Father’s Day 2021

 Henrying, holidays
Jun 202021
 

Hello and welcome to Father’s Day 2021! Since Chooch and I failed at Henry’s birthday earlier this month, I figured we better step it up. I found this LOG THAT GROWS SHIITAKE MUSHROOMS so of course I snatched that up because I love eating mushrooms and Henry likes growing things lately, so that seemed like a win/win.

OMG this fucking log is so HEAVY!! But it didn’t seem like it was “enough,” so I thought we better also do some elementary school caliber Father’s Day art project. Henry doesn’t drink hot beverages so a custom coffee cup was out of the question, but he DOES drink iced tea and iced coffee, so I screamed, “TUMBLER!” at Chooch who was like, “OK that’s great but I’m actually in class right now so if you could NOT scream through the house, that would be so chill.”

You have to know that once I get an idea in my head, it’s all I can think about until the thing is actually tangible so I started working on it right away. We knew that we wanted the background to be pretzels because our Him Man loves himself some pretzels of all varieties.

Remember when I had Henry take a picture of Chooch and me jumping? I told him it was because I needed it for my brother’s birthday and he said he didn’t think anything of it, just figured I was doing something weird as usual, lol.  Also included: Henry’s ult bias Cha Eun-Woo from Astro, a Rip-It can since he sometimes drives a Rip-It van for work and people ALWAYS stop him and try to buy some – it’s so bizarre, Ted Nugent, a water tower from where he used to live in the SERVICE, a plane that was supposed to be an AIR FORCE plane since Henry can always identify military planes in the sky, and GOCHU-JOHN because that’s how he pronounces gochujang. Also the pretzel background doubles as his favorite color – brown.

Then I wrapped it in the circulars which is his favorite part of the mail and I always throw them out before he gets a chance to see them lol.

He was really scared this morning when I thrust each box at him, lol.  The log had him extremely perplexed but the tumbler made him do his TRYING NOT TO SMILE smile!

Like it says in the caption – when he was admiring his new tumbler, Chooch asked him, “what kind of plane is that?” Henry squinted at it and said, “Well, it’s not American…” HAHAH I think I just googled “war plane” and never even bothered to check what it was actually was.

I was also going to include a picture of Hot Naybor Chris on it but I was afraid that Henry would never take it outside the house for fear of HNC catching him with it and wondering why Henry’s sipping cold brew out of a vessel bearing his visage.

Also, I texted my dad a picture of us at Wildwood from 1985. He might not be my bio-dad, and we may have had some BIG UPS AND DOWNS especially in my teen years, but we get along wonderfully now (actually, ever since I moved out at age 18!!) and though we may not share blood, I definitely share a lot of the same quirks as him, that is FO’ SHO’.

And now we’re about to head out to Cedar Point for today and tomorrow, with the lowest expectations as possible because: Cedar Point. This has to be THE WORLD’S most unpredictable amusement park, honestly. Maybe we’ll even let Henry treat himself to a soft pretzel or two.

Highs and Lows of Memorial Day Eve 2021, Part 2

 holidays, travel
Jun 052021
 

I was going to live-blog this day but then I didn’t and now I wish I did.

After we bailed on Six Flags, we drove to Buffalo (maybe the outskirts?) to a vegan junk food joint called Big Mood. Checking out local vegan places is my favorite thing to do when we go on road trips!

Big Mood’s dining room is open but we opted to order online and take the food to a park because it was such a beautiful day. After we placed the order, we had 20 minutes to kill so we decided to walk around the area, which had some pretty impressive motherwhomping mansions. As usual, we didn’t wait for Henry so he had to hustle to catch up. He’s used to it.

We stopped briefly to ogle two bunnies in one of the yards. Henry and I continued walking but of course, Chooch lingered a bit longer. Next thing we knew, he was being interrogated by a man in a car. All I heard was Chooch nervously say, “No, I was just looking at the rabbits. Rabbits. The rabbits in the yard.” And then he ran to catch up with us.

