Have you ever gottten so busy during the holidays, doing several things at once (think "multi-tasking"), that you end up forgetting one of the most important jobs, and because of it, friends and family have branded you for LIFE?

Well, that very thing happened to me one Thanksgiving week several years back, and once I tell this story, maybe you will understand why now we choose to go OUT to eat on Thanksgiving instead of me slaving away in the hot kitchen. Ever since then, my husband (and my dear, sweet children) pick on me something awful, and now I can't even LOOK at a turkey without being reminded of this particular incident.

I was busy trying to ge the house ready for the company that was to come in a few days (our daughters who were living out of state at the time were coming in for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend), and I wanted everything to be perfect. I was also cooking up a storm, and I was trying to make sure that we had everything we needed in order to make a spctacular Thanksgiving Day dinner fit for a king (let alone, SEVERAL kings, and possibly several queens!). I didn't want to have to go to the store to get those "last-minute items" because more often than not, they would be nearly impossible to find. I was so busy, in fact, I didn't know whether I was coming or going: I felt like a chicken with its head cut off. Yet, I was determined to make everything go without a hitch.

All seemed to be going well for the first few days, but then two days prior to Thanksgiving, I went to get the turkeys (all three of them, three twenty-pounders), to start preparing them--only I could NOT find the turkeys...I looked EVERYWHERE: in the refrigerator, in the oven, on top of the countertop--but there wasn't any sign of any of the turkeys. It was as though they had vanished into thin air, without a trace, without as much as a gobble.

I knew we now had a mystery on our hands. I was wondering what on earth could have happened to three twenty-pound turkeys; when I told my husband of the missing turkeys, he looked at me like I had horns coming out of my head, and he said, "Louie, come ON. You just don't LOSE a 20-pound turkey, let alone, THREE of them--that is, unless they magically sprouted legs and decided to take off for the hills!" He and then I started to tear the kitchen apart, looking through every cupboard and cabinet nook, all of the drawers, in every square inch of the refrigerator and freezer, the oven, and even the microwave--but there was no sign of the turkey. It was madeening.

Well, we didn't think too much of it--we were planning to go to the store to TRY to find three NEW turkeys, to replace the ones we had lost--until later that evening when my father, Armand, did the dishes. The dishwasher worked okay, all right, but it kept making an extremely odd noise, and we could hear something banging against the sides of it. It sounded like an animal or a pair of shoes (or possibly a small child) was trying to get out, and it scared the living hell out of me. When I went into the kitchen, to see what was going on, I was horrified to see bubbles and soap oozing out from the sides of the machine--and the machine was jiggling violently. There was an odd smell, like raw meat, hanging in the air.

Quickly, I turned off the dishwasher, unlatched the door, and pulled it open--and in a vomit-like fashion, soapy water and bubbles spewed out all over the kitchen floor (and myself). The meat-like odor was much stronger now, and in the midst of all the soap and bubbles, I was horrified to see that there were the three turkeys!! Miraculously, the skin remained on the birds, but they were three of the soapiest, cleanest birds I had ever witnessed! My father, bless his heart, had tried to be helpful, and he ended up washing NOT the dishes, but three 20-pound turkeys that were meant for our Thanksgiving dinner!

It was then when I started to put two-and-two together. The mystery was soon solved. I had inadvertantly put the turkeys into the dishwasher, so I could scrub the countertops and the sink prior to cooking them--and I completely forgot about the turkeys until my daddy had announced that he was going to put the dishes into the dishwasher. I had planned on taking the turkeys out of the dishwasher after I was done cleaning the countertops, but I started doing something else ("A mother's work is never done"....SIGGGGGGGGH!), and I completely forget about the turkeys until I was to start preparing them for cooking on Thanksgiving morning.

Because of this turkey-sized snafu, I ended up having to throw out the turkeys (all perfectly good, mind you, but they probably would end up tasting like soap and/or dishwater), and I ended up having to do the dishes all over again--not to mention, scrubbing the kitchen floor and cleaning out all the soapy water from the dishwasher. I wasn't too angry with my father, though (he was only trying to help), but because of his "willingness to help", I had to throw out three perfectly good 20-pound turkeys, and we ended up having to go out for Thanksgiving dinner.

We ended up having to eat Chinese food for Thanksgiving. (Somehow, beef lo mein, Peking duck, and won ton soup just doesn't sound so appetizing on a day like Thanksgiving as does turkey, sage stuffing, cranberies, fruit salad, and pumpkin or apple pie!)

My husband and children, of course, all got a big laugh out of this incident. Several years later, they STILL ask me if I am going to wash any more turkeys in the dishwasher, or if I am going to think of an entirely new way to clean a dirty bird!

...And now you know why we go OUT to eat on Thanksgiving Day. I will NEVER feel the same way again about cooking a turkey on Thanksgiving Day, and I will NEVER be able to look at a turkey without thinking about how I tried to wash three twenty-pound Butterball turkeys in the dishwasher several days before Thanksgiving!

*The End.*