How do I know if I’m looking at the turkey’s fanny? Do they even have fannies?

I’m eating a Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow tonight and Thursday night and the only difference between the two is that the one I’m eating tomorrow requires me to shove my hand up a turkey’s bottom whereas the one I’m eating Thursday requires me to simply show up.

Any day that I don’t have to stick my hand up poultry is a good day in my book.

We had every intention of driving down to North Carolina to spend Thanksgiving with my parents this year but that intention, just like the one I had last week to finally scrub the eight-month old remnants of bird poop from my car door, are missing in action. Probably because they’re busy paving the way to another destination entirely, one that happens to be way further south than North Carolina and quite a bit hotter.

The girls had been looking forward to cooking the big meal while in North Carolina so, despite an invitation to my mother-in-law’s house for Thursday which we gladly accepted, we decided to go ahead and cook our own meal tomorrow and now the biggest, most troublesome issue I’m dealing with at the moment is figuring out if my turkey is upside down. Am I the only one on the planet who has trouble with this? Why can’t they grow these things with a built-in compass? Or instructions like THIS SIDE UP, IDIOT tattooed on them, for directionally challenged people like me?

The second biggest, most troublesome issue I’m dealing with at the moment is my hair. Why does it insist on looking like crap within one week of having it professionally done? Why can’t I find a stylist that I love and can afford, instead of having to choose between one or the other? Why can’t someone put North and South Korea into time-out until they agree to stop peeing in the sandbox?

I had to stick that one in there, lest you assume I walk around thinking it’s all about me all the time.

The third and final biggest, most troublesome issue I’m dealing with at the moment is determining whether scoring a copy of The Blind Side for $3.99 is worth waking up Friday morning at holy-shit o’clock and standing outside in line somewhere in frigid temperatures and lake effect snow. My frugal head is thinking of course it is, numnuts but my extremities are thinking my frugal head ought to remove itself from its own ass. However, an LG front-loading washer and dryer for half off the MSRP? Totally worth freezing gonads off. However, I don’t have gonads to speak of which means … WAKEY, WAKEY, NATE!

Nate is understandably skeptical about the prospect of letting Old Man Winter go all cryogenics on his privates for the good of energy efficient appliances that hopefully won’t blow gaskets like bubbles or dance around our laundry room when they think I’m not looking. When he realized just how early holy-shit o’clock was, he was all “Uh, you want me to what? Are you out of your mind? That is completely insane! Who does that? Not going to happen. Get someone else. I’m outta here.” And I was all “Huh. That’s funny. I recall saying the exact same thing once myself.” And then I simply dropped trow and flashed my glistening twelve-hours-of-back-labor-with-an-anesthesiologist-who-couldn’t-administer-an-epidural-to-a-comatose-sloth-if-his-medical-license-depended-on-it c-section scar. GAME, SET, MATCH.

For all of you celebrating Thanksgiving this week, I wish you a very happy Gobble Gobble day! Don’t forget to wear your stretchy pants and burp frequently.

For all of you standing in line early Friday morning to score an 87 inch LCD TV or the latest umpteenth-generation gaming system, TELL THAT GUY BEHIND YOU THAT HE’S STANDING IN THE WRONG LINE. HIS NAME IS NATE.

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