In Which Cinderannie Says Goodbye

I’m home again now – but you all knew that. Even if there are mysterious strangers lurk-reading, they still could have figured it out from my days count down several posts ago. Hello, probably non-existent lurking reader. This post is dedicated to you. And to everyone else who has been reading this blog for all these months and putting up with my sporadic and often very lengthy posting.
Perhaps part of me doesn’t want to go back and write about – and thereby relive – the last weeks of my stay at Disney, because I am quite content to be home, and fear that to remember will be to miss. I do miss certain things. They come in flashes – the Winnie the Pooh ride, Minnie’s House, Frontierland and Adventureland at night, the three o’clock parade… just momentary memories and missings. But I miss nothing the way I missed home while I was there.
My last week at Disney was a glorious time. I managed to give away a great many shifts, so that my second-to-last week was spent packing and my last week was spent playing. I planned to cram as many last rides as possible into the last few days. Friday was my departure day, and I had given away my Wednesday and Thursday shifts. Gloriously, my manager offered me an early release halfway through Monday, so I went to Animal Kingdom and was able to have a last ride on Everest – two, actually – and my one and only ride on Kali River Rapids. After that I went home and nearly completed my packing.
Tuesday was my last day of work, a day of many farewells. Everyone was sad to see me go and wished me well – Goofy insisted emphatically that I should stay there, and even shed tears on my behalf, wiping them dramatically from his eyes. [ Oh, here comes the missing: there was one thing that I didn’t get to do in my last week that I wanted to do – go and see Minnie and Mickey at their house. This was due to a change in plans that was definitely for the best (I’ll get to that later) but I do wish I could have told them goodbye. I miss them. ] I said goodbye to so many people, who were sad to say goodbye and expected me to be sad, but I was so glad to be going home. It reminded me of Reepicheep in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – “He tried to be sad for their sakes, but he was quivering with happiness.”
On Wednesday, I went to Epcot and Hollywood Studios, to do all my last things and say goodbye and ride last rides. It was fun. I got to ride Rock’n’Roller coaster in the front at the end of the night. I was at first by myself and was going to imagine Thad next to me but then a large man came and sat by me instead. The next day was to be my final day in the Magic Kingdom.
When I got home that night, I was missing Thad and rather wished I had invited him to come for the last day so he could spend a day at the parks with me and ride back with me . But it was rather late at night now and anyway where would he sleep? Overnight guests aren’t allowed at the apartments. And he wouldn’t be able to get a flight, not now. Yet I felt I couldn’t rest if I didn’t try, so I texted my mother something along the lines of, “Is it very expensive to book flights less than 24 hours in advance?” She replied instantly with, “Do you want Thad to come?” We texted, then called, back and forth for quite a while. My dad was on his computer in the foreign country he was on a trip to, looking for airline flights. My mom called my grandmother to see if she could see if Thad could spend the night with friends of theirs who lived in the area. In a whirlwind, we had it all figured out and settled. He would arrive at the Orlando airport at 12:05pm the next day.
I was rather late picking him up – first I had to bring books back to the library and couldn’t find the library because the map showed it in the wrong place, then I got stuck in perfectly horrible traffic. Fortunately, Thad was too glad to be in Florida to mind very much. As we drove, we discussed our plans. I had made reservations at Liberty Tree for us at 2:45. He wanted to do Mission Space and Spaceship Earth and Rock’n’Roller coaster.
We did a lot of dashing about that day, mad rushing to do things before then ended. We went to Magic Kingdom first and I don’t know what we did and then to Epcot for Mission Space, then back to Magic Kingdom and just barely made our reservations. Actually, we would have missed them except that I had already arranged with Ben that he would be our server and he very kindly served us even though really the restaurant was closing.
That was a lovely dinner. Thad had a bacon cheeseburger and I had my last meal of William Penn Pasta. We had planned to share an Ooey Gooey Toffee Cake – the best dessert ever. But then Joseph, one of the chefs, came out to us, and was taking our dessert orders, and was asking Thad what he wanted. Thad kept saying he didn’t want any dessert, but Joseph kept offering him more and more options, saying, “Come on, I’m giving you free dessert here!”
“Strawberry shortcake? Brownie? Or how ‘bout some ice cream? Would you like some ice cream?”
“Sure, okay, I’ll take some ice cream,” said Thad finally.
In a little while Joseph and Ben returned, with my toffee cake – and a dessert for Thad – three or four scoops of vanilla ice cream in a Liberty Tree mug, drizzled with lots of chocolate syrup, and whipped cream and a cherry on top. This dessert is not on the menu – I should know. It was made extra-specially for Thad. He licked the whipped cream off the cherry, and was going to set it aside, when he got a strange look on his face. I watched him in puzzlement as he put the cherry back in his mouth and bit it off the stem. Then he ate it with an expression of surprised, delighted ecstasy.
“I can’t believe that all theses years I’ve been giving away my cherries!” he cried despairingly.

After that we went back to Epcot to ride Spaceship Earth, and then to Hollywood Studios. There, for the first time, I rode Tower of Terror. I was scared out of my mind. But it turned out to not be nearly as bad as I expected! It was actually really fun! I was missing out, just like Thad with the cherries. Then we rode Rock’n’Roller coaster. We got to ride in the very front. It was glorious. When we came off, it was three minutes to park close, so we ran like maniacs back around to the front to go again. We were on the very last round to go. So I rode on the last Rock’n’Roller coaster of my last night at Disney.
Then we went back to the Magic Kingdom. We were on the Monorail as Wishes was going, which was pretty cool. (I have seen those fireworks so many times that not getting to see them from the ground didn’t distress me much.) I even caught a glimpse of Tinkerbelle flying.
Once we were inside the park, we watched the end of Wishes, then dashed for Space Mountain. We had about forty-five minutes until the park closed, and we wanted to hit Space, Splash, and Peter Pan’s flight. Yikes. After we rode Space Mountain – I got to be in front, I always forget how scary it is – we tried to buy freeze-dried ice cream for Bram but they didn’t have any and went to check the back and they took a long time and then I got sent to two different places and no one had any and the whole time I’m thinking “Auuugh, we have no time for this!” Finally someone said they had it at the Emporium at the front of the park which would be open after park close, so we dashed off to Peter Pan’s flight. Fortunately, they took our fast passes, which were long since expired. It was now less than twenty minutes to park close. I took in one last time the loveliness of Neverland. It was 10:53 when we got off the ride, and we ran like crazy people – Thad carried his flip flops – toward Splash Mountain. If only we could make it!
We made it, at 10:56. Four minutes to spare. So if anyone ever wondered, you can make it from the exit of Peter Pan’s Flight to the entrance of Splash Mountain in three minutes flat at a dead run. We were both panting and gasping. It was a lovely last ride. Splash Mountain is definitely one of my very favorite rides.
We caught some of my favorite parts of Spectromagic on the way back to Main Street. I knew I wanted to be in front of the castle at midnight for the “Kiss Goodnight,” the farewell at the park close every evening.
In between we managed to buy the presents I still needed to get, but the person had to go in the back for the freeze dried ice cream and I feared I would miss it. There was another one at 12:30, so it wouldn’t be too dreadful, but I did want to get back to the apartment sooner rather than later so that I could get a little sleep before we left early in the morning.
It was 12:01 – I stepped outside, looking for Thad; I had been separated from him in the crowded store. There he was.
“Has it gone?” I asked.
“I’ve been out here since five till and I haven’t seen anything,” he answered. I was still a bit stressed because I still had my WDW ID card and needed to turn it in. It was supposed to go to my work location, but that was quite thoroughly closed by now, so I planned to give it to one of the custodial managers who knew me. The park duty manager said that Heather should be coming from The West (Frontierland and Adventureland) [ oh there goes another pang of missing…] any minute, so I was relieved. She would have to come right past where I was. Just as I saw her coming, the Kiss Goodnight began. I could catch up with her when it was over. It must have been five minutes past midnight. It was as though it had waited until I was ready.
I don’t remember exactly what it says. It’s just the man’s voice who does many announcement things, I think he’s from the Mickey Mouse club, he has a sort of warm friendly voice – and he says something like I hope you had a wonderful time, and all your dreams come true. And Mickey says, “See ya real soon!” Goodnight, Mickey.
Thad and I meandered down Main Street. “I see why you wanted to see that,” he said. I caught up with Heather and gave her my ID.
Finally we left and got on the monorail. The ride back to the Ticket and Transportation Center, the drive to where Thad would sleep, and then on to the apartment.

