A Funky Thanksgiving is on the Way to My House!

A funky Thanksgiving is on the way to my house!

My husband and my sons are cooking, due to Gimpy the Foot. I offered, but they were adamant that there was noooooo way that they want me re-injuring the Gimpster by a long-standing session in the kitchen.

Not, mind you, that they’re being all that altruistic. As my youngest told me, “You’ve been such a baby about this. I want you back the way you should be.” (I’m assuming he means in full-speed Mom working order.) “I am sooo ready for you to get over this.”

There you have it: The young son, taking care of the young son by taking care of his mom. (He’s right, btw. I have been a baby about Gimpy.)

My husband could cook, once upon a time. I remember it dimly. Back in our dating days, he cooked for me all the time. It wasn’t fancy fare, but it did taste good. Foolish woman that I am, I thought this meant I was getting a great husband with a co-chef thrown in.

I didn’t reckon with post-vow amnesia. As soon as he slid the ring on my finger, he forgot how to so much as boil a pan of water. When I can’t cook for some reason, he grills (he’s fantastic with a charcoaler) and brings in the meat. Nothing else. Just meat. Other than take-out, that’s the sum of his gastronomic contribution to this family for the past 30 years.

Before anyone gets riled up with the idea that my husband wooed and wed me under false pretenses, I should admit that I pretended to like football back when we were dating.

Madame Pot, meet Mr Kettle.

I suggested having the meal catered or even – horrors – eating in a restaurant. But they will have none of such sacrilege. They know what Thanksgiving looks like, and it comes out of Mom’s kitchen, not some box. Besides, if they ate out, there wouldn’t be any leftovers, and every civilized person knows that you need tons of leftovers for watching football around the clock over the long Thanksgiving weekend.

I was a fool – delirious on pain meds or some such – to even have such a crazy idea.

Now, my charcoaling spouse and my Ramen-noodle-is-a-feast sons are going to prepare Thanksgiving dinner.

I can hardly wait to see this.

I’m going to try to pin them down on what they think is an essential Thanksgiving Dinner – as opposed to the groaning sideboard affairs I spin up – and then make a list and send them off to the store for their last-minute Thanksgiving Eve shopping spree.

That alone should be a challenge for them. I had to get my girlfriends to shop for me after I busted up Gimpy because my men cannot follow a list. Now, they’re going to be on their own, trying to follow a list and come home with all the makings for an abbreviated Thanksgiving Dinner.

I start giggling when I think about it.

I know we’ll have turkey. And ham.  I trust they can get that done. The rest of it is going to be anybody’s guess. They nixed my suggestion that they go to mixes and not try to build things from the ground up. Their only concession is that they ordered the pies from a local bakery.

I figure if worse comes to worst we can put the veggies down the garbage disposal and go to a restaurant, then come home to four days of pigging out on leftover turkey and ham with a salad or something on the side and plenty of pie for desert.

In the meantime, I’m going to sit in my recliner and watch. And grin. And think about how very, very, very blessed I am.

You know that list I wrote of the 10 things I’m thankful for? Well … this is one of ‘em.