Dec 142018
 

I was going to do a Friday Five bullshit, I mean, bullet point post today but THEN MY FRIDAY STARTED OUT SO WACK and I can’t concentrate on anything BUT THE TRAGEDY THAT OCCURRED IN MY MOUTH.

Everything was fine. The morning routine was as boring and basic as ever. Chooch left for school and I sat down to eat the same bowl of cereal I eat every morning (Cinnamon Life with almond milk, boy) and I put on some kpop music show performances because this is how I spend the tiny bit of free time I have before leaving for work.

I had just finished my cereal and was about to tweet something about how Kai from EXO had graduated from crop tops to shirtless blazers…

Image result for kai love shot

(Yeah boy.)

…and I wasn’t mad about it, when my tongue happened to casually graze A HOLE IN MY BACK MOLAR.

My first instinct was to stop breathing. Then my mind began to reel and I began to try to wake myself up because I am always having nightmares about this so CLEARLY I WAS STILL ASLEEP.

First I thought my crown came off, which I am always terrified of, but then I realized that it’s actually the molar next to it, the very last tooth and the one that I was supposed to get a root canal done on earlier this year but put it off so NOW LOOK AT WHAT HAPPENED TO ME. I DESERVED  THIS.

I ran upstairs to the bathroom and did all kinds of contorting to try and see what was going on in there.

“And that’s how they found her, kids: standing on her head with a hand mirror jammed in her mouth.”

And you know what’s totally Alanis Morrissette about this? I actually had a dentist appointment scheduled for this Monday WHICH I CANCELED YESTERDAY because it’s the same day as one of our holiday work lunches so I had to call back and leave a desperate message, begging for my old appointment back, OMG WHY.

Then!! My stupid trolley was TWENTY MINUTES LATE and when it finally arrived, it was the elusive “Holiday Express” which I have been dying to ride, so it was perfectly fitting that I would get my inaugural experience on it standing shoulder-to-shoulder with surly strangers (that T was packed to the gills because of the delay) while trying not to pass out every time my tongue gravitated over to my molar canyon. You know what it feels like?! A fucking popcorn shell thing.

(I wish that’s what it actually was, because I DID eat popcorn last night but I am a dedicated flosser, so…)

Then I made the mistake of telling Lauren and Margie about it, who in turn made me feel utterly hopeless. “You’ll probably just have to get it removed,” Lauren said.

“Yeah, but then you’ll have to watch that your teeth don’t start to shift because of the empty space,” Margie added.

“They might have to pull a tooth on the other side to even it out,” Lauren volleyed, and I had to walk away from this tragic theoretical tennis match because I already know who wins: THE DENTIST.

“You guys are going to have me in dentures by the end of the day,” I cried.

The only highlight of the day so far is that I lost another pound and I guess I’ll continue losing more pounds considering THAT I WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO EAT AGAIN.

(I’m actually eating pineapple right now. It’s…OK. But I am hyper-aware.)

UPDATE!

Carrie and Marlene and have given me hope. First, Carrie pointed out that pretty much anything is fixable and it will be OK as long as I get it taken care of ASAP (trying to!!). And then Marlene was like, “Did you have fillings in that tooth?”

YOU GUYS, I DID INDEED HAVE FILLINGS IN THAT TOOTH. So maybe my tooth didn’t actually break, but the fillings fell out!? That’s a better scenario right!?

Also, Marlene told me that teeth don’t generally shift back, but if they are going to shift, they crowd* toward the front. That also made me feeling better, in case I have to get the tooth pulled. I’m so glad I work with so many recreational dentists!

*(You know where it feels like I do have crowding? In my brain.)

Now I’m just sitting here, willing my dentist to call me back.

Wow, I was like, “Why is my face wet” just now and realized that I had drool pathetically sluicing down my chin on account of the fact that I’m subconsciously trying not to swallow because of Tooth.

***********

I just came back from my lunch break walk which involved no food because I decided I may never eat again, and Henry did not make me feel any better at all because he’s acting like this isn’t life or death.

“I hate that your life is actually better than mine right now,” I wailed.

“WOW,” he said, and then he had to get off the phone because he was going to the store so I told him to just buy me broth, I guess. Straw-food forever.

I can’t tell if my face is actually swelling up or if I’m imagining it…

#cliffhanger

UPDATE:

I’m home from work now. My fake husband is also a fake dentist and is trying to put some temporary tooth filling* in my mouth to help tide me over until my dentist can see me. I am being v.dramatic about this so be lucky you’re not here.

*(and no, not an euphemism for a weener.)

Henry DDS said it really does look like I just lost a filling and that if I had actually broken my tooth I’d have been crying since 8:00am when I first found out. LIKE HE KNOWS ME OR SOMETHING.

Oct 182018
 

Henry said he knew he should have trusted his gut, but after dealing with me wheedling away at his willpower for three weeks, he finally cried uncle and told me to go ahead and buy three tickets to K-Expo, a Kpop/K-beauty/K-everything event that just happened to be occurring in NYC the day after we were seeing BTS in Newark. I mean, it couldn’t have worked out any better! Plus, Henry even found a discount so we were able to save some cash on the tickets.

My promise to him was that if he agreed to go, I would get the cheapest tickets, because they were being sold in tiers, with P1 being the best and included all sorts of artist engagements which sounds great but at the end of the day, I just wanted to see the performances.

There were four smaller-scale groups/performers on the bill: The Rose, A.C.E., Kim Myungsoo aka L from the group Infinite, and the reason why I wanted to go so badly: Astro!

I’ve really started to stan Astro pretty hard recently and thought it would be cool to see them while they’re still a smaller group. Henry got on board because he doesn’t mind the music but there was the promise of Korean food vendors so he was OK with throwing down for tickets, and then Chooch saw that there would be games and that was enough to win him over.

Henry had it all arranged. We’d check out of our hotel in Newark early Sunday morning, park at the hotel he booked for us in Jersey City, and take the train right over to Pier 36 in New York. All we knew was that it’s on the East River, right across from Brooklyn. The event wasn’t supposed to start until 11am so we figured we could roam around and sight see until then, check out the Brooklyn Bridge, try not to get taken. You know, regular tourist shit.

Let me tell you something: for about a month leading up to the BTS concert, I felt sick to my stomach. Nerves, you know? I always get that way when I’m going to see someone I like a lot and this was a pretty large-scale concert, so I was all worked up over it. But every time I thought about attending K-Expo the next day, I calmed down. I was really looking forward to this one without getting worked up. I just had this feeling that it was going to be a really chill event, so I felt relaxed every time I thought about it.

WOW, I HAVEN’T BEEN SO WRONG ABOUT SOMETHING IN A LONG ASS TIME.

I woke up really early that Sunday and it was a good fucking thing too, because I had mindlessly opened Instagram, as one is wont to do, and the first post I saw, right there at the top, was from the organizers of K-Expo: All That Korea. It said that there was a last-minute venue change and now the event would be held at Melrose Ballroom in Queens.

“Queens?!” Henry cried. “Now I have to figure out how to get to QUEENS?!” He was frantic and I was, at this point, rushing around the hotel room with wet hair, tossing things into my luggage so we could check out and get a head start.

Oh, did I mention that at the last minute, I splurged and bought Chooch and myself tickets to the Red Carpet event? So, KCON does this too and I always wanted to go but it’s only included in the higher tiered tickets, and it’s just basically where you get to watch the groups literally walk in on the red carpet and get interviewed. I was excited that K-Expo was doing this too, and it was only $20 so I figured K-YOLO or whatever.

Well, according to the JUST RELEASED event times, check-in for P1 and the Red Carpet was at 9am.

9AM YOU GUYS.

It was like 7:30 by this point and Henry was fucking flying down the highway from Newark to Jersey City. Luckily, the staff at the Holland Hotel were awesome and gave us really great directions to the train station.

“Where the hell are we going again?”

Pretty proud that we taught Chooch at an early age not to fear public transportation in other cities. He was a pro at the Seoul subway system by the time we left Korea! I wish I had gotten an early start with it instead of relying on cars all the time.

Also, while waiting for the train, I kept staring at that 333 Grand sign and realized that I now see Hangeul in everything.

Apparently, there was work being down on one of the stations, and as a courtesy, all passengers got a ticket for 2 free subway rides after we exited in New York!

I wanted to do the touristy “gasp and swirl” when we emerged from the bowels of the train station into Oculus (where the NJ transit and NYC transit systems meet) for the first time, but we had a fucking subway to Queens to catch. Basically, we just followed Henry.

My first impression of the NYC subway was “IT’S JUST LIKE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN!” I loved it. And there was some elder-goth sitting across from us and we kept making eye contact. She was on the phone and I was certain she was talking about us, too, because we were so clearly non-New Yorkers, so I was thrilled when Henry was like, “THIS IS OUR STOP, GO.”

When we were emerged from the subway (we had to walk down this long, empty and 100% creepy corridor and even though I was chanting, “WE’RE GONNA DIE WE’RE GONNA DIE” I secretly loved it), I was like, “WOW SO THIS IS QUEENS. SO THIS IS WHERE DAVID BERKOWITZ HEARD THE DOG AND DID THE KILLING.”

Because most of what I know relates to horror, murder, Kpop, and Days of Our Lives.

I looked at the time and it was only a little bit after 9am, plus Henry said the walk to the venue wasn’t very far so I started to calm down finally and enjoyed the time we had to make fun of Henry before we got to the place and suddenly realized that we needed him to buy us stuff. That’s how it works with us, it’s a cycle. We always bite the hand that feeds us until we need him to buy us a toy or a concert ticket and then our tunes changes RIGHT QUICK Y’ALL.

I knew we were headed in the right direction because we were behind two girls with Kpop accoutrements on their clothing and purses. Yeah, I see those dangling kpop idol Chibis. And then we heard a burst of maniacal girl-screams from over yonder, so I knew the venue was near.

And here is where everything took a turn.

I asked some K-Expo staff members at the front of the venue where to go to register for Red Carpet and she very distractedly said, “Go to the end of that line.” I looked over and saw a handful of people standing at the other of the venue, so we began to walk over there, thinking that was it, but then quickly saw that the line turned and went all the way down the block and then turned again onto another street. We just kept walking and walking, with no end of the line in sight.

Finally, halfway down the next block, we reached our destination.

“Holy shit,” I mouthed to Henry, who frowned his response back to me.

It was one long-ass motherfucking line at 9:00am.

And the best part was that no one knew what was going on! NO ONE! And then the  goth lady from the subway rolled up! SHE WAS FIVE PEOPLE BEHIND US IN LINE! We died!

