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You see that woman?

With the perky pointy boobs?

In high heels?

Smiling?

She is not real. Much as you male types wish to believe otherwise, she is NOT. She is a fictional Madison Avenue creation. She is nothing but a flamboyant mental derangement with the two-fold purpose of trying to convince women that if that have that lovely stove, they too can sail through holiday cooking with nary a hair out of place, all the while providing MEN the excuse they need to sit on the couch and play tag with the remote.

There! I said it. Much as you may wish to believe otherwise, MOSTLY women drive the holiday food fare. MOSTLY women slave away in an often cramped, steamy, environ trying to juggle the creation of seventeen different food items and turn them all out in perfection on the dot of 3 p.m. when a hungry mob of family descends upon an equally perfect table (with cloth, best china, silverware, and appropriate festive decorations) to drip, drop, spill, gobble, their way through your lovely dishes of bliss.

And then, they have the audacity, the sheer chutzpah, to belch, get up and wander back to their couches leaving a train wreck on the table, a mound of dishes, pots and pans in the kitchen, and nary an offering hand to clean it all up.

That’s what most women face this two-day marathon.

And yes I did say two days. More like five. When you add in the menu divining, the list making, the shopping through multiple stores, the planning, and the execution of breads, pies, birds, sides, relishes, and more, it’s a non-stop mental gymnastics that makes sleep nearly impossible.

Yesterday I made ciabatta bread, and holiday bread. Today, I spend FOUR (did you hear me?) FOUR hours creating pie crust and pie and salad and most of the dressing and giblets, and sweet potatoes, to say nothing of drowning the bird and draining it and putting it in to dry, and re-organizing the refrigerator forty-two times to accommodate all the extra food. And who in the hell ever thought it was a good idea to have pearl onions?

I am frazzled.  I look more like this:

I have washed every dish in my kitchen four times now.

I have wrinkles in my wrinkles from dishwater hands.

I have burns under my burns. (It’s a hoot to try to upside down a boiling hot apple pie to uncover the pecan now hardening into candy brown sugar top)

I have screamed at the dog thirty-seven times to “get out of my kitchen.”

The cats are hiding under the bed.

I am done.

For today.

I think God made pearl onions as a joke.

I spent hours peeling off papery skin.

Tomorrow I get to do the bird.

That’s always fun.

Mostly I have to “finish off” recipes I started today. You know, add the topping to the sweet potatoes, and mix up the dressing ingredients.

We’re making a lot of new stuff this time. So it’s a bit of a crap shoot.

The Contrarian was ordered to “make dinner”. Making dinner = making gruel which usually includes some combination of meat, tomatoes, pasta, and shaking seasonings around it.

Did I say, that I am done?

Until the cock crows and I leap from my bed to attack the final assembly of “THE MEAL”.

And did I mention that once we sit down, it takes on average 20 minutes to consume?

Sigh.

And I still have to pick off all that meat from the neck. That is such a pain in the ass.

Let’s hear it for giblet gravy!

Have a happy Thanksgiving!