In any life, however dull it may seem, you can find bits of humor. And in our life, and our family, and our....experiences..(hem) we seem to have more than our share! :) Take today. I almost thought I was watching an episode of "I Love Lucy". It all started out normally. I shall write it out as a screenplay, and then you can see just what I mean:
The evening before, Aunt Christy, Mama, and everyone else harvested a comically shocking load of cucumbers. They somehow stuffed them into the collective refridgerators, and waited till the next day when they could pickle them. (Camera pans around the sleeping gardeners, and new scene begins in the morning) Mama comes into the older girls' room and wakes them up. She asks, "Are you awake?" One big groan from Rachel. A muffled, and slightly-less-awake groan from Sarah. The morning progresses. Rachel lugs a huge black pot out to turkey-frier-burner thing on the back deck. Dad has rigged it up so that the burner is connected to the gas line for the grill which is connected to the gas line for the house. Rachel fills the huge pot with water, and waits for it to boil, naively assuming it will take 1 hour. She is confident in her pickling abilities. After all, she hadn't pickled 120 quarts last summer for nothing. But Rachel forgets that time erases such little irritations such as how long it really takes for a huge pot of water to boil. Meanwhile everyone hacks through the enormous pile of cucumbers. (Two and a half hours later) Rachel informs Mama that the pot is boiling. They head outside on the deck, and with Aunt Christy's help, Rachel fills the jars with slices of cucumber, packing them tightly, and dolloping the garlic and dill seed liberally. She adds the brine. They screw the lids on. They lower them into the steaming pot that has stopped boiling due to the absence of its lid. They hear a few little pops. Rachel goes inside. She is hot. She is sticky. She sets the buzzer for 15 minutes. She goes outside at the end of the time. (Dramatic camera close-up on Rachel's face) Upon lifting the jars out with the tongs, 2 of them are busted open, and the contents slide merrily into the pot! Rachel wails dismally, and quickly fetches the remaining jars out. Not wishing to waste time boiling new water, Rachel skims out the cucumbers, dill-seeds, and garlic, hoping that a bit of vinegar and salt won't hurt the processing of the other jars. Rachel returns inside. She and Aunt Christy and Mama decide the jars were probably too cold. She fills more jars with hot water. When it is time for this batch, she dumps out the water, repeating the process of filling. She dubiously lowers the jars into the water. It is not quite boiling, but that shouldn't matter. Rachel claps the lid onto the pot, and sets the timer to 20 minutes.....(Twenty minutes later) Rachel steps out onto the back deck. She lifts the jars out and to her great chagrin, another jar is busted! Obviously it was not a problem of the jars being hot enough. Rachel groans, and reports inside to the fellow pickle-makers who are still slicing cucumbers. She eats lunch while google-searching why her jars are busting. She finds an answer. She decides to give this one more try. (Camera pans to the burner outside.) Rachel walks up. She lifts the lid. The water is not close to boiling, and the lid has been on for at least a half-hour! What is wrong? Rachel peers closely at the burner. There is no flame! She turns off the gas at the grill, and enters the house. "Mama, is there a reason why the flame would have burned out?"
Mama peers at her over the pots on the stove, which are simultaneously being used to blanch green beans. "That's not good." she answers levelly. Rachel trys to use logic. She comes around to the front of the stove. "Well, the burner is tapped into the house gas-line, and these stove burners are....NOT ON!!!!!" (Dramatic music!) Everyone realizes that pickle-making is obviously not the golden task it seems. The one day of the year the family most needs the gas-line, and they have used up both their gas tanks. Rachel melancholily (?) cleans up the pickle making things and loads them up in the van to take to Aunt Christy's house. She tries to be cheerful. "We are one 12th of the way through what we made last year!" she says. Aunt Christy looks at her blankly. "That means we are 1 24th of the way through what we need to make this year." (Credit roll begins, and the Comic/Tragedy ends)
*Thank you! Thank you* I know it is brilliant! ;) Yep. That was my day. Foiled in the desperate attempt at putting away the comical amount of pickling cucumbers. Wow. I got exhausted replaying all that in my mind! It was second only to Meg March's jam misshap! :) Well, hope it amused you at least! :) -Rachel
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