I've been missing this blog. I've been taking notes for it on the back of old receipts and grill slips; my purse is full of the poor little Neglecteds.  The material is consuming the writing time.  This is the first day I haven't been to work in.......
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Anyway.

Last night Beetle and I got home early! At 2 AM! ! !  She sat down on the couch, I on Grandpa's chair, and the next thing I remember is waking up at 6.  The TV was on; I was on the floor, and I desperately wanted to be in my bed but it was so, so far away, maybe thirty feet, and reaching it involved lifting my body from the floor, so.

How To Get The Best Sleep Of Your Life: never get any.  Then when you do, you are untroubled by things like floors and cold and the absence of blankets.  You can sleep on the cement outside McDonalds and the traffic does not disturb your slumber.  You can sleep on the roof of McDonalds and the gnats cannot awaken you, although they do get into your bra and make themselves known when you are surrounded by customers and can do nothing about it.   But when it comes to sleep, you are impervious to things that ruffle lesser souls than yours.

Last night a fat white man came through McDonald's drive through.  Which reminds me, Beetle and I have unconsciously taken to describing everyone in sets of three words.  Thus: Creepy Chinese Guy.  Cool Solo Lady.  Etc.  It was a stressful night, only Kevin, Beetle, DJ and I, and we have been spending such a vast amount of time together, us second shifters, all of our waking hours really, that we have reached a complete comfort level, which sometimes mean we bicker like five year old siblings, especially when drive-through is backed around the corner and lobby is full of people and there are French Fries On The Floor and The Trash Cans Are Full and other such catastrophes to someone as OCD as yours truly.  Our conversations went something like this, in jerky fragments, all voices overlapping and shrill and exhausted and weepy and punctuated by maniacal laughter:

I know you didn't just steal my small fry. I'm glad you're going home tonight because I'm tired but I'm not a jerk like you and wouldn't tell you. Did you put tartar on that fish? She wanted no tartar, moron. Your mom's a moron. Really, what an thing to say. Why wouldn't you tell me if you were tired. If mom's a moron then why are you still........will you make a flurry for the asshole in window? I didn't mean it like that, I would tell you if I were tired. Damn! Sorry, customers, I said that too loud!  Drop fries. We're out of fries.  I have to go get fries. Did you just grind that cone into the floor? Kevin, I hate your ass.  I forgot to take my energy pills. You're making dinosaur noises again! How attractive!

And so on.  I love my second shift....I do....I really do.

Anyway, Fat White Man!  (I got distracted)

So he came through during this rush and everything was wrong. He wanted to know, why did I give him a Styrofoam cup? Don't I know he hates Styrofoam? Et cetera.  I did my best to commiserate with his trials and tribulations but I am not a very good Christian these days.  All of us having been saying, Sorry God, at work, as much as we've been saying anything else.  So as F.W.M went on and on a lot of ugly thoughts came out of my poor, charred little crisp of a soul.  Also, he was holding up drive through and--

Finally he asked if it would be too much trouble to get a glass of water.  I fixed him one. He rejected it on the grounds that he hadn't wanted that much. At which juncture I wanted to say YOU WANT WATER? I'LL GIVE YOU WATER and hurl the contents into his buggy little red eyes.

Then there was the drunkard who came in and stared at my foggily for a few moments. What can I get for you, I said, wearily, and for the third time.
 
'I'll have...' he said. 'I'll have uh.....a.....large order of a.....cone.....'

After work we sat in the crew room and leaned on each other and told each other how wonderful we all were and how hardworking and and how we were too tired to drive home and, do you have a cigarette? no? do you? and how much we love each other and how glad we are for God's and each other's sweet forgiveness.

I love my job.

What can I say to sexually upsetting co-workers (notably Creepy Chinese Guy, whose patronage I have suffered for the past two years) that won't get me fired?

Alas.

Also, our McDonald's is quite unique, methinketh.

It was a placid night at work.  Beetle, Kevin, me, and a girl I'll call M.

Beetle and I were a bit down when we got there. I had gotten an email from my happy, funny, un-judgemental mom, and….Ijust missed her so much.  Also, tonight was frantically busy for the first few hours. I was in grill and it was all I could do to keep up—making this or that sandwich while trying to keep meat and fish and chicken cooking all the while so there would be enough for more.