The drive back home was fairly uneventful, other than my car starting to misfire. We spent only one night in a hotel – my goal was to reach home by suppertime on Saturday.
All the way, it seemed I watched time go backwards as it changed from eternal summer into spring. I nearly started crying when I crossed the Michigan border.
I made it in time for supper, arriving at about 5:30pm. It was so good to be there, and we had supper – I don’t remember now what it was, but it was good.
For the first few days of being home I felt really strange – as though I had a different personality and couldn’t find my old one. But I seemed to gather pieces of it back everywhere I went, to church and to my friend’s house and with my siblings, and it has long since been back entirely.

I don’t know what will happen next in my life. I'm done being Cinderannie - who will I be next? I am excited to have such openness ahead of me. I don’t think that I’ll ever have a career with Walt Disney World – Florida is just not home to me, and I don’t think it ever could be. But Disney will always have a special place in my heart, and though Florida might not be, the Magic Kingdom will always be home. I’ll go back and visit, someday, and perhaps someday I’ll be a seasonal employee to take advantage of the free admission – that’s the one thing I shall miss most; the freedom of wandering around the parks, just living there, every turn familiar and dear.

Thank you, everyone who has read this and been with me, supporting, encouraging, and enjoying. It was so good to have you along. So many lovely things happened. This chapter is done, a new one is starting.

Goodbye, Mickey! See you real soon!

In Which Cinderannie Speeds to Space and Sits and Stares

One day I went with Dory shopping most all day because we needed to go to Michael’s to buy things for Kari’s birthday party and then to Wal-mart for groceries, and we got kind of lost trying to go to Michael’s and it took absolutely forever. All Florida lights are too long and every road requires you to turn around, and they don’t have nice turn-arounds like Michigan; you just have to wait for the next light. But we were successful in finding what we wanted to find, but didn’t get back until late afternoon. Then I went to Wednesday night church, which was nice, and when I got back I knew I had to go get Kari’s birthday present, so I went to Downtown Disney. But they didn’t have the present I wanted, because it was a theme park exclusive. So I asked what time the Magic Kingdom closed – it was about 11:30pm. It closed at midnight, so I should have just enough time to get over there and buy the present – a Tinkerbelle music box – before the stores closed. The main street stores are usually open till a half-hour after park close. And there were extra magic hours until 3am. I wasn’t sure if cast members can do EMH or not, but if they could maybe I could go ride Splash Mountain, which I had been wanting to do.
I made it to the store in good time, and soon found the music box and bought it. It was midnight, but I headed toward Splash Mountain in hopes of finding a kindly wristband distributor. I had asked at the gate whether we were allowed, and the girl said it depended on who you asked… from which I gathered that this was one of those bendable rules. Sort of like having to wear polishable leather shoes at Liberty Tree, which barely half of us do.
The wristband people at ------- wouldn’t give me one, so I trucked over to Splash in hopes of them letting me on even though it was past midnight. No go. Disappointed but not distraught, I decided to wander over through ------------ on my way out. There was another EMH wrist band distribution point there by ----------------. It couldn’t hurt to ask.
The person let me! I was so excited, and promised that I would just go on Splash and then leave, and that’s what I did. It was so much fun to be riding Splash Mountain at 20 after midnight! And I love that ride so much, too. Especially this one part where it’s like you’re in a cave with water splashing everywhere. Now I wish I could ride it right now. Well, I could. It’s 10:15 and I think the park doesn’t close until midnight. Hmm.

It’s now just over 24 hours since I wrote that. And I didn’t ride Splash Mountain. But I did talk to Dory, who came over, who had never ridden Space Mountain because she is scared of roller coasters. But recently she managed to ride Rock’n’Roller coaster with Tiffany. But Space Mountain has more ups and downs and is more jerky, and you also have to sit single file instead of having someone next to you to cling to. But when I suggested it – imagining the look on Tiffany’s face when we told her what she’d done, we decided to make a dash for it. The park actually closed at eleven, so we had to run for it. I drove superspeed, we ran to the monorail like crazy people – “will you make it?” the driver asked “sure,” we said – got to ride in the front, dashed off the moment it stopped, took a shortcut through backstage, and made it to the Space Mountain line at five minutes until eleven. The sign said 20 minute wait, but it was nearly a walk-on. She was shaking a little as we were about to get in line – and we got the front! – but she didn’t waver in her determination. I kept my hands on her shoulders the entire time, and we sang “Zip-a-dee-do-dah” for most of it. And she wasn’t too terrified! She was smiling when we got off. She says we need to go on one more time for her to truly conquer it, but of course we couldn’t do it that night since the park was now closed. On the way out we wandered through a lot of shops. I liked the crystal store with the pretty statues and the art of Disney store had some pictures I loved. There was one with Dumbo in the bubble bath and the light was all golden and it was so lovely I crouched down on the floor to just look at it. It made me imagine it would be in a hallway in Bram’s house someday, Bram’s house when he is all grown up, a big house with dark wood paneled walls and it would be in a hallway where the light is dim because that’s the sort of picture it was. And there was a picture I liked even more, my favorite one of all. It was about 18”x36”, tall ways, and it was of sleeping beauty, but not the Disney sleeping beauty exactly, it was more realistically painted instead of animation-looking. The coloring was all a warm red, with sleeping beauty laying on a bed at the bottom of the picture, and looming above her, through the huge window, was the dragon and the prince fighting it. It was so beautiful. If you want to see it, go to http://www.john-rowe.com/ and click on images, then scroll down through the pictures on the left hand side to almost the bottom and click the one with the scary red dragon. I sat on the floor in front of that picture for quite some time. Thankfully Dory was also liking wandering around the store.

