(Since Thanksgiving Thursday is not a holiday where I live, we celebrated early, on Saturday.)

1. Cooking the turkey will make you feel like a pervert again. Even worse, for reasons you do not understand, it will remind you vaguely of Condoleezza Rice this year, in addition to everything else, as it lies there on its back in the roasting pan, legs submissively in the air, while you stuff fistful after fistful of stuffing into its abdominal cavity. Why does the recipe call for me to tie the legs together, you will ask yourself, as you search the “miscellaneous” drawer for twine. And why does it give me so much satisfaction to do so?

2. When you are cooking, keep your cell phone in your pants pocket, not in your shirt pocket, even if you prefer the quick access the shirt pocket location affords, even if you have given a friend dodgy directions to your house and included your cell phone number to make up for it, and want the quick access to be able to respond quickly when he finally calls, lost. Because if you keep the phone in your shirt pocket, you will be overwhelmed by the following flash of insight when, towards the end of the roasting period, you notice that the side of the turkey nearest the oven door is not quite as brown as the far side and ought to be turned around for a while to even out and you are standing there, bent over at the waist holding a heavy tray of aromatic, assymetrically-browned hogtied turkey in your clumsy oven mitts:
3. Cell phones are not designed to be turkey-dripping-proof. Therefore, it will no longer function, having plopped into the pan. Therefore, my guest will not be able to reach me. Therefore I will have to contact work colleagues to get his number, since I only have his number stored in said cell phone, now submerged in an inch of turkey grease. Which, by the way, I cannot quickly snatch from its greasy bath due to clumsy oven mitts, not to mention the heavy tray they are holding. But the only work colleague whose number I have will be sleeping all day today, having told me of plans to stay up all night the previous night, so I will try in vain to contact her.
4. Your teenaged daughter will finally get the phone out of the grease for you and give it to you after you get the turkey back into the oven. The coefficient of friction of the phone’s surface will be significantly reduced by the fresh coating of grease, so you will drop it onto the kitchen’s tile floor.
5. Twice.
6. This will give rise to optimistic hopes of a new cell phone for Christmas, preferably with a built-in camera and death ray.
7. Unfortunately, your daughter and her friend will be able to take the phone apart and repair it. At first, the 4 and 7 buttons still won’t work so you remain optimistic, but by the next day even they are working. By Monday the phone is back in your shirt pocket and your co-workers are sniffing and saying, “Mmm. What smells like turkey?”