Bro when I say that I feel like a brand new person straight out of an isolation chamber ever since I got BIGBANG tickets….I mean, it’s really pathetic that concert-goers need to feel this level of anxiety when a band they love (especially if it’s Kpop) announces a tour. It just shouldn’t be like this, we have enough stress on a daily basis thanks to this fucking orange rapist and his gang of degenerates putting us in the crosshairs and obliterating basic human rights, let us at the very least have a normal, non-panic-inducing experience when purchasing tickets to a concert that we deserve to attend in order to restore our sanity and give us a small moment of joy before we head back into the reality of this corrupt world.

YOU KNOW WHAT I’M SAYING?

Here are some more little moments of joy that I have curated over the last week or so.

For the last year or so, I’ve used this photo app called Minutiae where you get a notification at a different time each day and you only have 5 seconds to open the app and snap a picture of what’s in front of you. Most of the time, I miss the notification. Most of the times when I DON’T miss it, I’m sitting at my work desk so my pictures are always of my house, depending on how fast I swivel to capture a new corner, lol. It happened when I was at DGD last week so I was really excited to have a picture that illustrated me actually having a life outside of the house.

ANYWAY!! While Chooch was home last week, I got a notification right as he walked out the front door to go see his friends. I screamed CHOOCH WAIT and took this through the screen door, lol.

Also, if you read my Waldameer post, the lady who was forcing her kid to ride Chaos WAS WEARING THIS SAME SHIRT which inspired Chooch to wear his the next day. I can’t believe he still wears it. He got it in some dorky gamer subscription box years ago, I think!?

Earlier that day, I made Chooch go for a walk around Brookline with me because I was bored. Here are some pictures I took with my Charmera, much to Chooch’s chagrin:

Lemonade we bought from two siblings on the corner of our street (I don’t know where they came from). The brother was the one we made the transaction with and there was not a lick of enthusiasm to be found on him.

It was $1 each so Chooch slid him a dollar bill and 4 quarters (we had to go back into the house to get cash when we saw the stand right at the start of our walk, and the two kids stood shoulder to shoulder, holding their lemonade sign, glowering at us like the Shining twins as we walked back down the sidewalk to get the money, it was scary).

“I don’t have change,” the kid said dourly, scooping out the lemonade with a ladle.

“Uh…that’s OK we don’t need it,” Chooch said, like BOY DO BETTER AT MATH CLASS. Sheesh.

“Do you want ice?” he asked in a monotone.

We did not.

The lemonade was actually pretty bad but we still sipped on it as we walked away. “That was an interesting serving technique,” Chooch laughed and I mean, really! It took him forever to scoop two small cups’ worth of liquid out of the pitcher.

I couldn’t believe how many people were actually PULLING OVER to support this local business. I’ll tell you why – BECAUSE THEY WERE WHITE KIDS.

The Teen Center’s lemonade was so much better (and the operation was diverse!).

This also made me think about how shocking it is in hindsight that Chooch never got into the lemonade slinging trade, but that’s probably because he was too busy diabolically banning people on the Minecraft servers he was in charge of.

The Moonlite Cafe redid its facade and it’s super cute. I have lived in Brookline since 1999 (!!!) and somehow have only eaten here twice and have no recollection of liking it or not.

Back on our block, the kids were still doing the lemonade thing. “Hi again,” the boy said to us like we were regulars.

I haven’t mentioned this much because the process has been so slow since we haven’t been home much for Henry to work on it, but we’ve reached the “accoutrements” portion of the record player buffet that we’ve (“we” lol) been refurbing. It’s exactly the same style cabinet as the one we clownified for the living room, but this one is purple and green. The doors will (hopefully) be a mosaic made from CD shards, with halved toy dinosaurs attached. The sides, which is what we’re currently working on, will be made from old cassettes and 8-tracks. (The theme here is prehistoric media, if you haven’t noticed.)

I’ve had these 8-tracks in a box in the basement for over 20 years. Freaking JOE gave them to me back when I worked at Weiss’s. I don’t even know why I took them, I did not have an 8-track player nor did I have any intention of purchasing one on eBay in order to listen to Lawrence Welk and Elvis albums. But, because Henry tends to just push things into the dark recesses of the basement, he found them a few weeks ago when he was looking for something else, and said, “Hey, can you think of anything to use those old 8-tracks for?” Well, it turns out, just using the cassettes won’t work, dimension-wise, but alternating between cassettes AND 8-tracks makes for a better fit on the sides of the cabinet!

So, here is a picture of Henry cleaning them the other night while we watched FROM.

Also, it’s super annoying because they wrote “WEISS” on a bunch of them like a mom tagging her kids’ underroos, so some of them can’t be used. (Sorry, it’s already bad enough that I have tangible evidence of this family’s existence in my house, I don’t need to see their names as well — this cabinet is already going to be haunted since we’re using these!)

Here’s the journal page from Father’s Day in Philly. Henry was not pleased with my depiction of him (mostly because I was using a picture of him as reference and he was insulted that I can’t draw him from memory, like bro calm down, I can barely draw a stick figure from memory anymore).

I fucking love my journal so much!!

All of these things have been keeping me afloat lately. Once I finally admitted that my life needed to shift, even if just the slightest, everything sort of fell into place and every day gets a little better. It’s not perfect, I still have sad days (ok, sad moments every day), I am still stressed, I’m still worried about Penelope constantly, I still have panic attacks reading the news. But these little things are my liferaft!

(+ HOLY SHIT I’M GOING TO SEE BIGBANG, BREATHE ERIN.)

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