Happy Holiday Between Halloween and Christmas

It’s one of my favorite weeks of the year! Food! Football! Binge-watching movies while eating pie! Fat pants!

Who am I kidding? I eat while binge-watching movies and wear fat pants every week of the year.

However, we have an actual holiday where these behaviors are not only allowed, but expected.

As I prepare to clean, cook and completely veg out in front of the idiot box, I thought you might enjoy this post from two years ago. Have a great Thanksgiving!

It’s that time of year again, y’all.

Thanksgiving. Turkey Day. The holiday you ignored as a kid because all it really represented to you was the halfway mark between Halloween Candy and Santa Claus making it rain gifts.

Or maybe that was just me.

The coolest thing about Thanksgiving when I was a kid was Charlie Brown Thanksgiving on TV. That is, until my brother pointed out that Woodstock was eating turkey at the end of the show, which made him a cannibal.

Thanks, Bro.

But I can still laugh at Snoopy fighting with the lawn chair. That will always be my favorite part.

If you are reading this and you haven’t started defrosting your turkey yet, it’s probably already too late and you should make other arrangements. Actually, if you didn’t start defrosting it some time two years ago, it’s probably too late. Why does it take turkeys so effing long to defrost?

This is why, if I’m cooking, I always make ham. I know ham is typically a Christmas dish, but I just have no desire to have to start babying a protein at 4 a.m. so that it’ll be cooked in time for dinner some time in the next century. It’s too much freaking effort.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that my mother, who always despised cooking anyway, would often volunteer to do the turkey for Thanksgiving with her side of the family. Watching her, I came to a realization early in life that I never wanted to have to stick my hand up a turkey’s ass and pull out its guts, even if they were already pre-bagged at the processing plant for the conveneience of those who like to cook and eat nasty things like gizzards, hearts and livers.

I’d like to point out that I managed to make it 46 years without ever laying a finger on a gizzard, until I started making the dog’s homemade dog food. I now am an expert at cooking gizzards in the slow cooker. Only for the love of my furbaby would I do this.

Anyway, ready or not, it’s time to get ready for the food holiday to end all food holidays!

Time to get up at the ass crack of dawn, cook my face off all morning, and watch my family devour the whole meal in less than twenty minutes.

Time to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and secretly hope I get to see the Garfield float malfunction and do something obscene with Spiderman. Or a light pole. Or a police car.

Time to break out my grandmother’s china and reminisce about all the family holidays that my oldest cousin, a depressive alcoholic, stormed out on after someone asked him such controversial questions as, “How’s work?” or “What did you do yesterday?”

Time to break out Mom’s fancy stemware that she bought when she was engaged to my Dad’s brother. Yes, my uncle actually could’ve been my Dad in another life. That’s how southern we are, y’all.

Time to perform several complex mathematical equations to properly calculate which item has to go in the oven first, and for how long before the next item goes in and then everything has to be rotated so that the entire meal is actually still hot when it’s served. Note to self: next house will have double ovens and a warming drawer.

Time to set a beautiful table and then have to ask more than once if the males in the household are actually going to put on pants. The only male who is exempt from this is the cat. He doesn’t wear pants.

Because that would be weird.

Time to put on stretchy pants and watch football. Except it doesn’t really feel like Thanksgiving anymore since my team, Texas A&M, moved to the S.E.C. and we no longer play our big rivals, the University of Texas, on Thanksgiving Day. What in the actual fuck is that? I mean, our fight song is about “sawing varsity’s horns off”, meaning the Longhorns. It’s just so wrong.

Time to listen to The Husband Dude snore on the couch at 2:00 in the afternoon. He’ll wake up and blame it on the tryptophan. Dude, we had ham, not turkey. There’s no tryptophan in ham.

Time to watch the news casts report on all the crazy psychos zealots camping out at stores in preparation for Black Friday. Just watching it makes me pour a drink. Or five.

Who am I kidding? I was gonna drink anyway.

I think this year I’m going to send The Husband Dude down to Best Buy with his Big Foot Costume to scare all the bargain campers in their tents and I’ll have Shane video it from the bushes like someone capturing a Sasquatch sighting at a campground.

And speaking of that…time to feel superior because while the rest of the world appears to be losing their minds, having fight-to-the-death matches in the middle of Big Box Stores over the latest electronic gadget, I’ll be on my sofa in my flannel Star Wars pajamas, snapping up all the deals online and eating a second helping of pecan pie.

And speaking of THAT….Time to do the dreaded “What in the holy hell is this?” reveal when packages start showing up at my door and I’ve ordered things like pants for the cat, because that shopping I did? It happened AFTER those five drinks I poured.

Note to self: remind The Husband Dude that friends don’t let friends Drink and Prime.

And seriously, credit card company? You flagged my purchase and called me when I bought something for my niece’s bridal shower because apparently a silver tray at Bloomingdales is an “unusual purchase” for me but you thought it was perfectly legit of me to buy cat pants????

Clearly, you know way too much about my shopping history, Big Brother. And my drinking history. And my drinking and shopping history.

Never mind…