Grill on Fire

I love to cook.  I hate to clean.  I will grudgingly clean my messes after I make them, and have recently learned to clean as I cook, which saves time in the end, but I still hate it.  Needless to say, aside from the grate, I have not cleaned my gas grill in more than a year.  Unfortunately, after all that time, the greasy build up is volatile, waiting for the right moment to ignite.

Have you ever looked down into the guts of your grill and seen the nastiness waiting below?  I use my grill frequently, and so I had more than a year of melted fat, carbonized grease, and mildly burnt meat parts, all built into a thick layer of detritus coating the bottom.  The way my grill is built, I would have to mildly exert myself to see the bottom - very mildly; the grates and the heat diffusers partially block the view.  And, I would have to be motivated to acknowledge how disgusting it is.  The grossness just gathers, fuel for a future fire.

I think the same can be said about ourselves.  If we looked deep inside, would we see the leavings of arguments unresolved, family and friend drama, social opinions we aren’t sure we really believe anymore?  These are all the elements of yesterday’s version of us.  As we grow and move towards who we are, we leave the remnants of who we were behind.  Sometimes, these little bits are just as flammable as the nast collected at the bottom of my grill.  The longer we ignore them, the more potent they become.

One of my menu items for this week was Teriyaki Chicken.  I use a recipe from my Dad, picked up from when we lived in Hawaii.  The recipe is simple.  Combine soy sauce, a homemade weak simple syrup, white onion, ginger, and garlic into a marinade.  Marinate chicken thighs and drumsticks overnight.  Grill.  Be prepared for flareups from melting chicken fat and dripping juice (the sugar).

I was ready to go.  I had my tongs for turning the chicken after eight minutes.  I had my timer.  I had my spray bottle for squirting the flareups.  I put the chicken on.

We are usually ready for personal flareups.  We know how to put out small fires and handle small dramas life throws at us.  Every once in a while a larger piece of our past catches on fire, but we deal with these as they come.  We don’t think about everything else lining the bottom, waiting for the big explosion.

The small flames are expected and manageable.  With a squirt here or a squirt there, I put out the fires quickly.  If they flare up too much, I move the piece of chicken.  This particular batch seemed to flare up quite vigorously, so I moved the chicken into the open spots between heat diffusers.  The grease and fat still dripped, but it fell in the depths of the grill instead of onto the diffusers right below.  Any flareups would be away from the chicken and wouldn’t lead to charred meat.  Smart right?

Well, this plan, while seeming intelligent at the time, didn’t end up that way.  See, the chicken still dripped.  And there were still some flareup on the grate and on the diffusers, just not as many.  And I still sprayed them with the squirt bottle.  And the water from the squirt bottle would scatter the flaming grease, knocking it to the bottom.  Where it would land on freshly dripped grease.  Where it would flare.  And ignite a year’s worth of fuel.

Have you ever seen a grease fire?  It is quite magnificent.  The way it ignores water as if it isn’t even there.  The way it just bigger as it finds more fuel, burning through a year of my laziness.

I have seen some spectacular meltdowns in my life and participated in a few.  People who haven’t dealt with their own issues, burying them deep below the surface, hoping they won’t ever ignite again.  I can remember doing the same thing beforehand.  Leaving them there, ignoring the need for a resolution, creates a flammable situation, sure to explode some point down the road.  

After emptying my squirt bottle to no effect, I ran inside and grabbed the baking soda and dumped it on the flames.  It wasn’t enough.  Thankfully, we had a second box and I doused the remaining flames with the white powder.  My hand has now been forced.  If I plan to use my grill again, I have to clean it.  

We can never plan for the explosion, preparing before hand to manage it.  All we can do is deal with it when it arrives.  Avoid burying issues; deal with them instead.  Look deep, clean out the garbage, take care of yourself.  Avoid the fire before it happens.

About my meal?  Don’t worry.  I took the chicken off before putting out the fire.  It was delicious

Spilling the Beans

Ever feel like this is you?

