Last night, I ate mashed potatoes smack dab between two of my favorite people in the world and sat at a table with some of the best New Yorkers I know and now I have to drink a red wine spritzer and shut up with the complaining and start being nice. I’ve written a Thanksgiving post every year I’ve had the blog because I’m a smartass who gets all riled up when something slightly inconvenient happens to me. Waaah my phone was slow waaah I had to wait on line at a bar waaah this sandwich has a mushroom on it. Shut up, freak. This is a reminder of all the things I am happy to have and oh so often forget: 

• Roasting broccoli with lemon juice, olive oil, and salt on a baking dish that has actually been cleaned
• Taking the L train to my apartment that has electricity and heat and cable television so I can sit on my stupid butt and watch rich women on Bravo scream at each other.
• finding socks in my room that are matched and not dirty
• Losing my childhood dog this year makes it impossible to watch Frankenweenie, impossible to deny my years flying away, impossible not to feel grateful for the new little pup my parents let me hold whenever I come home. Still miss the Mags, though. May her fat little body munch on popcorn in the sky forever.
• Having people understand my high school crush on Ben Affleck because of his growing list of impressive directorial credits.
• Learning that there are people who will consistently love you for the person you choose to be, want to be, have to be. Some of them will sleep next to you on the same pillow, some will call you family, some will be a friend who paints her nails with you. All are important.
• having a Diet Snapple, at least two beers, and one kind of cheese in the fridge
• being able to call my brother a great friend after years of high school screaming at each other. It feels nice to grow up because he’s the best, even though he still makes fun of my taste in shoulder pads by likening me to a Mortal Kombat character.
• Sure, I can’t do anything extravagant like buying an expensive sandwich or never ever paying my college loans or fully paying off my credit card bill, but I can feed myself and buy shitty Forever 21 necklaces that break immediately, so that’s pretty fucking lucky.
• a night out at a crowded bar where I go “oh I have friends who want to spend Saturday night with me maybe I should cheer up even though I hate everybody here that I don’t know.” Here is the post where technically I am just thanking whiskey.
• That moment when I remember the actor or song name or movie or word that I am trying to think of.
• that moment you turn on the television and the movie you didn’t know you wanted to see (NOT THE LAKE HOUSE) is on and you can watch the whole thing while melting into the couch.
• Learning to eat a chip or a mozzarella ball and not spending eighty-three minutes after that berating myself and hoping to somehow lose five pounds instead of gaining five pounds of self-goddamn-respect. Liking my face because it is my face and not because people say thick eyebrows are in this year.
• Any day I get stressed out and I don’t immediately suckle a gallon of alcohol or break out in adult pimples and just be an adult and get my shit done.
• the people who do more than my blogging ass has to fight for women and equality—the real people who know that some voices are quieter and so they inspire us to get out our motherfucking megaphones.
• the book Gone Girl reminded me that some books you should bury your whole body in, not just your nose
• Serious Eats and pretty much every cooking blog ever. But only the ones with pictures.
• RIP the Bloody Mary, long live the Greyhound or the pancetta-covered waffle.
• My favorite cheapass products discovered this year have been Caress “Simply Gorgeous” bodywash that smells like brown sugar and happiness, Sinful Colors nail polish, and Got 2 B spray volumizer. Yay I’m broke products! 
• My award for favorite food this year goes to cheese sauce. Congratulations on your 24th year winning in a row.
• For me, it’s The Vampire Diaries and The New Girl, but you don’t have to have the same taste as me. I’m just thankful I can get into television characters and worlds that aren’t mine as much as I do, because it reminds me that life doesn’t have to be “serious” or “real”
• I’m thankful that I probably will not see the movie 50 Shades of Grey at least in theaters, I’m thankful that Twilight is over, and I’m thankful that I’m not a CosmoGirl in the way that I haven’t called a penis a member once this year.
• Because I have to say this because of how true it is, I’m thankful that my book, Don’t Worry, It Gets Worse, comes out in May (and the first copy I get to hold in my hands will be waiting for me at my house tomorrow) because of the people here on this blog that read my stupid words and my stupid thankful posts. You guys have been the best Mean Girl loving, pajama wearing, hummus-stuffing people the world has ever known. A million curtsies.
• Old sweatshirts, old photos, and old memories that remind you how good of a life you have had thus far. New sunsets, new friends, new familiar smells, and new reminders of all the good you might have ahead.