Help! I Have a Hair Emergency

I really wish there was a hair hotline for people to call when they are about ready to get out the weed whacker or dog clipper and whack it all off.

“Hair Hotline.  Is this a hair emergency?’

“Yes, it is,” I assured Ms. Hair.  “I’ve been growing my hair out for months, and I’m about ready to take a Weed eater to it.  My bangs hang halfway down my eyes, and poke me like little kids tickling their younger brother.  It’s really annoying.  I’ve tried gel, mousse, and every type of hairspray on the planet, including pizza-flavored.  But that only resulted in a crowd of teenage boys hanging around my house.”

“Oh ma’am, that sounds pretty heavy.”

“Well, that’s not the worst part,” I continued.  “Last week I gave it all up and globbed a chunk of Crisco on my hair to try to get it under control, and now I look like a complete moron.  I can’t get it out of my hair.  I’ve tried everything I can think of.”

Ms. Hair snickered.  Just what I needed – an unfriendly hair hotline helper to shame me.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she apologized.  “I was just reading the funniest email someone sent me.”

“It looks pretty bad, and people have been calling me Crisco Head and telling me I should get into the oil export business.  But they are right, in some ways.  I look like I could resolve the entire world oil crisis.  I really need help.”

“Yeah, that sounds pretty serious.  Maybe you could do the export thing, or you could get a wig.”

I couldn’t believe her suggestions.  “Don’t you have any other ideas?”  I asked with a sigh.

“Okay, there is one other thing.  Go buy a box of cornmeal, and empty the whole box on your head.  It will soak up most of the oil so you don’t look like a greaser.  Then you can brush it out of your hair, after rubbing it into the roots and covering each strand.  Your hair will look sleek and gorgeous.”

“Sounds good.  I’m gonna go buy some cornmeal right now.” Click.  I hung up without thanking her because I didn’t think she deserved it with her slimy attitude.

I zipped to the store in my convertible, hoping the wind would whip through my bird’s nest-like hair.  But of course that was impossible.  At the stoplight I reached into my bag and got out my lipstick to do a quick touch-up.

Climbing out of car, I noticed a giant grease stain on the headrest.  I whipped out my compact mirror and realized I had applied a thick layer of flesh-colored cover up instead of my favorite lipstick.  My lips were heavily globbed with the cover-up because I had decided to apply the lipstick extra thick to detract from my greasy hair.

I pulled out a Kleenex and wiped off the cover-up, then strutted into the baking section of the grocery store to grab some cornmeal.  Once I paid for it and drove home, I went into the kitchen and poured the entire box on my head.  That’s when the phone rang.

My husband called to let me know we would be having guests over for dinner.  He said his boss had to fly to Australia unexpectedly to take care of some business, so the dinner party scheduled for next week was to take place that night at our house.

“That’s going to be a little tough,” I responded.  Later we will definitely have a long chat about this.

“Oh, don’t let it stress you out, honey.  You know Ben is from Oklahoma and loves a good Southern meal with lots of grease and cornmeal – something like beans and cornbread, with lots of bacon grease in the beans.”  Ugh.

Body Image and Negative Conversations

“I’m tired of the way women talk so much about food, diet and fitness issues,” Cindy said.  She sipped her chai tea Starbucks latte as she played with the wrapper from the straw.

“I know, ” I said. ”Sometimes I wonder if women could go a whole week without talking about 

                diets,

                                    workout plans,

calories,

fat grams, and

sizes.”

She glanced out the window at the pink snow from the cherry tree. 

“Why don’t women just get on with their lives instead of obsessing about their bodies? I really don’t get it.” 

We had just hiked one of the St. Edward’s Park trails down to Lake Washington.  The Seattle sun smiled on us and people laughed and told stories as dogs, kids, and trail runners met and then passed us. 

“I think the windfall of media poisons our thinking, causing us to compare ourselves to photoshopped and airbrushed images.  And since we see over 250,000 ads by the age of seventeen, we’re drowning in a tsunami of lies.”  I ignored the beep my phone made to signal I’d received a text message.  “It leads to a lot of comparing and coveting; wishing we had bodies that are not actually real.”

“That’s true,”  Cindy said.  She reached into her backpack to find her phone.  “This whole business of coveting can drive us to despair.  When we compare and covet something someone else has – like an image in a magazine that has been photoshopped- we buy into the lies of the Body Image Bandit. I heard a clip of Cindy Crawford saying, ‘I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford.’ She was talking about how the pictures of her in magazines don’t resemble her because of all the photoshopping.” 

