It's Never Easy

I swear to God, if I bought the Butterball Turkey in July and put it in the refrigerator to thaw, come November the damn thing would still be frozen. I don't care how "prepared" I think I am, I'm not. The only reason I'm calm enough to blog about this right now is because that bastard is roasting. An hour ago I was fit to be tied. It's not like I don't plan ahead. I do. I take a remedial course in turkey every single year. I buy the magazines. I read them. I scour the WorldWideWeb. I print the shit. I mean, I do my homework.

So, five full days in the fridge to thaw a fifteen pound bird seemed to be the general consensus. At my request Ron stopped by his home-away-from-home (Kroger) and picked up the bird last Friday after golf. He brought it home, and we lovingly deposited it on the middle shelf in the refrigerator in the garage. At that point, I was happy because I was hopeful. Hope is a beautiful thing when you have it. I clung to it like a soft blankie for the rest of the day on Friday. And on Saturday. On Sunday I was still a carefree hopeful child. It was on Monday that I began to change. A tiny bit of fear began to creep into my psyche. What if they were wrong?  By Tuesday, my childhood innocence had given way to teenage angst. I could even feel a pimple on my chin. Ghosts of Thanksgivings past were haunting me. And by Wednesday, I was a full-on adult paranoid schizophrenic. The turkey would never thaw! They were all against me! But still, I did hold out one tiny speck of hope. Maybe this time!

I got up at six a.m. this morning and like a fearless warrior, I marched into that garage, I grabbed that turkey and I schlepped into the kitchen and threw it up on the counter. Damn near busted the counter it was so fucking frozen.

They can beat me down, but they cannot kill me. I unwrapped that sucker and I plunged it into a sink full of cold water. 
"All right, motherfucker, let's see what you got now." 

Thirty minutes later, I was tearfully waking Ron up. "The turkey is still frozen. I need to get it in the oven."
"Okay, I'll do it," he said, like it was nothing.

The first thing he did was to slosh the turkey-thawing water all over the kitchen floor.
The next thing he did was to run hot water over the turkey (the thing they tell you absolutely not to do if you don't want to die) until he could get the little bag of stuff out.
"There. I did it. I'm going back to bed."
At that point I grabbed a couple of pieces of celery, stuck 'em into the cavity, rubbed some oil over the skin, and I threw that ptomaine-infested bird into the oven and shut the door.

If we don't die after we eat it, then I'm gonna call our Thanksgiving a success.