My favorite posts are those written in the first six months. They include the following:

Best post, maybe: It’s Always Been Right There

The story I think about to this day: If You Only Had One Wish

Most poignant for so many reasons: Love Letter

Poignant and telling: And Suddenly She Was Gone

Still gives me goose bumps: Last Days

Simply, a personal favorite: Through the Roof

From July 2007 on, I wrote mostly about leaving everyone and everything I’d known as an adult and making the big solo move to SoFla. I shared many comparisons and thoughts about differences with D.C. I also explored the painful exercise of starting over as a single girl who felt little more wisdom and maturity than that of a teenager. In many respects, those posts were the toughest to re-read.

Enjoy the first half of the year’s posts highlighted above. Read on, if you can bear it, and know that while my writing then may not have been my best, it became my best friend and confidant. Without such an outlet, who knows where the free fall might have landed me.

If anyone had told me then where and who I would be now, I’d have told them they’d written me quite the vivid dream about which I would laugh when I woke up. Thing is, I never did–wake up, that is. Thus, here I am, and here is RG, and here are you whomever of you remains out there as my beloved readers. If, by some quirk, there are those of you who have been with me since the beginning, I would love to heard from you in the comments. God love you.

I took time these past few weeks to look back at the beginning of a writing project I never thought would last a month, much less years. I was at once struck by my energy to write so often as I was by how differently I might write many of those stories today. Over the next few weeks, I’ll revisit each year of RG before offering a look forward. Enjoy this post’s 2006 retrospective.

2006: First Year’s Firsts

Without knowing it, I talked myself into my first adult hospitality job in decades in D.C. with one simple answer to a simple question asked by the GM who was interviewing me:

“What do you know about Cy’s?” he asked.

I knew I was supposed to answer that their outlets offered great food for a great value. I also knew I was supposed to remark on the beauty of the various locations, about the incredibly on-point combination of casual “Cheers” saloon ambiance that meshed “just so” with with a certain Georgetown fine-dining decor that those folks hauled out of their attic and barn collections to create a look no one will ever replicate. If you know this highly successful group, you know exactly what I am talking about.

Instead, an answer came to me out of a clueless nowhere, something I had heard from a teenager I’d been tutoring who was applying for a job as a Cy’s host.

“Well,” I said, “I know that if you are a kid applying to Cornell University’s hospitality program and you have the grades, and you say you worked at Cy’s, you are pretty much in. Your training program is legendary.”

With that, a man who’d previously paid no attention to me whatsoever turned around and stared at me. I stared back. I would later find out he was the regional manager.

“I went to Cornell,” he said, almost glaring, but seeming more surprised than anything else.

“I’d appreciate the opportunity to take advantage of your training,” I replied, wondering how dumb luck had found its way into this interview.

With that, I was hired.

I was also in over my head, which I am sure all the managers knew when they hired me. But I finally managed to “get it” as a maitre d’, and I never looked back at the office life from which I’d merrily escaped.

Favorite 2006 post: Where You Can Get Anything You Want (Check out the comments, too, because I heard from a very special someone.)

Runner-up 2006: Ladies Who Lunch (For the record, I almost got fired from my fine-dining job for writing this. Not long after, I simply got got fired/given a chance to resign for writing RG, period.)

Other fun 2006 posts: Doing the Drunken Swirl, Does This Happen Often?, The Proper Topper

My next post will remember 2007–the year of life changes, endings and beginnings. For now, enjoy readings from when this blog first took shape.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Okay, will do. But which one looks best with a three-pocket black apron and hideous non-skid shoes as accessories, and is still practical enough to allow me to work through a crowd?

Elfette dress–Simple and cute, and cost $2.39 at a 95-percent-off Wal-Mart sale last November 14. Looks adorable with fur-topped booties that are, sadly, impractical to wear to work.

St. Paulie Girl ensemble–Wore it on several Halloweens while tending bar in the Keys. This costume causes quite a stir, given its skirt length, and garners a decent tip or two. It cost me a fortune back in the day when I had a fortune, and requires dry cleaning.

Cinderella dress–RG Daughter wore this to a high-school costume party, and it comes complete with elbow-length gloves and a full petticoat. Will need to purchase a tiara to complete the look, however, and it is floor-length.

Vintage Capitals hockey sweater complemented by blacked-out teeth–Not sure this is best look for good tips, as comfortable as it would be. Guess I could lose the toothless part.

There we are. Talk amongst yourselves.

To wit for this gal, a birthday reflection itinerary:

Night before birthday–Dinner out with my great guy at a Brazilian steakhouse, which I love because I can eat so much of the food at these places. We are in a food coma within an hour and must go home and recline on the couch to watch reruns of Cheers. Reflective birthday thoughts: Wow, am I full. Wow, am I glad I no longer have to wake up at 5 a.m. to go to work. Wow, Cheers is still very funny.

