helping friends -

     Last week Friday, Brian and I had aided some friends in doing the graduation open house for their daughter. Graduation open houses are such a wonderful celebration of achievement tradition! In order for a kid to have one, they had to earn a graduation certificate / diploma. For some kids, that's an achievement. But for others, it's an achievement which contained some type of struggling. Our friends daughter's schooling definitely contained it's challenges! But struggles and challenges have been a part of Ashlee's life from the get go!
     Ashlee's mom Amie had gone in for one of her pre-natal scheduled checkups only to lean that the reason she didn't have much appetite, and the reason behind her continually swelling ankles (and Amie is a very tall size 3 model) was because her blood pressure wasn't just rising, it was sky rocketing!!! Amie was diagnosed as having preclampsia (spelling?). Basically, she was 'allergic' to the pregnancy and the only way to solve the problem was to deliver the baby.
      In-fact, the situation was so grave that the Dr's office did not even want to wait the fifteen to twenty minutes it would take for somebody to come get Amie and take her to the hospital. One of the doctor's offices nurses drove her there herself.
      Ashlee entered this world at 1 lb 7 1/2 ounces, 13 weeks before her due date. For the first few days, the medical staff was not sure if either the mother or the child would make it. Oh the pleading prayers that went up on their behalf!!!! Oh the prayers of Thanksgiving when God granted the desires of our hearts and they both slowly pulled through! What a day of rejoicing it was when Amie got to bring her oh so precious then five pound baby home from the hospital three months later!!!
      And last Friday we were celebrating Ashlee having graduated high school - with honors!! :-D Way to go Ashlee!!!
      Instead of cooking a full pig in the roaster, they had gotten a bunch of pig butts. Technically, they are huge pork shoulder roasts. The name change has something to do with the Jews, and how it was okay to eat pork butts, cause after all, it's just a butt, but it wasn't okay to eat a shoulder roast .... My guys told me more details ... that's how much I'm currently recalling ...
     For those of you whom are local - we highly recommend renting equipment from 'Sun Rentals' on Fuller St.!! We had personally recently rented an auger from there (you'll be learning more about that soon). Our friends had rented the gas pig roaster from there. Over the years of working for caterers, Brian has done 'ump-teen dozen' (another of my dad's terms) pig roasts!!! He HIGHLY recommends and prefers the gas roasters over the charcoal ones!!!! LOTS easier to control the heat, thus the timing, etc.!! And far less likely to have 'flare ups' (too much of the fat dripping on one area of hot coals can create quite the roaring fire, and you can't just easily lift a pig up, like you can hamburgers!)
     A-n-y ways, they had picked the roaster up Friday morning and been told that the tanks contained enough gas for eight hours of roasting. When Brian went to check progress at two and a half hours, the tank was empty and the temp inside the roaster had been seriously dropping! YIKES!!!! The guys pulled the half full much smaller sized gas tank off of our friends gas grill, while Amie called the rental place. While she did have to repeat the telling of the situation to a manager, the company did not give her any grief over it. In-fact, quite the opposite. They apologized, verified that the address on the rental sheet was also the address of the site where the roaster was being used, and immediately sent a worker our way with a new tank! They also said that our friends were to get their own personal tank refilled at such and such a place and then bring the receipt into them and they would reimburse them for it! Now that folks is customer service! Now true, it shouldn't have happened in the first place. But it did/had. Accidents happen. Life happens. But the company took both responsibility and action!!! Woohoo!!!
     Originally the 'plan' had been for me to do up a lot of the other food. But then I was (am) still struggling with my vertigo. So Amie recruited others to do most of the food, and all I had to do was help cut up fruit and tray and bowl stuff that day. Once the celebration started, for awhile I helped keep the buffet filled. Once I started 'feeling it' I sat inside at the kitchen island eating and recouping. Amie came through giving some relatives a tour of their new home and after taking one look at me, informed me I needed to go lay down! I said I would be fine in a couple of minutes... Two minutes later she was back, linking her fingers through mine, and leading me up to a bedroom. As she was shutting the door behind herself she 'informed' me that I was to stay there and rest!!! Goodness.
     I did rest for quite a while, feeling ever so guilty that Brian was still out there working over that hot roaster. Due to the situation with the gas, the roasts hadn't been done on time. So the guys were carving off the done parts and then sticking the rest of the roasts back in to keep cooking.
     I re-entered the kitchen later at the same time Brian was entering through the garage. "What are you doing back up?!!!" I reassured him that I was doing better and started in on the dirty dishes. Once the party was over, I stayed at the sink/counter while others brought everything in to us. 'Team work' got all of it cleaned up nicely!!
     Ashlee will be starting towards her teachers certificate this fall. I warned her that I had started towards mine, but instead ended up getting first my 'MRS.' degree and then my 'MOM' degree. But hey, I did work as a teachers aid for three years in the pre-school that was part of the school our boys attended :-). And yes, I am still glad I got both of the degrees I did.
o;-p