I miss you, my Bloggy Buddies!!

I feel like it's been a year since I've posted. It's been an incredibly busy week, which led to an even busier weekend.

Ding dong, the witch is dead.... has been playing in my head all weekend. I may or may not have posted about our bartender, who I did NOT care for. Long story short, she's gone. She did, however, screw us over on what should have been her last night, so I had to work Friday night. It was pretty busy, but certainly not as busy as most other Friday nights (I really didn't need my brother's help for much, since I had a server) and yet the ring for the night was a full 50% more than it usually is on busier Friday nights. Gave me a little more ammo to use in my arguing with my brother over this bartender, who I believe was stealing from us left and right. I really don't want to get into all the details, but let's just say, our numbers should improve greatly now that she's no longer stealing from, I mean working for, us.

Friday was a pretty profitable night for me, which was an added bonus. I went home with nearly a half-month's tuition for Stud Muffin. That almost makes up for what a looonnnnggg day it was. Naturally, I worked at the Hell-Hole all day. It was an unusually stressful day, too. I received a new student. A new student who HAS NEVER BEEN TO SCHOOL BEFORE! What the hell?!?! I wanted to grab her mother by the collar and ask her, "What the fuck have you been doing with this child since September when school started?!" Oh, wait, I forgot the best part...this little girl was SCREAMING when her mother brought her to my door. S-C-R-E-A-M-I-N-G!!! And she continued to scream for about the first two hours of school. It never even died down to crying, it just was constant screaming. The first 30 minutes or so I was feeling really bad for her. The poor baby has never been to school, she's used to being with her mommy all day, she's scared, etc. But, shit, after an hour of non-stop screaming, I was reaching the end of my patience. By the end of Hour 2, I was ready to slap her! Thank God, by lunchtime, she had calmed down, and was actually joining in with what we were doing. By the middle of the afternoon, she was doing great! Yay! I just hope after this long weekend, she doesn't come back on Tuesday crying. (Did I mention we have a three-day weekend? We're off Monday for Casimir Pulaski Day.)

Besides dealing with Screaming Mimi, I had to deal with the fact that BOTH of the assistants who dismiss my kids had called in sick on Friday. It was nice of them to both take a four-day weekend! So, naturally, instead of walking out at 2:45 like I usually do, I was stuck until the last one was picked up at 3:00. Now, I realize that 15 minutes doesn't seem like a big deal, but Stud Muffin also gets out of school at 2:45, and ends up waiting outside for me for about 15 minutes everyday, even when I leave on time. Well, by the time I walked out to my car Friday, he had already been waiting 15 minutes, outside, in the freezing cold, plus it had started to snow!! I was NOT happy, to say the least. Then, as I was pulling out of the lot, a huge fight/riot that had started in the building spilled out to the street, so I couldn't even get off the damn block! Ugh!! I finally had to call my sister and see if she could pick up my son for me, otherwise I'd never make it to the bar in time to open at 5. I finally got out of Englewood, drove home like a bat outta hell, ran in the door, changed my clothes, packed up my gear (mostly just my computer!) cleaned the dog's infected ear with antibiotic cleaner, forced his pills down his throat, got the ear drops in his ear, and I was on my way! I made it to the bar with about 5 minutes to spare.

Like I said, I pretty much worked by myself behind the bar all night, which was exhausting. But, I did get to see some customers I hadn't seen in a while, since I've been trying to only work Saturdays. There were really great customers all night. Unfortunately, it was a late night, and I didn't walk in my door until about 5:45 am. Which wouldn't have been so bad (even though I had been up since 6 am the day before!) if I didn't have to get up at 7 to take that rotten son of mine to school for a Saturday detention!!! Argh!! I had to repeat the whole process with the dog when I got home, so by the time I got into my pajamas and finally lied down, it was after 6:15. I was up at 7, drove to school and back, which woke me up a bit, which sucked, cuz I wanted to go right to sleep. I finally started to doze around 9ish, but I was so afraid I wouldn't wake up in time to pick Studly up, it was a VERY restless sleep for about an hour and a half. I woke up in a panic at 10:30, thinking I overslept, which got my adrenaline going, so then I felt wide awake. After picking him up at 11, I came home and tried to go to sleep for a while, but it just wasn't happening, especially since it was literally the middle of the day now. I finally started to doze off around 1:30, but then my brother called at about 2:30 to tell me he would open so I could come in a little later. Well, that's mighty nice of ya, but now you woke me up, asshat!! I think I fell back asleep at 3ish, with a pile of pillows over my head, but then CSJ called at 4 and woke me up, so I gave up. I was going to have to make do with about 3 hours of broken, crappy sleep.

