Aug 262015
 

I love when weekends start off with breakfast at Pamela’s with Wendy and Jeannie. Usually we go to the same one, in Shadyside, but Wendy decided to change things up this time and chose the one in Squirrel Hill, because it would be “more convenient for everyone,” which really means, “more convenient for Wendy and more annoying for Erin and Jeannie.” God, ever since she became pregnant, it’s become all about her.

Because I can never remember what the parking sitch is like near this particular Pamela’s, I wound up leaving way too early and ended up in a parking lot that was entirely empty and within perfect walking distance, with a good thirty minutes to spare—this is what happens when you’re a spaz about being late. So I spent my time wisely, listening to Icarus the Owl and the new Carly Rae Jepsen album, which is FIRE. I’m not even joking.

And of course, taking selfies with Large Marge:

Breakfast was great. Wendy spent the whole time talking about growing a human while Jeannie and I nodded and concentrated on our food.

“Did you know that Wendy’s pregnant?” Jeannie side-barred.

“I always forget that she is, thank god she’s so good at reminding at us,” I answered.

I think Wendy was about to tell us to shut up but then Pregnancy side-tracked her.

Later that day, Henry found some ice cream place for us to try in Butler, which is like an hour away from Pittsburgh in case you don’t live here and are like, “The fuck is Butler?” Professional Driver Henry loves driving and “getting ice cream” is less about the actual ice cream and more about the Adventure. It’s one of my favorite summer things!

Chooch slept on the way there, so we talked shit on him the whole time.

When we got to the ice cream place, it was around 5 so I made the unilateral decision that we should eat dinner first. Henry drove toward downtown Butler while I embarked on another frustrating field trip into the bowels of Yelp. I was really getting angry when we drove past some place called the Chop Shop and I started bitching about how we should just eat there because Yelp is a piece of shit. I checked out their menu and they had at least one vegetarian item, so Henry turned around and parked the car. I was still full from breakfast, so I figured I’d just get a salad anyway. Henry made the “if you say so” face and tentatively followed Chooch and me inside, bracing himself for disaster.

The vibe of the Chop Shop is small town gas station. Our waiter (BRANDON <3<3<3) was dressed like a gas station attendant and there was all kinds of old school garage paraphernalia strewn about. The booth was covered in the softest suede so my dumb legs didn’t stick to them since I was wearing shorts. IT’S THE LITTLE THINGS.

(The pain of pulling bare skin from vinyl seats, amirite.)

Aside from driving through Butler, I haven’t actually parked and gotten out of the car there since 1998, when I drove out there to get a tattoo from some dude I met when I cold-called his tattoo shop from the credit card terminal company I was telemarketing for. My impression of Butler was always that it’s out in the middle of farmlands and what the hell do these people do when they want to go to a concert? So I guess I was pleasantly surprised that we were eating at a restaurant that not only remembered that vegetarians exist, but actually had four different meatless salads to choose from.

And not stupid iceberg lettuce and cucumber salads, either. The salad I ordered had goat cheese and beets and GOOD GREENS. I am ridiculously picky when it comes to salads and I absolutely will not settle for regular lettuce. I hate lettuce. And the salad was big enough that it was totally acceptable as an entree.

We also ordered popcorn with siracha and peanut sauce for an appetizer, and the serving was enormous! Plus complimentary jalapeno cornbread?! I was in-fucking-love with the Chop Shop before my salad was even served, because I love cornbread, but I have had some bad cornbread. Ugh, this was the perfect ratio of sweet and savory, and it was MOIST AS FUCK. I can’t stand when cornbread has that dried-up nun’s vag consistency.

(Speaking of cornbread, I really miss that cornbread shit that ChiChi’s used to serve. It was like molten cornbread, just a puddle of this sweet ass corn splooge, oh how I long for some of that bastardized Mexican side dish goodness. Just because a few people had to go and die after eating bad green onions at ChiChi’s, the rest of have to be punished too!? Unreal.)

When we told Brandon how much we loved the cornbread, he came back with an entire carry-out container full of hunks of it and whispered, “You didn’t get this from me.”

“Give him a huge tip!” I urged Henry. “Like, $200!”

I mean, not that I had a crush on him or anything.

“Let’s write him a note on the back of the check!” I cried, because that’s what I like to do when I’m in love with the waitstaff or their coconut cream pie (although, I have also been known to write a scathing note or five hundred in my time, too).

“Yeah!” Chooch agreed. “Write ‘I’m in love with you, from Erin’.”

Ugh. Chooch is the worst.

Also, our check was less than it usually is when we go to shitty Eat n Park, so that made Henry’s blue-collar salary sing.

