Stream of Consciousness Saturday — Grill 5/26/18

It’s Saturday and I wandered over to Linda G. Hill’s blog to get my weekly fix of stream of consciousness writing prompt. Before arriving there, I thought it might have something to do with Memorial Day, even though (I think) Linda is Canadian. Whatever could it be?

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “grill.” Use it any way you’d like. 

There’s the obvious. Weber grill. Grilled steak. I’m hungry. Do I want to do the obvious? It’s my brain. I can do whatever I want, but I’m a good girl and tend to stay within rules — except when I don’t. I tend to interpret rules differently from the intended ones anyway. I think that I’m digressing. Can you digress from a stream of consciousness? Squirrel! “Hey, u all up in ma grill…” (Not the squirrel, although I have eaten squirrel. The squirrel was in reference to the dog in “Up” and I always picture that when my brain starts being all tangential.)

For some very interesting history, read about the Second Battle of Fort Wagner SC on July 18, 1863.

Remembering, even those we never knew. My real life photos aren’t Photoshopped either (otherwise they’d be better). It really IS that green around here.

When did Memorial Day become all about grilling hotdogs and mattress sales? Not that we grill mattresses or their sales, that I know of anyway. I had to google. When you use Google as a verb does it get capitalized? I can never remember if capitalized has an A or an O before the L. That’s embarrassing. According the surfing on Google, and if it is on the Internet it has to be true, right?, Memorial Day became an official three-day holiday in 1968. Well, it is still one day but we give it three. So that makes sense, three days = beer! That’s like a law or something. But mattresses?  Apparently that has something to do with combining the fact that more Americans move residences between May and August than other times of the year and that there is nothing more American than commercializing everything.

It’s about honoring our fallen soldiers.

The Vietnam war was going on while I was a child, but the draft stopped and we stopped sending children over there to die before I graduated from high school. No one in my grade or those immediately before or after mine were sent to Vietnam. Of course we’ve sent soldiers off after that, but I don’t have a personal connection. I don’t have a face to put to the memorial. But I still cringe that this day has devolved into burgers, beers and shopping for mattresses and grills. It’s about honoring our fallen soldiers.

From an earlier New England Memorial Day, when my crappy camera still worked.

There’s a difference between grilling and barbecuing, by the way, a bit of nerdness that will get a TaterTot hurled in your direction if you voice it at the family get-together (is that hyphenated?). Grilling is over direct, high heat. You grill hotdogs and burgers and steaks and… oh gawd, I haven’t eaten yet. Barbecuing is done low and slow, with indirect heat, allowing the smoke to do magical things. Living in an apartment, I no longer get to grill or barbecue, although years ago there was a sheepish moment where I accidentally melted the “hey look! it isn’t wood or aluminum” siding of my apartment porch — which was way better than when a building across the parking lot burned down because of a grill on a porch.

I love both grilled and barbecued almost anything. I hate brussel sprouts, but I wouldn’t be surprised if grilling/barbecuing them would make them edible. I’m good at both grilling and barbecuing and that is because of my California ex. He is a fantastic griller and barbecuer. He’s the one who taught me the difference, because boy-howdy (I’m going to hyphenate!), he is a true nerdy wonk on the subject. He approached both with the single-point (is that hyphenated?) focused obsessiveness only an engineer can do — but without the duct tape.

I stopped writing at this point, not because my brain stopped freely associating but because it actually went into high gear and I had a bit of an insight about me, my life processes and how it ties into my ex-husband’s obsession with grilling and barbecuing and music and beer. While that sounds like a great Memorial Day party (and I’m sure he’s having one with all of the above), that’s not where my rabbit hole lead me. I’m still pondering. I’m still wandering. It’s kinda deep. Plus, I still haven’t eaten…