Tomorrow will be the twelfth day in-a-row I work. Tomato dinners rolled right on through my weekend, so here I am on day eleven, spent and tense. The first few days of this week are starting to fade from my short-tern memory, so really after day ten, it doesn't get any worse.

"You look stern," says pastry boss Julie as I grate parmesean.

"No, I'm trying to look stoic." I say. I have a persistant slight glare when my brow is at rest, patially due to an early childhood experience involving a scooter and a rusty nail. I have a little scar on the inside of my left eyebrow. I am permanently a little furrowed, unless I "try" to relax it. The pasta girl calls it mala cada or bad face

I have plopped hundreds of roast garlic-studded beefsteaks and brandywines. I fought with the tomato linguini and sardines, which I never learned to love. I didn't like how the sauce melded into the noodle so tomatoey, fruit flies would gather around it.

The squid-garlic-tomato-parmesean canneloni were great/ Just a week earlier, I wondered if squid and cream could mix. As usual, pretty much anything you make into a canneloni is wonderful. Canneloni can-a-only be delicious.

Oh, yeah, back to how tired and miserable I am scraping down the soapy tables for the eleventh night in a row.

On my weekend I plan on climbing a tree and staring at the sun through the leaves.