There’s a little clothing store on my way to work. On a nice day there’s always a rack of pretty dresses out on the sidewalk to taunt me. Most days I don’t have enough time to walk to work and shop, so I walk past and give them a good hard look.

I head to the tattoo parlor with my friend. She’s having a consultation about jazzing up some of her current tattoos. I sit in the waiting room and eye the piercing price list. One ear is $50, genitals are almost $200. That seems like a lot for one ear. But I have no piercings, so what do I know?

I join my friend for her consultation. The tattoo artist introduces herself and tells me,

“So you’re the friend with no tattoos.”

Yes. Why is that so obvious? I could have a butterfly on my lower back. I don’t. You can’t have tattoos if you want to be buried in a Jewish cemetery. I don’t know what I want to do when I die,  but for now I’ll keep my options open.

This past weekend I took the pink machine out for it’s first ride of the season. That’s right, my pink bike with a white basket, sparkly pink streamers, heart bell, and a handlebar flower.

The ride was a success. I got to use my bell. Not only did I use it, but I NEEDED it. A couple pushing a baby stroller one way, stop to talk to a couple walking the other way and they manage to cover the entire bike path from side to side with no regard for oncoming traffic. I have two options: I can shout ‘EXCUSE ME,’ or I can ring my heart shaped bell.

Bell it is. Everybody jumps out of the way so fast. Amazing.

I continue on. Two middle-aged men stop to talk to me about my bike. One exclaims,

“I LOVE your bike.” He whines, “I want a bike like that.”

“You should get one!”

I pedal on, streamers sparkling in the sunshine.

At a crosswalk a woman remarks,

“That is a very girly bike.”

“I tried.” Handlebar flowers don’t happen by accident.

“I don’t think you could get a girlier bike.”

I have the feeling this woman is not complimenting my bike.

She adds,

“The only thing that would make it girlier is if you had a photo of Justin Bieber in the wheel spokes.”

Nope. Definitely not complimenting my bike.

I’m girly, but I’m all grown up. If there’s a photo of Johnny Depp I could put in the wheel spokes, we can talk.

Justin Bieber cake. My birthday is only weeks away.

We were busy last night. Not crazy busy that I forgot my name, but busy enough that I was moving. I had my head down. I know people need things and I’ll look up when I’m ready to help them. 

I have a big mouth and I’m over enthusiastic. Not a great combo plenty of times. It is now safe to blog this considering we have a new GM.

So the former GM… After much talk about her fiancé, he finally shows up at the bar. He seems like a good-looking, really nice guy. I enjoy chatting with him. My former GM comes over and asks me,

“Is he what you imagined?”

“BETTER!”

She stares at me.

Shoot. That flew out of my mouth and I was thinking it was a compliment, but it’s not a compliment. I rush and report what I did to a co-worker. I was not trying to piss off my boss. My co-worker reassures me,

“He is better than what I imagined.”

I’m learning to sail. Everyone keeps saying,

“But I thought you worked on a boat.”

Yes I worked on a motor-yacht and I specialized in setting the table, making beds, laundry and some line handling. I forget every knot I learned how to make. Although I can still fold toilet paper into really pretty shapes.

Captain’s dad just got a new sailboat. It’s big. It has two berths and two heads. Captain’s dad needs help to sail it and that does not mean folding the two rolls of toilet paper. I’m running around the boat trying to learn how to sail. Captain is off crutches, but he is still not an able-bodied seaman. He’s very good at holding the snacks.

Captain’s dad is now also being referred to as Captain, which makes everything that much more confusing. My Captain is not happy about the nickname. I offer,

“I can think of another name for you.”

“No. It was mine first.”

Okay.

My Captain says that his dad should be amenable to Admiral. It is a promotion.

So I’m running around the boat learning to sail. Meanwhile Captain’s mom is on the lookout for anything we might be about to run over. She shouts,

“Lobster pot!”

“Where?”

“Over there!”

“Starboard?”

“Which one is starboard?”

“The right.”

“And which one is the left?”

The lobster pot is forgotten as we descend into a boating terminology discussion.

Every time we tack, I’m in charge of feeding the lines out. Sometimes it goes smoother than others. Captain’s dad shouts,

“That was great tack!”

I give myself an imaginary pat on the back. The next time, Captain’s dad declares,

“Oh that was a bad tack.”

I’m pretty sure there was a lull in the wind.

At the end of the day we head up to the yacht club for a drink. We sit down just in time to catch the horse race. Is this really happening? I turn to Captain,

“The only way this day could be any preppier is if we had played tennis this morning.”

My Captain 😉

There was some sort of conference in town that drew people from all over the world. They came to my bar. Some were tipping, some weren’t. It’s been a learning curve. Five nights later, most are tipping.

Last night a guy was running a tab. The total was $47. I put the credit card slip down in front of him. He asks me,

“Now what’s the tipping percentage again?”

“Twenty percent if the service was great.”

“Ok, $10, that’s good?”

“Perfect, thank you.”

“You know I learned to tip in Canada.”

“That’s good.”

“At first I thought all the bartenders and servers were flirting with me because they liked me.”

“Then you learned they just wanted your money?”

“Yes.”

Big Sister threw a Celebrity Chef Dinner to raise money and my little sister and I got to speak at the event. Before we spoke they treated us to dinner across the street. It was all-you-can-eat plus a make-your-own ice cream sundae, I was stuffed and I thought my little sister was too.

