With the arrival of Summer my thoughts turn to baseball, beer, barbecue, beaches, and visions of sugar plums while my wife’s thoughts turn to the stupid list of household projects I was coerced into making with her in the early Spring. At the dawn of each rain-free day, the list magically appears for perusal so we can decide which quality-of-life-enhancing project can be completed by sundown, or, if it’s an interior project, by bedtime. I whine and complain that I’m a writer and only write lists; I never thought I’d actually have to do what’s on them. If I’d known that, I would have put some thought into what I was writing.
My assignment was to trim all the ivy off our shutters and the outside of our windows before our house looks just like a giant chia pet. I enjoy the ivy because it keeps the house cooler and we don’t have to run the air conditioner as often. My wife refuses to go along with my idea for keeping our utility bills near zero by running the air conditioner in the Winter and the furnace in the Summer. The ivy grows rapidly and she’s concerned that if untrimmed, it may creep into our bedroom at night and into our throats and choke us. Pretty ridiculous. If anything, it would creep in, grab my wallet and smart phone to find some cheap airfare to Bermuda. Or maybe to Atlanta, where it could have a party with some kudzu, “the vine that ate the south.” But if the ivy was hoping to get lucky, forget it: Kudzu is asexual, so even dinner and drinks won’t help.
At least when all the ivy trimming and other miscellaneous yard work on the list from hell is finished, it’s still a good day for a barbeque. What could be better than that? Offhand, watching Jeff Sessions tumble into a vat of weasel vomit might be one. But that could start a war with Canada, so it’s best to settle for the barbecue.
If you’re like me, you’ll always begin the barbecue with something flammable, such as charcoal or disposable diapers, and something to barbecue that came from the slaughterhouse or the highway, such as a type of meat-related product. If it has a label that states, “Not intended for human consumption” or “Ingesting may cause alien abduction,” I’d probably take a pass. I like to concoct my own barbecue sauce. I don’t put it on my meat product. I use it afterwards to douse the flames in the grill. Any left after that is directly applied to crabgrass and dandelions, but not near pets or wildlife because it can cause them to mutate hideously into life forms resembling overripe eggplants.
I always make sure to cook my animal protein thoroughly to kill, or at least dismember, any harmful bacteria and other species that may be inhabiting what once was a living cow, pig, or opossum. When the outside of the animal tissue is the same color as the inside, and both are the same color as the charcoal or other flammable material burning in the grill, you’re safe. If you’re still not sure, put your ear close to the meat to see if you can hear the melodic strains of Taps coming from somewhere in the fat. You’ll know the bacteria has been killed and only their harmless corpses remain toasted inside. At this point I take the meat off the grill, cut it, put it on plates and serve it with something we actually can eat, such as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
One of the benefits of barbecuing is the smoke keeps carnivorous insects away. But once it clears, they’ll be looking for something they can eat: You.