Birthday morning–RG Daughter calls, just to chat, and then realizes today, not tomorrow, is my birthday. RG Son and I had talked the night before, and I told him that counted as the birthday call. I call an old friend with whom I share a birthday and age, and laughingly tell her we need to agree on yet another new age, say 34; and then we seriously agree that we are simply thankful to be any age today. Reflective birthday thoughts: I will always be a “bratty kid” in the eyes and heart of my aunt, who is like my mother, as she reminds me every birthday.

Birthday Night–My great guy is working, so I insist that my former manager at “Eggs in Hell” join me to see Eric Burden of the Animals fame at Hard Rock. “You’re the only one old enough around here besides me to remember any of their hits,” I tell her. I have never had social time with my former manager, but we have unexpected fun on my birthday, singing and dancing to “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” and all the rest. Reflective birthday thoughts: My former manager is pretty cool now that she’s not my manager, and I hope a friendship continues to flourish.

Later on the Birthday Night–While killing time before my great guy gets off work, I win an $834.00 bonus on a 60-cent bet at a dumb slot machine I never play. I frantically press the “cash-out” button on the flashing thing so no one notices. “I played that machine right before you and didn’t win a damn thing,” says a woman sitting two machines down from me. Reflective birthday thoughts: Now, if I could just figure out a way to win even half that amount every week, I could supplement my income quite nicely. Right. That’s why I get weekly offers for free concert tickets and logo mugs and umbrellas.

Ever Since My Birthday–

Customers of my great October-birthday-too guy invite us on a 50th birthday dinner cruise aboard a beautiful private yacht, complete with live music and crazy colored flashing drink glasses. My great guy and I poach a few minutes of the extravaganza to quietly toast our own birthdays and just about everything else to each other on this fun, fun night off together.

Despite an ongoing learning curve, I continue to make more money in three days at my new evening job than I ever did in six (often 9 or 10 in a row) mornings at the fine-dining egg house. And I get to wear a cotton T-shirt as opposed to a polyester Nehru-jacket-like billowing mess that felt great when the August heat index topped 102 and I had $18 to show for a 7-hour shift. Although I have to pick up extra shifts and catering gigs to dig myself out of the financial hell hole I fell into slinging those expensive eggs for eight months, I am no longer exhausted 24/7 as a result of having to wake up at 5 a.m. every damn day.

Birthday reflective thoughts: I have been breathing a sigh of relief ever since my birthday. It feels decidedly good.

By age seven, I knew how to greet a celebrity politician/actor/musician with the perfect balance of bland familiarity, deference and ego-feeding awe. By age eight, I was instructing my mother on all of the above in order to appear just cute enough to all the politicians/actors/musicians when she had me in tow. She failed one test quite miserably, however, when she asked Hubert Humphrey what party he represented. Despite her combination Marilyn Monroe/Doris Day sultry adorableness, which Humphrey totally appreciated, both my stepfather and I groaned audibly and wanted to crawl under a table at that moment on that evening.

But as I grew older, I grew up and far away from the biz. School, friends and adolescent teen-club dances gave way to a perennial call-out from my step-father’s business world. Eventually, my stepfather’s mutterings and curses about why to “never go in this business!” took hold. By the time I was 18, he’d sold it all, and all I wanted to do was write. Yet, to this day, I can’t pass by the AFL-CIO headquarters or a certain Senate office building on the Hill and not feel the surge of incredible memories of a 1960s D.C. hospitality heyday.

When I walked out of my office and light years away from my bland editorial job some six years ago and applied to “do anything” with a highly successful D.C. restaurant group’s new downtown location, I was hired on the spot. This was not because of my biz-in-the-blood effervescence. Rather, I agreed to start out as a host, the least respected you-have-to-be-a-ditz-to-do-this-job job in restaurants. I will forever argue, however, that hosting is the restaurant world’s lowest-paying, most energy-zapping and ultimate pressure-cooker task ever invented, outside of management, that is. Actually, the jobs are about on par. Next time you’re in a restaurant, look who’s always hanging around the host stand looking for a lifeline to sanity and a pretty smile with no responsibility.

To learn my new job, the group’s big boss stuck me in the busiest of their outlets to learn from an old-school maitre d’ who I will forever swear is the best of the best of the best anywhere. On my first day, I wasn’t thrown to the wolves, however. No, I was thrown into the entire wolves’ den holding giant raw steaks in each hand. I was eaten alive. I was mincemeat. I cried and cried as I called RG Son from the sidewalk minutes after I was cut, and told him, “I will never learn how to seat in a rotation! I can’t even read the seating chart! I can’t do this!”

I will also never forget RG Son’s surprise at hearing his mother’s vulnerability and his teenage ability to maturely step up in a stark reversal of an advice-giving role: “Mom, the chart is just numbers. I’ll help you learn them when you get home.” I love my boy for many reasons, but that moment ranks high on the top five of why I do.

