping or contentedly swinging, then we feel a desire to fill this precious time slot with some "Roman"-time.  I don't think he's feeling left out, as was our 2013 P.A. concerns; but, I'm putting a little effort into keeping it that way.
     And, spending all this extra time with Roman (as Joanna seems to be the primary care-giver for a breast-feeding infant girl), has given me an insight on the gears that grind in the mind of our three-year-old adventurer.  I'll share a few of these discoveries this week and explain exactly what is the trouble of being Roman...

     Roman just recently learned his first negative phrase.  It's "I don't want to."  And, actually, it comes out with an extra syllable somewhere that is hard to place but sounds a bit like "i don't wah-wahn to!"  I'm not sure where he got this phrase, but it's a bit disheartening to hear this fun-loving, carefree sponge of life hiccup a piece of trash from our mad world.  Inevitable as it was, I would choose to keep him shrouded in those twinkle, twinkle good dreams.

     On a lighter note, I do love the way he expresses appreciation.  He doesn't say "Thank you" or a Polish equivalent; he says simply, "thanks" as evidenced in this video.

     Roman is all-boy.  When we go somewhere he wants a toy of some kind to take with him.  It's either a Matchbox car or an airplane or a rocket or a bulldozer or a balloon.  We've learned to have something small for him to carry along so that he's not lugging around a giant, toy spaceship when we're shopping.  At night, when it's time for bed, Roman grabs one of these toys to sleep with.  He doesn't want a stuffed animal; he wants a giant semi-truck or a train that he wraps his arm around and "snuggles" with.  

     He loves being outside (or as he calls it in Polish:  napoli).  But he doesn't much care for being outside alone, with us watching from the kitchen window.  We have a train track that runs a couple of blocks from our house.  When a freight trains rolls through, they blow their whistle as they pass over Pines Road.  The sound frightens my son.  If I'm outside with him, he nervously looks at me and proclaims, "train!"  I smile and  try to appear light-hearted trying to affirm the harmlessness of the sound.  If he does happen to be outside alone when the train whistle sounds, he runs to the back door and tries to get in.  Our back door has one of those push-button handles that he hasn't quite mastered, so he starts banging and yelling.  One of us lets him in; I like to maintain that trust that he has for us.

     He loves water.  That boy could splash around all day long.  I take him to this spray park in Draffenville, and he runs around aimlessly just happily getting wet.  We have a kiddy pool in our backyard in which he likes to scuba dive for sunken treasure.

     He had his first Independence Day experience, and it wasn't a good one.  We got invited to a really cool 4th of July party complete with all the Americana a man could wish for:  good barbecue, cold beer, and (best of all) awesome fireworks.  We got to enjoy the first two before the fireworks started, and we discovered rather resolutely that our son doesn't like fireworks (or rather the report that inevitably follows).  So, we climbed into the van and tried to watch the show from there which worked for a while; but, when I tried to crack the windows because it was getting stuffy, he jumped into my arms screaming "it's coming!  it's coming!"  So, we left.  And that's ok, because we'll just try again next year.

     He loves bike riding with me (which is great because I like that, too).  We run what I call the Paducah Loop.  We head up Park Avenue to the start of the Greenway Trail, to Noble Park, to the new floodwall trail, to downtown, and back up Jefferson Street until we find our way back home.  Downtown, we always stop for a restroom break, and it's there he has a very important decision to make.  Do we go to Kirchhoff's Bakery for a cookie or do we hit the Ice Cream Parlor for an ice cream cone?  We ride to the foot of Broadway and slowly pedal along the Ohio River where we see ducks and boats and other children.  We come back out on Kentucky Avenue to see the train there, and sometimes go to the library or the water fountain there, and then we finally head back over to Jefferson Street for the final leg.

     Concerns over how Roman would handle a new, baby sister were rather unfounded, it seems.  Roman loves Amelia.  He was cautious around her at first, of course.  But, slowly that caution has morphed into care.  He'll sometimes "pet" her when she cries and tell her "it's ok, it's ok."  He'll kiss her forehead when we're leaving her and Joanna at home.  He'll place the pacifier in her mouth if it falls out.  And he never complains when she cries.

     Nights when I get home from work turn into a Huff-and-Puff match that becomes a contest of me "blowing him down" and then him "blowing me down."  But, while I usually huff-and-puff he usually huffs-and-huffs.  I'm not sure why he doesn't puff.  Maybe he knows something I don't.  

     And when it's time to go to sleep, he lays beside me and pulls up his sleeve.  He likes for me to lightly "scrape" my fingernails along his forearm until he falls asleep.  Up-and-down his skin until softly his eyes close and within a couple of minutes his arm softly falls to the bed.  Then, every adventure from our day becomes a plot point to his starry dreams.  I kiss his forehead and that's a wrap.