In Which Cinderannie Makes Very Little Sense

I cannot stand high heels. Tonight I was going to Hollywood Studios (formerly MGM) and I was going to pretend to be a movie star so I put on a shirt with sparkles on it and my earings with the crystals that Papa got me and borrowed my roommates high heels and wore my sunglasses and went. And I was barely through the gate and walking down the street before I wished I was at Magic Kingdom and the heels were driving me crazy. I'm not cut out to be a movie star. I would have gone over to MK but I didn't particularly want to walk around there in high heels either. So I came home and now I'm writing a blog entry and Tiff and I are going to watch Stardust. They all like it so I hope it's good.
I know there were a couple things from work I wanted to tell you about. Oh yeah, I got to do the dinner bell the other day. That means choosing a family to help open the restaurant and go up on the balcony and ring the bell. And all the characters come up too, and the family gets to get a picture with all of them. It was fun, but the script had gone missing so I had to improv it, and for some reason I couldn't pronounce "hospitality" for the life of me and kept stuttering. Dear me. But at least I projected, and got everyone's attention, unlike sometimes when you can't even hear the person and no one knows what's going on.
I keep realizing I have more high functioning autism characteristics than I realize. For one thing, because of my roommates friendly teasing when it happens, I realized that I stutter rather a lot. I didn't notice how often I get "stuck" when I try to say something and repeat the same syllable, word, or phrase over and over again. Also at certain points I get a sort of barrier to talking, like I don't know what to say unless it's scripted, either by standard conversation, or a direct question I can give a direct answer to, or actually scripted like at work. I realized this very vividly when I went to work one morning, having hardly spoken to anyone until I was there, and then I had to seat a family, and when I was at the table needing to say my spiel, I felt like I almost forgot how to talk. I had to make myself remember my lines, "You're seating in the ______ room and ______ will be your server," and I certainly couldn't make myself get out any of the usual pleasantries (have you dined here before? what have you done today? etc). It was weird.



Edit: Grr! I wrote more than this! And the computer ate it! Now I have no idea what it was I wrote. I told you about some other things... that I no longer recall.

Oh yeah, Tiff's birthday party! It was her birthday so we had a party and I made chocolate cake with mint frosting (which I made myself) because mint and chocolate is her favorite.

And I wrote about the stuck-up Disney Vacation Club people! And it got lost... and it's midnight and I don't feel like writing about it over again right now. I am officially frustrated. This has to be the weirdest, most irrelevant and disconnected post I've ever written. Probably related to my very emotionally charged days off. Well, I think I'm going to bed now. Hopefully a more coherent - and more positive - post will follow before too long.

In Which Cinderannie Has a Lovely Time, Works Too Much, and Has a Lovely Time Again

Well, now, it's been awhile, as usual, but I have a good excuse this time, which is that I have worked 60 hours for the past two weeks. This is because it was spring break, when everyone comes to Disney. I really don't know what possesses people to come during peak times. Why would you want to come and have to fight all the crowds and wait forever in lines and not be able to get into any restaurants, when you could come in the fall and have almost no one there? It's ridiculous. But of course, people do it anyway, and then they are mad at me when I'm on door checking people in because they can't get into any restaurants. So that is the bad part of it being crowded. (And for goodness sake, the food at the quick-service restaurants really is quite good. I am sick of people saying it's "cardboard" or "fried junk" and being mad that there is no table service availability. If you're going to turn up your nose at the quick-service food, you should have made reservations. I have patience for a lot of things - mismade reservations, being late for reservations because you were caught in traffic, needing to add people to your party - but not that.)

The good part is that we open up the Diamond Horseshoe, the restaurant next door. It's basically an extension of our restaurant - it's the same cast members and the same food, with a makeshift kitchen area set up in the hallway. But the characters don't go over there. I like that restaurant because it's so beautiful inside. I only worked over there two days but they were so much fun.

There is a sort of bar area in the Diamond Horseshoe - just a long counter, with space behind it with a refrigerator built into the counter and more counter and cupboard space behind. This is where we set up the drink-making station (non-alcoholic, of course, just our usual drinks) and since the portable drink machine wasn't working, we had to use two-litres, and fetch pitchers of the drinks we didn't have two-litres of from Liberty Tree. There is not nearly enough space in that bar area for all the servers to be coming in and out getting drinks for their guests, so instead we have one of the seaters back there, and the servers write what drinks they need on a slip of paper and that person makes them and puts them on the counter for the server to pick up. They work with the stocker, who keeps the pitchers and the ice container full as well as getting glasses and coffee mugs. Now Brandy was the drink-maker for four days straight, because she was very good at it. And some days William was her stocker, and he is rather distractible and was always leaving her with no glasses left or no ice, so she was running around like a maniac. But then I was her stocker and she was glad to have me, and we had an excellent time working together - the time absolutely flew by. The five hours felt the way two hours does usually. And since she was going to be off the next day, and she had now taught me the system for the drinks, I was assigned to do drinks the next day. I had such a nice time. And Rob was my stocker, and he did a good job and we worked well together, and he joked that we would have our own bar, Rob and Joanna's, and I thought that this name actually had rather a nice ring to it, although of course I wouldn't really want to open a bar. But I had so much fun making the drinks that I thought that if it weren't for the sleazy drunk people I would probably enjoy being a bartender. If people always just went to have a nice time, and always only had one or two drinks apiece, it would be really fun. It's a pity that alcohol is abused so thoroughly.

I wouldn't want to leave Liberty Tree now, since I'm quite attached to the people over there, but if I could from the beginning have picked what shift and where I'd like to be, ideally, I would choose the opening shift at Cinderella's Royal Table. The reason for this requires me to skip back a bit and describe my morning there. I started work at 6am, as I told you before. But the opening work there is so pleasant. Everyone is still quiet and blinking themselves awake. You bring up the syrup and milk from downstairs, and then you fill up all the adorable little cream pitchers, and use this cool machine that you push the handle and it pumps syrup into the little syrup containers. (The little containers are called ramekins. I didn't know that until about a month ago - I always called them "syrup jiggies.") We also set up the soda machines for the day. And then when we were done with that we went out into the dining room for the pre-meal meeting. I was standing at the back of the dining room, with the big windows in front of me. I looked out, and I could see all the roofs and empty streets of fantasyland, and the sky was just starting to brighten to pink and gold. It was so beautiful I got tears in my eyes. And then, having started so early, we were done with the shift at 2:15. I like this arrangement.

