Post-Thanksgiving/Pre-Menstrual Rant

Thanksgiving's one of the holidays you look forward to. You prepare long in advance, you anticipate, you cook and bake...you get all excited about it, and then BOOM! It's over and you're five pounds heavier and lamenting that there's nothing to do on the Friday after Thanksgiving except shop. And who the hell wants to do that. So you stay home and eat and eat leftovers until you feel so bad about yourself that your whole new purpose in life becomes losing the five pounds you just gained and getting yourself through the rest of the holiday season without eating.

And don't even get me started on spending the day with the family (too late). Mine's better than most, and I still can't stand it. After spending 14 years away from family and doing fun things on Thanksgiving like sitting in bars, going to parties, going to Santa Fe, it's hard to enjoy being in central Massachusetts listening to my mother tell us - yet one more time - about her youth in New York City, which IS the center of the world in case you were wondering. Even my nephews are obnoxious. Old AJ (Auntie Jean) couldn't figure out how to use Wii, and you'd think I was the biggest moron on the planet! My nephews and I used to dance together. Now, when I dance, they tell me they're embarrassed. Or rather, what they say is, "That's disturbing."

Then, sis-in-law tells us we all have to say what we're thankful for, and suddenly I get stage fright and can't say anything in front of my family so I blurt out some stupid thing like, "I'm thankful for my friends and family. Oh, and Michael." He asks, "What am I?" I say, "Good question. I'm not sure." But boy am I thankful for him for acting like he really doesn't mind my family. In small doses of course. Poor SSM. If we had been living in Boulder, we'd be spending Thanksgiving actually having fun. Getting drunk because we're having a good time, not because we need a sedative to put up with my annoying, eccentric, quirky family. But then again, if I still lived in Boulder, I wouldn't be with SSM, so that's sad. I'm thankful I moved to Massachusetts so that I could meet SSM and fall in love.