Saturday, April 23, 2011

A pocket-full of hardware, and other randomness

I've been quiet on the blog of late because things have been somewhat hectic. On Monday Bristol went to the vets' for her checkup and lab work. The vet was very happy with her physical exam and said that everything looked great. He drew blood for labs and said they'd be in by Tuesday morning. The labs weren't in until Thursday afternoon. I was not a happy camper and kept calling the vets' office who was probably equally unhappy at being bothered by the crazy obsessive dog lady. Finally they came in on Thursday afternoon and everything was normal. My vet said that she has the blood of a six-year-old dog. For a thirteen-year-old dog, I'd say she's doing pretty darned good.

I had yesterday off because it was Good Friday and I live in predominately Catholic New Orleans. I went shopping and to lunch with a friend.

Today I helped Mister Pawpower assemble our new barbecue grill that I bought yesterday. I am assembly impaired, or something. I do not know the difference between a washer and a wing-nut. Mister Pawpower, however is the assembly master. I was the official holder of the hardware. Once he explained the differences between washers, wing-nuts, nuts, bolts and lock-washers, I was good to go. We got the barbecue grill put together and I screwed the handle onto the lid of the grill all by myself, and I didn't even break anything!

After we finished with the grill, we went to the store for beer, but alas, they don't have their liquor license as of yet. This is very sad because in my humble opinion, beer is an integral part of any proper barbecue. Hopefully we can solve this problem by tomorrow which is the big day.

We used to live in another house about three blocks away from our current one. Our neighbor was this elderly lady who was at least eighty-five years young.
Well one day, shortly after we moved in, Mister Pawpower and I decided to do a barbecue. We had some friends over and Mister Pawpower took the charcoal, the lighter fluid and the matches outside. He had just lit the coals and the flames were kind of high when our neighbor stepped outside. all of the color drained from her face when she saw the blind man with the matches and she yelled "OH SWEET LAUD!!" You could tell that her horror of the blind man playing with fire was doing battle with her proper civilized southern lady sensibilities. The sensibilities won out and in a very calm voice, she said "Ah, you're barbecuing... I see...."
I did not make any sarcastic remarks about her need to overstate the obvious, but instead offered her some food as any proper Southerner would do. She declined and went back into her house.

However she still didn't trust my husband not to burn down the entire block, and our sighted friends frequently saw her twitch the curtain aside to look out the window. Guess she wanted to make sure that our back yard didn't become an inferno while she was unaware.

We have not barbecued yet since we've been in this new house, so the reactions from the neighbors might be interesting.

It's that whole assumption that blind equals incapable. Educating by doing, I guess that's how I'll teach 'em.
I really want to learn to barbecue so Mister Pawpower is going to teach me how to set up the charcoal and set it alight and how to cook on the grill. I'm very excited about this, but I promise not to burn down our house!

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