As much as I know you would love a play-by-play of our time in line, I will break it down for you quickly:

  • We stood in line for over 2 hours. Oh yes, over 2 hours, when the Red Carpet was supposed to happen at 11:00 and NO ONE WAS INSIDE YET.
  • Some guy kept coming out of his house and he was PISSED that there were people lining up on his block. So pissed that at one point, he pulled out his phone and recorded all of us and then apparently called the police, who had already been called numerous times and this I know because—
  • —some All That Korea guy who looked like the villain in a K-drama with his slicked back hair, pastel suit, and bare ankles sauntered down the sidewalk and started yelling at us to stop blocking the sidewalk (THAT HIS PEOPLE TOLD US TO STAND ON, THANK YOU) and that if the cops were called again, he was going to have to SHUT IT ALL DOWN.
  • Some girls behind us were having a passive aggressive pissing match over who has had the most kpop experiences and one of them raised her voice and said, “BTS ISN’T EVEN IN MY TOP 1O SORRY BTS FANS.”
    • But then later, she was listening to Taemin’s “Move” so I turned around and said, “OK I HAVE TO GIVE YOU THIS” and handed her a sample of one of my Taemin Valentines that has my card shop info on the back and then we started talking about our biases and she was pretty cool but if you ask Chooch, he will tell you that it was awkward to watch.
  • Henry had to leave our line and go stand with strangers in a different non-P1, non-Red Carpet line and he was not happy about that but it was honestly a highlight for me.
  • Some total d-bag New Yawker meathead from the Melrose Ballroom repeatedly trolled the sidewalk, screaming at all us to move over and I was like, “Buddy where the fuck do you want us to go?” Also, HOW MUCH OF A NUISANCE COULD WE HAVE TRULY BEEN?! A bunch of fucking KPOP FANS.

Finally, sometime around NOON, the line began moving and staff members came around to scan our tickets and give us our wristbands. We passed this great sign on a creepy store and then also passed creepy Henry who was standing in a line full of young Asians. He wasn’t hard to spot with his dumb beard and Everfresh hat. Chooch and I cracked up.

After Chooch had his (SPECIAL EDITION! – he’ll never let us forget) Snapple confiscated by the same meathead bouncer who was screaming at us earlier, we made it inside the ballroom and my initial reaction was, ‘…..oh.”

It was just a nightclub, and not a very big one at that. Pier 36 had a capacity of 5000 and this one was 1,040ish (I only know this because we were standing across from a plaque near the entrance at one that had the capacity on it. I figured they much have moved venues because they didn’t sell enough tickets but there sure as fuck seemed to be more than 1000 people standing in that line out there.

Also, I saw a screenshot later on of Pier 36 responded to someone bashing them on Instagram and according to THEM, All that Korea never paid them, which is allegedly the real reason there was a venue change.

INTERESTING.

The Red Carpet started before they even got all of the P1/Red Carpet ticket holders inside, so they were REALLY off to a great start. It started pretty soon after Chooch and I got inside, when Jeff Benjamin, a writer for Billboard and self-proclaimed kpop expert came out and totally bored us with a bunch of small talk about himself. Wow, he was fucking douchey.

But then one-by-one, the artists were called out, and everyone’s phones shot up into the air.

First, we had The Rose. Admittedly, all I know about them is that they’re an actual band and that Joan went to see them with Ashley on one of the Joan Day vlogs. (If you would have told me three years ago that I would become someone who watches vlogs on YouTube, I’d have punched you in the throat; yet, here we are.)

The Rose!

Next came A.C.E. – I think they are so great! There were A LOT of people there just for them, too. Like, a lot a lot.

AND THEN ASTRO! I was so stoked for them! I might have cried a little bit, especially when Cha Eunwoo spoke English!

He’s the fourth guy from the left.

Kim Myung-soo was next and honestly, he seemed mildly irritated to be there, and I would later learn that all the artists were definitely feeling the bad vibes that All that Korea was emitting.

Here’s my snippet-collection!

After the Red Carpet, which literally only lasted for about 20 minutes, we found Henry standing against a wall behind us. Apparently, they let all the riffraff in before the Red Carpet was over so Henry got to see the end. We decided to check out the upstairs, which is supposedly where all  the vendors were, i.e. the “expo” portion of the event.

WOW. It was fucking hazardous up there to say the least. It was U-shaped up there, because it was essentially the balcony-area for the venue below, so people were pushing and shoving, trying to get through and I thought I was going to have a panic attack. It was awful, and also there were NOT 20-30 vendors as promised. We saw maybe 5 on the one side we were able to make it to, and then as we attempted to make our way back to the other side, we passed by the bar and I overheard one bartender ask the other if there was going to be food, and the other bartender laughed and said, “No.”

Wait, what? It wasn’t even 1PM yet! This thing wasn’t going to be over until after 9, and they weren’t going to have ANY food available?! We went back downstairs to see if there was reentry, and by this time, even more people had been stuffed inside there. Staff members were screaming at people to not crowd the stairwells and those people were all confused because there was literally nowhere else to stand.

And then one of those asshole bouncers told us no reentry, in a rude way that was expected by this point, so we went back inside and stood, pressed against a wall, by the entrance and watched as even more people were being let in. This was, ironically, when I first noticed the capacity plaque on the wall.

I was actually having a hard time breathing at this point because my mind was reeling with all the different ways we could perish inside this building. First of all, it was very clearly a safety hazard and I cannot for the life of me believe that the Melrose Ballroom was allowing more and more people to flood the room. Second, there was NO FOOD—how does that even make sense!? It’s one thing if this was JUST a concert that started at 6, then we wouldn’t expect there to be food. But this was billed as an “Expo” with “food vendors” and now there were no food vendors and absolutely no announcement from All that Korea telling us so.

I just kept imaging someone screaming and starting a stampede, and I know I’m a super selfish person but there was no way I was going to endanger my kid’s life by making him stay there in a building stuffed past capacity, with nothing to eat all day long, and no where to even stand or sit comfortably without fearing for your life. So I made the executive decision to leave and that is what we did, without looking back.

It sucked because that wasn’t a cheap thing for us and it was something that I was looking forward to, but come on, let’s be real. It was a clusterfuck and the fire marshal should have been called.

Later that day, I checked Twitter and Instagram and knew we made the right choice: people were PISSED. There was no clear separation of the different ticket tiers, so some people who paid $300 were relegated to the back of the room while some of the basic bitches who only had P4 (what we had) were all the way at the front. The artist engagements sounded like complete disasters, causing the artists to continuously apologize because they felt so bad things weren’t going smoothly, the P1 people were promised signed posters and they got ones that just had the signatures copied, one of those meathead security guys ended up getting fired because a video of him being racist toward the groups went viral, people were passing out, some people even went to the hospital.

Oh, and they decided hours after we left to honor reentry once they realized that, hmmm, maybe the whole “no food” thing might be an issue, but people were saying that they weren’t even able to move in order to get out of the venue, that’s how packed it was.

A bunch of people are trying to get refunds, even though it clearly states “no refunds” on the website, because when you really look at it, it’s a classic case of false advertising and they are being so shady about it. I got a canned response to my complaint about how they could have just canceled it but they did what they could to make sure fans still got to see the artists they love, etc etc, and therefore are not going to honor requests for a refund and I was rolling my eyes all the way to the Better Business Bureau website.

I don’t know what will happen. At the end of the day, I’m happy that I got to see the artists during the Red Carpet event and that we salvaged the day by having fun in NYC instead of risking our lives (not even being dramatic here) inside a shitty venue that when you google it, “Melrose Ballroom shooting” is one of the first things that comes up. But lesson learned – I will never attend another event “organized” by these chucklefucks.

Oct 152018
 

Dear Blog,

My annual October Week Vacation is here and I spent the weekend preceding it binge-watching The Haunting of Hill House which was fine all weekend but then I forgot that I would be home alone once the work week started. And it started off real spooky.

LET ME SET THE SCENE.

It’s 7:00AM and my alarm goes off. I have to still wake up early even though I’m on vacation because god forbid my seventh grader can get a grip long enough to wake himself or dress himself. I mean, at least he can shower himself, but what happens after that is a landslide of bad decisions and color-blindness that have him stepping into tattered clothes and mixed patterns. The other day I was working from home and stupidly let him do his own thing, and that’s how, hours later, I got the shocking reveal of his Friday outfit when he came home that evening: a really nice polo shirt paired with…..sweat pants with a hole so big between the legs that calling them crotchless wouldn’t be a stretch.

So, Mommy is still clearly needed.

I had to definitely be up and ready with him this morning because he has some presentation today at school that requires him to dress nicely, which is something he thinks he knows how to do, just like washing the dishes, which caused us to have a huge row last Saturday night when I realized he was putting food-caked plates into the strainer, grandma Judy-style.

I get out of bed to wake him up and notice that his phone alarm is also sounding, but a lot of good that did considering it was on a chair outside of his bedroom and the ringer was turned down low. I shut it off and set it down on a table in his bedroom and woke him up. We bickered for a bit, like we do, and then he reluctantly slammed himself into the bathroom to take a shower. I picked out a dumb shirt for him since he already had his pants ready (sans holes!) and stupidly thought I could lay back down.

STUPID THOUGHTS! Chooch, now out of the shower, pointed out that the smoke alarm was making a weird noise. Now, the other day it was beeping so we knew it needed new batteries, but then I didn’t hear any more beeps over the weekend so I assumed that Henry did his Man About the House duty by changing them, and I thought nothing of it. But now, it was making a weird metallic sizzle, like a growl, and I started screaming IS THERE A FIRE OMG WHERE IS IT?! and Chooch was like, “THAT’S NOT WHAT IT WOULD SOUND LIKE IF THERE WAS A FIRE, JESUS CHRIST.” So I had to climb onto the chair that Chooch’s phone was originally on, pull the alarm off the ceiling and hit it with the heel of my palm.

That seemed to work.

I put it back on the ceiling and proceeded to go back into my room so that I could maybe eke out another 15 minutes of rest.

But then it was all, “WHAT DID YOU DO WITH MY PHONE!?”

I yelled back that I put it on his blue table and he volleyed the sass-ball right back into my court with, “NO YOU DIDN’T. WHERE DID YOU PUT IT.”

Guys. If there is one thing I hate, not just in Mom Life, but in ALL LIFE, it’s being accused of something I didn’t do. EVEN IF IT’S JUST BEING ACCUSED OF BEING WRONG. And this is what lights the fuse on nearly all of my Fight Bombs with Chooch. In fact, if you have ever spent any time with us, you probably have witnessed at least one of our notorious WHO WILL GET THE LAST WORD tournaments. It’s like March Madness but we’re the only two teams and it just gets more and more heated.

So now we’re doing this over his stupid phone, which I KNOW I left on that dumb table in his room. My boiling blood catapulted me out of bed and I stomped into his room with that particular kind of rolling rage that only a mom can know, and I slammed my hand down on the corner of the table and shrieked, “I PUT IT HERE. YOU OBVIOUSLY TOOK IT.”

“Maybe it fell on the floor!” he screamed back, hysterics cracking his dumb prepubescent voice.

