Thursday, November 25, 2004

An Odd Thanksgiving Morning...

Well…I’m writing this on Thanksgiving morning. The turkey – a 24 pounder – is roasting in the oven, the house is clean and filled with scents like cinnamon, pine and well, food. The Macy’s parade is on tv (my favorite tradition) and I’ve already shed the tears.

I cry at parades. I have no idea why. I just get so into them and I get all teary eyed. When Santa arrives at the end of the parade, I’m usually bawling to the amusement of my loved ones.

And, so far, it’s a typical Odd Wife holiday.

In previous years, there has always been some funny turkey story. Like 2 years ago, my first year cooking, when I was irritated to receive a turkey with no giblet bag inside only to discover it baked into the bird when we carved it. We called that one “turkey surprise”. Or last year, when we roasted our 26 pound bird and it barely fit in the oven and I forgot to defrost it and had to spend the night before Thanksgiving running it under cool water and praying. Then I topped it when I proudly covered my turkey in those little turkey pop-up thermometers and set it to bake. Yeah. Never occurred to me to read the directions. I had this vision that you set them in the turkey and cooked it until they…well, popped. Well, when you cook the bird that way, they do not pop. They melt. An hour later, I was frantically yanking little melted plastic sticks out of the bird while my sister laughed her ass off and took pictures.

This year…no different. I remembered to defrost. I skipped the pop-up thermometers all together. I found the giblet bag. I was so pleased about getting it all right. I had made the stuffing last night to stuff my bird (that sounds dirty, doesn’t it?) and was cheerfully shoving handfuls up the dead birds ass when I realized I was missing one of my fake fingernails.

Yes. I kid you not. Remember my earlier post about my nail flying off in the grocery store? I now had a fully stuffed 24 pound bird and somewhere inside was a plastic fingernail. I swear I saw this on Friends once. I wish to hell I was making it up.

I ripped off all my remaining nails, and began un-stuffing my turkey. Visions of one of my guests taking a bite and blinking in confusion at the little pink melted nail in their mouth were running through my head. I couldn’t find the damned thing. I scraped at the insides and then sifted through my stuffing frantically. Nothing. Giving up and resigning myself to a typical Odd Wife holiday, I re-stuffed the damned thing and put it in the oven.

It wasn’t until I began putting stuff back in the refrigerator that I found my fingernail on the floor. Now that was a moment I felt truly thankful!!!

TEH is making funnel cakes for breakfast and Silly Girl (daughter) is nestled in front of the tv critiquing the parade (I’m fairly sure she gets that from her film critic dad). My guests (my sister “Brat” and her longtime, live-in boyfriend “Hick” and his son “Dysfunctional”) decided not to show up at 9 am like they planned and are instead just relaxing at home until later…which is fine with me. More time for me to relax too!

Posted by Red :: 10:18 AM :: | ---------------------------------------