It has been truly rewarding to hear all the great feedback from my blog. Just even people dropping by to say they enjoyed reading, means a lot. Thank you all for all following me in my travels!
I’m sorry it takes so long to post, but I’ve never been busier. We have guests on board the boat now, and it is go go go. I barely have a chance to catch my breath. I hear people say this as adults and I think to myself yeah yeah.. or when my mom comes home from work and she walks in the door and I’m already bombarding her with what’s for dinner can I have money for being the best daughter in the world? And she says just hang on and let me put my feet up for a few minutes... from this point on I will NEVER argue it. I now 100% understand what she means. The owners arrived on board on December 10th and will be on straight through til Jan 7th. Which means, we no longer work our more relaxed 8-5 days, we work from 6 am before they wake up until after they go to bed at night, maybe 10 or 11. And we work, every day. No days off while the guests are on board. My body and mind have truly never been pushed like this before and it’s quite amazing to see what the human body is capable of, although I wish it was being tested on someone else, haha. I have been working back-to-back 14, 15, and 16 hour days with very brief breaks. We are anchored in the harbor that the owners live in, so they go to shore if need be, or need to go up to their house to get something. We only get long breaks in the afternoon if say they step off the boat for lunch or something. But other than that, we are working constantly. My feet are bleeding from the shoes, every morning I wake up and strap on 7 bandaids. And still bleed by the end of the day.
On board, we have the owners (a couple), their daughter, and her 17 month old son. Ontop of our already very demanding job, we sometimes get thrown the baby, and that is even more tiring than our work already. Albeit, rewarding, he’s a beautiful little boy and I love him even though he still looks at me like I have 12 heads sometimes, but he makes me smile and I could listen to him laugh all day.
Along with being a nanny half of my day, I will try to describe some of my daily duties. When I first wake up, I go right to the pantry (the stewardess headquarters basically) and I make sure the tea trays are ready for the regular every morning routine for the guests and we wait for them to wake up and call for it to be brought up to their room, down to the gym, or wherever they are. First girl awake (we are on a rotation, first one gets up at 6, then 7, then last at 8.. but since I’m new I’m up at 6 everyday to get used to all the morning routines. I used to be with another girl but now I’m alone.. go Age.) First girl awake will turn on all the lights on the interior of boat, unlock doors, such and such. We tend to the guests morning needs, and if they don’t need us we may start off by walking around and fingerprinting all glass, windows, just anything with fingerprints on it. Then we may dust, vacuum, we check all the heads (bathrooms) and clean those top to bottom very thoroughly. Once the guests are eating breakfast, we get to their rooms as fast as we can.
Let me just say, this whole stewardess thing, is like trying to be a mouse. You don’t want them to know you even exist most of the time. Walking very quietly around the boat, sneaking into their rooms to make them absolutely immaculately clean and perfect and have them never even know you left the pantry. So then we scramble to get up to the master stateroom or down to the daughter or baby’s room. Must have iron in hand, yes we iron the sheets and pillows ON the bed, no wrinkles. Unacceptable. Cleaning room top to bottom, putting clothes away, organizing any messes (aka tons of toys and little baby books), cleaning the bathrooms and making sure there isn’t ONE water mark anywhere, on the marble floors and counters, the glass, the silver rails, the mirrors, the gold toothbrush holders and soap dispensers and faucets, the biday and the toilet, and making sure you fold the best toilet paper diamond ever. I am, if I do say so myself, a damn good diamond folder. If all else fails, I have a future in TP folding. Yahoo...
Once thats done we are usually clearing breakfast, pulling out all silverware (real silverware...) and such and such for lunch. Each day there are a bunch of different random tasks to be done. You may need to vacuum the walls in a certain room, or start ironing napkins. This month is a very busy month, as they are hosting many parties on board. We had our first one the second day they were on board, 80 people. It went very well and the owners were very please with the service. Hoorah! I must say, the INSANE chaos of rushing around in the kitchen and pantry and absolute crazy hectic-ness of the parties and then putting that tray in your hand and walking out the door with a graceful smile as if you just received a massage is quite hilarious. The adrenaline is kind of fun though, and before you know it, the 6 hour party is over. Oh but don’t forget cleaning takes another 3 and you’re not going to bed til 1 am.
