I begin to wonder if I have already blogged everything about myself. I am typing here with a band aid on my finger, and not the one I sliced. It's the one beside it, which has had some cracking going on for months now. It starts to heal but I press garlic or chop onions and those acids get in there and tear it up again. Then the cold weather today makes it crack and freeze and really burn. So I have the band aid on it, my index finger on the left hand. I have the razor slice on the tip of the middle finger, same hand, and typing now is a pain in the ass.

That is all something I haven't blogged about before. I think not anyway. On a related story, one that I was sharing with Kristi actually, last week some time, is about a job I ha once for a short while. I was a short order cook. I guess it was short order. It wasn't really a restaurant and it wasn't completely a bar. Charlie was the owner. He was my boss anyway, and maybe it wasn't Charlie, but that's what I remember. And I sort of remember he had a brother, but that might be a guy Lyle I am thinking about. Lyle was the owner of Little Ceasar's where I worked for a while, and he owned it with a brother. He owned about five of them in the area, and this was when Little Ceasar's was new on the scene. New to southern Cali at least. And that was near the end when I was working there, my last year or so of drinking. Deidre occurred during those Little Ceasar's year. And Olivia and the tarot card reading and the loss of a major amount of cocaine and pot, and a hundred other stories from that last year of social drinking.

Two years earlier though I was cooking for this not restaurant not bar place. It was located in the industrial parks of Huntington Beach. I cannot picture something equivalent here in Savannah except maybe parts of highway 17, but nothing there is totally industrial, it's more of a mish mash. This place I cooked for was mostly a bar, sawdust on the floor a big mounted TV (many years prior to flat screen, so don't get an image of anything too big here) and a couple of pool tables. And they served these four dollar steaks and these seven dollar lobster dinners, on paper plates with corn and potatoes. Somewhat like a crab boil, now that I have been exposed to some of them here in the south. Charlie had a dad who probably owned the place by the way, if I remember it any clearer now that I am typing about the moment. And I would cook up these lobster dinners and I would work Sunday mornings cooking eggs and bacon and the cook's line was in front of the cashier line, so they would come in the door and shuffle in front of me, chatting a bit and what not to me until they paid for their meal, got a ticket number and sat down. So not quite fast food maybe, not really a restaurant, who the hell knows how to describe something like this?

Maybe a writer would! Again, coming to terms with my limitations here!

And can I detour yet again, anyway? Because I had an image of another line, one that maybe I typed bout somewhere already. This line was on the fourth of July and the year would have been eighty-four, outside Frisco after the Democratic convention there. I worked for the carnival that summer and a biker sold me acid, gave it to me and said he would come back for the money if I liked it. I loved it, and the line for the Zipper, one of those caged flip you over and spin you around rides passed right in front of my dart booth. And if I was a real carny instead of an eighteen year old kid on acid I would have made money with all those bored fair goers in front of me. I did however make enough to pay for the acid and then some and had a wonderful rip roaring time for a few days until we were just burned out on the acid and Ron (weird the names I remember sometimes, isn't it?), all three hundred pounds of him, beat up his girlfriend and destroyed the hotel room and we all kinda backed off of each other for a bit.

Which brings us I guess a year or two later when I am a sort of short order cook for this sort of not restaurant bar in this sort of industrial area of a sort of beach town. And I am drinking daily and expected to show up on Sunday mornings to cook eggs and I don't think this went on for two weekends before I started not showing up. I was an assistant  for a few months. I guess I was in training to replace the guy who was cooking. I wish I knew his name for you, or the story as to why he was leaving, and I haven't a clue right now. Except I think he reminds me of that actor. You know the one? He was in Con Air, the second in command to Ed Harris. That guy, for whatever reason, reminds me of a cook I used to work with.

So he left and I took over and I was fine working weekend nights and drinking during and after, but I was a mess trying to show up Sunday mornings. And after once or twice of that the boss asked me what was going on and I told him I was allergic to the tomatoes. That they make my skin break out. And I assume now that they must have, at least partially. I can't imagine just making something up like that on the spot. Then again, my knack for story telling my way out of a jam could become legendary if I shared them all with you here. I don't remember if it was true or not, but I do remember that it was my drinking causing the problem, and the tomatoes were the perfect excuse.

Charlie bought me gloves the next day. You have to remember, by the way, that 1985, maybe 86, was pre-HIV. Or at least early on enough that it was before all the hysteria about catching it by being breathed on. So gloves were used in food handling back then, but not for cutting tomatoes. Anyway he did this for me. I was a good worker and he wanted to keep me and he accommodated my needs immediately and asked me if I was showing up or not Sunday morning. I said I was. He said don't screw him, to be honest with him. I committed to being there and thanked him for the gloves and he said that if I didn't show up Sunday morning to never come there again, ever. And I didn't show up on that Sunday and it was much much later, still in my drinking years, that I dared show up again. I remember he was there, he drank a lot on the weekends as well, socializing with the regulars, and he almost recognized me but couldn't place it and I avoided him and left as soon as I could.

And now we come full circle and to the real reason I love blogging. Because I had nothing to write about half an hour ago, and no idea where I wanted to go in here. Except that I had a band aid on and my fingers hurt. And they break out like crazy now, especially with garlic (and I am finally avoiding it and letting Kristi chop that up for me now), but lately with the onions as well. Every time. And I love cooking with both those things and I wonder if it is karma for that day I didn't show up to work when he bought me the gloves.

Still we aren't there. Because we know this leads deeper as well, and ties in nicely with my frustrations lately at work. I am a good worker, and there are times (which I don't tend to blog about) where my bosses put ti out there for me and I fail them anyway. But let's even go one layer deeper and realize that I only need to blog about maybe taking an inventory, and god provides the mental direction to type one thing that leads to another which in turn leads to me examining my repeated behaviors. And non e of it is there when I set my fingers on the keyboard. There is sometimes a thought of what i will write, and sometimes an image and many days nothing. And regardless of how I approach it, there always appears to be some sort of purpose unbeknownst to myself as to what I am typing.

And as a final note on these layers I just want to point out the idea I had about my life being layered as well, through the liquid shimmering looking glass of pool water. And I wonder where we will finally get to with that train of thought by the first of May.