Apr 212018
 

I always say I’m not going to be surprised when the weather goes batshit, because Pittsburghers should be used to it, but good lord this last week has been infuriating. Last Friday, it was starting to finally feel like spring and I even left the house without a jacket when I met Kara for breakfast at Dorstop! And the next day actually felt like July – I went with Henry and Chooch for a walk on some bike trail thing and even though I am a Professional Walker, it was too much too soon and I felt really lethargic and sick for the rest of the day.

And then it snowed three separate days later in the week so I had to go back to wearing my winter coat and scarf. In mid-April.

We took advantage of the warmth on Saturday though and got our first Al’s of the season! I say that like we’re regulars there when I think it was only probably the third time we’ve gone. I was sad though because the only reason I wanted to go was because last time I had this SIMPLY DIVINE (lol) Mexican fried ice cream topping and I needed that so bad on Saturday for some reason.

BUT NOW THEY DON’T HAVE IT ANYMORE.

At least, I don’t think they do. Chooch freaking ordered like it was his last ice cream on earth before Henry and I even made it to the window, so then the lady was looking at all expectantly, order pad in hand (I’ve never seen an ice cream…barista?…write down orders before!) and people were behind us now and we felt RUSHED and OBLIGATED to order immediately.

So we both got twists with crunchies as a topping.

Thanks, Chooch.

I mean, that’s probably what we would have ordered anyway, but still.

THANKS, CHOOCH.

Speaking of Chooch, his cat is a fucking nutcase. She started jumping on him and perching on his shoulders like a parrot several months ago (in fact, moments before I took this picture, she had jumped straight on top of his head and stood there with all four paws touching like an elephant standing on a ball). But now, she does this to Henry and me, too! It stresses me out so much because she only does this when we’re standing, and every morning before work, I stand in front of the TV and jog in place* while watching kpop stuff so I’m a prime piece of furniture for her now, apparently. The other day, I caught her started to pounce and I moved out of the way just in time and thank god because I was wearing a silk shirt! God, that would have hurt.

So that’s a thing that happens in my house now.

*(Side note: Another walking challenge started at work last Monday and I originally wasn’t going to do it but then Carrie asked me to be on a team with her and Lou, and I was like “Ugh, Lou, but OK fine” and then we roped in Wendy, so Lou named our team C.E.W.L. and the Gang even though I think 3 Girls and a Lou-ser is better. I’ve been averaging 22,000 steps a day without trying too hard because my lifestyle is way different now than it was back in the days of the original walking challenges, and I think I have been pretty calm about it. I haven’t berated my teammates and I don’t feel like flagellating myself if I don’t get 71234807230847 steps now. I mean, not like I was super militant about it in the past or anything.)

Oh, you want more work tales? Well, we had a huge cake the other day because two of our peoples are leaving us :( The next day, I was on late shift and was asked to:

  1. take some cake home
  2. cover the leftovers in plastic wrap and put it back in the fridge

A simple request, you’re thinking. If so, wow, how novel it must be to be so FUNCTIONING!!! Because I, on the other hand, was freaking out. The plastic wrap was so jacked on the roll that I couldn’t pull any out and the sheath of it that was already covering part of the cake from the day before had icing all over it and I didn’t want to touch it, ughhh. So I’m standing there holding this degenerate roll of plastic wrap, staring at this cake that has been butchered by too many cakecutters in the kitchen (Carrie should have just been on stand-by all day with the knife because her cake-cutting skills are legit! My cake-cutting method involves only my hands and zero skill.)

I didn’t feel comfortable asking any of the other people in the office on late shift because I’m not very close to them so they don’t know my neurotic levels of incompetency, so I did what I had to do…..

…..

…..

…..

…..

…..

…..

Yes sir, I texted Henry, who was already on his way to pick me up and said “Sue asked me to put the cake away before she left can you help” and his response was “how much cake is there” so I said “a lot” because I didn’t know how to measure and hahaha he came in to help me and immediately was like, “REALLY ERIN THIS CAKE IS ALREADY MOSTLY COVERED?!” but there were pieces that were already cut and on plates that weren’t covered, and also a peninsula off the east coast of the main cake that wasn’t covered by the original piece of plastic wrap because I didn’t want to touch it long enough to stretch it over.

See also: IT HAD ICING ON IT.

So Henry’s solution was to just take that piece home but that would have been EVEN WORSE FOR ME TO DO ON MY OWN thank god I made him come up. And then he carried the huge box into the kitchen, where I opened the fridge door for him and yelled Team Work which made him glare at me.

Then since he was there and I still had a few more minutes left of work, I gave him a bunch of stuff of Halloween decorations I found while cleaning out my desk for my move and said, “Here take this down to the car with you.”

Get yourself a multi-purpose Henry!

In other weird weather week news, Chooch casually mentioned over the weekend that he missed Korean food and I said, “SON, SPEAK NO LOUDER I HEAR YOU” and that’s how we ended up at Korea Garden on Sunday for lunch and it was grand but not as grand as, you know, actually being in Korea which I still cry about every day. Chooch had bibimbap and I’m so proud that he actually reaches for the gochujang now. People really can change!

Our favorite Korean restaurant in Pgh is Nak Won Garden, but Korea Garden has a nice atmosphere too.

Both of those restaurants are always filled with Korean people every time we go, so that’s how you know a Korean restaurant is legit! I didn’t want to write about this because it still makes me so angry, but the day after we got home from Korea, Chooch went back to school but Henry and I still had one more day off so I suggested that we get Korean food for lunch. We went to this place called the Golden Pig and this review sadly has nothing to do about the people running it or the quality of the food, but moreso the experience we had with the so-called “regulars” who made us feel like shit for being there.