Since I was done at 2:15 and I had a change of clothes up in my Liberty Tree locker, I went up to get them, changed, and went out into the park. I had not been wandering long when I got a call from Dory, wondering where I was because she was off of work and wanted to get together. "I'm in the Magic Kingdom," I said. "Where are you?" "At the Ticket and Transportation Center," she said. "Well, for goodness sake, get on the monorail and come over here!" I exclaimed cheerfully. "You'll be just in time for the parade!" And she was in time, and we went to Town Square where we found a place to sit and watch, and we had the loveliest time - we went on Jungle Cruise and Buzz Lightyear's space ranger spin and we got to ride the double decker trolley down and up main street! We decided to be seven years old for the day and we skipped and sang and had a sword fight with our knife and spoon from the pineapple ice cream and pineapple wedge we ate. So yes, this is the advantage of having to get up very early - then you have more day left.

Yesterday was so nice too, because Kari and I spent most of the day at the Magic Kingdom, and I convinced her to come on Big Thunder Mountain even though she doesn't like roller coasters, and it turned out she liked it after all. While we were waiting for our fast pass for that we went to Tom Sawyer Island and roamed around, and sat up at the top of the hill on a bench and ate our lunch and reminiced about our childhoods for about an hour - this is the beauty of being a cast member and not in a rush. And we had the most excellent ice cream from Enchanted Grove, which is a swirl of strawberry sherbet - made with real strawberries - and soft serve vanilla ice cream. Now that is deliciousness. And we ate it while we listened to a saxaphone quartet, and then we went on the teacups (I am so glad that I don't get dizzy so easily anymore like I did when I was younger, because I really like that ride now) and on Goofy's Barnstormer. We wanted to visit Minnie but she was busy spring cleaning. All this was while we waited for our FastPasses from Peter Pan's Flight to be ready because it was hours and hours. Oh and we went on the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, too.

Speaking of that, that makes me think of Mr. Owl, and I wanted to tell you that I was going to say that Liberty Tree was like hobbits and dwarves and Cinderella's Royal Table was like Elves, but I tend to be a Lord of the Rings geek and I didn't want to overdo it. So I was glad that you thought of it.

Something I like about Liberty Tree is that there is no skim milk to be found in it from one end to the other. Also our honey butter we make ourselves, from real butter and real honey, blended together in a giant mixer.

Oh here is something else I keep forgetting to tell you! One day when I was on the bus to work, the one that goes from the WestClock parking lot where the CP bus drops us off to the main tunnel entrance, I noticed a big building, and there were monorail tracks going into it. I had seen that before, and I knew it was where the monorails sleep, but then I noticed something else about it - through the windows on the lower floor, I saw a train! And there are train tracks going into it! So the monorails and the trains sleep in the same building, with the monorails on the top bunk, as it were, and the trains on the bottom. I thought that this was most delightful.

Well, Dory has just brought me a salmon, rice, and brocolli dish for lunch that she made herself, and as it smells and tastes wonderful, I am going to leave this entry as it is, with a last note:

44 Days until I come home!

In Which Cinderannie Meets a Photographer and Visits Cinderella

Tuesdays look to be turning into quite exciting days. You see, Tiff usually has Tuesdays off. And Kari always does, because she has a class from 2-6. Dori’s days switch around. But anyway, after Kari and I’s grand morning at Epcot, we thought we might like to do that on most Tuesday mornings before her class – go to a park right when it opens and enjoy the non-crowdedness. The trouble was my days off had always been Wednesday-Thursday. But this week and next week it’s switched to Tuesday-Wednesday, so maybe I’m having very good fortune.
But besides the mornings, we have discovered something very exciting for the evenings. Let me back up a bit, to a week ago yesterday.

It had been a very rainy day, and Liberty Tree was so “dead” (our term meaning barely any guests were there) that the manager let me go home early. When I arrived home, I found Tiff, Kari, and Dori all in our room, getting dressed up. They explained that they were getting all “gussied up” (as Tiff described it) to go to Downtown Disney, just for fun. It sounded great to me, so I took a quick shower and then let Kari pick out my clothes and do my makeup. She has a knack for it and it turned out very nice, especially how she did my hair. When we were all ready we headed out. The sky seemed to be still threatening rain, so Tiff and Kari both brought an umbrella.
When we reached Downtown, we first stopped by Ghirardelli Chocolate. This is always the first stop we make at DD, because they give you a free sample of chocolate. You can’t beat that – and it’s excellent chocolate, too. Then we went to World of Disney. Kari had the idea of us going to wherever they do the Bibbidy Bobbidy Boutique photos and seeing if they would take our pictures. I was uncertain at first if we would be allowed but agreed to ask and find out. The lady working near BBB said that the place was at the Photo center at guest relations, and she didn’t know if they were still open, but we could check it out if we wanted to. So we trekked over.
When we went inside the guest relations building, there were no guests. The two photopass photographers (a man and a woman) were standing around looking bored. I walked up and asked whether we were allowed to get our pictures taken in their little studio thing even though we hadn’t been to BBB, and the man (he had bright blue eyes and spiky hair) said “I don’t know, you can see we’re just swamped with guests today…” We all laughed and he beckoned us around to set our things down on benches in the corner. Then we all came into the studio.
“So, what do you want? Group? Individual?” We decided to do group pictures first and maybe some individuals later. And that was the beginning of over an hour of ridiculousness and fun, of poses both traditional and crazy. At one point Tiff said to the photographer,
“Is it just me, or are you having as much fun as we are?”
“You don’t understand!” he replied. “It’s been like this” – he gestured to the empty room – “ALL DAY!”
So we got lots of fun pictures, and then at the end he said that we should come back again sometime and do it again, coming at about that same time when no one was there, especially on rainy days, and that he worked Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. And we ended up going again the next Tuesday and getting pictures again, and this time at the end he said if we ever wanted to just hang out at the parks and have him take pictures of us, we should let him know. We couldn’t believe he was serious! So maybe sometime we’ll get to do that.

In other exciting news…
A little while ago, I was standing at the podium, chatting with the other seaters because there was no one to seat, and William (my trainer, if you recall) said something out of the blue that my brain at first didn’t process. It somehow connected to whatever we had been saying, though I don’t remember how.
“Yeah, you’re going to be cross-training at Cinderella’s.”

