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My Captain wanted to share a ‘family’ meal with his shift to honor Thanksgiving, even though they were not slated to work on that day, so he scheduled a shift a few days before the holiday to hold an official Pre-Thanksgiving Shift Feast.  Lt. Tom, Master Firefighter Johns, and I put together a menu, and I grocery shopped my fool head off.

I’m always happiest when I’m at the grocery store.  I love nothing better than to be be-bopping down the aisles to poorly re-rendered ’80’s music as I gleefully toss food items into my squeaky, wobbly-wheeled cart.  It’s the life I’ve chosen, and I’m good at it.  Don’t judge.

Our menu: Slow Cooked Roast Beast, Au Gratin Potatoes (Cheesy enough to kill a horse), Creamed Spinach/Artichoke Casserole (because CREAMED is the way God intended any vegetable to be eaten), Orange Glazed Carrots, Sage Sausage Stuffed Roasted Mushrooms, Hot Autumn Fruit Compote over Ice Cream, and Peanut butter Pie.  It was going to be fabulous.

The big day came, the Beasts were lovingly placed into two crockpots.  The side dishes chilled in the fridge, already prepared and awaiting cooking.  The men had their instructions for meal preparation.  The firehouse dining table was laid with tablecloth, adorned with Autumn-hued flowers, and the special ‘turkey-themed’ napkins were laid out.  And then…..

… the tones went off.

Montgomery County’s professional Trench Rescue Team was being dispatched

to aid a neighboring county’s volunteer rescue in their efforts to save a man trapped by a shale slough at a house construction site.

It would take them time to get there.  It would take them time to  establish what the other county needed from them.

It would take time to achieve that.  And it would take time to extract the victim.

And then it would take time to pack it all up and go back to the station.  Where they would then receive several more calls for various auto accidents and medical emergencies. They were in their element, doing what they do best, as much as their ability to support a different command would allow.

And dinner?  That forgotten thing that, in the grand scheme of priorities, fell way, way, way down the ladder?  Yeah, well….prolonged cooking time is not always kind to food.

The Roast Beast slow-cooked to the point where it fell apart.

The Potatoes and Spinach/Artichoke Casseroles were a bit dry. The Orange Glazed Carrots were mushy. The Sage-Sausage Stuffed Mushrooms were more like dehydrated pemmican. No one had time to buy vanilla Ice Cream, so they ate the hot Autumn Fruit Compote over ice cream flavors like Cookies and Cream (ugh!)

But the Peanut Butter Pie….it was as cold as it was supposed to be…flawlessly whipped-creamy, and sinfully delicious.

And so the meal, which was consumed by this band of tired, hungry heroes, who had spent the day collaborating in the service of strangers, may not have been perfectly executed, but it more than served its purpose.  It brought them together for a moment of non-emergency-oriented brotherhood, to pause and be grateful for what they have, for being able to do what they do, and to reflect on life as they so singularly live it.

My Captain’s intention for having this special meal was to affirm and strengthen the shift as more than just a ‘Special Ops’  team, but as a family.

It wasn’t just about the food.  It was also about solidarity.  Unity.  Fraternity.

But mostly it was about the Peanut Butter Pie.

I’m not going to lie to you, I’m a ‘gal’, but I’ve never been a ‘girl’.  I always WANTED to be a girl.  I always wanted to be cute, petite, feminine, gentle, and sweet.  But God, apparently, has a sense of humor, and instead built me to be a swarthy, moose-like, out-spoken, strong, wise-cracking ‘gal’.  That’s me.  Not so much a ‘girl’ as a ‘gal’.  Oh, believe me, I wanted to be all those other “Girly-girl” things, but I’ve long since come to terms with the big wonderfulness that is me.  I’ve embraced the Moose.

This world needs Mooses.

But as equally as I’ve never fit into the world of Girly-girl, neither have I completely fit into the world of Manly-man.  This was driven home to me last night as I overheard a conversation between My Captain, and Critter.

It was more of a lesson, than a conversation.  It was about handshakes, and the importance of them in the Manly-man world.  Apparently, to earn his mancard, a man must have a handshake that grips somewhere between George Clooney, and The Hulk.  It has to be suave, confident, and comfortable, but also send the message that you are not someone to be trifled with.  It requires eye contact, squared shoulders, and focus.  There can be no wavering.  There can be no apologetically embarrassed hesitation.  And there sure as hell can be no dead-fish qualities to the grip.

Who knew there was so much at stake in a common greeting gesture?  I sure as heck didn’t.

My Captain kept telling Critter that it is important to ‘land’ properly.  That, just as with a handshake, if you mess up the first attempt, and it turns into something awkward, you will find yourself having to re-gain your footing, so, too, is life.  That it is better to do things ‘right’ the first time, than it is to half-ass it, do it ‘wrong’ and spend more time having to fix things.  Oh, he wasn’t suggesting that it is not ok to make mistakes, but he was definitely teaching Critter that first ‘everythings’ matter:  First impressions.  First dates. First grades.  First jobs.  First commitments. First tries at anything.  So it makes sense to do your best, and approach these things with deliberate, intentional effort.

A true man, he said, approaches life like he does a handshake.  With confidence and straightforward strength.

