Complaint the First : My boyfriend is spending Thanksgiving with his dad, where they are going to sit and be generally unhappy and miserable together and eat Chinese, and when my boyfriend got a free turkey (from the job that just laid him off, he does have cause to be bitchy) and I offered to cook it for him and do a mini-Thanksgiving he was all, "Ehh." about it.

Complaint the Second: I have to spend Thanksgiving with my aunt's hideous boyfriend, who asked if I was knocked up when I got engaged to my ex-husband; who defrauds the government by being on full disability while learning how to parachute out of planes; who called the President the N-word at my grandmother's birthday party. The guy who my aunt has made clear we must at least fake accepting him or she'll disown us all, and my poor grandmother can't bear the thought of that, even after he told her she was basically to blame for my grandfather's failing health.

DOROTHEA IS SUCH A NINNY. I mean, I think I like her but Jesus God does she need a get-a-grip friend.

My dad is bringing a growler of my favorite seasonal beer to Thanksgiving tomorrow and I'm pregnant.
Thanksgiving is being hosted by my little brother and his girlfriend, who is/was also my best friend. It's still weird and it's been three years. She's invited her whole family including her sister-in-law who once almost threw punches when I said I thought Twilight wasn't that great, and who got REAL racist during her first pregnancy. BFF and brother also have a gluten-free kitchen, (she thinks she's intolerant but won't get tested) and are hardcore paleo, so all starches are being cooked elsewhere and brought there. Last year she tried to make a paleo vegan gravy that was thickened with almond flour and I almost cried.

Upside: my parents are taking the toddler for the weekend so if we don't get any leftovers, I'm making my own spread my own way on Friday while watching Scandal in the kitchen.

I always feel deprived around Thanksgiving because my husband is vegetarian, so we don't eat turkey & ham, and I don't live near any of my family any more so don't get to go to someone else's house for it, and because we're poor and busy &c &c we never really make a thing out of the day.

On the other hand I don't have to cook a giant stressful dinner for the entire family, ever, so I guess I can give thanks for that.

My complaint is aimed mostly at me, since it's nobody's fault but my own: my (vegetarian) husband and I are having an at-home Thanksgiving in pajamas, which is AWESOME, and I decided against roasting a chicken because we'll have so much wonderful vegetarian food.

But now I'm a little cranky that I'm not going to have my traditional leftovers sandwich Thanksgiving night, because that's my favorite meal of the holiday and the one I remember best from childhood: after dark, all snuggly in my pjs, I'd have turkey-and-stuffing-and-gravy on buttered white bread with potato chips and a big glass of milk.

But I keep telling myself that's okay, that it's just an excuse to roast myself a stuffed chicken some night when The Fella's working through dinner, which means I get to have a second Thanksgiving in pajamas sometime next week. Right? RIGHT?

I had a whole long thing typed out then I remembered that I post under my real name. So let's just say that the annual Festival of Passive-Aggression has already started and I would like all the wine now, please.

As a Canadian, I am jealous that y'all get to take some time to eat bacon-y brussels sprouts and stuffing. I know we got our own but it was like seven weeks ago! That's a lifetime.

ALSO can any other Canadians confirm that green bean casserole is not a thing? I don't think I've ever seen one and I don't really understand it. Are there onions on top? Canned onions? WHAT IS THIS

my husband may or may not have an evolving alcohol problem (he does but he doesn't really admit to it, just calls himself a "weekend warrior") and I'm getting to the point where I'm really just shutting down in lieu of watching him binge drink into oblivion. He's not really an angry drunk, usually. Worst case scenario is that he gets frustrated with me or I get mad at him and then he loses his shit verbally.

He's recently talked about "cutting back" because he asked some friends if they thought he had a drinking problem, and they said "yes" (thank you, friends). But he's already gone out for a couple drinks, and is waiting for me to get home where he'll badger me to have a "pregame session" at our house before going to the bar around 8 with some friends. I've said I don't want to do that, and he already laid into me, telling me he doesn't want me coming along tonight with my rotten attitude.