“WELL DID YOU LOOK?!?!!?”

“NO!!”

So now he’s doing a half-assed sweep of the floor next to his table while I’m screaming about how I rue the day I ever gave him a phone and I just want to fucking go and lay down BUT NO GOD FORBID WHY SHOULD I EVER GET THAT LUXURY, I SHOULD HAVE JUST WENT TO WORK.

Meanwhile, Chooch needed a belt for the pants he was wearing today and Henry was supposed to handle that AND HE DIDN’T OF COURSE BECAUSE WHY WOULD HE. Also, Henry left his stupid phone here so we couldn’t tag-team him with emasculating phone-scoldings like we normally would when he fucks up our mornings. I WAS SO ANGRY THIS MORNING!

Chooch stormed off downstairs to presumably look for his phone even though I hadn’t gone downstairs yet this morning and he was SO ADAMANT that it was me who lost his phone. By this point, I figured I was up for the day so I put my contacts in and changed into my exercise clothes. Now Chooch was back upstairs.

“CAN YOU CALL MY PHONE AT LEAST,” he asked, looking like he was on the fringe of conflagration because you know how no one can be without their phone for more than 5 minutes.

So I did, all the while barking things like OH FOR FUCKS SAKE and YOU RUINED MY MORNING and WHY DO I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING because these are things that real mature moms say. I dialed his phone and we sat there waiting. No ringing.

“YOU PROBABLY HAVE THE RINGER TOO LOW!” I screamed, recalling that when his alarm was going off earlier, I could barely hear it.

“CALL IT AGAIN!!!” he yelled, and now we were standing in the hallway, while I held up my phone to show him that I had dialed it, but still — no ringing.

I hung up and we went right back to grabbing each other by the horns when suddenly my phone rang.

We stopped and looked at my phone.

It said it was him.

Chooch.

Chooch was calling me.

“ARE YOU FUCKING WITH ME!?” I cried, and he shook his head no, eyes all wide with fear.

So I answered it.

And on the other end…

a tiny, tired voice said hello back to me.

I nearly dropped the phone, but Chooch grabbed it from me and he too said hello, only to have it returned with the tired, questioning voice of a kid.

He threw the phone back at me and I disconnected the call.

I backed into the corner and started screaming, “IS THIS YOU?! ARE YOU DOING THIS!?!?” because Chooch is always finding new ways to prank call people, but he was just as scared as I was.

Just then, my phone rang again.

Chooch’s picture popped up on my screen, just as before.

My whole fucking body went ice-cold, my goosebumps were more like gooseMUMPS.

I hit “decline.”

And then I got a text.

“Why do you keep calling me?”

Chooch and I were fucking SCREAMING at this point. I WATCHED THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE AND NOW I’M BEING HAUNTED TOO. I ALWAYS KNEW THIS FUCKING HOUSE WAS HAUNTED. THERE HAVE BEEN LIKE 5 PEOPLE OVER THE YEARS WHO HAVE TOLD ME THAT THEY FELT UNEASY BEING HERE. MY OLD FRIEND KERI WAS SUPPOSED TO LIVE WITH ME WHEN I FIRST MOVED IN BUT THEN SHE HAD A WAKING NIGHTMARE ON MY COUCH THAT THERE WERE CHILDREN HANGING FROM THE BASEMENT RAFTERS AND THEN SHE HAD HER FIRST EXPERIENCE WITH SLEEP PARALYSIS AND DECIDED NOT TO MOVE IN. SOME GOTH KID WAS HERE ONCE AND EVEN GAVE ME SOME KIND OF PROTECTION STONE AFTER TELLING ME THAT HE FELT WEIRD VIBES COMING FROM MY BASEMENT.

AND I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AFRAID OF THE ATTIC WHICH IS A FINISHED THIRD FLOOR SO YOU WOULD THINK IT WOULDN’T BE SCARY BUT IT IS!

By now, I was getting ready to just go to work because I didn’t want to be home alone, and at the same time my mind is reeling, wondering if I should call my estranged friend Brian who is closely affiliated with the Catholic church to see if he knows anyone who does exorcisms.

But then I realized that the text I got piggy-packed off of an old collection of texts from Chooch. We recently got him a new phone number and when I added it to his contact info on my phone, I forgot to take his old number out, so even though I was texting him on his current number, my phone was defaulting to his old number when I called him. And then Chooch found his phone DOWNSTAIRS because he fucking TOOK IT DOWN THERE when he went to look for the belt that HENRY DIDN’T FIX.

Oh, we laughed, you guys. Our crippling fear brought us back together as Mother and Son and we lovingly said our goodbyes when he left for school.

But now that strange kid who has Chooch’s old Text Free number is probably all scared, wondering who the fuck was calling him at 7AM.

He needed to get up for school anyway. You’re welcome, strange kid.

 

Dec 052017
 

Hi guys it’s me Chooch and I’m going to tell you about how my dumb cat ruined my puzzle and I cried A LOT and then ran to my room and cried A LOT MORE.

No I didn’t cry. You’re right.

I SOBBED.

I WEPT.

Drew is the dumbest cat ever. I take back everything I said about my mom’s cat Penelope. Penelope is like a freakin’ dream compared to that dumbass cat Drew.

She’s not my best friend anymore!!!!

Also, I think Taemin is a really great dancer & performer.

***

Just kidding, it’s me, Erin. Chooch is still crying too hard to relive the trauma through writing. But that doesn’t make all of the above any less true! This puzzle is destroying our lives. First of all, Chooch is constantly nagging me to help him with it because he hasn’t learned yet that you have to let me do things on my own terms or I will freak the fuck out, so then he tells me I’m a horrible mom who doesn’t want to spend time with her son and I’m like, “IT’S BECAUSE YOUR ELBOW KEEPS BUMPING ME AND THEN YOU TRY TO GRAB THE SAME PIECE AS ME AND THEN, THE WORST PART OF IT ALL, YOU TRY TO TAKE CREDIT FOR PARTS I ALREADY DID!!!”

I was crying about this at work today and Glenn was like, “So, two 10-year-olds are trying to put together this puzzle.”

Why didn’t Henry try harder to stop this puzzle from entering our house?!

#BLAMEHENRY

And then it’s making Henry resent us because the puzzle is taking up his serial killer Christmas card work station, right smack in the middle of our busy season, so he’s been using the kid-size desk in Chooch’s room to fulfill orders.

(Speaking of Henry, he just came home with supplies from the craft store and sadly said, “See you guys later,” as he trudged upstairs to his makeshift greeting card sweat shop. I’m dying.)

What I’m trying to say is, even without the feline factor, this puzzle is TEARING MY FAMILY APART.

It all came to a head last night though. Chooch and I went for our nightly walk and he was excitedly telling me about how he’s about to make a big connection between two large chunks of the puzzle that we were working on over the weekend. He was so amped about this and I of course was just like, “Whatever, I did most of it.”

I’m competitive even with puzzles, OK.

Then we came home and it happened. Chooch went to pick up stupid Drew off the puzzle when it backfired. She went limp and then grabbed an entire corner of the puzzle, the part that Chooch, I mean, I was making so much progress on, and FLIPPED IT OVER.

Chooch processed the severity of the situation. Earth-shattering chaos ensued. And then he yelled at Drew! He’s never yelled at her before! But in between yelling, he was cooing, “I’m sorry I yelled at you. BUT YOU RUINED MY PUZZLE! I didn’t mean to yell at you. BUT YOU’RE FUCKING GROUNDED!!!”

I was on the phone with Henry while this was happening, because he was — where else — at the store*. So I relayed the situation to Henry, who was probably heel-clicking in the middle of the sad dad aisle because he wants us to give up on the puzzle so he can take back his table.

*(It’s a running joke in our house that “the store” is where Henry goes to get away from it all by mindlessly pushing around a squeaky cart while getting lost in the dulcet tones of grocery store soft rock. You do you, Papa H.)

With his hands against his head, Chooch yelled, “JUST TELL DADDY TO THROW THE WHOLE THING AWAY! I DON’T CARE ANYMORE!” He stormed off to his room in tears. I told Henry that Chooch was in his room, so Henry, who is able to control Chooch’s Echo with his phone, made Alexa play Dashboard Confessional’s “This Ruined Puzzle.”

That went over real well. Chooch came storming back downstairs which only resulted in him having to look at the puzzle again and then the fury returned. He was still sulking over it, trying to piece it back together, when Henry came home from the store.

More pandemonium ensued because Henry brought home ice cream BUT IT WASN’T THE KIND THAT CHOOCH WANTED SO YOU KNOW WHAT, HE JUST DIDN’T WANT ANY ICE CREAM AT ALL, GOODNIGHT.

It was only 8:30 but he was “putting himself to bed.” A classic page right out of Erin’s bi-polar playbook. As soon as he shut his door, Henry made Alexa play Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River.” Shit hit the fan at that point and Chooch started shouting for us to grow up and leave him alone and I was laughing about it but secretly was scared that maybe he might burn down the house.

He came barreling down the stairs and yelled, “YOU KNOW WHAT?!?!?” like he was about to verbally assault us, but then he stopped and broke down into psychotic laughter/tears and begged me to help him fix the puzzle, so I did because I was afraid of the fall-out.

[SIDE NOTE: Everyone thinks I’m the dastardly parent—I mean, I’m the reason we had CPS called on us once, right?—but Henry is like the sleeper hit of pranks around here. For instance, Chooch lately has been playing ambient sounds on his Echo at night to help him fall asleep; Henry waited until he was sleeping Saturday night before changing it to some horror soundtrack, with some creepy girl saying, “I’M GOING TO GET YOU” over and over. These are the best parts of parenting, my friends.]

“THEY’RE CIRCLING ME LIKE SHARKS!” Chooch cried that night in one of many attempts to perform puzzle surgery, while the cats prowled around under the table, waiting for their chance to pounce on more pieces. This is our life now. Anyone want to come over and finish this fucking puzzle for us? I lost interest in it the night we started it.

Nov 292017
 

The evening was going so well. Henry and I had watched about an hour of compilations of kpop groups speaking English, because we live such wild lives, and then Chooch wanted me to work on our puzzle with him.

I love this puzzle because Henry hates its existence so much, but I also dislike it because have you ever seen Chooch and me working together? It’s the opposite of harmonious.

What’s the opposite of the harmonious? Meghan Trainor thrash metal, I guess.

Also, as if it’s not hard enough bumping elbows with Chooch when lunging for those coveted edge pieces — cats.

In an effort to stall the puzzle pandemonium, I decided to grab an apple, which of course requires me to spend additional time looking for/washing/positioning the apple corer because I can’t just chomp down on a pink lady like Trump going beast-mode on a box of KFC.

I need my fucking fruit cut into pieces.

OK let’s just cut to the chase, AND I DO MEAN CUT: as I pressed the corer down onto the apple, IT FUCKING SNAPPED INTO ABOUT 48 PIECES NO NOT THE APPLE THE FUCKING CORER!