“WTF was that?” I asked, and Chooch said it was the HOMEOWNER who just happened to be coming home AT THAT EXACT TIME, rolling up beside Chooch on the sidewalk to slap him with an authoritative, “Can I help you?”

Leave it to Chooch to make rabbit-watching look suspicious. It would have been better if this happened when Chooch was pulling the waistband of his jeans away from his body to demonstrate to us how big they are (see that previous post where I recommend that he wear a belt and he acted like this was the dumbest suggestion of all time), because to a casual observer who took us for burglars, it looked like Chooch was showing us all the goods he stole and stashed in his pants.

We left that street (it wasn’t even a gated community or anything so dude needs to step off) and rejoined the riffraff on a main street. There was a buffalo statue in front of a building and I said to Chooch, “Go stand by that buffalo.” What follows is real life dialogue from that moment, which is 100% accurate because my phone had been accidentally recording for over 5 minutes after Chooch got yelled at.

C: No

Me: Yeah.

C: No.

Me: Henry, go stand by the buffalo.

C: Yeah, you.

H: I…stood by something today already.

C: I ALREADY STOOD BY TWO THINGS! YOU!

H: You stand by it.

C: No. You didn’t stand by anything.

H: I stood by the…..[indistinguishable murmuring].

C: OK COOL (this is our go-to, ‘fuck you, we’re done talking’ sign-off)

H: *says something provoking that I can’t make out*

C: I literally….It’s your turn. I got the fountain picture. Go.

M: You two are both assholes.

H: I’ll do it.

C: Yeah, now you’ll do it. (As we already walked past it!!)

H: Well, now she’s doing that thing she does where she pouts.

M: That’s not what I’m doing.

It was 100% what I was doing.

Then Chooch found some dried out seed pods from a tree and we talked about that for a while.

Got our food!! I got this Sante Fe chicken sandwich and adored the fact that they call their fake chicken patties “zero clucks.” We drove for a while until we found a good place to sit at a park (on bleachers with like a constant swarm of people milling past us so of course I was like THESE PPL ARE MAKING ME NERVOUS and Henry and Chooch just rolled their eyes because oh look, Erin’s being Erin). Oh man, this sandwich was delicious and FILLING.

Stupidly, we wanted to venture out to the American side of the Falls after this, forgetting that it was a holiday weekend on the tail-end of a pandemic so….yeah. That place a  mad house and we weren’t willing to pay $30 to park so we figured it was time to call it a day and start the drive back home, which was fun for Henry because at this point, Chooch and I were fucking SLAP HAPPY. The only thing Henry hates more than Chooch and I fighting is Chooch and I laughing so hard we are either puking (Chooch) or pants-peeing (me).

Henry had to get gas, leaving us hyenas in the car. Henry’s phone was connected so when he paid for the gas, the text message from the bank popped up on the car screen with a prompt to reply, so I hit the microphone icon and frantically tried to scream FUCK YOU as Henry’s reply to the bank’s text, but it kept coming out like FWAHAHAHAHAHAHA YOOHOOHOOHOOHOOHOHOHOHOUIWUQUP, launching Chooch and me down a laughing spiral for a good hour, making me feel like I popped blood vessels in my eyes; Henry, meanwhile, didn’t laugh once, but did try to kick us out of the car once.

Then we went to the NY Tourist Center which was fanc-ay!

The lighting in the bathroom was excelsiur.

I tried to hide from Henry while he was going to the bathroom but somehow, when I was still outside running to a different entrance to use for a sneak attack, Henry and Chooch managed to leave the bathroom and even proceeded to “fake leave” me behind, nearly running me over in the process when I came flying out of the building. All of this happened after I started to lurch at a man coming out of the bathroom who was definitely not Henry and then I had to play it off like I had just tripped on my way to look blankly at the vending machine.

Went to Six Flags, had more fun at a tourist center. Sounds just like us!

