Look, I’m skipping my Friday Five: COVID Diaries edition for this week because it’s quite literally more of the same. I had the day off on Monday which consisted of, you know, more of not leaving the house, but less of work-stuff. So that was nice, not having to rot in front of the computer for 8 hours. 

But the rest of the week was: work, exercise, books, Kdramas. Chooch has been doing admin shit in Minecraft which really shows off his sociopathic side, that’s for sure. He built a house for someone, wow how nice, filled it with diamonds, WHAT A GENEROUS CHILD!, lured the guy in there, collapsed the roof on him, rude!, and SPAWNED A BUNCH OF WITCHES TO FILL THE HOUSE, what a psycho! He was laughing so hysterically that it was as contagious as the coronavirus. 

Aside from that, we haven’t Battle Royaled it out yet, though he did jokingly come at me with a knife today and I had to pull out that age-old parental line of THAT’S HOW ACCIDENTS HAPPEN!

One of the books I’m reading currently is Haruki Murakami’s “After Dark.” Several scenes take place in a Denny’s, of all places. I guess I’m just very emotionally fragile these days because I immediately felt a strong pull of nostalgia as I imagined these scenes playing out at a Denny’s in Japan. It’s probably been about 7 years since I’ve been to a Denny’s, for several reasons: 

• since I started adjusting my diet in 2012, diner-like food makes me so SICK, that I have to eat it sparingly;
• I refuse to pay what they charge for a fucking grilled cheese in this day and age!!

But hoooo boy, what I wouldn’t give to be able to leave my house and sit in a Denny’s at all hours of the night with some friends and a pack of cigarettes right now, am I right?

(OK, we can deep-six the cigarettes.)

I didn’t eat at Denny’s very often with my family (my pappap always preferred Italian restaurants, but when he felt like “slumming it,” we’d always go to Blue Flame, obviously). So it wasn’t until high school when I really became a Denny’s loiterer, probably when I became friends with Lisa. It was always the artsy/music scene types that hung out here (who knows where the “preps” and jocks hung out), and we’d just sit in a booth for hours on end, socializing, smoking, making new friends (I even went on a date with a guy I met at Denny’s, but that’s a story for another day), watching Lisa smash her molten lava cake into a soggy mess, acquiring a legitimate taste for coffee. 

Denny’s is where I started a fight with this guy James (who I later became friends with and his wife is the one who did my majestic Marcy tattoo!) because he was harrassing my friend Dan at school. (I literally pulled James out of his booth by his collar and made him go outside with me so I could yell at him – I had SOME decency to be a loud mouth in private, OK?). Denny’s is also where I wanted to go the first time, all those years ago, Henry said he wanted to take me out to dinner.

“Really? Denny’s?” he asked, surprised.

“I want a grilled cheese,” I shrugged.

I pulled out some old photo albums this morning thinking that I would look for two or three pictures I knew I had from various hangouts at Denny’s back then, but was surprised when I found around 12 almost immediately. I thought it would be fun to share them here because who doesn’t like sharing pictures of themselves with bad hair, fat faces, too-thin eyebrows, etc etc. 

I WILL NEVER FORGET THIS DAY (even if I wanted to – I have hours of it recorded on 8mm). This was the day of our friend Evan’s art show at Carnegie Mellon. We went to Denny’s first, of course, and our friend Justin and this guy Tony who was visiting from Virginia and whose mom was friends with Lisa’s mom and asked if we’d let him hang out with us and then he kissed me in my driveway hahaha) also were there, and Evan stole a door knob from a door in one of the CMU buildings and it looked like it was a super antique, and I think he gave it to me (do I still have it!!??) and then afterward we went to visit my friend Jeremiah in Hazelwood who tried to help me join a girl gang but I didn’t drive and didn’t know how to take a bus to get to the initiation. 

This was the best fucking day. 1996 could have been a perfect year if it wasn’t also the same year that my Pappap died. 

Justin!

Lisa and I were so well-known at Denny’s but no one, and I mean NO ONE loved us like our favorite waitress Marianne. She even kept my school picture in her keychain next to his actual kids’ pictures!! Sometimes I think about her and wonder if she’s doing well. She really cared about us. 

Meanwhile, there was this waiter, Gerard. He was like, Denny’s After Hours. Everyone who hung out there late at night knew him and the “Gerard Special,” which was a banana split made to resemble a weener and balls. When I was dating Psycho Mike in 1997 and he got kicked out of his house, Gerard let him crash at his apartment for a bit and Mike said it was one of the scariest times of his life which is really saying something because he once burnt down a house and spent time in a juvenile mental institution at least twice.

Don’t mind my Devilish expression, but Denny’s is also where my friend Brian fake-married me and my first love, Justin K., three years after we had broken up, lol. I also have a picture of Justin fake-kissing me that I kept hanging on the fridge but then Henry would flip it over so the picture-side was hidden, and I eventually put it back in my photo album because it was starting to get ruined. 

Henry hates knowing that I had past lovers, lol. 

Also, this was the closest I ever came to actually getting married. 

LOL, I used to place personal ads all the time because I LOVED going on dates (this was also when I was dating Jeff, and he was not really on board with this). I would almost always take friends with me though. This particular time, I met a guy named DeeDee who was aghast that I didn’t like football. We went to play pool and then of course went to Denny’s. Lisa came with us and brought her friend Petra, who was an au pere for a family that Lisa used to babysit for. I think she was Slovakian? She was very sweet and I remember stopping by my parent’s house at the beginning of the night for some reason and talking to my dad in his garage. Petra gushed over his classic cars (he had two at the time, a 55-something and a 36-blah blah. My dad was like OBSESSED with her after that. It was hilarious. 

(Sadly, DeeDee and I didn’t really hit it off and never hung out again, but it was still a super fun night!)

Justin (not the one I fake-married, but the one mentioned earlier) sleeping in the best booth. We could do things like that at the Denny’s on Rt. 51. 

I think this was 1999, sometime in the fall. 

Janna looking bored AF (in her defense, it was likely 3AM). And we were almost always there with Jon and Justin because none of us were 21 yet and it was either sit at my apartment all night or sit at Denny’s, sometimes both. 

Dang, now I want a grilled cheese and coffee, really bad. (And kind of a cigarette too, ugh.)

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In tonight’s edition of “Things Around Erin’s Shanty,” I’m featuring the print of a painting I made for my brother Corey several years ago, to memorialize our legendary trip to Sugarcreek, Ohio. We went to Heini’s, a cheese place, and encountered several fascinating characters and peed our pants from laughing so much. 

One of those characters was the guy doling out samples of THE BEST BUTTER IN THE WORLD. Would you care to read about him and our magical visit to Heini’s? Sure you would. You’re self-isolating – you need shit to read!

Once the world reopens, I would like to go back to Sugarcreek. I need some butter.

*****

I felt kind of bad that Corey and I opted to visit Heini’s Cheese Chalet over our dad’s suggestion of Walnut Creek Cheese. He’s a self-professed expert on Ohio Amish Country, so I don’t doubt that Walnut Creek Cheese is a wonderful establishment. However, when I did my own research last week and stumbled upon Heini’s Cheese Chalet, I was like, “Holy fuck, this is the one.” Because:

• it’s a cheese CHALET
• it’s called HEINI’S
• it offers cheese factory tours!!

I texted Corey and he was like FUCK YES HEINI’S. I noted that some of the Yelp reviews mentioned it was imperative to get there before 11:30, because that’s when it gets really crowded. We made it to Millersburg around 10:45, after squealing and pointing at all of the Amish buggies we passed along the way because we are Those People Who Remind the Amish Why They Chose That Path. …because they don’t want to be American assholes like us. We pulled into the parking lot of Heini’s at the same time as a large tour bus, and I was like “WHAT IF THE CHEESE TOUR FILLS UP?!” so we ran toward the entrance at the same time as four older woman, who laughed at us because they too were trying to beat the bus. THEY EVEN HELD THE DOOR OPEN FOR US. Corey and I thanked them sweetly and then exchanged excited LOOK AT US, MAKING FRIENDS! looks. If those old ladies really knew! I went straight to the restroom, knowing that an empty bladder was imperative considering how quick I am to laugh to the point of pee-drops.

When I came out, I found Corey standing near an information kiosk with a comically-old man who said he was willing to give us a tour anytime we’d like. Which obviously was RIGHTNOW. This was around the time that I realized literally no one, not one single fanny-packed Midwesterner, was trying to get a spot on this critically-acclaimed tour. It was just me and Corey with some old guy in a Cosby sweater who was extremely stoked to tell us the story of how cheese is born. We got started at the beginning of a hallway, where we could peek through windows into a large factory-room with industrial-sized bins where milk apparently does things. There was no cheese being made at the time, so our guide kept expecting us to “imagine” the process, but you guys. I have to admit, it was pretty boring. Curds and whey and blah blah blah. Corey looked extremely bored. He spent most of the time looking away, and all I could think was, “Oh no. Corey’s not having fun! I built this cheese tour up too much!” But then I quickly realized that he was trying not to make eye contact with me because he knew, and I knew, that we would both start laughing. While fidgeting to get my phone to start recording, I tried to occasionally nod my head and say things like, “Wow” and “Whoa.” I mean, this guy was so into it, almost treating it like it was the greatest bedtime story ever told, and I waited for him to invite Corey and me to sit on his knees so he could be better inspired to tell us wayback stories about how he used to walk 40 miles in cardboard-soled shoes in the winter to fetch Heini cheese for his mother while Father was in town watching nudies at the theater.

Nudies.

“And this is the man who invented yogurt cheese right here at Heini’s!” Father Cheese proudly exclaimed, and then stepped back to watch Corey and I gape at the portrait. I was surprised that the yogurt cheese man wasn’t a Heini! Man, he must be heralded by all those lactose intolerants.

We moved at a snail’s pace down that hallway, pausing to peer through new windows that offered the same views of large, steel vat-things, and I became acutely aware of the fact that the cheese shop had become twice as crowded since we started our tour. People were shoving cheese samples into their gluttonous maws mere feet from where we stood, listening to Father Cheese talk about the aging process for sharp varieties, like your CHEDDARS AND SUCH. I could feel the giddiness begin to churn deep inside my gut, just like all that HOT MILK THAT MAKES THE CHEESE. I just kept chewing on the inside of my cheek, digging my fingernails into my palms, and repeating “Don’t make eye contact with Corey” over and over. I was thinking that maybe I was going to make it through without making a complete asshole of myself! I found out later that Corey too was employing the physical pain infliction method of curbing the giggles, along with the classic “thinking about depressing things” tactic.

“What kinds of things do you like in your cheese?” he interrupted his curd-y fact-sharing to ask us. Corey just stared back blankly, so I quickly blurted, “You know, I like FRUIT in my cheese.” WHICH IS A LIE! WHY DID I SAY THAT?! I mean, I’ve had cheese with dried cranberries in it that was pretty tasty, but fruity fromage is not something that I would consider a staple on my cheese board. I wanted to take it back and tell him that I meant dill or fennel, horseradish even! But he had already plunged head-first into a passage of fruit-infused cream cheese spreads. By this point, he had backed us into a dead end while explaining to us how the cheese got its shape or something, I can’t remember. Full disclosure, I retained absolutely nothing from this walk down Learning Lane except that the men working in the factory were wearing BEARD NETS.