They then spent a few minutes practicing the handshake, working on the grip.  A true man’s compliment to another man, he said, is “Good grip!”.  I thought about what Girly-girls must practice, and couldn’t come up with a parallel, as it was never a world I lived in.  Am I supposed to be teaching Varmint some kind of hand-shake-life-lesson equivalent?

Oh, that poor child is so screwed.

If you need me,  I’ll be in the corner, practicing my Moose call. (We don’t have handshakes.)

Day four of anti-fat-butt morning walking:

I didn’t really feel like moving this morning, as reports, which have not been confirmed nor denied, state that I may, or may not, have eaten way too much Beef and Broccoli last night in a fit of loneliness.  How much Beef and Broccoli is too much Beef and Broccoli?  Well, that’s the funny thing about Beef and Broccoli overload…it’s personal.  One person’s adequate intake of Beef and Broccoli is another’s gaseously bloated, hellish indigestion, or GBHI.

I had GBHI last night, and into this morning.  In laymen’s terms, my tummy hurt.

In other news, saying ‘Beef and Broccoli’ several times over and over again is way more amusing than you might think.

In more other news, you just tried saying it.  I know you did.

My Captain came home this morning, pushed me into voting early (they only let me go through the line once, dammit.) and then wanted to walk my new morning exercise route with me.

I had no way to get out of it without disappointing him, so I pushed my GBHI into the background, and out my Beloved and I went.

I wasn’t sorry.  Today’s view was better than any other I’d ever had.

I found new interest in the idea of walking.

I didn’t feel my normal fatigue even when I passed the mile mark.

I found a reason to put pep in my step.

It was as if I was seeing the whole process of exercise in a whole new light. I can’t really put my finger on what it was, though.  Just something in the view made me glad to be there.

Oftentimes, the farm dogs will join me, but today they were nowhere to be found.  Though I did come upon these two dogs I’d never seen before, and remarked to my Captain that I hadn’t.

He paused, looked at me intently, then finally took a sip of his coffee, and chuckled in his deep, wonderfully sexy way, “They’re not dogs.  They’re goats.”

Oh.

My eyes ain’t what they used to be.

Unless, of course, I’m looking at my Beloved.

I could never mistake him for a dog!

Brace yourselves for campy inanity.

‘Course, if you have come to this blog on purpose, you were not expecting anything else.  Good for you!

Last night we as a family decided to carve our Jack O’ Lanterns. And by ‘we as a family’ I mean that I barked and bellowed and gnashed my teeth until they all came out onto the deck to shut me up.

I’ll tell you straight out that I am no novice at this.  Years of trial and failure have brought me a squash wisdom….call me the Gourd Whisperer.

And don’t mock my gloves.

I don’t ‘do’ cold and squishy if I can help it.

Oh, they laughed at me, of course, as they always do.  But I held fast as I pulled the nasty guts out of my flat little reddish gourd, with nary a dry heave.   And I had the last laugh when I saw Varmint sport this face:

And this face:

She could hardly get past the innards, my little Rosebud.  But Critter, total boy that he is, didn’t let anything bother him as he plotted and crafted and designed this year’s masterpieces.

He didn’t let Varmint’s squeals of disgust shake him as he worked. He had the concentration of Dr. Frankenstein!!!

With deft surety, he grabbed my best apple paring knife and proceeded to Edward Scissorhands the heck out of a pumpkin that weighs more than he does.

That’s right, I just turned Edward Scissorhands into a verb.  Let’s move on.

Sure, you’d think that My Captain would admonish him to be careful, but he was too busy carving his pumpkin IN HIS LAP.

That’s right, right on top of the ‘ol family jewels.

Even Varmint was concerned about that particular choice.  She envisioned sliced femoral arties mixed with pumpkin guts.

I reminded him that ‘safety never takes a holiday’, and would a Montgomery County Safety Officer approve?

He largely ignored me.

I begged Grandma Jane to step in.   But she was busy participating in her own way….  I hoped she was knitting a tourniquet as we would surely need it.

I kid you not.  The entire time she was just sitting there knitting and snickering.  What the heck, Grandma!

And me?  What did I get to spend the rest of the evening doing?   See this pile ‘o seeds?

I had to sift through them to get the gold out.

Gold that I then cleaned and dressed in a mixture of soy sauce, Worcestershire, garlic salt, sesame oil, sugar, and vinegar, and then baked slowly for this:

Oh YEAH, baby!

Like I said, I’m no novice.  I know EXACTLY what I’m doing here.

No Tourniquets required.

I walked again today.  That’s two whole days in a row.  Count ’em.  TWO.  Two days of invigorating fresh air.  Two days with a bounce in my semi-bionic step.  Two days of semi-occluded, sludge-filled arteried, aerobic activity.

You could say that I’m ‘on a roll,’ but whenever someone says that about me, it usually has something to do with lunch, and it’s probably whole grain.

There was a small setback, however, in my newest plan to control my burgeoning flabalanche.

You see, because my subconscious knew that I would be walking a mile or two today, my appetite decided to make up for it by forcing me to eat more breakfast than usual.

I KNOW it doesn’t work that way, that the law of thermodynamics still applies when trying to reduce one’s fat stores.  But the super-evil-villain-genius that is my appetite was one step ahead of me, the fiend.

I’m going to have to outthink him.  I WON’T go for a walk tomorrow.  That will teach him!

Ha!

You’ve got to get up pretty early in the morning to get one over on this ol’ bird!