Remember a few days ago when I told you that Amber replaced our way outdated Golden Thumb Award with a Bob Ross Chia Pet? And that I greedily claimed it at our Monday meeting? Well, we got him all set up today and it was majorly team-building in that a third of the group GAVE ME BAD WATER MEASUREMENT ADVICE.
But let’s back up.
The Golden Thumb was something that our old supervisor handed out at our weekly meetings to the team member who excelled the week before. It was kind of a joke tbh, and Amber has wisely eschewed it for this new fun gimmick.
Since Bob was in my possession, I got the party today by soaking him in water. Glenn was worried that we wouldn’t find something to soak him in and I was like “Hello, I have three empty plastic trick-or-treat pumpkins in my desk. I think we’ll be fine.”
So off I went down the hall and to the kitchen, gripping a plastic pumpkin in one hand and clutching Bob by the neck with the other. This likely did not look unusual to anyone who saw because, well, IT ME.
In the kitchen, I put Bob in the pumpkin, set the pumpkin in the sink, and then began to fill ‘er up. Debby came in. “Do I even want to ask?” she sighed, so I quickly gave her the run-down of how Bob Ross is the new member of the processor team, etc etc and she was like, “Wow.”
The second part of the process was the Soaking of the Seeds. The instructions said to add two teaspoons of seeds to 1/4 cup of water. PANIC. STRESS. A TEASPOON?! A QUARTER CUP?! How to measure?!?!?
“Just use a spoon,” Glenn said, and Todd supported this. Todd also happened to be going into the kitchen at the same time as me, so when I frantically held up a paper cup and cried, “HOW DO I KNOW HOW MUCH?!” he suggested “half.”
So I did “half.”
But then I went to Lauren on my way back to my desk for a second opinion.
“Um….I would dump out like an inch of that,” she said, squinting at the water line.
I feel like she probably cooks sometimes so she would know.
I dumped out an inch of water into the nearby water fountain.
After that, my assignment to stir occasionally for 30 minutes. It was daunting though because it looked like something gross and healthy that I would eat for lunch (like some kind of slimy earth porridge) so I had to be mindful not to put the spoon in my mouth.
Thirty minutes went by and while the seed mixture was definitely jellied and thicker than it was in the beginning, it didn’t spread very well on Bob’s head. Amber was getting angry because the seed-splooge kept sliding off and then LAUREN HAD THE NERVE TO SAY THAT SOMEONE MUST HAVE USED TOO MUCH WATER and I was like, “I ONLY DID WHAT YOU PEOPLE TOLD ME TO DO!” and then it turned into a thing and I can’t wait for when Bob’s fro doesn’t grow and everyone BLAMES ME. UGH.
(However, now I’m wondering if I don’t really know how much “an inch” is.)
Pictured above is Bob posin’ in front of one of two Glenn Galleries. Amber applied the chia-jizz as best as she could, so we’ll see what happens.
“Do I have a Bob Ross Glenn?” I asked no one in particular but then the real Glenn answered, “It’s hard to say. You made so many.”
Later, I checked out the display of Glenns (it’s like MoMA up in our department) and sure enough, there was Bob Ross Glenn.
“Yeah guys, he’s right under Jeffrey Dahmer Glenn!” I cried out but no one cared.
And then I just got depressed because the origin of those Glenns was basically the best thing I ever did here in the office. I totally fucking peaked in 2012. There’s no topping that. Ughhh.
Yesterday was our little group’s Christmas lunch at work. It’s hard to believe that last December there were eight of us, and now there are just five. So much has changed in one year!
I was looking forward to getting out of the office. I’m going to be honest here – learning of the death of SHINee’s Jonghyun earlier that morning really fucked me up and I was low-key crying at my desk off and on all day at work. I wish I wasn’t this emotional, but…I’m a bi-polar Leo, you guys.
But, I had this lunch to distract me and I really like my work group so it didn’t feel like a drag like it has in the past when I worked for a different group within the department. PLUS, Amber promised that we could get our picture taken with Santa afterward, because our lunch was at The Yard in Market Square, right across from SANTA’S WORKSHOP! I have wanted this to happen so direly for many years, a group picture with Santa, and I have only ever been able to get two people to go with me on two separate occasions (once with Chris when she still worked with us, and once with Amber).
Lunch was good, but I was SO BORED for like the first 25 minutes because everyone was talking about the Steelers game from the night before and some catch that wasn’t a catch and I was like, “Cool but can we talk about me, now?” God!
I was too sad on the down low to finish my salad, and when the waiter brought me a box, I just kind of stared at it and mumbled something about wishing Henry was there.
“Do you want me to help you?” Amber asked, and when I said yes, she sweetened the pot by asking, “Do you want me to just do it for you?”
“YES!” I cried in relief, and Todd was like, “Oh for God’s sake” and Glenn was like, “STOP ENABLING HER, AMBER” and Lauren was just like, “Erin, you are the sweetest person I have ever known.” Or something like that.
This literally happened about 10 minutes after I had finished telling everyone that I was panicking over the weekend about the thought of Henry dying and how will Chooch and I survive, so I asked Henry if he can teach us to be self-sufficient, to which he responded with, “I HAVE BEEN TRYING TO!” Anyway, first we were going to start with me relearning laundry because he’s been doing it since we got together and I honestly would be fucked if someone dropped me off at a laundromat right now…..
….but then we were sitting on the couch, me crying for the 87th time over the weekend (it’s been rough for me lately), when I noticed the front door in my periphery and wailed, “No, first you need to teach me how to open the fronnnnnnnnnnnnt dooooooooooor…..” followed by major ugly tears.
On the way out, we started to walk toward the whole Christmas Market thing but then turned and started to go back in the direction of work. I hung my head in a silent pout, not wanting to say anything because I was in such a bitch-baby mood that I chose instead to fester in disappointment so that later I would have something more to complain about because this is who I am sometimes, TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT.
We were about halfway back to work (which is really only about a five minute walk) when Lauren said, “Oh no, we didn’t get our picture with Santa!” and I sadly shrugged and said, “I know. It’s OK.” And then sighed heavily for emphasis.
Glenn and Todd were like, “TOO BAD SO SAD” and kept walking, but Amber said to me, “Oh, why didn’t you say something when we left?” So then we tried to figure out another day to go back and get it done, because we had already been out of the office for longer than intended, but there wasn’t another day left this week where all of us are in the office.
So then Amber sighed and said, “OK, let’s do this now, but when we get back there you better get to work, Erin!” and I was like, “YES BOSS!!” as I happily jaywalked across the street and you all know how anti-jaywalking I am.
When we arrived at Santa’s Workshop, there was just one family in front of us, and two that were inside the workshop. The lady made us stay outside to prevent the workshop from crowding, and that’s when we all noticed that some dude from KDKA had rolled up with a cameraman.
Everyone but me freaked out. Lauren was trying to bury her face in her leftovers while shouting, “ARE YOU KIDDING, I DO NOT WANT TO BE ON THE NEWS,” Amber was like, “Goddammit, Erin,” Todd looked like he would FOR SURE rather be reliving the not-catch moment of the Sunday night Steelers game, Glenn was reading the Farmer’s Almanac he carries in his pocket (I don’t know, but that seems like something he would do while waiting in line) and I was on the verge of peeing my pants from laughing.
My first real laugh of the day and it was so needed!
Sorry it was at everyone’s expense. LOL j/k I’m noy sorry!
I don’t know if we ended up being on the news or not but the fact that my work friends were acting like they were on the lam was good enough for me!
Anyway, the whole rigamarole only took about 10 or 15 minutes, which I thought was pretty good. Santa really wanted me to sit on his lap and kept pressuring me but I was like, “CAN I JUST SIT ON THE ARM OF THE CHAIR INSTEAD, YOU CREEP?!” Just kidding, he was a cool Santa. He asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I really wanted to say G-Dragon but didn’t feel like getting into some awkward explanation so instead I just mumbled, “Music” at which point Glenn smugly said, “SHE LIKES KPOP” and I was like, “YEAH, AND WHAT OF IT, GLENN?!!?!?” UGH!
I look like a fat-faced mess, but this picture is everything to me right now! I felt like it was a great team-building exercise. Also, Lauren needs to teach me how to pose so effortlessly casual! She and Amber both look great in every picture while I’m trying frantically to smile in such a way that it won’t look like my chin is having babies.
Anyway…sorry if this is all over the place but welcome to my brain—we have postcards and magnets for sale at the front desk. And merry Christmas from us guys at the Law Firm! That little excursion really helped lift my mood for a bit. Sometimes going to work is, strangely, just what I need.
I just decided to do this now at 9:37 so let me quickly catch you up on the riveting events you missed. Keep checking back for more! YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN ESPECIALLY ON MY LUNCH BREAK.
I watched Taemin perform “Day & Night” on Music Bank whole Chooch made puzzle pieces soggy with his tears.
I texted Henry death threats because he left a shoe in the middle of the floor and also made me walk to the trolley in 20 degree weather.
I purposely wore a navy blue lightweight thermal shirt to work today because I bought this adorable cape to wear over top of it but as soon as I shut the front door behind me I realized I left the cape on the couch and YOU KNOW HOW I CANT UNLOCK MY DOOR. Ugh, the tragedy that is my life.
Came to work and in lieu of any morning salutations, I dove right into my cape-tastrophe. “IT HAS BUNNIES ON IT AND THE HOOD HAS BUNNY EARS” I cried. “That sounds like my three-year-old’s bath towel,” Glenn worthlessly chimed in. “YEAH WELL MY CAPE IS FROM CHINA!” I yelled. “So is her bath towel probably.” Ugh.
9:51am: We just picked our Secret Santa names and I am so pleased with who I got! SEE I TOLD YOU SOMETHING EXCITING COULD HAPPEN!! I wonder who got my name.
