Trial...by smoker?

It is no surprise to anyone who has talked to my husband for more than five minutes that he is a fan of good old fashioned Texas bbq, and that he LOVES to cook. He cooks for everyone. Making good food (and feeding people) is something that just genuinely makes him feel happy - and he does it a lot. Thankfully, he is also REALLY good at it, much to the dismay of my hind end. We used to do Wednesday night meals at our church, but stopped a little over a year ago. While we both love serving in the church, doing dinners on Wednesday nights was always a challenge. The shopping, prep, and cooking itself were exhausting - but then add on top of that the process of clean-up, which too often ended up being just our family and one or two others to help out - and it was just too much. Making the decision not to continue the meals has been hard for my husband. With any event that comes up, he feels that yearning. I, on the other hand, usually hold my breath and sort of hope he DOESN'T get asked to help. When it comes down to it, we're a package deal in almost anything. For my husband to plan, organize, shop, and cook, that usually requires a large amount of effort on my part. My husband is an ideas guy, and the execution guy. All the stuff in between is kind of a big fuzzy mess that he hopes works out for the best. I am the one in charge of 'the stuff in the middle'. The past few weeks, my husband has been talking to a friend of his from work about helping them out with a few events they're doing for some of their missions teams. They have an even this weekend to raise funds for a ministry in Mexico, and then in a few weeks, they have two separate fundraising events where they are catering dinner for a big company, which will allow them to raise many of the funds they need for a mission trip to Cuba. Now I will say this about the other church....they do not rely on big offerings from their church body. They do A LOT of fundraising. For this one trip I know of at least 4 different events they will hold to earn their funds. I don't even know what else they are doing internally. But anyway - back to my husband. This friend of his asked him if he would help them out with raising money for the Mexico ministry. They wanted to sell lunches after church, and decided on a menu which includes bbq brisket, pulled pork, and smoked chicken quarters. And...that is where the wheels came off the cart. My husband, in a manner somewhat unlike him, had a plan for the order in which he would smoke each of these items. He had anticipated the food arriving at the beginning of the week, and over the course of the week he would smoke the various items in preparation for their sale this weekend. But the meat didn't come until Friday morning. And the wood that he needed to smoke the meat couldn't be found. And when it was found, it still needed to be cut and split into appropriate sized pieces. The sum total of which is that my husband ended up taking the day off Friday. He started smoking the meat some time between 10 and 11 AM. It is now 11 PM on Saturday. With the exception of a few hours overnight, the smoker has been going non-stop for 32 hours. We all...every person in this house...smell like smoke. Normally that's not a bad thing, but...I'm over it at this point. And then last night, around midnight, as we were trying to put the loads of smoked meat up in our basement refrigerator, we found that the fridge had given up the ghost. It was dead, Jim. It was a recent development, because the freezer items were mostly still frozen, but the refrigerator was hot. Everything in there was a total loss. Thankfully that wasn't a lot, because we had cleaned it out in preparation for the smoked meat - but the two full gallons of milk I had just bought...the eggs...several things that were just a nuisance to lose...well...they're gone. At that point, my husband did have a small moment of panic. Our other refrigerator was full of the meat not yet smoked. The meat that was cooked had to be cooled quickly. Thank you Lord that we have a daughter old enough to drive (and buy dry ice) because she made *two* trips to the store for enough ice to fill all our coolers with ice and dry ice enough to get (and keep) everything cold until it could be transported to refrigerators today. My husband took a cat nap as soon as everything was put up, and then got up again bright and early this morning to get things going again. It has been another long day of one meat after another piled on the smoker and slow cooked to beautiful bbq perfection. We also went out early in the afternoon to buy a new chest freezer. And some booze. Which we never did crack into. This has been a giant 2 days of anything that can go wrong, going wrong...so we're kind of afraid to risk a celebratory cocktail. But I will say this. We've spent the majority of today together, sitting on our patio under our umbrella (necessary thanks to the rain), just hanging out together. No computers, phones down, and just hanging out. Just hubby and me. It's time we don't often spend together at home. Sure, we go on dates, and sure, we spend long hours talking to each other before we go to sleep or in the morning before we get up and get going...but just...on a weekend...to sit there and just be together. We don't do that much. I enjoyed it. I think he did too. So...maybe this bbq thing may become a hobby of ours. I certainly wouldn't complain if we perfected an amazing bbq brisket. But not until the other fridge is fixed. I can't take this kind of bbq drama!