would you care for some chardonnay, madam?

Last night I captained* at my first sit-down dinner in six months, and it wasn't all that bad. It wasn't even half-Brad (sorry, sorry: I can't be the only one whose idea of good clean fun in bed came from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, can I?) Although I've been in and out of town since December, I avoided catering work because I felt too volatile to risk facing guests or managing staff. Now that my father has passed, and I'm trying to get my feet under me again (and now that my rent has jumped, of course), it's back to catering. Something I was pretty determined I wasn't going to do if I could help it.

I still don't want to get too involved. As Slice pointed out when he tried to discourage me from starting in the first place, it takes a tremendous amount of energy that one could be using towards one's real work, whatever that is. But I think I can stand working one or two days a week, at least for a while. I am still planning to seek out new writing markets, and possibly a part-time Day Job (shiver!), ideally one where I get a discount on books or art supplies (yes, I'm thinking about retail) since that's where all the money goes anyway. But I had a good time last night--I saw a lot of people I hadn't seen in a while who seemed genuinely glad to have me back, I liked the guests at my tables, and I managed to get cut before the breakdown and all the really messy bits of the evening. Didn't get to try the filet stuffed with shortribs, but hey, can't have everything. I have decided that I'm not going to be a bitch tonight, I told one of my waiters, and I need you to help me stick to that. He thought that was funny, bless him; apparently he wasn't one of the people I've totally terrorized in the past. But I managed to make it through the evening without getting huffy or overheated, which can be a real problem when I captain, and the guests commented on what a good job we were doing. In light of the fact that they were all professional party planners in town for a convention, that meant something.

We also got sent home with the extra wine, which is unusual. I got home and drew a bath in my brand-new haven't-had-one-of-these-in-years bathtub, drank chardonnay, and tried not to get maudlin thinking about baths drawn for me by people I've loved in the past. But that is another story. The point is that I made it through a night of catering secure that I'd lived up to my catering motto "everybody gets fed, nobody gets hurt" and I got to sleep in this morning, so things are pretty good.

* If you haven't worked food, this may be unclear. Some catering companies break out staff on sit-down meals into teams. Each team is composed of one captain and a certain number of waiters--usually, but not always, two. A team is responsible for a station, or a set number of tables. For us, there are usually three ten-tops in a section, which means one captain, two waiters, and thirty guests. The captain takes her cues and instruction from the floor manager, and the waiters look in turn to their captain. So the captain has some authority, and a higher level of responsibility, but she's not the alpha dog.

I, ah, occasionally have some trouble not being the alpha dog.