It's 4:30 on a Thursday afternoon and my cell phone buzzes at work three or four times. When I finally get around to checking it out, I see texts from Matt, who is on Day One of a five-day "stage," which is like an internship. The stage is at wd~50, a restaurant Matt has had his eye on for years. The first text says "This place feels like home." In one eleven-hour shift, Matt fell in love with this place and all the people who work there.
Every night of the stage, he came home smiling, upbeat, and energetic. He talked about how great it was to finally work in a kitchen with people who respected the food they were making as much as he does. They listened to music, they spoke English (big plus in a kitchen out here!)... He told me stories about $10,000 machinery and centrifuges and carrot balls and celery strings and it was very clear to me that he was finally home. In the back of my mind, I feared the day he actually had to go back to DBK, where he's been miserable for quite some time.
So the last day of the wd~50 stage rolls around and they ask him to come back two days a week (Fridays and Saturdays) to help them out. He says yes, but he has to check to make sure DBK will work around that schedule. His first shift back is Wednesday, and Tuesday night all he talks about is how badly he doesn't want to go back. We play around with the idea of him quitting and finding a part-time job to accommodate his weekend work at wd, but we ultimately decide that we just can't go without an income.
Wednesday, he talks to his chef about going part-time and the chef basically tells him no and that he can't cut Matt's hours. Matt's the strongest guy in the kitchen and he can't afford to cut his hours, especially with the holidays coming. He asks Matt to stay on full-time until mid-December and then says he can find another job. Matt relays this information, we're both unhappy with it, but we don't really see what else we can do.
Thursday night, he comes home and he's just... "miserable" isn't a strong enough word. He was all pale and disheveled. He dropped his bag right onto the floor and just fell onto the couch. "I can't go back there" and "I never want to step foot in that kitchen again" pass his lips. We had a really rough year last year, and that still doesn't compare to what I saw Thursday night. He was so upset and so... defeated. At one point, he even curled up on our hardwood floor and didn't want to get up. Again, we talked about him quitting and I finally gave in. But I told him he had to immediately start looking for a part-time job so we'd have some sort of second income.
Friday comes and three hours before his shift (and less than one week before DBK's big Thanksgiving dinner), he quits his job. I immediately ask my assistant managing editor for more freelance work when it becomes available and I secure a few extra hundred dollars a month—but certainly not as much as another full-time job would bring in. I'm stressing out already. Matt comes to take me to lunch at 1:30 and we have this big long talk about what kind of job he can get and where he should look and he promises that while I go home for the weekend, he'll start applying for jobs. I get back to the office at 2:30, wrap everything up, and leave for Port Authority at 3:30.
At 3:45, I get a text from Matt saying that he just missed a call from a 212 number and he's afraid it's going to be someone from DBK either bitching him out or asking him to come back. Then I get another text that says "CALLMENOW." I call. And he tells me that the chef de cuisine from wd~50 just left him a message asking him if he wants a full-time job. The chef had no idea that Matt had quit his job earlier that day; he was simply calling to offer him a job. And this is like... the job that Matt moved out here to get. It's a one-star Michelin restaurant and the head chef, Wylie Dufresne, is a chef first and foremost. Not a celebrity (although he's been on tv a ton of times), but a real chef. An innovator. And Matt actually met him and cooked beside him while he was a stage. I'd imagine he can learn a lot from him as a real employee.
So Matt was unemployed for a little over three hours. And as soon as I heard of this incredible job offer, all the stress I was carrying around about his happiness and our bank account just evaporated. I was kind of worried that I'd have to start ordering appetizers when I go out to eat with my friends and limit myself to one drink during happy hours. I saw myself searching for movie matinee times and stressing over the check book. And maybe we do need to be a bit smarter with the way we spend our money, but it's not that bad. We're still in the green every month. And now we get to have a real Christmas!