But later on, DJ came by to say hi and ended up working off the clock for awhile to help us out. McDonald's second shift is great like that.  He left at 11 or so, because he has to come in tomorrow for the 4 AM shift.  A miserable shift, let me tell you, especially if your sleep schedules are anything like ours.  (nonexistent)

It's funny how much of a second home McDonald's is to us.  A safe place.  My boss doesn't call it the McDonald's family for nothing.  We bicker like family, we love like family.  Everyone knows everything about everyone.  I don't know if it's because it's such a high stress job that there's no room for artificiality,or if it's that we're such an odd blend of people all mixed together, or if it's the sheer amount of time out of our lives that we spend with each other.  Probably a mix of the above. 

I sometimes feel, in some Christian circles, like I'm judged for not being Christian enough.  I still have so many rough edges.  As Tupac says, 'If I upset you, don't stress, and never forget, that God isn't finished with me yet.'  In college, on the other hand, I sometimes feel judged for being too Christian.  People think I'm naïve or whatever, because I don't drink or sleep with anyone.  McDonald's is one of the only places I have in the States where I feel fully accepted. As imperfect and flawed as the next guy, sometimes more imperfect.  Trustworthy and honest because of the work God's done on me so far, and limping in the right direction. But still a long, long way ahead of me to limp.

Anyway, through a series of conversations I learned that M.is a Christian, too.  Not the scary kind that feels the need to add rules that aren't there to the Bible, not the kind that you have to walk on eggshells around.  But someone who just loves God and knows he loves her back. She told me tonight about her fiancée and that she lives with him and their son, and she told me how much it hurts and bothers her.  'I'm living in sin,' she said, 'I know I am, and I don't trust him enough to marry him, but it's all so hard and scary.'

Kevin and Beetle worked by themselves for a bit and let us talk in the little closet that is the crew room. God bless them.

I told her what my parents and g-rents have taught me, which is that I need a guy who loves God more than me.  That way, when I (heaven forbid) come down with M.S., or when the years are just hard, the guy won't cheat on me or leave me, and we'll be able to work it out and get to the other side of the fire, because we promised God we'd hang in there with each other.  

I told her sometimes getting out of bad things we shouldn't be trapped in is really, really hard, and often a process. I know I still have plenty of flaws I wish I'd left behind me, left in my younger years, left in Africa. But they're there. Grandpa has a great metaphor for it.  When he lived in Gatab, Kenya, a woman came bleeding and dying to his doorstep. She had bullets in her arms; her legs; her shoulders; and one in her stomach.  'Take care of the stomach first,' she said before she passed out, 'because that's the one that's going to kill me.'  Grandpa did, and she lived, and eventually the other wounds were able to heal, too.

Not belonging to the Lord—not accepting and experiencing his forgiveness—that's the bullet wound in our stomachs. That's the one that's going to destroy us in the end, and it’s the one we're too weak to take care of by ourselves.  When we come, drowning in our own blood, to the Lord, that bullet is removed.  We become really alive now, and we know we'll live forever.  Without the Lord, we don't make it.

I still have plenty of bullets in my arms and legs and shoulders, as does M.  But the one in our stomach—the one that would have destroyed us completely—that one is taken care of.  We talked about it, the two of us, and we looked at each other in the stunned gratitude that hits us in our clearer, saner moments. I think God will help M. to extricate herself from a rough situation. The process has already begun.  There is a different way to live, a better way, but we have to learn it.  Most of us will choose the better thing once we've learned what that better thing is.  I'm trying to help, but we all need help.

Because God is so gentle, I cling to him.  He is disappointed, and I ashamed, when I fail, because it hurts me and hurts other people that he loves, but he never casts me off. It's no longer about what I do, as Grandpa says, but about the relationship I'm now a part of.  Once I am God's daughter, I will always be His daughter.  By his grace the bleeding wounds on his sides will heal the bleeding wounds on mine.

God is so gentle.  I love him, and he loves me, and he loves you, dears.

So there we were, M. and I. At one o'clock in the morning in this poor black hole of a town.  In uniforms covered with grease and sweat and soapy water.  In a crew room full of filthy uniforms and cigarette butts and worker schedules.  God's love can find you anywhere, that's all.

'Lord, let not those who seek You be confused because of me' (Psalm 69).