Another Wild Summer Weekend

J/k. It was pretty basic.

Henry made me put our card shops on vacation mode so that he could actually focus on getting shit done over the weekend without having to stop and make serial killer notecards or whatever the fuck, so that was helpful but the kitchen still isn’t done, so not all THAT HELPFUL, I guess.

We took a break Saturday afternoon to go to Bae Bae’s Cafe downtown and pick up the bingsu we ordered. This was notable for TWO REASONS and here they are:

• bingsu is one of my favorite Korean treats and we have not had this since we were in Korea over a year ago. In America, you might see this being touted as “shaved ice” but it is ANYTHING BUT THAT. If it’s made right, the “ice” is actually made from milk and shaved so finely that it’s soft like snow. And then it’s crowned with tteok (Korean rice cake), ice cream, condensed milk, fruit, chocolate, Oreos, etc etc etc – so many different kinds of bingsu! My favorite is the traditional patbingsu (pat = sweet red beans) and injeolmi, which is like a sweet soy powder, I think? I could google and give you TRUFAX like a real life blogger but we all know I’m a fucking hack. Anyway, I’ve never had the real thing in Pittsburgh (Toronto has lots of options but they also have a legit Korea Town, so) and I was geeked, if you want to get all 1990s lame lingo with it.
• This was the first time I’ve been downtown since The Pandemic, and it was bizarre to say the least. It was just weird to see how the restaurants have been taking over the roads in order to move tables outside in compliance with social distancing. I don’t know, outside seating or not, I’m still not trying to dine at a restaurant. I mean, we’re not big eater-outers anyway, but we have been trying to do takeout more often just to help out some of our faves. Anyway, so while that was strange, it was also kind of scary to see JUST HOW MANY PEOPLE WERE OUT AND ABOUT. Chooch and I sat in the car while Henry ran in to Bae Bae’s to get our bingsu, and we saw so many people sidewalk-strolling like it was just another Saturday. It made me so uncomfortable. But not as uncomfortable as when a group of churchies came around the corner praying, and then proceeded to stop RIGHT NEXT TO OUR CAR with their asses in our faces while they projected their religious spells onto Planned Parenthood. There was a priest who stepped off the sidewalk and got so close to our car that his gown-covered ass was pressed up against my car door! Chooch and I had to put our windows up; me, because I didn’t want to catch Covid since only half of them were wearing masks, and Chooch because he was afraid one of them was going to pluck him out of the car and brainwash him (wouldn’t take much) into joining their cult. Henry was so happy that this happened to us.

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Anyway! The bingsu! We took it to one of the nearby cemeteries so we could eat in peace (look, I don’t care if you think covid “isn’t that bad” – I’m super terrified of it and just want the world to get back to “normal” so I try to stay at home as much as possible and when I go out, I always wear a mask and even recently had a dream/nightmare where people were throwing me a birthday party (lol, who would though?!) and I was panicked because of social distancing and they were like “don’t fret my pet, we got a table outside” and it was true, we had this big ass table outside what I guess was a restaurant but seemed more like a video arcade but then suddenly we were inside my Pappap’s house (lol of course) and I was like THERE ARE TOO MANY PEOPLE and someone named Tall Mary was there and I had only met her once, apparently, but she was friends with someone I sort of knew and acted like it was fine to come to the birthday party of a near stranger during a pandemic and she was wearing this weird Laura Ashley-esque dress and she was so serious-looking, I hated it and all I wanted to do was make a dramatic exit of my own party, which would have been very reality-based, and if you know me perhaps you got to witness one of those dramatic exits at some point).

What was I talking about? Oh shit. Bingsu. Yeah, I’ll give it to Bae Bae’s – this tasted almost as I remember it to taste in Korea. I think if I hadn’t had real bingsu before, I would have been doing front flips over tombstones but because I’m a bingsu snob, I will give it a 7 out of 10. I wish that mine had actual tteok in it and not mochi. But I’m glad that they had a matcha option and not just a basic fruit one because gotta coddle those white people palates! Their menu has a red bean option but it says it’s been sold out since they started offering bingsu so I’m not sure what’s up with that because I can’t imagine that red bean would be a highly sought after flavor from a Pittsburgh crowd!

Chooch got strawberry. His was fantastic as well. Henry opted instead to get an assortment of cookies, assuming that we were going to share our bingsu with him, but you know what they say about someone who assumes: YOU’RE AN ASS WHO GETS NO BINGSU, ORDER YOUR OWN NEXT TIME.