While I was gawking at two of them pushing a cart of cheese up a ramp, Father Cheese made some comment about how heavy such large quantities of cheese is. “Look at them, pushing that booger up there,” he said adoringly, and in my head, I was like HAHAHAH HE SAID BOOGER, DON’T LAUGH DON’T LAUGH. But then bits of pieces of the last 15 minutes came flying back into my face: the fact that Father Cheese’s wife made him a breakfast shake out of WHEY that morning, the picture of the man who invited YOGURT CHEESE, the tour bus full of people HUNGRY FOR CHEESE, the bonnet-wearing cashiers who I’m not sure were actually Amish, Father Cheese’s sweater, us racing the passengers of the tour bus because we thought they were going to fill up the cheese tour…. THE IDEA OF PASTEURIZATION ALONE WAS INJECTING ME WITH GIGGLES, RIGHT IN THE FACE! LIKE THE GIDDIEST ROUND OF BOTOX OF ALL TIME.

And then I accidentally made eye contact with Corey right as Father Cheese was ticking off the BIG CITIES where one could find Heini’s cheese (Pittsburgh is one!). Corey made some kind of painful squeak from trying to contain the giggles, and that was all it took. Flood gates opened. We laughed so hard that it actually, physically hurt and even though I had purposely peed before the tour started, I felt a drop threaten to fall. It was hilarious and horrifying all at once because I have never actually been busted laughing in someone’s face like that before. I mean, at the Bayernhof, there were people (and music boxes) to hide behind. But here, it was just the three of us, and I was backed into a corner. Literally. This used to happen to me a lot when I was a kid. In church. Sitting on a pew among hundreds of silent parishioners, and there I go. Snorting and wheezing and my whole body shaking because YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO LAUGH IN CHURCH WHILE THE PRIEST IS TALKING ABOUT A MAN WHO WAS CRUCIFIED.

But it was never this bad. Father Cheese stopped talking and slowly looked from Corey to me. He was confused, yet trying to keep a smile on his face. He knew that nothing he was saying was funny, but Corey and I were fucking scream-laughing at this point. I was slightly squatting to stop myself from peeing and Corey’s face was bright red from the exertion of hilarity. You need to know about Corey and me that we are basically human hyenas. We will laugh at nothing and everything and then proceed to feed off of each other’s hyper-inappropriateness and it’s just a hot, douchey mess.

So, that’s all it took: one quick contact with the eyeballs and there went our sanity, slipping off our faces like rotted banana peels. I thought about how disappointed our dad would have been right then, at his kids making a mockery of Amish Country; and how disappointed Henry would have been, at the mother of his child setting more examples of assholery. And how disappointed Father Cheese certainly was, at these two spoiled brats who were laughing all over his very livelihood. We might as well have been squirting Easy Cheese into mouths right in front of him, that’s how badly our laughter was desecrating the entire Amish cheese process, right down to the Amish milk shooting out from Amish teats. What probably only lasted for 30 seconds felt like watching a wheel of cheddar being aged. It was so uncomfortable, awkward, mortifying, embarrassing—-but SO FUCKING FUNNY.

Poor Father Cheese though, he was so confused. Finally, I was able to psychically bitch slap myself hard enough to stop laughing long enough to explain that we had been in the car all day and were extremely slap happy. Father Cheese smiled and placed a hand on my arm. “I understand. Why don’t we just end it here,” he said in grandfatherly tones lightly seasoned with exhaustion and a desire to suckle butterscotch; he handed me a sheet of paper with additional information, including great advice such as: Do not put cheese in your car trunk [on hot summer days]. This would be the hottest place. Corey and I had to walk back down the hall with him after that and it was excruciating. We purposely fell behind and then pretended to be SUPER INTERESTED in a bulletin board full of children’s cheese drawings until we were certain that Father Cheese was far enough away for us to safely proceed. This was the first time in my life that I ever had to flat out confront my immature and out-of-place bray and it was A REAL EYE OPENER. Not enough to suddenly put us in check though. We were practically hiccuping at this point from all of the fermented laughter. I texted Henry:

Me: Well, I peed my pants from laughing so hard at our first stop. Henry: I’m glad it’s just the two of you. Me, Oh, you would be so pissed!

Henry: I’m sure of that.

And then we proceeded to get in a line that would eventually herd us like cattle past veritable troughs of cheese samples. 

Somehow, Corey and I were able to stifle our giggles long enough to devour Heini cheese samples. I was delighted to see that nearly every type of cheese had a tupperware container in front of it, loaded with tiny tastes in cube-form. Corey and I grabbed toothpicks and got to samplin’. The store was very crowded, and nearly every person in line was also buying stuff, so the line moved pretty slow. To the man behind me, this was unacceptable and rather than wait 20 seconds until I moved forward, he stretched his body across me so that he could blindly spear spear. I gave him a good once-over with my judging eyes and he did not appear to be OMG STARVING. I guess he was just in a hurry. Buddy, I don’t think they were going to run out of cheese.

Corey and I were intrigued by the weird cheese flavors in the aisle next to us, flavors such as rainbow sherbet, which looked beautiful but I thought for sure would not taste as such. Then that entire aisle turned out to be fudge, so I guess Heini’s isn’t really that progressive after all. I didn’t try any fudge samples because I knew it would culminate into my shaking entire containers of the minuscule slivers into my mouth because I can’t do stuff like that in moderation. One sample would quickly turn into an easy 5 new pounds on the scale Monday morning. Sigh. Corey tried some and said it was amazing. Of course it was! It was Heini’s brand. At one point, I looked around and felt sad at the urgency these people were popping sample after sample past their cheese-lusting lips. Sad and sick. Welcome to America! In fact, after crawling past the cream cheese spreads (the fruity ones were great, thanks for the heads up Father Cheese!) and beef sticks, Corey and I decided that we really didn’t care to stand in line and eat anymore, especially since we were going to be headed to lunch afterward. So we took our wares to the nearest register.

Corey bought some Amish noodles for our dad, and I showed tons of restraint by only snagging two types of cheese: horseradish and Vidalia onion. I really, really love cheese, but I’m also super cheap and don’t enjoy spending money on food. I also grabbed a jar of gooseberry jam, though. Because I could always go for a good gooseberry.

We ALMOST left right after this. The joint was a madhouse of directionless tourists and I can’t stand crowded stores. But I needed a souvenir! There were other areas of the chalet, like a candy room, a cafe, and also a room in the back that was full of Americana home decor, cat calendars and souvenirs…but also samples of butter. AND NOT JUST ANY BUTTER. Father Cheese had mentioned this butter during our excruciating cheese tour, and told us at least twice that we were lucky to have come to Heini’s that day, because the butter was ON SALE. I remember thinking that I didn’t care. In fact, I had forgotten all about this highly-touted Heini butter, until we walked into the back room where a man in a blue shirt stood behind a counter and cried out, “THIS IS…THE BEST BUTTER IN THE WORLD. YOU WILL NOT FIND A BETTER BUTTER!” while methodically slathering Wheat Thins with smooth, yellow globs.

Corey and I exchanged wide-eyed looks of hyperbolic wonderment and marched over for a sample, fully prepared to refute this man’s lofty claim. But goddamn if that wasn’t the best butter in the world. I mean, maybe I’m just really sheltered when it comes to the best butters, but this seriously was the BEST BUTTER that ever touched my tongue.

“And today, you can buy not one but THREE for $5!” the butter-slinger announced. I had a vision of myself splayed out on a hammock somewhere in Georgia, maybe, spreading perfect smears of the best butter in the world on hot biscuits and quite honestly not giving a FUCK about anything else, because why would I? The best butter in the world was melting in my mouth. I made a beeline for the cooler behind him, where I snatched up three tubs of the perfectly-churned bread lotion before the tour bus people caught on and another grotesque lined formed. I won’t be beat by the fanny-pack set. Across from the Best Butter-slinger was a small section of postcards, mugs, magnets and t-shirts for those sentimental types (me me me) so I grabbed a magnet for my collection at work. (I like to show my new magnets to Glenn right before I stick them on my closet-thing; he will say things like “wow” or “cool” without so much as a glance.) There was also a pile of red Heini shirts. A bright wheel of cheese was displayed prominently on the back, right above the informative phrase: WHERE THE CHEESE IS MADE.

Corey said, “Should we?” and I said, “Oh my god, definitely!” He had to go out to the car to get more cash, which left me alone, unsupervised and undistracted for way too many minutes with the Butter Monologue. It was like falling inside an infomercial at 3am: monotonous, cheesy (oh hahahaha), outrageously boastful…the only thing missing from his hyper sales pitch was a BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE! I guess probably because there wasn’t more. The best butter in the world was enough on its own. Do you think Butter-slinger wakes up at 6am every morning without the aid of an alarm, bounds out of bed and brushes his teeth with a squirt of that slick pasteurized cream while reciting facts to the mirror, such as BUTTER IS GOOD FOR YOUR LIVER, before rubbing the best butter all over his nude body while making orgasm-faces before going to his woodshed and slaughtering the Amish hostages he has chained up and frying up their flesh in the best butter? Does he bring his own to-go tubs of Heini’s best butter to restaurants with him so he doesn’t have to use disgusting, white trash Land o’Lakes? (The horror.) I wonder if he’s married. If so, did they have a butter sculpture at their wedding reception? TELL ME YOU’RE NOT WONDERING ABOUT THIS NOW. I sat on a bench with an old lady who totally busted me filming Instavids of the butter show, so I got up and moved to a different area, where people were too busy looking at racks of wind chimes and other such Amish novelties to notice me being weird.

The line had grown a bit by the time Corey came back to buy his shirt, so we had to endure an additional fifteen minutes of butter superlatives barraging our ear drums. Corey made eye contact with the cashier while he was purchasing his t-shirt and he said she gave him this “I know, right?” look. Once Corey paid for his shirt, we fled the butter room before we wound up having another fit. As we made it closer to the main area of Heini’s, we realized that Father Cheese’s voice was emanating from the ceiling, like God himself, and then we saw him with a HEADSET ON! And not only that, but somehow Best Butter had made it to the front of the store without us knowing and was HAVING A CONVERSATION WITH FATHER CHEESE! WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE! OUR TWO FAVORITE HEINIS!!

We had originally wanted to say goodbye to Father Cheese, mostly so that we could show him that we bought things, maybe that would convince him that his cheese tour wasn’t all for naught, that Corey and I aren’t so bad after all and at least Heini’s made a few dimes off us. But there was an actual wall of people blocking us from his information table and I was starting to sweat at the idea of trying to Moses my way through. As if that wasn’t a great note on which to end our visit, we noticed that some broad was arguing with Father Cheese.

The joint had become so packed with tourists hungry for cheddar that Father Cheese was trying to direct foot traffic. It appeared that he mistakenly told the poufy-haired broad to get into the wrong line, and she was FUCKING PISSED. Corey and I stood there in horror. How could anyone yell at Father Cheese?! He’s so old and frail and has TWO hearing aids! I wanted to march over and save him, but then a ginger-man standing nearby began speaking to me, because apparently this is what people do in Ohio Amish Country: cultivate small talk. “This is ridiculous!” he spat through a set of interestingly-directioned teeth. “I been standing here watching people cut in line this whole time! My wife has been standing in line forever trying to pay and I seen THREE WOMEN—I’ll just leave it that, three WOMEN, I won’t say anything else about them—walk past all those people and cut right in front of my wife!”

