Ok, I’ll confess…it was me you heard screaming, “Chivalry is NOT dead!” from the rooftop. Trouble is, I’m convinced my husband was the only one who listened. And, you might know, it would be the one and only time he ever did. I thought it quite a sweet gesture this year when he volunteered to fight off the masses at the local grocers’ to pick out our Thanksgiving turkey, insisting that a man could get a much better deal per pound on meat than a woman. Not being a glutton for punishment, I let him go.

Five hours and much pacing later, I glanced out the front window as he was pulling into the driveway. I immediately became suspicious when he returned from the garage pushing a wheelbarrow. After all the grunting and heavy breathing subsided he stood, proud as a peacock, in the middle of the kitchen floor and declared, “Now here’s a bird!” Somehow, I just couldn’t bring myself to tell him that being his prize catch of the day was the size of a Clydesdale, at $1.10 per pound he had spent more on this turkey than our monthly house payment. After mentioning that I could not possibly expose our 20 year old oven to such a glandular case, he patted me on the behind and quipped, “Well, honey, that’s why we have a microwave!” I would have had more luck shoving the microwave inside the turkey.

I suggested that maybe he should head down the basement, oil-up the chain saw for carving and afterwards, hunt down a supply house that carried walk-in coolers for freezing the leftovers. As there was just the two of us, I also tossed around the idea of writing a bestseller entitled, “1,824 Ways To Cook And Make Garments With Turkey”, since it was going to be our house guest for the next 2 ½ years.

I think I could have been in a more festive mood had it not been for one minor detail nagging at me all day…where was I going to find a children’s wading pool this time of year to cook it in? As I stood shaking my head, a bright thought occurred to me. After he gets a hernia from lifting the drumsticks, his grocery shopping days will be history. It’s just as well—Christmas dinner could be some form of mutant goose.

This house ain’t big enough for the four of us.