I'm completely. Dreading. This holiday.

Toasties, I think I'm allergic to wine :(

I don't have much to complain about yet this Thanksgiving, except the fact that there are SO MANY attractive people on the train back to my parents' house, but none of them ever sit next to me.

The person who sits next to me at work is a gum-snapper. It sounds like she is making popcorn in her mouth. She also sings, audibly, to herself, somehow at the same time as the gum snapping. She makes phone calls on her speaker phone and has now added a horrible wet cough (which I know isn't her fault) to her lineup. She has appointed herself the queen of everyone else's business. She makes me crazy.

So, this is going to be the first major holiday in all of my 28 years that I haven't spent with my family. Not because I'm too far away, or weather, or whatever, but because I am actively choosing not to go home. The last time I was home a few weeks ago my mom spent the entire time berating me and tearing down all of my life choices and it was one of the worst weekends of my life. She's under a lot of stress right now because she's caring for a sick relative, but when I failed to read her mind as to what she needed help with she took all of it out on me and it was seriously NOT OK. She also refuses to apologize and keeps acting like she didn't do anything wrong. So I decided not to go home.

Now my sister is texting me a bunch of sad faces and telling me she'll be so lonely without me, and I know my mom is going to use this as another reason why I am The Worst Sister and The Worst Daughter. I have a sneaking suspicion that the reason I am seen as The Worst Everything is that I got out of our toxic suffocating clingy needy control freaky family environment, and they can't handle that I'm doing my own thing and not miserable? I just need reassurance that I made the right choice, I guess. I feel like I'm BETRAYING THE FAMILY, and I know they're going to bring this up for all time as the reason I BETRAYED THE FAMILY, but I just couldn't do it this time.

Thanks bunches for this thread, Nicole, I reallyreally needed it today. Also the Jane Austen posts helped a ton too. Love you, Toast!

I'm skipping out on work early to leave to go home for Thanksgiving. I'm only leaving 2 hours earlier than I normally would, but I just got hired in September and I'm starting to feel super guilty about it. But oh well! I did mention it to my supervisor. And there's hardly anybody here anyway.

I have wicked cramps right now and I have to drive tonight during the basketball game and I have no idea what I'm getting anyone for Christmas and I'm usually DONE by now and while I adore my grandparents, I'm just not in the mood to come up with responses to statements like "I'm just not ok with this Obamacare. I heard that more people will be on the Medicare rolls. It's such a shame."

Phew. That felt good.

In better news, my grandfather is gifting me his leather-bound gold-leafed copy of Middlemarch. Though he did tell me, conspiratorially, that it was a gift to him from "a homosexual" who "was a good friend despite that." Womp Womp.

I ordered something from Canada. It was shipped to me last Monday and has yet to arrive. The USPS tells me that it departed San Francisco on 11/23 but the tracking information does not show any arrival on the East Coast (where I live). After spending lots of time on hold, a customer service representative told me that I was right and it should be here by now, and if I don't have delivery confirmation on Friday I should call and open a case on it. I understand that international trans-continental shipping is going to take a couple of days, but not being able to see the progress is really irritating.

Also, while I am very grateful to have a family of choice to spend Thanksgiving with, there are people who are invited to dinner who are not My People and I would really prefer that they not be there (including one who is not currently coming to dinner but expressed that she might come over in the evening/Friday for social time and I just was like NOooooooo!)

I just moved to Chicago this past weekend and it's 1) unreasonably cold!! 2) My new craigslist roommates are messy and bachelor-y and might be kind of nuts and 4) have prodded the apartment into a state of chaos which I will spend the entire holiday cleaning alone... all while I am 4) pining over for a guy who I think is perfect for me and vice versa but it's just not going to work out because long distance and ~the universe hates me~ and all that.

Yo, but seriously, Chicago Toasties, can we meet up for drinks or something soon? I promise I'm funnier and more cheerful than this post is making me out to be.

