i've got somethin' to hold on to

Oh, man. Just one more day, and then it's a beautiful Friday and Saturday off. It couldn't come sooner. Days like today, when I wake up and every muscle in my body hurts, and I find myself unable to do much other than order an americano and walk in the direction of work, are rough.

The past two days I was over the stove, tomorrow I'm over the wok. Just one more day of kicking the valves on full-blast, ladling oil and frantically tossing ingredients over my shoulders, steaming mussels and searing tuna steaks, frying rice with ginger, garlic, cilantro and scallions, squirting fish sauce and sesame oil, turning a cold faucet into a steel bowl of 550 degree oil and bathing myself in steam. Every once in awhile, I'll throw some wet bok choy, or some shoestring potatoes into a hot wok and light a fire the size of a small apartment kitchen, and I'll have to rely on my clean, cancerless lungs (a rare commodity in our industry) to blow it out or risk dumping a burnt mess out and starting over in the middle of the dinner rush. By the end of the night, my eyes will hurt from all the flashes of light--between shaoxing cooking wine, various accidents, and fishes hitting pans on sautè, we start a lot of fires. And my knees, my feet, my back will ache, and I'll want to sit down because I haven't in twelve hours, but I won't.

As much as the busy nights are exhilirating, there is an impending sense of doom at this point in the week--the business is making a steady crescendo, from an easy Sunday to a pain-in-the-ass latenight Wednesday to a catering, special-menu party Thursday to a rather mentally and physically abusive weekend, where we'll come in an hour early to prep for a war. I love the work but I still frown at the culinary institute for being such a bunch of assholes--through all the sanitation, restaurant management, and cuisine education, there's not a lot of honesty as far as working from one to one in a hot kitchen goes.