haf is irrelevant and relieved @hafnia@wandering.shop

I said earlier that I'd talk about this, so.

It's important to know what DARVO is and how it's used as a tool to bully people into silence/complicity in bad behavior.

DARVO is an acronym. It stands for:

Deny
Attack
Reverse Victim and Offender.

It is a technique that is used by abusive people to cover up their abuse.

It is incredibly common. Knowing how to spot it is key.

I guess I need to say this again, so!

Hi! Hello! I am pretty friendly and generally will approve follow requests if your bio is filled out, I don't recognize your instance as being home to bad actors, etc.

Please note, if we've never interacted, I am probably not going to follow you back. It's not personal, I just don't know you! A quick way around this is to say hi and have a pinned intro post. I'm not scary, and I'd love to get to know you better!

Everyone is some percentage of goblin, werewolf, or vampire, no exceptions

will admit that saying "I'm not bent on destroying the planet" feels odd in light of the 20 KILOWATT LASER I apparently am now responsible for setup of.

I keep seeing a lot of apologies for not being interesting or funny or positive, and I just wanna say:

You are a person, not a brand. You do not need to be consistently anything but yourself. If you need to take a break, that's OK. We're all people, we'll understand.

also a bunch of shit that's never going to end up on this playlist, but mostly:

-Ace of Base (NAZIS)
-Smashing Pumpkins (transphobes!)

...both of which I have literally never liked, so this is not really a hardship, but still, I'd like to think that I always knew.

Spotify is trying to recommend things for me to add, and it has such strange ideas about what I must obviously want to add, like basically all of George Michael? fuckin' algorithm.

I feel like it's pertinent to point out that I graduated in 2006, I would have been listening to the radio a lot in middle/high school, so 2001 - 2006ish or so

and 99.5 was the one that played stuff my mom found acceptable

college was 96.3, better known as "X96" to Young Adults Of That Era, aka the independent alt station that wasn't run by the college.

if I want to be totally authentic tho I gotta throw in some classic rock bc I used to flip between this and THAT station

trying to decide what else to put on it, tapped my friend Amanda for ideas

right now it's everything that used to play on 99.5 when I was in high school. lol?

I've gone "fuck it" and really added to my "hey, nostalgia" playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2D1Vsw0IFqSfKvQsIxbUBb?si=OTz6HI4iSAGpIBW8-5uENQ

last year my parents came out for Thanksgiving. we hosted. my in-laws came, too.

I just remember my dad awkwardly telling me that I had done a "good job". ha.

anyway.

just the partner and I this year. might run pie to the kid, if she wants pie. make a trade with her for brisket (door drops, both of us -- I don't like brisket, but the husband does, and we'll have too much pie for the two of us, so...)

and even then it wasn't, "that was really good, we appreciate the labor that went into it", it was, like -- "oh, that was okay, I guess, I have a hankering for it and now that you're gone I have to make it myself, I suppose" -- which. sigh.

only granddad ever had anything to say, and that was why I used to take him cookies and stuff.

which mom didn't get, and which I never explained, despite her prodding, but oh, well.

I don't cook for that side of the family if I can help it. I used to, when I was in high school/college, because I was just learning how to cook (and make food that was actually good!), but.

idk.

they never had anything to say about it, til after I moved out and both my mom and my sibling asked for specific recipes for stuff I did (my chicken pot pie and my meatloaf).

my mom told everyone who would listen about how she didn't believe me when I said that the turkey was going to be done in two hours, but hey, there we were and it had clearly worked, and wasn't that CLEVER. heh.

I mostly remember being very tired and slightly relieved at the end, that it was done and I'd pulled it off. no one said anything to me about the food except granddad. it was kind of taken-for-granted at that point that whatever I made was going to be good.

fuck, it just occurred to me how long ago that must have been -- both my grandparents were alive.

sigh.

I made it, I let it rest, when she finally was brave enough to temp-test it with me, she was surprised to find that it was done.

my granddad carved it.

it wasn't Thanksgiving, it was some random get-together. maybe dad's birthday 2016? I don't remember.

granddad carved it and ate a piece, and the first thing he said was that it was the best turkey he'd ever tried.

I definitely don't miss my mom's cooking, tho. her entire side of the family is like, "you have to cook the turkey until the indicator pops out!" and I'm like, "that's certainly a way to make sawdust, yes"

the first time I did a dry-brine and spatchcocked a turkey in her kitchen, she legit screamed at me about how it wasn't going to be done in time for company to eat it. ha.

I explained that it was going to be fine and she just needed to believe me, and eventually she relaxed.

whoops, forgot to remove the Hot Takes tag, none of this is a hot take apart from my hatred of pumpkin pie (have hated it ever since I was a small child).

anyway!

mostly I just miss my dad. like I said, uh, yesterday.

anyway, I'm doing a dry brine on the chicken overnight, and then I'm gonna probably spatchcock it tomorrow, bc fuck it, it reliably works to cook a good chicken and why mess with what you know produces something you want to eat?

if I feel Big and Brave and Bold I might make apple pie for myself (like, a tiny one, in a ramekin, using leftover pie crust from the chocolate pie and one of the apples in the kitchen), but ehhhh

oh, and stuffing. which I don't actually stuff into anything bc lol you get salmonella poisoning ONCE...

I'm only making a tiny pan of it bc the husband is Not A Fan, but I like it, so

also fuck pumpkin pie, out of all the uses for pumpkin, you choose that? smh

roasting a chicken tomorrow. going to have a salad, homemade bread, and potatoes/gravy. will also make cranberry jam (for the rolls) and have chocolate pie (for dessert, it is the husband's Favorite and one of the few food things he has strong feelings about).

none of this stuff is particularly traditional and tbh I'm glad, normally the whole get-together is A Production, and while I usually love it, I don't have the energy to do it this year.