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I have horrible dreams every Thanksgiving.

It was the worst holiday of my entire life. It was 10 years ago, but the memory is etched in my mind. I am a picture-perfect, Hallmark kind of gal for the holidays (only). I listen to Christmas carols while I bake pies. I get dizzy on the aroma of turkey and stuffing wafting through the air. I love the table decorations. I just love it all! And then came the Thanksgiving Day that changed everything! Everything!

The table was set with decorative candles. The plates held napkins shaped like cornucopia. The 20-pound turkey was slowly cooking in the oven. Everything was on schedule for a perfect dinner. We headed to our kid's high school football game. My daughter's cheering squad was freezing in the midst of a pyramid, but our team was winning. The fact that it was fifteen degrees with wind chills of zero didn't dampen our spirits. It was Thanksgiving and I had so many blessing to count.

My in-laws, sister-in-law and her family arrived while we were at the game. They proceeded to go in the house and wait until we arrived. I reminded them to give our English Mastiff, Winston, treats so they could get in easily. We got home 30 minutes later. I was expecting to inhale the aroma of my delicious turkey when I opened the front door. When we walked in, we were smacked with the distinct odor of dog crap.

My mother-in-law noticed the odor when they first arrived. She proceeded to do a dog crap hunt. She checked every room downstairs before she headed upstairs, where she toured each room. I'm not sure that was really for the dog crap hunt. She used to check on my housekeeping. She came back to report, "It's a mystery!" That is when I noticed mushy dog crap on her fancy black boots. She had just walked through our entire house spreading little odor bombs as she went. At the sight of brown mush on her new expensive black boots, she began to shriek, "Get it off! Get it off!"

Dinner was late. The turkey burned. The mashed potatoes were lumpy and bumpy. The green bean casserole had no fried onions of top. I'd spent an hour chopping and preparing my homemade stuffing all for naught. It looked like a petrified rock, smothered in gravy.

Instead of tending to my fabulous dinner plans, I was pre-spotting and deodorizing carpets with tissues stuffed up my nose. I was crying as my husband cranked up the carpet cleaning machine. Not just one carpet! Nine rooms of carpeting and the halls. I was not feeling very blessed.

My in-laws and my sister-in-law have all passed away. I'll never Thanksgiving with them again. I cried over that fiasco when it happened. Now I'd give anything to have another dog crap fiasco. This time I'd order a take-out turkey dinner and check their shoes before they entered the house. And I'd hug them all really hard.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

- Anne Bardsley

Anne Bardsley lives in St Petersburg, Fla., with her "wrinkle maker" of a husband and two spoiled cockatoos. She's still recovering from raising five children. She is so happy she didn't strangle them as teenagers as they've given her beautiful grandchildren. She is the author of How I Earned My Wrinkles: Musings on Marriage, Motherhood and Menopause. She blogs at Anne Bardsley: Perfectly Imperfect.