I didn’t say anything at first. My brain didn’t grasp the significance of what he had just said. Then it clicked. Me. Cross-training. As in training so I could work there. At Cinderella’s Royal Table. The restaurant in the castle. Then I started grinning and couldn’t stop. The rest of the day I kept repeating in a sing-song what I had heard a little boy saying at lunch one day –
“I’m going to Cinde-rel­-la! I’m going to Cinde-rel-a!”

It finally appeared on my schedule for this week, and I trained there on Sunday and Monday. There was one bad thing about this. Because Cinderella’s is open for breakfast, and because when you train you have to learn everything, I had to be there for learning how to open at 6:00am on Sunday. The day of losing an hour because of daylight savings time. After having to close at Liberty Tree and getting out at 10:25pm. Needless to say, I was expecting to feel very sleepy. However, I actually had a surprising amount of energy and only had about a half-hour where I felt sleepy, right before lunch. Speaking of lunch… they fed us breakfast and lunch! And it was so delicious! I want to learn to make scrambled eggs that good. And cheesy breakfast potatoes and a deep-fried cheese danish with blueberry over the top, and for lunch a whole bunch of different things like fancy porkchops and couscous and `jasmine rice and a sort of mushroom sauce and other things I’m not sure how to describe. And for dessert a “chocolate cheesecake buckle” which is shaped like a giant muffin and tastes like a very moist very rich cupcake. And know what? I saw Cinderella in the break room and she said "Good morning" to me! I found this very exciting. And I am hoping that at some point I may actually see her enough - she 's generally busy with guests - to convey at least one of the messages my little sister has requested me to give to her.
I like Cinderella’s. The atmosphere is very different from Liberty Tree. I like both, and both are very suited to how they are meant to be. Liberty Tree is very relaxed and we tend to “wing it” a bit. It feels like a home meal, the dining room is mostly wood, all cozy little rooms and it tends to be loud and the characters are always being silly. Cinderella’s is, of course, much more royal. The dining room is full of the cool brightness of indirect sunlight, since one whole wall is all windows. It is open and airy, and gives the feeling of being in the clouds. Everything is run more precisely. If Liberty corresponds to the element of earth, Cinderella’s corresponds to the element of air. At Liberty one would half-expect to find a roaring fire in the fireplace and some dwarves or hobbits or ordinary workingmen cheerily having a beer and a pipe in some corner. At Cinderella’s one would expect the breeze to bring swirls of cloud in the window or to be able to reach out and touch a star. There are no chipmunks dashing about and saying that the other one smells, no Goofy sliding across the dining room with one foot up on a chair. The Princesses hold court, moving gracefully and graciously from one table to another, talking softly and sweetly. We address the families and “my lord” and “my lady” (the parents or brothers) or “your highness” and “princess” (the daughters). I had to catch myself so as to not be too casual in my address as I seated. We present each child with a wishing star – I am hoping to have one of my own at some point – and tell them that their royal attendant will be with them shortly. There is more room for role play, because there is a greater focus on fairytales. Liberty feels a bit more like an ordinary restaurant – if a restaurant with Minnie and Goofy, and all of the girls wearing bonnets, can be called ordinary – and we aren’t really taught to play up the colonial aspect much in the way we address the guests. Mostly it’s just ordinary restaurant talk with extra Disney friendliness. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I dearly love role play, and getting to be at Cinderella’s where the fairytale story is at the heart of the experience, where we are encouraged to be as in-character as possible, is a delight.
Another wonderfully fun thing about Cinderella’s is the possibility for making very delightful magic. You see, the restaurant is booked up three or four months in advance. However, throughout those three or four months – even up to the day of – people are cancelling. Now, these cancellations are filled within a few hours – or even minutes – of opening up. It’s all on the computer, and people at the dining hotline and all the resorts and parks have access to it, and most likely at any given moment someone is trying to find a guest a space at the restaurant during their vacation. All this to say, it is a delightful thing to be at the podium. Because families are always coming up to the podium hoping for cancellations. And at first, my trainer would always say that she had checked the next two weeks and there were no openings – which she had, only a few hours before. But she (being a full-time trainer who bounces between Tony’s and Cinderella’s) has not fully grasped the magic of randomly appearing cancellations. And I am generally in a state of over-active pixie dust and am always wanting to make extra magic, besides which I have this tendency to never give up on something. (This tendency occasionally results in me driving across town in a rush so as to be able to attend two different events on the same day/night because I didn’t want to give up on either of them. Remember the night of the St. Cecilia concert and the barn dance, family? It’s not exactly practical but I do enjoy them.) At any rate, when no one was coming to the podium to check in, I began searching through the reservations for the next few days, breakfast, lunch and dinner. And I discovered that availability kept periodically appearing, at random times and for random party sizes. And it would be gone again shortly after. I treasured this discovery like a secret wish-granting knowledge in my heart, and waited. And when a woman came, saying that her family would be there for the next three days and was there any chance of finding a cancellation, I told her that we had been booked but I would look and see. (Incidentally, breakfast and lunch are in even higher demand than dinner, because there are no princesses at dinner, just the fairy godmother and the mice.)
“How many in your party?”
“Six.” Ooh, not too much chance of a walk-in, then. (Walk-in = someone cancels at the last minute / we manage to squeeze a party in because someone ate their meal quickly or whatever.) That’s more likely for a party of two or four. I might be her only chance. This was Monday night. I searched through Tuesday. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Nothing. Wednesday. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Nothing. Thursday. Breakfast, lunch – a table for six! At noon! Awesome! I double clicked it and clicked “accept” as quickly as I could. No one had better take this out from under me. Grinning, I told the woman that I had found her a table, at 12:00pm on Thursday. Needless to say, she was very happy. I took down her information and gave her her reservation card and was glowing for the rest of the night.
Oh dear, I’m on the fourth page already. But I must tell one last thing. The night was drawing to a close, and we were all in that passageway under the castle at the podium. It is so nice to just stand there, under the castle. Then the fireworks music began.
“Oh, I’m going to go see Tinkerbell!” cried another girl who was working there.
“Oh I want to come too!” I said. My trainer made no objection, so the two of us dashed off through the castle.
From standing right directly in front of the castle – where guests are not allowed to stand – you can’t see any of the big fireworks. But you can see Tinkerbell fly almost right over your head, and see the way they light up the castle right in front of you. A little bit after Tinkerbelle flew we went back into the passageway so that from the other side we would be able to see the fireworks.
“You’ll have to plug your ears for the finale,” the girl told me. “It’s loud.” That’s because the passageway through the castle has lovely, echoey, amplifying acoustics. So I did plug my ears. Oh and we had a very appreciative fireworks crowd, and it was fun to hear them ooh and ahh when we were out in front of the castle.

Well, it’s almost twelve-thirty at night, so I suppose I had better get some sleep…

In Which Moroccans are Delightful

This post is just going to be a few mostly unconnected anecdotes of my life – which is actually probably how most of my posts will be from now on. That’s kind of how my life feels right now. The work schedule provides the structure and sameness in each week, but interesting things are always happening here and there.