Long story longer: I learned the table numbers the next day. Far more importantly, I learned lessons in service from my old-school maitre d’ that I have taken to every job since. I was recognized very quickly by this D.C. restaurant group and given various increased responsibilities and a few promotions. I still thank them many times over for taking a chance on a gal who’d been out of the biz for decades. And to think, I was worried to the point of quitting after my first day about table numbers.

Yet, with every restaurant job I take, I worry–obsess–over the next “I-can’t-do-this-they’ll-find-out-I’m-worthless-and-really-don’t-know’what-I’m-doing” task that feels like the next insurmountable mountain.

To wit:

First job in SoFla: I don’t know fine-dining private events, I don’t know anything! I was a nervous wreck filled with self doubts for two weeks. Then I figured out I knew what I knew, and it was enough. And it worked out just fine.

First job in Keys: I can’t serve! I haven’t served since I was a teenager! I didn’t quit after the second day of weeds and my manager yelling at me, because I had no options on that second day. A few weeks later, I was making a stupid amount of money serving right up there with the best.

First bartending job in the Keys: I don’t know how to tend bar! I haven’t tended bar since I tended bar illegally at age 17! Shots? How do you measure a pour for multiple shots??? Yeah, I still have a certain shot phobia, but I did a damn fine job pouring every other drink. And shot recipes don’t matter when you garner a local following.

First job back in civilization and off the Rock: I can’t handle fine dining breakfast! I can’t carry a tray! No really, I can’t carry a tray and a tray jack and do it like the “real” servers do! I’m not even a real server!!! They’ll find it out in a second! I say the following more as a pep talk to myself as I take my next step: The tray issue was a nonissue within hours. Ask anyone who matters, you’ve done a damn fine job in corporate hotelville. To bad all the exhausting 45-plus-hours-a-week fine-diningness of it all sent you spiraling into mounds of debt due to overstaffing and other mismanagement. Trays…haha!

First job serving dinner and dealing with opening wine at tables: But I don’t know wine! I’ve never served dinner! I…I…oh, shut up. Okay, at least it’s upscale casual and not fine dining. Okay, at least they hired you on the spot thinking you know everything. Okay, at least you won’t have to get up at 5 a.m. ever again unless you have to catch an early flight. Okay, at least you know you are pathetic in your self doubt. Thus, as I watched more than ten You Tube videos about how to open wine as a server, I started to laugh. When the tenth video in a row still suggested setting the wine bottle down “on a surface” to open, I slapped myself upside the head. See, you know better than that. When the same ten videos showed servers “popping” corks, I knew I knew even “more” better. Now, if I can can just get my Celiac diseased finger joints to cooperate with the proper wine-opening process that I already know….

Every restaurant job I’ve had since I rocked my quiet editorial world has taught me that I know so much more than I think I know, and that I will always learn something more important about true professionalism in an industry rife with the mediocre.

Truth be told, I’d just like to make a living wage again, have a drink with my great guy after work because we’re on the same schedule, and maybe have fun at work one day out of twelve or twenty.

Okay, maybe my highest expectation is to not dread going to work anymore because that ultimately leads to second guessing your entire life when you’re not at work. Yeah, that’ll work for me.

Credit card purchases: Hecht Company, misc. clothing; Hallmark store, cards; Nordstrom, cosmetics.

Sept. 10, 5 p.m.
I dropped Mr. Restaurant Gal off at Dulles Airport for a flight to Sweden. This was a perfectly normal part of our lives, saying goodbye every few weeks as Mr. RG took yet another flight to yet another overseas business appointment. But at least this trip would be a short one–less than a week.

“See you Friday,” he said as we hugged.

Sept. 11, 8 a.m.

It was a perfect morning for a run along the C & O Canal. The air was clean and clear with a slight breeze that felt like cool silk as it caressed my bare arms and legs. I ran for miles along the dirt tow path, wanting to run forever, but knowing a writing deadline loomed as well as a tutoring session with a high schooler applying to various colleges.

Sept. 11, 9:20 a.m.

I returned to my car. DC 101, the local rock station, was forever programmed on my radio in the mornings so the kids and I could listen to Elliott in the Morning as I drove them to their Dupont Circle high school. Instead of his hilarious inane banter, I heard Elliott reporting that it appeared a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center, probably a small plane, but they didn’t really know. I immediately turned my radio to the all-news station WTOP. And for reasons that perplex me to this day, I couldn’t get anything but static on my AM dial. Thus, I drove the 20 minutes home relying on shock jock Elliott in the Morning for news about events that would forever change history.

September 11, 9:45 a.m.

As I unlocked my front door, my cell phone rang. This was followed immediately by my home phone ringing. For a moment I just looked at both phones and wondered which one to answer. I shrugged and answered both in unison, holding my cell phone to my left ear and the land line to my right.