OMG OK “I’m Not Racist, But…” Guy.

It was incredibly awkward and he just kept ranting about how out of control the place was. We stood in mutual silence for a few seconds, taking in the rowdy cheese epicure-wannabes, 80% of whom I guarantee have a fridgeful of Velveeta and individually-wrapped Kraft slices, anxious to taste the next sample and buy all of the cheese before it had a chance to age anymore. Finally, I shrugged and said, “I mean…it’s just cheese” while slowly backing out of the door.

 

As soon as we got outside, we absolutely lost our minds all over again. IT’S JUST CHEESE.

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Easter is my second favorite holiday (second only to HALLOWEEN, of course) so I was determined to still make it a memorable one even though we’re stuck at home. Now, we’re not religious people, so not being able to go to church wasn’t an issue, and we never celebrate Easter with extended family, so the inability to have a big family dinner wasn’t making us shed any tears either. 

For this particular Easter, we had planned to be at Efteling Park in the Netherlands, so any back-up plan I came up with was going to pale in comparison. Yet somehow, it ended up being one of the nicest Easters ever!

Chooch kept saying that he didn’t want anything, didn’t care if he didn’t get a basket, but all he REALLY WANTED was for us to hide eggs for him. I really think he’s going to grow up plagued by the Peter Pan syndrome that he undoubtedly inherited from me. I kept saying, “NO WE ARE NOT DOING THAT YOU ARE TOO OLD, GROW UP. THE EASTER BUNNY ISN’T REAL” and I guess he really believed that we weren’t doing anything because he originally woke up at 8:30 and then said, “I’m going back to bed, wake me up at 9:30 I guess.” I was so mad because I woke up early and raced against the clock to hide the fucking eggs for that little bitch-kid. 

When he finally woke up and went into the bathroom, he was met with Doll and an egg, so he knew that it was going to be an alright day, lol.

(He is REALLY BAD at finding eggs though. Or else I’m really good at hiding them. But one was literally inside a book, so it was like wide open.)

We got him a basket too because come on, what kind of shitty parents do you take us for? IT’S EASTER FOR GOD’S SAKE. He didn’t know that he was getting one so it just sat in its hiding spot all morning until I finally couldn’t take it any longer and exclaimed, “OH WOW, WHAT IS THAT.” 

I LOVED getting an Easter basket. I still like white chocolate to this day because it reminds of me the white chocolate lambs and bunnies with the blue or pink candy eyes that my mom would always tuck in there among the jelly beans (which I didn’t like) and the Sarris chocolate eggs, and OF COURSE THE TOYS, HELLO. For most of the Easters during the elementary school years, I got a new My Little Pony. I LOVED My Little Ponies (the new ones are dumb) so I always looked forward to seeing which one I was going to get. 

Knowing me and my warped memory, this probably only happened on one Easter, lol.

I also associate Easter with springtime and baseball (loved baseball as a kid, neutral about it as an adult) and wearing pretty dresses to church and having a casual Easter dinner at my Pappap’s house. 

I try to make sure that we’re always doing something for Easter, whether it’s traveling for a concert (we saw Emarosa in Lancaster, PA one year on Easter and it was a really nice weekend), being in KOREA, inviting friends over for a Pizza Party for Jesus Christ, or just having a family dinner at a Chinese restaurant. This year, I wanted to have the Inkigayo sandwiches again like we did last year, because I think this could be a new tradition for us. 

And you know how I love a fucking tradition.

Chooch the Baker wanted to make a carrot cake for Easter, so that turned into a Battle Royale between him and Henry in the kitchen while I sat out here and read a book and watched YouTube videos about reading books and finding books to request on Libby and exercising. 

I mean, his cake decorating needs practice, but the cake itself was A REAL GODDAMN DELIGHT. And he cut back the confectioners sugar big time in the frosting and it was such a good call, because it was perfect. I don’t like super sweet frosting, especially cream cheese frosting, so Chooch got a big thumbs up from me on this one.

Henry probably would have ruined it.

The weather was  nice on Sunday so we were able to comfortably eat on the back porch and it was a Big Time Spring Mood. I could not have been happier!

Inkigayo sandwiches and kimbap, a Korean Easter picnic! Henry forgot to buy banana uyoo so it wasn’t perfect but I’ll let it slide this time, I guess. 

We’re all big fans of the famous Inkigayo sandwiches here in the Oh Honestly household. I highly recommend them! The convenience stores in South Korea all sell variations of these sandwiches and I happily devoured them when we were there. One of them had a limited edition blueberry edition! IT WAS THE BEST ONE!

We were probably making fun of Henry’s mouth-sounds here.

I’ve rambled about this sandwich on here before but a quick summary: There is a weekly music show in Korea called Inkigayo and legend has it that the cafeteria in their studio makes these tri-layered sandwiches and the kpop idols go nuts over them. Of course, regular civilians cannot go to this cafeteria to get an authentic one, but there are numerous variations of the recipe online. 

Yes, that’s strawberry jam in the middle, surrounded by an egg & potato salad (there’s also crab in this layer but Henry omits it for us vegetarians) and a cabbage salad that includes corn and apple. It sounds hideous, but it is SO STUPIDLY DELICIOUS. And filling. I split mine with Henry, and Chooch saved his second half for today’s lunch.

Drank my coffee from my Lotte World mug to keep it extra Korean. 

(I know it’s obvious, but my heart breaks more and more each day I’m not in Korea. Sorry if I’m annoying, but this is who I am.)

The Inkigayo (or EASTERgayo, as I lovingly call it on Easter) is a two-handed affair.

You guys. Chooch’s carrot cake. Fuck yes. The best thing to come out of this quarantine (for my family, anyway) is Chooch’s blossoming interest in Kitchen Times. 

Easter, After Hours.

Really, I think this will go down as one of the best Easters. It was so casual, laid back, lots of laughing (on my part), lots of Kitchen Feuding (on Henry and Chooch’s parts, also the catalyst for my “lots of laughing”), and it made me appreciate even more that although these are scary and strange times, at least I’m going through them with Chooch and Henry and we’re still, somehow, having fun. <3

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(Stay-At-Homeaster? Quaranteaster? Easter Homeday? No? OK, I tried.)

Today was great. I hope everyone who celebrates Easter was able to find a way to connect with family, do the church thing online, eat a pandemic Peep, etc.

I will do a more thorough recap later, but for now, here’s our obligatory Easter family photo, with me catching flies as usual.

Super awkward, that’s us! But, at least it gave me a reason to actually do something with my hair other than air-dry it & throw it in a bun, haha ughhhh.

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Nine years from now, someone asks, “Erin Rachelle Kelly, what did you do on April 4th, 2020?” and I think to myself, “Oh, that was during Pandemic Times, when every day melted into itself like the dude at the end of the Roger Rabbit” but lo! I have a DIGITAL DIARY that I can reference, yes, do you remember those? I think they were called “blogs” where people tap-tapped their thoughts on a keyboard under the illusion that anyone actually read it, or even cared?

I don’t know, I think that even when we’re not living our lives to their fullest capacity during lockdown, it’s still a weird memory to have in and of itself, so I will keep recapping this lame-o life and one day, when I’m like, “All I did was go to Target, how boring” I’ll look back on the weekends when I would have actually performed a lopsided cartwheel through the doors of Target because I CAN’T GO TO TARGET AND AM I REALLY THAT ADDICTED TO BUYING THINGS I DON’T NEED THAT I AM SITTING ON MY COUCH ON A SATURDAY WHINING ABOUT NOT BEING ABLE TO GO TO TARGET BECAUSE IT’S NOT AN ESSENTIAL THING I NEED TO BE RISKING MY HEALTH AND THE HEALTH OF OTHERS OVER RIGHT NOW?!

That being said, here are some things that happened last weekend because I didn’t just rot in bed all of the days, after all.

The weather was very beautiful on both days last weekend, but even just going out for a walk can be tough. Henry and I went to one of the cemeteries in the Northside and had the whole boneyard to ourselves until toward the end, but you know, cemeteries are good places to social distance with ease, so we never ended up passing the three other people who arrived toward the end. (One of them had two huge dogs and I was sad that Pandemic Times prevents dog-petting. Now I know how Chooch feels.)

Earlier that day, I had gotten the audiobook of Crazy Rich Asians, and Henry agreed to listen to it with me, so that was our cemetery-soundtrack. I was really feeling it. This is a good book to read along with the audiobook because it’s so helpful to hear correct pronunciations of Asian words and the narrator was also really good at various accents. It also helped to pretend that we were in Singapore and not dry-rotting away in boring-ass Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

For dinner, Chooch made these delicious vegetarian bean burritos with some kind of creamy chipotle sauce inside and I don’t even know what else, but now I’m drooling at the memory (and the picture). I love Chef Chooch!

That night, I made them watch Jojo Rabbit. I had already seen it at the theater with Janna (OMG remember movie theaters?? I only go maybe once a year but now I will never take even those for granted. I am going to see a movie once we’re allowed to do things again. But not at a big theater. I only like small, independent ones because I’m a snob.) I thought I would be OK since I had already seen it, but nope. I still cried like a bitch.

(Not as much as Chooch cried two weeks ago when he watched My Girl for the first time, though HAHAHAHA. I mean, I tried to warn him, and he didn’t listen, so then I sent him a bunch of bee memes afterward.)

On Sunday, Henry and I went to Jefferson Memorial, the cemetery where my family lives. I think this cemetery is sooooo underrated as far as Pittsburgh cems go because it’s the kind that eschews headstones for plaques that are flush with the ground, giving the place more of a park-like feel. But there are some really great statues and monuments riddled throughout, and some really glorious pond-spots. You have to go there if you’re in Pittsburgh. It’s also where I learned how to drive!

(Lisa, teaching me to drive in 1996: “Put your right foot on the gas pedal.”

Me: What if I’m left-footed?

Lisa: Then you’re an idiot.)

We listened to more of Crazy Rich Asians while Henry kept edging me off the path and then I started yelling at him about how out of sync we are as a couple and is it him that’s getting under my skin or this fucking pandemic, or is HENRY THE PANDEMIC.

We should be in the Netherlands as I type this, but seeing pretty spring flowers in the cemetery here in Pennsylvania was, well, probably the best consolation I’m going to get right now! I’m surprisingly not as upset about this as I thought I would be, and I think it’s because the whole world is in this boat together and that makes me feel less alone, though still extremely anxious that this is out of my control. I don’t know if you know this about me but I’m kind of a control freak. Pity the fools who have to work on group projects with me.

There were some people out in the cemetery, but not very many. It almost felt like we were back in Normal Days.

This section has reminded me of some far-away Asian land! It’s also the section of the cemetery where one of my favorite Easter photoshoots went down:

Easter Bunny Strikes Back

That night at Cucino d’Chooch, we had chana masala! He is really getting into kitchen-y things during all of this housebound-ness, so at least something positive is coming from it.