So last week Sunday was probably the physically hardest day of work so far… we were open until 9:30 because the park had extra magic hours until 11pm. And Sunday is always our busiest day anyway, I suppose because Liberty Tree seems like a fitting place to eat, it being served family style and all. And they had me stocking during dinner. At first there’s always nothing to do because they haven’t used anything yet. I had just checked around again and found everything still full when one of the servers said, “The apple juice is out.” So I got the key from Kristin (a manager) and trucked downstairs to replace the syrup, glad that the apple juice boxes are half the size of the other boxes, and at the bottom, so it wouldn’t be too hard. Well, I got down there, replaced the apple juice… and discovered that a bunch of the other syrups were out too. (There’s two boxes per drink per station, so they were still working, but once the other box ran out they’d be done.) So I replaced them – I had to call in passing guys to lift a couple of them because they were on the top shelf. I replaced a total of nine syrup boxes. And then I went upstairs, and all the glasses at far side were gone. Bother, bother, I’d never let them run out of anything before. So I ran around replacing everything – near side was almost out too. And that was pretty much how it went the rest of the night, because we were so busy. And because the servers were so busy, they kept asking me to get things they ran out of that aren’t technically part of stocking, like lemon slices and sugar-free raspberry syrup and chocolate milk and the little cream pitchers. On the third or fourth “could you get us…” I started singing, “Cinderannie, Cinderannie, night and day it’s Cinderannie…” But they were so appreciative that I didn’t really mind. There are advantages to being small, one of which is that people have pity on you when you’re doing hard work. The bad thing, though, was that after stocking for five and a half hours, instead of going home I had to close. All that means is standing by the podium and waving goodbye to people until they’re all gone, so it isn’t very hard, but I was pretty dazed by the time I was going home...
Recently I got to be trained to be greeter, which means I learned how to check people in on the computer and make reservations. For some reason I find it to be great fun, perhaps because it’s interesting. I like calling people up to the second podium (the “door” person is the main greeter and is at the first one) to check in, and if they don’t have a reservation I ask on the radio how long they’ll have to wait. And I am very good at explaining about staying in the lobby. Because we don’t know which people will show up for their reservations and who won’t. So we might say that it will be 35-45 minutes because we have a lot of reservations, but then if several don’t show up and we can seat them earlier, we will. Sometimes the door people don’t explain very well and then when we say 35-45 minutes, they take their pager, and then half their party leaves to go get fastpasses from somewhere or something, and then when in 15 minutes their pager goes off we can’t seat them because we have to have everyone together, and then they are annoyed. We have to have everyone together because we are almost always fully booked and if we are having to wait for the rest of the party to arrive, order, and eat, that table takes that much longer to be done, and meanwhile people are waiting impatiently in the lobby. Know who the crankiest people are? The ones who are all by themselves, and they come in with no reservation thinking that they can just get in, and we tell them it will be 35-45 minutes (because we have a lot of parties of two coming in who have reservations). They decide to stay… but 30 minutes later they’re up at the podium yelling at me that it shouldn’t take this long for just one person and that they’ve seen lots of parties seated who came in after them. I explain politely that the parties were either of a different size, or had reservations, but they keep yelling at me anyway, and then say they want to see a manager. I like it when they say that; it means that Kristin or Mandy can deal with them instead of me. But other than those people, I really like greeting. I’m not sure exactly why. Maybe I just like feeling in charge…