I love to read and I’ve got a good thing going with a regular who brings me books. Last week she came into the bar with another woman, an author who is on the verge of being famous.

The almost famous author watches me hand a book back to the regular. She is not pleased. She asks me,

“Are you going to read my book?”

“Yes, if I can borrow it from my bar manager.”

Her face clenches with disapproval. A little while later, I’m laughing at something. The almost famous author tells me,

“You have this regal beauty, but then you have that donkey laugh.”

She tries again,

“Are you going to buy my book?”

I assume I can’t get it used on Amazon yet.

On her way out, she declares,

“You make enough money to buy books.”

Captain said some magic words to me: ‘Will you shop for me?’

We were chatting, he hung his head and sighed,

“I need some new summer clothes.”

I reassure him,

“I can help you.”

“Really?! You’d like to do that?”

Yes! If shopping with my credit card is fun, then shopping with someone else’s will be even better.

I head online. Free shipping, free returns, I order way too much. I report back to my bar manager,

“It was free shipping, free returns, so I bought a bunch of stuff, he can try it all and then just keep what he likes.”

“You did this all wrong.”

“What?”

“He wants you to shop for him because he doesn’t like shopping. You’re just taking the shopping to his house.

If anyone has any grand ideas that do not involve a surprise party or any kind of party, let me know. I was thinking more dance lessons, but he still has the good excuse of a bad knee.

This looks promising.

After a couple years of squinting at everything, I got glasses. I still squint at everything because I don’t wear my glasses. People keep saying: what about contact lenses? What about them? They sound annoying. Finally the annoyance of contacts has been outweighed by the annoyance of not being able to see.

I have two very good regulars. One of them reads this blog. They happened to be in the same night as two other guys I blogged about. The guys I wrote about were obnoxious. My good regular asks,

Facebook. Not my favorite thing. I enjoy seeing the posts from my 17 real-life friends, but the other 852? What are their names again?

The bike was a hit. My little sister is in love. She exclaims,

“It’s just like your bike, we’re twinsies!”

Yes, the bikes are very similar, probably because I have a bike that is a twelve-year-old girl’s dream come true.

We head to a Big Sister meeting. She tells everyone,

“I got a bike for my birthday!”

“What kind?”

“A pink and purple one.”

My little sister outgrew her kiddie bike, so I bought her a big bike for her birthday. After much online shopping, I decided on a bike at Sears because it was pink, purple and all put together. There was another decent bike for $60 less, but it was going to come in a box. I’m not sure what to do with a bike in a box, besides hand it over to a bike shop.

Yesterday I plan to go to Sears to pick it up. I can take the T or a zip car. I debate my options. If I take the T, it’s going to be a big pain. I decide on a zip car. There’s a hatchback available nearby. I ask Captain,

“Do you think it’ll fit?”

“Why don’t you go look at the car before you reserve it?”

I head outside. The hatchback looks great. I go online to reserve it. In the past 10 minutes someone else reserved it. Sigh. I look at the zip car next to it. It’s small. Will the bike fit? I have my doubts. I go ahead and get the small zip car. Don’t ask me what I was thinking. I wasn’t.

I park in the mall garage and return in a minute with a big ol’ pink, purple bike all put together. I try to put it in the back seat. No way. I stand there staring at the big bike and the small car. A man with his wife and baby are sitting in a car across from me, watching. He gets out,

“Do you need help?”

“Yes.”

“Do the back seats come down?”

“I don’t know, it’s a zip car.”

“Can you pop the trunk?”

I pop the hood. He sighs, comes over to the driver door and pops the trunk. The seats do fold down. We try to get the bike in. It fits, but just enough of the handlebars won’t go in, so the trunk won’t close. He asks me,

“Do you have rope?”

“No.”

He goes back to his car and comes back with rope. He ties the trunk down. I am so thankful and amazed at how much he has helped me. I tell him,

“I don’t know how I would’ve done this without you.”

“You wouldn’t have.”

The Bruins lost last night. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry I don’t care. What they needed was a triple D, dirty dangle, top cheddar, light the lamp and get the biscuit in the basket kid.

Yeah that’s right, I know how to talk hockey. All thanks to my fellow bartender who cares a lot more than I do.

In the middle of the hockey, two wasted guys manage to watch the game and hit on me at the same time. One says something obnoxious. A favorite regular of mine is a few seats over. He cringes. I deliver his cocktail with a heart on top of the foam. He tells me,

“You do this for all the girls.”

“No, just for you.”

The two obnoxious guys continue louder, now that I’m bestowing hearts on others. The beloved regular turns on the two guys. Uhoh. I see the makings of a tiff. The regular starts hitting on them and he doesn’t stop. I’ve never seen two men who wanted to drink leave so quickly. The regular turns to me,

“Someone had to go, them or me and I didn’t want to leave you alone with them.”

Before my little sister and Captain, me cooking dinner involved opening a container of cottage cheese. In the past few years I’ve had more successful cooking experiences than not. 

Sports. It’s the thing that’s on TV while I’m working. We have the sound on once a year for the Super Bowl, maybe. Other than that it’s a non-event. I forget we even have TVs unless someone points to it and asks me to change the channel. That may happen once a week.