Feb 262016
 

It’s almost March, which means we have almost successfully made it through another depressing winter! And there are lots of things that are happening in March, such as both Bled Fest and Warped Tour announcing their full lineups (Bled Fest has been announcing bands here and there, and there are at least 8 bands that have me feeling like an excited 18-year-old pop punk boy), Citizen, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Emarosa shows, and Easter which I started to really like a few years ago after spending most of my life not giving a fuck about it at all.

So while I’m mostly in love with the idea of March in general (totally underrated month if you ask me), there are also some other things latching on to my heart AND HERE THEY ARE.

THINGS I LOVE:

  • Chooch’s new hair. Chooch finally got a hair cut and I am so relieved. I have this thing where I associate certain hair length with shitty attitudes, and I SWEAR TO GOD, once Chooch’s hair reaches a certain shag, he turns into SUCH A DICK. The same goes for ponytails: anytime my aunt Sharon would tie her up into a p-tail on vacation, I knew I was in for it. Anyway, I convinced Henry to take Chooch to an actual barber for once, and not some rough broad with nicotine-stained fingers at Cost Cutters or wherever the fuck he goes. Chooch is also super pleased with the result, and I want to say that’s all that matters, but come on now. It’s all about pleasing me.  Now he wants to dye his hair opal (like a pale, muted pastel rainbow) but I’m not attempting that at home so we have to find a professional I guess.
  • ARTIFEX PEREO BEING ANNOUNCED FOR BLED FEST. I was so excited when this happened last night that I couldn’t breathe and Henry was like, “WHAT. WHAT. Oh.”
  • The grilled cheese I had for lunch at Poros. The bread alone was #litAF. I didn’t take a picture because it was a goodbye lunch for one of our peeps who is jumping ship and I already felt weird enough being there without throwing Instagram food selfies into the mix. So just believe me on this one.
  • Usually though, I have Cream of Wheat for lunch everyday. I know, it’s kind of blah-sounding, but I really like hot cereal and I always add things to it, like various berries or bananas, chia seeds, walnuts…you know, basic crap. But I recently started adding SPRINKLES to it as well, and wow—total game changer. I do have a picture of this one:

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  • That #wonderful is used at work now when anyone refers to me. I DON’T CARE IF IT’S FACETIOUS. I love it.
  • Having multiple personalities: Today, Catherine was telling people that I’m mean. “Look at her! She acts all sweet and whatever, but she’s really mean!” Which was Todd’s cue to chime in with, “Oh I know, she’s a bully.”And then they were closing in on me, dissecting all of the things on my desk. “I mean, look! She’s basically surrounded by death. If anything ever happens here, we can just be like, ‘Just look at her desk. The signs are all there.'” And I was so proud of this.
  • Just Jillian, the Jillian Michaels reality show. I unabashedly LOVE Jillian Michaels and this show, as much as I try not get sucked into reality TV, makes me love her even more. If I ever met her, I would cry for sure. I made Henry watch two episodes last night and I kept catching him laughing; hahaha Henry, busted.

  • When Pittsburgh looks all spring-like and sunny! It’s almost here. Spring is almost here. We can make it.
  • Balance & Composure. I’ve liked them for a long time, but recently something shifted and now I’m just like, more please. I can’t wait to see them again. I am going to share with you today “Tiny Raindrop” because it makes me feel some things. (Barb, you can listen to this. There is no screaming. It’s not heavy at all. WOULD I LIE TO YOU!?)

  • These fucking adorable cats!!!
  • Having a dealer again. Let me explain! God! Back in the late 90s, I used to go to Eide’s nearly every weekend. Eide’s a record/comic book store and it used to be so great back then. This one guy who worked there got to know me because I would always go straight for the Cs to see what new Cure b-sides and rarities they had gotten in. Lots of bootlegged European shows. So he would start waving me over when he saw me, like Mario to Pee Wee in the magic shop, excited to show me the new shit he ordered. Now it’s not so great as far as new music goes (thanks for ruining the magic of record stores, Internet) but sometimes I find myself walking there on my lunch break when I’m feeling like lamenting over the loss of their beautiful industrial and synthpop section. (I bought allllll of my synthpop CDs there and from A Different Drum, which doesn’t exist anymore.) Anyway, every so often I’ll find a new must-have record, like the Touche Amore one I picked up last week. While the guy was ringing me up, he said, “We sell a lot of this one” to which I replied, “Oh I bet, they’re a great band.” And then, as an after thought, I asked, “You guys don’t ever get any La Dispute in, do you?” He said no, but that he could order it for me, and I was like “JUST LIKE THE OLD DAYS!?!??!” So today I got to walk over and collect it, and there is just something way more fun and satisfying about going into a record store to pick up a record rather than clicking on “buy now” on some website. So then I came back to work with it and Todd and Glenn decided to listen to La Dispute and let’s just say the band did not accrue new fans from The Law Firm today. Todd was perplexed and Glenn was just straight up unimpressed. Sorry La Dispute, I tried.
  • Law Firm Memories: Today was Jennifer’s last day, so I made her Goodbye Glenn because I couldn’t let her leave without some type of memento. This inspired me, Amber2, and Todd to look at all of the Easter Glenns and reminisce which was fun until AMBER2 opened old wounds by bringing up when my low-key, grassroots Easter egg hunt was eclipsed by the Big Time Departmental “There Might Be Money In Your Egg!!!” Easter Egg Hunt and then no one gave a fuck about mine anymore so I threw a tantrum and shut myself away in my fake-office in my verboten hallway and cried about it. “I still have a picture of the Golden Bunny I got!” Amber2 mused dreamily, and I was like “UGH WHATEVER!!” But then Todd agreed that my version of the Easter egg hunt is the one that provided lasting memories, so that is why this bullet gets to reside in  the “love” section of this blog post.

