Forget foreign wars, whom the movie stars are dating, and horrific weather in the Eastern United States. My biggest dilemma as I write this is it is only four days until Thanksgiving and my refrigerator is packed with food.

What’s wrong with that? Besides the twenty pound frozen turkey that sits thawing in the big, plastic bowl, none of it is Thanksgiving food. I don’t care about the one minute video showing President Obama turning around and walking away from a helicopter as he retrieves his forgotten Blackberry or whether Hillary Clinton may not be the liberal’s candidate for president, I just need to clear the fridge out to make way for Thanksgiving leftovers.

To be sure, having a jam-packed refrigerator of food is a wealthy man’s issue (well, moderately successful), but it is one of those problems that would wake up any housewife and mother in the middle of the night.

As I peered in there, I saw it was really just a matter of rearranging things to make more space. Surprisingly I have few leftovers or throw away items to deal with. I’ve since discovered with my oldest away at college and picky about which leftovers are “college-freezer-food” worthy, I only need to cook two or three meals a week for the three of us still living in this residence.

Although on Tuesday, once again I had to throw away lunchmeat. As the grocery shopper of the house, I have decided not to buy lunchmeat ever again. Why should I buy it only to throw it away upon expiration? I’m not beyond pushing the envelope for expired foods (Google says: non-fat milk lasts 7-10 days after its expiration), but turkey lunchmeat has been my food-poisoning expired food of choice over the years, so it’s best to toss it right away.

I’m not blaming my youngest daughter; she tries her best one slice at a time (then again, who only puts one slice of lunchmeat on their sandwich?). I blame my husband. Every shopping day, he vows to make sandwiches for lunch. “Empty promises,” I think with my 3-point toss from the fridge to the garbage can.

So at the beginning of last week, I made pulled pork. We had it for dinner on Monday and I announced it would be their lunches for the rest of the week. To me it doesn’t seem like that many days to eat the same thing. I ate it in a bun or with leftover rice for lunch every day.

But my husband apparently likes to mix it up more and I was only able to coerce him into taking it a couple days. Maybe, just maybe, a total of 3 days, including Monday’s dinner did he eat pulled pork. On Thursday he said, “Can’t you freeze the stuff?”

I took the hint and Saturday morning, after I took out some to eat with the rest of the rice for my lunch, I froze it. Then I Skyped my oldest, “Pulled pork? Freeze some?”

“Uh, yeah.” (translation: she likes pulled pork and deems it college-freezer-food worthy)

“Well, there’s a lot. Your dad got tired of it. It would go good with ramen. Or I could freeze a couple sandwich rolls.”

“Sandwich rolls would be good.”

“Okay, eat what you want, then toss the rest when you get tired of it.”

She won’t be picking up that particular frozen meal until Thanksgiving when she’s home for the weekend. Hopefully, after all the turkey and potatoes she’ll be ready for a lot of pulled pork.

At least that’s one more thing out of my fridge this week. Now, I just need to see what else I can clear out so I can free up my schedule to fix congress.

Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Covington. She has to do everything around here. You can also read more of her writing and her daily blog on her website livingwithgleigh.com or on Facebook at “Living with Gleigh.” Her column is available every week at maplevalleyreporter.com under the Lifestyles section.