Everyone's a Critic..

My husband and I are celebrating (read: glad we're still open) our third year of our little BBQ shop.  Three years ago, he sold the restaurant he owned and I suggested we open a BBQ place since there is no good BBQ in the state.  So we found the space to lease, we bought the equipment, we did the build out ourselves and opened up in September of 2007.. Just in time for President Bush to announce the Country was 'officially' in a recession.  When he made that announcement the price of our food tripled over night and the roller coaster began.  We worked diligently, side by side, 80 hour work weeks (which, if you've ever spent a lot of time with your spouse you know that in itself is a feat), perfecting recipe's, dropping off menu's to local businesses, doing free samples, everything we could possibly think of to get our business some momentum.  That first year, no bullshit, was the hardest year of my life.  The second year we became the default caterer for the local high school, providing food for the concession stand for home football games (incidentally, the high school football team was the State's Champ for three years in a row), doing the food for the soccer, baseball, softball, basketball and swimming banquets.  That's when things became easier.  This business is our heart and soul.  We've put everything into it.  Blood, Sweat, Tears.. and lots, and lots of profanity.

I take it pretty personally when someone doesn't like our food.  And it's not that I expect everyone to love it the way I love it; but I am pretty proud of it having the reasonable expectation that there are moron's out there (a lot of morons out there) who wouldn't know great BBQ if a slab of ribs smacked them in the face.. That is fine with me, and if said moron's make me aware that they were not satisfied with their meal, that I try to make it up to them by suggesting something they might like or giving them a refund and apologize to them (for being a moron) and agree to disagree.  This doesn't happen very often which makes me think we are doing things alright.  That is, until the discovery of Yelp.com.  Oh, yes, there is a website dedicated for 'normal' people to sit behind their computer and put their opinions out there on the web for all to see.  And I hate it.  Most of you know that I hate people any way, but this website takes away the ability for me to make someone's experience more pleasant at my restaurant.  Instead of them complaining to me (and allowing me to try to fix it) they keep their comments to themselves to run home, get on their computer and tell the World what they thought of my food, my decor, my service, my bathrooms.  Is that really fair?  I don't expect for life to be fair, but what happened to just being... I dunno... Honest?  I know that not one person leaves my front door without being asked how their food was... and being thanked for their business.  Has our society turned us into such hateful beings that we do not desire others to succeed by giving constructive criticism?  I don't get it.  I really don't.  It drives me nuts and further fuels my "I hate people" attitude.

So.. This blog is dedicated to Yelp.com.. Opinions are like assholes and you've given all the assholes a forum to exhibit theirs.  Thank you.

That is all.

"Your cooking in the kitchen?! AGAIN?"

A large majority of the shenanigans of my life involve my husband (if not caused by said party).  This time is no exception.  He came home, I quickly learned, kind of grumpy.  I was in the kitchen, cooking spaghetti & meatballs and had gotten to the point of boiling the water for the angel hair pasta (that I was quite excited about indulging in - in spite of the promise to myself I would discontinue eating like a 13 year old boy after my birthday) Charlie was contently running around in his walker, chasing the dog and singing his favorite "Bah, Bah, BAH!" song.  My husband looked around and said "Your cooking...?  Again?  I thought we talked about this...?"  Yes, America.  My husband freaks out when I'm cooking.  Not because I don't cook (in fact, I love to cook.. and can be quite good at it actually) but, since having a baby he doesn't like me cooking in the kitchen, with the tot running around in his walker.  This seems like a pretty reasonable request when my husband *caught* me frying bacon one day, "Something could happen and knock over the skillet and hurt him!" he said.  "Ok.." I thought, "...Highly unlikely the skillet is going to jump off of the stove.. but, ok."

As our child grew older, I realized that Charlie was big on personality and really liked being in the kitchen, bathroom, shower, bedroom, where ever with me.  So, my choices for consuming/cooking food were limited to when he was sleeping (which, turns out he's a light sleeper) or.. when my darling husband came home (which could be as late as 9 p.m.)... Being that I never had the will power to be anorexic in high school, starving was not an option, and since I was still cursing my baby weight I refused to eat 'fast' food (i.e. microwavable foods) - oh, no.. I had to cook something.. and it seems as though I was going to have to *gasp!* cook, while my son was in the kitchen with me!!  Quick!  Call Child Services!  I'm a starving mother who is cooking in the kitchen with an (almost) toddler!  Take me away!!  Back to the story..  So my darling husband "catches" me cooking again.. in the kitchen.. and gets all huffy and we actually yell at one another mostly me telling him what an idiot he is and how women for thousands of years have been cooking - some with open flames - with their children present.  He yelling back how a friend who was in his 'grade' in school had burns from when he was a tot.  Then my husband grabbed our accordion style wooden baby gate, rolled little Charlie out of the kitchen and propped it against the wall blocking our sweet little boys entry into the kitchen while yelling his argument to me (impressive feat since I had no idea he knew how to multi-task).  So I gesture to the gate saying "...And this is better?!" as if on cue, my son grabbed the gate with his little chubby fingers and lifted it over his head.  Thankfully, we've had the gate for awhile, so it didn't fold up and pinch him.  My husband quickly ran over to Charlie, as I'm basking in the glow of (once again) being right; grabs the gate from Charlie and while untangling his little fingers from the gate, ignoring his glare of 'how dare you take my new toy' my husband says "C'mon Charlie!  Your making daddy look bad!"


