I didn't know how tense I was until I noticed how tense I wasn't.

While waiting, I went from anxious to furious in a heartbeat.  Furious was easier for me to manage. I stayed there for a long time.

Powerlessness is depressing, especially when the answer is out there but unavailable, and when finally available is only more confusing.  It's infuriating since it's so obviously fixable, and fury was a better place for me to be. 

Now it's all resolved and really no harm/no foul if looked at from a distance, but we were there, up close and personal.  All it took was people taking their jobs seriously, acting like professionals.  Grrrr......

We shook off some of the no longer necessary but still lingering feelings and took ourselves out for an early bird dinner before the Knicks game.  We were the only patrons at our go-to restaurant, now that the snowbirds have flown the coop and our temperatures are in the triple digits. The host was glad to seat us where we wanted, laughing about the fact of our reservation as we settled in.

We entered as refugees, fleeing people who just weren't doing their jobs with intention.  We weren't worried any more.  No, we were a combination of peeved and disappointed.

But our server appeared whenever we thought about her and never stayed longer than necessary.  She came equipped with smiles, a good memory (2 ice teas, no sweetener, no lemon, one straw.... always the same and rarely arriving that way), and a quantum relationship to the level of ice tea in my glass.

We went looking for comfort, for some reassurance that we were not the only people in the world to whom being conscientious was only the beginning of a job well done.  We knew the food and the ambiance would be what we needed, and that would have been enough.  The manager's apology and his taking responsibility for an innocent and inoffensive error and the warm and gooey bread with not one but two small sauce saucers induced my shoulders to come somewhat away from my ears.

But it was our server who reaffirmed my faith in people who go to work, who let me really laugh out loud, who replaced the ugh with some ahhhh.  There would have been no lasting fall out if she were less than wonderful, no reason to waste time being furious or anxious or depressed.  Laughing ruefully, we'd shake our heads at the sorry state of the world, and move on, comforted by the reliability of the establishment but not much else.

Instead, I felt my self returning to my self, leaving the worry and the angry and my hunched shoulders behind.  

All she did was do her job the way her job should be done.  That really shouldn't be remarkable, right?