ON THE TENTH DAY OF CHRISTMAS, MY TRUE LOVE OVERFED ME

Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners are now my husband's responsibility (I resigned as head cook when my youngest moved out), and I have finally accepted the fact that he sees it as an absolute necessity to cook enough food to feed a small African country for approximately six months. We live far enough outside of a city that it's difficult to keep anything warm and deliver it to a food kitchen (to feed the homeless in our area for ten months), my dog is Jewish (he threw up every single last bit of ham he was fed this afternoon), and the horses strictly refuse to become carnivores (and since the stuffing was made with chicken broth, they won't even touch that). So I end up throwing aways three to four trash bags STUFFED with left-over food. Even if there was enough room in the refrigerator to store it all, I for one am sick and tired of it all after just ONE meal.

But two of my children came over, and actually we had a fairly nice time. We ended up watching a very silly movie about Nintendo games (talk about a dated movie - Super Mario?) with Fred Savage, Christian Slater and Bea Bridges - oh, yeah, it was bad. Again, if you take none of it seriously, and my son and I are allowed to heckle, it can be enormous fun (well, at least for my son and me).

Well, the evening is young (it's 9:45), my house is a shambles, and I have eight pots, one crock pot, three cooking sheets, and a stove-top covered with boiled-over gravy to clean up. Anyone wants to come over and help, I can guarantee watching the first "Shrek" and very poor singing along with the soundtrack.