Golden Pig is very, very, very small. It has a counter that seats maybe 5 people, and then two or three (but I think two) tall tables with three chairs each. We arrived right on the heels of two white men who very clearly are regulars of the place, so they sat at the counter and immediately started talking to the, I assume, husband and wife owners who were in the kitchen. As soon as we sat down at a table, I turned and looked out the window just in time to see a literal procession of cars pulling into the parking lot.

Within 5 minutes, every seat was taken and there were groups of people waiting outside.

This isn’t some trendy restaurant in the heart of hipster Pittsburgh, you guys. It’s out kind of far in a place called Cecil and not in an urban setting at all. But it turns out that most of these people were coming from the same company, I guess, because the restaurant was filled with, “HEY FRED I DIDN’T KNOW YOU COME HERE TOO” and things of that cordial work-bro nature. That was mildly uncomfortable only because it made Henry and me feel like outsiders and we were crashing a party, and people definitely kept looking at us.

  I didn’t like it.

All blue-collared white people. This fact is important.

Then these ladies who were sitting at the counter knew the guys at the table next to us so they kept turning around and talking to them about what they liked to order there and THEY WOULDN’T EVEN USE THE PROPER KOREAN NAMES and the one lady was like, “Oh, what are things we like? The sushi roll things” and she was poring over the menu while Henry was mouthing, “DON’T” to me because I was bouncing in my seat in anguish, the pure desire to shout out, “KIMBAP!” made me have actual shakes.

But this isn’t the worst part. It came later, after our food was served, and I had this dolsot pot of bubbling hot kimchi jjigae in front of me which, have you ever had anytime of jjigae / Korean stew? It is SCALDING HOT. You absolutely cannot eat this right away. So I’m sorry, but when I ordered it, I didn’t know that there would be a mass of hungry Cecil-ites congregating inside and outside of this tiny, tiny, tiny restaurant, coveting my table.

Oh, but there was!

Particularly, this one bitch and her husband (I guess? She put her head on his chest at one point). I didn’t see them at first because they were standing inside the doorway out of my view, but Henry said that they were staring at him the whole time, watching him eat. I didn’t notice them until the moved farther into the restaurant to get something to drink out of the cooler behind Henry. Then they just stood there, so now I was the one facing them. I didn’t much much attention to them at first, but after a few minutes I had this paranoid feeling that they were talking about me, and every time I looked up, the bitch was looking right at me.

But it wasn’t until I caught her MOCKING ME BLOWING ON MY SPOON that I went from mild-paranoia to table-flipping urgency within seconds.

“THOSE PEOPLE ARE LITERALLY TALKING ABOUT ME!” I said to Henry, LOUDLY in the tone that he just loves because it means I just stepped into my PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE BITCH jumpsuit and I’m ready to take flight in my rocket TO PETTYVILLE.

“I know,” he said quietly. “They’ve been staring at us since they got here. Fuck them,” and continued to eat his whatever chicken because he has way more patience and integrity than me, who was ready to launch my whole dolsot pot into her face, BE STRONG, ERIN.

As soon as I said that to him, she got all bristled and turned her back toward to me and put her face in her husband’s chest and I gave him a disgusted, “WHY DO YOU SUPPORT HER BEHAVIOR?!” grimace. So then he hurriedly looked away too.

But really? Of all the people there, you need to have OUR TABLE? You can’t wait for your turn like everyone else, or perhaps focus on the two guys who arrived before us and were already finished eating but still sitting at the counter and talking? OR MAYBE GO SOMEWHERE ELSE? I know I can be hateful but I cannot imagine ever walking into a place and being such a cunt to a total stranger. I wish you guys could have seen the way she imitated me, for no reason, just because I was sitting at a table and she wasn’t!?

And then!!! The ladies at the counter were all, “Oh  my god, do you guys want to sit down?” and moved over so they could have room at the counter and I was like, “WHY ARE YOU BEING NICE TO THEM!?” and then they were talking about their favorite dishes there and the CUNT said in her gravelly redneck  Yinzer throat scrape, “My favorite is the sweet potato noodle, I get it all the time.”

WELL THEN CALL IT JAPCHAE, YOU DUMB BITCH!!!!!!!

Anyway, my whole point to this story is that we had just spent 10 days in another country, being the token foreigners in most of the restaurants we ate at, and not once were we EVER made to feel like we didn’t belong  there. In fact, no one ever even gave us a second glance. Yet, here we are back in Trump’s America, getting low-key harassed by some entitled cunt who feels like she belongs in a restaurant more than we do.

Now I’m irate all over again. So many people experience that condescending and denigrating attitude EVERY DAY OF THEIR LIVES in this damn country. So many people. I’m not saying that I felt like a victim by any means here because fuck that white trash bitch, but it was just like a big fat WELCOME HOME slap to the face, you know? The way some people treat each other here is sickening.

AND THAT’S THE END OF THIS DUMB POST.

  One Response to “A Week of Spring, Summer, Winter: Welcome to Pittsburgh”

  1. “Yet, here we are back in Trump’s America, getting low-key harassed by some entitled cunt who feels like she belongs in a restaurant more than we do…..The way some people treat each other here is sickening.”

    YES. Entitled, uncultured, rude, selfish, and ignorant. Fucking everyone. Ugh, what a shitty welcome home.

Say it don't spray it.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.