We were just notified the other day that school is officially closed for the remainder of the year, so they’ll be going fully online. I’m glad that he has found a good hobby/interest to break up his days now that he’ll be chained to the laptop all day while I’m chained to the computer all day. Oh shit, the Pioneer Ave. Office is really going to need an HR Department here soon. And a guidance counselor.

MMMMM CHANA-CLOSEUP.

In other weekend news, Slut Life got a Mustang convertible on Saturday and Chooch and I spied on him fiddling with the knobs and buttons while parked in the driveway. We were very upset this but then HNC informed us that it was apparently a rental (???) while his regular basic car was getting fix (he wrecked it on one of his many obsessive trips in and out of the garage, lol.

But in MORE Slut Life news, we noticed that he and HNC’s wife seemed to have been having A CIVIL CHAT in their respective yards on Sunday. HNC informed us again that HE APOLOGIZED PROFUSELY to her and that his grandmother had something to do with it (wtf did she scold him for his actions or something lol). So I guess now the feud has fizzled out (for now) but HNC still doesn’t seem sold on him. HOWEVER, I have noticed that ever since that day, he has been turning his radio down or off before pulling in and out of the driveway and he’s also not kicking up asphalt anymore either, so that’s something.

Guys, it’s really boring here. :( Hope you’re finding fun ways to entertain yourself wherever you are! My friend Jessy suggested doing a virtual game night soon so hopefully that happens because I need to see a face that doesn’t belong to a resident of this household, thanks.

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*(People with calendars, I guess.) Anyway, here’s another work week, pandemic-style. Keeping track of our mundane lockdown life is at least giving me something to do, I guess. 

Monday:

I literally can’t think of a single highlight. Work was normal. The weather was nice so Chooch and I went for a quick walk during my break and saw Wesley’s mom ugh. We talked from afar and she gushed about how wonderful Chooch is and I guess that’s how Glenn feels whenever people at work gush about how wonderful I am.

Our neighbors had friends over that night because evidently you can only contract COVID from strangers not friends.

Ugh that generation. Whatever comes after Millennials.

I can never remember. 

And our neighbors on the other side have had every single family member and their respective units in and out too like a fucking Grand Central Coronastation.

I think people misunderstand the concept of social distancing, but OK.

TUESDAY:

Some ragtag family oozed past our house and the Kindergarten-aged daughter must have fallen or something because she was crying and her fat dad in the neon yellow construction company t-shirt barked, “YOU’RE FINE” and she was like, “Noooo I need a Band-aid” and he was like, “WHERE THE HELL DO YOU THINK I’M GOING TO GET A BAND-AID RIGHT NOW?! JUST WAIT UNTIL WE GET HOME!!!” and if I had had a fishing rod, I would have flung a Jojo Siwa Band-Aid to them from my window, in compliance with social distancing, but I do not have a fishing rod, or a robot that I could have sent out on my behalf, Band-aid presented all….robotically from a tray.

Figures, the one time I have an urge to be nice to a child…

Thanks, COVID-19, for keeping me true to myself.

By the time Henry came home from work, I had so much stored-up energy, that I took to sprinting from one side of the house to the other, which eventually made Chooch snap because he was “on a call” with his friend Markie which only entails them bickering over Minecraft and Markie saying, “That’s what she said” as a response to everything, only making sense .01% of the time. Finally, Chooch got up and came at me so I grabbed a bottle of Peppermint Schnapps and then he in turn snatched one of those long stove lighter things in retaliation and lots of tribal screaming ensued, all the while Henry kept calm and cooked on in the kitchen.

The church across the street had a super loud drive-in broadcast that night, the word of the Lord blasting out from loud speakers, permeating through the ether and straight into my house which I thought was kind of rude, but also fitting to the theme of the night because earlier I had found some new African gospel workout called Afro-Praise that included PRAISE PULSES, Zulu dancing, and some lady unable to get up off the floor at the end.

I live for these kinds of workouts. 

Wound down with a matcha latte made from matcha powder I bought at Osulloc in Seoul, one of the Osulloc items that TSA did not steal from my luggage in New York.

Assholes.

Oh, we are certainly enjoying these fun days together, lol.

Wednesday

1:00am Storm!! I actually thought it was a tornado and got very scared.

 

I did this African dance cardio workout and I think I’m obsessed with that…genre? of aerobics now. Kpop cardio will forever be my favorite though, and my boy Give Me Five Thailand has continued to upload new routine from his house during the stay at home order. I love him!

At some point during the day, Chooch disappeared. It turned out he was in his room, actually reading!! I was so happy about this…until I found out that he was reading a Shane Dawson’s MEMOIRS. He’s banned from our house, but apparently I bought him this damn book several years ago, so I GUESS I ONLY HAVE MYSELF TO BLAME.

“You bought me PewDiePie’s book, too,” Chooch said in this shitty “Who’s the asshole now?” tone.

A conversation:

‪Me: I wish I was skinny so I didn’t have to carve out time to exercise and I could just sit here all day and read instead. ‬

‪CHOOCH:‬ THATS why you want to be skinny? Ok. Wow.

(I know, how archaic of me. Omg I want to be skinny. Wah wah wah. But honestly, I should have said “I wish exercise wasn’t necessary…” TOO LATE ERIN. TOO LATE TO BACKTRACK. YOU SAID IT. NOW WE ALL KNOW U HAVE BARBIE DOLL BODY IDEOLOGIES.)

We walked to Dunkin’ Donuts – they are open for pick-up only so Henry orders from the app and then runs in to retrieve our drinks. It’s like, a tiny treat we give ourselves to give life the appearance of being normal for several minutes. On the way there, we were talking about how it’s weird when people don’t have any pets, and Chooch accused Henry of not having any childhood pets, to which Henry defiantly spat that he had dogs and cats growing up and now he has, shoots us a disgusted look over his shoulder, “animals.”

WOW. 

I might have nearly peed my pants right there on the sidewalk. I’m an emotional time bomb. 

THURSDAY

Oh look, another day. Our face masks arrived from Korea. Sorry, I didn’t feel like jumping on the bandanna bandwagon when I can order masks from Korea and get them in like 4 days, free shipping. God, I love you Korea.

Speaking of Korean face masks, Chooch treated himself to a spa night:

I finished “Gingerbread,” a book that I had been struggling to read for a week and I went from hating it to loving it, I think?! I can’t be sure, but I watched an interview with the author, Helen Oyeyemi, and I for sure love her, at least.

FRIDAY

The Easter decorations I ordered from Oriental Trading arrived. Easter is my second favorite holiday for some reason (actually I know why but maybe we can wait until Easter to talk about that ok cool) and I am determined to make this one as “normal” as possible even though we’re essentially confined to the house. So we’ll see how that goes.

Other than that, the highlights of today were:

• My favorite booktuber Kat uploaded her March book review video;
• Gina B uploaded a new 20 minute walking workout

Wow. My days are so full!

Ah, perspective. Perspective.

My workweek is officially over, dinner has been eaten, and now I’m making Henry watch these fucking vanilla Christian YouTube videos about “fun family Easter games.” It’s, a thing. This one broad keeps interrupting herself to coo at her baby and then she knocked over her camera with her head so that was more entertaining than any of the games she’s talking about.

Now we’re watching this really annoying family with 87 subscribers hide Easter eggs from each other and it’s so cringey. This is totally our new version of making fun of birthday party videos.

Goodbye.

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As if I wasn’t already shambling lethargically through pandemic life over here, one of my favorite Korean groups, Winner, just released their newest video this morning, called “Remember.” So now I’m shambling lethargically through a stream of tears.

This release is significant because it’s the last time we will see them as a full-member unit because their oldest hyung, Kim Jinu, recently enlisted in the South Korean military last week. I think I saw somewhere that it won’t be until 2025 when they’re back together as 4 again, ugh. I wish they would have just enlisted together but I don’t think they get to choose their dates and I’m too depressed to Google that shit.

This video is 100% an homage to their history and my insides hurt from crying.

Winner is in my top 5 tier of most favorite groups, not even limited to Kpop, and they’ve been like a security blanket to me during BIGBANG’s hiatus because they’re kind of like BIGBANG Jr, in a sense. They’re on the same label and definitely have BB vibes without feeling like they were blatantly ripping them off.

And Song Mino, come on – he is basically G-Dragon’s heir apparent. We love Mino in this house.

But for me personally, Jinu was my Winner bias, so I’m pretty crushed.

 

Chooch and I were blessed to see Winner on tour last winter in Toronto and it was one of the best concerts of my life. I remember when we were leaving, Chooch was like, “That was so much better than the BTS concert” and I agreed with him – it was pure and real and cozy. It felt like we were in a theater full of close friends and family, and Winner was SO ENTERTAINING even in between songs. You should also know that they do write their own songs! There’s a misconception that all Kpop is manufactured – not all! There is real talent in that industry, and Winner has 4 of the biggest gems.

Winner Everywhere Tour!

Anyway, do yourself a favor while you’re on lockdown and fall down the Winner rabbit hole on YouTube. They are so good! And their variety show appearances are HILARIOUS. Like, pretty much anything Mino does:

OK, I’m going to wallow some more. But I think I’ll be back later with a weekend wrap-up, which will be, you know, boring AF. LIKE EVERYTHING LATELY. But at least we’re staying healthy, etc etc. Perspective blah blah. I KNOW, LEAVE ME ALONE!

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Hello! April is well underway and I still have some books left to read from my library raid last month, and several lined up on Libby and Overdrive, but I thought it would be nice to get some recommendations from my Internet pals. I primarily like horror, contemporary, thrillers, and apparently magical realism I guess. I’m also not above cracking open a juicy YA book every now and then, too.

On my TBR “shelf” currently:

• Attachments – Rainbow Rowell
• Everything I Never Told You – Celeste Ng
• Eliza and Her Monsters – Francesca Zappia
• A Girl Made of Stars – Ashley Herring Blake
• Pachinko – Lee Min Jin (I actually started reading this last year, lost it, then recently found it but now I have all these other books to read sorry Pachinko!)
• Final Girls – Riley Sager
• 13 Ways or Looking at Fat Girl – Mona Awad

Currently reading:

• Gingerbread – Helen Oyeyemi (almost DNFd numerous times)
• If We Were Villains – M.L. Rio

I changed my 2020 reading challenge from 30 books to 75 because it’s pretty clear that I’m going to have all of the time to do nothing but read and exercise for the next (x) months so BRING IT. (I’m already 63% to my goal lol.

)

Anyway – please give me some suggestions! Hopefully I can get ’em through Libby while my beloved library is closed.

Watching people talk about books on YouTube and adding books to my “want to read” shelf in Goodreads is one of the few things I have going on in my life these days and it’s holding my sanity together with a very flimsy binder clip so help me please thanks.

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Hi hello welcome to my dive bar corner of the Internet. I’m currently reading a book about Lizzie Borden so I thought what better time to take a post a picture of a souvenir wine glass I bought way back in 2003 when Big Shot Henry booked us a room at the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast for my birthday, back when we was still doing romantic gestures hahaha ugh.

