Thursday, August 30, 2012

Help, help it's on fire!

So, last night I went to bed at about ten, after spending an enjoyable evening cleaning my house.  I say enjoyable because I did not hate it, not because I was actually giggling with glee while doing it.  But I was listening to a book on tape -- Broken Harbor by Tana French -- and the time went by quickly.  And when I looked around at the house this morning upon arising, I was surprised and pleased by its cleanliness.  Not to say that it is ready for company, because it isn't, but I did two loads of laundry, folded it and put it all away, washed and dried and put away all the dishes, and then scrubbed out the sink, (which had reached the stage of smelling bad, so you see) and swept the kitchen and dining room.  When I get home tonight I will (probably) mop the kitchen and dining room, and front hallway.  And then I will be ready for company.

In any case, I went to bed at about ten, and was asleep before midnight.  At two-thirty in the morning I woke up.    Through my closed eyelids, I could see light, orange-yellow natural light.  I opened my eyes and peered around.  And by the time I was able to see clearly, I had also woken up fully, and was startled to realize that the light I saw was the leaping brightness of flames.  I sat right up and went to the living room after being unable to see anything from my bedroom window.  From the living room, I was able to see that the flames, jumping several feet in the air, were confined to the  consuitudinary roundness of a smallish barbecue.  I peered at the clock on the wall of the darkened dining room.  Yup, two-thirty-five A.M.

I went back to bed and lay and listened.  No voices at all.  So if there were more than one involved, they were being very quiet so as not to wake up their neighbors, for which I give them props.  But the banging and crunching and opening and closing of doors was quite fairly-merely disturbing.  More so than a quiet murmer of voices would have been.  After about half an hour, I began to smell that heavenly, hot, sizzling smell of barbecuing meat.  And so I went back to sleep.

So here is my question.  Under what circumstances would it seem reasonable and appropriate to barbecue your dinner at two-thirty in the morning?

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