Also, we actually get to do Christmas this year! And Thanksgiving! And New Years Day! And that's probably one of my favorite parts of Matt's new job. This place is the first he's worked in that is only a restaurant. It's not a country club, it's not a nightclub/restaurant/bar, it's not attached to a casino, and it's not attached to a hotel. It's just a restaurant. And that's fabulous because there's no special orders (They offer two tasting menus. If you don't like it, tough.), no owner's daughters demanding pots of plain pasta, no holiday meals, no promotional coupons, no room service... Just the restaurant and its menu. In all the time we've been dating (except maybe our first year because we were still in high school), we've never had a holiday where Matt didn't have to work. This is our first Thanksgiving and our first Christmas and even though he'll have to work New Years Eve, at least I guess we get to relax on New Years Day. And I think it's very appropriate that it's also our first year living together for these holidays. Which makes them extra special.
In addition to the holidays, he'll also get two days off each week—two days in a row. Wednesday and Thursdays. We're not sure how switching for other days will work out yet, but it's really cool that he'll have a set schedule. Restaurants rarely do this, but at wd, they want to give their employees "weekends." So that's pretty cool. What kind of sucks is that we won't have Saturday and Sunday mornings together anymore because he'll have to leave for work by 10. And on my only days where I can sleep in, I'd like to sleep until at least 10.
But this is actually going to work out, because it will give me a bit more time to work on my new project: co-authoring a young adult novel.
So let's set another scene...
Aunt Fil emails me to ask me some questions about the way the publishing industry works because she has a friend who wrote a book. We go back and forth for a bit and then she gives her friend my work email address. The friend emails me her pitch and asks me for advice getting an agent. I tell her I like the pitch and would like to review the manuscript; if my company likes it, she could just skip the agent altogether.
So I love the idea for the manuscript, a young adult novel written from the perspective of a sixteen-year-old girl with cerebral palsy who goes to a summer camp and falls in love. The writing needs work, but I figured that if I pitched it to my director and he liked the idea, too, then I would polish the writing after we acquired the title.
The director and publisher love the idea, but then the hurricane hits and no one has time to review the full manuscript. Finally, last week, the managing editor of our children's imprint reviews it and says the writing isn't strong enough to publish, but it's almost there. My director calls me into his office and says, "I would typically reject this, but..." and suggests an alternative. He said that he and the publisher like the idea of the book, but that it needs so much work (not so much work, but more work than a novel should need when it's acquired) that they can't offer on it. He says that he can tell how emotionally invested I am in it and then tells me that if I want to personally help the author on my own and in my free time (see also: unpaid), that I can do that. And then I can pitch the manuscript again and, if it's up to par with the other best-sellers on the market, they'll make an offer.
So I love the idea and I felt like I already had developed a working relationship with the author. I relay all this information to her and tell her that if she doesn't want to work with me and if she wants to take it to another publish, I would totally understand. And instead of doing that, she totally agrees to work with me. So over the next few months, we're going to work on her novel (hence my call for young adult novels on FB) and hopefully get it to a point where my company will publish it (and then I'll work on it some more, but paid).
I'm hoping that working with this author will allow me to kind of get into a groove. And will inspire me to write more of my own stuff. I've been saying that for a while now, and I've written a short story and a few essays in the past month or so, but this is a real, full-length book. And yeah, we're not rewriting it from scratch, but it'll get me thinking creatively and that's what I think will help.
So on top of 9 to 6:15 (I've adopted a later schedule because the train at 5:30 is impossible), freelance for two companies, the gym three days a week (I did it last week!), and Matt's new schedule, I'll be doing this, too. I'll definitely be busy. But busy is good...
Had a great time at home this weekend. It was nice to see everyone, and I'm really looking forward to visits from Matt's parents, my parents, and then the trip home for Grandma's eighty-fifth birthday. Should be good times. :)
And this was great to come home to, too!!! It's really nice to be missed. It's hard to do the missing, though. <3
