Running off to “historic” Olympia, Washington today for the annual Thanksgiving famjam; this will be my first year in attendance. Bitsy Olympia used to have the third-highest dome in the country, and that was the old Capital Building, way back in the amazing year 1913 or something. At one time, I think people thought that Washington was “going places” what with all the fur tading and pine trees and such.

Now no one’s going places. If I almost get rear-ended by another SUV on the freeway while going twenty-seven miles an hour, I’m going to jump out of my car and take a shit on their hood. They won’t be able to drive away, because they’ll be just as stuck in traffic as I am. And don’t say they they will beat me up, for my teeth will already be filed into points. (That is PHASE ONE.) I will sit in Jerome and gloat as a steaming pile of girl-mess hardens on their hood.

Err…Olympia! Today we are off to make nice with Mr. Husband’s multitudinous cousins, who are so similar in appearance and names that it always strikes me that they must be part of some kind of Top-Secret Yuppie Cloning Project.

They will say, “Wow, Seth, you finally got a real job. Perhaps now you can aspire to own an ugly giant generic house in Bellevue like we do. Perhaps it is time for the giant SUV to store your adorable army of Yuppie children in. Perhaps your wife should quit school and dedicate herself full time to starving herself down to nothing like our wives.”

“Eeep!” says Yuppie wife #1. The wind blows and she snaps in half at her waspy waist.

(Okay, I stop myself here to concede that I am being unfair, because Mr. Husband’s family is pre-disposed to thinness. Which makes them more annoying, actually. Never mind.)

ANYWAY, it should be A Day. I don’t know what the Jim Bob I’m complaining about, because the reason I’m going to Oly is that this is the first year I don’t have to be subjected to my mother’s awful cooking.

One year, when my mother moved in with me, I decided to cook Fangsgiving dinner for her. You know, show Ye Olde Bat how it’s done. Instead of going through the trouble of a giant turkey for only four people, I decided that Cornish hens would be more fun. I glazed them with a honey apricot sauce, and stuffed them with walnuts, apricots, and I think pears. I made all these awesome side dishes, including my wine-marinated grapes.

“Where’s the stuffing?” she said. “This is just wrong.”

My parents spent hundreds of thousands of dollars building a house from the ground up when I was eight years old. The mortgage payment alone must’ve been killer, not to mention the utility bills in that tiny mansion. They were my age, twenty-five. I live in a cracker box and Mr. Husband gets bent about our buck-thirty-a month car payment. Priorities, man.

I digress. As a result, we were property rich and cash poor. My mom did things with rice and hamburger that would have made a Depression-era mother weep with envy. We sat in our deluxe new house every night, eating gloopy, cafeteria-looking food that had a soup base, with the heat turned down to about fifty. Mom and Dad used to bring home a WHOLE SIDE OF COW that had been butchered, and they would spend hours wrapping it up for the freezer. We would eat off it for months, like cavemen with a freezer chest and central air. “It’s cheaper that way!”

Now I sit in my speck of a house, and whip up some phad thai, sear some lamb, experiment with French sauces. Everyone’s getting homemade truffles for Christmas. Priorities, man.

Whatever. The point is: today I am thankful, because any turkey prepared by one of Mr. Husband’s aunts will be moister than any prepared by my mother, whose cooking mantra for everything is, “Let’s just leave it in a FEW MORE MINUTES.”

I will bring my wine-marinated grapes:

Pluck two bunches of grapes (for a large crowd) off stems. Wash. Put in a large ziplock and pour in the cheapest bottle of rot-gutty red wine you can find. I like Gato Negro. Let the grapes suck up the fermented blood of their distant cousins for twelve hours or so. Drain well, then toss grapes in granulated sugar til coated right before serving. Excellent with turkey or chicken.

Seven a.m.: off to redye hair, because its current shade of pink isn’t quite retina-searing enough for Mr. Husband’s grandma. Have a good day, you fucks.