10:09: Today is jeans day and I just want everyone to know it’s because I begged for one yesterday. YOURE WELCOME, COWORKERS.
10:30: We were just talking about the shocking conclusion to my apple thumb saga, because somehow Todd missed the ending and innocently asked for an update, so Glenn got to relive the story about my bandaids being on too tight.
11:30: I picked a boring day to liveblog. I should have done it yesterday when Lori was wearing a cool pair of vintage 90s chunky-heeled boots she found and then realized halfway through the morning that they were disintegrating and she was leaving boot crumbs all over the department. I suggested that we try to rebuild the soles with the leftover bling I have from the G-Dragon table, but then she realized that the bottoms of the soles were jacked too so there went that great idea. :(
11:33: I wonder how many times people catch me sitting at my desk, silently mouthing along to Korean Instagram captions and then quietly celebrating when I’m able to understand what it says.
11:36: Glenn is eating his lunch. I bet it’s a bologna sandwich.
12:24: Now I’m eating my lunch too. I almost always just have Cream of Wheat because it’s something easy that I can handle. Today, I’m eating it with a banana and honey, as well. I usually put cinnamon in there but THERE IS NONE LEFT IN THE OFFICE KITCHEN. I’m not sure if this is supplied by the firm because there has always been cinnamon in the kitchen in the entire 7 years I’ve been here, sometimes two things of cinnamon even, and now…none. This is worse than when we ran out of the honey that Gayle brought in and I had to go out and get my OWN HONEY to keep in my desk and now cinnamon too? When will it end?! I can’t handle these grocery issues.
12:50: This is my current desktop background because I’m 14
Everyone here just ignores it now. That’s for the best.
1:02: I hope my Secret Santa gets me a Korean tutor.
1:40: Glenn just came back in from outside. I asked him if it was super cold and he said “just like it was this morning” but I couldn’t remember what it was like this morning at first until I scrolled up and re-read the first part of this blog post. ALL HAIL THE POWER OF LIVEBLOGS. Speaking of weather, here’s an actual convo that happened Tuesday on the elevator:
Me: Tomorrow is supposed to be really nice!
Tracy: I thought it was gonna be cold?
Me: I dunno I just saw a big sun when I checked.
Lauren: Do we need to teach you how to understand weather forecasts? #probably
I’m just really bad with weatherly things.
2:10: I’m at Gasoline Street getting a maple brown sugar latte and I hate everyone in line with me because The Postal Services cover of Against All Odds is on & I’m tryna listen to it. Instead I have to listen to these bitches are talking about how bright their futures are and I’m like let me help darken that shit for you.
2:43: I’m back from my lunchtime walk. Here are some things that happened, in addition to the coffee-getting:
Henry and I had a huge fight on the phone over pizzelles! He acted all shocked when I said I didn’t like them so that’s nice to know that after 16 years, he’s ignored this huge, defining fact about me. He was like, “Why don’t you like them?” and I’m all (cover your eyes, pizzelle-lovers, because I know you’re out there in droves gunning for me right now), “You mean besides the fact that they’re the peasants of cookies?” and he was all, “HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT” like he’s some 90-year-old Italian bitch selling them on the street so she doesn’t lose her cottage. Then he went on to gush about how much he loves them and I was like, “Of course you do, because you have the palate of a fucking Pilgrim” and people near me on the street where like wtf is this girl jawing off about.
I accidentally littered and there were witnesses!! I was running across the street (I jaywalk now sometimes, can you believe it?) and the top of my (empty) latte blew off and I was torn between stopping to pick it up and continuing on to the sidewalk before getting smashed by a car. So I let the latte lid get smashed by the car instead and I felt terrible. I even yelled, “I CAN’T BELIEVE I JUST LITTERED” and people at the nearby bus stop were like, “OK.”
Some guy with a big beard wearing a blue hoodie and carrying a backpack definitely stuffed with hacky-sacks waved merrily to me, like he was the Santa of headshops. I waved back. I’m not always a bitch. (This sighting wasn’t a coincidence because it happened in front of that weird stoner coffee shop.)
3:52: Sorry, I was doing work. But then I sold a BTS Christmas card! I feel so blessed. I love my Kpop Kards line.
4:18: Approximately two more hours before I get to meet Barb for dinner! AND I AM REALLY HUNGRY. Also I think that offices should have soft rock playing gently from the ceiling at all times, because it gets too quiet in here and then maybe the real Against All Odds will come on and everyone will unite in a shared love of Phil Collins.
Speaking of Against All Odds, Chooch came home from piano lessons last weekend and cried, “GUESS WHAT SONG I’M LEARNING!?” and here is a picture even though you’ve already guessed:
Chooch has the coolest/best piano teacher ever, sorry to you other piano teachers out there.
5:26: ALMOST TIME TO LEAVE. This day was fine until the last hour when some dumb project came in at the last minute, stupid work, just kidding I love my job.
8:17: Hi guys I just came home from dinner with BARB! We went to Gianna Via’s and I uncovered some new information about Barb:
Barb “discovered” salmon at McCormicks and Schmicks.
There was a guy there in a plaid shirt that Barb kept staring at and murmuring about. “Oh, he must work here,” she said at one point and I blurted out WHY, DO YOU LIKE HIM? “No!” she cried defensively. “I said that he looks like someone I used to work with!” That means she likes him. Whenever it was time to leave, she was taking her good old time getting her stuff together so I made it to the door before her. As I was standing there waiting, I watched her walk past Plaid Shirt and TALK TO HIM! I was so excited to point this out when she walked over to the door and she (again, defensively) yelled, “I JUST WANTED TO LOOK AT HIM UP CLOSE TO SEE IF I KNEW HIM!” She likes him.
I had to take a picture of us before we left, for liveblogging purposes, and Barb was excited to wear her new sunglasses for the picture. OH BARB. Also, I made Barb look at a gif of Taemin eating and she was not impressed.
Now Chooch and I are walking to CVS so maybe I will have more liveblog fodder when I get back, you just never know.
8:48: Brookline sidewalk shrimp.
9:02: Oh hi Chooch and I are back from our nightly walk about the town. I had a lovely conversation with my favorite CVS clerk, John, while he rung me up. We talked about how we can never phone numbers, but he can remember his best friend’s number and had to call him once to ask him for his own cell phone number because he forgot it and I told him that I can’t remember any phone number from the last decade, yet I still remember my grandparents’ landline that I haven’t used in like 20 years.
Also, Chooch randomly blurted out, “I’m so glad you’re not a Pinterest Mom.” Same, Chooch. Same.
Then! I saw my Mexican taco cart boyfriend and got my hand stuck in my coat pocket when I was trying to wave hello to him and Chooch was like “wow you’re so slick.” Then Chooch was rejected when he asked to pet someone’s dog and I secretly rejoiced because his dog-petting is such a burden to me; it puts me in awkward social positions where I feel forced to then make small talk with the dog owner and I hate it I just hate it ugh.
But now we’re home, annoying Henry, and I’m probably going to sign off for the night because it’s KPOPX TIME, WHUT WHUT.
Being off work for an entire week right after I began my ambush decorating really slowed my roll. It especially sucked that I wasn’t there when two of my coworkers got to see their newly Halloweened offices.
However, it gave me some time to collect my thoughts for the (most likely) final horror set. Trust me, I was really pumped when it hit me that I could turn Jill’s office into a Wicker Man shrine.
#NotTheNicholasCageOne
I spent Sunday afternoon sitting Indian-style on the floor, hot-gluing popsicle sticks while watching South Korea travel blogs. This is my life. I also ran around the house, collecting other things I needed, like some of our old plastic animal masks and Chooch’s stuffed rabbit.
I barely said hello to anyone when I got in Monday morning, I was in such a rush to get this shit done before Jill arrived. Debby and Marlene watched with great interest.
“Oh, and there’s the rabbit mask! Oh, and there’s the sheet music!” Marlene exclaimed as I set out each object.
“Have you seen The Wicker Man?” I asked excitedly, after being certain that this one might wind up being the most obscure set yet, even more than last year’s Ju-On (or, you know, Lou-On).
“No I have no idea what this is,” Marlene said, and then she and Debby cracked up. I tried to give them a quick run-down and they were just like, “Wow. How many Academy Awards did that win?”
“Christopher Lee was in it!” I said all defensively, and they just laughed harder.
My life, you guys!
This is the old-as-fuck English round that the crazy Pagans sing at the end of the movie.
#NOTTHENICHOLASCAGEONE!!!!!!!
Summerisle was well-known for their apples.
“KILLING ME WON’T BRING BACK YOUR APPLES!”
Anonymous letter received by Sergeant Howie, the protagonist, asking him to come to Summerisle and help find a missing girl named Rowan Morrison.
Picture from one of the creepy harvest festivals and a March hare, which represents the missing girl.
Green Man Inn is where Howie stays while he’s in town and it’s full of debauchery. MY KIND OF INN.
“Oh, I know that movie,” Todd said disgustedly when I was telling him I decorated Jill’s desk. “It was so stupi—-”
“NOT THE NICHOLAS CAGE ONE!!!!!!” I shouted. Ugh! His version was a desecration of the original, a motherfucking disgrace.
Anyway, I stopped by Jill’s office later in the morning to see if she liked it and she seemed….thrilled! I would target everyone there if I had the time/energy/brain power. There’s one other one that I MIGHT do if I can find the time, but it’s looking like I might skip it. But happily, I still haven’t spent more than $10 on this whole thing!
***
I was inspired to watch (THE ORIGINAL) Wicker Man Sunday night, after getting all of my props together. I let Chooch watch it with me because I forgot how much freaking nudity is in it, so that was goddamn fantastic. Then yesterday, I came home from and he was like, “LOOK AT WHAT I TAUGHT MYSELF” and when he put his hands together, I thought it was going to be more sign language because he’s been learning that in gifted this year, BUT NO IT WAS THE FUCKING SONG THE WEIRDO BOYS SING AT THE MAY POLE IN WICKER MAN.