I was even a super sweetie and drove the last hour so Henry could sleep

***

The next day, I mentioned something about the drive home and Henry said, “You mean when you were doing 85?”

I paused. “Well…the speed limit was 70, so.”

“You were doing 85!” Henry reiterated, his tone flecked with slightly more hysteria this time.

“Oh my god, were you spying on me?”I cried, and you can imagine the incredulity.

“My eyes would automatically fly open every time the car lurched forward,” he said, and by now I was bored of the conversation and only like talking about myself when it doesn’t involve someone accusing me of doing something wrong, THANK YOU V. MUCH. Luckily, it’s easy to flip the switch on Henry. You usually just have to point out the window and yell, “OH LOOK AT THAT PLANE” and then he’ll be all concerned with trying to identify it. This also works with birds, cars, 1970s porn plots…

Then Henry and I went for a walk at the Homewood Cemetery on actual Memorial Day and saw this zombie ground hog, which was basically the highlight of the whole weekend for me:

mom’s day 2021

 holidays, nostalgia
May 102021
 

Oh hello, here I am to talk about my Mother’s Day, 2021. It started out BLAH – we were tentatively going to take a mini-road trip to some state park in WV to get away from the 100% rain forecast here in Pittsburgh, but I woke up FEELING LIKE A HORNET. I think I just have this bad habit of expecting the worst on any holiday because I just assume that Henry and Chooch will fail me (to be fair, they usually do lol).

I came downstairs like a little bitch, haughtily declined Henry’s offer to make me breakfast, and instead showered all of MY GOOD ATTITUDE upon the cats and squirrels, a/k/a MY REAL FAMILY.

When I opened the door to refill Buddy’s Bistro (that’s what I call the crate that doubles as a squirrel shelter so they can nosh on their peanuts and sunflower feeds with a roof over their little furry heads when it’s raining), I noticed a plain white envelope on the doorstep:

LOL Henry is such a dork. And I know it was Henry who made it because of the half-assed punctuation. I was still in A MOOD so I didn’t give him a reaction right away. LOL forever a b-r-a-t.

When I was younger, I could steady be in a bad mood for like, days. Nay, weeks. But the older I get, the more tiresome it is! I only have so much energy and I need that for exercising and going on copious walks, not scowling and hissing at everyone who dares to look at me.

Sigh. My edge is really getting dull as I age.

Then Henry said he was going to Lowe’s and I was like THAT IS DUMB until I realized he was going to FINALLY check out different options for what he needs to finally finish my subway sign – he was originally holding out for plexiglass but the price HAS NOT gone down at all thanks to the pandemic making it a hot commodity. I opted to go with him because it was raining so hard and I was too depressed to stay home and also I wanted to get a new houseplant because it’s Mother’s Day and that seems like something a Mother would treat herself with, right? I got this big’gun pot of California Elephant Ears and named him SETH.

Because of The O.C.?

California?

No?

I was annoyed the whole time we were at Lowe’s and the only thing I could think of that would make me feel better at that precise moment was boba so we went to Squirrel Hill because I wanted Kung Fu Tea but they were CLOSED for MOTHER’S DAY but it was OK because Pink Box is across the street and even if that was closed too, there are like 4 other places on that street alone that could have curbed my boba cravings and we also ordered vegan sandwiches at Allegro and went for a short stroll in the rain while waiting for it so that was nice I guess.

Came home and Chooch was like “OMG LOOK! IT’S A MOTHER! ON HER DAY!” and then thrust a homemade card at me which made me laugh because he signed it Sincerely.

I like being his MUM even though he eats in his room which breaks HOUSE RULES but whatever I guess let’s all just whatever we want, ugh.