And to make this a real two-fer, let’s also spin this into a Virtual COVID-travel post by revisiting the second time we visited the Borden house, this time with a 7-year-old Chooch because you know, educational, etc. I started doing another Jillian Michaels series which is helping to combat my depression, but my muscles and mind are fatigued AF so I still have no energy for this blogging thing. :/

I’m going to veer off schedule here for a  minute and share the pictures from our tour of the Lizzie Borden house in Fall River, MA. After an entertaining breakfast at AlMac’s Diner where I had Portuguese bolo and will consequently never be satisfied with a regular old English Muffin ever again, we stopped here on our last full day of vacation. Chooch was pretty fucking stoked to say the least. The kid has grown up in a house where serial killer greeting cards are made, what do you expect? Henry and I stayed over night here back in 2002, but it was worth the return trip for us, too. Mostly to experience it all over again with Chooch, who knows the legendary story and has watched countless YouTube videos about the house. However, when we walked into the gift shop to pay for a tour, the tour guide behind the register looked a little skeptical at these two assholes toting a 7-year-old child to a murder house.

But then Chooch sprawled out on the couch in the waiting area, mimicking the crime scene photo of dead Andrew Borden, and the tour guide widened her eyes a bit. “Do you wanna help me out when we get in the house?” At first she suggested that he play the role of Abby Borden, but Chooch quickly said, “No. I want to be the dead dad.” “How old is he?” one of the three old people in our group asked. I could tell that they too were leery of taking an hour long tour with some brat, but I’d like to think they were pleasantly surprised by the tour’s end.

I mean, come on guys. You know I’m the first person to call my kid out for being a dick. But he was actually super well-behaved and genuinely enrapt in touring the house. I was so proud of my gruesome little brat!

Floral patterns suit him.

The house has changed owners since we were last there. To be honest, I don’t rememeber much of the original tour we got in 2002, other than being a served a plate of cheese and Oreos to snack on while watching some made-for-TV movie about Lizzie Borden, so a lot of what I saw on this day was basically brand new to me. I also feel that the guide we had this time was more knowledgeable. (Side Note: The guide we had in 2002 was also the summer caretaker and ended up being the only other person sleeping in the house with us that night. He was pretty creepy, but affable at the same time. I posted a picture of him on my blog a few years ago and someone commented, informing me that he had perished in a house fire. So sad! I mentioned this to our tour guide last week—I shamefully can’t remember her name but she was really wonderful—and she said that when the new owners bought the Borden house, they had a really hard time getting him to leave.)

The house was replicated as best as possible, considering they only had black and white photos to go on.

In the dining room, we learned that this is where Abby Borden’s autopsy was done. The guide had pictures of their mutilated bodies and said to me, “It’s up to you if you want your son to see these.” I asked Chooch if he wanted to see, and he shrugged and said, “Yeah, sure.” I found out later that I probably should have asked him if he knew what “autopsy” meant first. While the guide was demonstrating ironing handkerchiefs (one of Lizzie’s alleged alibis), Chooch was chomping at the bit to go into the next room because he recognized the couch immediately. You’d have thought he waited all his life for this one short moment of impersonating some dead dude with a crushed skull and dangling eyeball.

Chooch’s Shining Moment. The old people on the tour with us laughed uncomfortably during his performance.

We were all clustered in the foyer listening about Andrew Borden’s final moments on Earth; I was standing at the foot of the steps — the top of which was where Abby Borden’s dead body was first spotted prostrate on the other side of the bed in the guest room–with my back to the front door when the mailman began shoving circulars and bills through the mail slot. The new gray hairs I must have amassed in that moment has got to be a staggering number.

Chooch volunteered me to play the butchered Abby Borden, which required me to sprawl ass-up on the floor while Chooch giggled devilishly. Thank god there are no pictures. My ass is much wider than the last time I was photographed in this pose.

This lady knows her shit! We definitely got our money’s worth.

Borden spirits all up in Henry’s shit! J/K. I was just really bored in the car. Best use of a bokeh app!

In the corner of the guest room, the actual dress Elizabeth Montgomery wore in the final scene of the Lizzie Borden movie in the 80s is on display. When the guide mentioned Elizabeth’s name, Chooch put his hand up to his mouth and whispered, “Witch!” to me, giving me this faux-serious look. At first I couldn’t figure out why he said that, but then I remembered that the day before, we took him to the Salem Witch Museum and there was a wall of photos of famous witches throughout history, and of course “Bewitched” was one of them. The guide we had that day pointed out each picture and gave a brief explanation, and I guess that little jerk was actually paying attention (because I know I barely was).  Yay for money not wasted for once!

Actual books that belonged to Lizzie. Check out “With Edged Tools.” LOL right!? Chooch was really into all the vintage cat figures he spotted throughout the house, and also the creepy trunk of toys that the owner keeps in one of the attic bedroom that is supposedly haunted by random children. Chooch said that’s the room he wants to sleep in when we go back and I was like, “That’s cool, bro. But have fun staying up there by yourself.”

Haunted or not, there is something to be said about standing in a house where one of the most sensationalized double-murders in this country’s history were carried out.  I was definitely on edge the entire time while Henry just looked bored (or probably confused because the only way he understands anything is if the cast of Criminal Minds is acting it out on TV for him). Chooch would get fidgety here and there, but thankfully he didn’t do anything overtly dickish to draw attention to himself. For the most part, he honestly seemed like he was interested in what the tour guide was saying, officially making “7” my favorite Chooch age thus far. When I went back to the gift shop afterward to buy souvenirs, the guide admitted to me that she was a little worried when she saw us walk in with Chooch, and how pleasantly surprised she was at how he conducted himself. I’m so glad she told me that, because as a parent, I’m sure there are times when I think my kid is acting normal but everyone else is thinking, “TAKE THAT BASTARD BACK TO THE ZOO, MY GOD!” My fear is that we’re going to take him somewhere like this and he’s going to break something or cause a general scene by throwing a tantrum out of boredom. I remember the time when I was a kid, just a little bit older than him, on vacation with my grandparents in Europe. I think we had stopped in Assisi, Italy and, right befor walking into a shop filled to the brim with breakables, my grandma gripped me by the upper arm and hissed, “DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING!” Aaaaand guess who knocked over an entire display of glass figurines with her purse? GOOD OLD GRANDMA JEAN. Meanwhile, as the guide was praising my kid’s good behavior, Chooch was in the process of pissing on his shorts in the customer rest room. So, you win some, you lose some.

Can’t leave Fall River without paying our respects at the cemetery!

Stoked for Lizzie! I really was pleased with how we were able to sneak in educational bullshit on our vacation without it feeling like 5 days of war memorials and dry history lectures. I can’t wait for Chooch to go back to second grade and tell everyone about the shit he did, haha.

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If you’re like me and stuck in an awkward mandatory work-from-home order, then you might be struggling to not succumb to 8 hours of remaining planted in your seat. When I work in the office, I get up usually once an hour: to get coffee, go to the bathroom, visit a coworker on another side of the department, just do an absent-minded lap to stretch my legs…

But when I work from home, I find that I will get up from my desk MUCH LESS if I don’t think about it. And that makes me feel zapped of energy by the time I log off for the day! So what I try to do is devote 5 minutes every hour to a quick spurt of activity, whether it’s a quick jog in place, or a legit 5-minute fitness video on YouTube. This is also a good distraction from SNACKING. Seriously, if you’re roaming around the kitchen looking for a snack, you might just be bored! Jump into a quick little workout instead—it will keep your calorie count down AND boost your energy.

Thankfully, there are a SLEW of them. Here are some of my go-tos, much to Chooch’s chagrin because it means he has to turn off whatever lame Minecraft video he’s watching. These are great in general for everyone stuck inside during quarantine, especially when the weather’s not cooperating for outdoor walking.

(If none of these do it for you, just search “5 minute workouts” on YouTube – there are so many!)

1. If you like yoga or Pilates, I highly recommend this channel. It’s not something that you would think I would like, but for some reason, this broad is soothing to me.

2. I LOVE GINA B SO MUCH! Especially when she starts singing whatever song is playing and then quickly apologizes and I always scream, “NEVER STOP SINGING, GINA B.!!” Her whole channel is wonderful if you’re looking for fun supplemental cardio workouts with great soundtracks.

She just uploaded a 20 minute Michael Jackson dance-walk workout, and she also has other themed ones, like 60s, disco, 80s, 90s, Shakira, ABBA.

I love her.

3. Jessica Smith is one of my faves because her dog Peanut is almost in the videos. She has all sorts of workouts on her channel so if you’re looking for barre, kickboxing, or just longer cardio/walking workouts, check her out!

4. AllBlanc needs no explanation, lol.

5. Want to focus on abs? This one is so good!

6. Counteract all that sitting with a good lower body burn!

7. Gotta include my girl Leslie Sansone, haha:

8. Maybe you’re just looking for some nice, good ol’ stretching. Well, my girl Denise Austin is here for you. I was obsessed with D.Aus back in 1991-1992 when my grandma implied that I was going to ruin my aunt’s upcoming wedding because I was a fat 11-year-old, but then I found Denise Austin’s workout videos on TV and she (and Bodies in Motion, and Slim Fast, and a mild dabble in anorexia) really changed my life.

Lol. Ah, no wonder I’m still so weight-obsessed.

9. Don’t forget your butt! Blogilates has a ton of 5-minute workouts but don’t let the time length fool you – they can be really challenging!

10. BONUS KIDS WORKOUT – TELL YOUR KIDS TO PUT DOWN THE SWITCH AND MOVE!

OK guys, I’ll leave you with these fun starting points. Let’s stay active and combat pandemic-depression!

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Look. I’m over this. All the days blend together. What did I do on Monday? THE SAME THING I DO EVERYDAY, APPARENTLY. So here are some highlights broken up into five categories I guess, because I have little left to give. Full day recaps? To quote the letter HNC wrote the landlord, “that ain’t happening.”

1. BAKED GOODS

Chooch has been on a roll with the baking. Here are the delights he whipped up over the course the week. Not shown: the healthy banana pancakes he made for breakfast on Thursday which were delicious but the recipe told him to cook them for 3 minutes before flipping and we almost got smoked out of the house.

Healthy carrot muffins. God yes. 

Weight Watcher-approved lemon bars. I refuse to believe these were WW-approved, and I’m not doing WW or anything but I appreciate that Chooch considers the fact that I am uber-conscious about the food I eat, especially now that we’re on lockdown and overeating is soooo easy to succumb to. Trust me, I would love to sit around all day and snack but I have to try even harder now to not do that!

37-calorie brownies – these were a big hit!

He just needs to work on presentation, haha.