“OMG please do not ever sing that in school,” I begged him, and he was like, “Duh.”
I am the worst parent ever.
Later, on our nightly walk, he blurted out, “The Wicker Man was so good. I LOVED it. Like, a lot.” Yeah, I wonder why?!
Well guys, it’s that time of year again! As usual, I was waffling: did I or I didn’t want to decorate for Halloween at work? It takes a lot of mental energy out of me, but I had a few ideas that I came up with several months ago, so I did a quick inventory of the things I’d have to actually spend money on because that’s a huge factor: the more I already have on hand, the more inclined I am to put the effort in.
I did a quick Goodwill and craft store run Tuesday night and $5 later, I had everything I needed to get the four offices decorated. Some of the offices required $0!
OK, first up is Terry’s office. This was the first one that I came up with a few months ago and if only you could have been there when I excitedly spun around in my chair to tell Glenn…
“Pet SemaTERRY, get it Glenn? SemaTERRY? Because his name is TERRY?!” I squealed.
“Yeah, I get it,” he mumbled. Just jealous that he didn’t think of it first, that’s all.
Anyway, this one required $0. I inherited those tombstones from Barb years ago and they’re actually mainstays on my desk. The stuffed cat is Chooch’s (“Please don’t rip it up or put blood on it!” he begged) and that sign was made be me demonstrating my awesome cardboard box-ripping skills.
I can’t tell if Terry likes it or not. He hasn’t said anything. Glenn disappeared from his desk at one point the day I decorated this and when he came back I yelled, “WHAT, WERE YOU TALKING TO TERRY!? DOES HE LIKE HIS OFFICE” and he was like, “NO I WASN’T TALKING TO TERRY.”
Honestly though, I was so giddy about this one all day. It was so stupid in its simplicity, yet so PERFECTLY PUNNY.
OMG this next one was one that I wanted to do last year but I ran out of time:
My hands felt arthritic by the time I was done cutting those branches out. When I was taping them up the next morning, my coworker Amanda was like, “Let me guess—Children of the Corn!” and I was like “NO AMANDA I DID THAT ONE LAST YEAR, DO I LOOK LIKE SOMEONE WHO WOULD REUSE AN IDEA?!” Ugh, god.
The worst part about this is that I came in 30 minutes early on Wednesday to decorate and I was SO PROUD OF MYSELF and couldn’t wait for Aaron’s reaction, but when I went back to my desk, Glenn said, “LOL, Aaron is working from home today.”
Ugh.
Henry helped me make the chainsaw.
“I thought you said you weren’t decorating this year so why am I sitting here cutting out a chainsaw?” he sighed when I stopped him en route to Slumber Town and handed him a pair of scissors.
The only thing purchased for this one was poster board for the trees.
In case you have no idea what this is from:
I didn’t even have to bring a book from home because Gayle turned one of the cabinets into a library, so I grabbed the first chunky hardback in there (thanks, Nora Roberts). I was going to make my own Necronomicon cover out of a latex mask but I wanted to get this set up the next day so…..a quick print-out it is!
Also, the chainsaw is green because my piece of red foam-stuff wasn’t large enough.
Cathy is visiting us from the Harrisburg office! Today was her first day in the office so Amber suggested yesterday that I decorate her desk too. Luckily, I had some extra stuff on hand, like this bloody sheet that I used for last year’s “Carrie” desk, a creepy clown doll, spiderwebs, severed fingers, a vintage picture of an actual dead guy in a coffin that I used for my funeral parlor theme desk a few years back, and probably what scared Cathy the most: an Asian snack on her keyboard. I think she felt welcome!
OK, this next one is my favorite! No, they’re all my favorites. I love all my babies equally. But seriously, when I made the connection that Patrick shares a surname with the Stranger Things family…it just all fell into place.
So I turned his office into a shrine for older brother Jonathan Byers.
The pictures he took of Barb on the diving board and Nancy in the window. There’s an actual scene in Stranger Things were the photos are hanging on a string like this. I didn’t have any string, rope, or twine, but I DID have some old party hats in my desk! So I ripped off the elastic.
In the show, Jonathan actually uses a Pentax and I’m so mad because I do have an old Pentax from the 80s somewhere in my house, but I couldn’t find it. So this Konica will have to do. Also, if you watched the show, you know that he liked The Clash’s “Should I Stay Or I Should I Go.”
The nail-studded baseball bat Demogorgon weapon that he carried. Thank god for cardboard boxes.
I had to carry this on the trolley with me this morning. No one even noticed.
I had a strand of white lights on hand, so I quickly painted them yesterday after work.
Total amount spent on this: $0.
I don’t know if this is good or just admitting that I’m basically a hoarder.
OK, the last one I decorated today is, in Glenn’s words, a bit of a stretch, but I had to do it.
Chris’s office is right next to me and I was disappointed last year that I couldn’t think of anything for his name, and then it hit me.
“Think about it, Glenn. ‘Chris Kenrick,” I said the other day after I came up with it.
Glenn just shrugged.
“Chris Kenrick. Chris KenRICK. Chris KenRICK GRIMES,” I blurted out giddily.
“Wow,” Glenn said, totally not impressed but probably a little.
In case you don’t watch The Walking Dead, Rick Grimes is the main character.
Today, Catherine said, “You are totally wasting your talent here!” and then started preaching about how I need to find a job that utilizes my skills, but I literally never see any job openings for “half-assed horror movie-themed office decorator” so it looks like the law firm is stuck with me for a little bit longer.
I have two other offices on my radar, but I’m off all next week so I don’t know if I will do it when I get back — is it worth it? UGH MAYBE PROBABLY WE’LL SEE. I can never tell if I’m going to get in trouble for this, but I guess that’s half the fun of being the office black sheep?
If you’re interested in last year’s decorations, please turn your attention here and here.
Here’s a recap of some things that have happened at work over the last month or so.
The Pumpkin of International Candy Horrors is still in full effect around here. Actually, I haven’t filled it up in a while but that’s OK because there’s still stuff in there that people keep picking around and maybe I should just not refill it until they eat all the bad stuff too, right? For example, the pouch of prunes.
The last fill-up was from Lotus Foods, which I sometimes walk to on my lunch break. I was mad because there were a bunch of white assholes in the candy aisle, loudly mocking all the candy that my work friends and I have come to cherish. Sorry if your palates aren’t refined enough, dumbos. I grabbed a bag of “assorted ham” but I think it was mislabeled because it was definitely that “haw” candy I bought before which tastes like thick fruit roll-ups. They’re super good. I meant to try and get some candy when we were in Chicago but when I searched “weird candy Chicago” the only thing that stood out was this place that’s supposed to be “famous” in Chicago (what isn’t though, really) but when I went to the website, it was ALL OF THAT GROSS CANDY I bought from the Mexican store near my house (and also some of the good candy I bought from the Mexican store near my house, but if I wanted more of that, I would just take a walk when I’m home, you know?).
Speaking of that Mexican store, there is this guy who works the taco cart in front (it’s wildly popular and brings ALL THE HIPSTERS and FOODIES to my town, so gross). Anyway, this guy is my secret boyfriend. I walk past him everyday because I’m, you know, always walking, and he always says hello to me in his super-flirty accent and I’m always like, “Hehehehe, hello” and he has his eyebrow pierced which normally I wouldn’t like, but you know—accent. If Henry is with me, he won’t say hello though.
Hi Henry.
Um, back to the subject of candy. One day last month, someone found a dollar on the floor and it ended up being Lauren’s. Instead of pocketing it, she said, “You know, put this aside for the candy refill,” and she gave it to me! I thought that was really nice and also , why am I not collecting money from EVERYONE.
One day, I was standing in line at Crazy Mocha, minding my own business like I do, when a man next to me leaned over and said, “Apologies in advance if I smell a little….musty.” Oh wow, not the pick-up line I was expecting, but OK. “I spent ALL DAY in the University of Pittsburgh library archives.” THERE IT IS. “Oh wow, ok. I don’t smell anything, don’t worry,” I said with faux-reassurance and then used my back as a conversation stopper. But no, he wasn’t done. “I never thought working in a library would leave me so smelly,” he said with absolute dryness to his voice. He wouldn’t look at me while he was speaking, either, but instead he kept his head tilted up slightly toward the ceiling, almost in a boastful stance. I nodded and then went back to scrolling through pictures of G-Dragon on Instagram because #life. “Pitt hired me because I’m fluent in French. I know the French bibliographer there,” he continued after about a minute of silence passed AND IT STILL WASNT MY TURN TO ORDER. I vaguely heard him reference Raiders of the Lost Ark but I had fucking shut down at this point. OK cool story guy, you get to work with dusty books all day. “I felt really bad for the people I sat near on the bus yesterday, having to smell me,” he said and I seriously thought he was going to press his body into my face and make me smell him, he was so obsessed!
The weirdest part is that while this guy didn’t smell at all, I had stormed into work the day before bitching about the old guy who was sitting next to me on the trolley and how musty he smelled, and then I had one of those weird moments where the word “musty” didn’t sound right and had I been using a fake word all these years? But I googled it and it’s a real word, so there.
On another episode of Erin Gets Taken For a Ride, I had just left the office one day for my lunch time stroll, when some old woman stopped me in front of our building. Something about just having taken her insulin, needs a dollar to buy some food so she doesn’t pass out…I don’t know. It all happened so fast, but she reminded me of Henry’s mom and I was like, “OK OK OK, I will get you a dollar!” I told her to stay there and I went all the way back up to the tenth floor, got a dollar out of my desk, and went back out to give it to her. But when I got there, she was talking to two young women with a baby stroller (I think there was a baby in there? I didn’t look, because babies, meh). The women were REALLY ORANGE-IN-THE-NEW-BLACK-LOOKING, you guys.
