Tough Going

This is one of those nights when it’s really crashing down on me. Our biggest sales day of the year is coming up this weekend—on Saturday, our community festival takes place right outside the doors of the café. Last year’s festival was the busiest day of 2006, with sales for that one day equal to almost half what we were doing in a normal week back then. In an effort to maximize our opportunities (what with having the community block party right outside) we’ve gone out on a limb and advertised a "Wine Garden" for that day. The festival itself has no alcohol venue. So we have chosen to become "it." What am I thinking?????

I have no clue what kind of attendance we should expect. It’s our plan to have wine tasting, wine and beer by the glass, and a munchie bar. Haven’t even completely firmed up the menu, and here it is almost Thursday. Sigh! I know it will all come together in the end, but I just wish I was a little more on top of things. Doesn’t help that I am chronically stressed out by a million little details of the everyday running of the restaurant, and perpetually exhausted as well…

So I have this whole load of worries that I’ve been carrying around since we decided (at the last minute, more or less) to do this thing. And so, tonight, the husband and I proceeded to celebrate our arrival at home after a long and slightly disorganized dinner service at the café by…having a fight. A real knock-down drag-out, by our standards. Doesn’t matter what it was about. I mean, it does, but the story is long and convoluted, and you kind of "had to be there." In other words, it was a stupid fight, and if you tried to explain it to someone outside the relationship, they’d say, "Uhhh…What????"

The thing about it was, I was really taken aback by how mean we were to each other. I mean, the gloves were off from the get-go. And that just isn’t the way we argue. Or at least, it hasn’t been up ‘til now.

Yeah, we’re both totally stressed out. And we’re both weary to a degree that we never thought possible. But…I don’t know. Is that a good excuse for treating each other like crap?

And here’s the really crappy part: I know it’s my fault. In the past couple of weeks, we’ve gone through some insanely stressful days at the restaurant. Like the huge Sunday breakfast I had to cook by myself because my two "cooks in training" were both out of town and my "cook’s helper in training" decided to call in sick. The only one available to help me out was the poor husband, and I was SO freaked out that I was an absolute bitch to him. I can’t believe the things I said to him, the way I treated him, but I was so overwhelmed, I had absolutely no control over the things that were coming out of my mouth.

So, tonight, here we are standing in our kitchen at home, duking it out…and I can’t believe the things he’s saying to me. I can’t believe that he’s calling me names and accusing me of every nasty thing under the sun. And I am absolutely livid…until I realize I’m looking in a mirror. That I am reaping exactly what I have sown. And I just want to cut out my own tongue and strangle myself with it.

I know that if it came to a choice between our marriage and this stupid restaurant, there would be no choice at all. But I really don’t want to have to make that choice…