The best part about the Chop Shop is that my Yelp nemesis has yet to review it! I was thankful that I was able to enjoy my cornbread without Yelp nemesis’s sickening food-prose tainting my taste buds.

Instead of driving back to the ice cream place that originally brought us out that way, we opted to just go to Madlyn’s down the street because it looked cute and Chooch was all WHY CAN’T I EVER PICK WHERE WE GO and that’s where he wanted to go.

So…

I didn’t really care at that point, because I was so happy to have eaten a salad that didn’t taste like it came out of a prison cafeteria. So when it turned out to be one of those dime a dozen self-serve froyo joints, I didn’t throw a colossal fit like Henry was anticipating. I think what helped was that the teenage froyo clerk was fucking adorbs.

“Have you ever been here before?” he asked. We all said no.

“Well, are you familiar with self-serve frozen yogurt?”

Answering yes to this question apparently comes with a reward of being told, IN DETAIL, how the entire process works: from choosing a cup or cone; the difference between yogurt, sorbet, and custard; a perusal of the topping bar, where a staggering 100+ options lie in wait; and a nod toward the extra toppings, such as the sauces and whipped cream.

It was excruciating. I mean, the kid was adorable and clearly loved his job, so hats off to That Kid. But Jesus. I felt so on the spot after that, like he was quietly judging my choices and sprinkle-drizzling form.

(He failed to include in his instructional lecture that there was a plastic pan over which one is to perform the topping-dropping; I did not realize this until after I had already created a wasteland of intermingling topping crumbs all over the counter.)

Henry opted to put his froyo in a cone and was shocked to discover that getting the stuff in there is a lot harder than it looks.

I told Henry to use my method of capturing a totally non-creepy, unstalkerish picture of the Froyo Prince, but this was the best he was able to produce.

My attempt.

Then Chooch and Henry played Donkey Kong, which was amusing because Chooch gets so mad when Henry does better than him.

God, could he be any less like me? I am always so supportive of Henry when he’s excelling at something!

Afterward, Henry was the best dad ever and took us to Playthings Etc, which is a toy store inside of a STEALTH BOMBER. It’s so cool that it’s even listed on Roadside America. Just sayin’.


Tow young guys were working that evening and one of them immediately complimented Chooch on his choice to have pink hair. Chooch, while never tiring of the actual hair color, is super 100% over graciously accepting people’s compliments. His obligatory “Thanks” these days is bloated with derision and ruffled feathers. And to make it even worse, the toy store guy practically cut himself off from talking about Chooch’s hair in order to gush over my EYEBALL PURSE. Chooch literally threw himself into a full-bodied, “Ugh!” and stomped away.

“He hates it when people like my purse,” I explained.

“Oh….well, he has pink hair!” he shouted at Chooch’s retreating back.

I sometimes wonder what Chooch and I look like through the eyes of a stranger.

Random thing on the wall.

Most of the toys had demo versions that we were allowed to play with, which meant that Henry spent a large portion of his time there shooting Chooch in the back with various Nerf-like guns. I usually get bored in toy stores pretty quickly (shopping in general bores me now that I don’t have the corporate AmEx to use….or maybe “depresses” is more of the word I’m looking for), but this place was the shit because both of the guys were so great at interacting with the customers. They would pop around corners and say, “HEY! Have you ever seen….” and then start demoing something for us. It was exciting!

“Who wants to go outside and see human-sized bubbles?” one of the guys asked, and a bunch of us were tripping over ourselves to follow him out to the parking lot.

At one point, Chooch and I were looking at a collection of realistic animal masks that had a price tag of “Not Today,” according to Henry. One of the guys came over and started talking to us about the masks and I mentioned that we were really into masks and enjoyed doing photo shoots with them.

“She has a blog,” Chooch said with an eye roll and then walked away.

“Well?!” the guy asked. “What is it?”

So then I had to awkwardly tell him about my blog and I hope he never reads this, but hey guy, if you’re reading this, thanks for making our visit super fun! And we’ll be back for that fox mask real soon. Henry promised.

We did leave with a pug, though.

What started out as a simple trip for ice cream turned into an accidental day of local tourism, and I fucking loved it! The main thing I realized about Butler is that every person we encountered there was ridiculously nice and hospitable and now I want to go back and maybe make a friend or something I don’t know.

  2 Responses to “pancakes & local tourism”

  1. That pug mask freaks me out. (You probably already knew it would.) I want to go to that toy store! It looks pretty awesome.

  2. I’m down with the Chop Shop. Looks great! After I win the lottery (LMAO) I’m going to plan a month-long trip to visit you.

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