Call Me Bwana

“Don’t even think about it!”

Even before the words were out of my mouth, ears pasted themselves to neck and Dog was under the sofa, all staccato fur and scurrying claws. To this day, I haven’t figured out how he dragged that gnu under there with him, but I can tell you gnus shouldn’t be under sofas. They dislike confining, dark spaces almost as much as they dislike being wrestled to the ground by their throats. Not that Dog cared. He had captured the gnu fair and square, and he was determined to keep it.

“All right. I bow before the prowess of the great hunter,” I admitted as I flopped on the floor, prepared to haul out Dog, the gnu and whatever else was under the furniture, by force if necessary. “The gnu is yours. Now please bring it out from under the couch.”

Two glittering eyes peered from the dark slit between the sofa and the floor. “Wildebeest,” he said.

“Wildebeest?”

“It’s a wildebeest,” he answered. “I’m surprised you didn’t recognize it.”

“Whatever. Just bring it out from under the couch.”

Dog inched his way out of the wilderness den without any sort of ungulate mammal in tow and vigorously shook himself .

Drama on the Range

In the immortal words of Willie Nelson, "my heroes have always been cowboys." As of Thanksgiving Day 2011, though, I've bumped another group of everyday heroes to the top of the list, at least temporarily: firefighters. There's nothing quite like having a group of hunky firemen save you from your own stupidity to engender a modest amount of hero worship. Who knew hunky firemen even existed in the small Texas town where I live?

What did y'all "see" when you read "hunky firemen?" I'd tell you what I "saw" at the time, but honestly, it was just bizarre under the circumstances and probably shouldn't be allowed to escape into the wild if I wish to preserve any shreds of decorum still clinging to my reputation. This is what romance writing does to an ordinarily restrained descendant of untold generations of Baptist ministers.

Here's the condensed version of the sordid tale:

The Thanksgiving cooking marathon always seems to be hectic around here. Oddly, this year everything proceeded without a hitch...until suddenly it didn't. In an attempt to be helpful (which should have set off my calamity radar right there), my other half offered to put the dressed bird into the oven while I took a much-needed shower. Since I had laid out the bagged turkey and the roasting pan and had pre-heated the oven, I thought "How much trouble can he get into? We've done this every year for quite some time now. He knows how it's done." So I took myself off to clean up, leaving Other Half and pending disaster alone in the kitchen to become better acquainted.

An hour and a half or so later, while I was busily engaged in slicing my thu...er, putting together a Waldorf salad, I heard a faint sizzle coming from the oven. Odd. Bagged turkeys don't sizzle. Pressing a paper towel to my thumb so I didn't drip blood all the way across the kitchen floor, I opened the oven door to check on the turkey.

That's when the smoke alarm went off.

Because the turkey would have been a snug fit in the roasting pan—which we knew going in—Other Half decided to use a jelly roll pan (essentially a cookie sheet with sides) instead. The turkey's wings hung over both sides of the pan, and somehow the bag had sprung a leak. (Predictably, I might add.) I didn't realize the problem until the sizzling started because, uncharacteristically, Other Half had put away the roasting pan.

I snatched the cookie-sheet-ensconced turkey (as much as it is possible to "snatch" something that weighs more than 22 pounds) from the gas oven just as flames erupted—thankfully, only inside the oven. In the meantime, Other Half called the fire department, just in case.

To make a long story slightly less long, I dumped an entire bag of flour into the oven and smothered the flames (probably killing the oven, but I'll deal with that later). Whoever Other Half spoke with at 911 said to get out of the house—which, of course, I was having none of because although the fire was out, my house was filled with smoke. So I ran around opening every window I could get open while Dog and Underdog, locked in their condos much earlier to keep their tiny, troublemaking selves out from underfoot, howled and Other Half attempted to disarm the raucous smoke detectors (which are everywhere in our house). By the time every fire department person on duty (two engines and an ambulance) showed up, I was sitting in a chair on the porch holding both dogs in my lap. Underdog threatened to eat the strange creatures in bulky yellow suits, to which Dog responded by repeatedly biting Underdog in order to discourage a fruitless display of aggression toward odd-looking people who, for all Dog knew, had come to deliver dog treats.