Totally rough and clad in wife beaters, one had a half-shaved head, the other had barbed wire tattooed around her bicep. Just, you know…intimidating. I handed the lady a dollar and she looked at me like she didn’t know what I was doing, but that didn’t stop her from clamping onto the bill. “Oh, these are my friends,” she said, nodding at the two women, and all three of them just looked at me blankly and I was petrified because were they going to shake me down for more money?! I kind of wanted to renege and pull back my dollar but the lady was already taking out of my fingers and oh, what to do?! I know, turn and run. You guys, the way she thanked me, it was like I was PAYING HER BACK A DOLLAR THAT I OWED HER.
When I went back in after my break, I was telling Lauren what went down and she was like, “THIS IS WHY YOU SHOULDN’T GIVE MONEY TO PEOPLE ON THE STREET” and this was just the start of a long-winded lecture about how I shouldn’t be gullible and how that lady probably had enough ones to buy 87 orders of fries now.
That’s OK because it was actually LAUREN’S DOLLAR I GAVE THAT LADY, OH LOL LOL LOL!
I actually just saw that broad again last week, right after some businessman gave her money and a hug and I watched that con-artist wipe away her fake tears and wanted to trip her, oxygen tank and all!
I had a nightmare about Catherine. She was yelling at me from her office because I handed her a stack of folders and papers that I had hand-written and she hated my handwriting and felt that it was time to let me know because she just couldn’t take it anymore. So the next morning, IRL, I remembered the dream and found myself labeling a folder for her very slowly and as neat as possible. I told Glenn about this and he muttered, “Did you use your best crayon?” Ugh. I finally told Catherine about my dream later that afternoon and she exclaimed, “OMG I LOVE your handwriting though! I always have!” and I was like, “Yeah I know, my handwriting is awesome, duh.” *nail painting emoji*
I made Todd watch the new BTS video and he said he liked it but he doesn’t like that there are 7 of them in the group. “It’s just too many. One of them is going to end up starting a fight and then it’s all over,” he said and I was like, “Yeah, if they were AMERICAN.” I don’t let Glenn watch my Kpop videos anymore because he’s a hater and the one day I was so mad because he was mocking the boy groups again and calling G-Dragon a pretty little girl and I was about ready to blow a gasket but then Carrie came over and distracted me long enough for my heart rate to come down. SORRY I’M NOT STANNING JETHRO TULL, GLENN.
The day before I left for my lame Brookline vacation, Lori was like, “I want tacos. Do you want to go get tacos?” Whoever says no to tacos? Probably Trump supporters, of which I am not one so I said YES and we went to Condado and I didn’t fuck up my tacos this time (last time I added the wrong sauce or something to my BBQ jackfruit creation and it just curb-stomped the whole flavor profile) and we also got the guac of the day which had raspberry puree in it and I never knew how much guacamole needed raspberries until that day and now I can never not eat it with raspberries. I’m just that fancy.
One of the new perks that come along with Friday late shifts is that we have the option to work them from home. I mean, they’re still a drag but whatever. Anyway, Amber was all, “Make sure you have Jabber set up so you can take calls” and I was like, “OK but isn’t the REAL PERK of working from home that you get to miss all of your work phone calls? No? Ok. I put it off the first several times I was working from home but then I finally decided I better get that shit straightened out even though hardly anyone ever calls me at work. I logged on, threw on my headset and called my office phone from my cell phone. Nothing. Not even white noise. Just dead silence. So I’m sitting here at work, alternating saying hello into my headset and into my phone before eventually giving up and performing a traditional Angry Erin swear-stuffed screamo song. Then I called Henry and started yelling at him too because this was somehow his fault since he’s the one who plugged the headset in for me. While I was on the phone with him, my stupid Jabber notification popped up, saying that I had an incoming call from Lauren. OH GREAT A CALL I CAN’T ANSWER! I emailed her back immediately and said, “Jabber difficulties” and then after I finished verbally castrating Henry, I called Lauren back from my cell phone and started complaining right off the bat about my dead Jabber connection. “Erin,” she interrupted me solemnly. “Something happened….” She was scaring me. Was she calling to tell me that someone knocked over my Fiji mermaid?! Did Glenn deface my G-Dragon pictures? WHA’ HAPPENED?!!? Oh, I’ll tell you what happened. When I called myself, it somehow connected to my actual desk phone at work, put itself on SPEAKER, and broadcast me saying, “hello? hello?” to the whole quadrant. Lauren said she heard my voice coming from my desk and slowly turned around, and saw that Glenn and Todd were also blankly staring at my desk. And then Ethan was all, “Isn’t Erin working from home today?” She said it was so creepy and made her instantly yearn for Season 2 of Stranger Things. “Oh my god, like I was trapped in my phone or something?” I said, and then we had a hearty laugh, but really I was half-embarrassed that happened and also super thankful that I hung up before anyone could hear the explosive cursing that followed the hellos. “I wish they had heard,” Henry sighed. “Then they’d finally know the Erin I know.”
I’m working from home again this Friday and still haven’t figured it out. Please don’t call me. Email only.
My favorite Pittsburgh ice cream shop, Millie’s, recently opened a second location minutes away from where I work downtown. I thought it would be an awesome idea to skip out on one of our Monday meetings and get some Millie’s instead. I broached this idea to Boss Amber, paired with the gentile insinuation that it could be a TEAM BUILDING EXERCISE. But Amber was like, “Um it’s ice cream, you don’t need to justify it” and an ice cream outing was officially scheduled!
This has been a rough year for our little group. We lost* two people – Amber1 and Gayle – and plus everyone has had to endure all my DAILY KOREA FACTS all year, so some fancy locally-sourced ice cream was just what we need to boost morale.
*(I mean, they’re still alive, but still! We miss them.)
Guys, I got SZECHUAN ROASTED PEACH and it was to die for. The only way it could have been better would be it was, I don’t know, gochugaru roasted peach.
Lauren got coconut lime, Todd & Amber both got Vietnamese coffee, and dumb Glenn probably got a scoop of Plain. Who knows, who cares.
I took a group picture for our department’s Wiki page—I’m one of two people in our department with editing rights so every once in awhile, random Kpop pictures find their way into the limelight and everyone is all, “Ugh Erin Kelly.”
On th way back to the office, some deranged street person sidled up to Glenn and started screaming about if Glenn took him to the ATM and gave him $100,000, he’d be his best friend.
“I come out here every day, and no one bothers me. I come out here with Erin and all her friends come out to attack me,” Glenn mumbled as we crossed the street, leaving his new friend behind on the sidewalk.
****
Back at work, I was all hunched over, giddily editing our group photo, getting it primed for its public debut.
After I posted it on our group’s page, I announced, “Ok our picture’s up!” No one said anything. I craned my neck to see if Lauren was going to our wiki page.
She was not.
Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer so I flat out told Todd to go and look at it.
“I already saw it,” he said. “You showed us on your phone.”
“Yeah but….just go and look,” I urged, standing behind him to make sure he did it. It took him FOREVER TO GET THERE because he doesn’t have it saved as a favorite. Ugh.
When he saw it, it took him awhile to register, but then he laughed.
“Wow,” he said in a total #smh tone.
Lauren, upon hearing us laughing about it, decided she better go and check it out too. I’m sure she was low-key worried because god only knows with me, you know? But then she started giggling too.
I had to wait for Amber to come back from her lunch break, but when she did, I practically crashed into her desk and sat on her lap in my excitement to have her look at the picture.
She doesn’t have our wiki page saved as a favorite either so I had to stand there doing the pee-jig while she clicked through 18 pages to get there.
She didn’t catch it at first, but when she finally saw G-Dragon’s perfect face, she started laughing and cried, “You’re….so special.”
The best part is fielding questions from the people in our department who have somehow avoided the Kpop-mania on our side of the floor, after they go to our page for actual work-related reasons and see our picture. That’s just the new intern, you guys. Kwon Jiyong. <3
The last thing I think of every night before I fall asleep is, “I can’t wait to have coffee in the morning.”
(Well, that and “Please don’t lop off my feet with your rusty scythe, Mr. Closet Monster.”)
Unless I’m on late shift, I don’t have my first cup of coffee until I get to work, and immediately afterward starts my daylong wonderfing of “when will I have my next coffee?” because I try to have restraint.
I drink too much coffee. I don’t have a problem admitting that. Out of all the “too muches” in my life, it’s probably the least detrimental.
My usual routine is to make coffee using the office Keurig. I have one of those pods that holds actual grounds so I never have to buy a box of k-cups again (anything for you, environment!). I really like going to Nicholas Coffee in Market Square for some fancy-ass bags of coffee but it’s temporarily CLOSED on account of the adjacent restaurant catching fire for like, the third time this year.
Ugh!
So I brought in a box of Maxim instant coffee that I bought specifically after watching a video from Henry’s favorite Korean cooking lady on iced coffee.
(Gold star alert: I found it at the Korean market in the Strip because I could read the box! Granted, it also says “Maxim” in English but I saw the Hangeul first!)
I was expecting this to be disgusting because, you know, instant coffee like what is this 1993. But no! It’s delicious! And now I don’t have to fuck around with refilling the water in that damn Keurig when the person who uses it before me inevitably walks away with the ADD MORE WATER light flashing.
I’m sure I will eventually buy a bag of fancy coffee but it’s nice to know that I have a super convenient alternative that doesn’t taste like shit.
MY LIFE IS SO EXCITING.
I also have been drinking this delightful coffee milk tea in the afternoons. Everyone was all “oh ho ho ho, you have fun with that!” Because I have struck out with this brand of bagged-beverage before.
But holy shit, this shit is great too! It’s so good that I talked Amber and Glenn into trying it too and they both agreed that it was good and that they would probably drinking again (Glenn begrudgingly so).