 

 

 

“Wow.  That’s unbelievable,”  I said.  I noticed two kayaks paddling down on the waterfront.  “Hey, want to go kayaking on Saturday?” 

“Sure.  Sounds fun.  Let’s see if we can go on the Hood Canal to check out the seals you’ve been telling me about.”  She got up and put her cup in the recycle bin.  “I’m going to write a challenge to my Facebook friends to go a week in their real lives without talking about diets, sizes, workouts, and foods.  I bet they’ll have better weeks because they won’t get into negative thinking patterns.”

“That sounds interesting,” I said.  “Can’t wait to hear how it goes.  See you Saturday.” 

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” Exodus 20:17

Tooshie: Defeating the Body Image Bandit, chapter one

Note:  Normally my posts are 300-500 words.  I apologize in advance for the length of this post.  Since it is the first chapter of my book, it is longer.  I would greatly appreciate your feedback. 

What if you and your body could finally make peace?  You have dieted, exercised, and poured it into jeans three sizes too small. Maybe you, like me, bought a pair of yellow plastic bloomers designed to hook up to your vacuum and suck the fat off your hiney. Unfortunately, the Girl Scouts showed up during the procedure. Seeing you through the window, they were traumatized for life. You waddled to the door anyway and bought a year’s supply of chocolate mint cookies.

Face it. Many of us spend enormous amounts of time dwelling on our derrieres. On some level, we believe the world actually cares about them, but in reality other people are too busy to ponder our plunder.

I imagine our love-hate relationship with food started in the Garden of Eden. Eve’s hormones whacked out and she had a craving for chocolate that wouldn’t quit, even though she had never tasted it. Bible scholars believe it wasn’t a red delicious apple but another type of fruit. I think it was actually a large handful of chocolate beans, coffee beans, or hybrid chocolate-coffee beans that tasted like a Starbucks mocha. Now that would certainly be tempting.

Can you picture Eve getting up on the wrong side of the hammock?  Stepping out of the TigrisRiverafter bathing, a bee buzzes by. She turns to swish it away with her long hair and sees for the first time one of the great wonders of the world: a woman’s derriere- in the reflection of the sunlit river. Realizing it belongs to her, she cries out “Good gosh!” The same thoughts you’ve had in the mall while trying on the size of jeans you fit in once for five minutes begin to assault her. I had no idea my derriere was that expansive. I’d better do something about this thing before it gets totally out of control!

The other possibility is that Eve argued with Adam the night before, and he lashed out with his tongue, saying, “Eve, you better do something about that rearie of yours or I’ll …” He never finished his sentence because he knew if he left Eve, the pickings were slim, and he didn’t know how he could work the garden without her to come home to at sundown. After all, television and remotes wouldn’t be invented until much later.

Maybe part of Eve’s desire to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was the hope it would be the fad diet of her day – transforming her derriere into the one she had always assumed was hers. Somehow its fiber would operate like liposuction and she would have her dream body.

So began women’s preoccupation with the conceptual size of their derrieres and other unassorted body parts. Now don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about, because I know you do. You’ve exercised and dieted and some of you have binged, purged, and/or starved yourself in search of the perfect body, or a skinnier one or a perhaps a downsized version.

But if you actually succeeded in molding your dimensions into perfection, bizarre men started clinging to you like chocolate on chocolate-covered raisins. The fabulous derriere acted like a weirdo magnet, and bizarre guys came from everywhere to meet you because they loved your packaging. You resented this. It led you to drive through all the fast-food places in town and gorge yourself with sugary, fatty foods until you thought you would pop. The bottom line is the more you obsessed about having the perfect packaging, the more you attracted guys who wanted you for your looks and not your heart.

Maybe you’ve worried about how your body measures up to photo shopped standards of models and movie stars who are eaten from within by the beasts of bulimia and anorexia. Eating disorders form an imploding black hole that-without proper treatment-ends in darkness and has swallowed up many lives due to heart failure and other health complications.

This book is for anyone who has been weighed down with feelings about food, fat, and their bodies. Stories, experiences, techniques, and humor will enable you to fend off the Body Image Bandit –the Father of Lies. You will experience resounding joy when you realize through and through that God is much more concerned about your heart than your derriere. Of course you already know this in your head. But when you truly feel it in every cell of your body, you will be  able to battle the Bandit who continually works to convince you that your value comes from outer beauty as opposed to inner beauty. The antidote to the tsunami of cultural lies shouting, “To be thin is to be beautiful, and to be beautiful is everything,” is the truth from the Word of God, which is, ”Man looks at outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.”  I Samuel 16:7.