“Are you okay?” asked my newly found biological father in my right ear.

“Don’t worry, it’s just a helicopter crash,” said Mr. RG in my left ear.

“What?” I asked Mr. RG

“Are you okay?” asked my father.

“Really, don’t worry,” said Mr. RG.

“I’ll call you back,” I said to the phone in my right ear.

“Okay,” said both my father and Mr. RG.

And now I was talking to no one. Little did I know at the time how precious those few phone minutes had been, as they would be nearly impossible to reclaim in the hours to follow.

Sept. 11, 9:50 a.m.

I turned on the TV to the local news and saw images of a burning Pentagon. The images were so bold, so big, so violent in nature, I immediately thought, “That’s no helicopter crash.”

I switched stations, and saw live footage of the World Trade Center Twin Towers in flames. What the hell?

My land line rang, startling me.

“Oh my God I worked RIGHT THERE!” shouted my college roommate. The World Trade Center? I thought. She only ever worked in D.C.

“But, how could you…”

“Oh my God, right there. I cannot believe it.” And then the line went dead.

I changed TV stations and saw a split screen that showed the whole unfolding horror in both cities.

Sept. 11, 10 a.m.

Bomb threats at the State Department. Bomb Threats at the Vice President’s Mansion. Bomb threats at Dupont Circle. Oh my God, they are moving the attacks right through the city, right toward my kids. Oh my God.

Sept. 11, 10:01 a.m.

I call and call and call my kids’ high school, trying to reach someone in charge to tell them not to let any of the kids take the Metro subway and to please tell my kids that they are to stay at school until I personally show up to get them. Please, please, please DO NOT let them leave school. PLEASE, PLEASE do not let them get on the Metro!

Except I never completed those calls, because the phone lines–land and cell alike–were jammed and useless.

Sept. 11, 10:05 a.m.

Unable to reach me by phone, one of my great girlfriends simply showed up at my house. Her son went to the same high school as that of my kids.

“Should we go?” she asked, although she already knew the answer. Her question was really, “Should we be the only car driving into downtown, knowing we may not get out of downtown?”

“We have to,” I cried.

All the way there, the radio announcers further alarmed us with real news, unfounded rumors and talk of another hijacked plane en route to D.C.

Sept. 11, 10: 15 a.m.

We were literally the only car headed into downtown on Massachusetts Avenue, other than the emergency vehicles that screamed by us every second. The lines of cars and throngs of thousands and thousands of pedestrians streaming one way out of town was unlike anything I had ever seen in all my life of living in D.C.

“I can’t believe this is happening; it feels like a bad dream. God, I wish it was a bad dream,” I said over and over to my friend who is driving.

Sept. 11, 10:30 a.m.

So many parents. So many kids. So many of us just wanting to see our own kids’ faces, touch their arms, kiss their cheeks. When I saw RG Daughter, she asked with a smile, “What’s going on?” When I saw RG Son, he said, “If we’re getting out early, can I go to Dan’s house?”

At this funky, alternative private high school that costs more than college and is located in the heart of D.C.’s Dupont Circle in what I am sure is in the line of fire for the next terrorist attack, TVs are obviously not an amenity for which I have paid plenty to have in every classroom.

Sept. 11, 10:40 a.m.

As my cell phone rang, I took a second to dumbly stare at it because who on earth could get through to me?

“Don’t take Massachusetts Avenue,” screamed Mr. RG from far-away Sweden.

“But…” I start to say, amazed he knew where I was, but of course he did. I looked at the gridlock on Connecticut Avenue, a scant half block from my kids’ high school.

“No, please, don’t take Mass. Ave. past the Vice President’s house,” he begged.

“It’s likely the only way or at least the only moving way out of here,” I told him. But by then the line was dead, and would be for several days.

Sept. 11, 1 p.m.

We were home. We would stay home. And nothing would ever be the same, ever again, at home.

Sept. 11, 9 p.m.

I turned on most of the lights in the house. I double checked the locks on all the doors. I turned on the TV in my bedroom. I opened the bedroom windows on this cool night. I wanted to hear the F16s. I timed them. Every 26 minutes. They were my security blanket, even as I didn’t sleep.

Email messages to my father because phones were useless:

Sept. 11

I put Mr. RG on a plane out of Dulles last night, headed to Sweden through Amsterdam. He arrived just fine, but of course, his return plans are now in question. He is due to get to London on Thursday and return here to Dulles on Friday afternoon. At this point, we have no idea when and what route he will take to get home. Just know that he is safe in Sweden.

When you called this morning, I really had no idea what was happening. As events unfolded, I became more and more concerned about getting RG Son and RG Daughter home. Their school is downtown in an embassy neighborhood. The Algerian embassy, for example is just a few doors up and across the street. I knew I didn’t want them on our subway, so a friend and I drove downtown to get them.