Saturday was it's usually crazy busy time. My cousin and his boyfriend came in, which is always great. My parents came in, too. At about 1 am, one of my oldest and dearest friends called because she was on her way home from a party and wanted to know if I was at the bar. She stopped by, and we got to visit for about an hour and half, which was awesome! There were a TON of people here at 3 when we closed, and NOBODY wanted to leave. Needless to say, I was getting more and more annoyed. I turned the ugly lights on, and finally just turned the music off, but still they couldn't take a damn hint. I finally begged my brother to ask them to leave. It was nearly 4 before the last person left. I balanced the drawer, cleaned a bit, and headed home. I was too tired to even go to breakfast!! That's highly unusual :)

I walked in the door at 5:15 this morning. I think I fell asleep at about 6, and next thing I knew, my brother was calling me at 2. Eight full hours of sleep!! I felt like a million bucks!! Sadly, I had to work today, too, which is why my brother was calling. We had a private poker tournament here tonight (it's still going on!) and I have the pleasure of bartending for the crew. I had no freakin' clue they'd still be playing this late (it's 12:30!!) and I'm dying again. I got here about 3:30. Even though I'm off from school tomorrow, I still have to get up to drive Stud Muffin to school, then I made plans to meet friends for breakfast. I'm really tempted to skip breakfast so I can sleep, but I haven't seen my friends in such a long time, I know I would regret not going. I guess we'll have to wait and see how I feel in the morning.

Wow, I've been working on this post for about 1 1/2 hours now, and the boys are still playing!!! I think it's time for me to call it a night. It's 1 am, and I need to sleep. They're going to have to get their own damn drinks. I had intended to post about school, so maybe I'll get to it tomorrow. Or, would that be later today? Whatever. I'm too tired to be technical :(

~~~Update~~~

I finally left the bar at 3:15, pulled into my driveway at 3:40, carried a sack filled with two weeks' worth of dirty towels, a box with 6 reams of paper, my computer and my purse into the house, let out Dorky Dog, brought the towels down to the basement and loaded the washing machine, came back up and let the dog back in, cleaned his ear, put in the drops, got the pills down his throat, pulled my son's essay up on his computer, proof-read/edited it, printed it out, stapled it and put it in his bookbag, and it's now 4:25. I have to wake up Studly in about 2 hours. Should I just stay up? Hey, Matlock is on, I could just watch that! Nah, I'll just review my weekend:

Hours worked (on my feet, slinging drinks) from Friday-Sunday = 32

Add in the hours spent driving to and from, plus time cleaning = 8

Came home Friday with $370, Saturday with $200, tonight with $210. Total = $780

Sounds amazing until you figure out that hourly that comes to about $19.50/hour. Now subtract the fact that from the time I woke up at 6 am on Friday until right now (4:30 am on Monday!), I've slept a combined total of 11 hours. Doesn't sound so great now, does it? I'm just going to focus on the fact that I was able to make almost a month's worth of tuition for Stud Muffin, and I'm going to pretend I don't have to be up in 2 hours to drive him to the school that demands $800 a month from me. At this point, I'm seriously thinking I'm going to have to ditch breakfast with the girls. I still have so much to do tomorrow, that I think that couple of hours I would have hung out with them would be better spent napping. I had planned to spend my evening reprinting all the menus and table tents for the tables at the bar. I spent an hour editing the menus, changing the lay-out, etc., only to find out that my printer was out of freakin' ink!! I tried to run to Office Max, but they were closed. Target doesn't carry the ink cartridge I needed, so I obviously couldn't finish the job. So, now I have to print them out tomorrow, here at home, then somehow get them to the bar. More than likely, I'll have to drive all the way back out there tomorrow, which is gonna suck big time. I'm going to try and get all the towels washed, dried and folded before then, so I can kill two birds with one stone. Yeah, so maybe I should try and get a couple of hours of sleep right now, huh? OK, well good night then...