It literally does taste like tea and coffee, in one cup, with a dash of cream. It is so good! I don’t know why or how it works, but it just does. Additionally, if you drink it anytime other than 3:15, you won’t actually die like I thought!
But I do have a small growth—I mean, what, no, I’m fine. It’s fine. Coffee tea milk is fine!
**********
In “outside-of-the-office” coffee news, I have been searching for new places to get my iced lattes, which I tend to get once or twice a week as a gift for making it halfway through the day without (royally) screwing anything up at work or if Henry says no to me about something and I need to pair my pout with some espresso.
Typically, I go to Crazy Mocha (there are several around town) for a lavender latte but I’m growing tired of the same girl asking me every time, “Have you ever had this mixed with vanilla?” like it’s my first rodeo with lavender and hello, why doesn’t she know me by now?! I order the same freaking thing every time. UGH I AM SO FORGETTABLE. The other locations don’t always have the lavender syrup so I don’t fuck with them anymore.
Occasionally I will go to Coffee Tree Roasters to get a maple latte, and I love their goddamn lattes, but — and this is embarrassing — the door to their building confuses me and my anxiety over the impending exit starts to build before I even order my stupid drink and then I always end up making a commotion when I’m trying to leave.
Unfailingly!!
So that’s a situation I try to avoid.
If I’m really looking to splurge, I’ll walk to Colony Cafe in the Strip because they have one of the best lattes in town BUT they’re kind of pricey—$5-something and then I always leave a tip because the people there are so goddamn nice, plus it’s a cat cafe (not a good one like you see in Korea and Japan, though. The cats are in a separate upstairs area and you have to reserve a block of time to chill with them, which is probably a good thing because then I’m not going back to work, like, “Look at the new fur pants I bought down the street at Burlington, guys!”
All of this is to say that I needed to change shit up a bit, so I used Yelp (ugh for days) and found a place called Gasoline Street Coffee Company that I had never heard of, probably because it’s on a different side of the city and not as convenient as the Starbucks inside our building, so why would anyone from work go there unless they’re psycho over stupid shit like me.
I had to use Google maps to help me get there because I don’t know street names and the only directions I can follow are things that involve landmarks, like, “Turn left where your stalker works and then make a hard right at the corner where the Dunkin’ Donuts protester stands with his middle fingers up.” While I was following the moving blue dot on my phone, Henry called.
“I can’t talk to you right now, I’m on a mission,” I said in my secret agent voice.
“OK, bye,” he said, and then HUNG UP. He didn’t even ask me what my mission was?!
You may be shocked to know that I followed my map accordingly and found the damn place. It’s located in an area I have never been on foot before (for my Pittsburgh peeps, it’s over by the First Avenue T station) so I had to walk beneath overpasses and it was pretty daunting. There was some construction going on nearby too so I kept expecting to get jack-hammered or hit by a rogue chunk of asphalt. You don’t know my fears.
Except that now you do. God, why can’t I be more mysterious!?
Since I was on late shift and taking my break much later in the day, I rolled up to this spot about 40 minutes before their 5pm closing time. The decor is old gas station/repurposed licence plate chic, and I feel like that trend peaked in the late 90s, right? But it didn’t feel too hipster-y, so I was willing to embrace the outdated-ness as vintage.
There was one man sitting in a balcony-thing, reading a paper. Other than that, the place was dead. The coffee counter was located halfway up a ramp, to the side, and it was so awkwardly situated that I had to practically stand on tiptoes to see over top of the counter. When the guy asked me for my order, I told him it was my first time there and he said, “Oh take your time” and started to walk away.
“No, I mean, what do you recommend?” I called after him.
He had next to no personality and was clearly lacking any drop of desire to engage in my wishy-washy coffee needs. I was hoping he would say something like, “Well, if I were YOU, I would get a cortado because we use blah blah blah beans and then blah it and add some blah” or maybe he would gesture to the Specialty Drinks portion of the chalkboard behind him and give some smooth sales pitch about matcha.
But instead, with a sigh, he started naming things like, “Coffee, tea, lemonade” like OK I get it, bro. So I interrupted him and just ordered my go-to iced latte.
THEY DIDN’T HAVE SOY so I got it with coconut milk instead. Then I had to stand on the ramp, on an angle, while he made the damn thing and it was kind of like standing in line for an elevated ride at an amusement park but WITH LESS THRILL.
It was fine. It was reasonably priced. But it was just a latte.
^^^Just a latte.
Of course, now that I had a real menu in front of me and I was back on a level surface, I was able to take my time and really give it a good perusal and now I wish I had ordered the Chocolate Orange, whaaaat!? I guess I will have to go back someday, maybe this week. I can’t commit to anything right now though.
Also last week, I was in the Strip and decided to stop at Prestogeorge, which I have never been to for some reason. They’re located far enough away from my work that I really had to quicken my pace, so I was full-blown sweating by the time I got there.
I ordered an iced cinnamon latte and it was super refreshing and lovely, but the best part about this place was that the people working there were very down-to-earth and didn’t have a single drop of barista snob in them. For as much as I love coffee, I usually stick with straight-up hot coffee, lattes, cold brews, and macchiatos (the real kinds), so sometimes when I feel like trying something different, it can be daunting! I have had so many baristas make me feel stupid. So if I can walk into a place and join in a conversation about Pink Floyd’s The Wall and then only pay $4 for a latte AND a lemon fig bar thing instead of the NINE DOLLARS it would cost me at Crazy Mocha, then you’ve got yourself a new regular customer.
Except that I can’t be TOO regular of a customer because it’s a far walk and sometimes I have other parts of town to visit on my aimless lunch break walks YOU DON’T KNOW MY LIFE.
Also, the ladies at Prestogeorge loved my birdcage ring and I love it when people love my jewelry because for someone who hates small talk, I sure wear a lot of conversational pieces.
OK, and that has been 1700+ words on the coffee I drink at work. I am truly such an interesting person. Sign-ups to be my friend are hanging on the glass window behind the milk crate that my favorite homeless guy sits on. If you have any questions, I’ll just be over here drinking my second cup of Maxim coffee.
I wanted iced coffee today while I was walking on my lunch break. Crazy Mocha is usually my go-to, and I havent been there since last week when I walked out after I reached my gagging point at the strung-out couple heavily making out in line in front of me. Not to sound like a PRUDE but it was just TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE.
I figured enough time had past for their salacious residue to have evaporated, so I was going to go there when I remembered that Henry told me about some new place he heard about over by the Art Institute called Grateful something or other. I very recently had walked down that street (it’s pretty shady back there but I like to press my luck) but didn’t recall seeing anything other then a Thai restaurant, a head shop-looking store front, and a carjacker.
I consulted my enemy Yelp to no avail. Maybe the place was so new that it wasn’t even on Yelp yet, meaning my Yelp nemesis probably hadn’t patronized it yet and if that was the case — did this place really even exist?!
Right before I was pulled into a parking garage sex ring, I saw a sign that said Grateful [Something] and realized it was the headshop that I had seen the last time I was on that street. But lo and behold, there was a placard out front that said COFFEE on it.
The stench of patchouli almost warded me off, but I took one brave step across the threshold and stopped. It was a small store full of tie-dye shirts and things of that nature so suddenly the “Grateful” part of the shop name made sense. I was about to turn around when a man called from the back, “Are you looking for coffee?”
I must have had The Look.
He motioned for me to come further into the back of the store, past some broad who was hanging hemp bracelets on a rack, I don’t even know, IT WAS ALL A BLUR.
“So here’s the coffee,” the proprietor said in a sleepy-happy-high slur, pointing me toward a counter. “It’s self-serve. You have your iced coffee here,” he said, pointing to a cooler, “and here’s your hot coffee.” There were five or six bottles of Torani syrups as well, but this was not what I wanted! I wanted someone to make it for me! If I wanted to make my own iced coffee, I’d just go home and add an ice cube to whatever’s left in my French press. Ugh.
I really wanted to leave but now I felt like I was in too deep because he was asking me where I work and if I’m a lawyer (lol) so I went through the motions of preparing myself a plastic cup of ok-quality room temp coffee and I couldn’t find the ice but didn’t feel like asking because I just wanted it be over. I felt so scrutinized! Like hey guy, can you turn your back and give me some privacy here? There’s a certain intimacy to sprinkling saccharine into that cup o’ caffeine, you know? lol sike jk. I just didn’t want that dude looking at me.
I squirted some sugar free vanilla syrup up in that shit while Spicoli kept getting in my face about how great his coffee is and showing me the gigantic printer he has to print out receipts.
WHERE WAS THE SOY MILK?? I don’t know because I didn’t want to ask. Black it is!
After telling him three times that I didn’t need a receipt from his medieval printer, our transaction was finally complete.
“Um can I have my credit card back?” I asked as he walked away with it still in his hand.
“Oh yeah, good call!” he laughed, all Dazed & Confused.
Ugh. Stress.
The coffee was fine even though it tasted like I made it. Because I half did.
On a scale of “Drinking the coffee you lft in th microwave for a day” to “Kind of like going to Telaropa and getting coffee from a vending machine,” I’d rate it a “I let a child fix my coffee at the gas station.”
Will I go back? Fuck yeah. It’s going on the Erin’s Shitty Pittsburgh Tour itinerary.
“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.
I decided that I would liveblog my workday because I haven’t done that in a while and quite honestly, I have nothing else to write about because everything in the world sucks, you know?
And this morning sucks because it’s raining REALLY hard and I had to walk to the trolley thing and now I look like a drowned rat and my umbrella blew back and slammed me in the forehead and it HURTS and I made the mistake of telling Glenn.
“Oh wow, Glenn has a smile on his face so early in the morning!” Catherine said when she walked back to her office with her coffee.
“Yeah, because I injured myself!” I spat, and everyone laughed but NOT ME, I DIDN’T LAUGH.
And then Todd said I should blog about the NBA finals because that would take my blog to the next level. NO.
