Turkey in My Eye.

So, I woke up early this morning to battle cleaning the massive 24 pound turkey and preparing it for brining today. This turkey was a different brand than my tester turkey, so I was surprised to see that the legs and everything in the cavity were zip tied together, and secured to the inside of the cavity somehow. Um, weird. And of course, there are no scissors in the new house yet. So, I'm sawing at this zip tie business with a knife and trying to yank the thing out of the stinking turkey. Somehow, some way, the whole innards of the turkey came flying out and splattered all over my face. And turkey blood and guts went into my eye.

Now, Renee, Kait, and Lisa can probably already tell where this story is going, but for those of you who can't, let me clue you in. I have an EXTREME eye phobia. So extreme that it took me years of surviving practically blindly before going to the eye doctor, and when I DID finally go, I cried the whole time and eventually had to be sedated. This was like last year. Seriously, I hate looking at eyeballs, I hate touching my eye, I hate putting eye drops in my eye, and I threw up when I watched Requiem For A Dream. SERIOUS. EYE. PHOBIA.

So now that we're all caught up, you can imagine the trauma I experienced this morning. My hands are covered with turkey guts, turkey guts are in my eye, I'm trying to fumble around for soap to wash my hands and then flush out my eye. All the while swearing like a sailor and wondering if turkeys can contract AIDS, and if so, if it could now be passed along to me.

Finally, I get washed off and try to wash out my eye. This is a feat in and of itself because I almost throw up any time the water comes close to my eye. I then leave a message for my eye doctor explaining that I got turkey blood and guts in my eye, and I'm not sure if washing it out is sufficient, or if I need to do anything else. They tell me that I should be fine, but that if I suddenly stop being able to see out of that eye, I should come in. You think?

So then, eyeball is flushed, turkey is washed, it's time to get that sucker into the brine that I cooked up last night so that it can soak for 24 hours. I've read that the best way to brine is in the extra oven bag. Great. I get the turkey all situated in the oven bag, and start pouring in the brine. I get to the last half gallon of brine, and somehow, my turkey roasting bag of brine turns into a brine fountain and starts spurting brine all over the kitchen and counters. I still couldn't tell you exactly what happened other than I lost about a half gallon of brine. So then I got to clean that sticky mess up.

This all happened before 8am this morning. I'm dreading opening the fridge when I get home for fear that the bag decided it was time for another brine fountain, and fountain-ed all over my nice new fridge. That would figure!

It's just been one of those days. But I guess at this point, all you can do is laugh.