The Beat Down

OK, so let me answer some questions that I recently recieved in the "comments" section of this blog:
1. Do you like the second shift? I really like second shift. I work from 3:30p to 12:18am, and I get to sleep in and watch all the SkyNews and Cartoon Network that I want, since those are the only two stations with anything good to say. I do have two other stations, but BBC World has their heads up their collective arsses with all their talk about how the English will sweep the coup du monde de rugby, and CNN is full of peroxide blondes faking their way through the news. No thanks.
2. Who eats steak at midnight? Greedy, selfish Americans eat steak at midnight. I think they were from Texas. As a public service to the other 49 states in the Union, I have begun telling everyone here that Texas has recently ceeded itself from the nation, and is now a different country altogether, so not to judge us all on the basis of the Longhorns (sorry Leah).
3. What are toast points? You take a piece of sandwhich bread, cut it into an even square, toast it, flatten it under a flat tray, and cut it into four equal, triangular wedges. Presto! Toast points.

So now that my stint as Dear Abbey is over, on with the story of this week.
It has been rough.
Really, really rough.
Remember a few blogs ago, I was like, "I am ready to kick my own ass"? Well, I should have said, "I am ready to have my ass kicked."
This is how the week has been so far:
Monday- arrive to find out that my schedule has been changed to the night shift, but no one told me. Not too bad. OK.
Tuesday- My wife left me for anther country. What does that country have that I dont have? As if Ruta leaving wasn't hard enough, I also caught a cold. Super. I thought, "I can deal with that. I have some Airborn. I work nights now, so it wont be too busy, and I can sleep in. No problem." Wrong. As you already know, it is crazy busy here at night, and I dont have a cold, as it turns out. I have, as usual, seasonal allergies. Huzzah! Now the runny nose, and sore throat and sinus pressure can last for months, instead of a week! Hurray!
Wednesday- I woke up from a long and leisurly slumber to find out that I had slept on my left shoulder wrong, and now I can barely turn my head or lift my left arm. No harm done though; its not like I use both arms in the kitchen.
Friday- We are slammed again, and I cant breathe through my nose, my head is pounding, my shoulder is aching badly; I have no pain meds except some pills that Will gave me whose instructions are in Chinese (so I probably wont be taking them. They could turn me in to Mothra for all I know). In the midst of all that fun, chef says, "Mark go to the patisserie, and get some madelines!" I say four words to the chef at all times: "bonjour", "au revoir", and "Oui, chef." This was a situation that called for the last phrase. He further instructed me, "Vite, Mark! VITE!" (Hurray, Mark. Hurray!) So I ran.
I ran on my newish clogs.
The universe is an ironic place.
I am signed up for the Chicago Marathon, which I obviously wont be attending. I signed up because I didn't think I could do it. I wanted to prove myself wrong.
Turns out, I was right.
I ran down the hall to the patisserie, and just as I was turning the corner, my right ankle gave out under me. For a moment, my foot was perpendicular to my leg. The chef coming down the hall stopped with a look of horror and said, "What was that!?!" at the sound of bones cracking.
I told him "Nothing, chef" and got up and got myself to the patisserie. If I could just ignore the pain for the next four hours....
I did, and the shift ended quietly.
My right foot is swollen and red. I can walk on it though. I am icing it, and my friend Olivier says that he will bring me some cream for the swelling. If it does not go down tomorrow, I will have to see a doctor because it might be sprained. Yippee!
The upside to having allergies, a pulled shoulder muscle and a possibly sprained ankle- simultaneously- is that the doctors here dont really require an insurance card. I can just walk in and wait to be seen. I was floored by this. I mean, you just walk in (or in my case, hobble). Isnt that..... a fricking great idea!?!?!? Hello!!! Public health care, people!!
So, because I took off two days last week, I am working this weekend to make up. I have twelve days in a row to work. Thankfully, I only have seven days left, but our buffet line is closed tonight and tomorrow, so all orders come through me and two other chefs. What fun.
If I can do this, I can do anything, though. It is all an education.

Last night, though, in the midst of all of this, I had an almost out of body experience.
The night was over, and I was a bit burned out, for reasons that should be obvious. One of the other cooks, Jeremy (the "I love you" guy) saw that I needed a break, so we did a little coke.
Ha! That joke never gets old.
He bought me a CocaCola, which is not drank everyday here like it is in the states. It is a real treat here.
I think my generation missed something though. The coke he bought me came in the classic glass bottle, and there is just something more fitting about that. I know you can get coke like that in the states, but it is a bit harder to find. The bottle is just how they serve it many times here.
I hadnt had one since I was 14 years old. I had gone on a mountain climbing trip with my BoyScout troop to New Mexico. On the way back of two weeks in the mountains, we all stopped in a little town called Simeron or Cimmeron or something. It was like somehting out of an old movie.
The gas statin had an actual guy who pumped your gas, people honked and waved to each other when they drove by, and inside the gas station there was an old Pac Man game (which was still old when I was 14). A group of us Scouts walked in kind of timidly, covered in dust and grime (since there really arent any showers in the mountains, per se), and just stared at the game in awe. To teenage boys, a video game is like a momentary key to paradise. I knew the game was old, but after two weeks of packing up everything I had in the world and loading it on my back, of sleeping on the ground, of boiling everything I had to eat, of not showering at all, of tying my food into a tree so the bears couldnt get it, of being lost almost constantly, and of walking forever uphill, a video game was pure and simple Nirvana.
I had no coins though; no body did. The man behind the counter looked us over, and said, "We got only one rule here: if you're gonna stare at the game, you gotta play it." He took some coins out of the register and gave us all enough money for a turn. I have never been so shocked at such simple generosity.
After we had all had our fill of Pac Man, he opened the cooler and gave us all a tall, cold, blue/green bottle of Coke. It was pure nectar. In all my wine tasting, I dont think I have ever tasted something so good.
In a flash last night, the minute I put that bottle to my lips, I was there again.
It is so funny where life takes you. I never would have thought that 16 years later, I would be living in France, doing what I am doing. I wonder where those other scouts are now...
Now, I am not making any endorsements here, but that Coke was a total treat. It was such a relief to have the day over with.
And it was the second time in my life that someone handed me a tall, cold, blue/green bottle, and I was stunned at the generosity. It was all I needed.
Sinus pressure, sore throat, runny nose, pulled muscle, sprained ankle, and carbonated sugar water.
Things really do go better with Coke.