May 282019
 

(Otherwise known as #MDW, which I kept seeing all over twitter and had no idea what it meant until Sunday night when I really decided to use my full brain to figure it out.)

FRIDAY

Memorial Day Weekend was off & running here on Pioneer Ave. early on Friday evening. Our drunk neighbor Larry who has to blow into a breathalyzer to get his car (a repurposed Yellow Cab van that retained its primary yellow hue) to start was totally blitzed. Henry came running downstairs to gleefully report that Larry was drunk and yelling at traffic again. Yes, this is a thing that Larry does.

Chooch went outside to spectate, just as another man began to walk his bicycle past our house. Chooch popped his head inside the house to tell me that this was the man who promised Chooch a football several years ago THEN NEVER BROUGHT HIM ONE. Anyway, as Chooch was telling me this, there was a sudden commotion outside.

Larry started screaming at Bicycle Man not to ever stop by his house again, motherfucker, and Bicycle Man was like, “YOU DON’T WANNA FUCK WITH ME, MOTHERFUCKER” which seemed out of character for this man with the docile, avuncular face and demeanor. But, I guess Larry can bring out the beast in even the most domesticated man on a bicycle.

Larry just kept running his drunk mouth about this man coming to his house and then Chooch and I remembered that a while back, that man did in fact stop at Larry’s house because Larry had a broke go-cart in his yard that he was going to throw out, I guess. Bicycle Man inquired about this and Larry told him he could have it.

WELL NOW IT SEEMS THAT LARRY WAS RENEGING, LIKE, A YEAR LATER!

Did Larry not remember that he GAVE IT AWAY?! I guess Larry was probably drunk then too, just like the time he probably accidentally set his Pokemon cards on fire then accused Chooch of stealing them (this is how they came to be nemeses).

So these two were really going at it, verbally, but then Larry went in his house AND CAME OUT WITH A BASEBALL BAT! Thankfully, the Old Italian Brothers who live on the other side of Larry’s duplex had just come home from doing Italian things and they were like, “WHOA WHOA WHOA!” and one of them assumed the position of Larry-Blocker while the other one shooed the Bicycle Man up the street.

Meanwhile, Haley had come outside to see what the hell was going on.

“I just put my kids to bed and if they wake up, I’m going to be PISSED,” she said, ready to call the police.

Thank god the Italian Guys came home because I don’t think Henry would have been much help.

SATURDAY

Larry slung a giant flag out of his window, signaling to all of Brookline that he was ready to get this MDW started for realskies.

Henry and I went for a walk later that day and saw him stopping in a nearby bar for a six pack, but Saturday night was surprisingly quiet. His wife must have been home, I guess.

I spent most of my Saturday exercising and watching Korean dramas. I started “My First First Love” on Netflix even though I hate the way Netflix subtitles things because they use white font with nothing behind it so it’s hard to read! I also started watching “Angel’s Last Mission: Love” which has the girl I love from “Thirty But Seventeen” and also L from the Kpop group Infinite.

You know, in case you cared.

(You don’t. It’s OK. I talk about K-dramas with my Korean imaginary friend. Her name is Minji and she corrects me when I screw up my Korean words.)

SUNDAY

Chooch had piano lessons in the morning, and Henry and I went for a walk around Garfield to kill time — we would normally go to the Asian markets but since we were leaving straight from there to go to Erie for the day, we didn’t want to buy groceries. So we went for a walk in order for me to hunt for Help Wanted signs for my Job Spotter app (it’s been a year and I’m still using it!) and then we stopped at Artisan for coffee. It was the first time I’ve been there since I got my Bad Apple tattoo in…2014? Has it been that long? Maybe even 2013!?

I’ve never actually been to the cafe portion of Artisan before though and I was pleasantly surprised. I don’t know, I guess I thought it was going to be one of those TOO COOL FOR SCHOOL types since it’s affiliated with a tattoo shop but the crowd was super mixed and the barista was the sweetest little thing! She kept smiling at us like we were celebrities and she was nervous around us or something, maybe Henry’s face-bush made her uncomfortable and smiling is her coping mechanism, I don’t know. But I do know that my soy latte tasted like it was hand-crafted with care and precision.

And that’s all that matters.

Then it started raining really hard and I was like, “I AM NOT WALKING BACK TO THE CAR IN THE RAIN, YOU CAN BRING THE CAR TO ME” and Henry was like, “Yes ma’am” while I stood in the stoop of a closed yoga studio, sipping my hot latte and then all of a sudden, this is really weird, I started to think about how much I appreciate that Henry is the type of person who will literally weather storms so that I don’t have to, and then I started to crack up because I was scaring myself for thinking such nice thoughts.

THEN WE WENT TO WALDAMEER. That will get its own post though. I have too many pictures.

MONDAY

That fucking parade. I can’t believe it still lures us out of the house every year. IT’S SO LAME!

The only good part is seeing all of the people in the parade who know Chooch and call him out, lol.

Dum-Dums must have been on sale at the local CVS because that’s pretty much what all the parade people were tossing at the kids.

After the parade, I couldn’t put my finger on what it was that seemed to have been missing from the parade, but then it clicked – the local dance studio wasn’t in the parade this year! There were no clumsy girls in leotards to laugh at! UGH.

The Teen Center was in the parade and we were like WHY NOT YOU to Chooch but he just shrugged and said, “If I’m in the parade, I can’t get candy.”

Wow.

Later that afternoon, we went to Millie’s new soft serve joint in Bakery Square, called Summer of Softserve. Henry muttered the whole way there about how it was going to suck because unlike me, the girl who gives a million chances, Henry has been donezo with Millie’s after the first subpar scoop he was served.

Janna met us there and I felt kind of bad for making her go all that way for what was just basic softserve at best. Um, the ambiance was fun though and the girl at the register liked my (aforementioned) apple tattoo and was highly complimentary of Chooch’s wardrobe choice, so I gotta give them points for that.

The only “fun” choice outside of the basic vanilla and chocolate was the dairy-free blueberry. Everything in my gut was telling me to go for the classic twist, but my tongue was being ridden by the devil and out came, “I’ll have the dairy-free blueberry please.” It was a-ight, and actually it kind of grew on me pretty quickly (the texture was off-putting at first) but the real MVP was the sunflower seed streusel I chose as the topping.

That shit was the BOMB – even though most of it ended up on the ground.

I’ll probably go back at some point this summer, maybe just for a cup of that streusel, and probably definitely without Henry who spent literally the rest of the day complaining about how Millie’s basically killed his first born. I suggested that he just open his own softserve place and I think he’s seriously contemplating this.

“You need a gimmick though, something that will keep people coming in the winter,” I said, before shouting, “OOH, TTEOKBOKKI!” I mean, softserve and Korean street food – no hipster d-bag in Pittsburgh has done THAT yet.

And that concludes my MDW recap.

Say it don't spray it.

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