Sentimental Feminist?

I suck.

After last year's Thanksgiving, when I complained about feeling too overworked, I thought there's no way I'm going to put myself in that position again. If anybody wants turkey this year, they're gonna have to make it themselves.

Then, as always, I started getting sentimental. There's apparently something genetically wired into me that frickin loves the smell of turkey as it is baking for hours. Eating Stove Top and Mashed Potato Flakes and basking in the cleverness of substituting these for the time-consuming counterparts my grandma would make. Topping it with gravy that I always think I'm going to screw up and it ends up boiling over and spilling on the whole stove but apparently the boiling-over is the secret ingredient in making it taste awesome to me. That, and a lot of salt and grease.

But the feminist part of me said "No!".

So when Rod suggested tonight bringing home a pre-made turkey meal from a restaurant for Thanksgiving, my brain was at 100% CPU usage for nearly 60 full seconds, not sure how to respond. At first I thought my feelings were hurt, as in "MY HUSBAND DOESN'T LIKE MY COOKING!", and then I thought "Wow, that's so Debra Barone of me. I hate Debra Barone.", and then I thought "No, he's probably just trying to think of a way to make things easier this year."

The sentimental part of my brain started getting sad and accusing the feminist part of my brain of ruining Thanksgiving. The feminist part of my brain told the sentimental part of my brain to grow a pair.

Tradition is important to me. But so is being valued like an equal and getting as much time to relax as the men in my family do. I need to learn how to give something up. Not caring about the emotional value of a meal is probably a good way to start.