Spending today getting the house nice and Christmassy.

P.S. If you, like us, are faux-tree people, pleeeeeease trust me and buy this candle.

Hi! In lieu of an actual "kid's gift guide," this year I thought I'd just go ahead and tell you what I'm getting for my kids, mostly because I am at this very moment doing my own Black Friday shopping (via Amazon Prime, because this means I don't have to brush my hair). (And okay, also because I meant to write this last night but put my son to bed around 8:30PM and ended up passing out next to him, and apparently entered a tryptophan-induced coma state, because I didn't wake up for TWELVE HOURS.)

The photo accompanying the Forbes fanfic article says it all.

Over the past week, your daily "Donald Trump does an unimaginably bad thing" news items have spotlighted an interesting new character: Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law (married, as you know, to Golden Child Ivanka). The conspiracy theories keep pouring in: Did Jared's father pay off Harvard to get him in?! (Yes.) Are Jared and Ivanka using their newfound positions to further their own business interests?! (Come on; of course they are.) Is Jared The Boss Of The World now?!?!? (Maybe; he certainly holds huge sway over the decisions of the impulsive, self-indulgent emotional toddler who will soon become president.) The answers to these questions matter, but the reasons why he is extremely, extremely dangerous extend far beyond them. I'm aware that sounds like hyperbole. Stay with me.

Jared's involvement in the national disaster we collectively refer to as "The Year 2016" has been particularly interesting on a personal level, because I know the guy pretty well. We were friends in college, and briefly dated a few years later, and I liked him a lot: I thought he was kind, and interesting, and have genuinely fond memories of him through the years. He's the sort of guy who makes you feel like he's really hearing you. He is, in a word, charming.

Hey...what's that back there? Oh right: IT'S MY PAST, HAUNTING ME FOREVER.

Ummmmmmm so I'm putting together a Thanksgiving Recipe Rundown post (coming up) and just went down a major old-video wormhole searching for my ancient Sugared Cranberries video. That video appears to no longer exist (which is probably a good thing, because helloooooo awkward), but you know what does? Everything else I thought would be a good idea to post to the Internet in 2009/10.

Thanksgiving 1982

My memories of Thanksgiving from when I was a little girl are of me, my mom, my dad, a turkey, and Ocean Spray cranberry sauce in the can (which is, just so you're aware, superior to every other cranberry sauce on the face of this planet). Sometimes we combined our celebration with family friends (above; and lol at my grumpy face), and sometimes my grandparents on my dad's side came to visit from LA or a relative on my mom's side came to visit from Canada, but we didn't have any family who lived close to us, so more often than not it was just us hanging out in New York City and eating too many sweet potatoes.

Except, as it turned out, there were more of us than we'd realized.

Me and my milk and my emails, 7AM

With two kids in the house, there is a lot of milk that gets consumed on a daily basis. And in our house, it’s even more than you’d expect, because my five-year-old and my two-year-old aren’t the only ones interested in the stuff. (Just to be clear, they're primarily interested when it's located next to cookies or on top of fluorescent cereal puffs, in case you were under the impression that I was raising Health Angels. I'm not.)

Not infrequently, I’ve had a houseguest comment on my habit of waking up, walking directly to the refrigerator, and pouring a massive glass of (super-cold) milk. “Jordan?” they ask. “Are you...what are you doing?”