Some of the pieces sprung back onto my hands and I knew, I just knew: I HAD BEEN WOUNDED. I let the plate and the remains of the apple fall into the sink while I ran out of the kitchen, moaning loudly and holding up my damaged limb. I collapsed onto the staircase, not knowing what else to do with my broken body, and proceeded to apply pressure to my thumb while yelping, actually yelping, in pain. I was straight panicked, had no idea how bad it was, only that my right hand was on fire.

Chooch came running over to assess the situation and did his best to calm me down while Henry strode past us to survey the scene in his precious fucking kitchen. I thought he was in there looking for bandaids at first, but no, there he was: picking up pieces of corer carnage while I’m rocking back and forth on the steps, applying pressure to my thumb and screaming.

“WHY AREN’T YOU GETTING ME A BANDAID!?” I wailed. Henry walked out of the kitchen and asked, “Why, did you get hurt?”

OMG DID HE REALLY THINK I WAS CARRYING ON LIKE THAT BECAUSE I WAS UPSET THAT I COULDN’T CUT MY APPLE?! I mean, I guess that’s valid if you know me, but COME ON HENRY. I’M BLEEDING OUT OVER HERE.

So he sent Chooch upstairs to the bathroom to find me some lame, regular person bandages that are all beige and translucent and not pretty at all.  Henry tried to put some kind of spray stuff on it and my instinct was to kick him in the nuts, so he put his hands up and got rid of the spray before my foot could make contact.

While Henry diligently applied the bandaid to my thumb, I noticed another cut too and started screaming all over again.

“THERE IS NOTHING THERE!” Henry yelled, but there was, so he had to go and get me another bandaid. HA.

I thought I had a bunch of cuts on my left hand too but it ended up some being some apple shards.

This is all Henry’s fault. I told him weeks ago that the apple corer was cracking, but he was all, “JUST USE IT UNTIL IT BREAKS.” Well guess what motherfucker, it broke and nearly took me out with it.

While I was being bandaged by Nurse Henry, Chooch ran into the living room and yelled, “I KNOW WHAT WILL HELP” and put on a Taemin video* for me in a desperate attempt to diffuse the bomb ticking from within me because he’s the best son in the world even though today he apparently got a splinter and told me that it was way worse than my apple abrasion but he didn’t even cry, wow cool story SONNY BOY.

SIDE BAR: I watch this video a lot because I like to announce the part where Taemin is about to pop open that blazer, what.

Meanwhile, Henry was back in the kitchen. I assumed he was cleaning up all of my blood spatter and bone shards, but no – he was cutting up the apple with a knife, and then tried to serve it to me, like are you kidding? That piece of fucking fruit just assaulted me, I’m not eating that blood apple!

“You didn’t even bleed,” Henry sighed and this is a lie because I peeked at my thumb before he bandaged it and there was a literal FLAP OF SKIN hanging there and blood was definitely all around it. I’m lucky I even still have a thumb, if we’re being frank with each other here.

I spent the rest of the night wincing and sniffling every time I bumped my thumb.

Henry said I should have gone into acting.

The first thing I did when I got to work this morning was put better (read: prettier) bandaids on over top those dumb plain things.

“I feel like I should have probably gone to the hospital to get a staple,” I said after summoning up the courage to relive the previous night’s horror through words.

“I can staple it for you,” Glenn eagerly offered. Later, he made me relay the tale of terror to Amber and after she was done fake-caring, she shook her head and said, “It still blows my mind that you had a C-section.”

I agreed, but then added, “I mean…I did try to get it out of it, though.”

It might be a while until I eat another apple, if ever. I mean, I never had another kid after that C-section, so.

(Ed.Note: I told Henry I had to finish writing this blog post and he got all incredulous. “How do you even have that much to write about it? IT WASN’T THAT BAD.” Oh my god.)

Sep 252017
 

Parts of being home with Henry were nice. (If you ask him, it was all nice because he got to mostly relax and not have to wake up at like 3am to go to work or see his mistress, whatever it is he does during the witching hours.

(Also can we talk about how dumb of a word staycation is? More dumb or less dumb than “glamping,” though? TOUGH QUESTIONS FOR A MONDAY NIGHT.)

So here are some pictures of food we ate and things of that nature, because we were kind of being tourists in our own town I guess? 네?

On our first day off, we walked to Beechview and had lunch at Taal, a new-ish Indian restaurant which I hope succeeds because the owner was so freaking nice. They had mixed reviews on the Devil’s Website (aka Yelp) and I’m no Indian cuisine expert but I’ve had it enough times and from enough different places to say with confidence that this place was comparable to most other places so STFU Yelp Elitists. Jesus Christ.

Anyway, we had a lovely lunch but it always feels weird at a restaurant without Chooch, who was in school, I guess because we were able to talk without him butting in to say he already knows everything we might even dream of talking about because he is such a fucking genius. Ugh.

Also if Chooch had been with us, we more than likely wouldn’t have been eating Indian food because that kid’s palate is so ginger, it can pretty much only handle buttered noodles and grilled cheese.

Friday morning, Henry and I went to Black Forge for coffee (for me) and iced tea (for him).

Their punch card tho.

We were talking to the barista about how the owners were currently in Riot Fest and I told him that we were supposed to be there too but decided not to go this year. I thought I would feel a twinge of sadness, maybe a quick pang of regret….but nothing! Hopefully next year’s lineup will excite me but for this year, I was more than happy to trade Riot Fest for a kpop concert.

Anyway, Black Forge is a metal-themed coffee shop and so much less pretentious than many other cafes. I think Henry was nervous about going there because he always feels like a sore thumb at coffee places to begin with because he hates coffee but he was like, “OK THIS PLACE IS FINE.”

I loved the guy who was working there that day. Usually small talk makes me clench up but he was really cool and I liked talking to him, bye Henry. I’m with this guy, now.

We also shared a Mexican chocolate donut thing which was really great but way too heavy and rich for me. I never would have been able to eat one on my own. I’m not a big donut person, but when I do eat a donut, I prefer it to be super light and either sugar, glazed, or some kind of mild fruit (preferably lemon). I’m picky.

Chooch had a half-day on Friday so we went to Lili Cafe for lunch, and if you’re sensitive to places that are super too-cool-for-school, either avoid this place entirely or go on a weekday I guess because it wasn’t crowded that Friday afternoon and I only half-wished I hadn’t showered that day so that I’d fit in better.

But the girl working that day was really nice and chill and the kimchi rice bowl was all I wanted so I was pretty blind to the bike messenger aesthetic of everyone in there but us. Oh well. That’s what you get when you want a decent vegan/vegetarian lunch, you guys.

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On Saturday, my mom picked up Chooch and took him on a mountain adventure which basically means they got lost in the Laurel Highlands for four hours looking for Ohio Pyle, but they at least played mini-golf and visited the haunted Quaker Church. While this was happening, Henry and I went to East End Brewery because the Blue Sparrow truck was there and I wanted the vegan bahn mi. It was OK.

This pumpkin beer was the opposite of OK though. It was hideous. (Please keep in mind that I only barely like beer.) It felt like it was kicking me in the mouth and it stung. I hated it and Henry was pissed because THERE I GO WASTING MONEY AGAIN. He’s such a dad.

The worst part about our lunch that day was that I hated all of the other people there who were your basic day-drunk yuppies. I was pretty hateful that day.

On Sunday, I did a quick photoshoot with my pal Regina! She’s about to start a blog and needed some pictures of her around town. Here are a few:

And then Monday was me whining a lot and being exhausted because I walked and exercised too much and managed to get dehydrated and I was just a big miserable baby and SO BORED. I got a terrible pumpkin latte in the afternoon and then we watched a “just OK” horror movie (Final Girl, not to be confused with Final Girls that came out the same year and was better).

Oh shit the one good thing about Monday was that the new BTS album was released and it’s pretty dope.

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OK I’m lying, it’s pretty much my favorite thing right now. Needless to say, we listened to it A LOT on Monday.

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And Tuesday.

And….you know. So on and so forth.

I was kind of ready to go back to work. Sorry Henry. Be more entertaining next time.

Jun 102017
 

I started off the day learning the hard way that you musn’t spray canola oil on a hot pan. If I hadn’t already lost most of my eyebrows during the Great Overplucking of the 90s, today would have been their funeral fo sho. 

I was running around screaming about the injustice of it all, like who is supposed to know that would happen?? when Henry calmly said, “Well, everyone. It says it on the directions.”

“The PAN has directions?!” I cried. 

“No! The can of cooking spray!”

“Srsly? Why does a can of cooking spray need directions? Like, who would read that?” I said indignantly. 

“People like YOU are the reason those directions are there,” Henry sighed. 

(I know you guys: how does Henry “tolerate” me? He must be a “Saint.” “Job is going to shake his hand when he gets to Heaven.” Because our relationship is something he “tolerates” or “puts up with.”)

Honestly though, that flame went up SO HIGH. This is what happens when Henry takes too long waking up and I take breakfast matters into my own hands. :/

It’s all his fault. Just like it was his fault for failing to buy me a bag of coffee for work, creating a MAJOR CRISIS last Friday which culminated in Catherine and I colluding in a dangerous k-cup robbery from Lori’s office which I tried to reason was ok because one time she told me I was welcome to the candy she keeps in the one drawer and her k-cups were one drawer beneath that one, so…And then Catherine was so fraught with guilt that she left a dollar on Lori’s desk. The much anticipated conclusion to this is that Lori returned to work on Wednesday amd Catherine FLEW into her office before Lori even set her purse down, blurting out her confession and waiting to receive penance. There was a tense moment when we weren’t sure if Lori was going to throw a stapler and yelled, “Cash me ousside!” but turns out she had used up all her fucks on games 3 and 4 of the Stanley Cup finals and had little left in the tank to use on a stolen k-cup. She even gave Catherine her dollar back (had I known, I would have stolen that too!) Then when Todd got to work later that day, he said, “Oh yeah, I’m telling Lori you stole from her” and I was like OMG SHE ALREADY KNOWS! EVERYONE KNOWS! I’M A DIRTY THIEF!

I mean…

Ahem. 

SUBJECT CHANGE. 

Here are some pictures from this day, Saturday, June 10, 2017. 

We moved Chooch’s keyboard out of his bedroom and onto the backporch. Well, let me rephrase that: Henry and I kept saying that’s what we were going to but Chooch is the one who finally did it on his own accord because he was tired of waiting for his parents to finish watching Running Man and take care of him. 

Last night, I walked past him and saw that he had found the music for BigBang’s “Haru Haru” and decided to try and learn it! The coolest part is that he realized one of the notes was off and FIXED IT. He’s really good at playing by ear, which is something he definitely didn’t get from either one of us. 

He played it for Henry and made him guess what it was. Henry knew it was Bigbang right away but not what song because Henry never knows song names except for Ted Nugent ones. 

