Oh Honestly, Erin

I. There was a water leak one day last week at work, nearly right above Gayle’s desk. It must have happened over night and by the time I got there in the morning, a yellow WET FLOOR sign was in place and there was this orange industrial fan thing that turned the corridor into a wind tunnel. It made me feel like I was walking through an 80s hair metal video, like I was Tawny Kitaen.  HAHA OK LET’S NOT GO THAT FAR. I accused Glenn of causing the leak, and cried sabotage. “Don’t you think it would have been over your desk, then?” he droned. Valid point, Work Enemy. 

That fan was on all day long and it was aimed directly at Lauren, who eventually succumbed and put on her jacket. None of us could hear each other talking either which was either a good thing or a bad thing depending on who you asked, I guess. 

II. We went to visit our pal Patty on Sunday at the nursing facility she currently resides. We stopped in the activity center briefly, where Patty encouraged Chooch to play the piano. At first he just pressed down on one key and I was like, “Ugh my kid is so rude, sorry he thinks he’s too cool to play the piano for you guys, kbye” but then he pulled out the bench, sat down, and played some jazzy tune his teacher Lavendar taught him and I was like “DID I KNOW YOU COULD DO THAT?!” All the ladies and one of the nurses loved it and he got a hearty round of applause AND a popsicle for his efforts. He was satisfied. 

The best part was that midway through the song, Henry was walking down the hall toward us and could hear the piano and thought there was some entertainment going on in there – little did he know our son was the entertainment. 

He barely practices but somehow manages to wing. SO JEALOUS. I have zero musical talent. I was decent at clarinet but I had to work hard at thy shit. This kid can hear a song and figure out how to play it.  What a jerk. 

Lavender is also teaching Chooch how to play the drums now too so PLEASE GOD, LET HIM HAVE A FUTURE IN MUSIC. 

III. I went nuts of nowhere the other day and screamed, “Every time I think about the G-Dragon concert, I feel like I’m going numb!”

Henry said sadly, “Yeah. Me too.”

I honestly haven’t been this excited for a concert since the first time I saw the Cure!

HIS COMEBACK ALBUM COMES OUT ON JUNE 8th! I might have to take the day off work. 

IV.  Chooch plucked this plant-thing out of the ground two years ago when we were visiting Octavia in Savannah because I thought it was a rogue succulent in the wild. It was only about three inches tall then and now look at it! Henry said that’s because it’s a weed. No, YOU’RE a weed, Henry!!

(Actually, I’m pretty scared of it. It has a reptilian quality about it and sometimes I half expect it to start hissing at me. :/)

V. Lastly, here is my current favorite song that I put on everyday as soon as I get in the car after work:

Here are some pictures I took over the last several days, before some motherfucker piece of shit bombed an Ariana Grande concert. I seriously just can’t take it anymore – WHY CANT SUPERHEROES BE REAL?! WHEN WILL CHRIS PRATT SAVE THE WORLD?! Literally nowhere is safe. Nowhere. 

Don’t you sometimes wish you could be a cat, completely oblivious to the explosions and rapes and obstruction of justice going on in the world? Oh, to be Peen Lop, lounging on a devil rug with Pink Mousey, if only for a day. 

A great distraction of mine is to constantly watch South Korea tourism videos on YouTube. Above is what Chooch’s face looked like when I made him watch the fortieth vlog of Jeju Island. (They recently unveiled a forest named after G-Dragon! I AM GOING.)

Drew getting ready to take a bite out of Chooch’s delicious arm. 

My car thought I was listening to Winger and not the smooth Kpop boy group, Winner. 

After Chooch graciously posed for photos at Buttermilk Falls, Henry had to hurry and find somewhere to eat because he knew he was running out of time before the Hanger Eclipse occurred. Honestly, there is a small window of time when Chooch and I are in good spirits and if we’re late for a feeding by even fifteen minutes, get ready for heads to spin and pea soup to fly. Luckily, Henry found a place called Ree’s and he insists we’ve eaten there before but I DO NOT RECALL. We had great service though even though some other waitress came over and tricked me into doing her job for her by having me replace the sugar and sweeteners. 

Ugh, work. 