Meanwhile, I told Chooch (and Henry because Chooch never does shit on his own) that all I wanted for Mother’s Day was the ability to be able to work out to my beloved Jacki Sorensen aerobics tape that I have been unable to use in what feels like 20 years almost because it’s a VHS and Henry was like I CAN DO THIS and was trying to find a VCR to borrow so that he could convert the tape to a computer file and put it on a USB so that I could use the Roku to play it so he asked Hot Naybor Chris who probably thought Henry found his old VINTAGE PORN stash and needed a VCR to have a viewing party and he said he would see if he could find one at his camp whatever that means but then Henry was in the attic looking for something completely unrelated and found my old VCR that we didn’t know still existed!!

So I was able to work out with Jacki last night while wearing my beloved Jacki shirt that my mom got when she attended the actual Jacki Sorensen Danceathon in 1984 at the old Civic Arena!!

I have been a BIG FAN of Jacki Sorensen ever since the 90s when I found my mom’s old VHS of one of her aerobics workouts and even tried to make some of my friends workout with me in my basement when they were sleeping over and I was DRUNK (maybe it was THIS NIGHT???).

The tape came with me (as did the shirt) when I moved out in 1998 and over the years, I used it as sparingly as possible because I was so afraid it would just snap one day. Now that everything in the world seems to be on YouTube, I would check every now and then to see if anyone ever uploaded it but NOPE, NEVER NOT EVEN A LITTLE CLIP.

Then I was doing a walking workout on this one guy’s channel that I really like and one of the songs he used was this one:

I SCREAMED. This song is used in one of my favorite segments from that damn Jacki Sorensen tape and it was at this point where I found the VHS, slapped it on Chooch’s desk, and said, “ALL I WANT FOR MOTHER’S DAY IS FOR YOU TO FIND A WAY FOR YOUR MOMMY TO ENJOY THIS AGAIN.”

“What even is this?” he murmured and then promptly forgot about it because he has teenage dementia.

So I had to coax it out of the recesses of his memory and finally, to Henry he said, “Oh yeah. She wants some weird tape converted to a DVD or something” and no, THAT’S NOT WHAT I SAID, but OK close enough.

And Henry made my wish come true yesterday and I was SO HAPPY and also I still cannot do the “Tom Jones” move which is in like every segment almost. But who doesn’t love a workout that warms up with Barbara Streisand and cools down with Barry Manilow?!

This is what the VHS sleeve looks like but god only knows what happened to mine over the years, it probably disintegrated at some point in the attic:

Amazon.com: Jacki Sorensen's Aerobic Dancing Encore [VHS]: Sorensen,Jacki: Movies & TV

And that was my Mother’s Day.

P.S. It just now occurred to me that Kung Fu tea had some sort of Mother’s Day promotion happening via their app that I was prepared to take advantage of but then they were closed because it was Mother’s Day. What kind of shady fucking mother-crushing shit is that.

 

Chooch Appreciation Post

 chooch, holidays
Apr 262021
 

Please allow me to gush a little about my WITTLE BABY-WABY, MOMMY’S #1 SON, MY PRECIOUS ANGEL. Lol, ugh. But yes, our boy turned fifteen yesterday and we celebrated all weekend as best and as big as we could in these fucked up times.  Sometimes I wonder if, from the other side, it looks like we spoil Chooch. But honestly, aside from snippy teenage attitude (what teenager DOESN’T have it??), he deserves so much more than we’re able to give him. Kids have been hit so hard during the pandemic, and I am so thankful that Chooch was able to adapt to not only starting high school at a brand new school, but doing so by maneuvering through all the awkward hiccups of virtual learning. Not only has he made a group of new friends, he has been a hit with his teachers while tackling advanced classes and maintaining a 4.0. He is the coolest nerd I know. Honestly.

Plus, he’s my favorite roller coaster riding companion, Henry hassling partner (we call him “Him Man” almost exclusively now, in case you were wondering if I ever refer to Henry as “dad” when I’m talking about him to Chooch; nope, I use the term that our cats use for him), stay at home buddy, begrudged photoshoot subject, neighborhood walker. Don’t get me wrong – he’s at an age where he’d prefer to hole up in his cave and play his dumb computer games (he got  promoted to a “helper” on some server and got to have someone banned for saying the n-word, so I approve of this job!), or chill at the Teen Center with his friends, but he’s not opposed to joining us for family outings. Not to mention the fact that his little niece and nephew look at him like he’s a magical being.