Early afternoon, we went to Kohl’s so I could buy new jeans and for the first time in years I didn’t have an emotional breakdown in the fitting room, 고맙습니다, Korea!!!!

Anyway, the whole point of mentioning Kohl’s is that there were these two middle-aged women loudly airing their dirty laundry RIGHT NEXT TO THE LAUREN CONRAD SECTION so I had to stand practically butted up against them, enduring their not-even-interesting drama. They were there every time I came back around and at one point I said loudly to Henry that they should take their lame bitch fest out to the parking lot instead of polluting our ears with it, because that’s how I handle conflict with strangers: passive aggressively, with loud immaturity. 

It was honestly the only time I was mad all day though so that’s pretty huge. I’m usually mad MANY times. 


I imprinted on this red leaf banana thing at some nursery we went to today. 

“Who imprints on a banana leaf plant?!” Henry cried. 

Um, me — I literally just said that?!

Henry wouldn’t buy it because it was $80 and that’s like a lot for a plant I guess? I literally do not know the value of a dollar. 


Chooch chose a plant for himself and mused, “I’ll name him A-ha, because I want to take him on.” OK, 80s kid?


Pet cemetery visit:( Chooch and I got really emotional and Henry didn’t know what to do so he just walked away because he doesn’t love animals. 


Obligatory ice cream from Yough Twist down the street from the pet cem. “Ugh I forgot this place has the inferior sprinkles!” I cried with my head back, dramatic damsel I am. 

“What’s wrong with them?” Henry and Chooch asked in tandem. 

“Well in addition to not being properly rainbow, they have a chalky taste,” I snapped because duh, just look at them. 

Beneath the inadequate sprinkled shell sat a perfect black raspberry & vanilla twist though, so once I hate-ate the sprinkles, I was good to go. 

Henry and Chooch also had ice cream, blah blah blah. 

Drew is like, “No really, you can trust me. I’m just gonna sit on them and help them grow.” 🙄


But seriously, these little propagations are coming along swimmingly in spite of PENELOPE digging them up once a week. 


Henry made me a snack plate with pineapple, kimchi, and pickled daikon – it was so refreshing. So refreshing that I went back for more pineapple which I then left out on the kitchen counter.  

“You left the pineapple out,” Henry said when he was visiting the kitchen later on. He sighed and put it away. 

Which is the exact outcome I expected, so why bother putting it away myself?

*******

In other news, G-Dragon’s new music is the most wonderful thing I’ve heard in so long and it made it to #1 on iTunes in 39 countries including the US which is crazy to me because most Americans I know are incredibly narrow-minded & ignorant when it comes to anything that’s not in English. Omg so weird and inferior. 

I still can’t believe I’m going to see him next month! I was thinking about it on the trolley yesterday, trying to imagine how I will react when I first see him, and I started to cry openly in front of people which sadly isn’t the first time that’s happened on the trolley. Dat bi-polar life, y’all.

******

It’s 8’oclock now and Chooch has stains all over my treasured Howard Jones shirt. Should I cry, laugh, or burn down the kitchen for real this time? I JUST DONT KNOW. GOODBYE. 

Jun 072017
 

I can’t believe how good this oatmeal tastes,” I said enthusiastically yesterday at work. 

“Ooh, what did you put in it?” Lauren asked. 

“Nothing,” I shrugged. “I just followed the directions on the box for the first time.”

****

OK, let’s back up.

Typically I eat cream of wheat or oatmeal everyday for lunch at work because it’s instant gratification and I can barely handle much else, other than slopping some fruit salad (pre-made by Henry) into a tupperware thing and praying that it doesn’t leak in my bag on the way to work.

If I’m feeling particularly whimsical, I will add some sprinkles to it. If Gayle has honey at work, I might add that too. Usually I have a bruised banana that will find its way into the hot slop, too.

I always tell Henry when it’s time to buy me more instant cereal for work, but sometimes — this is going to be hard to fathom for some so make sure you swallow first if you’re eating or drinking — I will go to CVS during my lunch break and buy it myself.

I KNOW.

ME!

I CAN DO THAT!

Recently, something crazy was going on with me and I tagged along with Henry to the boring grocery store (as opposed to the magical Asian markets, which I happily visit every weekend). I knew that I needed to restock on my work lunch stash, so I bought kids oatmeal (complete with dinosaur eggs, thank you) and some healthy oatmeal thing that had flax seed and whatever in it.

Turns out, that healthy oatmeal is a kind that I’ve bought before and I HATE IT! It turns out so watery, basically just warm cloudy water with grain things floating in it. Disgusting! Two days in a row I suffered through this sad-sack lunch, complaining about it at length to Glenn who had the Don’t Care glaze over his eyes, until something occurred to me yesterday.

“Maybe I should try to make it the way the box says to make it,” I said mostly to myself, reading the directions at my desk.

“Well, how have you been making it?” Glenn asked hesitantly, probably wishing he could recall his question.

NO TAKE-BACKS.

“Well, I dump it into my mug and then fill it up with the hot water from the spout on the coffee maker,” I said. “But then it just stays watery! Nothing happens!”

“Oh my god,” Glenn mumbled, and I couldn’t tell if that meant he was shocked my method didn’t work, or if he had just looked at a really great picture of G-Dragon.

So in the kitchen, I followed directions. I dumped the oatmeal into my cup. I filled the now-empty paper oatmeal pouch up to the line with water (not from the hot water thingie though – I’m not that dumb, you guys! Plus there is a warning sticker on it). Then I poured it over top the oatmeal and baked it in the microwave for two minutes.

And it exploded like a fucking 5th grader’s volcano science project. I had to take the glass thingie out of the microwave and clean it, ugh! Aaron walked by when this was happening and I sheepishly said, “I made a mess…”

“Is that your banana tea?” he asked, because one time he saw me cutting up a banana in the kitchen (with a plastic knife, don’t worry) and putting it in my coffee cup and then for the next year, he secretly thought I was literally adding bananas to my tea and expressed his concern (and disgust, probably) to Jeannie, who later told me about it and we had a great laugh.

Ugh, yes it’s my banana tea.

After I cleaned up the mess (burning my hand in the process), I took the remnants back to my desk and was amazed at how wonderful it tasted!

Glenn said I should have taken it out of the microwave every 30 seconds to stir it.

“Well, how would I know to do that if it doesn’t say on the box?” I cried, and he went back to trolling comment sections on fake news sites.

Later, I struggled to get the burnt oatmeal off my Goonies mug and considered just throwing it out and getting a new one, but then Gayle was like, “Just soak it….?” and hello, I know about that dish-washing secret, but the oatmeal was caked to the OUTSIDE of the cup too. I ended up just scrubbing it really hard and now my wrist hurts and I need to blame someone for this but I haven’t decided who yet. Probably Henry for not training me to be a grown-up, which by the way, he threatened to do over the weekend “in case something happens.” Something happens? Like he grows a pair and leaves?! Monica said she always just assumed Chooch and I would just move into Chez Chronica if that happens, kind of like she and Chris are our godparents.

I still should just get a new mug though. A G-Dragon one!

****

Today, I remembered Glenn’s sage cooking advice and stalked the microwave, stopping it every thirty seconds and giving the oatmeal a good stir.

With 45 seconds to go, I had a bad feeling. I could sense something wasn’t right, so I stopped it before the timer got to 30 and IT HAD OVERFLOWN AGAIN!!!!

Another day of cleaning the microwave! UGH. Where is Barb when I need her?!

Still though, it’s amazing how wonderful food tastes when you follow directions.

“Did the instructions give you options based on the microwave wattage?” Henry asked me on the way home from work, as we sat in traffic for an hour and he tried to resign from being my chauffeur.

“Huh?” I asked, scrolling through my Spotify kpop playlist.

“Never mind,” Henry sighed.  But then he had the audacity to ask me if I was trying to microwave the oatmeal IN THE POUCH, like I’m so dumb that I didn’t know to dump everything into a cup or bowl first, I AM SO INSULTED.

“It was so weird, it looked like it expanded somehow!” I gushed, as though I was telling the Story of Oatmeal for the very first time, to a bunch of pioneer people sitting on logs around a cauldron.

“That’s because it literally did expand. It absorbed the water, you idiot,” Henry sighed.

WOW. No need for name-calling!

“Anyway, who knew oatmeal needed to be baked. I guess I’m a baker now.”

“You’re not a baker. You cooked it in a microwave.

I’m going to try and bake other things in the microwave this weekend. Baked beans, probably.

Apr 272017
 

Last week, I was doing my routine lunch break roaming. I generally don’t have a destination in mind, I just kind of roll with it, and if something eventful happens—cool. If not, at least I racked up some steps, amirite? Well, two days in a row I had an eventful walk. Here, let me tell you all about it. Stay for a spell, WON’T YOU.

1. The Lady In the Road

On Thursday, my free-form pavement pounding found me crossing the Rachel Carson bridge. I only know that’s the bridge I was on because there are pennants hanging all over it that say RACHEL CARSON with some broad’s face on it.

A thing to note about me is that I am VERY SCARED of bridges, but I try to cross one on foot every now and again as a psychological exercise. On windy days, I am fraught with fear. FRAUGHT. And one time I was certain the man in front of me had a bomb and I started to have blurred vision.

I made it off the bridge though in case you were wondering.

OK, back to the Rachel Carson bridge. I was on it. Everything was going as fine as it could be for someone with a crippling fear of hovering atop a disgusting river. I was almost to the end of the bridge when the man who was walking a few yards ahead of me took off into a sprint. I shrugged it off as a sudden burst of energy, but then panicked because what if he knew that the bridge was about to buckle!?

Turns out, he was running to assist a woman who was sprawled out in the middle of the road just a bit away from the end of the bridge. Several other people were gathered around, cars were pulled over, a bus too.

There was a white towel laying near her head.

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I knew almost immediately that something was wrong.

In case you couldn’t figure that out.

The Alcoa building was right next to the intersection where this scene was playing out, and several people had congregated on the sidewalk. I walked up to an older woman and asked, “Was she hit by a car?” But her response to me was screeching in Pittsburghese, “OH MY GAWD THAT WAS TURRIBLE! THAT WAS TURRIBLE! OH, I CANNOT BELIEVE THAT HAPPENED!” and then she balled up her hands, stamped her feet, and screamed, “OOOH GAWD!” and walked away from me, tears spurting from her eyes.

I clearly wasn’t getting the 411 from her, and I deduced that whatever had happened, it took place mere seconds before I came across the bridge. So by this point, numerous people were on the phone with 911, and little ol’ Erin hanging around, with an iced lavender latte in one clammy paw, was not going to help the situation in any sense whatsoever. I lowered my head a bit and slowly walked away, and then once I got to the next block, I started crying. That poor lady! I don’t know her, or what she was doing, where she was going, but I knew that I just wanted her to be OK.

