Someone Alert The Environmentalists

THERE HAS BEEN A MAJOR OIL SPILL.

But first, a note from our sponsors.

Dear Everyone Who Reads This Blog Whether You Like It Or Not,

As of late, I realize that my online presence has been replaced with tumbleweeds and probably a surplus of tears.  To attempt to explain exactly what has been going on, which has kept me from you like an unjust prison sentence, would require more space than the internet can provide.  I can only beg for your forgiveness in this matter, and instruct you to refer to my book.  That I will write.  Someday.  As soon as I can figure out what will be in it.  But the past two weeks, you can be assured, will be in it.

Patience is a virtue,

Houdini.

As I was running out of the house with my arms full, I realized that I just absolutely could not survive the next 4 hours without a box of Rice Krispie treats.  I stumbled into the kitchen, reached up into the cupboard, and that was the last moment of life as I knew it.  Had I met my soul mate?  My maker? Did I experience an epiphany that somehow pieced together every bit of my crazy life into a beautiful puzzle of clarity?

Not quite. As I was staring at my kitchen floor/cupboards/rug/fridge covered in olive oil and shards of glass, I shouted every bit of language I’d remember from my French class.  Which, unfortunately, was nothing since I took Spanish.  An entire 48 oz bottle of olive oil (extra virgin, of course, cus what am I a cheap bastard?) had been knocked off my counter by my extemely oversize (but tragically attractive) purse.  And. Holy. Crapballs. It was a freaking mess. Have you ever tried to clean up oil? OH wait, you haven’t…cus it’s IMPOSSIBLE.

OF COURSE, I was already 20 mins late. OF COURSE, I had no paper towels.  BUT OF COURSE, I’m a neat freak and couldn’t handle leaving a mess of this magnitude so my immediate reaction was to reach down and pick up pieces of glass. WHICH OF COURSE, resulted in about 6, 3459 cuts on my hands, which isn’t even possible. AND OF COURSE, when I went to change the clothes I tracked olive oil onto my carpets that were just cleaned.

Finally, I said screw this and I put bathroom towels over my entire floor and took off.

But of course, I’m not the only one in my family who’s been doing permanent damage to the environment lately.

You should know that here in the Midwest we’ve experience an extremely unlikely, cold, and damp summer.  So the other night, I went over to my parents house for a “bonfire.”  I walk out in the field and I quietly assume that this is what my dad was referring to:

bonfire

Have you met my dad lately?

That’s what I thought.  Apparently, nor have I.

huge-bonfire

And as we quickly ran to escape the nearly 100 ft flame scolding our faces and the atmosphere, we all took a second to rethink Heaven and Hell.

fire

And we started stripping off layers of clothing due to the surmounting heat, my father stood back and watched like a giddy Boy Scout.

Me: Well, I guess our town might as well stop recycling for about a year, cus we’ve probably just reversed any progress they’ve made.

Dad:  [laughing in a way that makes it impossible not to love him]  Tell Al Gore I’m sick of this cold summer, would ya?

Mom chimes in: I think the only place Global Warming is happening these days, is inside Al’s mouth.

Ah.  This is the heart of America, folks.

dad2

49 thoughts on “Someone Alert The Environmentalists

  1. Damn it … I miss the suburbs. I hate living in the city – and I swear to God if we have another summer like this one I’m going to be burning tires in the alley. At least maybe the rats will choke on the fumes and die as well. That looks like so much fun!

    I haven’t had quite the olive oil catastrophe that you had, but have spilled some on a smaller level – it is a pain in the ass to clean, no doubt. I still have the proof on my cheap-as-shit flat painted walls from my cabernet explosion that looks like someone shot a cat – Boondock Saints style on my kitchen wall. I think it will help sell the place though, that’s my theory. I would drive my ass out to the burbs to have a bonfire with your family any day.

    • linlah- i’m glad you could shed some light on that cus i was wondering where it al started.

      jill – i have eyebrows. however, i will never have to shave my legs again.

      mama- well spank you very much.

      theresa- i am sorry we burnt your grass. we have plenty i could send you from here in the midwest. in fact, thats about all we have to offer the world. that, and this blog

  2. I know this is supposed to be about the environment and all, but I can’t help but admire all that green grass your dad has. We desert dwellers cherish our little pieces of grass and the damage to my psyche is not the hazardous air pollutants escaping into the atmosphere more than it is the precious grass area he burnt.