Yesterday I went home on my lunch break from work to make some food instead of spending money on it and in the 20 minutes I was home I GOT A $66 PARKING TICKET. They didn't even street sweep in that time. The forbidden times are: every 2nd and 4th Tuesday of every month from 9AM to Noon. I have lived in my apartment for 2 and a half years the only way I will remember this MUNICIPAL CASH ROBBING window when I'm busy is if I get it tattooed on my hand. What's worse: only working class and poor neighborhoods have street sweeping times. Rich neighborhoods have parking stickers so the poors from the ghetto can't park near their homes. Rich people don't pay parking tickets for stopping at home to make lunch. The rich are to blame for everything.

My perennial complaint: I put in a load of laundry, set a timer for 45 minutes, and sat down "for just a few minutes" to check in on this thread and my email. The timer just went off. WHAT HAPPENED?

Colin Meloy dissed GoldieBlox on twitter and then someone told me (earnestly, not in an argue-y way) that it's not even that good and I'm irrationally heartbroken all over the place. that's my weird complaint for the day, and this feels weirdly liberating.

THANK YOU THE TOAST, YOU'RE GREAT.

My complaint is that, in absence of any sort of plan or commitment from my husband's family regarding their Thanksgiving plans, we planned our own thing, bought food, decided on recipes, and made an open invitation to anyone who wanted to stop by our house. This afternoon my husband calls and tells me that my mother in law decided last minute that she's going to have Thanksgiving at her house, and that we have to plan our dinner around hers. I may have said FUCK THAT a little too loudly for an office environment.

I hate everything about my job. Even when things are basically perfect (I have lots of happy clients, my coworkers are being decent, etc etc) I am so so so miserable. But I feel like an ungrateful wretch complaining about it since it pays extremely well and I'm not terrible at it I guess. Uggghhhhh though.

I have no plans for tomorrow because I didn't buy plane tickets to visit family and I stupidly thought a friendsgiving would magically crop up. The saddest part is that no one will taste my green bean casserole or sweat potatoes this year.

UPDATE: My buddy is having a dinner with his poetry masters program alumni and while I will be the odd one out, that has never stopped me before, e.g., Toast-up. He said some poetry will bust out and that usually leaves me feeling hot and cold, but I think I'll have to blow some minds with either an original of mine or a Henry Rollins poem. (I will not be reading any Henry Rollins poetry.)

I just left one side of my city for the other and I'm sad about it. I loved my old side. I was there a long-ish time (five years.) I also strongly associated that part of the city with my ex, who also lived in that neighbourhood. I'm also not over the ex, and we broke up in spring. I'm also still very very angry with him. I am so frustrated that I am not over this, and still consumed with fury. I dread seeing him as the one time I did I unleashed a (totally deserved, but totally mean) torrent on him. And I know he's moved on, which just hurts like hell.

My complaint is that one of my best friends from high school and super-gay-friendly-college has moved to Texas (ok, she moved there like 7 years ago, I'm still complaining) and has become an evangelical Baptist and posts on FB all the time about being #blessed with #TRUTH and #LIGHT of the #SAVIOR and one time she said homosexuality is a little bit of a sin, like getting drunk D: and it's just bumming me out so much, because it feels like my best friend is not around any more. Like, I got rejected from a job recently and I texted her about it and she replied "rejection is protection". I replied with "???" and she said that it's God's plan for me to be rejected and something better will come along. I mean...thanks, but no thanks? I know, people change and evolve, and I'm the one with the problem here, and we live like 5000 miles away from each other anyway, but I miss the old version of my friend. That's all.