I have been carrying around a lot of stress recently.  I have piled it up on my shoulders, determined to struggle alone with my burden, not wanting to throw it off on anyone else.  It has pulled my mood down, and instead of keeping a delightful air about myself, I succumb to the sarcastic and slightly negative.  There have been times in my life where I have been stressed worse, and I am sure there are many of you out there thinking “buddy you don’t know what stress is,” but for some reason, this particular bout of stress seemed to carry a little more weight than it should have.

Stress shares characteristics with the physical properties of pressure dynamics.  Imagine a closed pressure chamber in which exists air contained at the pressure equal to outside the chamber.  Now, by adding more air into the chamber, the pressure increases.  As more and more air continues to enter the chamber, the pressure climbs higher and higher.  Internally, the environment is gradually becoming more hostile.  As the pressure climbs, so does temperature.  The air becomes thicker as more and more molecules are forced to exist in the same space.  The walls of the chamber are designed to withstand a particular amount of internal force, but when the pressure exceeds that amount - BOOM!  The chamber blows.

We are all pressure chambers, but instead of our pressure regulators measuring the amount of air pressure within us, they would should stress.  For the most part, we exist with stress well below what we can handle, but periodically, as more stress barges into our lives, our stress chamber becomes more full, increasing our internal pressure.  The more stress we have, the higher that internal pressure becomes, and unless we find a release for the stress, the results will not be good.  If release never happens, our temperature will rise, and eventually, we will blow.

This particular stress episode of mine stemmed from feeling overwhelmed at the variety of my responsibilities.  I felt like I wasn’t able to fully accomplish anything I set out to do because of all the other things looking over my shoulder.  If I took a moment to relax, I felt guilty because there was a pile of work I needed to do in my office.  If I took a second to work on a personal project, my professional work grumbled.  While I worked on teaching schedules, I couldn’t help but feel that I was neglecting the activities that lead to a happier life.  It never seemed to stop.  My pressure was building.

The image I have in my mind of what happens when a person reaches their stress point took root way back in the 80s when I was growing up.  One of my favorite childhood movies - The Ghostbusters - reaches the pinnacle of tension at the end of the second act when they are forced to shut down the containment grid.  Those of you who have seen the movie know the exact scene I am referring to.  Vankman and Egon slowly creep away as the order is given to shut it down - they know what is about to occur.  The lever is thrown, a red light flashes and an alarm sounds.  Steam shoots out from the walls.  Bricks fly.  The walls shake.  Then everyone runs.  The grid blows, unable to handle the pressure inside, and from it spews every ghost, ghoul, and demon the Ghostbusters had been able to catch.

This is what it is like when someone blows.

We each have varying degrees of containment grids.  Some of us can withstand quite a bit of stress, while others can barely take any at all.  I am pretty certain we each understand our individual limits, but I am not sure we are all certain of how to find a release of that internal stress pressure before we blow.

For me this week, my release came from simply having a conversation with Samantha about it.  For weeks, I succumbed to the stupid masculine idea that I was strong enough and didn’t need to burden her with my worries.  All I succeeded in doing was to give her the impression I was in a funk - which was true.  Finally, I admitted to her what all was bothering me.  I spilled the beans.  While I spoke, I could feel the stress leaking out of me.  The next morning I felt so much better.  The stress was still there, but it was manageable.

I forgot that just because my stress burdens me, it won’t necessarily burden other people.  Talking about my worries to Samantha didn’t add to any worries she might have, but it relieved the pressure I was feeling on the inside.  I will not be blowing anytime soon.

There are many stress relievers out there to help you manage your stress levels.  Just the first page of a Google search for “stress reducers” produces this hearty list of choices - humor, diet, exercise, sleep, music, thinking positively, deep breaths, getting up early, play ahead, writing things down, changing it up, patience, simplify, don’t worry, organize, add love into the plan, be flexible, delegate, don’t judge, journal, water, kissing your loved one, cuddling, tea, massage, and sex.  There are many to choose from that can fit all lifestyles.

If you are stressing right now, find something to help let off some of the steam.  Maintaining a positive balance takes concentration and focus, but the results are worth it.  For those times when the stress seems to pile up, just remember what will happen if you don’t let it out.  Think the Ghostbusters.