And I barely care about people, so that says a lot. I must have been struck by the gods of humanity at a weak moment, I don’t know.

By the time I made it to the next block, I could hear sirens in the distance, and my legs turned to noodles. So then I dove into an endless abyss of hypotheticals and what-ifs.

I texted my friend Debbie who works in the building right next to the accident scene and she replied to me later on to tell me that it ended up being a woman who works in her building, and that luckily she was OK – just sore and bruised.

Such a relief!

Caring is a weird feeling.

2. Bring Some Home For Daddy

I occasionally see this super disheveled yet exuberant man ambling about the ‘Burgh aimlessly, I guess the same way I do except I don’t yell uplifting platitudes at strangers or sing to myself.

Yet, anyway.

I walked past him one day about a month ago while he was looking into a store window and he was momentarily sidetracked from whatever mental mathematics he was chugging through with the aid of his fingers and an imaginary abacus.

“Oh, you have a nice day, pretty lady! Yeah, you have a nice day, now!” he sputtered jovially, and I thanked him because I’ll take compliments from anyone, NO DISCRIMINATION HERE, but I did pick up my pace a bit because…yikes.

It occurred to me that he looked really familiar, like maybe I had seen him the last time I was in the psych ward, but then I realized he looked like one of the baggers at Kuhn’s, and that is a huge feat for me to remember someone who works at Kuhn’s considering I’ve only gone there maybe 10 times in the last 16 years.

Hello, Henry-oppa does all the domestic bitch work.

I described him to Henry who admitted that he did sound familiar based on my impeccable profiling skills. But this wasn’t good enough and I set off on a mission to take his picture.

Fast forward to last Friday. A beautiful spring day, lots of activity downtown. Glenn mentioned that there was a stand in Market Square giving away tomato plants or something and I wanted one, so I stopped there first and found the stand. I just stood there for a few seconds and no one gave me anything, so I got mad and moved on to another booth where I got to try a sample of some kind of honey water. It was OK.

None of this has anything to do with the point of this story, but I felt the need to include it.

I did a huge loop around the Point and circled back onto Liberty Avenue, which is where a lot of hot messes can be found.

Just as I was approaching Planned Parenthood, I saw him. He was rummaging into a basket of chalk to help one of the protesters desecrate the sidewalk with her cheap message. I thought to myself, “Wow, a two-for-one special!” as I readied my phone.

Just as I took the picture, the man turned and looked straight at me. I mean, see for yourself:

I froze, wondering if he was going to be angry. Instead, he moved toward me quickly and put his fist up, so I was like, “Oh ok. I’ll play” and humored him with a fist bump. This was already breaking my NO HUMAN CONTACT rule, but whatever. I was in a good mood (no thanks to those motherfuckers in Market Square, denying me a tomato thing).

And then…

Oh god…

I barely have it in me to say…

The horrors….

He pulled me in, so fucking fast, into a suffocating bear hug.

It was like that Tango move. You know the one. Where the dude just yanks the broad into him.

THAT HAPPENED TO ME ON THE SIDE OF LIBERTY AVENUE.

IN FRONT OF PEOPLE.

I froze. Completely shut down. Went limp.

Obviously he smelled pretty bad, and he was so sweaty, oh my god, the dampness of his untucked shirt….

The dampness.

So much moisture on that shirt.

TOUCHING ME.

I began to hear the sounds of wavering sheet metal in my ears, which usually means I’m about to pass out, die, or be lifted up into space by a beam of light.

Did you know that I hate hugs? I don’t even like hugging my friends. In high school, Lisa used to chase me around and threaten me with hugs all the time. I have a picture somewhere depicting one such occasion but alas, I am not in a position to search for said picture at this precise moment in time.

But anyway – back to the wet embrace. I was still all up in those stinky pits, pinned against his soggy shirt, feeling his hot breath against the side of my head as he gushed in the voice of 1940s radio personality, “Aren’t you just a pretty little lady, bring some home for daddy.”

BRING SOME HOME FOR DADDY.

That gave me the strength to wrench myself out of his vice-like hold and take off down the sidewalk, past all these people staring at me like I was the crazy one for going around hugging vagabonds, and I was acutely aware of him crossing the street while singing some song about FEELING JOLLY.

Oh my fucking god, why.

Why me.

Why why why.

On my race back to work, I started thinking of all the ways this situation could have gone awry. He could have turned hostile and stabbed me or worse – he could have stolen my G-Dragon pin!

I got back to work and my hands were shaking like milk (shout out to you if you know it). My first mistake was telling Glenn what happened. He thought this was the greatest story ever told. He loved it. Every last second of it. Meanwhile, I still hadn’t regained the color to my face and was still stumbling around with the pallor of a girl who just had her soul hugged out of her.

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“That guy’s going to be have good dreams tonight,” Glenn chuckled and I felt sick all over again.

My second mistake was not immediately going home and taking a shower. Instead, I spent the rest of my workday, sitting inside the sweater that had just been molested by the sweat-stippled chest wig of a sidewalk stranger.

My third mistake was also my first mistake which was TELLING GLENN, who derived great joy in asking, “Did you tell them about your new friend?” every time someone came over to my desk. The really unfortunate part was that one of those people was Wendy and if there is anyone who loves basking in a swimming pool of Erin-related schadenfreude, it’s freaking WENDY.

“Oh my god, I would have pissed myself if I had been there!” she wheezed, and then I reached into my drawer to get out more of my international candy to use as Wendy-deterrent, while Glenn happily said, “Bring some home for daddy!”

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****

When I showed Henry the picture of my hugger, he said, “It looks like it could the brother of the bagger from Kuhn’s, but it’s not the same guy. Good job, Erin.”

All that I endured to get that fucking picture, and it wasn’t even the same guy.

Fuck everyone.

(Except for that lady who got hit by the car.)

Apr 162017
 

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Blake was over last night and I did that thing I do where I wait until the last minute and then blurt out, “CAN YOUDO ME A FAVOR HERE PUT THIS ON” and then before Blake knew it, he was reprising his leporine* role.

*(That was today’s Dictionary.com word of the day, have some smarts.)
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Reflection.

My original plan backfired, because Henry failed to perfectly execute my vision so I threw a fit and pouted for twenty  minutes (I’m getting better), so I guess I’ll save that for that next year.

Anyway, enjoy whatever it is you do on Easter, and if you’re like us and do nothing, then bask in the glory that is no religious obligation! Stupid Henry, I mean, the real Easter bunny didn’t come back to our house so there were NO BASKETS for chooch and me and Henry, I mean, the Easter Bunny, said it’s because we’re spoiled brats and don’t deserve anything and now we know how he feels because we never get him anything for holidays?!

Henry, and I mean, the Easter Bunny, strikes back. What the fuck. 

(NOT EVEN ANY JELLYBEANS?!)

Dec 092016
 

First thing Monday morning, I was delivered a real coal-raking when Lauren (of all people!) told me, “You know Erin, it’s not always all about you.” Granted, she said it in good fun, but it was still the best thing Glenn would hear all week. Ugh.

Later that day, I was on my lunch break, talking to Henry. I was whining because Chooch had a birthday party to attend later that week, at 5pm!! Who has parties on weeknights at 5pm!?!? And why did it concern me, you might be wondering? Oh, because it meant that since Henry was going to be dealing with that, he wouldn’t be able to pick me up from work, so I would have to TAKE THE TROLLEY, UGH. And when Henry said, “It’s not always about you, Erin” I had brief déjà vu and then said, “Weird. That’s the second time today that’s been said to me!” Henry asked, “Who said it first—Glenn?” YEAH YOU WOULD THINK.

Wednesday was the day I had to take the trolley home, which wouldn’t have been that bad except that I remembered I don’t have a house key, and here’s why: Chooch lost his house key so I let him borrow mine, and then he lost MINE, so Henry had to get him another one made, but never got one made for me!? So Henry was like, “When I go home to get Chooch, I’ll leave his key under the seat of his bike” and I was like, “Chooch has a bike?” SIKE NO—I know he has a dumb bike.

So I got home and of course it was dark out because WINTER SUCKS, so I had to turn on the flashlight on my phone while hunkering down along the side of the house, digging under a bike seat for a fucking key, and it HURT!! Henry had it jammed so far up there that my hand was getting all scraped! Finally, I got the key out but then I couldn’t get it to unlock the door because here’s another thing: my key was the master key. It slid in smooth like butter, like a well-lubed weener, every time. And way back when I had a key made for Henry back when we were “dating,” the dude at Daniel’s Hardware didn’t cut the key very well, so Henry’s been using a janky key for like, 16 years. So then when Chooch lost his key, and then my key, Henry had to get him a new key made using HIS JANKY key, so now both house keys are FUCKED. And now you know the history of my house keys.

Needless to say, I could not for the life of me get this fucking key to unlock my door. I tried all the tricks, such as leaning into the door while turning the key, and….OK, so I tried a trick. After 15 seconds, I gave up and called Henry. Try to picture me shaking with unbridled anger and also HYPOTHERMIA because it was cold out there, with rage beginning to present itself in the form of foam in the corners of my mouth.

Henry answers from the luxury of Dave & Busters, and I hiss, “I can’t get the fucking key to work.”

And here is where Henry says a string of patronizing things like “Are you turning it the right direction?” and “Is it plugged in?” and “Did you turn it off and on again?” Or whatever. I low-key cried into the phone, “You’re a motherfucker and I can’t believe you did this to me GO FUCK YOURSELF.” And then I quickly looked around to make sure no one heard because I am my grandmother’s granddaughter.

While struggling with the key, I looked over and noticed that the mysterious neighbors now have a lamp downstairs, so that’s a new development. Thanks, landlord. It sounded really quiet over there and I imagined that they were spying on me from their bedroom window like I do to them. HOW RICH. Now I’m the trashy neighbor trying to kick her door down while threatening to slit her boyfriend’s throat with a frying pan.

(Shout out to my new DGD friends!)

Henry had the audacity to call me back after I hung up him. I feel like hanging up on someone is a pretty clear cut way to tell them that you no longer wish to expel breath on them but I guess Henry’s too dumb to get it.

We would yell words over top of each other for 10 seconds before I would have to hang up on him again on account of the rage noodles boiling in my blood.

ALSO! Idiot Chooch has some metal Batman keychain and it was cutting into hand every time I tried to force the key to turn! Since when does Chooch give a fuck about Batman?! Oh my god, my hand hurt so bad! It was so red! I was too afraid to look long enough to see if it was bleeding too but it felt like it was. I kept dropping the key on the ground because I was shaking with so much rage, and every single motherfucker who walked past my house looked over at me because I LOOKED LIKE I WAS TRYING TO BREAK IN. So then I would have to stop, casually lean against the porch column, and whistle.