I am also not ashamed to say that I’m pretty positive most of my friends like him more than they like me, and I can’t really blame them! He’s got personality dripping off him in iridescent waves.

So yeah, I always want to do big things for him on his birthday! I want him to have awesome memories of his childhood birthdays, just like I do.

Of course I was hoping that the state of things would be better this year and we could have a party for him, but that still wasn’t the case. So we decided to at least get him a small strawberry cake from Sumi’s and have Blake and Haley come over (I was nervous about this – no one has been here in over a year!) Saturday night. It was a super last minute thing, because we had already planned to take him to the Columbus Zoo on his actual birthday, so it was kind of a surprise non-party in a way? Of course it went from “just cake” to “we should go to Party City and at least get some decorations” to “WE SHOULD DO A JOJO SIWA THEME!” Of course Henry the Skeptic was like, “Yeah, if they even have any Jojo Siwa stuff there” like, OK Father Time, you don’t know anything because not only did they have an entire Jojo section (it was super picked-over though, but most of the empty racks seemed to hold hair accessory party favors and I don’t really think we needed bows, lol), they even had a singing Jojo balloon which I could tell by the fearful glint in Henry’s eyes that he was hoping I wouldn’t think it was necessary but I was like “PLOP THAT SHIT IN THE BASKET, BROTHER.”

But then, we had to listen to go off in the backseat on the entire drive home:

My Instagram caption is true: Never had I heard a Jojo Siwa song until that day.

Luckily, Chooch rarely leaves his room so I was able to decorate without him knowing anything was going on, lol.

I accidentally broke the tall candles because I’m a brute, but Haley said later that night that she thought they were meant to look crooked, so all’s well! Also, had to go with Peppa Pig candles because there weren’t any Jojo Siwa ones :(

Drew was 100% not a fan of the balloons. Henry had to stash them in the attic before we left for our day trip yesterday so she wouldn’t go into shock – she gets so stressed out over everything. :(

Henry didn’t understand why the tablecloth says “Bows make everything better” because he’s a 55-year-old man.

Then Blake ended up being late (I know, I know – but they live next door, how long could it possibly take them to come over; except that there were coming here straight from somewhere else) and we could only stall Chooch for so long. Of course, he ended up coming downstairs before Blake was able to get here so he saw his non-party spread and was like, “WHAT IS ALL THIS.”

“THIS IS ABUSE.”

He secretly loved it though! And besides, he’s always complaining about not having a damn cup to use, so now he has his very own Jojo’s Juice vessel.

This just in: when Chooch and I were on our afternoon walk a little while ago, he got his “Evaluation” from that server thingie he’s doing and they said “We have no critique because everything you’re doing is awesome.”

OMG I hate him but also, now I know how Glenn feels whenever I get showered with over-the-top kudos at work.

I forgot to get a picture of Chooch blowing out his candles so I made him redo it and also Henry wasn’t even in the room because he was too busy holding his newest  grandbaby and doing weird Him Man cooing. G-to-the-ross.

Mm, that Sumi’s cake though!

Anyway, it was a very rapid-fire cake-eating sesh because the kids were in that weird limbo right before bedtime where they were super slaphappy with drunk-eyes but could easily lose their shit at any minute and I never realized just how NON-CHILDPROOF our house actually is until two toddlers were let loose and trying to grab everything while their parents yelled at them and the  baby was wailing and it was an actual hellscape. Like, I felt absolutely exhausted after they left and I didn’t even have to do anything but stand there and watch. I feel for Blake and Haley, bigtime. Three kids under the age of 4 is super ambitious and insane but one day when the kids are older, it’s going to be pretty cool.

Oh yeah, I had to make Blake cut the cake since Henry was holding the baby and I certainly wasn’t about to break my decades-long cake-cutting boycott.