So, here’s my liveblog prologue. We’ll see how the day goes. Check back or don’t, I don’t care! Ugh!
9:14am: Lauren just got here and I let her talk a whole lot before I told her that I’m liveblogging today and now she’s mad that I didn’t give her a disclaimer before she started talking. EVERYONE BETTER WATCH WHAT THEY SAY TODAY. Just kidding. I don’t want to get fired.
9:36am: I can’t get an email to send and Todd just asked me if I pressed “send” and now I’m ready to flip a table!
10:32am: Just had an argument with Lou (typical) and then we got an email about something to discuss at this afternoon’s meeting which I guess we’re still having because “But it’s raining” isn’t a good enough reason to not have one or something which seems dumb.
Current candy situation ^^^
Everyone seems on board with the current stash of candy I’ve provided, although there has been some heavy discussion on the Pollito Alvbros (???) which some people claim has a slight chicken taste to it.
What nationality’s candy should we try next?! Glenn said we should do what Conflict Kitchen does and provide candy from the places that the US has conflict with, but given the temperament and idiocy of our current “leader,” that could pretty much be anywhere soon.
11:50am: I just briefed Todd on the latest in the T.O.P. marijuana scandal (Glenn has his earphones in, acting like he doesn’t care), and Todd said, “Thank god it isn’t G-Dragon though. I don’t know what I would do with myself” and I said, “I KNOW RIGHT” before realizing he was being sarcastic, ugh.
12:10pm: I’m currently eating one of these milk candies. They’re my favorites out of this recent candy batch because they’re Korean and I can read the package because my name is Erin and I’m amazing:
12:31pm: Remember when I said I was amazing? I was just in the kitchen and I couldn’t open my packet of oatmeal and one of my co-workers had to help me and it was mildly embarrassing because I was really trying to handle that shit on my own. I think my grunts and whines of, “Ugh, I can’t do this!” gave me away. It’s not even good oatmeal that’s worth the struggle either. (That would be the dinosaur egg oatmeal that I left at home.) UGH RAINY MONDAY.
Also, Lou has spoken to me 4 times without permission today.
1:48pm: Just came back in from my lunchtime walk and guess what — it’s not raining anymore! Today still sucks though. Some homeless guy snagged me (they always do because I have that deer-in-headlights naivete about my dumb turtle face, I guess) and when I said I didn’t have any change, he decided he wanted to talk about the good ol’ days, so I felt compelled to be his audience as he wove yarns about being a carefree kid and how then you grow up and they only things you think about are life and death, and then he had a massive coughing fit, and now I’m fucking depressed, man.
Also, I finally saw the Umbrella Sky Project at the Arts Festival that everyone has been posting about on Instagram and SORRY PITTSBURGH but my boo Seoul has one that’s much more fabulous, because: Korea.
2:44pm: We just had our weekly meeting and talked extensively about patchouli. Now Glenn is leaving for the day after giving me zero fodder for this liveblog.
2:55pm: UGH I was just filling in Amber on the whole T.O.P. pot scandal (Chooch gleefully pointed out that TOP is pot backward) and Todd started laughing. I called him out on it and he said that in his head, he was thinking, “Run, Amber, run.” SO RUDE!
3:41pm: It’s raining again so this blog post title is still relevant. Also it started raining after Todd left for his lunch break so that’s what he gets for laughing at my somber Kpop talk.
4:44pm: I picked a dumb day to liveblog. There is nothing happening here! So here is a special peek into Glenn’s locker thing:
Amber1 and I put those dead flowers in there over a year ago I think inspite of Todd’s protests (I think he called us Mean Girls) and I’m not sure Glenn even knows it’s there.
Um, all the other stuff is his, though.
4:51pm: WENDY just came over to get candy from the magical candy pumpkin. “What are these?” she asked, holding up one of those aforementioned chicken lollipops so I got really mad and yelled, “IF YOU WOULD HAVE READ MY LIVEBLOG, YOU’D KNOW.” I mean, hello. Anyway, she is like totally grossed out because it’s the shape of a chicken on a spit, and Todd happily pointed out that I, the sanctimonious vegetarian, ate one of those. “There’s something you could liveblog about – your hypocrisy,” Todd suggested smugly and I was so mad. And then Lauren started cracking up because she was thinking of our conversation last week when I said the word “gleeking” and how we became concerned after the fact that it might not mean what I thought it meant. “My friend Chad Green taught me about it in fifth grade!” I cried defensively. “It’s when you spit from under your tongue, typically when eating something sour!” And then Lauren was all, “Oh great, I just trusted you based on something you learned from a fifth grade classmate!” I want to google it now but then it might take a turn like it did a few weeks ago when I was googling Iraqi candy shop.
5:39pm: Hey you guyyyyyys. I’m here in the car with King Uber, aka Henry. He was like “I HAD TO CALL PAYPAL. I GOT HACKED! FOR $2.99! IT WAS FRAUD!” And I was like “You mean this app that Chooch bought?” and showed him the email that I got on my phone. So now Henry is mad that he has a fraudulent son.
Henry made me forward the email to him and he snapped, “WHY IS THERE HANGUL ON THIS?!” Because my email signature is in Korean? Le duh, oppa.
Plus, proof that it was raining today.
I just filled in Henry on my day. “I liveblogged today but it was boring. I think when people found out I was liveblogging, they quit talking to me.”
:(
6:06pm: Still in the car because traffic is terrible and now Henry is threatening to make me take the trolley HOME from work everyday now too as if one way isn’t terrible enough. But anyway, I was just reminded of the best part of today, when I was in the elevator this morning and some broad said she liked my bag and in a cheerful voice that came from one of my happier personalities, I said, “Thanks it’s from the 80s!” And she was like “OK cool.”
6:59pm: Henry’s supposed to be making my dinner but then Chooch interrupted with some kind of fabricated bike crisis and I’m just sitting here getting high off the wonderful tteokbokki fumes, but whatever who cares that all I’ve eaten today was crappy oatmeal and Korean milk candy.
7:29pm: my favorite part of the day! Dinner and Running Man!
8:23pm: “No.” – Henry’s response when I asked him if he wants to say something for my blog. Now we’re watching the hockey game and I feel sick. Remember when I loved James Neal and called him my Prom Date? Well that doucher can fuck right off now. He just looks like a soap opera villain to me, like he was shot and pushed off a cliff by the ISA but then came back to life as a Nashville Predator with an uglier face.
8:41pm: A hearty head shake. That’s wat I got when I asked Chooch if he wanted to say a thing for my blog. STICK A FORK IN THIS THING, IT’S DONE.
8:47pm: Here’s a song for the liveblog. This came on my playlist on the car on the way home from work, causing me to dance zealously with my fists (i.e. rhythmically punching), resulting in Henry roaring, “OK!!!!!”
Jeez.
9:00pm: Nashville fans are trash. TRASHVILLE. Go choke on a catfish. I find it so hard to enjoy hockey anymore.
9:53pm: Well, Henry ditched me about an hour ago for the sweet temptation of bed, leaving me alone with this dreadful hockey game and the ever-biased commentating of NBC. I painted my nails and have a headache but I think I will go and do some more kpopx while imagining that I’m stomping on the entire city of Nashville and their classless, twangy fans. I’M MAD.
10:20pm: crying over hockey and T.O.P. all at once because I’m a gold medal sobber. Boo fucking hoo. No cheesy kimbap for me.
https://instagram.com/p/BU-I1QCA_lQ/
I’d like to point out that I have been blogging since 2001 and this, my friends, this right here is the best I can do anymore.
11:14pm: Penguins lost and I just stress-ate a buttered bun while watching Drew hang off the window screen like she’s auditioning for the cat circus. This is real life, NO GLAMOUR, people!
DREW JUST BROKE SOMETHING. Eh, Henry will clean it up in the morning. On his birthday. HAHA.
In other “blogging just to blog” news, I bought a new phone case and it’s supposed to be delivered tomorrow so no more Unicorn Tears after that. Don’t worry – my new one is certainly not anymore mature.
But it’s very accurate.
11:41pm: OK WOW THX FOR YR PERMISSION??
11:55pm: Well on that note, it’s almost tomorrow so I guess that’s my cue to wrap this shit up. Hopefully tomorrow is sunnier and less boring. I mean, it is Henry’s birthday after all.
On my way to work today, one of the G-Dragon fan accounts I follow on Instagram (DON’T JUDGE) posted this snip of GD laughing from the last Run BIGBANG Scout episode (which was so adorable, btw, and I cried) and it just instantly cheered me up. HIS FACE!
Of course the first thing I did when I got to work was squeal, “DO YOU WANT TO SEE THE CUTEST THING EVER?!” to Glenn, who is the worst audience for these types of inquiries but I’ll never learn.
“Is it puppies or kittens?” he mumbled, not looking up from whatever riveting thing he had on his computer screen. PROBABLY SOME COMMENT SECTION SINCE HE’S A TROLL.
“NO EVEN BETTER IT’S G-DRAGON LAUGHING OMG,” I wheezed, shoving my phone at him.
He only glanced at it and then sighed, closing his eyes in defeat.
“LOOK AT HIM, GLENN!” I yelled.
“I did! I looked once. That’s enough,” he said, resuming his boring, American day.
**********
Later, I was talking to Lori about this and first, she asked me when I’m ever going to learn, but then she asked me when the G-Dragon concert is and I told her July 30.
“I can’t believe I’m going to see his face in real life,” I said all dreamily with googly eyes just like girls did in the 50s when they talked about cute soda jerks or whatever.
“We should make a countdown calendar,” Lori suggested. “I’m going to make one.”
This of course got me all wound up and I excitedly told Glenn and Amber.
“Why do you encourage her?” Glenn asked Lori, while I was busy making Diabolical Finger Steeples at him.
I’m going to make a sparkly dragon to move along all the squares of the countdown calendar!