© Cherrie Herrin-Michehl

Cherrie Herrin-Michehl, MA, LMHC is a licensed mental health counselor with a private practice near the Microsoft campuses outside Seattle. A former public school teacher, Cherrie took a year off to study Scripture at Multnomah Seminary in Portland, Oregon. From there she went on to earn her master’s degree in counseling. She has worked with a variety of people of different cultures, socio-economic statuses, and in various parts of the country. Her experiences living in Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, and Maui, Hawaii, give Cherrie a broad perspective of the human heart and its truest desires.

A passionate speaker who loves to use humor and scripture, Cherrie has spoken for several churches and on radio shows.  Contact her at hope4today1@hotmail.com or 206-353-1307.  Her blog addresses are www.cherriemac.wordpress.com and www.cherriesotherblog.wordpress.com.

When she is not counseling, Cherrie can be found sea kayaking in the glorious Pacific Northwest waters, among the seals and salmon. In the off-season, she enjoys making beautiful jewelry. She lives in the Seattle vicinity with her husband and a spoiled golden retriever.

Note:  The book includes a preface that I am not an eating disorder specialist, and to seek professional help from an eating disorder specialist if you have an eating disorder.  “…The intent of this book is not to resolve eating disorders, but to help people begin to love the bodies God gave them…”

Stop Obsessing about Body Image Issues (and Get On with Life!)

Have you ever wondered how much time you waste per day by thinking about:

• Do these jeans make my tooshie look big?
• I need to lose weight!
• Is that woman (in front of you at the grocery store) thinner or fatter than me?
• Have I eaten “good” food or “bad” food today?
• I wish my ____________looked better.

Research shows that when you add all the time together women think about such things, it adds up to  an hour a day.

What if you committed yourself to getting on with your life?  After all,

you weren’t created to obsess about your body!

You have a much higher calling.  So when you waste precious time obsessing about body image issues, you are robbing yourself and the world.

Phil 4:8 encourages us to think positive thoughts. “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”  Phil 4;8 helps me to focus on the positive. 

For example, I’m planning to speak at churches about How to Defeat the Body Image Bandit, using lots of humor, research, and my own story.  I’ll have the churches take up an offering and donate it to organizations that help victims of human sex trafficking.  So instead of focusing on “Do these jeans make my tooshie look fat?” I’m spending my time planning and preparing the speech instead of combing through beauty and fashion magazines, comparing my body to those of photoshopped, concentration camp thin models.  Such a much better use of my time. 

Notice Phil 4:8  does not say:

“Finally, girlfriends, whatever can make your tooshie look sleek, trim, and keep cellulite off your thighs – think about such things.” 

Yet we often live as though we were created to obsess about our bodies.  After all, we’re so good at it!

What if you were to live out your gifts and talents, using your personality and story to become the person you were created to be?  It’s time to stop obsessing about our bodies and get on with our true callings.  You are a unique

masterpiece,

                                    a jewel,

and you were created for a much greater purpose.  So get on with it!

Someone Please Call the Birthday Police!

If you have the number for the birthday police, I really need it.  Last February I received a postcard in the mail that my pap smear happens to expire around my birthday.  Of course I had the option of going in a few weeks early so my birthday would be free of paraphernalia down in my South America.  Bless their little hearts for giving me the option of choosing another week.  But my question is:  Why do they have to ruin my birthday month with annual exams?  I want to ask the Birthday Police about this.

I would prefer to do almost anything else on my birthday than have a pap smear.  Since my driver’s license and my professional license also expire on my birthday, I do have other options for my special day.  Either way, I was left with three unforgettable choices for celebrating my birthday:

1. Get a pap smear
2. Renew my driver’s license
3. Renew my professional license

What kind of a sick joke is this?  We need a birthday police to make sure that nothing expires on our birthdays.  What’s wrong with having licenses and pap smears expire on our half birthdays?  That would mean that on August 18, half way between my last and next birthday, my licenses and pap smear would expire.  I could deal with that.

Speaking of birthdays, I plan to celebrate mine until I get so old that my teeth, hearing, and memory are all gone.  I want to milk my birthday for all it’s worth.  Presents, parties, special dinners, and cards – bring them on!