The school was releasing kids as parents came, and we have no idea if school will open tomorrow. The scene was eerie as we left: hordes of people walking on both sides of the sidewalks, all going in the same direction. Cars were in gridlock along Connecticut Ave. We chose to take Massachusetts Avenue out of town because the traffic was at least moving at a crawl. I was shocked as we moved along past the Vice President’s compound, seeing armed secret service men posted everywhere, shotguns prominently displayed at their hips. I have never in my life seen anything like it. As we sat in traffic at one point, a Russian Orthodox church’s bells rang in somber tones.

Needless to say, we are simply staying put at home, hearing only F-16s
flying overhead as they patrol DC airspace.

All this is against a backdrop of one of the nicest days we’ve had in
weeks–bright, sunny, no humidity, and 78 degrees. The beauty of it makes the horror all the more surreal.

Sept. 12, email to my father

F16s continue to fly overhead on a regular basis, and
school remained closed through today. Both kids are headed back tomorrow (as all schools in the area re-open), but happily I was already scheduled to be there for lunch tomorrow. I will feel much better knowing I am with them for at least part of the day. Security is very tight around the embassies, so we are okay with letting them go back. Believe me, if anything changes security-wise, I will bring them home.

But we are so determined to try to get our lives back on track–not completely back to normal, just back to a scaled-back regular routine. Today, for example, I allowed RG Daughter to visit a friend’s house just over the DC-Maryland line for a few hours. RG Son went out toward Rockville and had lunch with friends, then shopped at Best Buy and later hung out with pals in downtown Bethesda. I didn’t let them anywhere near downtown, but with National Guard troops everywhere and police on full alert, it was probably the safest place to be!

Sept. 15, email to my father

Just a quick note to let you know that although he wishes he was home, Mr. RG is doing just fine north of London. His friends are taking him on tours of the countryside churches and villages, as well as a pub here and there. The unexpected vacation! We are hopeful that United’s plan to get him back on Tuesday afternoon will occur.

In addition to a funeral for Mr. RG’s uncle who unexpectedly died on Sept. 11, I attended services at our own church yesterday. I was so sad to learn that a member of our congregation was on the flight that hit the Pentagon. Although I did not personally know her, the pain and grief at our service was palpable.

In most other ways, things are moving closer to normal. I think the F16s are still around, but we now see the planes headed in and out of Dulles. It is questionable when, if ever, National Airport will open again.

The neighborhood around the kids’ school is secure, although one never knows when parts of Massachusetts Ave. might be shut down in due to threats against the national mosque (blocks away from their school). The police presence around the mosque is impressive, but it is depressing to think that they are there as much to protect the congregants.

As I drove around uptown last night, I was struck by the small groups standing outside with candles. Two little girls stood outside their house holding red, white, and blue candles. We are not keen on venturing downtown at this point, any further than the kids’ school, that is. It’s not a case of fear so much as we just don’t really feel like doing a whole lot. The kids have gone out with their friends, but just to dinner or out to Best Buy–low-key things like that.

Sept. 15, credit card purchases: Citgo, fill-up; Giant grocery store, bottled water, batteries of all sizes, milk, eggs, toilet paper, canned everything, cat food.

Thank you dear neighbors who have reduced my otherwise sweet and house-trained pup into a shaking, shivering and panting disaster in serious need of doggie drugs. Thank you China or any other country that mass produces meaningless and worthless blasting devices under the guise of “fireworks.”

Someone, anyone, please tell me what is the point of these tiny, dangerous and annoyingly loud explosives? Professional fireworks mesmerize in their brilliant and multi-colored splendor, enthralling everyone at professional celebrations. Buy-’em-by-the-bag “bombs” tossed at will into the street, over my fence and onto my front yard are nothing more than pieces of crap lobbed by the same.

Then again, I was once saved by a cherry bomb.

I was 11 years old that Halloween, too old to be trick-or-treating and too young not to give it one last chance for a pillowcase full of Milk Duds, Mary Janes, and wax candy lips. My girlfriend of the same age joined me, and we happily trooped around the neighborhood dressed as “hobos.” Within an hour our sacks were three-quarters full. The sun had long ago set. Time to head home.

“Get ‘em!” came a voice-cracking cry from a masked adolescent boy with his gangly posse in tow.

“RG duck!” screamed my friend.

Pop, pop, pop all around us.

“RG run!” screamed my friend, as more invisible pops cascaded around us.

But where to go? How fast could we really run in our baggy costumes, carrying heavy sacks of candy?

And suddenly, there it was, the scary house of the neighborhood. The one with the curtains perpetually drawn, peeling paint on every surface, and mysterious residents who were never seen and forever unknown.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

We were sobbing as we banged on the splinter-laden front door and frantically rang the doorbell.

“What the hell?” yelled an old man clad in overalls as he peered out of his front door that he’d opened only an inch.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

“Help us!” cried my friend.

