In a glaring moment of either sheer stupidity or amazing brilliance (I’m blaming sleep deprevation here), I have offered to host Thanksgiving Day at my home this year. Brilliance because then I am not required to travel with two children in a car AND bribe someone to come by and take care of our menagerie for several days. Stupidity because I abhor cooking (true story: in kindergarten, my class was required to submit a recipie off of the top of our heads for a class cookbook. You know, “a room full of milk” and other such hilarious units of measure. My contribution was simple: Call China Light, order food, pick up in 20 minutes. To this day, this remains my favorite recipie, bar none) unless it is baking. I adore baking.

Every other year, we’ve diligently travelled up to Wisconsin to visit Dave’s grandmother in the nursing home and eat somewhat frightening turkey and stuffing. She never remembered who actually I was, I’m sure that I was just some blurry young thing to her but she always remembered Ben and looked forward to hearing him sing his Greatest Hits Album (including, but not limited to “Ring of Fire,” “Working Class Hero,” and “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”). She passed on this summer, which effectively let us off of the hook for Thanksgiving, which meant that Thanksgiving proper was free to be filled with such goodness as ordering junky pizza and drinking a 30 case of Miller High Life by ourselves.

Until I opened my big, fat, trap, and suggested that we could host this holiday. We have a tentative menu, which guarantees that we will waste approximately $60 on a piece of meat that will summarily be ruined by my minstrations. Thankfully, however, I am planning to make several pies that will hopefully overshadow my obvious shortcomings as a chef.

I have begun the process of getting my house back in order (after my recent bout with sleeplessness coupled with my wonky thyroid, I am starting to feel like a reasonable shadow of my former self), which is no small feat. While I am completely aware that the 4-6 people who will come by for Thanksgiving will neither notice nor care that Alex’s teeny clothes are now perfectly folded, organized, and stacked in fancy blue bins, I feel it is necessary, therefore it is (somewhere, Dave is cradling his head in his hands in frustration). It’ll be several weeks (a.k.a. Thanksgiving Day) before this process is completed, so on and on I will plug away.

But I have something completely special up my sleeve for this joyous day, something that no one (save for my husband, and now, The Internet) will have seen coming. Something that will be a new holiday tradition at my house: Schweaty Balls (if you are completely confused right now, go down and watch the SNL skit on this page. It’s about a minute long and worth every second. And no, I am not a teenage boy.)

After listening to me tell the baby over and over “It’s a Schweaty family recipie” and laughing completely by my lonesone, my husband suggested that I pull this stunt for the holidays. I am going to make some sort of ball-shaped cookies (no, not THOSE balls, silly), and put a index card with “Shweaty Balls” next to them.

When someone comments on them, Dave will begin the straight man monologue that he is so good at (about the balls feeling good in your mouth, ad infinitum, ad nauseum), which will surely send me into spasms of laughter. Hell, he’ll be lucky to get my ass back to the kitchen, women! after I have made said balls, as I will be too busy laughing at them. Since my family raised me, they will be expecting these sort of antics from me and laugh along side me, but the real treat will be seeing my uber-conservative in-laws react (the more that I think about this, the more I am convinced that marrying me was an elaborate retaliation method designed to drive his parents insane. I got back at my parents by smoking cigarettes (because in my home, everything else was just fine to do, so long as I didn’t smoke pot in the living room. Ah, hippies), and he got back at his by marrying a crude, crass, pre-marital sex-havin’, loud-mouth woman.), not because I don’t like them, but because I think that someday, they are going to have to learn precisely who their son married, Schweaty Balls and all.