So, What'cha Get, Watch'cha Get??!!

...ugh, this year at the House of Whippersnap, the festive spirit came drenched in rich, creamery butter...

I don't know how other people react to their Christmas presents, but here in this family, how loud an exclamation you make is inversely proportional to how happy you actually are about what you get. In other words, if you hear someone in the corner ecstatically freaking out about the great pair of socks he just received, you know it's all just a big cover-up for his real feelings and he's actually rather wistful that the soft, mushy package did not miraculously end up being a 1 litre bottle of Jack Daniels.

My memory is a little foggy, and I'm not entirely sure whose shrieks of joy were louder two years ago when That Guy and I unwrapped the gift from his dad and step-mom and found the Deluxe 18 Quart Turkey Roaster. I think, in retrospect, probably his were louder... I mean, I was "happy", don't you doubt it for a second, but him? He was "totally overjoyed." He even managed to say something inane like "wow, just what I always wanted," in a voice so concentrated on trying to sound sincere it brought tears to the eyes, it really did. His words "always wanted" sounded so earnest in fact, that I've always wondered if, when they heard them, his parents' minds flashed back to his rebellious teenage angst years and thought, "he... he wanted a Turkey Roaster back then? Gee, if only we'd known..."

Needless to say, for the last two years, said Turkey Roaster has sat in its box unopened and lost in that scary, chaotic lair we call our basement. Then, yesterday afternoon, around 2:30 p.m., we did a (pretty exhausting and exasperating) excavation and dug it up.

"You figure out how to work the thing and I'll stuff the turkey," I told Mr. IQ, and got to work immediately. I unwrapped the bird, pulled out all the gibletty things and tossed them into the sink where they landed with a resounding clunk. "Weird," I thought, and, with great difficulty, wrenched the poor bird into a most indelicate position to commence stuffing procedure. I wasn't terribly successful with this, and managed to get only about three teaspoons in. Discouraged, I wandered into the living room, where Mr. IQ was sitting with furrowed brow, staring at the directions.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"It says you should run the thing empty the first time to (do something or another, blah blah blah, I always tune out when it comes to technical things.)"

"Well, we don't really have time to do that," I said, "I'll just give it a good scrub with soap and water, and that will be good enough, don't you think?"

"I guess...I don't know....sure..."

"By the way, this bird has got the smallest insides ever. I can hardly get any stuffing into it at all."

"Really?" he asked, perking up immediately. Always up for a challenge, he headed for the kitchen and came back nanoseconds later.

"It's totally frozen!!"

"No it isn't!" I said, instinctively hiding my frost-bitten hands behind my back. I mean, it truly had not occurred to me before that the damn thing was still frozen, but the second he said this everything suddenly made sense. The thunking giblets. The stubborn thighs. Crap, the freaking, bloody turkey was still frozen!!

A tense and heated discussion followed, and then suddenly something changed on the face of Mr. IQ. The brow smoothed. A calm look of cool determination came over him. What can I say? The realization that 21st Century Man dealing with a frozen turkey at three o'clock on Christmas afternoon is the modern equivalent of Stone Age Man hunting the Wild Wildebeest had dawned on him.

"I'll deal with this," he muttered, and disappeared back into the basement with the turkey. And returned about three minutes later with a miraculously defrosted bird.

"What did you do?" I asked, genuinely impressed. (Oooooh, he can defrost a turkey in SECONDS, he IS an Alpha Male after all!)

"Heat gun," he said, wiping the sweat off his face.

So the turkey went into roaster right on schedule, and all was good. The Christmas tree was beautiful. My children's laughter was beautiful. The sound of the beautiful Christmas music was beautiful. The smell of the gently roasting young turkey was... was.... (sniff, sniff)... um, Mr. IQ? What's up with the, uh, burning chemical smell?

That Guy investigated, then re-read the manual. "Oh," he said, "you're supposed to run it empty the first time to burn off something something blah blah toxic residue blah blah blah."

Oh.

Whoopsie.

"What's that weird smell, mom?" High Intensity asked at one point during the afternoon.

"Dinner," I said grimly, and the look on my face told her she shouldn't ask any more questions.

But I'm happy to say, despite the smell, the turkey ended up tasting just fine. Our insides are probably coated with some kind of carcinogenic rat poison now, but it was Christmas day, so who cares? We ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and ate. High Intensity wandered off at some point and passed out in the TV room. The rest of us continued to eat.

After we'd eaten, we ate a little more, and then retired to the living room with some light snacks. I sat on one sofa eagerly reading one of the books I had bought Mr. IQ, and he sat companionably on the other couch reading a book he had given me. We had a bit of squabble over the music-- I wanted to play the C.D. I'd given HIM, and he wanted to play one he'd given ME, but we compromised and played a Corny Christmas Album instead.

My mother-in-law sat over in the corner pretending she wasn't passing gas into the cushions of the overstuffed chair every two minutes and, in the true spirit of Christmas, we pretended we weren't noticing.

In other words, a truly wonderful Christmas was had by all!

Love to you all, and Merry Christmas!