    I’ll have to agree with mama-face, the colors are brilliant.

    Sorry about the olive oil, cuts on the hand, no rice-crispy treats debacle. Hope you are okay.

    • janice- big. fat. no.

      robin – UGH. always gotta one up me. but thats what i love about you.

      mclaughlin – you can currently find me at the holiday inn – extended stay.

      grannie – i think my olive oil spill could be part of the reason why that fire was so easy to light.

  3. Ah heck….you call that a bonfire?
    You can still see the horizon.
    Come to Newport….we’ll show you a bonfire. 😀

    BTW…..they say that olive oil is great for the skin

    I’m not so sure about linoleum and carpet….

  4. It really sucks to clean up oil. I might just move into a hotel if I spilled an entire 48oz bottle of it until I could pay someone else to come and clean it up. I get frustrated too easily.

    Also, Bonfires = amazing :o)

  5. I have been craving Rice Krispie Treats lately. Needless to say, I am rethinking that. OMG you have me howling because my spouse builds the same kind of bonfires and is gleeful with the results. It is why we have to live in the country. Did you stop to wonder if the fact that you had been soaked in oil might have caused some great disaster during the fire dancing?

    • bearman – sigh. finally. you’re learning some restraint. for once in your inappropriate life.

      rachel – i know right . just about every look on his face is priceless. AW, you are so sweet, such a loyal reader… i appreciate it!! sorry for the lack of posts. but if it weren’t for my crazy life, well, i’d never have anything to post.

      darlene – thank you so much for stopping by!! glad i could give you a laugh

  6. Honestly, I think the best part of this entire post is the look on your dad’s face. Hysterical! I’ll probably laugh about that all day…so thanks for the entertainment!

    In other news, I was one of the ones providing a “surplus of tears” this week as I loyally checked your site daily…hoping for some new little gem to get me through my week. I was glad to start my weekend off right, though, with a new post from the artist formerly known as ‘lil ‘phant. SO, gracias.

    Happy weekending to you!

  7. Hi, I wandered over from Granny Annie’s blog and am soooo glad I did. Just what I needed; a huge laugh. Now that really was an oil spill and the bonfire would put the homecoming guys to shame.

  8. Oh I want to see a real bonfire!

    Hey I don’t know if this will work, but I know if you spill an egg, you can dump flour on it and it soaks it all up then you just clean up the mushy flour. It probably will work, seriously.

    I really wanna see a bonfire. I heard girls looks 10x hotter with the fire flashing around!

  9. I would think that they are more fun though in the fall when its cooler out.

    You could even eat ice cream and stay warm with a fire like that, although it might turn it into soup 😉

  10. I agree with Mr. C – girls do look hotter with fire around. In fact, I travel everywhere with my own personal candle. I’m super hot in candlelight. We should have a big blogger bonfire.

  11. Yep, that’s a bonfire alright! That’s the kind my dad builds as well. Nope, not chinzy at all, to hell with logs, why not burn whole trees!?!

    As for your olive oil experience, I so know what that’s like! Being a cook in a restaurant, there are frequent oil spills and it’s a real bitch to clean them up! First you need to sop up the mess, then you spray degreaser over the entire area and let that sit for a few minutes. Follow that with a mop and bucket and you’ve killed a good portion of time that you should have been cooking orders that were rapidly piling up! Yep, it’s always a hoot when someone turns on the fryer pumps instead of the heat, ’cause if there’s nothing there to catch the oil, you’ve got yourself one hell of a mess!

  12. Your dad is da man.
    And your mom is da wo-man.

    Nothing like people with good ol’ common sense burning large amounts of wood and lighter fluid while drinking large amounts of alco- I mean lemonaide.

  13. quick story.
    While at a family reunion on year, my husband and I were sleeping in a tent down by the lake (with 10 other family members in tents). The house was a tad too small.
    My early-morning dreams were interrupted by a loud BANG! I mean, the sound of a gunshot. We jumped out of our tents expecting to see some characters from ‘Deliverance’ standing over us with creepy grins.
    Instead, we saw my crazy (awesome) Papaw standing next to the trash barrel with a bottle of lighter fluid. Trash rained down on our heads as he quietly commented, “I guess that hair spray can exploded. It went pretty high.”

