Shots of Dr. Pepper...

For those of you who might be some what out of my social loop (more or less how I spread the news concerning my life events) I'm now back at Chili's. You'd think that three years there had been enough, but not so.

Truth be told I sought out this position so that I might have a better work schedule. Now I have more weekday and morning hours free. In fact most of my shifts are evening ones, so usually I don't have to be at work until 4:00 or 5:00 pm.

The downside in this whole equation is that I'm still occupied in the morning hours with research and writing. This means I'm still up at a decent hour and greeting the day. Lately though rising hasn't been the problem it's how I've been greeting the new day that gets me. I've been rather a grump. Why you ask? Well I work evenings and this usually means I'm not home until 11:30 or midnight, sometimes even later.

One would think I could go straight to bed (especially seeing as I'm usually dead on my feet), again not so. I'm sure servers the world over will tell you how a certain amount of time is required after each shift in order to wind down.

When you spend your working hours running around filling this order or refilling another you can't automatically shut yourself down and fall into bed...it's quite impossible. It usually takes me a good 1.5 to 2 hours to quiet myself enough to finally fall asleep.

That's usually around 1 or 2 am and then I find my alarm sounding off at 8 am the next morning. This is not at all pleasant for me since I am and always have been a 8 to 9 hour sleep kind of girl. Sure I can handle one or two nights of sleep than perfect sleep, but as those nights begin to add up I start to become one BIG grump.

Okay so there is no simple solution to this predicament. I guess my body will eventually adjust to a few less hours of sleep a night. When I was in college it adjusted (though back then I spent most of my holiday time sleeping).

I will be doing one thing in the next couple of weeks and that is knocking off the Dr. Pepper shots. It just so happens that at Chili's servers are required to use cone cups if they are thirsty (about the serving size of a shot). I tend to be quite taken with the Dr. Pepper since it's the one thing that gives me the added energy and pep for my shift. I think though if I cut out the Dr. Pepper maybe (just maybe) I could decrease the wind down time I need at the end of my shift. Who Knows!!!