Chooch went camping yesterday with the teen center and Henry is working (when isn’t he anymore), so I’m sitting here alone on a Saturday morning getting way too intimate with my thoughts and I don’t like it! The morning started off great though – I lost some weight and decided to try on these old Mudd jeans that I have been hoarding since I was 20 because they were favorite jeans ever and also a tangible artifact of the Before I Got Fat era that I like to cling to because I just can’t ever let go of the past.
So I tried these jeans on, a juniors size 9 from 1999/2000 so god only knows what that would translate to now, and they were too big on me. Which makes sense, because I have some juniors jeans now that are 7s and too big, and in “regular lady” sizes, I’m a 4 and 6 depending on the brand.
All of this you would think should make me fall to my knees in happy tears, because yay all my hard is paying off (and it is HARD WORK – I exercise super religiously and the shit I do is maddening), but instead I’m just sitting here fixating on how I still feel like the giant in the room and how I still hate my legs and wearing shorts makes me feel so self-conscious and my underarms are still flabby (I make Henry watch me as I make my arm fat swing like a pendulum and he is so over me) and so on and so forth, like one of my elementary school teachers used to say.
My brain is trash. Absolute garbage. Henry is right – I will literally never be happy with myself, no matter what the scale or the tags on my clothes say. I’m fucking hopeless, lol.
But I will still exercise my fat face off today and tomorrow and the next day because I have a legit addiction.
Anyway, in other “vintage Erin clothing” news, I go through these phases every so often when I start mourning the loss of my favorite t-shirt. Let me tell you about it! So, when I was in high school, maybe this was 1996, Nick at Nite had this super-hyped marathon of Sid & Marty Kroft shows that they dubbed Puf-a-Palooza. I was OBSESSED because why wouldn’t I be. I wanted Sid & Marty Kroft to be my daddies, you guys. Their brains were…well, about as warped as mine! During the commercial breaks, ads would run for a commemorative, limited edition t-shirt, and this back in the day when you had to actually PICK UP A LANDLINE and call to order! So I made my mom do it and I treasured that shirt:
This sadly isn’t a picture of my shirt, but one that I got from Google.
I don’t know why I never brought it with me when I moved out, if that was even the reason why I don’t have it now. So I texted my mom, urgently, and asked her if she knew where it could be. She said that she thought I still had some clothes in the attic and that she would look BUT IT HAS BEEN A WEEK NOW WHERE IS MY SHIRT.
Hold on, I’m texting her about it again…
Anyway, I was whining to Henry about it and he said it’s the first time he’s ever heard of this. WHAT. This was such a huge part of my life?! My HR Puf-n-stuf and Sigmund the Sea Monster plushies have been on a shelf in Chooch’s room since he was BORN?! Henry never wondered why I had those!? Or a boxed set Kroft collection on VHS?!
Wow, Henry. Why to keep up with my life.
Anyway, I want that shirt back. I looked online and every once in awhile one goes up on eBay but it’s always like, an XL and $500. I haven’t told my mom that though because if she finds it, she will definitely sell it, lol.
(She hasn’t responded to my text yet.)
The best part of that shirt was that it was a ringer tee and those are favorite kinds of t-shirts! 1970s forever!
In other news, Chooch and I had another Summer Breakfast Club meeting yesterday since it was my dreaded Friday late shit (and I really annoying one at that). We pre-planned to go to Pitaland for this one because even though we shop there regularly (Henry is like part-Syrian or something and needs to eat pita and yogurt to stay alive) we don’t eat at the cafe very often. Actually, it’s been like three years since Chooch and I last ate breakfast there, and every time we’re there I say to Henry, “Why don’t we ever eat here?” and he just shrugs.
We arrived right after they opened and enjoyed the hustle and bustle of the morning deliveries and the soothing Middle Eastern music playing throughout the store. It was really relaxing. And then while waiting for our food, we mused about how everyone else has beautiful cash money and America has dirty green bills. So plain.
My cup of Arabic coffee was SUPERB, my friends.
I ordered the shankleesh and eggs and knew immediately that Chooch was suffering from order remorse.
He ordered the Fatteh without remembering what it was, and said it was “fine” but that the yogurt tasted “weird” a/k/a it tasted the way it was supposed to taste because it was real yogurt and not like, strawberry banana Dannon. So I sighed and said, “Do you want to switch?” and he happily took me up on my offer which was partially selfish on my end because I tried his and it was DIVINE. Chick peas and pine nuts swimming in warm, savory yogurt on a bed of crispy pita? Fuck yes.
I ate almost all of it and felt so full for the rest of the morning which usually doesn’t happen. I almost always leave breakfast feeling so unsatisfied and ready for second breakfast (unless I get pancakes, then I want to throw up) even though my stomach is like, “Girl, don’t do it.” So this was a great breakfast!
Then the Pitaland lady came over and gave us two giant, puffy pieces of freshly made, still warm pita and we were like, “BLESS!”
Another great breakfast meeting of the minds. It’s really nice to spend quality time together i.e. commiserate over all the ways Henry has pissed us off recently.
(I mean, he definitely didn’t piss me off last night when he finally booked our trip-within-a-trip flight to Tokyo!)
In other Chooch news, he was at the library last week when the power went out on the Boulevard. He wrote this about it on Instagram and I don’t know why, but it just cracked me up:
Me at the library: playing some good, quality Minecraft.
Power: I’m outta here.
Lady next to me: AW DAMMIT! I was on the last page of my Women in Religion essay for Carlow University and the deadline is tomorrow!
Me: that sounds fricking boring. *leaves*
“Who even ARE women in religion, anyway?” Chooch asked me later. “Mary….Jebediah. No, not Jebediah.”
Wow, perhaps we should have enforced CCD on the kid after all.
And to conclude this mish mash of thought sundry, I almost wasn’t around to even make this post because I ALMOST GOT HIT BY A CAR ON WEDNESDAY! I was crossing the street on the way to work, right in front of my building. I had the walk sign, and it wasn’t even counting down yet. To my left, traffic was stopped at a red light. But suddenly, when I was in the middle of the street, some fucking piece of shit in a muscle car decided that he couldn’t wait any longer for the light to turn green so he revved his engine and FLOORED IT, speeding through the intersection so fast that my hair actually blew forward. I had JUST stepped onto the other lane, so if he had done that .0001 seconds sooner, I would have been a goner. As it was, he very nearly clipped the back of me. It was so startling that I actually jumped in the middle of the street and screamed “OH MY GOD!!” and there were people on the sidewalk who were yelling and gasping, too. Some guy spat, “Yeah well, he ain’t going nowhere” because he immediately hit another red light, this time with other cars in front of him. So he did all of that to travel like, 200 feet.
I couldn’t stop shaking for about an hour after that. When I told Glenn, he looked super amused because he didn’t understand the GRAVITY of the situation. “This is why I think every street should have a pedestrian bridge!” I cried. “I don’t care if I have to walk all the way to the other end to cross, I will happily do so if it means a car won’t smash me!”
“And can we call them Erin Bridges?” Glenn asked dryly. THANKS FOR THE IDEA GLENN. I will make sure to suggest that in my next letter to the mayor!!!!!!!!!!!
Let’s end this on a good note, with this sizzler from Baekhyun (there’s an official video as well but I love these live performances more):
One of the verbs that Jiyong has been making me study is in this song so I excitedly texted her “백현 says 원해 in his new song!” and she was proud of me lol.