And now on to the part that everyone cares about because schadenfreude:

THINGS I HATE:

  • When nice people leave The Law Firm. (See above.) :(
  • Meghan Trainor. Still. I honestly hate everything about her: her voice, her face, the way she moves when she “sings.” She is a pimple begging to be popped. After hearing about the Lionel Richie tribute at the Grammy’s, I YouTubed it and my ears are still sobbing. She didn’t belong up there on that stage with those other performers! Even that country guy was passable as a singer! BUT NOT HER. I was seething about this and it was until I started making physical threats to her that Henry butted in and told me I was being unreasonable and that he didn’t “understand” why I “think” she is so “terrible.” So then I started making physical threats to him while rage-texting Wendy because she is the only one who share my pain when it comes to that dumb bitch Meghan Trainor.
  • Getting to pick winners for some fitness incentive thing (after TODD was solicited before me but I whined until Michele was like, “Ok…or Erin can help with the drawing…” and then Todd had a new opportunity to call me a bully) and I wound up picking MY NEMESIS Lou. UGH.

  • Vanilla yogurt. I eat greek yogurt every day at work as a mid-morning snack. Every single day. It’s just another one of those INTERESTING things about me, OK? But a few days ago, the only option available in our fridge was vanilla. Two greek vanillas and one regular vanilla. Ew. But when choice did I have? So I grabbed a Chobani and then proceeded to gag and make puking sounds two hours later when I attempted to eat it at work. So awful! Like sour paste! I couldn’t even make it a quarter of the way through that fermented slop. I’m not the type of person who can quietly dislike something, so I threw a basic fit about it at work before hurling it into the trash. The general consensus around here was that Henry is a fucking prick for buying vanilla yogurt. I texted him and was like WHY and all he said was that supposedly our SON requested vanilla but then changed his mind (sure he did, once he realized that not even Little Orphan Annie would eat that shit), so now we had enough of that sickening vanilla glue for a whole preschool art class to smear on construction paper. The next morning, I reached into the fridge to pluck out my daily yogurt and STILL ALL VANILLA!? I was fuming mad by the time I rolled into work that my salutation to everyone was, “I’M ON YOGURT STRIKE.” Glenn was like, “If I was Henry, you know what I would say? Go to the damn store yourself!” And then Todd piped up and was like, “Yeah, you know!? I’d even show you how to GET THERE.” UGH!!! Anyway, my strike only had to last one day because Henry dutifully went to the store and bought quality flavors so today I was able to enjoy a nice tub of key lime. Henry taunted me last night by eating one of the remaining vanilla puke pots in front of me while I made dry-heaving motions.  “You don’t like mainstream music, you don’t like mainstream yogurt — where does it end with you?” Glenn mumbled today.
  • One-sidedness. Isn’t it an awesome feeling when someone who you used to be BFFs with calls you out of the blue and they’re sobbing uncontrollably and you still have no idea why you even answered because they’re such a piece of shit, but you saw their number and felt worried and you’re a human being who doesn’t want someone to be hurting so you answered, but then a few weeks later when you needed someone to talk to because you were feeling super low and helpless, you call that same person, thinking that they will return the favor by lending an ear but instead they decline your call and haven’t said a word to you since and then you realize it’s just because they’re trying to repeat the cycle of abuse? FUCKING AWESOME. I’m sorry that happened to you and I hope that person fucking burns in hell.
  • Wardrobe malfunctions. Today was Jeans Day at work. I only have one pair that is work-appropriate, i.e. without designer slits and rips. This pair though is pretty old and worn, so when I sat down at my desk immediately upon arriving at work this morning and heard a rippppp, I can’t say I was too surprised. The rip was small, horizontal, and in the middle of my inner left thigh. I discreetly shimmied to the bathroom to assess the sitch, and it wasn’t noticeable, because I don’t walk with my legs turned out. (If you do, that’s totally OK.) So I went about my day like it was no big thing, and planned to go jeans shopping this weekend. Then on my lunch break, I was right outside of Eide’s when I crouched down to tie my shoe, and this time it was more like RIPPPPPPPPP. Immediately, I felt the frosty tongue of February licking my BARE THIGH. Fuck fuck fuck fuck. I ran inside Eide’s. My shoe was still untied, so I tried to gracefully achieve bunny-eared status in the stairwell, only to heard a series of truncated, staccato rip rip rips.  