Dog Food and Husbands

When my husband and I were first married, he was a funeral director. At some point we moved into an apartment that was attached to a funeral home/flower shop. This residence was the brunt of many jokes and was also a great place to pull off a lot of pratical jokes.

It was a great place to hold family gatherings because we had so much room. We had an entire storage room where we could set up long tables and have plenty of room for the family to eat comfortably. So, one year we hosted my husband's side of the family for Christmas. There were 10 of us in all. This funeral home/flower shop was located in the Panhandle of Texas. Now, for those of you who aren't familiar with that area, the winter's are very cold. We owned a bassett hound named Duke, and my husband felt sorry for him because he had to be put outside in the cold. He felt so sorry for him that he decided to heat his sealed can of dog food in the oven that had recently been turned off.

Before I get to the interesting part of the story, let me tell you a little bit about the funeral business. When you get a "death call" you must respond immediately. The movies would like for you to think that the bodies are placed on a slab and rolled into a nice little cabinet in the wall and picked up whenever it is convenient. That is not the case. The longer you wait to embalm a person, the worse the outcome.

So, he received a death call and the can of food was completely forgotten. That is until...the next morning (which happened to be a Sunday) when I got up to cook breakfast. I turned on the oven to 'broil' because I was going to prepare some toast. Everyone was scurrying around trying to get ready for church. My sister-in-law who was single at the time had brought her boyfriend. He had gone into a closet to change clothes not realizing that the door could only be opened from the outside. She then lost her bra and was tearing up the apartment looking for it. We had two babies (mine and a niece) crawling around and getting into everything. The bassett was howling because he was cold and hungry. Well....you get the picture. Chaos was all around.

My back was to the oven door, and I was busy buttering my bread. All of a sudden, the worst explosion EVER occured right behind me. The oven door flew open and dog food exploded all over the house! You cannot imagine how loud this explosion was and what it did to me. Words came flying out of my mouth that I didn't even know existed. I had dog food in my hair, on my clothes, in the butter, on top of the cabinets, underneath the cabinets, in the living room, down the hall, and many places that you cannot even imagine.

My father-in-law's reaction? "Everyone knows you're supposed to look in an oven before you turn it on!" Really? How many meals have the women who are reading this prepared and NOT looked inside the oven before turning it on?

Anyway, it was a Christmas to be remembered. I would go back and do it all over again just for the memory.

Noel only had to sleep outside with the dog for a week!

Blessings,
Penny