None Out of Three Is Very Bad

September 4, 2006

Today I found myself at home for Labor Day, without any of the three weekday holiday staples. We had no caffeine in the house. There were no tasty animal carcasses to grill. And worst of all, there was no beer.

We don’t mean to live like Neanderthals. Sometimes it just happens that way.

“I doubt I could conjure a good explanation for the EMTs as to why my tongue was stuck to a frozen chicken thigh, for instance. Not another one, anyway.”

To be fair, one of the shortages purported above isn’t entirely accurate. There were various and sundry bits of chicken carcasses in the freezer, left over and saved from a party earlier this summer. But they weren’t pre-thawed, and I wouldn’t know how to go about thawing the things on the fly. Who do I look like, Gordon Ramsey over here?

I suspect an emergency thawing would involve rubbing the parts, or dangling them under steamy water, or perhaps breathing aggressively on them for a few hours. But I’ve never been briefed on the procedure, so I didn’t dare undertake it, lest I have some sort of thawing-related mishap. I doubt I could conjure a good explanation for the EMTs as to why my tongue was stuck to a frozen chicken thigh, for instance. Not another one, anyway.

It’s a moot point, anyway. Without the caffeine, I wouldn’t have had the energy to lug the chicken out of the fridge. And without the beer… well, what good is being home on a holiday to eat in the first place? I got up this morning, stumbled to the fridge, saw no Labor Day beer supply, and went the hell back to bed. I finally got up around seven this evening — mostly to watch the Simpsons. But mostly to be up before my wife got home, so she wouldn’t think I’d schlepped around all day doing nothing.

(What? I did something. I checked to see whether we had any beer. That’s something. Don’t give me that look.)

So my Monday off was fairly tame. It feels weird to be going into work the day after a holiday without a hangover, singed eyebrows, or a citation for public indecency, but there it is. Either I’m getting old, or Labor Day’s just not what it used to be.

I guess we’ll find out soon. Just you wait until Hallowe’en. Boo!