The old man stared long and hard at us.

“Please,” she begged.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

“Okay, inside,” he said, clearly put out by the candy-toting hobos who’d landed on his front doorstep.

Even in my panic, I could only stare as we stood in the scary house’s living room. Except for the heavy curtains, the room was completely bare. Not a chair, not a lamp, not a table. Nothing.

“They’re chasing us,” wailed my friend.

I could only nod in agreement, being rendered completely unable to speak.

“Oh yeah?” said the old man. “Wait here.”

He shuffled down a dark hallway, leaving us alone in the dark living room for hours that were only 30 seconds.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

“They’re waiting for us!” sobbed my shaking friend as we clung to each other.

“I’ll take care of it,” muttered the old man as he shuffled back into the room.

With that, he snapped open a lighter, lit a hand full of round somethings, opened the front door and tossed whatever he’d lit into his weed-laden, overgrown front yard.

Boom. Boom. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. BOOM.

Ever heard an adolescent boy scream? That night I heard five of them cry like girls as they scattered and took off running, screaming to each other, “Cherry bombs!”

We just stared at our rescuer, both dumbfounded and aghast. And incredibly grateful.

“You can go,” mumbled the old man.

We couldn’t move.

“Now!” he almost barked.

“Yes sir,” said my friend, startled back to life.

“Sir,” was all I could manage to say.

He held the door open just wide enough for us to squeeze through. The moment we were on the front porch, he slammed the door behind us. I could hear the turning of multiple locks.

We were alone, the firecracker boys as far away as their awkward lanky legs could carry them in the few minutes that had passed.

And we still had our candy.

Happy Fourth of July stupid neighbors. This cherry bomb memory is all for you.

I love it that RG Daughter calls me almost every day. It’s like she lives just over the fence and a shout away instead of 1000-plus miles out of reach and many more in the distance.

I saw a double rainbow moments after she called. I was outside smoking a cigarette before a freebie slot tournament, and a select few smoking outside with me knew the rainbows meant something wonderful:

“I’ll win, for sure,” said two.

“The pot of gold is right here!” said four.

“Alright,” sighed a few others who noticed this freak of beautiful nature.

“I’ve never in my life seen that! Never! Today must be my lucky day.” said one.

I didn’t win money that day, but I didn’t lose any, either, the slot tourney being free. But those double rainbows heralded the 15th–or is it the 20th–time RG Daughter and I have glanced at each other over a fast-pass fait accompli and silently high-fived because we had an unexpected, incredible time together in a place that writes the book for unoriginal and very expensive family time to which we cannot say no.

I had to beg to leave early on a slow day and promise to be back for the next morning’s 5 a.m. shift that would surely be slower. I wasn’t sure how I would make the three-hour drive up and back in one scant afternoon and evening, but I didn’t care. I hadn’t seen RG Daughter in six months, and I was certain I wouldn’t see her for another six if I didn’t run screaming from my slower than slow off-season serving job and just go.

I drove three-and-a-half hours through multiple horrific rain storms, some so strong I was sure a tornado lurked just beyond the wall of water that my VW’s windshield wipers could do nothing whatsoever to clear. I got lost twice trying to find RG Daughter’s hotel. I hadn’t eaten a thing since my day began 12 hours before.

All of this mattered not the least at the exact minute I wrapped my arms around my best baby girl and hugged her tight. My stupid schedule, my terrible tips, my total lack of a life beyond my stupid schedule and terrible tips retreated into a safe harbor of momentary denial in the here and now of seeing her again.

Back in the old days of easy money and frequent-flier perks, RG Daughter and I only ever stayed on Disney property, where we walked or trammed to the parks and never, ever parked with the masses in lots named “Pluto” or paid full-price for one-park, one-day admission. Funny how times have changed. Funny how much the real Disney World costs.

I bought a Florida resident multi-day pass for myself and tried to convince the perky Disney gate agent that RG Daughter counted as one, too. An expired Colorado school ID didn’t convince her. It was probably just as well; I felt like one of my customer thieves who pawn off 16-year olds as “under age ten” so they can get a cheap plate of kids’ eggs.

So, hundreds of dollars later, we were in Epcot buying frozen margaritas in Mexico, when we saw him–a poncho-clad Donald Duck, with no line of strollers to meet him.

“You’ll need to put the drinks behind his back for the photo,” said Donald’s handler, “You know, so he doesn’t get in trouble.”

Of course.

The handler took our photo with my phone, and I promptly texted it to my manager and begged for today off. Something about a mother-daughter Disney photo must have tugged hard at her heart, because she relented, adding that RG Daughter was “beautiful.”

We never planned to go back to Disney today. RG Daughter had work to do; I would leave early and head back before rush hour and more storms. But at 7 a.m., while drinking the worst-tasting in-room coffee ever brewed, I pointed out that we could be at the Magic Kingdom riding Big Thunder Railroad in less than an hour.

