It is not easy to celebrate Thanksgiving in Spain. You won’t find whole turkeys — fresh nor frozen — in a supermarket.

So when Michael and I host Thanksgiving in this country, our first mission is to go to the butcher shop and order a turkey. We have to specify that we don’t want the insides, the head, nor the feet. And that we’d prefer most–and ideally all–of the feathers are gone.

It doesn’t come with legs nicely tucked beside the body. When they first show it to us, it looks like it’s ready for an autopsy — its legs and arms spread apart, body fully exposed. Spanish ovens are small as it is–there’s no way a turkey doing an upside-down face plant will fit. So we show the butcher a picture of a raw American turkey with legs and wings in the places we’re used to seeing. The butcher, with a puzzled look on his face, goes to hunt down some string and attempts to tie the turkey such that it will fit in our oven.

As this will be our fourth Thanksgiving in Spain, we thought we finally had this turkey-acquiring process down.

But it turns out we do not.

This year we decided to celebrate Thanksgiving the Saturday before the official day as Michael and I have a habit of planning trips (or, as in 2022, a move across the country) the weekend after Thanksgiving–and therefore never get to enjoy leftovers.

This year, I wanted leftovers.

So we dutifully ordered our turkey from the butcher. And were quite proud of ourselves when friends asked where in town they could procure their bird and we knew the answer.

In fact, Michael and the aforementioned friends went to order the birds together.

Sadly, the friends were celebrating the same day as us with other family in town, so we couldn’t be together. Or so we thought.

For various reasons, though we invited more people than we did last year, most were unable to come. And those that were, were Spaniards. Which is lovely except that they don’t know the traditional Thanksgiving foods. And we do a pot luck. So we also had to track down Spanish versions of Thanksgiving recipes.

I left that to Michael.

But as people continued to back out, we finally decided just to cancel the whole hosting thing and cook a turkey for ourselves, enjoy leftovers, make some turkey soup, and then freeze the rest.

We certainly no longer needed the originally ordered 14-pound turkey and the additional turkey breast.

So last week, I went to the butcher shop to cancel the breast and change the order to a 10-pound turkey.

This morning, Michael went to pick up our bird while I made my fourth attempt to find celery–a crucial ingredient in my stuffing. The butcher said the birds were in the shop but not yet ready for us. “Come back in 45 minutes,” he told Michael.

After lamenting to a friend yesterday about the lack of celery in this town (as it’s out of season), I got a tip on a market that usually has some “and you can buy just the number of stalks you need.”

I walked in to find a single slightly-limp bunch. I bought my three stalks and called it a success.

I’d given up on finding fresh thyme (last year, the only way I got it was by buying my own plant in the local nursery). And I still had to drive to a friend’s house to get some fresh sage from her garden–as that doesn’t really exist in grocery stores here, either.

I hadn’t figured out where to get the challah-type bread I use to make my stuffing. Just this morning, when I told Michael I was headed to the bakery where I got it last year, he said, “Oh–there’s a sign on their door. They’re closed this week.”

My plan was to try the other bakery in town and, if I had no success there, pray the supermarket bakeries had it.

But all of this hunting came to a sudden halt when Michael returned to the butcher shop to pick up our turkey. They somehow thought we’d canceled our order.

They only had the two birds our friends ordered.

By this point, Michael and I had lost interest in our small, not-on-the-real-day Thanksgiving. We told them not to worry about it. I was relieved–as much as I love the apple-celery stuffing I make, the fun of trying to find all the ingredients had long since worn off.

Our two-turkey friends offered to give us half of one of their birds. When we messaged them to say we were just calling it quits, they invited us to join their celebration. But their group involves a whole lot of Spaniards and sometimes our non-native-Spanish-speaking selves are just not up for such events.

I was delighted when I got another message from our two-turkey friends. “We’d already planned on you two joining us on the real Thanksgiving Day. We were going to order another bird. Do you have the number for the butcher shop? Or maybe you can call and order it?”

Yes, I’ll be a guest. But I’d like a turkey to actually be present. So I recommended they order it.