I'm guessing I'll be asked to bring mashed potatoes next year.

Some time this weekend I will drive to the grocery store (if I can still find it), and after some painful mental mathematical calculations--during which I will frown and harrumph and cause consternation to my fellow shoppers--I will decide upon and purchase a bird large enough to feed 11-to-15 people. This rock-hard frozen hunk of poultry--roughly the size of a small child--will be my one and only contribution to next week's Thanksgiving day eat-a-thon. It will very probably be the most difficult thing I undertake this month.

And I won't be doing anything complicated. I won't be smoking my turkey for 14 hours over slow burning embers or deep frying it in a vat of molten oil. I won't be casting runes and uttering incantations to cause it to rise again with a flesh-eating urge to marauder the surrounding villages. I won't be prepping it to run for president. I'm just going to rub a little butter on its pink and naked breast, sprinkle some salt and pepper on top of that, and pop it into the oven. In theory, it should be the easiest dish on the menu.

But first, I have to get all those extra turkey parts out of there.

Here's how it's gone down in years' past. Muffin Uptown begrudgingly rouses from slumber at the crack of dawn. Sleepy-eyed and bed-headed, she holds the bird by its cold, stubby little armpits, while I--rubber gloved and stern of face, go spelunking for giblets.

"Are you hurrying?" she asks.

This produces in me a momentous surge of motherly love and I assure her that I am indeed proceeding as quickly as possible, but that I will try and step it up as much as possible, just for her--my one and only worth-while contribution to the betterment of the human race.

After several moments of acking and cawing and the likely use of some extra-special, expensive, holiday curse words, I emerge victorious from the recesses of the carcass, giblets and neck in hand. Together, we wrestle the bird into a browning bag, throw it into the oven, have a jigger of tequila apiece, and return to bed.

This year though, mindful as I am about the importance of family holiday traditions, I just can't get that excited about sticking my hand up in there. I just don't want to do it anymore.

So I've decided that the main course of our holiday meal this year will either have tong marks all over its insides or come to the table with something other than stuffing in its cavity. I guess we'll just have to wait for the dinner bell to see which.