I really didn’t want to have an encounter with Boots or Phyllis while this was happening, so I felt even more stressed out, like I was racing against something….time or whatever. Like the Mormon missionaries were swishing their wool skirted way to my house and I had to get inside, draw the blinds and hunker down on the floor until they left their bible literature and moved on. LIKE THE PIZZA GUY WAS COMING. (Do you even KNOW me? I scream and run up the steps every single time we have pizza delivered. I was scarred by Freddy of Freddy’s Pizza back in the day. He got too friendly with me and my friends and then started to COME IN MY HOUSE?! I mean, the pizza was great, but nope, go away.)

It was clear that I needed help before I did something stupid, like throw a brick through my window/hit myself in the head with a brick/chuck a brick at the next car that drove by. YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT A BRICK IN MY POSSESSION COULD MEAN.

WHERE WAS I EVEN GETTING A BRICK!?

Hot Naybor Chris’s light was off, and I certainly wasn’t asking mysterious neighbors, and Marky’s mom would want to hang out and talk and I don’t make a habit of talking to neighbors. But then I noticed that Chooch’s nemesis Larry was unloading groceries from the weird-ass Yellow Cab van that he drives. Oh man, I really didn’t want to have to talk to him. But I couldn’t get in my house! And my rising agitation was threating to destroy any hopeful entry into my dumb house. And I had to pee! SO BADLY. Why didn’t I pee before I left work!?

So I did it. I swallowed my pride. I took a deep breath of compromised Brookline air. I started my slow march to Larry’s house, motherfucking Henry in my head the whole way. Larry had just gone back inside his house, but as I slowly climbed the steps to his door, he had turned to come back out. The sight of me startled him, so right away our interaction was fueled on suspicion and alarm.

I tried to be super friendly, like, “HI I’M ERIN FROM THAT HOUSE THERE” like he doesn’t know I’m the mom of Notorious Chooch. I dangled the key up high and said, “This is really embarrassing, haha, but I can’t get my key to open my door.” Insert self-deprecating shrug and cute sitcom laugh. “So, can you help me?”

He was still looking at me with that super-serious, concerned face, like he couldn’t tell if it was a trap. And I’m like, “Do I look like a burglar? Come the fuck on, man, help me.”

So then he made a “come on” motion with his hand and I followed him back to my house, where I stood on my porch with him for what seemed like a full half hour, enough time to reflect on the idiocy that clouds my life.

I tried to lighten the mood by making jokes, and all of them bombed. Like, “My 10-year-old can open the door, but I can’t, LOL.” And he was just like *no response*. Brookliners are a tough crowd, yo.

But I would just like the record to state that Larry even had a trying time with that defective key. Which made me happy because at least I’m not a moron, but it also meant I had to stand there awkwardly with him in a bubble of rape alert, arms crossed tightly over my boobs. TRUST NO ONE.

After about 5 minutes (OK probably 3), Larry finally got the key to cooperate and my front door popped open. I could see the twinkling lights of Trudy’s arm and all of Henry’s shit strewn about the dining room table and what appeared to be a package containing a vinyl laying on the chair, and I was like THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME! THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME! And then, “Oh yeah, thank you Larry” as I shouldered past him to get inside. I gave him a few seconds of an audience while he explained to me the trick of opening the door and how I was probably turning the key the wrong direction because I Am A Gurl.

So after being all, “Oh OK. Gurl thanks Man,” I shut and double-locked the door, ripped open the vinyl package (it was the 10 year anniversary pressing of Alexisonfire’s “Crisis”!), remembered I had to pee so I peed, and then sat down to watch The Crown.

Ten minutes later, my phone rang, It was Henry.

“DID YOU GET IN THE HOUSE?!!?” he asked hysterically.

Apparently, he wasn’t getting my texts and proceeded to call Hot Naybor Chris to see if he could help, and when he didn’t answer, Henry was actually going to make Chooch leave the party early so they could come home and rescue me, lol.

God guys, calm down. I wasn’t dying.

(Henry for no reason just now told me he’s mad at me and I’m like I don’t care, I’m writing about my hero Larry.)

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*OK cool is what I say when Henry doesn’t respond to me in .00000000008 seconds.

Never forget that time last summer when Chooch spied on Larry from the window:

Hey Larry – I appreciate you. I mean, now I do, anyway. Until you do something to piss me off, which will probably be soon.

Now Chooch REALLY hates Larry.

Jul 302016
 

I notoriously get depressed and despondent on my birthday. I was doing OK for a while there by planning road trips/events around the day to help keep me distracted and surrounded by new scenery, but I didn’t do that this year since we already took an early vacation and, as Henry reminds me constantly, we are not made of money. So then I was going to have a birthday dinner at my favorite restaurant Zenith and I went through the whole Facebook event rigamarole but wound up canceling due to the current state of my family and also because I panicked that my meat-eating friends would hate it there. 

I figured I would just wing it, except that from the moment I woke up on July 30, I felt hopeless and confused and at one point Henry had to wrestle a hammer out of my hands so that’s how you know it was my birthday. Once he got me calmed down though, we decided to go to Zenith anyway, for lunch, just me, Henry, and Chooch. No fanfare. We were originally going to try a different place but I just can’t with most vegan/vegetarian restaurants, you know? They can be so pretentious and even though I’ve been a vegetarian since 1996, I still feel like an outsider. Like my hair is too clean and I don’t have enough hemp on my person. However, I have never felt that way at Zenith so even though it felt weird going to the place where my birthday dinner was canceled, I just wanted to be comfortable. Low stress, casual, and I wouldn’t have to plaster a fake smile on my face. 

But I ended up smiling a ton anyway because Elaine waited on us and I just goddamn adore that woman and her amazing, quirky, vegetarian paradise of an establishment. She even gave Chooch a sample of the red-cooked black beans before he committed to the Peking-style tacos. 

Which he “kind of liked” but decided to stick with the safe bet of pasta primavera instead. 


…and proceeded to complain about every vegetable on the plate. He slurped the fuck out of his celery soup though, thank god! 

The other guy who works there, I have never asked his name because I’m socially incompetent, noticed that Picky Palate wasn’t eating  his pasta so he asked Chooch if he wanted something else, and me and Henry both shouted “No!” because his other option was BBQ seitan which is what Henry and I were completely smashing (SO FUCKING GOOD) but we knew it would be too spicy for him because he’s lame. 

Then the guy came back again and said to Chooch, “Hey, I just got some fresh cherries. You want some?” And Chooch, in all of his overwhelming politeness, shrugged and said, “Ok I guess sure?” UGH THE RUDENESS. 

He’s making Sour Face but he devoured every last cherry. I love that everyone caters to that jerk. It’s MY birthday, HELLO!

Elaine came over with her phone to show a picture her daughter sent her of the Japanese equivalent of the DMV and it was all bright and shiny with a play area full of toys.  Unreal. Get me to Japan. 

And then Chooch started raving about how much he liked the hummus and we said we were surprised because he generally doesn’t like anything that’s not cereal or cheese, and Elaine said that she actually hates hummus too and didn’t like it at all until she started making her own! I think she and Chooch would have sat together at lunch of they were classmates because she also isn’t a fan of the red-cooked black beans. (It’s on the menu though because everyone else there likes it and has been a big hit with the customers and I can verify that it was DELIGHTFUL based on the sample she gave Chooch.) She gave us a full container of hummus to take home and I was like HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME! 

That place never fails to make me feel like I could be a functioning part of society because small talk is so goddamn organic there. I’m not even sure if Elaine recognizes me as a long-time patron but that doesn’t stop her from treating me like one. 

I don’t regret canceling my birthday dinner though because believe me, I’m not good company these days.  Trust. 

Then we went to Dave’s and the Attic to peruse the records. Henry found an early birthday gift for Wendy’s baby, Summer:

Gotta teach the young to live the music their parents hate! 

(I also hate Meghan Trainor so it was pretty torturous for me to even look at her face while taking this picture.)

Um…then we drove far away to some ice cream place Gayle recommended called Forbush’s (not 4 Bushes like I originally kept googling, THANKS GAYLE).


They do something special there with their ice cream that I can’t remember now, but it’s BITCHIN. Somewhere in between soft serve and hard ice cream, and so stupidly creamy I could have died. I got vanilla cherry because I haven’t had that flavor since I was a kid and since this past year has basically been about inadvertently revisiting my youth, I figured BETTER GO ALL IN. 

Chooch standing in a puddle of his tears. Eating ice cream is depressing! All he wanted to do was go home and SLEEP, ughhhh! 

I wanted to take a picture of him against a wall but he was being a bitch about it.  

“Its my birthday!” I cried. 

“And did I take pictures of you on my birthday? No, I did not,” Chooch calmly stated and Henry lost it. 

“Touché Amore!” Henry said, trying to be clever because that’s the band we were listening to in the car. Wow, great job knowing how to use that in conversation, Henry. 

The drive home was rife with mom-son bickering and SWEET, TASTY 80s girl pop pleasures, like PRETTY POISON and SHANNON. Which transpired into me falling down a rabbit hole that ripped off some pieces of my heart, but that will be a story for another time, because Sharon. Sigh. 

Chooch ditched us to go to some carnival with his friend so Henry and I watched old Emarosa interviews and then I played the birthday card to get him to finally hang up some of Chooch’s school pictures that have been sitting in a corner. 


AND WHILE THAT WAS HAPPENING Artifex Pereo announced that they’re playing a home town show Labor Day weekend, and it’s an album release party, and I’m like begging Henry to take me because they’re not coming to my shitty city on their tour even though they told Henry at Bled Fest that they were?! And at first he was all combative but now he’s thinking about it. I need an Artifex Pereo do-over. 

THEN THE WORST THING HAPPENED: I found out that there is a festival happening this weekend in New Jersey called SADFEST. I can’t believe I had no idea this was happening the weekend of my birthday. I could have been a #sadgirl with all the other #sadkids and had glorious group cries. There is no better day to center something called SADFEST around than this bitch’s birthday. July 30th is basically the soggy hobo boot of all the calendar days. 


I would have been the perfect attendee. WOE IS ME. 

Ciao for now. :(

P.S. I yelled at Chooch for not getting me a present and he said, in this shit-eating tone, “I gave you love.”

UGH SCREW YOU. 

Jul 202016
 

After another night of shitty news, I decided that the only way to end things on a good note would be to go and deep throat an ice cream cone.

We ended up stopping at Sugar & Spice since it was on our way home and our first choice was too crowded. (I WAS NOT IN THE MOOD TO STAND IN LINE WITH PEASANTS.)

Look, listen, do whatever it is you do to pay attention: I have no beef with this establishment. I definitely wouldn’t put it in my top local faves list but it’s not like, disgusting there or anything.  However, on this night, some RUDE FUCKING BROAD was at the window and, after already being annoyed with the people in front of us (the one girl had on camp sweatpants with flip flops and it just rubbed me the wrong way), she set me off before I even opened my mouth to order.

