Bonus: most of my family is pretty chill and easy to get along with, so family dinners aren’t usually tense or full of shitty conversation. So the fact they all live pretty near is even better because I can and actually do want to see them more often.

But even when I do have to keep a stiff upper lip and suffer through inane bullshit with extended family, I can at least relax knowing that I’m always less than an hour’s drive away from home.

The thought of having to haul my ass to an airport with two kids, dealing with packed lines of holiday travelers all feeling exactly as shitty and sleep-deprived as me, and flying out to Bumfuck, Ohio to spend even just one night in a house full of angry husks who just want to shout, and there’s not even a bar – let alone a good bar – to escape to, and then I have to drag my family all the way back home again and cram in any actual celebration in the last few hours of peace I have before work starts… ugh, that’s fucking awful. That’s the kind of toxic shit that would make me turn into an awful father and project all that crap to my own kids.

What I’m saying is, the coastal elites have a fucking point, guys. Get with the program. Happy Thanksgiving.