Friday, 9 January 2015

Keeping It Real by Frizzy Lizzy

Hi dear friends and followers, here we are again Saturday, would you join me at Frizzy Lizzy's?


Keeping It Real by Frizzy Lizzy

So you ask me what is the craziest thing that second ex, Frank, ever did? Well, Sarah, that's not an easy question to answer. I suppose that it really depends upon what you call "crazy."

There's the time that he took on the hornets in the yard shed and won. And there's the day that he tried to fix the leak in the roof of our first camper, or maybe the time that he decided to cook steaks over the coals on New Year's Eve. Or maybe when our neighbor gave him the little green peppers to eat - there are many to choose from!

Since we just had New Year's maybe I should reminisce a bit about what we did after the crowd left our home following Christmas dinner.

Now Frank was not always a pain-in-the-ass. For several years he was a pretty good man to live with, and if he wanted to try to recapture the spirit of Christmas past, as it was for him when he was an only child, and do it for his sons and their children, so be it. I'll try anything at least once if there's a good person involved.

So we had a real blowout of a Christmas, complete with more gifts, decorations, food, and people than I have ever seen in my life! We socialized all Christmas Eve while playing cards, drinking, and doing some of the preparations for the dinner. We seldom got 2 hours' sleep before Frank would wake the kids, make the coffee and get all of us adults to drag our butts to the Christmas tree to open gifts.

In short, we were pretty tired by the time Christmas night came around.

It became our custom to go to this campground where Frank and his mom had a camp trailer on a nicely kept campsite for New Year's and a few days beyond. We had the place to ourselves and it was so restful! We slept, woke, and ate on whatever schedule we desired, and since we were not driving anywhere we took a drink or two; or three; or more.

This one New Year's Eve it was rather mild weather with no snow on the ground. Frank and I went into town to buy groceries and he got it into his head that he wanted to make steak and shrimp for supper. It sounded good to me, so I went along with the idea.

We got home and drew water for cooking the shrimp from the freeze-proof faucet outside the trailer and steamed them. They smelled delicious! But the steaks were a different story.

Frank had forgotten to look for charcoal when we were out and by the time he was ready to cook the store had closed.

Now many other men would have settled for taking two New York strip steaks and putting them in a frying pan but not Frank. He had a better idea.

He went out to the fireplace that we had built in the yard in front of the trailer and cleared all of the leaves and debris out of it. Then he came in and had a shot of Canadian Club and a beer. On an empty stomach.

He went out to the shed and found some newspapers and made wads out of them and put the wads in the fireplace. So far, so good. Now to fine some dry kindling wood and bigger wood for a fire. That came after another shot and another beer.

So he went back out and began to search for kindling and wood. A half-hour later he came back and tried to light a fire. The wood was damp and the results were so pitiful! I felt badly for the poor man.

Then he went into the shed and brought our more newspaper. He folded it in two and used it to fan the fire. Sure enough, the smoke dissipated and a flame began to dance in the fireplace, but as soon as he stopped it was back to smoldering again.

And that is when he went back into the shed and came back out with an extension cord. He plugged it in to the outlet on the side of the trailer. I had no idea in hell of what he was doing but he did. He returned to the shed and came back out with a large electric fan that he plugged into the end of the extension.

He took the fan out to the fireplace, turned it on, and aimed it where the smoldering was going on. In a few seconds there was flame again!

Frank left the fan to blow on the damp wood like mechanical bellows! He watched it from inside of the trailer while we both toasted his ingenuity. Then he took the steaks and threaded them onto the long forks that we use for roasting weiners and walked back out to the fire. He returned about 10 minutes later with two nice steaks, done rare!

Now to the untrained mind the notion of steaks cooked over an open fire in the middle of winter might seem like sheer craziness, but not to Frank.

After supper we tried sitting outside by the fireplace. We did that just long enough to feel our front parts staying nice and warm but our backs freezing. He figured out how to cook steaks and give us a nice fire but keeping our asses toasty, well, you can't have everything, can you, Sarah?

How about more coffee and another dip of ice cream with your black forest cake?

Thank you very much again, dear friends, for visiting my blog. Please share your thoughts with us, if you will. have a great Weekend.


ڰۣIn Loving Light from the Fairy Ladyڰۣ

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