In Korea, you can get super cute bingsu like this one from the Thanks Nature sheep cafe:

Writing from a Bus: A Sunday in Korea

Meanwhile, I was reading Sodom Road Exit all week and it was a true fucking delight but I had to take a picture of this one page and send it to Chooch because I had just referenced David Copperfield on Thursday and who even thinks about David Copperfield anymore? Anyway, this was the same book that also referenced Three Men and a Baby so basically I think that this book fell into my lap at just the right time and by fell into my lap I mean that it was handed to me in a paper bag over top of a social distancing table by the security guard at the library.

I think I’m really into Canadian authors! I’ve had great success with them this year.

On Sunday, I did a thing: I WENT TO LOWE’S BY MYSELF FOR THE FIRST TIME. Wait, let me back up. Henry and I were supposed to go to the flea market but I was tired and cranky and basically just in the mood to start a fight. So I did. Then I was like I WILL GO TO THE FLEA MARKET BY MYSELF GIVE ME MONEY and Henry did that thing that he does where he acts like I’m so predictable and he knows I’m not really going to go but GUESS WHAT I DID only I had already made up my mind that the flea market likely wasn’t going to happen and I was correct – it was jam-fucking-packed and it looked like a covid convention, so I said fuck that and went to Lowe’s instead because I wanted to get paint for the front door and SO THAT IT IS WHAT I DID and I even had to stand outside in a small line because it wasn’t open yet, and normally what would happen is that I would throw my hands up in the air and yell ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME because my life is so important and who does Lowe’s think he is by making me wait and I probably stormed off back to my car in a huff and peeled out of the parking lot with my radio blaring.

But no, not on this day, because I really wanted to paint my front door.

Anyway, I was so excited and also very scared, standing inside Lowe’s all by myself, but at least I’ve been there enough times with other people to know how to ask for paint and I was overly nice to the paint mixer who very clearly was not a morning person and just kept saying, “mmm” every time I would try to say something like cute.

And then Better Than Ezra came on the soundsystem and I gotta tell you, it felt like a coming of age moment for me, you know? Like I’m a real ass adult now.

Then I came home and MADE MY OWN BREAKFAST because Henry didn’t make it right on Saturday (oh don’t worry, there was much pouting about that but I didn’t feel like including it in this wrap-up) and later I decided he was allowed to be seen with me so we went to Michael’s to get craft support bullshit and I wrote “Michael’s sucks. Pat Catan’s 4lyfe” because in case you don’t know, Pat Catan’s was our crafting bitch and then stupid corporate Michael’s swooped in and usurped them and now it sucks. Henry was 너무 너무 너무disappointed in me. But when isnt he.

Later that afternoon, I started an audio book while painting the door!

This book is not great!

But the door is!

I had to take the picture from the side because the light coming in from the windows effs with the exposure and I’m not a real enough photographer to care about fixing that, haha.

I painted the inside rim (?) of the windows gold and then really laid the gold glitter on thick, lol. It’s not finished yet – I have some hand painting to do and toys to buy!

Look man, there’s nothing else to do right now. Let me have my fucking pink circus door.

Meanwhile, Henry was still chained up in the kitchen. I will say, he’s made progress. You have no idea how badly the cabinet-area needed cleaned out and painted! But…the cabinets and drawers still aren’t back in place so we’ve just got a bunch of gaping holes.

He apparently took it upon himself to reorganize the silverware drawer and we nearly broke up because he had the audacity to ask me a really fucking stupid question.

“What’s the order you like? It’s forks, knives, spoons right?”

NO! KNIVES FORKS SPOONS! WE KEEP THE KNIVES AWAY FROM THE SPOONS. THE KNIVES ARE LIKE LARRY FUCKING WELCH COMING IN & STEALING HOPE FROM BO, HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL U. FORKS&SPOONS 4EVA.

SRSLY HOW DOES HE NOT KNOW.

I heard Chooch later on saying, “What, why is this the order?” And Henry was like GO ASK YR MOTHER. So Chooch came over and was like why and I was like <see explanation above> and he was like “are you fucking serious that’s your reasoning?” Like what did he expect me to say I read it in Good Housekeeping or some shit LOLOL.

Oh I forgot to mention that Henry and Chooch were supposed to be some dumb color food challenge where they could only food of one color for the entire day. Henry picked red and Chooch picked purple. Neither of them did very well. After dinner chooch walked past me eating a banana.

Before I could say “that’s not purple,” he cried, “I don’t care anymore! I’m hungry, ok?!” So then Henry was like OH THANK GOD and ate a handful of Capn Crunch. It’s um, always a party over here.

I don’t think anything else very noteworthy happened so I will leave you with this picture I took when Chooch and I went out for our nightly walk – you can see TRUDY looming through the window and I love it. TRUDY never gets old!