2. FIGHTS

• I lost my shit on Tuesday because Chooch watches Shane Dawson videos everyday (after like a three year hiatus!!), and if he’s not watching Shawn, he’s watching Shane’s boyfriend Ryland, whose stupid sister is always making appearances and I might perhaps hate her the most. So I banned all three of them from our house. “AND THEIR STUPID FUCKING FRIEND WITH THE GLASSES TOO!” “Garrett?!” Chooch cried. “Yes, that douchebag! I don’t want to fucking see his face or hear his voice!” “How do you even know him?” Chooch cried, and I screamed, “BECAUSE OF THAT ONE VIDEO WHERE RYLAND AND HIS DUMB SISTER TRY TO SPEND NOTHING FOR ONE DAY AND THEY GO TO HIS HOUSE AND HE MAKES THEM LUNCH FROM SHIT HE BOUGHT AT 7-ELEVEN AND MAKES THEM SIT ON THE FLOOR BC HE JUST CAME BACK FROM JAPAN.” Chooch’s face lit up with question marks. “You left that video on the TV the other day when you went to your room and your dad and I watched almost the whole thing because we had no COVID-motivation to turn it off!” Honestly, even if I have headphones on while I’m working, I can hear every single one of those idiots’ voices over top of it and it gets under my skin so much. WHY DO THEY SCREAM SO MUCH?! I HATE THEM! THEY ARE WORTHLESS! FAMOUS FOR ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!! 
• Henry and Chooch fought over the carrots for the previously-mentioned carrot muffins.
• HNC’S WIFE AND SLUT LIFE HAD A FIGHT WEDNESDAY EVENING FROM THEIR RESPECTIVE PORCHES!!! I couldn’t hear what was said because it was really windy and we live on a busy street, but I was excited to see a fight that complied with social distancing guidelines.
• Me vs Henry, re: everything down to his breathing.
• Chooch vs me, re: both of us knowing everything.

3. WORK

• I miss my co-workers, but the ones I have at home are pretty great. Fine, even Chooch, who today said, “Teamwork makes the dream work” when I helped him fit some crap in his backpack. “Wow, that’s the second time I heard that since yesterday!” I laughed, and he said, “Yeah, I only said it because I heard someone say it on the work call you were on yesterday.” Ugh. I will say though that at least when I’m in the office, no one steals my seat if I get up for more coffee.

• I mentioned already here that Tuesday was Cheryl’s last day so Amber arranged a virtual toast for her. It was super awkward, but I had luckily had done all of my crying earlier that day when Cheryl and I were emailing with each other for the last time. I chose strawberry soju for my toast of choice. It was a good decision.

• I keep it cold enough in the house that a blanket is necessary, to help me feel like I’m actually in the office. 
• Yeah, I have nothing exciting to say about work. We’re all kind of shell-shocked, I think. We have these check-in calls and everyone either seems starved for conversation or speechless. On one of the calls, one of my co-workers told this 15-minute long story about people hiding wine outside of her house, and something about Malort, I actually have no idea what was happening so we all just laughed nervously. It all happened so fast yet also dragged on for an eternity, please explain how that’s possible. Time is a mystery during a pandemic.

4. BOOKS

• I can’t tell you how impeccable my timing was when I decided I wanted to carve out time for reading. Books have been my saving grace during lockdown At first, I was so sad that the library was closed, but then I remembered that Chooch has an old Kindle, so my new thing, while working through the stockpile I was able to check out from the library on that last day (I only have 4 more left though!!), is to download both the ebook and audio versions of books so that I can listen to them while I’m working. I HAVE to have the print copy of books in front of me while listening to them though because otherwise I will zone out and not pay attention. Obviously, I have to pause it a lot if I’m working on something that requires my undivided attention, but it has been going pretty well. I can’t do this in the office though because I like to be aware of my surroundings. I guess I’m just weird. 
• I read two REALLY EXCELLENT books in a row, yesterday and today, and that has really given me life, you guys. I will talk about them in my APRIL book recap so look forward to that I guess? I busy myself by adding books to my “Want to read” shelf on Goodreads and watching BookTube videos to get hyped on new books. It’s really helping to distract me from the doom and gloom of the outside world.

DEPRESSION & OTHER MINUTIAE

• I admit it, I’m fully depressed at this point. To be fair, I’m bipolar and my depression comes and goes like leaves in the wind (literally) so I could have been depressed right now even without a pandemic acting as a catalyst. But I am really struggling. I’m one of those people who are both introvert ad extrovert, depending on the situation, so the prospect of being housebound only appeals to a small percent of my brain, while the rest of me is like I NEED TO BE IN THE OFFICE. I NEED TO MAKE MY ROUNDS AND TALK TO MY BUDDIES. I NEED TO GO ON MY DOWNTOWN LUNCH WALKS AND SEE WHAT STRANGE INTERACTIONS BEFALL ME. I NEED TO JUST BE OUT WITH PEOPLE. It can be a very confusing and contrary way of life, but this who I am and I am suffering. I have little energy and have to force myself to exercise everyday, I am finding that I am clamming up when I’m on group calls at work even if I have things to say, which is strange because you’d expect me to start blurting my own versions of people hiding wine stories, and god knows I have neighborhood to say! But instead, I say nothing because I’m tired and my soul aches. I still manage to get dressed most days, but I have stopped caring about my nails, even. I’m just sad. 
• Snail mail must be back in vogue now that everyone is housebound because both of our card shops have enjoyed a jump in sales. I’m about to look for penpals. 
• Right now, we were supposed to have been on a plane to Frankfurt. I know that there are much more important things to care about right, like being thankful for good health, family/cats, and having a job, and that if we all come out of this OK, we’ll go another time. But it still adds to the depression because we worked so hard to save the money for that trip and I feel super antsy and caged-in. Anyway, I gave back my vacation days because I didn’t want to use them if we weren’t going anywhere, but I did keep today off. I mean, it was no different from every other day, except that I didn’t have to sit at my desk and work. Sigh.

• But on a good miscellaneous note, we got take-out from Zenith because they had the super coveted TOFISHY sandwiches on the menu. This is my FAVORITE THING that Zenith makes and I pretty much inhaled it. No one told me to slow-down, so I ate with piggish abandon.
• Meanwhile, Slut Life has a blue convertible now so his music will be even more audible as he peels in and out of the driveway a thousand times a day. SRSLY WHERE IS HE GOING?! We have no idea, but I guess no one told him about the Stay Home order. Most of the time, he is only gone for 10-15 minutes before he comes back again! Then he goes through the process of struggling to park his dumb car in the tiny garage, only to leave again in a few minutes!! He doesn’t seem like a drug dealer, so then I thought maybe he’s a pizza delivery guy? Like, maybe he works at one of the local pizzerias and they have him stay home because of social distancing and then they call him when an order is ready to be picked up? Maybe he’s Doordash or Grub Hub? I mean, he’s not going far! 
• I’m still on an MTV Challenge kick. I was watching some old highlight reel and Henry laughed quietly and whispered to himself, “Abram!” like he was delighted to see an old friend. Then he goes, “IS THAT BETH?” It’s so funny when Henry knows their names, lol. 
• This song is really good. There’s a small guitar solo in it that has Chuck Mangione vibes and transports me back to the 80s, sitting in a booth at the Blue Flame with my pappap. Chuck Mangione came on the radio there a lot, at least in my memories.

OMG I’m so fucking sad. 

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When all the days blend together like the art therapy watercolor I should probably start painting in order to curb my insanity, do weekends even really count anymore? Still, I woke up on Saturday and was like, “YAY WEEKEND!” because that means Henry will do stuff around the house.

(I’m glad he has a job, but not too stoked that he’s considered “essential” and has to leave the house everyday.)

Well, here are some highlights, because there’s no use in being big whiny bitch babies when we still have our good health (knock on all the wood).

Chooch has been really into destroying the kitchen cooking and baking, and who am I to stop a growing boy from exploring his culinary interests? Especially when I reap the rewards, like the delicious veggie burger he made FROM SCRATCH. It was the best veggie burger I’ve ever had this side of the Impossible one.

God, what else happened on Saturday? I’m sure lots of screaming. And I probably read until I got a headache.

That evening, I made Henry help me go over some of the Korean vocabulary that I learned in the beginning of my textbook because I didn’t study most of them enough to really memorize them because I’m 40 can’t remember how to study anymore.

Henry was, really something. Apparently he can’t read my handwriting and was basically just saying yes to everything but he did say no once and I nearly flipped the table because it was a word I was confident about but turns out he just can’t read.

Then I asked him to write the words in Hangul on a whiteboard paddle but after watching him struggle through two of them, Chooch was like OH FOR GOD’S SAKE and took over. Thanks, Chooch.

(Chooch can read & write Hangul fairly well!)

The korean language will probably be the death of me but goddamn I sure do love it so much.

Then we were going to watch a movie but instead I fell down the slippery slope that is MTV’s The Challenge highlight reels on YouTube. GUYS: we haven’t had MTV in 2 or 3 years, since cutting back cable, and it is the ONLY thing I miss about TV.

Henry used to watch this watch with me too so we were both steeping in the nostalgia like two raunchy reality tea bags. It is how I learned what a carabiner is!

(As I write this, Henry is searching for ways to get MTV without adding $$$ to our cable bill haha.)

SUNDAY was so heartbreakingly beautiful! My lord, nearly 80 degrees and blue skies in March, yes gimme.

I wanted to go for a walk and clearly parks and trails are out of the picture these days so I suggested our favorite cemetery in the North Side which almost never has other (living) people in it but by the time we were getting ready to leave there were SIX of us and that is A LOT for Uniondale!

Still, we were diligent and aware and never got close at all to anyone else. When you turn it into a game, it’s kind of thrilling.

Meanwhile, HNC texted me and asked me if it was OK to namedrop me in the letter he was writing to the landlord about Slut Life. Oh please do, I replied! Then he asked if I wanted a copy of it and oh my god do I.

I have three cameos in the letter! I was so excited! Henry, conversely, was much less thrilled that he was also mentioned when HNC insinuated that Henry likely shared the same sentiments. He does not want to be involved in this AT ALL.

Penelope looked out the window. We watched more The Challenge nostalgia videos and tried not to have panic attacks. Maybe that last part was just me. I’ve been having to say, “JUST BREATHE” to myself a lot to get my heart rate to chill the fuck out. It’s fine.

Oh! And Chooch made these chocolate oat bar things that looked a hot mess but were very delicious. At least some good things are coming out of quarantine.

If you’re reading this, I hope you and everyone you love are doing well and hanging in there. I am so afraid of dying, or having someone close to me die, that I can’t do anything else but shove my face in a book to avoid the news.

Be safe, guys!

 

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What a wild month. March started out slow for me because I got sick on the very first day of the month and WAS TOO SICK TO READ FOR TWO WHOLE DAYS.

But on March 3rd, I was ready to really dive into my first book and it was a real unexpected treat! More on that soon.

In more wildness, the Carnegie Library announced on 3/13 that it would be closing at the end of the day on 3/14 and stay closed until 3/31, in an effort to stay safe during the coronavirus crisis. Obviously, props to them for being responsible. But selfishly, I was SCREAMING. I had to go to their website the night before and check to see which of my “want to read” books are currently available at my local branch, made a list, and walked there the next morning with a canvas bag.

People mass-buying toilet paper while I’m out there scooping up books from the library.

And, as with the previous two months, I had another book coincidence to make it a three month streak: two back-to-back books mentioned the act of kneeling on uncooked rice.

KNEELING ON UNCOOKED RICE!

Also, the Spanish Flu was referenced in several of these books and I fucking swear….this universe.

Anyway, let’s get into it!

1. Blue Monday – Nicci French

I picked this up because I kept seeing it all over BookTube and Good Reads. I figured it would be a good filler book, a light “thriller,” but I was absolutely blown away by this. The characters! I’m so glad this is a series because I grew so attached to them. Anyway, the book is centered around Frieda, a psychoanalyst who has some issues of her own (like insomnia). Her relationships with the side-characters and the dialogue between them was just as compelling as the child-kidnapping main plot of the book. She is fascinating and I can’t wait to read more from this series (I hope that the Ukranian handyman, Josef, and his comedic relief make more appearances!). I think this would be good for people who like Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta books.

