Jul 102020
 

Here I am, reporting from the Pioneer Ave construction site. Kitchen is still not done. SOS. How hard can this really be? Anyway, here are five things going on right now that may or may not be kitchen-related, and no, the irony of a person who has little use for a kitchen complaining about not having a functioning one is not lost on me, thanks. (Literally, in our team meeting this week, Glenn butted in to ask, “Do you even know what a kitchen is for?” and I said, “YES, IT’S FOR HAVING A WINDOW WHERE I SPY ON MY NEIGHBORS, NICE TRY, GLENN.”)

  1. THE YACHT ROCK WEEKEND

I mentioned in my dumb weekend update post that I went to Home Depot with Henry but what I failed to mention was that I stayed in the car and listened to the YACHT ROCK STATION which I never knew existed. Yacht rock is my favorite subgenre of soft rock so I was perfectly fine to hang back while he was in the store, especially when England Dan and John Ford Coley came on and I am happy to report that I still know all the words to their masterpiece “I’d Really Love to See You Tonight,” which I fucking SCREAMED theatrically. Oh shit I love that song so much. Then Grover Washington’s Just the Two Of Us was next and I was shrieking “BUILDING CASTLES IN THE SKY” like a fucking maniac, please send me back to the 80s.

(Side note: that song always makes me thinks of the time Henry sent Chooch and me to CVS to buy a newspaper and we were panicking because we couldn’t find it, but then “Just the Two Of Us” came on and I found the newspapers! WE CAN MAKE IT IF WE TRY!)

(Side note 2: on Twitter last week, I erroneously said that it reminded me of the time Chooch and I conquered the RedBox but that was apparently a separate incident which also involved CVS. We have many incidents.)

Anyway, I was really inspired by this station, so when we went back home, I blasted more yacht rock while Henry worked on the kitchen and every once in awhile he’d emerge in time for me to ask him  things like, “Did you dance to Paul Davis’s ‘Cool Night’ at your prom?” and then when the video for Key Largo came on, it was “Did you ever dress like Bertie Higgins?” He actually had me convinced for a second that he did.

2. The Soft Rock Encyclopedia Girl

All this yacht rock over the reason had me going through lots of feelings, and that in addition to the fact that I talked to my friend Carol last week had me thinking a lot about The Bad Place where she and I shared an office and also where Henry and I met thousands of years ago. For as many shitty (and I mean S-H-I-T-T-Y) memories that I have of that place, I have some good ones too, and also some neutral ones.

One of the things I remembered thanks to yacht rock triggering, was how the owners of the company, a pair of older-man brothers who I guess were in their 60s at the time, found out that I, a 20-year-old girl who loved goth music, was a fountain of knowledge when it came to the lighter side of rock. I can’t help it, I grew up with LiteFM swarming all around me! I spent 90% of my childhood in my pappap’s house, in his car, and in restaurants, and guess what was playing in all of those places? SOFT ROCK.

Anyway, whenever I would have to go into the bosses’ office (usually for some dumb reason like getting their lunch order or being bullied by their meat-thrusting—no, literally; I was a vegetarian working in an actual meat place and they loved to fucking torment me. There isn’t enough therapy in the world to help me get over some of the shit I went through there LOLugh), they would love to say, “QUICK! Who sings this?!” I mean, sometimes that would be the actual reason why they called me into their office in the first place, because they actually couldn’t remember who sang something. They thought it was wild that I knew about this “old stuff” even though some of it was only from the 80s, it wasn’t like classical music or something.

I will never forget this one time in particular when I knew who Aaron Neville was and one of them was so entertained by this that he slammed his glass of whiskey down and howled.

I can still hear them. “Call the girl in here and see if she knows!”

(Yeah. I was “the girl” for 4 years. It was super awesome.)

3. COFFEE TABLE REFURB

Several years ago—wow, maybe around 8??—we found this cheap-ass coffee table at Goodwill and made it into a photo collage which was great until someone spilled water on it and we found out that Henry hadn’t sealed it good enough so one part of it started to rise up. The underneath of it was like particle board or something so it basically ballooned.

You can click here to see the old table:

Future Heirloom: Fini!

Then, over the years, some of the photos just became irrelevant (see also: they featured people who paddled their douche canoes right the fuck over me) so I was like, “Bro, we gotta change up this table.” So Henry ripped out the center and we repainted the table, then ordered the new pictures, which–surprise surprise–are all from our Korea trips because I can’t imagine ever tiring of looking at those, lol.

So now I have all of these pictures ready to go but the kitchen takes precedence, so we’re basically using a piece of unfinished wood as our coffee table. Truly, our house is a fucking wreck right now and I could cry, but one day, everything will be nice and COVID will be a chapter in a closed book and you guys (anyone? hello?) can come over and pretend like my house didn’t recently have a torn up kitchen and two holes in the ceiling from where the bathroom is leaking and the landlord hasn’t fixed it yet. This might not be until 2025 and it could be a completely didn’t house in a different town by then so don’t ask me for directions just yet.

4. TAEMIN – DOOR

This might be my favorite pin of all time. Pins (mostly just kpop and horror designs) are the ultimate impulse purchases for me so when I saw this Taemin design on Etsy, I didn’t even hesitate. Buying myself little gifts here and there is how I’m surviving the pandemic, OK?! (Well, that and diligently wearing a mask and social distancing.) This pin is a commemoration of Taemin’s legendary “Door” performance and the pin maker really nailed the vibes. Usually, when I post kpop stuff on Instagram, only fellow kpop stans like or comment, but this time, a lot of my friends liked it and some of them were even like “ok, that’s pretty awesome.” I mean, you can’t deny it!

Anyway, please enjoy Taemin’s “Door” performance, because I haven’t shared a Taemin video in a hot minute! (He’s supposed to have a comeback this summer and I’m over here waiting, and waiting, and wai-HEYHEYHEYHEY-ting.)

5. Nightly Walk with Chooch

Just got back from a nightly neighborhood walk with Chooch. I like these walks because it’s like being part of an ambling, rambling talk show where I rarely get a word in edgewise, but I learn so much about my kid. Tonight’s route took us into the bowels of Brookline and it was borderline alarming when Chooch started out all of the houses he’s sold cookie dough to in the past, you know, when we didn’t know he was walking around like an under-aged door-to-door salesman, cold-calling Yinzers. So that’s always cool.

But then we got to this one block and Chooch said, “Oh, this is a dead-end, btw.”

“I know,” I said in a sneer-tone. “I saw the No Outlet sign.”

“Ooooh, is that what that means? I always thought it meant there was no electricity.”

OMG you guys. He wasn’t kidding either. That’s our gifted son!

**********

Well, that’s a wrap. My stomach hurts because I had to make my own dinner tonight while Henry was at Lowe’s for the 87th time. Good bye.

  One Response to “Where I List 5 Things on a Day Called Friday.”

  1. That video was beautiful, though I had difficulty hearing it over the sound of diesel MOTORS in this joint.

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