    • pinky – ok SERIOUSLY. i need to watch deliverance. the constant references to this movie are ruining my life.

      christie – thanks darling.

      jen – i have learned my lesson. forever. about the oil. not the fire.

      wendy – thanks for stopping by!! um, and the answer is no. but it DID involve alot of ice cream

  14. First of all, never, ever, leave a bottle of olive oil that close to the end of the counter. I have had nightmares of breaking a bottle of oil and the ensuing hours of cleanup to follow. I feel for you. And, as a transplanted Californian where droughts and wildfires happened every year the sight of bonfires scare the bejeezus out of me. Living in the midwest now I see it often and always have the urge to start screaming.

    • candice. you WOULD.

      danielle – um, i’m gonna guess the grass is a wee bit damaged, if not permanentaly ruined. i apologize on behalf of my family.

      steve – that was almost as poetic as a haiku

      kevo – bahahahaha. we try.

  15. All I see in this picture is the beautiful grass underneath. Please tell me it wasn’t ruined. 🙂
    I love me a good bon-fire.
    I can’t wait to see your photography site.

  16. You realize that their are people that will cuss at you for wasting food as well and their are people who will applaud that you used Glass and Not plastic…and what about the folks that will yell about cutting down our trees…and the bilingual folks that will say what is wrong with learning french…..cause the fire dept will be upset…but the fireflies will happy as clams………zman sends

  17. Reminds me of when Mr. YnB decided to make a similar bonfire (while I was out shopping). But, his was under overhanging trees right out the back door of our house. His plan was to have it all gone when the wife got home so she’d never know, right? Well, a couple of days later when I walked out back I, for some strange reason, decided to look upwards only to find totally blackened leaves on the summer trees. Then the real story came out.

    • yorks – oh men. they always think they are so sneaky. haven’t they figured out we are the most observant creatures on the planet?

      Dearest beautiful snow-capped mountain,

      my only desire in life is that I can keep you in love with me forever. my goal, each day, is to make you fall more in love. I should have throw my microwave in there because its a useless piece and it broke again. along with my faucet. I wish we lived next to eachother for so many reasons that they far out number the stars in the sky.

      love,
      blunt

  18. Dear Bright Light In My Otherwise Dark, Cold Existence,

    The Olive Oil Spill did NOT disappoint. It has made it impossible for me to fall out of love with you.

    Did you add your microwave to the bonfire? Inquiring minds would like to know.

    Wishing you lived in the house next door to me because if we lived together the spillage factor would just be way too high to exist,

    Your One and Only

  19. That is exctally what our bon fires look like in the midwest. Get in the country and load up as much wood or whatever and make the flame as high as possible. *sigh* I miss that….

  20. For all your hard work I have a surprise for you….come hither and glance…not its not a hose to put out the fire…shh just come and look..zman sends

  21. @ blunt delivery:
    No Brit, not I WAS a cook, I AM a cook…lol. That is the only kind of job I’ve ever really enjoyed and also the only one I’ve ever spent any time at. Yes I’ll marry you, but will you move here, or do I move in with you? Not only that, but what do we do with Silv? I hope you don’t mind the mess that clay makes when sculpting, carving or throwing it on a wheel, it can get rather messy and I tend to enjoy playing with it (just so you know that I do tend to make messes!)

    Oh yes, you’re also 2 posts behind now, so much for you complaining about me not posting…lol! 😉

  22. That seems like a proper bonfire for our neck of the woods. Anything smaller might as well not exist.

    Also, your absence is completely inexcusable. I mean, I’m here just about every day looking for something to comment on, anxiously awaiting to take in just another minor piece of your life in blog form, and you leave me hanging. It’s almost enough to bring me to tears. Almost.

  23. haha i love how my barn is in the background. and you should know by now that your dad doesnt ever do a bonfire that small lol. it can be seen at the bottom of the hill love your blog and your pictures

  24. haha i love how my barn is in the background. and you should know by now that your dad doesnt ever do a bonfire that small lol. it can be seen at the bottom of the hill. love your blog and your pictures

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