And so, another $88 dollars later, RG Daughter was upgraded to another day’s single-park pass, her work and mine be damned. We got soaked on a log flume ride that scares me more than upside-down roller coasters and dried off on Big Thunder. We took in the Pirates and got fast passes for Peter Pan’s Adventure. Which gave us an hour to kill.

“We’ve never eaten in Cinderella’s Castle,” I pointed out.

“You have to have reservations,” pointed out RG Daughter.

“You have to have reservations,” said the un-Disney-like greeter. “Sorry.”

We wandered aimlessly in the crowds for a few minutes, when RG Daughter announced we would return to the Castle and beg for a last-minute seating. Something about a mother wearing yesterday’s clothing and her cute daughter must have tugged at the heart of the second not-too-nice greeter.

“I’ll seat you, but it has to be now and it has to be breakfast. And it’s $54 each. It includes a photo with Cinderella. Is that okay?”

What the hell.

The photo, it turned out, was a “professional” shot that included an 8×10 and six 4×6 copies. The $54 breakfast included an auto grat (they get a guaranteed 18 percent on every check?!?) and visits with five princesses, plus a table-side chat with the chef who wanted to make sure we knew he knew we were Celiac girls.

I spent more on park admissions and over-priced food in 24 hours than I make in a week. I missed a day-and-a-half of lousy tips and $4.25 hourly wages. Maybe I’ll care when I see my credit card bill. Today, I couldn’t have cared less.

Because when you add it all up, I have had much less fun for far more money on many other days. And I wouldn’t trade this regal day for any amount.

For months and months, I have been in touch with SallieMae to straighten out my six-plus student loans taken out over the past 8 years so that my kids could attend the college of their dreams. When you have undiagnosed-but-surely-have adult ADD, SallieMae is not a realm in which to wallow.

Because wallow is all you will do in the SallieMae miazma, through umpteenth forbearance attempts, through faxes sent of your pay stubs and income tax returns to gain that promised forbearance status, through phone calls numbering more than 20 in two weeks that garner a different response that is “the final say” each time, but never is. Just when I thought I had it fixed for a year so that my payments would reflect my “income sensitive” status for six loans, another two loans reared their hideous heads this morning–totaling more than my bi-weekly income. It will be all I can do to muster the focus, the patience, the reigned-in frustration to contact this awful organization for the trillionth time to straighten it all out, AGAIN.

On a positive note: Both kids seem to be following some sort of dream as a result of attending the expensive colleges of their dreams, and I am very, very proud of them for this. But if I had to do it all over again, I’d save more money from the first diaper change through the last teenage grounding for some now-meaningless infraction and point out the virtues of community college as a very real stepping stone to those same dreams.

Prom Theme Haunting Me

I have been invited to a birthday party in the Keys that has a “1950s Prom” as its theme. I love a theme party. I love a costumed event. I look great in pale pink tulle. Now, I only have to find the perfect dress for this silly but great event I cannot wait to attend. Every day before work, at 5:30 a.m. while munching a gluten-free and somewhat tasteless muffin, I peruse the Web for the perfect dress. Which has made me almost, but not quite, late for work these past few weeks, because I cannot focus on the tulle at hand when Etsy and its never-ending links and any number of other “vintage reproduction” Googled dress sites lure me deeper and deeper into their layers of fun, frivolity and unaffordable chic.

Kill Me Before the Kitchen Crashes

Today: Saturday. Fully booked hotel. An over-priced, profit-garnering breakfast was just the ticket for everyone staying in the hotel today. Too bad our great cook was out at the last minute, and I truly hope all is okay for him, because he never calls out–never–and he just celebrated decades with the hotel that mean he was cooking these same eggs for the same place when I was in high school a world away in D.C. wondering how to be a hippie as the hippie era was winding down. Wow. But he called out today. Uh oh.

To say the fourth string cook wasn’t up to the madness is, well, not worth saying. That’s a nice way of saying that from 6 a.m. on I banked my tips on this one phrase: “I hope you will give us another chance tomorrow, and breakfast is on us.” It sort of worked. But I have to say I had a moment I have never had in my entire hospitality career: As a charred French Toast was delivered to a table by my food runner–a plate of a burned-to-a-crisp mess that I mistakenly described to the doubting guests as “caramelized sugar”–a dining room mutiny ensued. Mind you, I was handling a 12-table, 48-plus guests section alone and being quintuple sat every 45 minutes. My busser had vanished, and so it was just me and the food runner feeding and turning tables for the hungry when the blackened French Toast landed on table 22.

“I can’t eat this,” complained the guest. No, you can’t, I thought.

“Excuse me,” piped up table 46 diagonally across and two rows over. “I ordered that, too. I want to change my order.”

“Miss! Miss!” shouted table 53, “Please make sure my eggs are not overdone!”

“Or my pancakes!” screeched table 15.

