Month: March 2015

I found out tonight that the chefs are going to fail me this quarter. They will change the grade in April when I get in my ninety hours of internship, but my final grade for now is officially an F. Before I found that out, I experienced yet another injustice, and it took me a while to even feel like I could speak calmly to them.

Thankfully, I had a call with my awesome new wellness coach today, and she gave me the best advice! She told me to put myself in the chefs’ shoes the next time we have a toxic interaction. Even though practicing empathy should be obvious, usually I end up trying really hard to summon positivity and gratitude up from nowhere and then feel guilty when I give way to feeling upset or negative. Putting myself in the chefs’ shoes did help calm me down a bit, even though I still do not think their behavior has been remotely professional or appropriate.

On the way home, Abe spent the usual forty-five minute drive calming me down on the phone. He also gave great advice and told me to let God fight my battles for me. At this point, there is no question in either of our minds that the chefs have treated me with unusual harshness, but knowing that it is in God’s hands helps me feel better about just moving on and not calling out their behavior to administration.

On the other hand, I wonder if their behavior should be allowed to continue unchecked? I will continue pray about that one. Part of the problem is I feel so powerless to make a difference, and I also feel hopeless that the chefs would be able to take any type of criticism seriously. If they wouldn’t take it seriously, then what’s the point of going to the trouble? I don’t know.

Tom was so sweet and took pictures of me waitressing tonight. He, Suzanne, Abe and the girls were customers at the restaurant tonight. The girls were perfectly behaved, and I was so proud of them.

My face always blows up in pregnancy, and I have been doing a lot of stress eating/sleeping lately. It shows. Oh well. Hopefully this will all be over soon and I will have my normal life back.

So the chefs hated and despised my dish tonight. Apparently, spicy chickpeas and a goat cheese mouse do not a garnish make. Tomorrow my partner and I are going to make a deconstructed AND constructed hummus, fry extra chickpeas, herb up our mouse, and add lemon zest to our garnish. I might even throw some flowers and microgreens on there just to make a point.

In other news, leprechauns visited our house last night. Abe did all the work behind the scenes, and the girls were thrilled.

I had the first night of my final practical today! I am so glad it’s over. And tomorrow I get to be the expediter, which means I stand around and call out orders. Basically, I’m off the hook until next week. Thanks, Mom, because I know you were praying for me. Abe had the girls kneel with him and pray this evening too, and I definitely felt helped.

Also, I have decided to delete all of my complaints from my journal. I figure God has cut me LOTS of slack, so I can cut the chefs some too. In general, sparing people discomfort is probably a good principle to live by.

I’m starting with pictures from Saturday that I never posted:

This morning I sincerely wished I had gotten a concussion last night because I so badly did not want to do the musical number in sacrament meeting today. Before this morning, I had practiced exactly once. But I tried to meditate on my covenants and get into a “build the kingdom” frame of mind.

I think it worked, because I felt very helped and uplifted not only through my own musical number, but throughout all of sacrament. We had an amazing returned missionary give a talk that I will never forget. He was so humble, so unassuming, and so unenigmatic. In a lot of talks, people speak very vaguely about their problems, but he was very specific, and I felt so inspired by his faith and his message: just keep moving forward and trust that God will help you. That is just what I needed to hear.

On the picture front, we have a couple.

 

 

This morning I decided that I was going to progress in my goal to fall in love with Orem. So far, I have to admit, I spend most of my time here either in my house or driving the less-than-enchanting State Street, and so this town hasn’t grown into my heart quite like Salt Lake. But what better way to rectify the situation than walking? My little walk really helped! I walked to Sprouts for groceries, and I didn’t cut up to State Street until the very last minute.

I was dying  to make strawberry rhubarb pie. We make rhubarb crisps at the pizzeria, and I always want to eat one. Plus, it’s Pi Day! So I set out with that one intention for the day: make rhubarb pie! Sadly, none of the stores have any rhubarb. I guess I’ll have to postpone my craving for a couple weeks.

We did go car shopping in the afternoon. I got discouraged because I really fell in love with the highlander–it looked so easy to clean and very child friendly, but it has barely any room otherwise! We decided if we settle on one, we will have to get a shell for all of our road trip gear to go on top. We’re going to wait until the end of March to see if the dealership gets desperate to meet their quarter goals and perhaps swing us a deal.

After that, we came home and Abe walked the girls to the park. Supposedly he took pictures, but none have appeared in my email yet.