Sandy overheard this and called out from her office, “How long until the concert?”
“TWO MONTHS AND FIVE DAYS!” I shouted across the floor.
I couldn’t see Sandy from my desk but I bet she was probably repeatedly slamming her hand in a desk drawer at the thought of two more months of G-Dragon anticipation.
And then I told Amber about how Glenn didn’t have the appropriate response to the G-Dragon Laughing video.
“Well she hyped it up as the cutest thing in the world,” Glenn defensively said to Amber.
Well it happened – Wesley’s mom fed Chooch. He came home one day last week and said, “Things got really awkward at Wesley’s. His mom asked me if I wanted a grilled cheese…..I said sure.” Wow. Mega awkward.
Somehow at work yesterday, Glenn, Todd, and I fell down a tennis rabbit hole. I don’t remember how it began but I mistakenly told them about the translucent yellow vinyl folder I kept stuffed with newspaper articles about Andre Agassi and pictures I had crudely drawn of him. (Crude as in amateur and terrible, he didn’t have like, weeners coming out of his mouth or anything like that.) I hate when I give them fuel like this because I know it will come up in the future as a way to make fun of me. Ugh. And then I called Aranxia Sanchez-Vicarrio beefy and those two got all up in arms about how I was essentially just calling her fat like they’re suddenly sensitive to fat-shaming, and I frantically argued that I just meant she was muscular, so Glenn said, “Then just say muscular.” “Yeah, not beefy!” Todd chimed in with his Team Aranxia pin on. Whatever!
Lauren asked me if there are any vegetables I’ve been eating on my Korean diet that I’d like her to try and grow and I was like FUCK YEAH BELLFLOWER so she was like “ok what is that” and I was like “……” So we started googling it and I would like to take this time to accept all of the credit for the super informative things I have accidentally been teaching my coworkers. But seriously I’m obsessed with bellflower this week.
Speaking of Bring Some Home For Daddy, Amber read that blog post and told me that he once tried to hug her too! But her reflexes were less lethargic than mine and she was able to sidestep his malodorous embrace.
Tuesday was the annual Dreaded Finger Prick day at work, a/k/a Wellness Screening. I participate every year because it does something for your health insurance, I never actually read that far into it. Anyway, Glenn and Amber get great jollies out of heckling me every year because they know how I get the vapors just thinking of the impending trauma my fingertip is about to endure. I went up the 28th floor (which gives me anxiety in and of itself) and signed in while the lady at the table was trying to make conversation with me about my name (she was confusing my name with Erin Andrews and I just let her roll with it because my jitters made it sound like she was talking to me from inside a fishbowl and I just wanted to sit down). There was a tiny triage area and I collapsed into a seat next to my co-worker, Lucas. “I’m FREAKING OUT, LUCAS!” I said in lieu of any sort of normal salutation. And then I made him talk to me until it was his turn to go and sit behind a curtain and I was ALL ALONE beneath a leaking thought-bubble of horrible finger pricking tragedies. A few minutes later, an older man in a lab coat named Ray came over and called me back. He immediately started wringing his hands and pretended to bite his nails in spot-on mockery of my visible nerves. “Is it that obvious?” I laughed nervously. “Oh, you’ll be fine!” he insisted, seating me in a chair facing out the window. “Look, you can see Kennywood from here,” he said, gesturing toward the window. “REALLY?” I squealed, unable to contain my gullible delight. “No,” he said, unpacking the pint-sized torture device that was able to fuck my finger to hell and back. OH RAY, YOU FUCKING CARD. His strategy worked though because he made me talk about my favorite Kennywood rides, and he asked me if I like Potato Patch fries (le duh), and it totally distracted me from the blood being pillaged from my finger.
J/K I totally noticed it and it hurt like a motherfucker.
Still, Ray was an absolute delight and the scale said I weighed three pounds less than my scale at home said that morning and all of my cholesterol-y numbers were great – and again, I say Thank You, Korea. You are changing my life in the best ways!
Glenn went up for the Perforation of Ye Olde Phalange and ended up getting Ray too! He claims they traded war stories about me, and Glenn told him at least he doesn’t have to sit behind me all day. :( Then Catherine went up and specifically asked for him when I told her that I weighed three pounds less on his scale, but then everyone kept getting called back before her because the lady at the table kept saying, “She’s waiting for Ray” so then finally Catherine was like FORGET RAY I JUST WANT TO GET THIS OVER WITH so she went back with some lady who, it turned out, was sharing the same scale with Ray so Catherine was happy.
Finally, something about me is highly desirable! That sexy 2.8, boyyyyy.
KCON tickets went on sale today and everyone was counting down with me at work and by everyone I mean that Glenn was counting down for when Ticketmaster was going to make the tickets available and he could go back to listening to his political commentary in peace without me turning around every 30 seconds to let him know where we were in the countdown. (Todd planned his lunch break accordingly and was not in the office when this was happening.) Anyway, I got my KCON tickets! Henry is thrilled. I’M GOING TO SEE TWICE, YOU GUYS! AND G-FRIEND AND CN BLUE AND HIGHLIGHT AND ZION-T AND I’M GOING TO BE AROUND PEOPLE WHO WON’T MAKE FUN OF ME FOR LIKING THIS STUFF!
I think I got made fun of enough at the baby shower on Sunday to last for quite some time. I know making fun of things you don’t understand or like is so cool, but let’s take a break, lol.
Chooch and I went to the grocery store with Henry last Saturday, much to his chagrin. We decided to help him at the self checkout, in spite of his cries of “NO PLZ DON’T NO, OH GOD—” and then proceeded to set off the Needs Assistance alarm three times.
I couldn’t find the black cardigan I usually wear with this shirt so I thought, “WWG-DW?”* and then when there wasn’t a $15,000 Chanel hot pink feathered blazer in my closet, I opted for this ballet shrug that’s been chilling in my dresser since 2000, never worn. I bought it at Express for probably $50 more than it’s worth. #bringingballetshrugsback *(What Would G-Dragon Wear)
Chooch has a date for a dance next week. o.O I don’t have it in me to say anything else about that right now. :(
I was working on my Korean studies last weekend and made it to the have/not have chapter and one of the answers was a name of a BIGBANG song! I already know this word of course, but it was so exciting to learn WHY it’s written this way. (The BIGBANG song is missing that last character up there, because their song title is informal Korean / banmal.)
Henry’s bringing approximately 4 weeks of laundry into the house (Chooch and I have a lot of clothes) while a bunch of teenagers are walking by so I yelled, “HENRY ASK THEM TO HELP YOU” and now he’s all embarrassed/angry/exasperated.
I just asked Henry if he’s going to freak out when Twice sings “TT” at KCON and he said, “No. Why would I?” Then I told him that I feel like I’m going to act extra-erin at KCON, like I think I might go super hard, dummy-style all up in the Prudential Center. Kpop makes me super hyper and giddy.
Chooch texted me today when I was at work to tell me that he got straight As. So, I got KCON tickets.
That’s all for me. We’re going to Cleveland tomorrow to see Emarosa and eat food with our pal Jason so maybe I’ll liveblog / post pictures of Henry once an hour. READ IT OR DON’T.
“What’s wrong? Why are you so flushed?” Amber asked me this morning as she walked by my desk.
I took a few seconds to compose myself before squealing, “I just watched this G-Dragon video,” at which point there was a collective groan of “oh my god” all around me.
But then I let her watch it and she became obsessed with trying to make fingerhearts and by obsessed I mean she practiced doing it for like 15 seconds and then went back to being a professional adult while Glenn was using his hostage eyes to plead for her to take him with her as she walked away.
https://instagram.com/p/BTxyZnGDB0t/
Every time I made someone watch this video today, I would giddily whisper, “OMG what’s he looking for? Oh, oh! Fingerhearts.” And then I would clutch my heart and swoon.
Wendy thought this was dumb but then she too tried to accomplish the perfect heart-shaped placement of the fingers.
She was watching me do it and cried, “Why can’t I do it? My fingers won’t do it right! Why?”
“Because they’re yours,” I shrugged.
“I couldn’t imagine what he was going to pull out of his pocket,” Todd said. “But then it was just fingerhearts. That’s time I’ll never get back.”
Whatever. Lauren thought it was adorable. And Glenn is probably at home right now waving fingerhearts in front of his baby daughter’s face.
Plus random pictures. Bulletpoint posts: the true compost piles of blogging. We’ll start with a random picture of a thing in my house and go from there.
The other day, Chooch asked, “Remember your apple tattoo? Do you still have it?” Um you mean the one that takes up most of my upper right arm? Yes, it’s still there, son.
In order to get Chooch out of the house so that we could surprise him last Saturday, we arranged for Blake and Haley to take him to the gaming place on the Boulevard. I think this place is so dumb – just a room filled with TVs and computers where parents can abandon their children for hours on end, but Chooch and all his weird little friends love this place. Needless to say, Chooch has become chummy (lol, who even uses that word other than me, right now) with the guys who run the place, so Henry stopped up ahead of time and let them know the sitch. Basically, he started a tab which I didn’t even know you could do. He went back the next day to pay it, and Ed told him the total was like $43 or something. Henry was all, “OMG for what?!” So Ed showed him the long list of all of the snacks that Chooch had “purchased” in addition to the hourly rate ($5 a person – Ed is like the cheapest babysitter in town). So Henry came home and was like, “Chooch, the FUCK!?” at which point Chooch blamed Haley, and then Blake blamed Chooch, and this is just the funniest thing ever to me because Henry was so pained over it, haha.
When we went to visit Robbie & Nikki at the hospital after the twins were born, Chooch was all, “Robbie, do you want to go to the gaming place with me today?” Like yeah, little bro, I literally just became a dad but let me ditch the fam and sit in front of a computer for 5 hours with you.
