You’re probably wondering what the hell I’m doing here when I am up to my eyeballs in goose livers, but my housemate and I decided to take a break from all the poultry guts and celebrate our 14th wedding anniversary per our usual tradition of running off to the casino and spending the night. And with past annual visits resulting in power outages and thievery, we thought, what could possibly happen this time?

And so it was I’m yanking the one arm bandit’s chain when my phone vibrates urgently at me to tell me about a tornado warning and severe thunderstorms IN MY AREA and to seek immediate cover and go to the basement and stay away from the windows and all kinds of other tornado tips and tricks for survival.

And because we live in a town where weather and natural disasters never happen, we immediately ran up to our 16th floor hotel room and flipped on the nearest electrical appliance that we here in the capital city call the boob tube:

Oh my gosh, it really WAS a tornado warning in our area, as it turns out. And the whole town was talking about it. And we flew to the window and threw open the curtains and pressed our faces to the glass to see what we could see.

It’s the same with earthquakes. I feel the slightest vibration and I throw up my arms and scream “Whee!!” like I’m suddenly on Space Mountain at Disneyland. And I must have gotten in free because there is NO WAY I’m paying $150 to get into the Magic Kingdom these days. Are you kidding me? Why would I pay that kind of money to spend most of my day waiting in line? What was I saying? Oh yeah. The tornado.

So, because I’ve never been squashed or hurled or stomped or even scratched by a natural disaster, apparently my brain doesn’t register danger.

So there I was gawking out the window and exclaiming Wow! and Cool! and other lame exclamations (like probably even Groovy!) because we could see the very thing they were showing on the TV but from the dark side:

Can you see it? No?

Here’s a closer look:

Now can you see it?

So yeah, while the TV ticker was telling us to stay inside and hide under the beds and whatnot, we were oooh-ing and ahhh-ing like a couple of idiots, watching funnel clouds on the TV and from our window. And the dude in the TV station helicopter clearly had a better view than us and is it just me, or does the funnel cloud make the scene look like the meadow below is trying to say something?

30 Minus 2 Days of Writing Challenge
Day 19: Tastes Like Chicken

How have I lived, lo these many years, without the knowledge and power of the wonder that is the slow cooker, the almighty Crock Pot?

I have fought and fought and fought some more with various protein animal products with less than zero success and ultimately limited my repertoire because most meat comes out hard and dry and yucky and blecky and other similar adjectives and I figured I just didn’t have the knack for it and recently came to realize you all have been cheating. Consider yourselves on my poop list.

And never have I been more happy to cheat than through the discovery of this cook’s best friend. Oh my lord, the tender fall apart heaven that comes out of these things six to eight hours later. I’m cooking again with gusto and beef broth and low heat and Pinterest.

And I’ve been cooking everything now, from the oxymoronic pork butt shoulder, to neighborhood stray cats to local road kill (because eating local means organic and pesticide-free and you know where it came from and who knew skunk could be fall-apart scrumptious?).

And don’t get me started on all variations of backyard snakes. Those slithering nuggets of deliciousnessability.

I can’t believe you guys didn’t tell about this culinary magic before. Shame on you.

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 This post is part of The 30 Minus 2 Day Writing Challenge and is hosted by We Work for Cheese.