Anyway this place ruled because they had veggie wraps and one of my favorite kinds of French fries. Not the elusive Good Kinds (you wouldn’t understand) but the thin, greasy, golden ones that are just so wonderful that I cleaned the plate of them and then felt sick for the rest of the day because French fries are not a regular staple of my K-diet and my stomach was like ABORT ABORT WHERE IS THE KIMCHI. 

Afterward, we went to the Beaver Valley Mall because that’s where the closest Game Stop was located and if you must know, I had to bribe my child with a DS game in order for him to willingly pose for portraits. 

Ugh I hate this!

Anyway, they didn’t have what he wanted, but we sure enjoyed meandering about a mall that looked like it hasn’t been updated since the 70s but still somehow had patrons milling about it. 

On the way out, Henry found a tiny bottle of disappearing ink in the mulch outside the entrance, and Chooch forgot all about fidget spinners and Nintendo DS games for a few minutes while he squirted invisible ink all over Henry’s back. It was great. Team Chooch.

(Dont worry, he got his dumb game later one when he and I walked to the Exchange in Dormont and the sales guy and I awkwardly touched hands when I was paying for the game and Chooch thought it was the funniest thing ever while my soul was slowly crushing in a vice of human contact.)

The next day, we went to the Strip to hit up the Asian markets, which is the only time I will joyfully tag along with Henry because it’s where I get all my candy for the Pumpkin of Horrors (which hasn’t been too horrible lately, except that something in there apparently pulled out one of Sandy’s fillings, so we can’t drop the “Horrors” just yet). But we also usually get a package of Samanco, which is the ice cream version of carp bread, and filled with wonderful red bean. Chooch just recently decided he likes red bean so when we go to S. Korea, he’ll be living off of red bean ice cream, hotteok, and, I don’t know, candy probably. Maybe we’ll pack some astronaut food for him. 

Henry made me bibimbap for dinner Sunday night and then dropped me off at the Balance & Composure show with a full and happy belly. 

Waited so long for the Twin Peaks return to finally happen and then of course I wasn’t home to watch it live. Henry and I watched the first episode today after work. I need some time to process, but I’m definitely along for the ride. I’m hoping it will inspire me to finally finish the painting I started three years ago! (It just needs some detailing but I’m the laziest fake artist you’ll ever meet. Planets have to be properly aligned for me to feel inspired these days, I guess.)

And here’s a Sistar video for good measure. Sweet dreams. 

ETA: nooooooooooo

“Touch My Medal”

A few weeks ago, I was walking home from CVS. It was the day of the Pittsburgh Marathon. There were people ahead of me who were waking too slow and I didn’t feel like passing them so I crossed over to the other side of the street which I rarely walk on.

THESE ARE ALL IMPORTANT FACTS CONDUCIVE TO MY STORY. 

So I’m walking, walking, walking when suddenly, from the opened passenger door of a parked car comes a familiar sounding “Hello!” Shit, I think, slowing my roll. I looked over and sure enough it’s JOE, the neighborhood Mr. Atlas who loves to strut around town in the summer in semi-indecent runners shorts and a greased-down mega-tanned body. He’s probably in his late 50s so it’s a little much, you know?

(Sorry all you quinquagenarians.)

Anyway, if there are any long-time readers left on this sinking ship, they might remember Joe as the man who ever so briefly deemed himself our official lawn mower back in, say, 2006 or 2007. Except he would always show up unexpectedly and then want to get paid and I never had cash on me! So then it turned it A Thing, like the paperboy on Better Off Dead, and Henry one day was like “Wait–why is he even cutting our grass anyway?”

I think he was the official grasscutter of whoever was living next to us at the time (some guy named Fish, I think), and I happened to be outside at some completely inopportune moment, probably with Chooch’s chubby baby-body clinging to me, rendering me unable to flee with the quickness, and I just couldn’t remember the word “no.”

So that’s how Joe started cutting our grass.

Then one day he decided he was going to be our personal landscaper as well when he saw an unplanted bed of flowers on the porch. He came at me with this grand blueprint involving Italian mulch filling up a tin triangle of our yard, with the price tag of $70. At the price, I suddenly remembered how to say no in 8 languages, including whichever one that is that involves a cool, swift kick to the nuts. German, probably.

OR RUSSIAN. 