Which resulted in a ripple effect around every single one of my 12 tables that sought me out of my neck-length weeds to tell me to change their orders to cereal or fruit plates or toast or muffins so that theirs would not arrive as undistinguishable, burned-to-a-crip remains of something they all wanted to amount to today’s perfect fast breaking.

Which was when I watched the host unset two dinner tables and re-set them for breakfast and seat two more four-tops–all mine. When you have undiagnosed but oh-so-real adult ADD, that’s all it takes to send you running, scurrying, crawling into the kitchen, where you tap one of your favorite co-workers on the shoulder and say,”All that is getting me through the next three hours is the vision of us all done and smoking that first post-shift cigarette as we laugh about how horrible today was.” Except he was so weeded in his own far-away section, he couldn’t acknowledge me, except to mumble something about room service crashing, too. And that, I figured, was a great time to swill a quick glass of juice and refill the industrial-sized coffee filters with a bag of coffee that takes me three weeks to go through, but last approximately 32 minutes here. Which made me forget who changed their order to what, and then made me laugh aloud to no one, because the stress, the frantic pace drowned out my adult-ADD-denial two-second laugh break.

Make Time for Best Friends

“I’m coming in June, but I only have these days here and those days there,” emails my best sister friend. I request and get them off. I am broke, but I will pay anything, forgo anything just to see her. So I will drive three hours there then, and three and a half hours to the other there a few days later. I’m okay with that. Road trips force this adult ADD mess that I am to focus.

Oh, Geez

Clean the house, anyway, now that you are home after the worst day of your hospitality life. Then you won’t have to clean it Wednesday when you have your one day off. Yeah, no. It’ll just need cleaning, again, Wednesday. So I’ll wait until Wednesday.

Train your dogs to sit and stay, really stay, so they can pass the upcoming evaluation to become volunteer service dogs, because if you don’t get a life soon and volunteer to bring smiles and cheer to those who have so little, so that your life means something beyond serving eggs and slinging drinks at weekend weddings, what is your actually life worth?

Wait, isn’t the world supposed to end at 6 p.m. today, anyway? Maybe I should drain the $200 in my bank account that won’t last me ’till next pay day and play 25 red on a video roulette wheel at Hard Rock. Hey, the extra points would get me platinum status and preferred parking, right?

Sit. Stay. STAY!

Vacuum, even thought it’s not next Wednesday and your day off, just because. Hmm. I might as well wash the bath towels.

“I won something on the Preakness,” texts my Great Guy, whom I live with and never see, much less connect with anymore, except for tip-toeing around his sleeping, snoring profile that I try very hard not to wake up each morning at 5 a.m. when I dress for work. He got off at 1 a.m., after all.

Great. Guess the world didn’t end.

Did I put the laundry in, because I only have two work shirts and work six days a week, so laundry is as important as flossing. Actually, more. I never floss until two weeks before I am due to see a dentist.

Crazy Shackleford just took a race at close to the precise moment the world should have imploded–a horse with a sure case of ADD as I watched him prance and worry and sweat and fret as he timidly entered the gate to race, and I laughed that his name was that of a very long-ago, very nice boss of Mr. RG. Figures. If I had bet my last $200 on him, then I would have made…right, no more gambling.

Sit. Stay. Please stay. Please be the old dogs who can learn old tricks so that I have a chance to get a life beyond the couch onto which I fall every day after work, exhausted as I always am, with energy only for watching “Sex in the City” reruns that are, happily, all new to me because I was always too busy with my “real” D.C. life to watch them the first go ’round so many years ago.

Bugs in my house. How many times do I have to spray something that is supposed to last 12 months, but never lasts more than 30 days?

“It’s SoFla. Bugs are a way of life,” says my great guy. Really? Never had them in the one place I can no longer afford to live in SoFla because I have $200 in my bank account that won’t last ’till next paycheck.

Stop training the dogs to sit and stay. Stop looking for prom dresses. Check Craig’s List for rentals for bug-less places, just because I can after a two-hour nap.

What? Move again? No can do. And so I spray the useless poison again and again and again every day. And truth be told, bugs aside, I really like this old house.

Sit. Stay. STAY. STAY!

Set the alarm on the iPhone to wake up at 5 a.m. so I can press the “snooze” and sleep five minutes more. Sleep all the rest of the afternoon away on the couch. Wake up groggy, and wish it was 5 a.m. so I could call it a night over.

Shop online for the perfect prom dress. Figure out a way to take on another job. Vow to quit slot machines and casinos, unless the world really is ending.

Remind self that great guy is still great. Don’t think about D.C. Don’t think at all, because one thought cascades into another and another and another, and never a one is complete. So goes the wandering brain of one with adult ADD.

Sit. Stay. For the love of God, please stay. You dogs represent my next best hope to do something bigger, better, beyond my scattered self.

And with that, they stayed.