March 22, 2021

We try and do a family meal after church on Sundays. COVID-19 put that on pause for most of last year but with very low (less than fifteen active) cases in our county we have started back. Not for the whole gang, mind you, that requires a large banquet hall. Just a subset of the gang including my wife's two children, their spouses and children...lots of children. We try and keep it simple and this week's menu was no exception. White chicken chili and regular (red) chili with beans (plus all the fixin's) were the main courses and pretty much my only responsibility as cook. My wife would prepare four dessert dishes. Seating for fifteen plus a high chair for Cruz, who turned one two days ago.

Before I tell on myself, we did a similar Sunday brunch with a different menu last Sunday and my wife was making cornbread. We have a package mix that we like and she got the package and mixing bowl and carried the package to the trash can, cut the top off and dumped the contents into the trash. Once she realized what she had just done, we had a good laugh about it. No big deal, there was another package in the pantry. It made a good story to tell the family, right?

Going back to this weekend, I did a lot of the prep work Saturday night, so Sunday before church was only a matter of quickly heating up the contents and putting them into crockpots; two of them to be exact. One white, one red. One chicken, one beef. Not rocket science. I had already heated up the already browned beef and tomato sauce, and put them into one crockpot and most of the ingredients for the white chicken chili were heating up in the other. The chicken and beans were heating in the wok, the only pan big enough to hold them and it was really full. Now, we call our kitchen a "one butt kitchen" for a reason. My wife zigged when she should have zagged and a little of the contents went on the kitchen floor. No problem, wife said she would get it. Maybe that rattled me just a little. No worries, we've got this. I went around the counter to where the crockpots were and dumped it in and started stirring but my mind was elsewhere. Then it hit me. Wrong crockpot!

What happened next was that I had a total meltdown. You would have thought that World War III had just happened in my kitchen the way I acted. Jeez, Louise! My wife talked me down off the ledge, finally, after I had paced the room, ranting and cussing and generally making a fool of myself. In the end we just put the whole mess together and made an original regular, red, white, chicken, beef chili (with all the fixin's). And it was actually pretty good. I call it my "Whoops Chili". Maybe we'll have it when you come over.

I'd be happy to come over for some messed up chili. Thanks for asking.

When I was younger, I liked to wear a Halloween costume to band practice. This was not well received. It set me on a course to become a camp counselor.

One of the things about working at a camp out in the middle of the wilderness is that you have to rely on country doctors when you seriously injure a camper while doling out wisdoms. Last night, we had to call the doctor in town because one of the campers had fallen on the ice on the floor of the cabin he was sleeping in. He struck his head on the wall and began verbally malfunctioning.

I like watching these medical shows on television. There is always so much fucking amongst the staff. I find myself wondering if doctors and nurses are screwing all the time like that in real life. When I watch these shows, I try to figure out when each person will have some kind of relationship with every other character of the opposite sex. It is something you can place bets on. You can run a betting parlor. This is something to get in on the ground floor on. Tic Tac Medical Show. When will Dr. Ben sleep with Nurse Lovely? Maybe in two seasons? I don't know. These shows go on for so long that eventually everyone fucks everyone else. They ought to stop discriminating and have everyone be bisexual and everyone eventually fucks everyone else over the course of 15 seasons. That would be something. At the end, they are all like, "Well, time to get a job somewhere else. Fucked all my co-workers here."

Magical.

Anyway, country doctors piss me off. There has to be a reason why they didn't get hired at a fancy hospital where everyone fucks everyone else over the course of fifteen years. Their life isn't magical. They have corns on their feet. Fucking gross. They need to stay indoors and away from people. You ever see one of them with their green, swollen toenails, walking around in sandals? For fuck's sake, pull yourselves together. Represent, motherfucker. Represent. You would think.

She arrives and looks at this camper. She's concerned about why we are open in the winter, or at least at the tail end of winter. We're way up in northern Maine. No one knows we took their kids. We took them for discipline. The country doctor frowns on this. She looks at the campers that are gathered around. Half-naked, icicles hanging off their noses, shivering with threadbare blankets wrapped around them.

"This is a travesty. I'm calling the health department!"

"If you do that, you won't get the glory. You want the glory, don't you?"

"Often I will self-promote, yes. I don't see what that has to do with anything."

"If you call the health department, they will send in doctors from a fancy hospital where everyone fucks everyone else over the course of fifteen years. They will be the ones in the papers. They will be the ones on CNN. You feel me?"

"Oh, I feel you, beautiful woman who is likely a cougar. Aren't you that lady who was interested in a fourteen-year-old boy?"

"What mean?"

"I understand you expressed a sexual des--"

"No! That would be wrong. I am not that kind of person. Not a pedophile or anything. I just dug his manly smell. I put him on ice until he turns eighteen. Until then, just teasing."

"No. That isn't right. You belong in jail. I'm calling Captain Benson."

"You don't want to do that. You can handle this, country doctor. If the cops get involved, they'll be in the papers. They'll get all the air time on my daddy's favorite network, Fox News. They love stories about cops."

"Okay, but this place has to be shut down. This isn't right. Those kids are sick."

"And getting sicker."

She turned towards the kids. As she did, I picked up a log and smashed her in the back of the head with it. She's out cold and I dragged her up to my cabin, the one with the space heater and handcuffed her to the foot of my bed.

The boys will be in later. They know what to do with someone like her. They know how to use the Bohemian Tickler (someone ought to node that).

In the meantime, the campers will be punished for their insolence by being made to sleep with their windows open tonight. Below zero with the wind chill, motherfuckers. Hope you enjoyed your insurrection.