Hey turkeys, it’s time.
Memaw and the cousins are due to arrive in T-minus 15 hours and counting. You’re either elbow-deep in guts and gizzards questioning the meaning of life or you are hiding in a bathroom breathing heavily into a paper bag.
Am I Close?
It’s always a good idea to host an event until it’s go-time. Only then do you realize the people living in your house aren’t domesticated and that weird smell was never resolved.
Oh, Thanksgiving and Christmas…how dost thou bringeth us to our knees, rendering us helpless and insane, yet magically grateful and awestruck?
An abundance of emotion, sugar, saturated fats, and questionable DNA will do it every time. That and menopause.
So what can you do tonight to make sure tomorrow doesn’t Titanic? Here are a few practical and impractical tips to survive the holidays:
Diarrhea.
No, it’s true. You can always create this no-questions asked scenario. This conversation killer and activity canceler is the emergency “go to” for crawfishing out of anything. It’s gross, I know, but think about it… Who’s gonna ask questions or argue with diarrhea? Not me, man. One mention of the D word and everyone’s happy with some Circle K Vienna sausages and a Polar Pop. So sister, just know it’s there. Tuck it into your holiday toolkit if the goin’ gets tough enough and you just can’t face playing host. But just know, that’ll be your last hosting gig this generation.
Moving on…
If you find yourself without enough time to cook the turkey, you can always SPATCHCOCK it. Isn’t that the best word? In the south, we might say, “Splay that sucker out.” The bottom line is that you flatten the bird, lessening the density, thereby shortening the cooking time. Butterball has a tutorial right here: Spatchcock How-To
If the bird is frozen, you better stop reading and Google turkey intervention or restaurants open on Thanksgiving. If your turkey is teeny – there’s still time, but get that gobbler to the fridge STAT.
Next, move all the drinks outside of the kitchen. Having extra people coming in and out of the kitchen is a surefire way to end up on the nightly news before the taters are mashed.
This applies to all drinks, except alcohol. Take all the glasses, cups, stirs, and liquids and set up in another location. If you have an ice bucket – great, otherwise an ice chest will suffice for ice. The alcohol? Find a responsible adult and tell ‘em they’re in charge of it, it just doesn’t go in the kitchen.
Last thing before bed, run pick up a couple of bags of ice!
Another important tip for getting them all to leave the party is the ole, “Come make yourself a to-go plate, honey.” Aunt Marge doesn’t WANT to overstay, she just needs a little redirection from the thirteenth rendition of her cat’s last trip to the vet. It’s just physics, you see. An object at rest stays at rest, unless it has a frictional force to combat the inertia. The same is true for an object in motion – it will stay in motion. So if Marge has the frictional force of you prodding her to the “to-go plate line,” you can just nudge her right on out the door…politely, of course. We love Marge, we do, but for the love of Pete y’all got to get gone at a reasonable hour.
And finally, everyone needs a Chaos Captain. Understand me clearly, a CHAOS CAPTAIN…NOT CAPTAIN CHAOS. Captain Chaos brings his own Maker’s, the Chaos Captain will take you to Meet yours.
Maybe your family is refined and everyone minds their p’s and q’s. I love this for you and yours. Play your Mah Jong and Gin Rummy in peace, friend.
But if your family tree involves restraining orders, lots of boundaries, or struggles coping since Saban left, you might need a Chaos Captain.
Stop brining right now and make the call to the most responsible guest on the list, and crown them tonight. Bribe them with extra pecan pie or a bottle of your best wine in exchange for making sure the Vodka disappears when the crowd gets rowdy, the Monopoly Board closes before midnight, and the stick-in-the-mud cousins are escorted out early so the fun ones can have some fun without ending up on the prayer list.
Better yet, go ahead and put us on the prayer list now. After this weekend, we’ll need it.
I hope you giggled a little and got your mind right and ready, so when tomorrow comes you can look around and think, “Some of the time, I may not like y’all, but all the time I love ya, and by gosh, I am beyond thankful for you.”
And I am thankful for each one of you. Thank you for continuing to read my column and Happy Thanksgiving, my friends.