Also, it’s not just guest areas on the boat, the dirtiest place is the crew mess! While tending to teh guests needs almost 24 hours a day we 3 girls still have to try to find time to clean the crew mess, and we have to clean the captains cabin everyday as well. Oh and ontop of ALL of that... there is always piles, and piles, and piles of laundry to be done. It is a NEVER ending process. Usually one girl is assigned to laundry all day and pulled up when needed for meal service and such, but you pretty much are stuck in the cave of laundry all day and it’s constantly going you never run out of washing, hand washing, drying, ironing, steaming, folding... it never ends. But, you do get to throw your iPod into some speakers and listen to your music all day. Not too shabby. I actually prefer laundry...
There are many other random tasks we do during the day but I’m having a brain fart cause work erases all normalcy of my head, but at night it’s the same deal. While they are eating dinner, we are running (ever so quietly, and actually never running... as I’m sure you can all imagine I’ve been yelled at for speed walking.. thats not graceful. Hello have you met me?) because then we turn down the beds. Put the porthole covers on, pull back the sheets turn over the pillows (and make sure you brought the iron). Often times I give the baby a bath at night and put him to bed, didn’t know I signed on for diaper duty when I wanted this job, haha.
There are a bunch of funny things that still blow my mind everyday that I must speak of. First of all, if you EVER walk by a tissue box that isn’t looking like a flower, you might as well go home. Tissue boxes are arranged by pulling two pieces out, laying one ontop of the other (but at an angle so it isn’t a square.. gah how do I explain this in writing)... You then pinch the middle and stick it back in the box so the ends of the tissue stick up it looks like a flower. Everytime. There is never a tissue box allowed to have just one tissue coming out. And while we’re talking about tissues, shall I mention these sparkle? They seriously have glitter on them or something. It’s weird. Never seen sparkly tissues before.
Ha.. it’s probably crushed up little diamonds or something.
Another thing is, you walk into a bathroom to clean it and see the marble floors thinking yup thats gonna be cold. Oh wait, no it’s not, of course their marble floors are heated. Pretty nice I must say, I hate having cold feet so walking on warmth is a treat. I have to constantly keep myself in check, surrounded by so much expensive and ridiculous things I’d never have myself (heated marble floors? WHAT?), it’s very weird to be in this atmosphere of so much money.
If you know me, you know I tend to have my not so gracious moments. Like biking into a parked U-haul trailer truck, breaking my finger playing a rousing game of billiards, tripping over absolutely nothing, someone injuring my sternum from hugging me.. the list goes on. BUT! I am proud to say (and knocking on wood as I say it) that I haven’t been too uncoordinated yet. On our first big party, about 2 hours into it I thought to myself, wow, none of these crystal champagne and wine glasses have been broken yet, impressive. Not even 30 seconds later, SMASH. I turn around and someone dropped one, breaking into a million little pieces. My first reaction instantly was “I’M SO HAPPY THAT WASNT ME”. Then everyone that was back in the kitchen/pantry was frantic to clean it up, sure enough someone comes through the door with a huge tray and runs into someone else, smashing another whole slew of glasses. We now have the full attention of all the guests on board, how embarrassing. BUT! IT STILL WASNT ME! And although I was still back there being looked at along with my coworkers by all the guests, I didn’t care because it wasn’t me haha. I was proud to make it through my first big night and not break anything.
But yesterday, didn’t have the smartest day. These very long strenuous days are surely starting to wear...
In the morning while remaking the bed, I grabbed for the iron without looking at just placed my fingers on the hot plate of the iron. Burned the fingertips on my left hand, nice. Don’t ever do if you can try, not so good. I went down to the pantry to shove my hand in some ice water, and my captain walks by and saw me and the look on my face and started laughing and just said “impressive” and walked away. Hahahaha... crap. Later that day I was down in laundry, ironing the inside flap of a pillow case, and the outside flap of course trapped all the steam inside and I gave my other hand an incredibly bad steam burn. Far more painful than touching the hot plate of the iron. Mind you, we use this huge and powerful industrial iron and the steam that this thing generates is just unbelievable and I trapped my hand in a huge cloud of it. Smart, I love when I use my brain.
