The Return of Andrea: Day 1

Apparently, Andrea had such a smashing time in Pittsburgh last September that she decided to come back for an entire week this time!

I tried to go easy on her for her first day, so we spent a low key afternoon at my house, watching the Penguins 2009 Stanley Cup CHAMPIONS DVD (it totally won her over and she was crying into her Free Weezy t-shirt by the time—spoiler alert—they won the Cup in Game 7; Fleury is her favorite, in case anyone wants to send her trade her Pens memorabilia for My Pretty Zombie eye shadow), being terrorized by a mop-headed 5-year-old, and talking about apples.

I even gave her a slice of my Jonagold and she was like, “Did that really just happen?” When Henry found out later, he was absolutely bowled over. “She almost ripped my head off last night when she thought I was going to take her apple when all I was doing was moving a slice that was about to fall off the plate,” Henry confided in her and I could tell he was reliving the moment because he instinctively crossed his legs to protect his ballsack.

Seriously, I went so berserk on him last night in the kitchen that I even surprised myself. He’s lucky I only know how to cut my apples with one of those coring devices, otherwise it’d have been a sharp blade in my hands, ready to core his apple.

Ain’t no one be touching my apple, unless they’re Johnny fucking Appleseed and we’re filming orchard porn.

Later, Andrea had the pleasure of meeting one of Brookline’s savory half-schizo residents, who invited her to take in a performance of a barbershop quartet at the library. These are things that can happen if you stand on my front porch for longer than 2 minutes.

Long live Brookline.

(OMG she caught a glimpse of Hot Naybor Chris, too, who was in the driveway working on his muscle van. She was wowed by his hunky 80s ‘stache and could totally see why Henry would man-crush on him, for sure.)

Then Henry’s mom came over to watch Chooch while Andrea, Henry and I went to Primanti’s with my friends Rick, Tammy and the Castle Blood crew: Ricky, Chris and Kari. I only wish Dawn had been there too. Stupid Canada.

Through Andrea, I have become Facebook friends with this awesome mask creator and all around Halloween guru, Chuck. Turns out Chuck is some kind of Henry advocate and told Andrea he wants his autograph. This of course made modest Henry laugh bashfully, yet puff out his chest and rub his forearms like he’s wont to do when his masculinity has been boosted. (As you can imagine, this doesn’t happen very often.)

But then it occurred to me that Ricky probably knows him, being a fixture in the haunt industry. He does indeed, so I immediately made him pose for a picture with Henry, just to make Chuck’s head explode.

Wish you were here, Chuck! :( I’ll get you that autograph!

Rick’s new mission is getting me to eat meat again. He even suggested planning a huge party around it, like a true flesh-eating zombie party. At this point, the whole table was staring at me making me internally scream SPOTLIGHT! ABORT! ABORT!, and I had slammed back one whole Woodchuck on a stomach filled with one lone apple (and not even a whole apple thanks to Andrea guilting a slice off me) so I kept laying my head down on the table in an effort to create a
makeshift panic room; even after I (too quickly) devoured my cheese sandwich, I still felt completely giddy and immature. And Andrea was the one worried about being awkward.

“You’re a hot mess,” Andrea said, with a silent but implied “tsk tsk.” God, she’s here one day and she’s judging me! Thank god some waitress dropped a wad of sour cream, complete with all the nacho garnishes, on the floor next to Andrea, so she spent the rest of the time judging that chick & every Primanti’s employee who subsequently stepped over the slop while pointedly ignoring its presence.

It was a really big deal when some poor lackey finally came over and mopped it up. I thought Andrea was going to for sure give him a standing ovation.

Somewhere during all this, Andrea made disparaging remarks about Jonny Craig, Tammy made us think she killed a pet snake, and Henry prayed someone would ask him about the SERVICE.

Afterward, we all went back to Rick and Tammy’s to watch the hockey game. Chris and Kari stopped at Eat n Park and picked up some dessert. I was really considering having some apple pie, but now that I’m such an apple purist, I couldn’t bear to imagine an apple covered in all that non-apple stuff. I’ll just go home and eat a Jonagold, I said in the car, and apparently this was funny to Henry and Andrea, which offends me considering apple is my new religion.

(Oh my god, I just remembered my fake last name is Appledale! It’s all coming together. Please send me apple paraphernalia for Christmas.)

Thank you to my super cool friends for being so sweet and accommodating to my other super cool friend, Andrea. She will probably appreciate it even more by mid-afternoon tomorrow, after I’ve been dragging her around the flea market, throwing temper tantrums over Christmas trees and bending her (and Henry) to my will.