a crime, a tine, and a whine almost make a rhyme

Some notable things that have happened recently:

Last week, I got this super official TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT email from Etsy. Apparently, Mattel did not like that some of my serial killer cards had KEN AND BARBIE in the listing name. Look, I’m not the one who named the Canadian serial killer couple “The Ken and Barbie Killers.” And apparently it’s OK to completely crib the official Barbie font and use it on Etsy products, but the names of actual people are considered infringement. MMmm. So now I have to just re-list the items using like, K*n and B*rbie or Ben and Karbie, who the fuck cares. It just made me laugh because we do such a large amount of trademark and patent work at the firm where I work so being on the other end of it was wild.

OK, not “wild” but “mildly interesting,” maybe.

I know that this incident isn’t Etsy’s fault per se, but Etsy in general has just been so shitty these last few years and I really need to take my ball and find a new playground. I’m just so lazy and to be honest, I haven’t even made anything new for Etsy in probably two years. We just keep selling the same old stock. I keep saying that I want to phase out the true crime stuff and just focus on general pop culture and expand my Kpop shop to include a bigger variety of items, but bitch, when. Where. How. I say I don’t have time but then all I’m doing is going for walks, reading books, and watching YouTube videos while complaining about being bored. Rut, I’m in you.

In “weekend news,” I was washing the dishes on Saturday (yes, we’re old-school pioneer folk up in here, only manual dish washing for us) when my hand slipped on the sponge I was using to rigorously exfoliate a fork, and one of the tines got me good on the meaty part of my palm below my thumb. It fucking HURTS still. It broke skin and I whined about it sporadically over the course of the weekend, to which Henry would give me the “it can’t be that bad” sneer at which point I will reiterate that it broke my motherfucking precious-baby skin, OK. Let’s not be cunty about someone else’s silverware wound.

The weird part is that this happened a week before the yearly anniversary of my St. Forktrick’s Day injury from the 90s, long-time readers of OHE or unfortunate decades-long acquaintances of mine right remember as the day my dad chucked a fork at me while I was setting the table and mouthing off to him and it hit my knuckle and then my mom had to take me to the doctor to make sure it wasn’t broken. FUN TIMES IN KELLYLAND.

Speaking of the 90s, I made the fatal mistake of stopping on One Day last week while scrolling through Netflix. I was looking for a series with SHORT episodes, none of this movie-length bullshit, and after seeing One Day come up a fistful of times, I finally hovered over the synopsis. Seeing that it took place in the late 80s and through the 90s was appealing to me so I put it on, thinking it would be fluff, something mindless to watch while jogging in place or doing Duolingo. You know how it is, gotta multitask while watching TV, I don’t have ADD, you have ADD.

And you know, for the most part, I don’t want to call it FLUFF because there was definite depth and substance there, but I was enjoying it, vibing with the cast, applauding the music choices, totally feeling the nostalgia. The whole premise is that each episode is one day (July 15th) of each year for 20 years, showing how the characters evolve, come in and out of contact, some episodes they don’t have scenes together at all and/or it’s only focused on one of them.

(Maybe it would have been a bit on the nose, but the fact that they never once used Billy Bragg’s St. Swithin’s Day felt like a big missed opportunity.)

But then after work yesterday, I put on the penultimate episode, and you guys if you haven’t seen it / heard about it / read the book, this isn’t a spoiler per se but maybe just say see ya next Tuesday and peace out here because, just because….

….there is a thing that happens in that episode that I wasn’t prepared for, maybe I sort of started to wonder if something was going to happen but then it did and it still knocked the wind out of me and the way I started ugly-crying INSTANTANEOUSLY is kind of ridiculous, and even Henry who saw this happen in passing, having not watched a single episode, was like, “Yikes.” Then he left to go to Dunkin’ for After Work Coffee and while he was gone I was like, “Well, I might as well just watch the last episode and get it over with, it can’t even worse.”

IT GOT WORSE.

You guys, I can’t remember the last time television made me feel that broken inside. Gutted. Panicked.

Henry came home and I was now full-blown WAILING. Penelope was in my lap and drenched in my tears and slobber.

“IT GOT WORSE!” I cried, hiccupping on my uncontrollable sorrow.

Henry was like the IRL version of the eyeball / looking emoji. “Jesus,” he muttered, putting down my coffee and patting my head.

I was crying so hard that I almost threw up. Sorry, that’s gross, but you need to know how serious this was, OK. Maybe I just watched this at the wrong time (right time??) in my life where I am so tightly wound and corked up that I needed something like this to break the dam. I don’t know. But I cried like I was losing my Pappap or Marcy all over again. Just, inexplicable.

Then it was over, my face was swollen, I couldn’t calm down. Now I needed to talk about it. So I ran to Chooch’s room (like, why would I think was a good idea, hey sociopathic son, console mommy with your biting sarcasm and abrasiveness) and cried, “Don’t watch One Day, it ruined my life!”

“Cool, I wasn’t planning to, shut my door, bye.”

So now I’m like WHO DO I KNOW WHO MIGHT HAVE WATCHED THIS, MEGAN so I start blowing up Megan’s phone and she did watch it and was like, “I take it you did too?” based on my “UGHHHHHHHHH” I guess, very intuitive. Then she told me that there was also a movie adapted from this book in 2011!!!

She said she liked the movie a bit better but I looked it up and ANNE HATHAWAY was in it which made Henry laugh because over the weekend, we kept seeing previews for some dumb romcom she’s in and I said, “You know, I’m just going to say it, I don’t like Anne Hathaway” and Henry was like, “OK” and I said, “I didn’t want to offend you since you’re obsessed with her.”

“I’m not…?” Henry slowly said, questioningly.

“Yeah, because of Princess Diaries,” I reminded him, and he was like, “OMG SO WHAT, I LIKED THE PRINCESS DIARIES!”

Dude, so defensive, calm down.

But back to me. Yeah, this really triggered me to the point where I started reading things and watching YouTube videos to continue the torture and now I’m wondering if I should just really drive it home by reading the book, too?? I don’t like getting too MUSHY on here but I kept imagining that I was Dex and Henry was Emma, OK?? God, I tell you way too much.

I was so exhausted from all of the crying that I passed out around 11:30, slept straight through the night and literally felt like I was recovering from an illness when I woke up this morning. I felt so heavy and swollen.

Both Henry and Megan tentatively asked me how I was doing this morning, lol. STILL WRECKED but thanks for asking!

I don’t think I will ever forget this series. Jesus Christ. This was right up there with The Smile Has Left Your Eyes which also made me do the full-body sob sesh and traumatized me for many months.