We have a lot of servers who are from Morocco: Brahim, Mo, Achraf, Najib, and Sebat, and a couple others whose names I don’t remember. When they all get together in one of the side stations (the place where they get drinks for the guests) they will all start speaking Moroccan. It sounds really cool. They all speak English very well too, of course, albeit with a charming accent.
One night, a couple weeks ago, I was seating a party of guests and I told them,
“Achraf will be your server this evening.”
“Does he speak English well?” one guest inquired, in that sort of haughtily anxious way someone might ask to be sure that the dishes are washed properly or that you’ll be dressing nicely for their honored guests.
“Yes, he speaks English very well,” I replied sweetly. I would have preferred to reply coldly rather than sweetly, but one must be polite to guests. I couldn’t decide whether to be extremely indignant or extremely amused. Over the next weeks as I got to know Achraf, I realized that he would get a huge kick out of it. So one night when he was in the side station and didn’t seem too busy, I asked him with a suppressed grin,
“Achraf, do you speak English well?” He looked slightly baffled, and George, who was also in the side station, said teasingly,
“Oh no, he doesn’t speak English at all.” I rolled my eyes at him and continued to Achraf,
“One of the guests wanted to know.”
“What?” he said, still baffled.
“Well, I told them that Achraf would be their server, and they asked me if you spoke English well. So do you?” I grinned, and he burst out laughing.
“Really?! They asked you that?! Just from the name? Oh no, what table is it?”
“Oh, it was a while ago,” I explained.
“Oh, man, you should have told me! I could have had so much fun with that!” He shook his head, grinning mischievously. “Can – I – take – your – order?” he said slowly, exaggerating his accent.
“Oh dear, I think it’s good I didn’t tell you at the time,” I said. But we laughed about it for the rest of the night, and periodically when he saw me he’d exclaim,
“I can’t believe they asked you that!”
While we’re talking about Morocco (sort of) I think I will tell you about my wonderful Monday morning. On Sunday night (this past Sunday, not the Sunday of stocking forever), when I came home from work Kari was over. So she and Tiff and I were hanging out. Have I told about Kari? Maybe not. She and Dori are Tiff’s friends from back home who started their college programs about halfway through January. Kari and I have connected really well, almost more than Tiff and I do. It’s cool. Especially since originally she and I were both worried that Tiff liked the other one of us better… yeah, that was pretty silly. But anyway, one of the things with us is that we like to always communicate openly what we are thinking and feeling, that if something’s bothering us, big or small, we’ll let the other person know so that we can work it out. In this case, Kari was feeling worried that we would never see each other because Tiff and I both have to work a lot. The thing that means the most to her is spending quality time together, and even though she knew in her head that we couldn’t help our work schedules, her emotions were still telling her that she must not be loved because we weren’t spending time with her. Well, I had the next morning off because I didn’t have to come in until 3:45 instead of noon, so since she was off too, I proposed that we hang out together. We agreed to meet at 10am and head over to World Showcase at Epcot, to be there right when it opened, at 11.
Well, we were at World Showcase when the golden morning light poured down on the nearly empty streets, and the cast members were just opening up the shops. It was beautiful. I’d only ever been at World Showcase in the afternoon, because I guess our usually way of doing a day at Epcot is to start in Future World first thing and then go over to the countries. Well, England is beautiful in the morning. We wandered through the tea shop, and admired the purple flowers growing on a trellis over a path.
In Morocco (see, it did connect back, it just took a while…) we wandered through the little shops that had all kinds of Moroccan things, all beautiful, and we each tried on a beautiful shirt – they are made of lightweight fabric, very flowing, and with embroidery at the collar and sleeves. Kari’s was tan with silver embroidery, mine was black with pink. Kari had been wanting a shirt from Morocco since she came in August, and the one she chose looked lovely on her, so she bought it. I liked mine a lot – for twenty dollars I would have bought it without thinking twice – but I didn’t like it fifty dollars worth. It was different for Kari, she’d been thinking about it and wanting hers for a long time – like me with my Scottish cloak. It was made in Scotland and it’s 100% lambs wool and so soft and beautiful. So I had my saved up special thing already.
Now the food in Morocco smelled absolutely wonderful, and we were getting hungry. We looked at the menu of Restaurant Makkaresh, the sit-down restaurant. We each saw and appetizer that looked good to us – mine was something that was either the same or similar to something I had with my grandparents on my birthday. Then we saw the Combination Appetizer for Two – it included both the things we liked the look of, plus one other thing! It was decided. We went in to the restaurant and we seated right away. It was almost empty. Our waiter was very kind, and it was peaceful in the restaurant. We looked over the drinks, and Kari decided to try the Moroccan coffee. I wanted to drink something interesting too, but it seemed that everything else was alcoholic and I don’t like coffee. Then I saw something called a “Moroccan sunrise” – non-alcoholic, a blend of pineapple juice, strawberries, and orange water. Oooh. So we both got our special drinks. And mine was really good.
Just after we got our drinks, another guy, not our waiter, brought us bread.
“Moroccan bread,” he said, setting it before us, and then, with a half smile, “and American butter.” It was real butter, at least, and not margarine. The bread was a small round loaf, cut in half with half for each of us, crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Then our appetizers came. It was a small salad that seemed to have similar ingredients to a Greek salad but with a different sort of dressing. And the two things we had wanted, which were two kinds of pastries, one with beef and one with chicken. When I describe they sound strange – they were somehow both spicy and sweet. The pastry was light and flaky as pastry ought to be and had cinnamon and powdered sugar on top.
We ate almost ceremonially. First the salad, until it was gone. Then half of the chicken pastry. We couldn’t figure out whether to use our fingers or the forks. But trying to use a knife and fork made the pastry go all to pieces, so we just ate with our fingers – and then ended up licking them because how could you waste any of that wonderful cinnamon and powdered sugar? When our waiter came by I asked him,
“Are you supposed to eat the pastry with your fingers or a fork?”
“Well, we eat it with our fingers,” he said, “but you could use a fork if you wanted to.”
“Oh no, fingers work better,” I said. “The fork makes the pastry come apart.”
“Well, there you have it,” he said. So we ate with our fingers guiltlessly – and licked them almost guiltlessly. When we’d eaten about half of the chicken pastry we started eating the beef as well so that we could eat them together, along with the bread we still had some of. It had looked like a rather small amount of food, but the pastry was very filling and we were both stuffed by the end. When we were done, the waiter took our dishes away and then – to our surprise and delight – poured a little rose water into our hands from a golden bottle for us to “refresh” them with. We were walking around smelling our hands for the rest of the morning.

I had another very good time on Tuesday night, but I think writing about it will have to wait, since this is already four pages long. But later… and there’s pictures of that one that you can see if you let me know your e-mail address somehow so I can e-mail you the link to them.

In Which Cinderannie Starts a New Job

Note to self: Never promise another post “tomorrow.” It’s not a good idea.



Anyway, the time has come for a post of some bits and pieces and anecdotes and descriptions from the Liberty Tree Tavern. They'll be a bit disorganized, but at least I’ll start with training.