Sweating at this point, I made sure my coat covered my partial nudity and continued up to the record section of Eide’s where the beauty and pleasure of holding my La Dispute record in my hands was marred and sullied by the fact that I was one quick squat away from returning to work in cut-offs. Outside of Eide’s, I texted Henry my latest trauma and he completely did not find this to be an emergency situation at all. So I knew I was going to have to solve this problem on my own. Because I was still in ear-ringing, brain-clogged, panic mode, it appeared that my only two options were to either bypass work and go straight home and never leave the house again, or jump into the river. I cried a little bit. I felt anger toward Henry because this was his fault somehow for not noticing that my jeans were in peril the last time he washed them. He could have added some type of reinforcement to them or built me a new pair altogether. But then the fogs of frustration and fluster slowly drifted away and I saw a light at the end of the tunnel, and that light belonged to BURLINGTON. I still enough time left on my break and one slight change in direction would put it on my path back to work! And then my FUCKING shoe untied again. I thought to myself, “Two more blocks. Fuck the shoelace. Just keep walking. Two more blocks.” Just then, a man TAPPED ME ON THE SHOULDER and said, “Miss, your shoe is untied. Be careful.” WHO EVEN DOES THAT IN 2016?!?!? People aren’t supposed to care about each other! JUST LEAVE ME AND MY FUCKING SHOELACES OUT OF YOUR LIFE, OK?! So I cried, “I KNOW THANKS OK!!!!!” and then I ran across the street. Like, RAN and never looked back. Waiting to cross another street, I tried to lift my foot up high enough to at least be able to tuck the laces in because I was afraid that if I didn’t acknowledge this man’s shoelace policing, I might trip over it and fall into an oncoming bus. THESE ARE THE THINGS YOU HEAR ABOUT ON THE NEWS!!! Finally, I made it to Burlington and grabbed the first pair of jeans I saw in my size, tried them on while sweating and hiccuping on anxiety, and then bought those motherfuckers for $16 because Burlington. When the cashier asked if I wanted to donate $1 to whatever charity, I said yes before she could even finish because saying no to charity after all of that was bound to have me struck down by lightning. Plus, I felt thankful that I was fortunate enough to be able to go to a store and buy new jeans without thinking twice—PERSPECTIVE. Went back to work and threw on the new jeans in the restroom. I texted Henry to let him know that further crisis was averted and I was sitting at my desk, legs swathed in a pair of snug jeans that I think might actually be jeggings. “There’s rhinestones on the back pockets,” I told him (found out later that they’re actually studs, this is how you know I was in such a hurry that I really didn’t even look at what I was buying). “They’re totally urban. I think the butt might actually be padded.” And he asked, “Are they Applebottoms?” Fuck you, Henry.
  • Henry. Because after he picked me up from work, we sat for a few seconds in silence before he started cracking up. “Fuck you, I had a really traumatic day!” I cried. “No, traumatic would have been if your jeans and LEG ripped all the way off,” he laughed. And then he made me show him my other jeans, to which he knowingly said, “Yeah, that’s exactly how I thought they were going to look. That rip is NOT that big.” I started screaming about how it was so big, and he put on that chastising tone to say, “Erin. ERIN. Erin! You probably have people thinking your whole vagina was hanging out. That rip is not that big.” Fuck you, Henry! It’s like at least 7 inch-things long!!!

  3 Responses to “Love&Hate, Ups&Downs: February Edition”

  1. I totally would have asked if they were Applebottoms too!
    Please tell me he sang you the song?

  2. I LOVE his hair! It looks fantastic! Pale opal, I like the thought of that. :)

    “You don’t like mainstream music, you don’t like mainstream yogurt — where does it end with you?” Glenn mumbled today.”

    Excuse me, mainstream yogurt? What does that even mean, Glenn? We can’t all like Dannon!!!

    “I’m sorry that happened to you and I hope that person fucking burns in hell.”

    Yes.

    “only to heard a series of truncated, staccato rip rip rips.”

    Only you would make me laugh that hard when you are in crisis!

    “I felt anger toward Henry because this was his fault somehow for not noticing that my jeans were in peril the last time he washed them. He could have added some type of reinforcement to them or built me a new pair altogether.”

    Seriously. He can install beds and do other carpentry, but he can’t reinforce jeans? What kind of Professional is he? Jeez, Henry.

    TOLHURST.

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