I stayed home and wrote my journals for my school portfolio. I haven’t done a single one, and the portfolio is due in two weeks. After a couple hours of writing, my journal had devolved into itemized complaints about class. At one point, Abe interrupted my writing to tell me about a great spiritual experience he had, and I felt inspired enough to do the Christian act of deleting two paragraphs of accusatory complaints.

There are still pages upon pages of complaints still left. If I feel sufficiently inspired in church, maybe those can go too.

After Abe and the girls got home, we ate some pie I bought while grocery shopping. It wasn’t strawberry rhubarb, but hey. It was $2 and felt like a party.

Then we enjoyed Lydia’s fort upstairs for a bit until I stood up and smacked my head so hard on the low ceiling above it that I thought I heard my skull crack. Tylenol has been my constant companion ever since.

And now Abe’s back from his midnight run to the store! I just realized I’m in charge of nursery snacks tomorrow, so he took care of it for me.

I felt like I spent the whole day chasing an elusive nap. Thankfully, at one point the girls decided to play “doctor” and I quickly volunteered to be the patient.

While I was at Pizzeria 712, the girls and Abe had lots of fun.

Then our neighbor called Abe in desperation because the church basketball team only had four people coming. He wanted Abe to play and let Abe use his babysitter so he could play. Abe played the worst game of his life, but he had a lot of fun.

I picked the girls up at the neighbors’ house after work and then got them all ready for bed. We watched Annie because I have never seen the movie versions before. We’re going to finish it today because it was two hours long.

Today I’m hoping to take a nice long walk to the grocery store because I recently read a compelling article about the benefits of walking. Currently I am trying to find some form of exercise I am not allergic to. I always hurt myself running, I get eczema from bikram yoga, and last Saturday I emerged from the swimming pool with a yeast infection (TMI, as usual). Maybe I can get away with walking? It’s worth a try!

It’s after midnight and I have yet to blog. Such is the story of my life. Good thing I have pictures today!

Today while I was at school, Summer dressed the girls up and had them pretend they were at a fancy restaurant. They picked a fancy tablecloth, made menus, and when Abe arrived home, Summer was serving the girls dinner like a waitress would. Abe immediately jumped on board, changed into my chef whites and took over service. He addressed the girls as “madam,” and they thought that was the greatest. They called him “madam” too for the rest of the night. (Actually, Mary says, “badam.”)

While I was at home, the girls also played pretend. They pretended they were pioneers.

School went okay. I am trying to practice “enemy love’ and love the chefs, but it’s hard. I didn’t make any of the food, and by the time I took pictures of it, a lot of it had lost its perk, but here was tonight’s dinner.

Another good day today! I am so thankful. The girls woke up at almost 10 am thanks to Daylight Savings, and it was pretty smooth sailing from there on out.

Then tonight I got to serve Abe, Derek, Chelsea, Kim and Lucas! It was really fun. I thought the food was going to be a disaster this week because everyone was crazy in the kitchen yesterday, but everything turned out. I have hardly had to interact with the chefs for two weeks now, and it is so, so lovely.

Before I go on and on about my cooking school woes like I usually do, I just have to give a shout out to Abe. Today he broke the record at Qualtrics for first year sales! Previously the record was held by a highly experienced salesman Qualtrics recruited away from another company. We attribute Abe’s success to both his hard, hard work and the goodness of God in helping him through a career change. It was very humbling for Abe to have to start over completely from the bottom over a year ago, and I’m so proud of him for exercising so much faith and working so hard for our family.

Onto my complaints about school. Today I met one of my classmates who happened to be crying in the library. She had just gotten done talking to the head chef about how badly our restaurant chefs have treated her. As bad as I think I have it, the chefs have been waaaaay harder on her, and it hurts worse because she is one of the school’s most talented students. The chefs have not let her cook for almost half of the quarter (at most, everyone else has only worked front of the house two weeks), and they told her they don’t want her in their kitchen anymore. She attributes their behavior to sexism, but I tend to think it all relates to the arcane pedagogical methods, complete disinterest in students,  and lack of introspection on the chefs’ part. We bonded a ton over our mutual woes.

On the home front, I had the best day I’ve had in weeks! I felt barely nauseous at all, and I had a lot of fun with the kids. I even let the girls do a craft from Lydia’s favorite show, Creative Galaxy. The message of that show is that all problems can be solved with art. Abe finds it really irritating, but I like the ideas at the end of each episode for art projects at home. One of the easiest involved making a picture out of cut-up pieces of fruit. Since I actually felt good today, I let the girls do that. Mary just ended up eating the fruit, but Lydia made a “picture” on her plate. I felt like I’d done my good-mom part for the day.

While I was at school, Abe and the girls played “doctor” with Lydia’s new doctor kit. Here’s a picture: