Ugh.


I ache right now; I'm too tired to move enough to change out of my nasty clothes, much less bathe. I haven't even finished a beer in the hour since I've been home. And tomorrow, I work from three to ten one more time, before a relaxed and productive Monday of...laundry. I'm working six long, high-pressure days--a completely different set menu daily plus a limited menu for the bar--to celebrate the restaurant's fifth anniversary. Last night I watched my chef literally press his nose against a piece of pork belly that hadn't cured properly before abruptly straightening up with this terrible grimace. Somehow, this combination drives home the magnitude of the "glamorous restaurant" myth.


And of course there was the disparity between me and the rest of the world as I drove home through Buckhead and Virginia Highlands. I watched happy, enthusiastic people get down with their music and convertibles, groups of friends meeting on the sidewalk, bikers outside Belly General, while sweating in my chef's jacket, unable to do more than inch through traffic, pray that I'd make it to Buddy's before midnight, and more than a little resentful that anyone else wasn't in the kind of funk I am.


I'm hoping that this beer, radio paradise, and the vegetable chapter in The Chez Pannise Café Cookbook will restore a positive attitude. And that failing all else, sleep and vegetables will set me right by morning.