How enjoyable your training is depends almost entirely on your trainer. My first time with custodial-specific training, was, as you may recall, dreadful, because I had a not-very-magical instructor whose personality did not complement mine. Then the next two days, I had a fairly good trainer, who if not extremely magical at least made training interesting.
For my first day of Liberty Tree training, I had a wonderful trainer. His name was William, and he is the best person I have ever met at staying in character. I and three other girls were training together, and we were all in our costumes. A note on costumes would, I think, be, good, so you can picture us. The girls’ costume is a top and skirt (but it looks like a dress) that’s a slate blue with floral trim, an apron, and a bonnet sort of hat. I’ll post a picture if I can get one. The guys costume is slate blue knickers and a white long-sleeved shirt with a navy blue vest over it. The knickers are supposed to button at the cuff, but the costume makers seriously underestimated the muscularity of our guys’ calves, so… very few of the cuff buttons get buttoned.
Anyway, William gave us the grand tour of Liberty Square. A lot of it was very familiar to me (“the attractions in Liberty Square are the Haunted Mansion, the Hall of Presidents, and the Liberty Belle steamboat”…) given how often I’d walked around in the area both as a custodial and on days off, but it was so much fun to trail around in our costumes! I felt like I really belonged there. Once a guest asked if he could take our picture. We agreed, of course, and I felt like a celebrity.
William warned us not to cross over into Frontierland.
“We don’t go over there,” he explained. “That’s too wild for us – they’ve got gunfights and cowboys and I don’t know what all else. We’ve got enough to worry about with our own war going on over here.” He’s the first person I’ve known who could say things like that without ever breaking – you know, doing the half-smile or wink, and without using an “I’m telling a story” voice. He said it like he was explaining not to cross the yellow line on a ride, or something like that – like he was perfectly serious about the whole thing. I loved it. This continued for the rest of the day, including when he was showing us where to get the pixie dust to put on people’s tables if someone had a birthday – “delivered to us by Tinkerbelle herself,” he declared. Putting pixie dust on the birthday tables is one of my favorite things – although I have a sneaking suspicion that the handwritten sign that recently appeared above the pixie dust reading “please do not grab too much pixie dust” was directed at me…
The second day of training was not quite as exciting. Ashley was our trainer. Although she was not as in-character, I’m still glad we had her for the second day, because William had a tendency to skip over details, and we needed someone a little more practical to fill in the gaps.
There are five different jobs that we do as seaters. (“Seater” is our overall heading, distinguishing us from “servers.”) I’m going to describe them all for you so that you know what I’m talking about later when I say that I did such-and-such.
Seating. This means that when a slip of paper with a family on it prints out at the podium, we take it and the menus they need, summon the family, and take them to their table. We used to call “Hear ye, hear ye! Let it be known that we are now seating the _____ family of the colony/territory of __________!” I thought that this was fun. However, we have a pager system now, so we just punch in the number of the pager and the family comes to us. Or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work. Sometimes the number is wrong or the pager isn’t working or whatever, and then if they don’t come we call. We also get a high chair or booster seat if the paper says they need one.
Table-setting. This means wiping off the table, sweeping the floor under it if it needs it, and setting the silverware and napkins (and at dinner, salad plates). We used to have to stack all the dishes on the table onto a tray for the server to take away. We didn’t have to carry the tray unless we wanted to. But there were some people from Tony’s restaurant over at Liberty for a while because Tony’s was closed for refurbishment. And at the rest of the restaurants seaters don’t have to bus tables. So the Tony’s people went back and told their people, “At Liberty Tree we had to bus tables!” And those people said, “Hey, they shouldn’t have to bus tables! The other seaters don’t have to bus tables. They aren’t getting busser pay. You can’t make them bus tables.” So we don’t have to bus tables any more, and the servers have to do it themselves. They have mostly taken it very well, although on one of the first days of it I did hear one of them singing, “I’ve seen better days…” But when it gets really busy we still bus them for them. And even when it’s not busy I do Patty’s tables, because she’s the nicest server ever and she used to bus her own tables when she didn’t have to. But the ones who never did their own and who would leave the trays for ages hoping we’d carry them for them… Kim the assigner (she figures out where to put which guests) declares I am not allowed to bus their tables because they need to learn to do it themselves. Another side note about table-setting: whenever I am wiping a round table I feel like I’m back home as a child wiping our dining room table for supper because it is the same color of wood and it was round back when there weren’t such a lot of us and we didn't put all the leaves in.
Folding napkins. Umm… it’s pretty self-explanatory. Fold it in half, fold the two sides into the middle, fold it in half again. Either in the GT office (which is crowded and claustrophobic) or in the Diamond Horseshoe (which is large, beautiful, and pleasant). I wouldn’t want to fold napkins every day, but it makes a very nice break if I’m feeling tired or want to pursue my own thoughts. Also it’s fun to be in the Diamond Horseshoe because periodically various interesting people come by, like the Frontierland street musicians. I think I have forever endeared myself to one of them because I knew that his instrument was a sousaphone, and listened with great interest to him explaining the different finishes of brass instruments. And sometimes the piano player who’s usually at Casey’s corner comes in and plays the piano that’s onstage to practice. When we’re table setting we fold napkins for the first hour (because no tables need setting yet) and when we get all girls and sit around the same table it feels like a quilting bee.
Fourth, set-ups. This means taking the folded napkins and putting a knife, big fork, and little fork on each one. (I am amused by the fact that while technically I suppose they are dinner forks and salad forks, I have never heard anyone refer to them that way. Even the managers call them big forks and little forks.) Then you stack them up and put them on the shelves according to how many – two, four, six, and eight, because those are the table sizes. Then when a table setter needs them, they just come take the stack of however many they need instead of having to count them. Oh, and I had better tell you that instead of “table for four” or “table for six,” we call it a “four-top” or a “six-top.” That’s also used to designate the stacks of napkins and silverware (aka “set-ups”), as in “I’m going to clean table 302, could you grab me a six-top?” Set-ups is another rather dull job, but it also makes a nice break because you can think about whatever you want to.
Last, stocking. This means bringing glasses, coffee mugs, trays, and ice to the drink stations on each side of the restaurant as they are needed, and taking the trash out of the drink stations when it gets full. It is hard work because the things are rather heavy, but it makes the time go by quickly. Some people hate it but I don’t mind it. Actually, it’s kind of fun. Especially like yesterday when Tam the server was impressed with how hard I was working and asked me if I wanted to work in his bakery someday when he starts it. I said, “Sure.” That seemed like the right sort of answer since of course I wouldn’t really promise to take a job sometime in the indeterminate future in an unknown location, but I liked the idea of it. Sort of like my mom and her friend saying they were going to run away to Tahiti. Stocking yesterday was actually very dull. For some reason nobody wanted to eat at Liberty Tree for lunch. Half the restaurant was empty, and we were all standing around bored. Although it was nice because I got to chat with some of the servers, and normally we’re all running around like crazy and can’t do that. Then when it was dinner time, we had a million people because it was raining outside and everyone wanted to come in and eat. We set towels out on the desk because everyone was coming in soaking wet…

Dinner at Liberty Tree is a character dinner, with Goofy, Minnie, Pluto, and Chip and Dale. I love them; they make life interesting… the first day I was table setting, I had put the silverware out on a table and was about to set out the plates, when Goofy came up and indicated to me that I ought to set the plates by standing in one place and frisbeeing them into their respective positions! I told him that I couldn’t do that, I would surely break the plates. “I could do it,” he said. I just shook my head and laughed. (And of course, he didn’t really say, “I could do it” out loud. But the characters say what they mean so well that when I think about it afterward, I can’t remember what motions they used, only what they communicated to me. So throughout my tales, I will say what the characters “said” as I understood it, quotation marks and all, rather than attempting to recall the motions they used to convey it. It’s easier.) And they are always teasing and goofing around, especially if we aren’t very busy or it’s toward the end of the night. Then Goofy will be balancing a tray on his nose, or putting one knee on a chair and sliding across the floor, pushing with the other foot as though it was a scooter, and Chip and Dale and Goofy will all be pulling each other’s aprons off, so the character attendants have to fix them… Patrick the character captain shakes his finger at them and scolds them, reminding me of a grumpy grandfather of several rambunctions children, who shakes his head and orders them to behave and pretends to be cranky but really loves them all.

I expect that’s enough for tonight. At least now you have a picture of what I’m doing these days. I’m working long hours, but enjoying it. And my coworkers are great too. Oh and Tiff (my roommate)’s friends Kari and Dory have arrived from Washington state to start their college programs, and we’re hitting it off just marvelously, especially Kari and I who spent all of today together and had a grand time. Most fun I’ve ever had running errands, I think. Oh and I bought my mother’s birthday presents today :-) It was the last day of the 40% holiday discount so of course I spent way too much money. I’m think I’m a bit of a spendthrift.
(Of course after thinking that I had to look up spendthrift on dictionary.com to see if that was true. Most of the definitions talked about spending money “wastefully,” “recklessly,” or “foolishly.” I don’t think I do that. But there was one definition that I think fits, from the Kennerman English Multilingual Dictionary. “A person who spends his money freely and carelessly.” That’s it exactly. I tend to spend money freely and carelessly. But then I make my own food cheaply (I can make a whole pot of hearty nutritious vegetable soup for a little over $5!) and don’t spend lots of money eating out to make up for it. But this is the last shopping spree type trip, because I don’t have the discount excuse anymore. From now on all purchases are thought about carefully and pondered for a few weeks before I decide if I really want it badly enough to spend the money on it. Okay, enough of me rambling about being a spendthrift…)
Oh and I have a library card now! At some point I’ll have to tell that story…

Love to all, and good night.