Hello yes do any people who are vegans or who are people who aren't vegans but love vegans have advice for dealing with vegan siblings who you love but are very sanctimonious? My sister has decided that my family is evil for daring to eat turkey in front of her, essentially, and thinks we are being unreasonable when we tell her that it isn't fair for her to make my mother feel absolutely awful all the time by telling her she's being "unsupportive of her lifestyle" (by having exactly 2 nonvegan dishes at thanksgiving). It's unclear at this point whether it would be better if my sister just didn't come home for the holiday, because she is being absolutely unreal with how awful she's acting towards everyone, and she's attacking me a lot for pushing back (usually we're on the same side of family fights). Is this just a thing that I have to accept for a year or two while she grows out of it? Also what about Christmas?

graduate school. make it end. the group work. the depressing public housing research (that is still fascinating, won't lie). the mansplainers. the unavailable advisors. and also the job i have to do to pay for it with micromanagy weird smiley boss who just dumped a bunch of bullshit work on me that doesn't need to be done today when all i wanted was to leave early and start black Wednesday.

also turning into that person who complains about grad school all the time. 22 year old me is eating so much crow.

So two weeks ago I was mulling around my darkened apartment, as one does, and stepped on an unworn shoe (which happens OFTEN), such that my ankle rolled and my full weight came down on the right side of my right foot. It sounded like someone had cracked a knuckle really loudly. It hurt and was insanely swollen.

Doctor dad said it was probably a bad sprain, so I was careful but not super careful, until a few days later when I woke up and my foot was covered in random bruises - between my toes, on the rims of my feet, in the heel. Doctor dad said this was the result of pooled blood from an internal rupture. So we went to an urgent care place and X-rays came up with what they call an "avulsion fracture", meaning that when I rolled my anke the tendons in my feet were pulled so hard that one of the bones they were attached to cracked. There's a little red splotch on the top of my foot now, where a free-floating shard of bone is just hanging out.

These last two weeks have just been kind of brutal. My dad had broken his knee some weeks prior but had slipped on the hardwood moving around our house and nearly broken it again, he was super emotional about it in a way that made me bristle involuntarily - our family is usually very stoic and it made me uncomfortable. My mom, who has problems with her hearing and memory and exhaustion due to the medications she takes, had to take care of both of us until I could move around again.

My foot feels better now but I haven't regained full motion and I can't run on it for at least 6 weeks, which sucks so much because now I've got no outlet for my stimming impulse and it adds to the anxiety I already feel around the waning daylight hours. I was getting into shape, too, and I haven't been able to work out for two weeks. At least school has been easy.

Also my dog caught stage two cancer and had to get a tumor on her leg removed. It was quite a sight around our house, my dad and I and our dog all in leg casts, like we'd entered into some sort of comically injurious pact.

So that's why I haven't been around. But I finished a pitch! Took me four months, per usual, and I don't know how I feel about it, but I gave my word that it would be made and now it has been made. Bring on the dry bird meat.

My complaint to lodge: my brother has been having a rough couple years and lives in Southern California away from the rest of the family (I live in Northern California, Mom/stepdad live in Washington state, Dad lives in Mexico). I'm going up to Washington for Christmas for the first time in like five years, and my brother--who is notoriously difficult to get ahold of--mentioned offhand to my mom at one point that he might come too. Since then, I've texted him three times to ask if he's actually coming, because Mom can't get him on the phone, and he hasn't responded to any of those texts but decided to have a long text-conversation with me last night about Attack on Titan. I feel bad nagging him because things have been difficult for him (major depression and a possible alcohol/substance abuse problem) and I don't feel like it's my place to get in his face about it, but we're less than a month out and nobody even knows if he has a plane ticket.

WIthin the last three weeks, my car was totaled in a hit-and-run and my dad's car (which I was driving in the interim) had its bumper knocked off in the work parking lot (possibly by a coworker, but no one will 'fess up). I will be fine and a new car is in the works and I'm taking it to the body shop soon, but I am so, so frustrated with the entire situation.

This is the first post-dead-mom Thanksgiving, and I am worried it is going to be stressful and awful, and I am moderately resentful at the world for doing this to my favorite holiday.

I plan to spend Thanksgiving a) eating rolls and b) drinking with enthusiasm.