A few weeks ago I had lunch with a friend in her early thirties.  The conversation turned to birthdays and age.  She commented on a TV commercial where a woman spoke of parentheses lines around her mouth.  This angered my friend.   She told me what a good thing it is – that faces are meant for lines, and how they define us and make us beautiful in unique ways.  She reflected on how age is a virtue because it is connected with wisdom.   Scripture emphasizes this.  But in the midst of a culture that worships beauty it’s easy to forget this weighty truth.

Tomorrow I will turn fifty, and I’m feeling good about it.  To me, it means I’m even more comfortable in my body.  and much more free of societal expectations.  I work out because I love it (please don’t stick Oreo cookies all over my car because you hate me!) and I love who I am and what I do on most days.  Of course this side of Heaven, we all have our dignity and depravity, and I certainly have mine, which I’m writing about in my book.

So tomorrow I’ll celebrate and indulge by eating the richest, heaviest chocolate cake on the planet.  I will remember that I have a great deal to be thankful for.  What’s not to like?

Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained by a righteous life.  

Proverbs 16:31

Defeating the Body Image Bandit: Truth vs. Lies

Americans see over 250,000 ads before the age of 17. 

Living in a culture where we drown in a tsunami of images takes a toll.  We forget that phenomenal women have hips.  The lies of the Body Image Bandit tell us if we’re not thin, tall, and flawless, we don’t possess beauty.  Yet that mentality is from the Body Image Bandit, the Father of Lies, whose mission is to kill, steal, and destroy.  The lies include:

1.  Fat phobia:  Research shows that teen girls are more afraid of fat than terrorism.

Due to the images our brains are saturated with, we are brainwashed into thinking thinness is the major criteria of beauty.  One way to combat this is to rid or limit our lives of fashion, beauty, and celebrity magazines.  After looking at such magazines for ten minutes, women become more depressed.

2.  Appearance is almost everything. 

God values our hearts much more than the size of our hips.  Actually, our internal qualities carry much more weight in God’s eyes.  “But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control.  (Gal 5:22)

4.  Food is the enemy, as it creates fat.  God created a variety of foods to be enjoyed in moderation.  Read related posts about deprivation, which remind us depriving ourselves leads to binges.

Yet if we allow ourselves treats in moderation, we will reduce our desire to binge.

5.  Beauty is completely external. A complete lie.  “What matters most is not your outer appearance – the styling of your hair, the jewelry you wear, the cut of your clothes – but your inner disposition.  (I Peter 3:3, The Message)

6.  Youth is beautiful and old age is ugly.  In many cultures, age equals wisdom and is greatly valued.  Yet in most so-called “advanced” countries, older people are devalued (women more so than men).  Wrinkles aren’t respected.

“Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained by a righteous life.”  (Proverbs 16:31, NIV)

How do you define beauty?  What does your soul sing about beauty?

Body Image and the Fearless Foursome: Dieting and Bingeing

 

Dieting has become a rite of passage for teen girls.  I challenge you to find a teenaged girl who hasn’t tried dieting.  Sometimes the dieters lose weight, and other times they don’t.  Either way, they often hurl themselves onto a path of life-long roller-coaster dieting.  Whether the first attempt ends in success or failure, it likely gives them a taste where they long for more.  If they lose weight, they become believers, and if not, they profess to try again and again until they get it “right”.

Just when they begin to feel sure-footed from the triumph of dieting, the ground shifts beneath them, bumping them onto the merry-go-round of self-contempt.   They feel completely deprived, and begin to crave what they’ve started to call bad foods.  This turns them into eating machines.  The hunger wells up within them like a hurricane ready to ravage everything in its path.  They crave  fatty foods and sweet foods and salty foods.  Hunger consumes them.  Food, food, food, is on their minds a great majority of their waking hours and sometimes in their dreams as well.  They’ve opened the floodgates of eternal hunger and will never be the same.  They crave foods they love, as well as foods that they did not used to like before they felt deprived from dieting.

They now feel insatiably starved, which leads to the first all-out binge.  The binge fools their hearts into happiness, but only briefly.  This leads to a free-fall into the shaft of despair and depression, with waves of guilt and shame knocking them into the heart of hopelessness.  Around and around they spin on the merry-go-round of self-contempt, dizzy and depressed from a level of hopelessness they never knew possible.

Research shows the majority of people who lose weight by dieting usually gain it all back, plus more.  So what’s the answer?  Stay tuned for more.

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How to Stay on Track with Weight Loss

Many Americans will begin another year with a resolution to lose weight.  Most will start out with a bang, but then fizzle out like New Year’s Eve fireworks.