So, after that rejection and having to chase down one last $7, Joe never came around again. We still see him all the time around town, but he always pretends like he doesn’t see us, those cheap motherfuckers at 3021 who don’t love their yard seventy dollars worth.

(We live on a main drag in Brookline, guy. I’m not paying $70 to have some drug addict or wino stumbling home from the bar at 2 in the afternoon vomit all up in the Italian mulch and petunias. I literally JUST watched some asshole puke on the sidewalk near our house and then I almost STEPPED in it the next day. So fucking gross.)

So back to the Pittsburgh Marathon day. Joe is sitting in the passenger side of a parked car, one leg out on the sidewalk, cordially saying hello to me like he’s so excited to see me after all these years.

I said hello back and figured that would be the end of it, but then he asked me how I’ve been and if there’s one thing I love doing, IT’S TALK ABOUT MYSELF ALL FUCKING DAY LONG, so that was enough to get me to linger for an additional second.

But it was just a fucking ploy to brag to me about how he ran in the marathon that day.

“How come I didn’t see you down there?” he asked me in a gross, flirtatious chide. And then I became acutely aware of the fact that before I left the house, I realized my lips were stained with the black icing I was using on the baby shower cookies and I had used HOT PINK lipstick to cover it up for the time being. I mean, my lips were practically beacons for my bordello, a neon sign displaying my going rate.

I fought the urge to wipe it off with the back of my hand, because then I’d just look like I woke up from a bender, so instead I politely said, “Because I don’t run” and almost started telling him that I’m more of a Kpop dancer before I realized that WAIT A MINUTE, I was trying end this conversation, not open up a side topic with dance numbers. 

I hoped that would be the end, please let me leave, release me from your small talk chains.

“Do you want to see my medal?” he asked.

I mean…kind of?

I shrugged. “Sure.”

He lifted it from his neck and I pretended to be really amazed but look bro, it ain’t the fucking Secret of NIMH amulet.

“You can touch it,” he urged, thrusting it toward me.

UGH SO I TOUCHED HIS FUCKING MEDAL, OK?! I DID IT.

UGH it probably had so much of his sweat dried to it.

———————————————————————————-

“The Secret Life of Chooch”

When I came home from work on Tuesday, Chooch immediately started jawing off about how we didn’t pack him a lunch for his track meet that day, how could we, we’re the worst, etc etc.

But let’s back up a few hours.

Earier that afternoon, Henry sent me a screenshot of Chooch’s school’s Facebook page, which I do NOT follow because I don’t want any of them knowing me. (“Oh my god, can you imagine if the school found your blog?” Todd laughed. “‘That lady’s a MOM?!'” And then I laughed too but it’s only kind of funny considering that’s already happened to me once at a different school.)

So this screenshot. Back to the screenshot.

It was a picture of the boys track team at their meet earlier that day.

And Chooch was front and center in that picture.

“Chooch is on the track team?” I texted back.

“Apparently,” Henry said.

THIS IS HOW WE FOUND OUT THAT NOT ONLY DOES HIS SCHOOL HAVE A TRACK TEAM, BUT OUR SON IS ON IT.

So Henry and I let him play out his sob story about how he was the only kid without a lunch (hello, he never packs a lunch! He eats the school lunch everyday!), and then when he finished, we started firing questions at him about this so-called track team.

“When do you even practice?” I asked.

“We only practiced once, yesterday after lunch,” Chooch said calmly because this kid knows he can weasel his way out of any conflict.

“Shouldn’t there have been a paper or something that we needed to sign?” Henry asked.

“There was. I signed it,” Chooch said with a shrug.

“What do you even do in track, anyway?” I asked him later.

“Long-jump. I came in sixth.” Long jump?? I didn’t even know he could short jump!

Ugh, come talk to me when you come in at least second, kid.

P.S. I wonder who that message is from in Henry’s Facebook screenshot? PROBABLY HIS GF, OBV. What if he proposes to her and not me?! Whatever–he’s taking me to see G-Dragon, not her. I win. 

Twice’s new single came out today and now I’m even more excited to see them next month ahhhh get your lightstick ready, Henry! (AND NO THATS NOT A EUPHEMISM…OR IS IT.)

Henry gave this video his highest score yet: “it’s ok.”

I can’t wait to get everyone at work to make antennae with their hands. Jjirit jjirit!