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I engaged in some power-whining a couple months ago about not wanting to travel too much over the holidays and how I was hoping we’d keep things more low key this year because as lovely as it was visiting JB’s brother’s fiancee’s parents (got that?) last time, their house is spotless and features lots of pointy marble things and their dinner spread is like something crafted by set designers for a keepsake Gourmet magazine (RIP) layout. Between constantly scanning to be certain that one of my feral children isn’t pulling a collection of Waterford crystal onto their heads and having a hand at the ready to clap over the other one’s mouth in case he decides to loudly describe a food item that took seventeen consecutive hours to prepare as “yucky”—while, by the way, being personally poured into something that requires Spanx—well, just thinking about it makes me want to crawl into a closet and suck on dog hair.

So anyway, we’re having Thanksgiving at our house this year. This all seemed like a very good idea until this morning when it sort of hit me all at once that I have to produce an actual non-microwaved meal this week, at which point I launched into the exact same process I experience every time I host a holiday:

1. PANIC! Consider faking own death.

2. Pore over 257319 recipe websites, considering which seventy-step dish I should try for the very first time this year. Should I buy a chef’s torch? Make croissants from scratch? I should at least replace all our dishes and get some raw silk table linens and sterling silver napkin rings and maybe plan on at least seven courses, not including the amuse-bouche and palate cleansing sorbet and—

3. Fuck it, man. These people are getting Stove Top and paper plates. I hate everyone and everything. Cram it up your pilgrim-hole, Thanksgiving.

4. OH FINE I GUESS I SHOULD BUY A GODDAMNED TURKEY.

5. Panic! Consider faking own death.

I am now in step 6, where I’ve figured out what I’m going to serve and I’ve created the monstrous shopping list and I think I have it under control, except I just found out JB’s parents are arriving tomorrow and all I can say is I hope they don’t mind pizza between now and Thursday because seriously. See also: step 1, step 5.

We’ll stick to the basics—turkey, potatoes, stuffing—for the meal but I think I’ll sneak one weird thing in there that probably no one will like except me. This is a recipe from my Aunt Eileen, and I have very fond memories of it.

Aunt Eileen’s Jello Salad

2 cups hot water
2/3 cups cinnamon candies
1 large lemon Jello
1.5 cups applesauce
8oz cream cheese
1/2 c. chopped nuts
1/2 c. chopped celery
1/2 c. mayonnaise

Pour hot water over candies until melted. Add jello and stir in applesauce. Pour 1/2 of mixture into bowl or mold. Chill until set. Blend cream cheese and nuts and celery and mayo. Spread over set mixture. Pour on remaining mix. Chill.

Oooh, it’s just all spicy and creamy and cool and it’s a pretty red color and looks particularly nice in a glass dish and I’m telling you, you should try it. Even if it is weird, which fine, it sort of is.

What are you doing for Thanksgiving, if you’re celebrating? Do you have any oddball family favorite recipes that are part of your holiday meal?

So we watched 2012 on Saturday night and dear god, what a shitfest of a movie. I mean, we chose it simply for the epic amounts of destruction, not the nuanced acting it was sure to contain, but wow. It was like . . . I don’t even know where to start. There’s nowhere to start, really, it started out purely ridiculous and swiftly veered into some kind of bizarre filmmaking practical joke where each scene is even more hilarious than the next until it’s sort of like the director is just dry humping your eyeballs while the laws of physics unravel in a sad puddle on the floor. But it wasn’t the paper-thin plot; the action scenes that repeat themselves in various unexciting will-they-make-it scenarios while you fervently hope everyone will die, die, die in a lake of fire; or the multitudes of groaningly awful moments of bloated million-dollar effects; it was the repulsive attempt at emotion that was the true travesty, where characters lean to each other while in the midst of some insane brink-of-death situation and whimper things like, “Daddy, why don’t you like Mommy’s new husband?”

That said, I enjoyed every single one of 2012’s many, many minutes. Why? I was out of the house, kid-free, and I had me a box of candy. You could say my standards are pretty low, but that would be assuming I have any standards to begin with.

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