I’m sorry, but you have over 30 flavors of soft serve which I could not peruse until I got up to the window, so don’t fucking rush me  I hate being rushed. Go wipe down a counter or something and I’ll call you back when I’m ready, maybe?!

She was scowling and I didn’t want to stand there any longer than I had to so I blurted out “Cinnamon” but immediately had remorse and then Broad asked in a rude tone what kind of cone and I started to say sugar because I always confuse the cone-types and she cut me off to spit, “WE CANT PUT IT IN A SUGAR CONE. THE SOFTSERVE IS TOO HEAVY” and I totally looked like some sort of soft serve n00b to the guy who was still standing there waiting for his milkshake.

But the way she cut me off, I can’t even. My tolerance was already down real low, like the lowest rung of limbo, and this bitch and her highfalutin’ soft serve superiority was about to knock the pole right onto the rink IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN and I hope you do because my rollerskating analogies are a little bit rusty.

You guys, I then had the AUDACITY to ask her for sprinkles.  Whaaaaat was I thinking! I’m an alien sent to earth for my first ice cream cone and I fucking blew it, apologies to the Mother Ship.

“YOU CANT PUT SPRINKLES ON THIS, ITS TOO SOFT.” Wow, really, you have to straight scold me about this? You’re the one dishing out limp soft serve, you dumb ice cream cooze.

I literally snatched the cone from her hands and, as she was muttering in her bitch-voice about “putting the sprinkles on the side” I cut her off and in a PURPOSELY FAKE UPBEAT VOICE THAT WASNT TOO SOFT TO SPRINKLE WITH SARCASM, I sniped, “OK GREAT NO THANKS BYE” and stomped off through the parking lot while making loud, passive aggressive declarations to my 10-year-old son and the man who was waiting for his milkshake that I would NEVER come back to this place again.

PUT THE SPRINKLES ON THE SIDE. Oh for fuck’s sake. If I want to make a mess with my ice cream cone that I’m paying for, that’s 100% within my right as an American! IF I WANT SPRINKLES, DUMP THAT SHIT ON MY ICE CREAM AND TELL ME TO HAVE A NICE NIGHT AND I WILL SAY THANKS, YOU DO THE SAME

THIS IS HOW IT SHOULD HAVE PLAYED OUT. I have read from this script plenty of times

Henry tried to play devils advocate which is basically the only character he knows how to play because he’s so one-dimensional and I interrupted his empty words to shriek, “I’VE HAD THIS SAME SOFT SERVE AT OTHER PLACES AND GOT SPRINKLES ON IT!” And it is definitely the same soft serve because all those places use the same OMG 30+ FLAVORS sign and it’s the same machine!! Sugar & Spice isn’t unique! This isn’t their own creation! They use the same mix that every other place uses and I know this because I eat a lot of fucking ice cream.

I know my fucking soft serve.

Henry was stuck there at the window because he still had to pay, but I had already marched off to the car. I considered viciously pitching my cone in the garbage can on the way there but let’s be real: I’m too much of a tightwad to waste money like that so I leaned against the car and angrily lapped at my stupid too-melty-for-sprinkles ice cream while shuddering with rage.

What a dumb, surly bitch. I continued to spout off vague threats as we drove past her on our way out, like how I wanted to chuck my cone against her stupid window. “I don’t think she can hear you,” Henry mumbled.

“Oh I’m going to leave a really nasty review,” I growled against a background of mirthless laughter, cutting down my melty ice cream cone with my razor-edged tongue. And as soon as I opened the Yelp app to destroy this establishment with my hateful prose (“Not only do your employees have no chill, but either does your ice cream!”), the first thing I saw was a review from my MORTAL YELP ENEMY.

A FUCKING 5-STAR REVIEW.

So of course I had to clear my throat and read it out loud to Henry in my best Robin Leach voice.

“A den of sug’ry iniquity hidden in a seemingly innocuous suburb and building” — get the fuck over yourself.

ALSO HE WAS THE FIRST PERSON TO REVIEW THIS PLACE.

One time he sent me a message and was like “you should add some pictures of yourself to your profile” and I was like “That sentence was too simple. Needs 87 more adjectives.” I hate him so much. (Projecting? Or naw?)

I should probably just go to bed.

Mar 152016
 

 Alternately titled: Another Dumb Idea!
Last week when I was meandering about town during my lunch break, I kept pausing to either tweet or text Henry about all the perils in my path. You know, like Planned Parenthood protestors, city school kids, an errant paper bag skipping across the pavement. (I COULD TRIP!)

And it made me think about how much more fun it would be to SEND A POSTCARD instead of these electronic means of communication. Like my lunch break is a vacation and oh motherfucker, do I wish you were here. 

Perks: 

-snail mail is never a bad thing and gives the mailman something to read other than Pennysavers and campaign mailings. 

-I love handwriting things and it will give me something other than my name to scribble over and over again at my desk. And let’s be real, I don’t have the time/attention span to write full blown letters. 

-I’ll have something to give Last Mail!

-WHAT A PERSONAL WAY TO STAY IN TOUCH!

If I have your address, don’t be surprised if you get some weird sketch of the Stalker of the Day (I ALWAYS FEEL LIKE SOMEBODY’S WATCHING MEEEE) or a poem about the trash in the river. 

And if I don’t have your address and you want to get a random post card, email me! Butgavincantdance@gmail.com

I’ll probably also send them to random addresses as well because that’s not creepy it’s sweet. 

I’d like to send one a day and I’ll start as soon as Henrh buys me stamps, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. #HenryProblems

And if you wanna send one back from your own lunch break, PLEASE DO! Postcard frenzy!!

Feb 052016
 

You already know that I’m a horrible mom. I mean, psychologically horrible. I can’t help it! I live and breathe to punk people and no one is easier and more fulfilling to punk than my own kid. And believe me, he gives it back to me! It’s like our thing. We love to fuck with each other.

Off and on over the years, I’ve made loose comments about the man who lives in the attic. The steps to the attic can only be accessed from Chooch’s room, so it’s my way of nudging him down Night Terrors Alley. He’s always just like, “YEAH OK MOMMY” and then we all laugh and go about our day. But lately, it’s been heating up. My response to almost everything has been “manintheattic” and Henry gives me a disappointed look. Like when Chooch had a fever last week and woke up in the middle of night and dressed himself. He was horrified when he woke up because he never goes to bed with a shirt on.

“And now I have on TWO t-shirts?!” he cried, like call up Scully and Mulder, quick.

“Manintheattic,” I half-coughed. “Sometimes he dresses you during the night. You’re like his living baby doll.”

“YEAH RIGHT!” Chooch scoffed, but I could see that there was a tiny glimmer of doubt in his eyes.

The next night, as we all in our respective bedrooms for the night, Chooch made a fake phone number using one of those free text apps and started prank-calling me. I stupidly fell for it too, and I got so nervous when I saw a call coming in from someone with our area code BECAUSE WHO COULD IT BE, WHAT DID I DO NOW!? Then I realized it was the idiot in the next room over. So I made one too and said, “Be quiet down there, I’m trying to sleep.” And then “Good night.”

“You’re a dick,” Henry mumbled into his pillow when I giddily showed him my work.

The other day at work, I decided to create an Instagram account for The Man In the Attic.

Because these are things normal moms do.

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Step 1: Find a good snap of Gary Busey’s mug to use as my user pic.

Step 2: Follow Chooch.

Step 3: Comment on Chooch’s most recent video of the kittens.

“You need to put them in the basement while you’re at school. They’re very disruptive during the day.”

Step 4: Post pictures.

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I was crying at my desk over this while several of my co-workers clucked their tongues and made various remarks about Chooch’s future therapy bill.

“He does it to me, too!” I yelled in defense.

Glenn just shook his head at me and Todd struggled to wrap his head around how anyone thought it would be a good idea to have a child with me.

“My mom used to do this shit to me all the time when I was kid,” I explained during one of our daily “Dissecting Erin’s Childhood” conversations at work.

“Oh,” Todd said, attempting to understand how this was normal.

“I don’t talk  to her anymore, though,” I added as an after thought, and then we all started to laugh, because: family.

“I’m going to pay someone to hide in the attic one night,” I said, and everyone groaned.

***

After work, Henry dropped Chooch off downtown because he and I were going to the Pens game. First, we went to get dinner. Over pizza, Chooch learned of the Man In the Attic’s Instagram account.

At first he was like, “Wait. What. How.” But then his brain kicked on and he said, “Yeah OK, I know this is you.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Let me see that. Oh my god, this is so creepy!” I exclaimed, scrolling through Instagram on Chooch’s phone.

“Whatever, I know it’s you.”

I kept denying it over and over, and then we went to the game, where me made jokes about how Henry was home alone with the Man In the Attic. I thought everything was good. He knew I made the Instagram account and was able to find some humor in it, life goes on, Pens win, etc etc.

But later that night, after we came home from the game and Henry retired to bed after a long night of staying home doing nothing while Chooch and I screamed our faces off at Consol, Chooch brought up the Instagram account.

“Honestly, this is you, right?”

I couldn’t believe this was coming up again because I was certain he knew it was me. I mean, Chooch is a pretty bright kid!

But the sinister side of me saw this as an opportunity to continue the fun, so I denied it. Over and over and over.

“Chooch, like I have time to do shit like that at work, really!” I said with faux-annoyance.

(LOL, this was the biggest lie I’ve ever told.

)

Suddenly, we had a replay of the Doll Episode. He was pissed, and he was also tired: A deadly combination.

He got so angry because I wouldn’t admit to it, that he started sobbing. Like, hands covering his face, body-convulsing sobs.

Since he’s my son, I initially couldn’t tell if he was faking it or not.

Turns out, nope. Thems some real optic-wets right there.

So of course I dropped the gag and hugged him, swearing it was me and apologizing profusely, but he shrugged away from me and shut himself in the kitchen.

When he came out, he spat, “DELETE IT. DELETE THE ACCOUNT.”

I promised I would, and then he retreated up the steps to his bedroom, sniffling and wiping tears with the back of his hand.

I felt like a complete asshole.

“Good for you!” Henry spat with disappointment when I went up to bed later and filled him in. “I’m glad we spent all that money on his new bed, because you’re the one who’s going to be sleeping in it!”

***

The next morning, Chooch was still bitter, but by the time I came home from a day of being scolded for being a terrible mom by my co-workers, Chooch had cooled down. I honestly think that the biggest issue here is that he hates it when I prank him better than he pranks me. But I’m happy to report that Chooch has now accept The Man In the Attic as a part of this household and has even added my newly-created phone number to his contacts as Manin Theattic. One day, we will laugh heartily about this over Christmas picnic in the cemetery with his children. I just can’t help it—I was born with a very dominant Prankster gene. (Or as some might argue—a Bully gene.

)

The funniest part about all of this is that I’m the one who’s actually terrified of the attic.