The majority will lose weight, but only a small percentage will keep it off.  Most will gain it all back, plus more.  They will then jump again onto the merry-go-round of dieting, which always leads to the feeling of deprivation.  This often causes  a binge, which causes shame and despair.  Then the cycle continues and the person hops back on the dieting bandwagon.  The cycle continues until they understand the truth:  Food and body image issues are as much about our hearts and our stories as calories and exercise.  Granted, a calorie is a calorie, and exercise is pivotal (unless it becomes an addiction, which happens to many people).  But food/body image issues (including eating disorders, although they are much more complex than this) are issues of the heart.

This trap of dieting, bingeing, dieting, and bingeing is a vicious cycle.  Sometimes it includes purging and/or an exercising addiction. More recently, research has poured in showing a strong correlation between binge eating, purging, and binge drinking.  The cycle of dieting, bingeing, dieting, bingeing repeatedly is hard on the body, mind, and soul.  Considering less than 1% of the people who lose weight will keep it off, why not deal with the roots of the problem?

If you are a professional dieter, you probably know so much about dieting you could write a book on it.  But the problem is you’ve missed the major piece of the puzzle.  I know I’ve already said it, but I want to shout it from the Space Needle:

Food, weight, and body image issues are as much about our hearts and our stories as they are about calories, carbs, and exercise.  If you continue to concentrate on the symptoms instead of the causes, it is like putting gas in a car that has a hole in the gas tank.  You will be successful, but only for a while.  This blog (and book, which is almost complete) addresses the underlying issues so you’ll have a greater chance of beating the Body Image Bandit.  Make this the year to address the underlying issues of your heart and story so you can become the person you were meant to be.

My hope and prayer is that you continue on the journey of changing your heart, working on the causes of your food and body image issues instead of treating the symptoms only.  After all, you’re worth it!

Your Body Image Time Line

When did you first begin to obsess about your body?  Can you identify what event or events sprung you into yo-yo dieting, starving yourself, purging, binge eating, and/or excessive exercising?

Once you can do that, you’ve identified a major contributor that prevents you from developing healthy relationships with food and exercise.  Draw a time line of your life and place markers at the most eventful times.

Also other changes, such as getting married, divorced, moving, having a friend move, starting or ending jobs, etc.  Remember, any major change is stress, whether it’s experienced as positive or negative.  No wonder brides gain an average of 18 pounds during the first year of marriage!

During these difficult times of your time line, you probably began to obsess about your body.

You attempted to self-medicate by dieting, bingeing, purging away your true feelings, and/or overexercising.  This offered you what we call the illusion of control in the 12-step programs.

In other words, your life felt out of control by your parents’ divorce, a move to another city, a difficult break-up, etc. You knew that you were powerless over the situation, so you obsessed about your body and attempted to control it instead.

Eventually your new, dysfunctional way of coping took on a life of its own.  Whether it’s obsessive overeating, bingeing, compulsive dieting, purging, or overexercising you’re struggling with, you’ve probably been looking for a solution for years. It became a beast in your life, and you have desperately tried to tackle it.  And now you’re wondering what really works in the long-term sense, not quick fixes that help you change for a small chunk of time.

“How do people recover?
We   believe an eating disorder is a mechanism for coping with stress. We binge,   purge and/or starve to feel better about our shame, anger, fear, loneliness,   tiredness and ordinary human needs. As we learn to address stress through other   mechanisms, the symptoms of the eating disorder tend to fade away. It is a   process, not an event. In EDA, we share our experience, strength and hope with   each other to help one another come to terms with and change how we deal with   life.
Recovery means living life on life’s terms, facing pains and fears   without obsessing on food, weight and body image. In our eating disorders, we   sometimes felt like helpless victims. Recovery means gaining or regaining the   power to see our options, to make careful choices in our lives. Recovery means rebuilding trust with ourselves, a gradual process that requires much motivation  and support. There are bound to be setbacks and moments of fear and frustration.   Support – professional, group and family – helps us get through such trials   safely, when we are honest about them. Support groups such as EDA provide   inspiration and opportunity for turning the most deeply painful and humbling   experiences to useful purpose. As we learn and practice careful self-honesty,   self-care, and self-expression, we gain authenticity, perspective, peace and   empowerment.”

That is an excerpt from Eating Disorders Anonymous, which provides great results for many people.  I truly believe in 12- step programs ,and have been in Al-Anon (a 12-step program for friends and families of alcoholics) on and off since 1999.  Next to my salvation, my husband, the gifts of attending Multnomah Seminary and another graduate school, Al-Anon has been one of the most beautiful gifts God has provided.  (The 12 step programs are not affiliated with any religion.) A true life saver. 