The gaggle of firemen stripped off their yellow suits right there in my house (hence the thoroughly inappropriate mental images I mentioned earlier) and proceeded to ensure no fires had broken out spontaneously anywhere else. (Evidently attics are notorious hotspots for secondary fires. Again: Who knew?) They also planted big fans to blow any lingering smoke out of the house. All in all, they were very friendly guys, although a couple of them grumbled good-naturedly about having to leave the station at the exact moment some football team was about to make a touchdown. Couldn't I have timed the fire a little better? Then they hung around to chat and write up a report in case I need it for insurance. (I don't intend to file a claim. At worst, I may have to buy a new oven—which, unless I go hog wild and buy the oven I really want, will cost well below the insurance deductible.) When they left, they took a pecan pie with them, with my most heartfelt gratitude.

Other Half and the male component of the couple with whom we were to share Thanksgiving dinner ferried the half-cooked turkey, the dressing and the candied sweet potatoes over to Male Component's house a block away to finish cooking everything, while I made gravy and cooked green beans on top of the stove. (The top continues to function just fine.) Then the guests brought the food back to our house, and things proceeded as though nothing out of the ordinary had taken place. The house suffered no damage outside the oven, and even the smoke smell had disappeared by the time everyone arrived.

Dog and Underdog each gained about five pounds that day, because everyone kept slipping them bites of turkey in order to ease them over their (non-existent) trauma. Despite a blanket prohibition on feeding table food to tiny terrorists, each person evidently thought he or she was the only one unable to resist exceptionally pathetic, obviously abused and patently starving canines.

The meal was delicious, if I do say so myself. And post-almost-catastrophe I must admit: Hunky firemen make an exceptional appetizer.

A Conversation with Dog

“So how’s what’s-his-name?” my brother asked. Even through the phone he sounded distracted.

“What’s-his-name? You mean my significant other?” I asked.
“No, no. Not Crabby. The little one—you know, uh…. Oh, the Mexican hairless!”

I get a kick out of my brother's self-exasperation. It's so cute to watch Mr. Cool lash himself to the mast with his own tongue.

For some reason this time I was more amused than usual. Some of the iced tea ended up on my shirt, and some ended up across the room. “Did you just say ‘Mexican hairless?’” I couldn’t suppress a chuckle.

Dog raised his head from the couch, his ears standing at attention and displeasure in his eyes.

“You know who I mean,” Brother informed me. “That little dog thing you have. Never mind. I don’t care anyway. Gotta go. Bye.”

“‘Mexican hairless?’” Dog asked, cocking his head and raising one eyebrow. “What kind of thing is that to say?”

Naked in Church

Fiction writers face all sorts of fears: fear of rejection, fear of success, fear of failure, fear of the blank page, fear of running out of ideas, fear that this internal something that drives us to create is destructive, because all we've managed to put on paper so far sucks so bad we may as well have created a black hole.... The list goes on.

Recently, I've realized one of the biggest fears I face in fiction writing is what I call "the naked in church fear." The nightmare reportedly is a common one: There you are on Sunday morning, filing into the sanctuary along with everyone else, when suddenly you realize you aren't wearing a stitch of clothing ... and everyone is staring. "Oh my," you think, blushing scarlet from head to foot. "I know I was wearing something besides my birthday suit when I left the house. Of all the places to be caught in the nude: in church? I'll never live this down."

Most dream interpretations attribute the naked-in-church nightmare to fear of exposure: as a fraud, as wanton beneath a prim exterior, as someone who harbors dark secrets. Psychologists often say the dream is an attempt by the subconscious to inform the conscious the dreamer is being disloyal to himself or herself by hiding something.