For My Immediate Family:

This year, I’ll be watching the kennel club dog show from start to finish. I want to watch cute, well-groomed dogs prance for treats, and revel in the blandness of the handlers struggling to keep it all together. If you want something to eat during the kennel club dog show, you can either forage in the kitchen, or you can eat my ass.

I will then play the recorded Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade while preparing for guests to arrive. You may skip over commercials, but I reserve the right to watch any song and dance numbers to grade the performers’ ability to lip-sync. Feel free to offer your own judgments during these evaluations, but do not complain about the quality of entertainment. If you want to binge watch something emotionally devastating or needlessly violent, use the iPad in your room.

(NOTE: Sharing plot spoilers of any of the six shows I’m watching is courting trouble.)

For Family and Guests:

I will be checking vaccination cards at the door. Anyone without a vaccination card will be turned away, including Grampa Frank, despite his predilection for handing out cash to my children. And I don’t care that my husband’s side of the family all “had Covid” already. That just tells me you dumb-shits haven’t taken the pandemic seriously.

I will also check Facebook and deny entry for any recent postings about attending country music concerts (Aunt Connie) or just mentioning NASCAR in any context (Uncle Steve).

I’m serving re-heated food I’ve cooked during the past three days. Anyone doesn’t like it can cook their own goddam turkey.

I’ve only prepared enough food for this one meal. You want seconds, you are welcome to order-in food from the Thai Kitchen, who delivers and will be open on Thanksgiving. I’d prefer if you picked up the food and just went home, to be honest.

If I haven’t made it abundantly clear, my purpose in hosting this holiday meal for family was not to relieve you of the burden of cooking for the next three days, so anyone expecting to take home bags of leftovers (Aunt Debra) is shit out of luck.

Anyone expecting this house to be clean should bring their own maid. If you, my family and friends, can’t endure the clutter of my life, or all the goddam leaves and dirt our two dogs track in, then bite me.

Speaking of the dogs: they live here; you’re a guest. You should know by now that they beg for food. Also, I prefer dogs to humans these days, so anyone commenting about my dog’s behavior will be cold-shouldered by me. Anyone messing with my dogs will be stabbed in the neck with a serving fork.

During the meal, we can have football on the television but it will be muted. I’m sick of those idiotic, has-been quarterbacks filling air with their bullshit. Their comments stink like the turds I drop in the toilet every morning, but at least I can wipe my ass and flush away the stink.

Dinner will be buffet style, so be prepared to forage for food, dishes, etc. I recommend you watch my kids and do what they do, as they’ve somehow survived all these years with me as their mother. Meanwhile, I’ll be sitting on my ass enjoying conversation, probably talking about the finalists in the kennel club dog show. If you want your meal to be served, you sure as shit better bring a butler.

There will be no benediction this year, thanks to Grampa Frank repeatedly thanking God for Donald Trump and the second Amendment. Say your own prayers and—I mean it—keep it to yourself.

Speaking of assholes, no one mentions Trump, the GOP, or that fucking Illinois bastard who murdered people in Kenosha unless it’s to vent in anger about how fucked up things are right now. If you are venting in anger, I will personally make you an Old Fashioned so that we don’t swill Kamikazes while making Molotov cocktails in the garage.

Listen, if America’s former favorite son, Aaron Rodgers, can turn out to be a lying sack of shit who doesn’t give two fucks for what we think of him, then I can sit on my ass and enjoy Thanksgiving any goddam way I want to.

Any questions?