Page 25 of Nailed (Dad Bod Contracting 3)
“Ehhh? I don’t know. I’ve done a muscle car; I’ve done a truck, and now this. I think I’d like to work on something a little obscure or different. One of those old seventies or eighties Toyotas or Land Rovers like you see in the documentaries about Africa or Australia, or an Austin Healy, or a Fiat, or a Rolls or something.”
As we continue down I-294, we chat about his passion for restoring old cars for a while, and then he asks about how I ended up working for a nonprofit.
“Honestly, it was mostly just chance,” I say. “I’d been working dead-end jobs for years—waitressing, hostessing, answering phones, crap like that. I have a degree in business, but when Paul and I got married, I got pregnant with Nate pretty much right away, and we decided I’d be a stay-at-home mom. But then Paul couldn’t hold down a steady job, and I didn’t have the time to really go job hunting properly, I just had to find something to pay the bills. And this was when the market was in the tank and there were no jobs anyway, so finding a job as a waitress was pretty much the best I could do at the time. I had the degree and the internship, but no experience, so I couldn’t just go and get a career-trajectory sort of job even in a good economy. Then Paul and I divorced, and I was…” I shake my head and shrug. “I was miserable. I was overweight and out of shape, working two jobs as a single mother, and getting basically nothing from Paul in alimony or child support. I decided the first thing I had to fix was my body, because that was the one thing I felt like I could control. So, I hired Audra to kick my ass into shape, because I was seriously at least fifty pounds overweight, probably more.”
Ryder eyes me. “I have trouble picturing that.”
I snort. “You don’t want to picture that, Ryder. It wasn’t good. At all. I’m not sure there are any photographs of me from that period, now that I think about it. Working and taking care of Nate was all I could do…it was just raw survival. But I’d gotten so fat and out of shape that I was ashamed of myself and refused to take pictures. And, really, it was just Nate and me for the first couple years. I had no friends, my parents are retired and live in Arizona, and my sister and her husband have five kids and live in Oregon. I moved here with Paul after we got married because he’d gotten a job of some kind. I don’t remember what, but it was a bullshit job that paid crap and he got fired after six months, leaving us with three grand a month in bills and no income, and a one-year-old son.”
“Ouch. So you went to work.”
I nod. “I went to work. I had no time to think about trying to transition from dead-end restaurant jobs to a career, because it was all I could do just to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. But I was just…honestly, at the end of my rope. Something had to change. It had to. And I figured the one thing that was in my control was what I ate and whether or not I was in shape. So I took extra shifts, saved my money, and paid Audra up front for six months of personal training. I told her I wanted to feel pretty again.”
Ryder’s smile is understanding. “I can empathize. After my divorce, I started drinking a lot and eating garbage. It was Franco who ended up kicking my ass into shape.” He laughs. “That about ended our friendship, though, because he was a real bastard about it. You’ve seen him—he’s so shredded it’s embarrassing. But, he got me to eat a bit more cleanly, made me do burpees and push sleds and barbell cleans and all that shit until I legitimately hated him.”
I laugh. “Oh god, I feel you there. I loathed and craved going to the gym in equal measure. I loathed it because burpees are from Satan and cleans are a close second, but I craved it because I started feeling strong again, and my clothes started getting looser and the scale finally started going to a number I wasn’t embarrassed by.”
“So how does getting into shape lead you to managing a nonprofit?”
We’re nearing downtown, now—the skyline is in front of us and getting closer by the mile.
“I was in shape, eating clean, feeling good…and still making crap for money. I’d managed to get promoted to assistant manager of a restaurant, so at least I was on a salary, but it was only nominally more money—it was steady, predictable money instead of the unpredictability of waitress tips. But I hated it. I hated the hours, I hated the food, I hated everything about it. And once I’d taken back control over what I looked like and felt like, the next logical step was improving my living situation. So, I started putting in applications. With no real business experience, I got zero offers from anything that wasn’t just a step sideways. I went from assistant manager to general manager, and actually sort of turned the restaurant around a bit. It had been floundering pretty badly, and when the GM quit, the owner put me in charge. So, I did things my way. Fired people and hired new ones, adjusted the menu, did some minor updates to the decor, streamlined the finances. It got business on the uptick, and I think that year or so of turning the restaurant around was what got me the job. One of my regulars was a woman named Mary-Jo. She was older, retired, a widow, and very well-off. The restaurant was walking distance to her condo, so she ate breakfast there every morning, and we got to be friends, because I always worked the opening shift. One day, she called me over to sit down with her after the breakfast rush.”
