Bitch of the Day

(and I don?t mean Howard)

By: Jason R.

As I write this, I can?t help but feel a bit cranky and pretty upset with one of my numerous roommates. Not to mention I might just be dying of hunger. Oh yeah, I almost forgot until I shifted positions, I have this blister on the bottom of my right foot that just might be the size of Texas. How did I get to be cranky, tired and ravenous you ask? *Insert question here*

Fine, those of you not conditioned to the tragedy that is my mind; I?ll explain it to you. As you might guess, July Forth Weekend is usually a slow boring three days for us at Market Street Caf?. Normally the crazy denizens of Harrisburg enjoy the numerous outdoor activities Mayor Reed had planned during ?lets make all the fucking money we can before winter kicks our ass? three day festival we call Fourth of July weekend. With everyone hanging at the festival with the cool peeps and considering my staff had been working overtime with ?little? complaining, I decided to schedule a skeleton crew for the weekend. (Just because I would rather have my nuts torn from my body by a baby elephant than spend time with my parents, doesn?t mean I should make others suffer for my retarded home life, does it?)

Let me tell you, I must have been out of what little mind I have left. Not only were we busy as rabbits in a storefront window, but we did record numbers for the weekend. Probably due to the horrendous downfall of rain we were ?lucky? enough to receive. (Like I watch the fucking weather channel) I have spent the last three days eating, breathing, and sleeping Market Street Caf?. Wearing the same stinky clothes, trying my best to remember why the hell I entered the service industry in the first place.

By four PM on Monday, we were slammed back to the ding dong section. I, in all my wisdom, had only three servers and two cooks working that beautiful rainy day. To say we resembled a famous star losing his mind on a popular daytime show would have been an effort in futility. Being the great and talented manager I am, I used my talent for multi-tasking. I ran around serving tables, I made drinks at the bar for the other severs, I bussed tables so fast I reminded customers of police upon hearing Crispy Creme gave away donuts. So basically I was the resident insane person. Why didn?t I call in some of my fun loving, grateful I had given them the weekend off, employees you might ask? Let me say this, all efforts to reach them by train, plane, automobile, cell-phone, fax machine, email, text message and pony express proved in vain. Not a single one of those pricks answered my call.

After finally arriving home around 1am Monday night. I poured myself into my soft comfortable bed fully intending on catching up some much-needed sleep. But I was so wired on Monster and nicotine I tossed and turned for about five hours before finally drifting off to a restless slumber. I had clocked just under forty hours in the last three days and Damnit; I deserved some fucking sleep.

But alas dear reader, it was not to be. Fate had other plans for me. After drifting off to sleep around six am, I was awaken rudely at nine am by the doorbell. Ignoring the various doorbell sonatas and the very loud banging on the front door, I rolled over and buried my head in my pillow hoping whoever it was would grow tired of this quest to gain entry into a house filled with five other roommates. But not before I wished some fairly unpleasant things upon whoever this was and their entire family, second cousins and such included.

But the incessant banging finally grew too annoying for me to ignore any longer. So I ran from my first floor bedroom to the front door and threw it open only to find a crazy meter reader person standing there. She informed me in a pleasant voice that she was there to read the meter. So after greeting her with some pretty horrendous morning breath and seventeen yawns, I showed her to the basement. Not more than thirty seconds later she walked back up the stairs and wished me a good day.

I slammed the door shut behind her and crawled back into the safety of my bed. Hoping to quickly fall back asleep and resume the dream I had been having about four friends and I in the middle of a giant arcade surrounded by pink bubble gum. Right about the time I had convinced myself that it had all been a horrible nightmare and while teetering on the edge of oblivion, teetering mind you, the ringing of my front doorbell once again disturbed my slumber.

Exactly twenty-three minutes after I had slammed the door behind the gas meter reader person, a way too cheerful UPS delivery guy began his tortuous attempts to gain entry into my house to deliver a pair of shoes my roommate (and employee that would not answer my desperate cry for help over the weekend) purchased online from this trendy store in New York City.

Tearing myself from my nice warm bed for the second time in under thirty minutes (I must have missed the meeting where the other housemates voted on making me the designated door answerer person. If you think about it, you know logically and stuff, it makes all the sense in the world. I live on the first floor, the other roommates live either on floor two or floor three. I don?t have the pleasure of traversing narrow stairs each time the doorbell rings. It?s only fair that I should answer the door. Isn?t?) I opened the door.

It wasn?t that I rude. Because I wasn?t. I swear. But something about way too cheerful UPS delivery guys makes my blood creep inside my already blocked veins. He had it coming, right? I mean, it was early in the day. And I had a blister.

Anyway, after signing for the package and giving the finger to the way too cheerful UPS delivery guy, I slammed the door shut. Now there?s something about holding a person?s package in ones hand that does strange things to your mind. Like maybe deep down we all, everyone one of us, has this unfulfilled desire to deliver the mail. Because no matter whom the package is for, we feel like we must give it to the intended party. I hated climbing those narrow rickety stairs but I found myself carefully walking up those stairs heading for my roommate?s door. You know I lost my mind because I wasn?t wearing shoes, and in my house, that?s as good as inviting tetinas.

Banding loudly on the door, I completed the two-day trip for the pair of shoes by personally handing them over to said purchaser. Knowing my good deed for the day had been accomplished, I walked backed down the stairs and climbed into my now cold bed with a promise to the gay god, you know the gym, that I would not rise again until at least one PM. Again, fate decided to royally fuck me. Spitting and laughing on my simple pursuit of a good days sleep. Before my head hit the pillow, my roommate, now fully awake and ready to face this beautiful sunny day, began blasting his music at what I can only assume is volume eleven.

With what I can only describe is him dancing around the room in his newly purchased sneakers to the horrid sounds of the Broadway musical Urine Town, I stare at the ceiling and plot all the horrible ways I am going to kill him, slowly. Upstairs, oblivious of my murderous thoughts, he dances and sings not caring about my desire and need by this time, for sleep. Beautiful restful zombie like sleep. In my tired dementia, I envision him dancing and singing in his room, wearing his sponge bob square pants boxers, in some kind of bizarre ritual to the shoe god in the sky.

No amount of burying my head with my pillow can block out the wailing from above. And much to my dismay, God did not strike him dead, unless the banging sound is him in the final throes of death; he is very much alive and happy with his new pair of shoes.

So with a spirit of retaliation, rivaled only by America?s hunger for oil, I rise from my sleep like a vengeful vampire and approach my own stereo. I serenade him back with the thunderous sounds of Orgy?s Fiction (Screaming in Digital), the synthetic sounds blending with crunching guitar?s to battle the happy sounds of Broadway. Like a childish game of truth or dare, we battle back and forth for noise supremacy. The noise emanating from the house not only woke up the remaining roommates, but shattered several laws of the city of Harrisburg.

What is the moral of this tirade you ask? *insert foolish question here* No matter what you plan for your life, no matter how hard you try to anticipant the extraordinary, fate, destiny or maybe even Loki (mischievous god of the Norse) takes an almost perverse pleasure in destroying those plans.

If ever awaken by a crazed meter reader person, promptly make a pot of strong coffee and wait for the inevitable. Sleep is lost for the rest of the day and maybe for the rest of your life.

Oh yeah, on the subject of my hunger. I have yet to buy food this week so I had nothing to eat. In a final attempt at retribution, I eat my roommate?s last donut. And when he inquired about the missing donut, I smiled and wipe the crumbs from my shirt and blamed it on the crazy meter reader person. I?m not surprised he didn?t believe me. I was chewing the last bite at the time.

Hey Ann, this is for you. Now you can't talk shit.