Happy Valentine's Day everybody!

A happy marriage can make Valentine's Day a lot better. Well, if you're a human being. If you're a lobster, it's a lot worse. But I really don't think that lobsters get married....or do much of anything besides fight with other lobsters. So I don't object to eating them.

And since I don't object to eating them, I don't object to killing them. That is, I mean doing it myself. It's this kind of weird moral code that I have. I'm not saying that I've killed a bunch of animals for meat. I haven't. But I'm saying that I'm sure I could if I had to. I know most of my friends don't believe me, but I'm pretty sure, in my own heart, that it's true.

Anyhow, there's a point to all of this. The point is that I wanted to do something really special for The Hub for Valentine's Day this year, since we have stuck together through so much stuff that was difficult, stressful and just plain weird. The Hub LOVES lobster. It's the main thing he misses about not living in MA anymore: inexpensive, fresh, easy to get lobster.

When I was at the T.D.'s today, Mr. T.D. mentioned that lobsters were on sale at a local market. So I went there after I got done at their place to check it out. I thought they might be sold out, and if so I could get some good salmon and cook that up with a nice sauce, which is something else The Hub enjoys.

However, they weren't sold out. There was just one dude at the seafood counter and he was really, really, really busy on account of his co-worker, whom he said was "brainless" had written down six orders for steamed shrimp and such-like and then lost them. So all these people were there expecting to pick up already steamed shrimp or lobsters or whatever only to find that their orders had been lost. I decided that I had better just take live lobsters, which were almost sold out, and get out of there before Seafood Dude confronted Brainless Co-Worker who was due to come back from his break soon. Lots of sharp knives in the seafood department.

Consequently I came home with two grocery bags. One with corn, some chips and stuff....the other with the unhappy lobsters. I had to get water boiling real quick and so I didn't at first notice what was going on behind me. Specifically, that Winston was completely puzzled by why the grocery bag was rustling. Grocery bags, in his experience, only come in and sit down and don't do anything when sniffed, though they do smell like food. I could tell he was completely mystified by the smell of the lobsters. When Winston isn't sure what's going on he sits back on his haunches and looks hard a the situation. It's one of those habits he has as a dog that I think humans could learn from: specifically, many humans just rush in running their mouths and doing things even when they don't know what's going on. Dogs never do this.

Cats, on the other hand, are something else. Vio-kitty obviously had one thought and one thought only: Grocery bag making sounds = PREY! And, let me tell you she hopped right onto the grocery bag getting the plastic bag off of the lobsters, which were each in clear plastic boxes in short order. And when she saw those live crustaceans in there, spoiling for a fight and loaded for bear she could hardly contain her glee. She clearly thought that she had won the Cat Lotto and began to circle her New Toys looking for a way to get them out of the plastic. Never mind that one lobster was pretty much as big as the Vio-kitty, and she was outnumbered.

Meanwhile, the dog had gotten a load of those claws and, even though they were rubber banded, made the pretty sensible decision that these things were dangerous. In his mind, it's his job to protect his pack from danger, and Vio-kitty is a pack member. Winston's basic M.O. for protection is to get in between whatever he percieves as a threat and the person or cat he is trying to protect. If that doesn't work he has a very impressive growl. What he would do next is unclear, since this is as far as anything or anybody has ever gone in terms of acting threatoning when he is around.

So, while I was trying to get the water to a rolling boil without it boiling over, Winston was trying to convince Vio-kitty to stay away from the lobsters by means of nudging her with his enourmous nose and growling at the lobsters. The cat was looking at him like he was going crazy and the lobsters were just burnt up at everybody. If aliens landed in my kitchen right at that moment and tried to figure out what was going on....well, I guess somebody would have gotten vaporized.

Anyway, I got the lobsters in the pot, but had a problem keeping the lid on. So I just held it down for 15 min while the lobsters steamed. All I needed at that point was a lobster escape. Winston seemed deeply impressed by my bravery. Vio just seemed pissed off as usual.

The Hub came home, and I was running around, cooking the corn, trying to set the table. It occurred to me that we don't have any tools for cracking open the lobster claws. "Hey, Hon, do you have any pliers or anything?" I asked.

"Of course I have pliers. I'm a handyman!" he answered.

"Well, maybe you'd better get them."

I thought he had NOTICED the lobsters on the back burner, though I guess they did have a lid on. He went down stairs to the basement and came back up. "What do you need me to use the pliers for? Is something wrong with the sink?"

"No, bring them out to dining room table."

"What, I've got to use pliers on my dinner?!"

"Well, um, yeah, kinda. See?"

"Oh my God! Lobster! My favorite! I haven't had any since we came home! Wow, corn and everything! This is so great!"

So he was happy, Winston was happy, Vio-kitty got a little fin piece and some juice in her food which she ate with great gusto, and I was happy since The Hub did the dishes.