We have 3 outfits we wear.
-Our everyday working outfit, is a white polo shirt with navy blue rim, the name and logo of the boat on our left chest, a navy blue skirt (skort) and white flat shoes (that are basically 100 percent plastic and made by sketchers... enough explanation as to why my feet are constantly bleeding and my shoes are no longer white in most places...)
-Then we have our whites. The same white shoes, with another white polo (button down this time) that has the epaulettes (google it, very sailor looking) on the shoulders. Much lighter material shirt, not cotton like our every day polos. We also wear a white knee length skirt. This outfit is for welcoming guests on board, or fancy dinners and parties.
-Then we have our blacks. A black short sleeve button down shirt with the yacht logo, and a black knee length skirt, and black flats. This outfit is for night, we put it on every night about 5 or 6 pm (unless there’s a party, then we put on our whites).
We get changed 2 or 3 times a day, and then again in the morning and night of course. It’s annoying haha. Also, I wear a size 7.5 shoe, my black shoes are 9’s. You can only imagine that every step I take my feet pop out and make a flip flop noise. It’s obnoxious and obviously going to be the reason I trip and drop something one of these days, but I’m the new kid and I get all the clothes that fits no one. I have all larges, extra larges, and size 6 and 8 and such in skirts and have to fold them in the backs and pin them every time I get dressed. It’s quite a process.
Christmas! Here I was thinking I’d be waking up christmas morning just wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, but every year the captain organizes a secret santa and a yankee swap. It’s actually exciting! For my secret santa, I had to buy for our 2nd chef, Emi. Shes probably in her 40s or 50s, this hilarious and sweet Philipina woman. She told my 2nd stew Caitlin to tell whoever had her that she wanted Chanel number 23 rouge orange lipstick. hahahahahahah. Wow. She said she wanted to make sure she got something she wanted and would use instead of a gift she’d hate and throw out. We had a 30 dollar spending limit and it was about 35 bucks so I figured whatever it’s christmas and I’m only buying for one person might as well make her happy. But, I’m Adrienne and I have to be an ass, so I took an old book that’s titled “Naked Julia” or something ridiculous and cut out the middle of every page with an exacto knife and put the lipstick inside so that wrapped up she thinks shes getting a book. Muahahahaha, it’s going to be hilarious. She’ll see a big present addressed to her and be like shit, that’s not lipstick. It’s going to be great.
For the yankee swap, we were supposed to buy something for about 5 bucks that was a fun or joke gift, so I may have bought a couple funny inappropriate items, take a guess. But whatever, I’m immature and I love it and it makes life (and especially this job) more fun and it’s going to be hilarious to see people fight over condoms and lube.
We have a little fake christmas tree up about 2 feet tall in our crew mess, and it’s fully decorated with awesome ornaments and really pretty lights and everyone is about done with their shopping so there are presents under the tree and it actually kind of feels like christmas, it’s nice :)
I think what I’ve learned so far is that I am going to be the best house wife ever. Except not, I’ll probably just end up being my moms slave. But truly, this is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, if not the hardest. I can’t lie, it’s not as pretty as it seems. I don’t blog about the rudeness I deal with and how I’m spoken to and treated, it’s honestly pretty awful. I cry quite often and wonder how I’m even doing this. I may have no idea what I want to do with my life or what my purpose is on this planet, and this is just another adventure on the way to finding out, but for being 20 years old, I do know one thing, and that is that I know myself very, very well. I know who I am and what I believe, and I have a strong gut and intuition. I know that this job isn’t for me, and all day during work I daydream of the things and places I want to go next. But for now, I’m trying to muster up all the strength I have to push through for a while and get through these next few weeks while guests are on board, and hopefully things will get better afterwards. If not, we’ll see where life takes me next. I try to stay positive all day long, put a smile on when it’s hardest (I sing “put a smile on, put a smile on, everybody come on” the McDonald’s theme song in my head.. yeah it takes that much, cause then I make myself laugh and it works haha). This job is very difficult and I’m looking for inspiration and motivation everyday, but it’s a good challenge and I’ve already learned so much about myself and I am getting stronger each day.
A great quote I read today.. some food for thought:
"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for."
-Epicurious quotes, Greek Philosopher, BC 341-270
