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In a world peppered with negativity, some pretty amazing events have occurred in our lives since the last time I wrote. Our little girl has turned four months old, and she is all smiles and squeals, quite unlike the colicky first seven weeks we survived. I’m pretty sure she said, “Da-Da,” but it may have just been gas. She eats, sleeps, pees, and poops a lot, and she is growing at what seems to be an exponential rate. People say over and over that you should enjoy these moments, and we are. We love all of the time we get to spend with the girls, and we are growing ever closer together. What a beautiful life.

About a month ago, after Amanda’s F.M.L.A. was over, she was let go from her job of roughly eleven years at the Lafayette Club. It was one of the most toxic workplaces either of us had ever been a part of, and realistically, it was probably for the best, but they did it in a shady way and used people as pawns to weasel their way through the process. We aren’t resentful, we are grateful that she no longer has to put up with the people that make it so poisonous. And, she is eligible for unemployment, so she gets to spend a lot of time with little Elsee Anne.

We have been working on something big. I have flirted with the idea of writing about it for a while now, but major developments have occurred in the past few days that make me confident enough to say something. My wife and I are making a big leap together into the life of $&%@-%&*!@#$%@$.

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Twenty-seven years ago, at the tender age of 15, I started my career in foodservice. I worked at Miami Subs on the corner of Snelling and University in the Midway area of St. Paul. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, and the employees were all on some mixture of ephedrine, alcohol, and cocaine. Cool. Over the months that I worked there, I learned some basics of food handling, customer service, theft by swindle, and proper cleaning techniques. I remember the day they packed up after we closed one summer night. They said to us at the end of our shift that we had to help them load everything on to a U-Haul, equipment, tables, chairs, booths, etc.,and they would drive off into thedistance. They gave us some “energy” pills, and we worked through the night.

A night or two after, a friend and I broke into the building to steal anything we could. Those were the days of cigarette machines, and we knew that if you tipped them upside down and back right-side-up, all of the cigarettes would eventually fall out, which they did. We also decided to pull the little lever on the wall to suppress a non-existent fire. The Ansul system exploded with a powder shower that we could still see weeks later even as people had tried their hardest to clean.

I was a mess at that age. Not fully addicted to anything, but into the criminal lifestyle; I was no good for society.

A few weeks later I was working at Taco Bell in the Midway. On a whim, I stopped at Burger King to eat, and the manager came out and asked if my friend and I were looking for jobs. I said I already had one, and I made $5 per hour. He said he could beat that by a quarter, and I was hooked! My time at the King was criminal at best. I sold copious amounts of marijuana at the drive-through window, and both of the managers were on board with it.

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Years later, into a new millennium, decades after my inauspicious start, I have years of love and passion for the culinary arts. I have worked for great and terrible chefs, and I have gleaned whatever good I could through each scenario. I have worked as a non-functioning alcoholic, a drug-addicted line cook, and sober as a sober judge.

These last few years of my life in general have been the most rewarding. I have intrinsic knowledge of how to cook, how to manage, how to create a menu, and how to achieve consistency—the ultimate ingredient for any successful restaurant.

My wife has the knowledge to lead and train her own team of front-of-the-house employees to give spectacular service to everybody that steps into her domain. She has mollified the highest-brow of our society, and treats everybody as if they were a part of our family. Our combined training, years of practice, and a great love and dedication can lead us to just one point.

The next great step for us is coming.

In my next post.