Not to get all competitive, but when it came to early rising on Thanksgiving, I had Roseanne beat by almost an hour.

A text popped into my phone. Even though it was from my sister Carol, I found my reading glasses and read it anyway:

Do not, I repeat, DO NOT, cook the stuffing inside the turkey. It’s an invitation to salmonella.

My bossy big sister thought pretty much everything was an invitation to salmonella, but I decided to listen to her anyway. Mostly because this cancelled out the hand-up-the-turkey-butt issue.

I took a deep breath, reassured myself that I had the Turkey Hotline number on speed dial. Not only that but just in the nick of time the Turkey Hotline had also gone digital, backing up their telephone outreach with both Twitter and text capabilities. Over fifty turkey experts with nimble fingers were at the ready.

I was good to go.

“Hey,” John whispered. “Happy first Thanksgiving together.”

I jerked awake, yanked my head off the kitchen table, delicately wiped a smidgen of drool from one corner of my mouth.

“Why didn’t you wake me up so I could help?” he said.

I turned my morning breath away so his kiss landed on my cheek.

“Did you save the giblets for the gravy?” he said.

Giblets. My foggy brain sputtered as it tried to remember what the word meant.

“Damn,” I said. I jumped up, slid across the kitchen floor in my fuzzy faux-rabbit slippers, a gift from one of my students. I grabbed the potholders and wrestled the mammoth beast to the stove top. Then I opened drawer after drawer until I found a pair of barbeque tongs.

John took a step toward the turkey and me, as if one or both of us needed to be saved. I narrowed my eyes. He took a step back.

The kitchen door swung open again. Polly tiptoed into the kitchen with an armful of empty cat food dishes. She took one look at me and kept tiptoeing.

I reached inside the turkey with the tongs, feeling oddly like a gynecologist brandishing a metal speculum. I found the plastic pouch and hurled it into the kitchen sink.

“Try the other end,” John said.

“Eww,” I said. But he was right. I flipped a smaller plastic pouch into the chipped porcelain sink.

When I looked up, Polly and John were staring at me.

I pointed the business end of the barbeque tongs at them. “If either one of you tells me this turkey is contaminated, I will take you out. We’ll never find a replacement turkey in time.”

They kept staring.