Brine 'da Bird!

I almost titled it "Brine 'da Byrd." Am I thinking of "tyger tyger burning bright?"

Sweet relief. I began and finished a paper today. I have so much to do - part of me wants to start the next thing, and part of me wants to say "It's 7:00 on a Sat. evening, you just wrote an 8-pager, go watch a movie." Which I can easily do here at work - I rented "In Her Shoes." To top off the lovely feeling of accomplishment, I think it's a pretty good paper. I felt that my fiction work sucked, but that this social analysis somewhat redeems it. It makes it seem so much deeper than I truly intended. :-)

Yes, I desperately want to brine our turkey. Except I need a container that will hold 2 gallons of water, completely submerge our turkey, and fit in the refrigerator. I've been racking my brains, but I don't think it's going to happen. Even if I buy a plastic bin at Walmart - how am I going to wrestle it into the fridge? What am I going to do with the stuff that's been displaced?

I had the same problem with the Christmas tree. I really really really want a Christmas tree, ever since Mom asked a slew of questions pertaining to the holiday and I answered each one with a gloomy "no." She finally asked if we're going to have any holiday spirit, which I answered with a tentative yes. So it propelled me into plotting how I can get a Christmas tree into our house. I finally solved where our box of ornaments can go - somewhere in the top of the closet. Then I figured that we don't really need to open our dresser drawers for a month, so the tree can go in front of the window in our bedroom. The hitch came with the tree itself. If we get a fake one (one that already has lights on it, preferably), then where the heck do we keep it until June (unless we become those tacky year round Christmas lovers who never open their dresser drawers)? I had the brilliant idea of a real tree, but my brilliance has yet to be followed up with practical answers as to 1. where do I buy a real tree? and 2. how do I transport it our apartment and up our steep, narrow stairs? 3. do I really want pine needles everywhere?

Then I realized that I was potentially more excited about the prospect of buying an incredibly festive candy-cane patterned tree skirt than the tree itself, and I began to wonder if maybe I should scratch the whole idea. I stopped myself short of googling Pool Cities in the Lexington area.

So I'm back to a too-small refrigerator with a too-big container of a dead bird soaking in a salt solution.