Chooch is friends with these two younger kids that live on the street, and for the sake of not getting in trouble with parents, we’ll just call them J and M. Really though I’m not going to be dragging them through the mud or anything…this time. Anyway, J & M are friends with some kid from their grade named Wesley. I don’t know if he’s new or what but I haven’t heard shit about any Wesley until recently and now HE IS ALL I HEAR ABOUT. Let’s back up. Wesley lives a few streets away and I guess M & J aren’t allowed to go there alone, so they asked Super Brave and Responsible Fifth Grade Chooch to go with them one day. This was about a month ago, I guess. Chooch was reluctant, because he was already hanging out with TWO younger kids, why did he need to add a third to the crew, you know? But he went anyway, and by the time he came home he had been sufficiently infected with the Wesley Bug. “Wesley has TWO TRAMPOLINES,” he said, ruddy cheeks and out of breath from running all the way home in excitement. “AND A POODLE NAMED BELLA, A REALLY COOL OLDER BROTHER NAMED WADE, AND A MOM WHO COOKS!” So it’s been all Wesley, all the time ever since and I am like, “STFU ABOUT WESLEY AND HIS DUMB COOKING MOTHER ALREADY, GOD.” And then he started going to Wesley’s without J & M. “Wesley likes me better than them, anyway,” Chooch said all cockily the other day. “And he doesn’t act like he’s 8. He’s more mature than them.” Oh for God’s sake. So this has been going on for weeks now, this Wesley Mania. Monday night, he had JUST walked into the house after returning from Wesley’s when his phone rang. He answered it and put it on speaker which I absolutely hate, and without any salutation whatsoever, J’s whiny voice blasted through the speaker: “So you went to Wesley’s.” WOW. OK, POSSESSIVE. So Chooch hung up on him immediately and said, “Ugh, I thought I blocked him.” So then they had a text-fight, which had Chooch defending himself like a wife who can’t be trusted: “Oh, so now I need your permission to go to Wesley’s?” he texted, and the feud culminated with J texting: “Do you want to come over?” Ugh kids.
But really though: Wesley and Wade?
We took Henry’s mom to Bob Evans (I originally typed Bob’s Evan. Someone send my brain to the beach please) for her birthday the other night. On the way out, she picked up a jar out of a barrel and asked, “How much sodium do you think is in this?” Henry squinted at it and said, “Mom, that’s a candle.” We all had a good laugh, but then a few moments later, in the parking lot, she asked earnestly, “No but really, what’s worse – a lot of sodium, or a lot of salt?”
I’ve been taking turmeric supplement things for the last month or so, after several people recommended it. At first, Henry was like, “I AM NOT BUYING THIS, THAT’S DUMB” but then his mom randomly mentioned one day that she’s been taking turmeric because some talk show or Steve Harvey told her too, so now suddenly it’s not some witch doctor bullshit drug that can’t be trusted, so he bought me a bottle. Today, after choking back my daily dose, I held the bottle up and said to Glenn, “I don’t feel any different at all.” He asked how long I had been taking them and I told him a month or so but admitted that there were days that I forgot, of course. “Well, what’s it supposed to do?” he asked, so I read the thing about helping with inflammation that’s all big and bold on the bottle. “But, I’m not particularly inflamed, though,” I said with a shrug, realizing that perhaps I didn’t need turmeric’s help after all. “No, you’re just inflaming,” Glenn muttered.
I CANT BELIEVE I AM GOING TO BE UNDER THE SAME ROOF AS G-DRAGON.
Todd lost his ID badge (literally days after saving it from falling into a sewer grate which I just think is the funniest thing ever) so he asked me to go with him to Reception so he could get a temporary one. Look – I get it. I hate going to other floors alone too. Our department doesn’t really mingle much with other floors. Anyway, the receptionist asked me, “Do you need one too, or are you guys just traveling together?” For some reason, this made me laugh, because I started picturing us backpacking throughout the law firm.
“I don’t see you lasting very long as a backpacker,” Glenn said when I told him about this the next day. (LOOK, IT FELT LIKE A GREAT STORY AT THE TIME OK.) “Yeah I know. My backpack would just be filled with junk,” I said in total agreement.
Interestingly, this was the second time that day I found myself in a conversation about backpacks. The first was earlier that morning when I told Lauren that my high school backpack was full of toys. She wasn’t surprised.
One of my co-workers is grooming me to take over editing our department’s Wiki page after she retires. I don’t want to make it sound like it’s a big deal but it’s a big deal ok. Anyway, she was off several days last week so I thought it would be fun to replace the WELCOME SPRING picture with a picture of my horrible candy bowl, with the caption “Come get some.” It lasted two days before Cheryl came back and replaced it. My group had our weekly meeting on Monday and My Favorite Work Friend Amber (and this has nothing to do with the fact that she has the ability to deny my PTO requests now) thanked me for revamping our group’s reference page, which launched me on a crybaby tangent about how apparently I can be given rights to edit all this shit but god forbid I should ever change the picture. “Cheryl took down my pumpkin and replaced it with some dumb, generic tree,” I whined. The next day, I found out from Glenn that the “dumb, generic” tree picture was Gayle’s and I know this because he forwarded me an email from her that said “That dumb generic tree picture is mine.” OOPS SORRY GAYLE but this is very funny to me now! I told Henry and when I couldn’t stop laughing, he was like, “how do you have any friends at work?” Apparently Lauren knew this also and said she didn’t have a chance to kick me before I went any deeper into my freshly dug grave.
Sometime after buying MY G-DRAGON TICKETS on Tuesday, I was walking back from the kitchen when Amber, who was ahead of me, stopped and asked if Henry and I booked a hotel yet for the show. “No, but I’d sleep on someone’s floor if I had to, I don’t even care!” I said, still riding that high of snagging VIP tickets. “What if you slept on G-DRAGON’s floor?” Amber goaded, and then I got all dreamy-eyed and weird and yelled, “Ugh, why did you have to say that now I can’t stop thinking about G-Dragon’s floor!” and this was right as we rounded the corner to where our desks are, so Glenn heard the tail-end. “How long do we have to hear about this?” he asked in annoyance. “She started it!” I cried, pointing at Amber. “I was just walking along quietly and she brought it up!” UGH.
The other day, I popped into CVS on my break and the old lady at he register flipped out over my phone case and started calling her co-workers over to see it. The manager, a youngish guy somewhere in his 20s I guess, asked my permission to Snapchat it and I was like, “Go for it?” I’ve had it for over a year so it’s a bit worn, but here it is:
Speaking of my phone, I actually left it on my desk when I left yesterday and had to come back up to get it. Lori was like HOW. I’m mean really, this case makes my phone 3x bigger it feels like yet I still somehow left without it
Remember when I wasted 7 years of my life obsessing over Jonny Craig, completely unaware that G-Dragon was only 6,781 miles away? LE SIGH.
The other day, Chooch came home (from Wesley’s, ugh) and his hand was bleeding but he didn’t know why. While Henry was calmly asking him questions (such as “did you fall”), I was busy screaming, “STIGMATA!”
Todd just sadly admitted that some of this Kpop stuff is sticking with him and that if he mentioned it to any of his friends they’d be like, “…………..”
I’m really excited for Henry to stand in the pit at this G-Dragon show and wave a light stick. “He should just use a lighter. Maybe there’s an open flame rule and he can get kicked out. Tell him to start planning ahead,” Glenn suggested after I showed him pictures of what light sticks are in the Kpop world.
OMG you guys! Last night, Chooch and I went for a walk to the boulevard when guess who we ran into?! DAVID FUCKERBITCH. Chooch was like, “Oh god no, please don’t, oh god” but it was too late – I had whipped out my best glare and wouldn’t let him out of my sight. He was on his bike with some other hooligan, and he kept trying to get Chooch’s attention but Chooch was all, “NOT TODAY. NOT WITH MY MOM. SHE’S A LOOSE CANNON” so he pulled me into CVS and away from conflict, but not before I loudly said, “THEY LOOK LIKE HOOLIGANS” which is clearly my favorite word to use in this situation. Chooch just rolled his eyes and we moved on with our lives, until after CVS when we continued down the boulevard to go to Scoops, and DAVID LOSERVILLE was back, tooling around on his bike in front of the Las Palmas taco cart. We were waiting to cross the street when he wheeled on over to us, licking his FunDip or whatever dumb candy he had that was turning his vulgar tongue blue. He just sat there, leaning on the handlebars of his bike, staring and smiling at Chooch, trying to get a reaction from her. “Is there a problem?” I asked, causing Chooch to groan. “No, I’m just going to stare at him until he looks at me,” David Toothrot replied in an obnoxiously sing-song voice. “AWKWARD,” I said, as the light turned and we were finally able to cross the street. “YOU JUST MADE IT WORSE,” Chooch spat. “As if it’s not already bad enough that I’m walking down the boulevard WITH MY MOM.” OMG ew, shut your face, Chooch! I’m way cooler than a mom. And besides, we were going to get ice cream while David BrokedownBike was out there, I don’t know, panhandling or whatever it was he was doing. It was 8:30 at night – GO HOME KID.
By the time we got home, I was so amped up over this run-in. I excitedly filled in Henry, who just frowned and said, “Wow Erin, that’s great. Are you happy now?” WHY YES, I AM.
I came to work and told Glenn and Todd, and they were just like, “Wow. Way to bully a fifth grader.” Then Todd said I should create a fake Instagram, like I’m a kid, so I can bully him and I was like, “THAT’S A GREAT IDEA I COULD CATFISH HIM TOO” and Todd quickly said, “I WAS KIDDING DON’T DO THAT!” while Glenn was like, I don’t know, beating his head off the desk.
I decided a few hours ago that I was going to be nice to Wendy today but then just now I told her she’s dumb, so maybe I’ll try again tomorrow. It should be easy since she won’t be here.
And we’ll end on a beautiful G-Dragon note because I’M GOING TO SEE HIM ON BIRTHDAY.
