Streak Broken

Guess I’m going to have to reset the three strikes thing, because yesterdays Memorial Day Barbeque was great.

When I went down ten minutes prior to Activity Director’s event last Tuesday, she was nowhere in sight, the grill wasn’t going – in fact Assistant Maintenance Guy was cleaning the grill, and there was confusion as to who was going to man the grill.

When I went down ten minutes prior to the Residents Volunteer Activity’s event, everything was already in full swing – the grill was going, music was playing, residents were dancing around, socializing, having a good time, with more residents coming to join us as time went on.

And guess who was manning the grill.

That’s right, it was Shadow.

When asked to do the duty last week, he was pissy and walked away. However, inasmuch as he had not been asked to man the grill this time -- arrangements had been made with a female resident (The Lady Who Wants Braids [LWWB]), he decided he wanted to do it.

Go figure.

Anyway, we ended up with two grill masters and they worked it out. Shadow did the ribs and links, the LWWB did the chicken.

There was so much food – macaroni salad, potato salad, fruit, barbeque beans, corn on the cob, baked potato, some sort of squash dish, someone brought tea, two people brought popcorn.

Since a baked potato doesn’t upset my gut, I was able to eat that; plus, the LWWB grilled a chicken breast for me with only salt and onion powder instead of BBQ sauce. I’d also made a few deviled eggs for myself using gluten-free soy-free ingredients, as opposed to the real mayo, sugar, pickle relish used in eggs for the seniors.

I got a surprise when I removed the aluminum foil from what I thought was two small baked red potatoes -- I found one potato, one whole onion.

That was a fortuitous error because onions are on my menu in some way shape form daily, but I didn’t know they could be baked whole.

I’ll be doing that from now on when I roast veggies.

So anyway, yesterday’s event was A-Okay.

The only thing that wasn’t okay was Apache bringing up the Orange Idiot in Chief and getting into a political debate with a resident who didn’t want to be debated.

When Apache began talking about all the great things the Orange Idiot has done, including bringing that last guy home, the resident made the grievous error, in Apache’s Trumpette brain to say, “I hate that Mother F ___er”.

An expression I hear a lot around here relative to the Orange Idiot.

Apache lost his damn mind. He was ranting and raving, as the resident said, “I don’t want to talk about this”.

Apache wouldn’t let it go, “It’s disrespectful to talk about the president like that. You can get in a lot of trouble.”

The resident said she was getting upset and didn’t want to hear it.

“That’s the problem. When we talk about all he’s done, no one wants to hear it”, Apache raged on.

At this point, I’m thinking “That’s because we’re not blind. We know it’s all self-serving” and very much wanting to say out loud to Apache “How can you believe a guy who lies so much?”. But I knew better to voice it out loud, because Apache was already turning red and raging out of control. Instead, I told Apache to “Squash it. We’re having a good time here, no one wants to hear about that stuff”.

Still he persisted. I began chanting over his tirade, “Shut up, shut up, squash it, shut up”. Others also began urging him to shut it down.

Shadow came over with a water bottle and sprayed Apache in the face saying, “You’re all wet”.

With a chorus of us seniors chanting, and Shadow spraying him again as he keep raging at the woman, unable to get any of us to pay attention to what he was saying, Apache finally calmed down, but really – it was kinda scary how out of control he’d gotten.

When it was over, Apache was back to normal, like nothing had happened, and the party went on.

The resident he’d gotten into it with is new. She didn't know you never engage when Apache begins praising his hero. You ignore him or get up and walk away but, whatever you do, never ever say anything negative about his hero.  She learned that rule the hard way.

All in all, a fun event.

Later, back in my unit, while on the puter, up popped a pin for those skull print onesie pajamas.

I took that to mean I’m meant to have them, reordered and sent to a different mall for pickup.

Today, it’s back to scrapbooking. Now working on the Great Donut Run photos, I’ll be totally caught up in no time and back to needlepoint.