That phrase made the 3 arguments we had over this stupid issue totally worth it.

The bluetooth enigma

Along with being a full time mom to a ten month old, I also deal with the operations side of our small BBQ restaurant; that includes advertising, marketing, dealing with the State, County and City.  I need my cell phone.  I've also found that I need a bluetooth; it enables me to multi-task like a lunatic escaping from the asylum (if only the City employee's knew when I was talking to them about our liquor license I was also chasing a poopy butt down the hallway of my house).  The biggest problem with my bluetooth is that annoying little blue light that flashes that my son finds to be the most ah-mazing thing he's ever seen in his little life.  The bluetooth ends up on the couch, the changing table, the clothes drier, wherever avoiding my sons chubby finger grasp, pulling it from my ear and seeing if it floats in the sea of slobber that leaks from his mouth.  I've always known the practice of leaving the bluetooth anywhere would come and bite me in the ass at some point.

Alas, one day *gasp!* I couldn't find it.  I pulled the couch apart.  I looked under the rocking chair, the stove, the fridge, EVERY WHERE and it was no where to be found.  As I'm in my desperate search, Meeka our 5 month old Schnoodle is following me around as if to say "Whatcha lookin' for?" I stared at him for a minute, finally concluding that Meeka probably ate my bluetooth.  I went three weeks without the usefulness of the brilliant contraption that made the quality of my life sooo much easier.  During this time there were numerous calls that were simply not returned and bullshitting with my friends pretty much came to a halt.  For my birthday my brilliant husband bequeathed to me a $50 gift certificate to Amazon.com which I quickly squealed in delight "YEA!! I am going to get a new bluetooth" officially waving the white flag that my bluetooth will never be found.  My husband, less enthusiastically said "You know as soon as you order a new one, the old one will turn up..."  I told him he was crazy as I quickly scanned through the thousands of bluetooth options available on Amazon with the glee of a 3 year old about to get an ice cream cone.  I finally settled on a pretty purple Plantronics bluetooth that comes with a portable charging case (that is freaking awesome).  I order it and anxiously await in anticipation for it to arrive.  In the interim, life went on as expected.  Two days after ordering, I got an email confirming the shipment of the bluetooth and clearly reading: "You cannot cancel or make changes to this order now that it has shipped..."  And then I went on the search for a teething ring for Charlie (dealing with that 8th tooths arrival).  Under the couch is always the first place I look for everything, this time was no exception, I got down on my knee's and peered under the couch pulling out a teething binky, meeka's stuffed squirrel, a large piece of popcorn and to my horror, there behind the popcorn was that damn bluetooth I had been searching for, for three weeks.  I reach and grab it, noticing the telltale bite marks that Meeka had in fact, been in contact with it; and the damn thing still worked in spite of the callus abuse it probably endured.  All I could think was "FUCK!" and then my husbands haunting prediction.  At this point in time, I had a decision to make; I could call my husband and tell him that I found the missing bluetooth so he could mercilessly tell me how he's always right (because that sounds like fun) or I could just give the bluetooth back to Meeka and let him finish the job.  Always a strong believer in completing unfinished tasks I gave the bluetooth back to Meeka.

A couple of hours later, I find the bluetooth, even more mangled than before, but still working.  At this point, I'm just pissed off.  I can make any functioning kitchen appliance spontaneously malfunction when I need said kitchen appliance to work, how is it my idiot dog cannot break the will of this bluetooth?  I finally had to take matters into my own hands.  I grabbed my meat tenderizer and went nuts.  Charlie is looking on from his walker, with a look of complete bewilderment as I'm pounding away at this bluetooth, a stream of obscenities flowing under my breath, and pieces of decidedly surrendering bluetooth flies through the air.  After a few minutes, I wipe my brow, catch my breath and observe my handiwork.  Oh yes, I finally killed it.  The bluetooth was officially dead.  And I was satisfied.  I left (what was left) of the bluetooth on the stove, much like a housecat leaving it's owners a dead field mouse, so my husband could see what the dog had done to my beloved technology.

He came home a few hours later.  Observed the bluetooth and said "Oh.  You found the bluetooth." and I said "Yep.  It was under the couch..." and he said "Ya know, it's pretty pathetic that you find it, destroy it and then blame it on the poor dog.." and left the room to go take a shower, laughing the whole way.