I'm tired.

Alright.  I'm dead exhausted and possibly sick, and at least the exhaustion is entirely my fault.  My other New Years resolution is to get better at my husband's video game than he is, so that's what I did last night.  Until almost 7AM.  On the bright side, my daughter also made the decision to stay up all night, so at least I got to sleep in.  Yeah, I know that's a horribly irresponsible thing to allow, but you know what?  Who cares?  It was fun.  Except not, because it meant I got to sleep from 6:45 to 8, then from 10 to noon and that's just plain kicking my ass.  But, I did promise fifteen minutes at least once a day, so lets see what I can come up with.

I used to work in a restaurant.  Working for tips throws your whole sense of money off.  It's no longer a matter of "can I afford it?" or more importantly, "is that worth it?"  Instead, everything becomes a matter of how many customers you need to make it back.  That's it.  It was the easiest money I ever made.  Sure, my in-field office job was more fun and came with benefits and advancement opportunities, but restaurant work?  What else could I do that brought home $200 in nearly tax free cash from one six hour shift?  Leaving an 18 hour a week job for less money from a 40 hour a week job was really tough, no matter how good of a decision it was.  And really, I just ended up knocked up later that year, anyway.

The other thing about working in a restaurant is that it literally drives you to drink.  I had four friends at work.  Really, we all mostly got along--or at least I did, as I wasn't sleeping with anyone there--but there were four people I was really friends with.  We'd work.  Then we'd drink.  Then we'd go to breakfast.  Even if one of us didn't work, we still made it to that cheap little dive bar almost every night.  After breakfast, I'd end up feeling around in my pocket, wondering why I only had $50.  Didn't I leave work with $200?  How many guests would I have to serve to make that back?  This was truly the low point of my irresponsibility. 

There's not really a whole lot to this.  Don't get me wrong, there are tons of stories, and they'll all have their day, but today is definitely not it.  I all can think right now is, "I don't know how I did that!"  I went almost every day for a year and a half on the amount of sleep I had today.  Give or take, of course, but still--I just can't figure out how I did it.  Today is just about killing me.  Hell, I got more sleep when I had a newborn.  So here I sit in dumbstruck awe of the person I was at 22.

Yeah, this is kind of a cop out post, but I promise things should slow down now and I'll have plenty more time for fun stories and self deprecation.  In fact, I have about four super embarrassing ideas in queue right now.  Yay!  Yay, and goodnight!