They say to try 6 meetings of a 12-step before deciding if the program works for you.  (Like life itself, you can find groups like people.  Some of them you really click with, and others you think, “holy moly, I feel so sorry for their mothers!”  So don’t give up.  Try different meetings.  Also, find a good therapist who is knowledgeable about your issues.

 from www.Eatingdisordersanonymous.org

Another great resource, also a 12-step: www.oa.com (Overeaters Anonymous)

Also www.celebraterecovery.com (for Christians)

Turkey Troubles: How to Save Face when your Turkey Bites the Dust!

(Note:  In honor of Thanksgiving, we are taking a short holiday from our journey down Body Image Road. And remember, it’s normal to overeat sometimes.)

Does the thought of preparing Thanksgiving dinner give you the shakes?  Maybe as you’re reading this, your heart is beating so loudly the neighbors can hear.  Images of undressed turkeys roll around in your head and make you wish you lived in India, where no one would consider eating a turkey, let alone cooking one.

Memories of yesteryear haunt you throughout November, and this time of year often brings nightmares.  You’ve considered seeing a therapist about this.  Last night it was the rerun of the time you didn’t have any turkey bags like Aunt Myrtle swore by.  So you wrapped the turkey tightly in a role of plastic food wrap and secured it with duct tape.

It took a two-week sabbatical from work to get the exploded turkey and plastic film off your self-cleaning oven.

The night before last, it was the a nightmare about the gizzard gravy with plastic incident.  It was the first year you’d cooked a big bird.  You plunged it into the oven, without removing its fine little hairs and gizzards.  (Always rinse poultry before cooking to remove the fine hairs.  Most people don’t know this life-changing truth.)  “What’s this interesting texture on the skin?“ your cousin Sam asked as he pointed to a scorched turkey hair.  “It’s so unique and delicious.  I must get the recipe before I fly back to New Jersey.”

These are the symptoms of Turkey Preparation Anxiety, which I’m sure will soon turn up in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for mental disorders.  The most severe type involves a nightmare involving an enormous turkey, which my friend Sally experienced last year.  She stood face-to-face with a human-sized raw turkey and repeatedly struck it with her fists.  She began pounding on her husband, screaming, “Get in the bag or I’ll …“before he woke her up and suggested she get help.  His black eye took a month to heal.

To make one last effort on turkey roasting, take a deep breath and relax.  (And don’t forget to exhale, or you won’t be around for another turkey dinner.)  Now say your prayers and slip on your apron with confidence.  Make sure you have plenty of leftover chili in the freezer, and thaw it out the day before.  Most people like chili, and you can thaw it quickly on the defrost setting of your microwave, just in case your bird bites the dust.

Carefully rinse the turkey and pat dry, talking nicely to it the whole time.  Turkeys are like copy machines in that respect.  If you’re in a hurry and don’t say kind words to them, they get attitudes and make you look bad.

Rub the bird with olive oil and salt only lightly.  Turkey experts swear that too much salt dries it out.  Do not pepper the turkey because this royally dries it out.   Dry, rubbery, peppery turkey tastes like singed stinky shoes.  Remember the one back in 1999?  Even the dog didn’t like it.

Spray your oven bag with cooking spray and the flour, just as per the instructions.  (Don’t use hair spray or it will blow up your oven.)  Resist the temptation to carve fancy designs for air vents.  The six ½ inch slats in the top should be simple.  I tried a Mickey Mouse design in the slats of the turkey bag one year, and it scorched the top of it.  My family called that one the Cajun blackened turkey, and refused to eat it.  That year we ate peanut butter sandwiches for dinner.

Place the meat thermometer exactly like the picture shows in your Joy of Cooking book.  Putting it in the rear end of the turkey is not an option.  And never go without a meat thermometer, or you are asking for big turkey trouble.

Now slip the turkey into the bag, tie it with the provided tie, and place it in the pan.  Before slipping it into the preheated oven, tell it again how beautiful it is and how much you love it.  Take it out at exactly 170 degrees.

As for the rest of the meal, delegate.  And if that doesn’t work, bring on the chili, which of course you made in advance out of ground turkey.  And the day after Thanksgiving, forget the mall sales.  Make reservations for next year at your favorite restaurant, and you can relax the whole year without getting turkey jitters.