Attacks on Black Friday

(Okay so this is long but I have so many things to tell you! I just can’t help it! Deal with it. I’ll be having a giveaway tomorrow so you can’t stay mad at me for long.)

I love my husband. This is no secret. He makes me happy, he makes me laugh, he makes you laugh. But, you know, we’re married. And when you are married and live in the same house, sometimes you take your spouse for granted. (I very often tell Stephen how lucky he is to have a wife who cooks dinner for him every night. But then I remember that he’s okay with fast food and take out every day, and that just makes me want to kick him in the shins.)

Tuesday night was a night that God practically came into my house and said, “Chelsea, don’t take your husband for granted.”

We got home from work fairly late since we had a couple errands to run. I went to the kitchen to preheat the oven for my “Mexican Chicken Made With Turkey, Therefore Mexican Turkey.” Stephen went to the living room to turn on the television so his wife wouldn’t miss a single second of Biggest Loser. I then went into our spare room where Rookie hangs out while we’re gone.

“Oh my gosh. Oh. my. gosh. OH MY GOSH. Stephen. Oh my gosh.”

A few seconds went by before Stephen could pull himself away from Obama on television. He came in. “Oh my gosh.”

Explosive dog diarrhea all over. We had white carpet and white walls. No longer. We had a house that didn’t smell like crap. No longer. It was awful. Terrible. I gagged. I wanted to hug and comfort my poor dog who had never dumped indoors ever before. But I didn’t touch her… because well, she’d just diarrhea-ed all over and that stuff tends to get on everything. And you want to know what my amazing husband did?? He turned to me and said, “You go finish dinner and get ready for Loser. I’ll clean this up.”

Lord bless him. Like, a lot.

(For the record, you can’t clean 972 liquid crap stains out of white carpet with normal “over the counter” cleaner. Stanley Steemer is at my house at this very moment. I didn’t tell them what they had to look forward to. I thought it would be a nice surprise.)

Now do you all have good feelings in your mind about Stephen? Do you love him just a little bit more? Okay, hold on to that feeling because some of you aren’t going to like the rest of this. It’s about hunting.

Some of you won’t care. Like my friend Lyndsey. If you can drink a glass of wine while watching a deer get gutted, we’re probably on the same page. She and I are on the same page. If I sat her down and showed her these photos and told her these stores, she wouldn’t say, “Oh gross! Blood!” She’d say something cool like, “Sweet. Who shot him? How many points is he?” If you can relate, you’re probably from Texas. Or maybe you should move here. Anyways, if you start reading and don’t like it, skip the pictures. I’m posting the “nicest” of the batch but some people can’t handle it. You’ve been warned.

We spent Wednesday through Saturday last week in a small town south of a small town in south Texas. Also known as: Practically Mexico. My Papa works for a bank in another small town in south Texas and has access to their hunting camp. On holidays when we’ve prayed real hard, we get to use it. It’s fabulous… as far as hunting camps go.

Last year Stephen shot his first deer. And coyote. And quail. And dove. And probably 4 or 5 other species. He was thrilled because he’s a man and that sort of thing makes him puff his chest. I was thrilled because that meant I had venison in my freezer and wouldn’t have to buy ground beef for a long time. And then I ate it and wanted to hurl. It was awful. Stephen loved it, but he loves everything that isn’t soup.

So this year I told him not to kill a deer. I don’t want that funk in my freezer. I just end up making crappy meals that I hate. So his goal was to get a rabbit. One rabbit. That’s all he wanted. Then my parents said they wouldn’t mind having some venison, so if he shot a deer, they’d take it. Then my brother (who wasn’t able to come with us because his wife is 8 months pregnant) said he’d like some sausage, so if he shot a deer and a hog, he’d take it. New mission: kill a rabbit, a hog, and a deer large enough to split between multiple people.

Let me tell you one thing about my studly husband. He doesn’t miss. Seriously. So when he went out to the blind on the first morning he was vewy vewy qwiet as he was hunting wabbits. A rabbit he wanted, a rabbit he got.

Here he is waiting for Papa to pull the truck a bit closer so he doesn’t have to haul this beast too far.

I’m not sure if there’s enough space in the freezer to store all that meat.

I mentally reorganized my freezer and made peace with the fact that there would be a large rodent in there. And I didn’t really care if he killed anything else because it wasn’t coming home with us. He had other ideas.

See that buck spooning that hog? Those are Stephen’s. Here is Texas, our animals comfort each other in their time of need. Either that or they were cuddling and trying to get used to each other since they knew it’s only a matter of time that they’d be put together forever in the form of sausage.

Sometimes I pretend that it’s my deer because it makes me feel tough. Like a modern day Annie Oakley. Then I let Stephen jump in and do the dirty work.

Check out how focused he is. For those of you who don’t know anything about cleaning a deer, one wrong cut and you’ve ruined some good meat. And another wrong cut and you’ve ruin a good finger. Slow and steady wins the race here. So while he focuses on not hurting himself or his dinner, I focus on having a beer and staying a safe distance from blood and stink.

That’s my sister, can you tell? That’s my scarf too, can you tell?

I don’t have many pictures of the hog for you. Most of the ones I have involve a lot of blood, guts, and bones. Something tells me that if I post them you’ll throw a fit. I’ll share this one final one with you. This is after the gutting but before the skinning and especially gory parts.

On Saturday we took the meat to my aunt and uncle’s house to process it. My uncle cooked up some patties and, turns out, I like venison. I think we must’ve had a bad deer last year. The meat is WORLDS apart. I could never understand why people like it. So now I really do have a full freezer.

And that, my friends, is how Texas does Thanksgiving. Jealous? Just wait until tomorrow when you see how we do Christmas.