Fun fact: Nicci French is actually the pen name of a married couple, who also write separately.

2. The Troop – Nick Cutter

OK, shit. Goddamn. This book. Wow. A boy scout troop is on some small isolated Canadian island for a weekend camping trip with their Scout leader, but then some mysterious stranger shows up, on his deathbed, his body wrecked, ravaged, and infiltrated by lab-created parasitic worms. BODY HORROR GALORE. Probably the WORST book for me to read while recovering from a stomach bug, but, you know, I said I was looking for a book that would actually SCARE me. Well, this scared me and also made me involuntarily dry-heave. Since I was working from home several days during that first week of March, I decided to see if I could find this on audio book as well, so in addition to reading, I listened to parts of it if I was doing particularly mindless work at the time, and I really enjoyed it! It helped to have the physical copy of the book though because there are transcripts of lab experiments peppered throughout the book, newspaper articles, interviews…it was helpful to read along for those parts.

And remember last month when I was bitching because of that one book, Kill Creek, was so nauseatingly descriptive? SO IS THIS BOOK. Except that by nauseatingly descriptive, I mean that the writing is SO FUCKING GOOD that I actually felt like I was going to puke. I 100% couldn’t eat while reading this and I’m not going to lie: there were chunks that I had to skip because it was animal-related and just…written so skillfully that it was like watching it on TV. Nick Cutter is GOOD.

Henry was sitting next to me on the couch when I was reading this page and HIS HAT FELL OFF AND LANDED ON MY SHOULDER, CAUSING ME TO SHRIEK SHRILLY AND JUMP IN THE AIR.

After I read it, I found out that Nick Cutter also writes under the name Craig Davidson, the author of Saturday Night Ghost Club, which I read last month and also loved! His Nick Cutter alter-ego is definitely more gross, though, ha.

3. Radio Silence – Alice Oseman

My favorite BookTuber, Kat from Paperbackdreams, is always going on and on about how this is her favorite book, so I finally picked it up. It was interesting to me because it follows a British girl in her last years of high school, preparing for college, and I know next to nothing about how the UK school system works so I learned a lot about that, for instance, I was like, “The fuck is an A-level” but now I know.

I think this book would have had more an impact on me if I was younger, and having that post-high school crisis; but as it is, I’m 40 years old and far-removed from exams and college applications (although I guess that will be my reality in a few years with Chooch), but I still really enjoyed this story. It brought back some belly-aching sensations though when the main character, Francis, has a falling out with her best friend—isn’t it amazing how, no matter how long ago high school was, those sick feelings in the pit of the stomach can be recalled almost instantaneously. Or is that just me? Lol.  God, anytime a memory pops up of some teenage confrontation, I feel nauseated like it just happened yesterday.

Oh, the one thing I really loved about this book is the broad LGBTQ+ representation, and the fact that this book doesn’t involve the two main characters falling in love (not a spoiler, it’s mentioned very early on in the book). That was refreshing! A boy and girl simply….being friends. We love to see it.

Bonus: a smidge of Korean shows up in!

<3

4. Convenience Store Woman – Sayaka Murata

For as short as this book is (around 170 pages, I think?), it wasn’t a quick read for me. I could only read so many pages at once before losing interest, and it made me sad because I had high hopes for this book based on what I heard about it. I’m going to chalk it up to bad translation, maybe? I think something must have definitely gotten lost.

The premise is that this 36 year old Japanese woman has been working in a convenience store for like, 19 years. There are little dips into her childhood and she’s portrayed as perhaps a blossoming psychopath. So she gets this job at convenience store, becomes obsessed with the comfortable predictability of her days, the safe routine, and essentially uses it as a “manual” to act like a human. She is basically faking it to make it, and when she is eventually forced to leave her job, she has no basis of knowing how to live or act anymore.

It makes me wish I knew Japanese so that I could read it as it was originally written because I really feel like this book had to have been better than this. Especially because a lot of the blurbs on the back cover talked about how funny it was and that was lost on me, yo. I gave it a 3 on Goodreads, but I think maybe a 2.5 is more accurate.

5. The Poet X – Elizabeth Acevado

YES. YES YES YES. This is 100% a book I never would have picked up on my volition, but I saw that the audio book was available on Overdrive and I kept hearing about how wonderful the audio version is because it’s read by the author herself. Yeah boi, this was a real gift. It’s written in slam-poetry format which should have deterred me because I don’t like a poetry, but hearing it read by Elizabeth Acevado was so compelling.

It’s a coming-of-age story about a 15-year-old Dominican who lives in NYC, her secret love of writing, her strained relationship with her ultra-strict and religious mom, her bond with her twin brother, her questioning of religion, her falling in love. I recommend the audio book but also getting a physical copy because it’s fun to read along since it’s written in prose.

6. Evvie Drake Starts Over – Linda Holmes

I picked this up 100% based on the cover. I kept seeing it in the current best sellers display at the library and I finally snatched it up. I mostly listened to the audiobook though, because I had two back-to-back work from home days early in March so I cruised through it then. It was…fine. Predictable. The dialogue was nice but I admittedly didn’t enjoy the narrator too much. Her male voices were questionable, like they were all suddenly royalty. It was a nice feel-good read but it won’t stick with me.

7. Red, White, & Royal Blue – Casey McQuiston

I was LOVING this at first! It’s a Post-Obama America. We have A DEMOCRATIC WOMAN PRESIDENT. Her kids are BIRACIAL – MEXICAN! Haha, fuck you, Trump! The First Son has a years-long feud with one of the Princes of England, Henry. It’s a classic hate-to-love trope but what I hated was that it goes to “love” way too quick. And then the character of the First Son, Alex, starts to get super annoying and I honestly began to wonder why Henry settled for him.

There’s a little bit of politics here, some seriously fun side characters (who were way more interesting than Alex, to be honest), and the obvious WHAT WILL THEY THINK ABOUT US dilemma. What I didn’t like was that it was awkwardly smutty. I think that it needed way more faux-hateful buildup – Casey McQuinton gave it away too fast. The second half of the book was just not Fun Times for me, as a reader. I wanted to be rooting for them way harder than I was but instead I was just like, “Come on, Henry, you can do better.”

Which is, coincidentally, what people have been saying to my Henry since 2001!

8. The Incendaries – R.O. Kwon 

This is about a religious cult with ties to North Korea. I listened to the audiobook for this but also had the physical copy on hand, which is the best way for me personally to listen to audio books. The narrator had a pretty boring, monotone voice, so that didn’t help, but the writing was really beautiful. Just extremely lovely. I love how the narrative was woven in between three characters: John Leal, the leader of the cult; Phoebe, an American Korean who gets sucked into the cult; and Will, Phoebe’s boyfriend who is leery of what is happening but unable to stop it.

I actually didn’t like Will and so all of his chapters were difficult for me to get through. I kept picturing Penn Badgley because Will reminded me a bit of Joe, the main character from “You.” He was obsessed and consumed with the idea of Phoebe, and of being with her, to the point where it was pretty clear that he didn’t even see her as a person. She was way out of his league, like your typical Prince Henry to First Son Alex. It just made me feel uncomfortable. It was a short book though, so I didn’t have to be “uncomfy” for too long. I think I gave this a 3.5, but R.O. Kwon can really throw down a shiny sentence. I’d read more of her shit, but this one just wasn’t exactly what I was looking for.

I AM SEW GUD AT REVIEWING BOOKZ.

9. Here We Are Now – Jasmine Warga

Another audiobook and physical book tag-team action with this one, and I’m really glad because the main character’s mom is Jordanian and the narrator used the most beautiful accent when speaking her parts! This was just really cute. Teenager daughter meets her rock star dad for the first time while mom is away in Paris, and goes on a road trip with him back to his hometown because his dad is dying. She finally gets to learn the history of her parents, how they met, why it didn’t work, which one left. I could see this being turned into a Netflix movie – it was really sweet and there are so many super hipster music references peppered throughout so I could only imagine how stacked the soundtrack would be.

The mom character is such a great representative of a strong, independent woman and I loved that part of this book. “It wasn’t enough” is something that she says numerous times throughout the book and that resonated. DON’T SETTLE LIKE PRINCE HENRY DID!

Ughhhh!!

10. The Dream Thieves – Maggie Stiefvater

This is the second book in the Raven Cycle series – I read the first one last month and I fell in deep. I’m still kind of *scratches head* when it comes to the actual “quest” plot of this series, but THE CHARACTERS. From the Raven Boys to Blue and her houseful of psychics, I’m actually starting to dream about these people now. Obviously Gansey is my favorite, but Ronan’s “he’s gonna snap any minute” brand of shitty snark is the perfect balance of menacing and “WHO HURT YOU??” There is a heart of gold under all of that abrasive armor. And he has a pet raven named Chainsaw, you guys. Come on.

I really regret not getting the last two books while the library was still open. :/ I’m still 16-years-old at heart, OK? Lay off.

It really is the problem. STAY HOME!!

11. Sometimes I Lie – Alice Feeney

This was a real fun ride, but I gotta be real: I didn’t quite understand the very last page? But if you’re down with unreliable narratives and a twist that I certainly didn’t see coming, then pick this up! Sometimes I have to stop myself from only reading thrillers, exclusively.

12. Station Eleven – Emily St. John Mandel

Well, this was a timely tome, wasn’t it? A new flu from Russia kills off 99.9% percent of the world’s population, but this novel mostly details on the aftermath, fastwarding 10-15 years into the future. It follows a traveling symphony and theater troupe, and it has Walking Dead vibes, without the zombies.

My favorite parts though were when the book jumped back into the past, building up relationships between some of the characters. Pre-pandemic, the main location was Toronto and I was so excited when Spadina was name-dropped because that is MY FAVORITE STREET IN TORONTO and it’s so fun to say!!

The writing was SO GOOD. I listened to the audiobook solely for this one and usually I have issues following along without the print copy, but this was so engaging that I never felt lost. Because of the current state of the world, though, this definitely gave me anxiety. I wouldn’t last a day if this was our reality.

A KIND REMINDER TO STAY HOME. COUGH IN YR FUCKING ELBOW OR BETTER YET JUST HOLD IT IN FOREVER. DONT JUST WASH YR HANDS, CUT THEM OFF.

13. Confessions – Kanae Minato

THIS BOOK, WOWIE WOW WOW. A teacher’s 4-year-old daughter dies and it turns out one of her students did it (not a spoiler). The book is broken up into various narrators/parts and I swear to god, each part made me gasp and I couldn’t wait to see how it could possibly end.

My only complaint was that it was short and I wanted so much more, but apparently there was an Oscar-nominated short film made a few years ago and now I need to find that.

14. My Sister, the Serial Killer – Oyinkan Braithwaite

Loved this one too! Man, I was on a real good streak there for a minute. This book is another shortie–the chapters just cruise on by. I highly recommend the audio book for this one too because the author is Nigerian and there are lines here and there, primarily when the mom gets worked up, that are written in the native language (Igbo? Maybe?) and it just really adds to the story to be able to hear those parts spoken.

This played like a movie, or a Netflix series, in my head. So vivid. I cared about both sisters, but shit I just wanted all the best for the main, non-killer sister. This is such a fun, quick read, and I want a sequel.

