Dotty Parker

woo woo woo fiiiiiiii-ya!

The nearly monthly pancake breakfast was this morning. As the self-designated volunteer co-ordinator for this event, I've become used to having too many volunteers, too much food, and too few customers.

This morning, it seemed as if we had many more people. It also seemed as if we had too few volunteers and too little food.

It's a strange thing, scheduling volunteers. While the expectation is that the same people will help month after month, they, of course, do not have to do so. I can't manage to browbeat them. I can't even encourage them to change their plans if they happen to conflict with the schedule. It doesn't fit with my idea of the job I made for myself.

This morning, I began to rethink my policy. I forgot that the people who are used to being the cooks couldn't be there. K-Fine, a wacky, but competent chef, had many big doings to attend to. BrilliantEditor, who was being trained, was away in a temptingly sunny climate doing un-tempting work-related tasks.

(He says that he hates hot weather and hates San Diego, but I bet that there will be a tiny part of him that says, "ahhhhh," when the sun is warm on his neck and he can feel the top of his hair get hot because of the sun. Still, it'd be nicer for him if the task were more tempting.)

Thus, the "second shift" of being a cook was left to no one. And so it was left to me.

My first act was to grab the turner and make some pancakes. Simultaneously, the bacon was cooking on the same grill. The bacon had been started in another pan and had been transferred. That left a pan filled with grease on the burner, you see. So I was doing two things at once.

And the pan caught on fire.

I didn't notice. JaySkay did notice. He was teaching me how to do the cooking part. Apparently fire isn't part of it. The whole pan hadn't really caught on fire. It was the outside edge that was burning from all the grease that had dripped on the side when the bacon had been transferred. So no harm done there except to my pride.

I burned the pancakes, too, during this fiery foray into the big world of short order cooking. I didn't turn them into bricks, but they were darker than most people would have liked.

Nevertheless, I made it through my morning of cooking pancakes and french toast and bacon and ham. I thanked my volunteers, too.

relax
Then I ate some breakfast at the same table as an acquaintance who brought with him a very annoying woman. She cut up all of her pancakes before she ate a bite. So there are all these pieces tumbling all over her plate and there's syrup and it's just ewwwwww. Gross. And when there was no bacon and then the bacon magically appeared, two dozen pieces, maybe, she had six. Six! She stacked it on a plate. Other people wanted bacon, too.

(I know they wanted bacon because when I left, they were standing outside in the cold with thin faces and blued lips with small plates that they were licking. When I passed they said, "Please. Bacon. We will surely die.")

Also, after the kitchen closed, she ordered more food.

And I hated her outfit.

One more thing: The district attorney came to breakfast this morning. He's a very intelligent and charming man. (I can say this since I was on the grand jury and spent some time with him along with about twenty other people and know him oh-so-well.)

This charming and intelligent man has recently made a decision that I consider foolish. He's decided to get rid of the drug court. It's a program that will keep minor drug offenders out of jail and in rehab while encouraging them to become members of a community and receive help and support.

Some of the people I have volunteering are in a program that is similar to the drug court program. Community service is part of it. Because the DA is a fan of the Rockefeller drug laws (draconian, monstrous laws that defy my objective description) and sometimes has his intelligent and charming head somewhere other than on the top of his neck, he doesn't like that the program I have working for me exists at all.

The head of the program was there today and pointed out the DA. I offered to go out and make a grand production of thanking him for his amazing work and the efficient, honest, and hard work his compatriots were doing.

He smiled and said it wasn't necessary.

The links here are to BrilliantEditor's site about living in our town. They're informative. That's where I've learned everything.

Posted by dotty at February 8, 2004 03:32 PM