Oh, man, what a weekend, talk about crazy and tiring.
I don’t know if many of you have a large family. I do. I suppose that term is a little subjective. After all, some of you might think that a large family is 10-15 people, if you’re a single child for instance, and some of you might be thinking that the Duggar family must be having some reproductive issues. In which case I urge you to just not have sex. For me, though, I consider my family to be quite large, indeed. No, I’m not talking about the six of us in my immediate family, or even the spread of that with marriage and kids into a family of twelve, though I bet a lot of you are going, “FOUR KIDS? Did your parents even know what birth control was?” The answer should obviously be, “A Challenge.”
All of that is just build up, though, for the crazy weekend I’m seriously needing to recover from, though. You see, Saturday was Family Barbecue day. That means, in addition to all twelve of of us that regularly gather at my home for things like family dinners, there were a lot more, too. Now, not nearly as many as would be at a family reunion (where it is likely for the numbers to rocket well into the triple digits), but enough to keep you on your toes at all times. Fortunately, they came in waves, and I got to have a nap between them. Still, there was something like 35 people in my house on Saturday, and at least 1/3 of them were little plague carrying monkey-gremlins, aka, kids.
Not too out of the ordinary, actually. I’m pretty used to large, eruptive crowds thanks to the fact that I am in a huge family and we like to get together. I’m not complaining. I actually feel a little bad for the people with small or distant families. I just don’t understand a world where you don’t have these big gatherings to look forward to/dread.
A First Time For Everything
Like I said, this wasn’t an abnormal weekend for me. My family gathers as often as it can. What was new for me, though, was the responsibility that was shunted onto me for the day.
I cooked all the meats on the barbecue.
ALL THE MEATS!
So basically, I turned the gas on the propane tank all the way up, lit it with a very long handled lighter, and watched as the grill that was seriously in need of cleaning went up into a giant ball of fire…
Then I put hamburgers on it.
Now, if you’re not aware of what happens to hamburgers when you put them directly above fire, let me describe it in one brilliant Onomatopoeia:
FWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!
Yeah, apparently, when you put greasy meats on a barbecue grill everything goes up in flames.
Fortunately, I was on the task, and I speak fluent fire, so I told it to “Calm the frack down!” “Fwooshcracklesnap”
Then I took the mostly not burned hamburgers off and cooked the brats and hot dogs. Nobody seemed to notice that I came really close to both burning down the entire city and ruining dinner with my giant flames. Also, I had bought some beer, so they all seemed pretty content to let me do whatever it was I was doing. I think they were afraid of my Fire Spirit Dance, but really, how do you expect to keep the barbecue grill from growing into a full sized inferno without it.
In the end, the fire continued to burn for like an hour after I turned off the propane. Actually, I just closed the lid and went inside to eat, so as far as I know, the fire could theoretically still be burning out behind my house. I’d have no idea, because I don’t go outside that often. Also, once you eat like 7 pounds of hamburgers, hotdogs and bratwursts, you pretty much enter a diabetic coma while trying to watch the Stanley Cup playoffs.
It’s no big deal, it wasn’t a real game, it was just Boston vs. Washington. Not even the players care who won that series. It’s not like it was Pittsburgh.
So a couple of hours later, I awake to find that the people in my house have completely transformed into a different set of people.
This happens on Barbecue day, because people will randomly leave and arrive over the course of several hours.
It’s a thing that happens at my house.
This time, though, I didn’t have to cook food for all of them, because I already had cooked it all earlier in the day. However, there were also delicious meat balls now, because my dad was showing off his awesome Celebrating Home Bean Pots, and Meatballs are the best thing to show off that power.
Seriously, though, guys, these things are magical. I have yet to ruin ANYTHING I’ve cooked in one. I’m actually tempted to get one for the Notoriously horrid cook, Yeti_Detective, to see how powerful that magic really is. If he can cook something in it, I will start a government program to require one in every home in the country to substantially reduce the rate of food cooking related deaths.
So, after my nap, I got to eat delicious meat balls and left over bratwursts, which, if you know me, basically means I was happy and cheery, so I played some party games with my friends and family and when they were all finally exhausted and leaving, I… ate more left overs and fell back into my food coma.
Sunday was spent pretending to recover, but actually just getting more tired, and then I went and saw Cabin in the Woods, which I will not spoil for you, but suggest you go and see right now.
Basically, imagine if Joss Whedon pretended to be Aaron Sorkin and wrote the BEST DAMNED HORROR MOVIE EVER!
It’s basically the perfect way to end your weekend, and leaves you sitting in your cubicle on Monday morning going, “Rest now?”