15. Lock Every Door – Riley Sager

This book is always coming up on BookTube and I’m glad I was able to snag it on the library’s last day pre-lockdown. It wasn’t a game-changer in the Thriller World, by any means, but it was FUN. If you read my Friday Five from last week, you know that I compared it the old made-for-TV movie Nightmare on the Thirteenth Floor so there was a moment where I was ready to be disappointed, but then the plot pivots a bit and the twist is…a bit more realistic? Maybe? I mean, crazy shit happens in real life every day, so sure, we’ll believe it.

I added another Riley Sager book to my queue, Final Girls, so we’ll see if this was a fluke or nah.

16. The Ballad of Black Tom – Victor LaValle

This was real interesting. I didn’t think I would like it because it’s set in the 1920s which doesn’t do it for me, and it’s also an homage to Lovecraft, whom I never much got into. But it held my attention and I was rooting for Black Tom. What a smartly written novella that combines Lovecraftian themes with the intense racism of the 1920s.

17. We Sold Our Souls – Grady Hendrix

Yeah, I’m done with this guy. I read “My Best Friend’s Exorcism” last month (or in January?) and I wanted to like it so much but it just kind of read like a really bland middle grade book. But I always see people recommending his books so I wanted to try one more – no. His style just really isn’t for me at all. His characters have no depth. Literally no development at all!

The premise of this book is so great: the singer of a small-time metal band from the 90s basically screws over the bandmates and goes on to become this mega-star while the rest of them, specifically the guitarist and co-founder of the band, Kris, are left in the dust. The whole book is about Kris’s mission to confront him, but it turns out that there’s devil shit at play and demonic obstacles in the way.

I just didn’t care. These characters like cardboard to me, and the cheesiness is just off the charts. I threw it across the room when I was done and then felt bad because it’s a library copy. :/

Other than that, I thought the cover was nice and I liked that the edges of the pages were black?

~~~~~~~~

Man, my desire to get back into reading couldn’t have come at a better time. I have so many books to devour that I almost don’t care that I can’t leave the house.

Almost.

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My co-worker Cheryl is retiring today after 23 years of The Law Firm service, and I have to tell you: I’m kind of glad that we’re all on this mandatory work-from-home order because I was able to cry alone at my dining room office rather than do that awkward thing I do in the real office where I try to hide from people on their last day because I want everyone to think I’m an anti-social robot who doesn’t care about people when I’m actually disgustingly empathetic to the point where I hate myself daily.

Anyway, what an odd time this is, having to say goodbye to a cherished co-worker via conference call instead of eating cake and awkwardly one-arm hugging. Cheryl has been my mentor in that department for years, and anytime a kpop group is going to be on daytime TV, she emails in case I want to “tape” it.

I’m actually crying again, hold on, OMG.

OK I’m back. I had to wipe my tears with a tissue and then wash and sterilize my hands for the 87th time this afternoon.

I thought today would be a good day to do another “Things Around My House” post and highlight the clown paintings that Cheryl sold me several years ago, which hang proudly above my bed!

Some guy made them for her mom in the 60s; she knew him from the campground they use to go to and he liked to sit around, drawing clowns apparently.

And thank god he did!

They were waiting for me at work one day several years ago and 90% of my co-workers were totally skeeved out by them, so that made me love them even more. I couldn’t stop smiling! I loved that one of them has a bird nest on his head!

“They’re so majestic,” I whispered, and everyone around me laughed BUT I WAS BEING SERIOUS. They were way more amazing than I could have imagined. Totally worth it.

Then Glenn meandered over, and in a total Henry-esque moment, he picked one up and to get a better look at the frame.

“These are nice frames,” he said, admiring it closer now. “The wood is really good,” he added, tapping on it. “I think it could be wormy oak.” I started laughing so hard, totally couldn’t help it. He looked annoyed, made some last minute disparaging remarks, and retreated.

When I put the pictures in the car last night, Henry also went right for the frames. “Those are really nice frames,” he said, and I began having deja vu. “Maybe wormy chestnut….or oak.”

Anyway! I’m glad that I have something to remind me of Cheryl! She also said that she’s giving me her bird coffee cup, so I’m happy about that too. It’s going to be SO WEIRD there without her. If we ever go back, I mean.

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Since there’s not much else going on in life during isolation aside from lounge wear and calling into meetings, I figured I would start a new “series” (but you know how I am with these things; I’ll probably do two and forget about it) featuring items around my house, tchotchkes and souvenirs that have little stories behind them, etc etc blah blah blah.

To start out, let’s talk about this stuffed hippo that I have had since I was 16, and in every place I have lived, he has always been out and about on display.

Please say annyeong to Steve the Hippo!

But, let’s back up. Like, back waaaay up to the summer of 1995. I was a freshly-minted 16-year-old on one of those coach bus tours through Europe with my aunt Sharon. These tours were always the same: a bunch of retirees, maybe some middle-aged couples, and then me, the lone kid. Lots of continental breakfasts where the hot chocolate is ACTUALLY OVALTINE, and hectic tours of one cathedral after another. And Sharon and I were so hot and cold with each other and more often than not, we would bicker and then go half the day giving each other the cold shoulder. But this time, on this particular trip, there was a slew of young’uns in our group and I could not have been happier. I had other people to sit with, walk with, eat with, and Sharon HATED THAT.

This tour consisted of mostly elderly people, still, but we also had Nick (14), who was traveling with his grandma; Amanda (15), Natalie (13), and Noah (10), who came with their single mom; Andrea (19) and Sarah (22), on a girls trip with their mom; and Greg (14), Steve (20), and Amy (22) who were with their parents. This was my favorite trip ever. Normally, when we had travel days on the bus, I would sleep or read, or stare out the window sullenly after having another argument with Sharon (seriously, oil and water, but damn do I miss her and these wild adventures she took me on), but now, I had friends to sit with and let me know you – we were total jackasses.

Sharon ended up befriending Andrea (who reminded me so much of Alanis Morissette – I was enthralled by her) and Sarah’s mom, Mary. When we were cleaning out my grandparents’ house in 2016, I found a bunch of cards and letters from Mary in Sharon’s room; they apparently had kept in touch for quite some time after the trip ended and that made me simultaneously happy and sad, because Sharon didn’t really have friends “in real life” so it was nice to know that she had made a somewhat lasting connection with someone from the group, but it also made me sad because I started to wonder about Mary – is she well? How are Andrea and Sarah? I was inspired to look them up on Facebook when I was still on there, and I actually found someone who might have been Sarah, but I felt weird about sending a friend request, like “Hi, I was just over here in Pittsburgh cleaning out my deceased aunt’s bedroom and found letters from your mom and so I did a deep-dive on the Internet and you probably don’t remember me because we only knew each other for three weeks in 1995 but wanna be friends?”

I guess it’s not that weird, really, but I was so emotionally drained during that summer in 2016 that I let it go.

Right before that trip, I had gone to get my hair cut at some shitty salon in Century III Mall called Shear Talent or something and I even brought a picture of Carrie Brady from Days of Our Lives with me and told the bald hairdresser that this is what I wanted, but he listened to my mom instead and cut my hair IN REALLY SHORT LAYERS, literally the shortest my hair has ever been, and it was actually traumatizing (oh, don’t act like you have never thought your life was over because of a bad salon experience!!!) and I remember wailing, “I NEVER SHOULD HAVE TRUSTED A HAIR DRESSER WHO LOOKS LIKE MR CLEAN!!” So, I went into this trip with relatively low self esteem. I was ultra-conscious about my hair cut and basically just didn’t want anyone to look at me.

But then one day, Mary looked at me and said, “You know who you look like?

Drew Barrymore.” And just like that, my confidence soared. All these years later, and I still remember this so vividly, this nice woman named Mary from Michigan telling me I looked like some cute actress instead of the total toad I saw every morning when I looked in the mirror. She was being very generous with her compliments, though.

I know, you’re thinking, “I thought this was about a stuffed hippo?” We’re getting to that! I just get derailed sometimes.

Out of all the young people in our group, Steve was the one with whom I had the best rapport. At first, it started with just little sarcastic jabs here and there, but then I found myself looking for excuses to talk to him.

I have always been super big into souvenirs. On one of our trips, I was obsessed with obtaining a collectors spoon (????) from each country, and I’m currently a serious magnet hoarder. But on this trip, it was all about key chains. And European key chains, at least in the 90s, were really hard to open. So I’d buy a key chain in every city and then sidle up to Steve and ask him to do it for me. Even if I could do it for myself.

I mean, I definitely have not outgrown this at ALL.

I totally had a crush on him—and even admitted it at one point in my vacation journal so you know it’s real—which probably definitely was not reciprocated by him because he was in college and I was some chubby, brace-faced 16-year-old from lame-ass Pittsburgh but our hyper-snarky love/hate banter always gave me that super minuscule inkling of hope that maybe THIS WAS LOVE.

In a truly passive-aggressive declaration of love, I bought a this small stuffed hippo at an Auto Grille in Italy, on a travel day from Venice to Florence. Back on the bus, we were trying to decide on a name for him, and I smugly said, “I think I’ll name him Steve.” And everyone laughed because you know, wow, Erin is insulting Steve, she must really NOT LIKE HIM AT ALL. (I was so fucking transparent.) All of the kids on the bus were obsessed with Steve the Hippo, for some reason. He became kind of a mascot and everyone would take turns holding him during the long bus rides.

Near the end of the vacation, we were on the bus, going to the overnight ferry that would take us to Greece. Natalie asked Steve, “If you were stuck on an elevator, who would you want to be stuck with?” and without even a millisecond of hesitation, Steve said, “Erin, because I’d like to get to know her better.”

My heart. My goddamn coal-chunk of a heart. I still get a little jolt in it when I remember this moment.

I mean, he also said I was the meanest person on the bus but that’s just because my flirting tactics are borderline-bullying.

Of course, we never kept in touch. And every once in a while, I would get inspired to Google him but always came up empty.

All of these years later, Steve the Hippo is still out and about, and oddly is one of the most precious and sentimental (and cheapest) souvenirs I ever brought back from one of those trips.

I was inspired to write this because a couple months ago, I was leaving the bedroom and said goodbye to Steve the Hippo, who lives on my dresser, and Henry was like, “?” so I yelled, “DO YOU NOT KNOW THE STEVE THE HIPPO ORIGIN STORY?!” Needless to say, he was subjected to a much more winded and gushy version than you just read here.

While reading my vacation journal to get details for this post, I said, “Steve threw Steve the Hippo at me so I hit him. Oh look, Steve and I arm-wrestled!”

“Of course you did,” Henry mumbled.

Every time I look at Steve the Hippo, I think about how one time, years ago, someone chose me in the hypothetical elevator game. As I age and lose more and more of my personality, become more introverted and wallflower-y, and am having a particularly low self-esteem day, this memory gives me a boost.

Steve is the first guy there on the left.

On the last day of our vacation, we were on the bus en route to the airport and Steve was holding the hippo. “You’re going to go home and rip all the stuffing out of this thing, aren’t you?” he said to me. I joked that I was going to give it to my dog, but man, if he only knew!

If.He.Only.Knew.

(I wonder if he even remembers me?)

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