Still successfully dodging holiday responsibilities

(Me and my mom. Look at me with the Ambrosia Salad? What a poser.)

We look like normal, grown women.  We have jobs and pay property taxes.  We swoon at Anthropologie, are secretly in love with Jason Mraz and have kids and husbands; all the outside appearances of being totally functional.

But we have a secret: We’ve never prepared a holiday feast.  We’ve never cooked the bird, stuffed it with dressing or prepared gravy from its drippings. That IS what gravy is made of, right?  We wouldn’t know what to do with a yam or a chalet; in fact, we would be hard pressed to point one out in the produce section of Pavillions.

I’m not going to pretend anymore. I know all you gals who slave the day before Thanksgiving and Christmas know I’m not pulling my weight: My mom and dad still makes it all! They make the big stuff–Turkey, potatoes, stuffing– at their house, pack it in their car and bring it to mine. We host both holidays every year, so I scrub the bathroom sinks,  empty boxes of Wheat Thins onto a cheesed-up platter and put out the plates, but I have never prepared the heavy weights.

The day before Thanksgiving you could have spotted me at the market stressing out, just like the other women.  But they were panicked, clutching their neatly organized list, because they were out of fresh cranberries for their traditional sauce, while I was standing in Aisle 5 annoyed and saying (out loud) “What? Frick! They’re out of Bugles!”

I know I’m not the only one either, I was confessing to my  friend Lynne at the Ducks game on Wednesday night and she said, “Oh, I’ve never prepared anything either.”  She told me her mom asked her to make the potatoes this year but  it occurred to her that her mom actually wanted her to BRING the potatoes.  “I mean, I’m perfectly capable of buying a bag of potatoes,” she explained, but after a frantic call to her mom, she was assured she already had potatoes and just wanted Lynne to mash them.  **whew**

So I gained some courage to come right out and say it after realizing I would have the support of other women living with the same shame:  Hi, I’m Suzanne Broughton and I’ve successfully dodged preparing holiday meals my whole life…but I will drive around to four markets until I find Bugles.

*****

If you are just dying to know what Thanksgiving is like at my house, take a look at my Whrrl Story below:

Click anywhere on the box to see the story.