But poor Chooch! He just wanted to eat his fucking cake in peace, haha. I think he still had a nice evening though. I wish we could have safely given him a bigger celebration and I did consider trying to arrange something outdoors but honestly, I thought better of it, what with so many of us THIS close to being fully vaccinated, why not just wait.

I swear to god though, if things are safe next year, you better believe he’s getting a sixteenth birthday blowout!

Easter 2021! Original Title!

 chooch, Covid Diaries, holidays
Apr 092021
 

I really love Easter so much and this year’s bunny day did not disappoint. The weather was perfection (in the low 60s and sunny!) and we actually all got along even though Henry’s chewing and breathing was really beyond extra that day.

First, we had to wake up Chooch and give him his “basket.” Chooch is definitely my kid, in that he is nearly 15 and still wants TOYS and FUN and all the things his little niece and nephew next door are enjoying as toddlers. We decided to fill a small basket with what Chooch claims to be the only sponges he can use to wash the dishes which is clearly just an excuse to not have to wash the dishes. I plopped in one piece of candy for good measure and then at the last minute, I added a bath bomb that he had gotten earlier that day when he was at the store with Henry (not pictured).

Of course it took us forever to get him to wake his ass up. I left the fake basket on the dining room table for him to find, totally exposed so there was no fun involved. He actually took it all in stride, and laughed a lot, so I’m not sure if it’s a reflection of the GREAT JOB Henry and I have done raising him that he didn’t act like a petulant shit when that was “all he got,” or if he’s been conditioned over the last decade to know that there was something better in store if he just rides it out—probably the latter, lol.

Then I needed to get him BACK into his room because Henry left DOLL on his computer desk with one lone Easter egg. OMG for a kid who never wants to leave his room, it was surprisingly hard to get him to go back into it! Granted, the reason I used was probably a bad one: I told him that our new Easter tradition was going to Church with Blake, Haley and the kids and that he needed to go change into something nice, which made shit hit the fan. he became INEXPLICABLY distraught at the prospect of suddenly having to go to church after all these years of living in the lap of heathenism.

Finally got him to go into his room, where he hurled himself down on his bed and proceeded to cry some more. God, this kid!! We should have kept him in Catholic school! Why did we ever pull him out? Oh right, my blog. LOLOLOL.

Anyway, I had to point out DOLL to him just to speed shit up and that set him off even more. “OMG YOU MADE ME GO THROUGH ALL OF THIS JUST SO I COULD SEE DOLL?? UGH!” and he stormed off back downstairs without even realizing that DOLL contained an Easter egg, because DUMB HENRY stuck the egg up her dress instead of just setting it in her lap like I told him to, so then I had to carry DOLL downstairs and thrust her at Chooch, who refused to take her and instead gave me this bewildered look, like “I’m used to you acting insane but you are being TRULY STRANGE this morning” so then I had to EXTRACT the egg from DOLL’s dress and chuck it at Chooch, who finally started to realize that this was an effort to make Easter fun for a surly teen. Except that now DOLL’s egg message didn’t make sense since he was supposed to open it IN HIS ROOM, but now he was in the dining room so he asked, “All of the eggs are hidden in the basement?” Ugh. This dumb scavenger hunt WAS NOT THAT COMPLICATED.

We only hid 8 eggs the night before, just on the first floor, so this hunt should have been over relatively quickly but instead my DENSE SON dragged it out for nearly an hour because he is sooooo obtuse! We were giving him all these dumb hints and he was just standing in the middle of the room, looking lost.

Although, to be fair, one of my hints was “Something you could find at the circus” and he cried THAT COULD BE LITERALLY THIS ENTIRE ROOM!

Anyway, all of the eggs contained a piece of Russian candy and a “coupon” for things like “trip to the Columbus Zoo” and “Dad takes out garbage for month of April.” (In response to that one, Henry wrote out a coupon that says “Geocaching with mom, no less than two hours!”

I hate geocaching.

After he found all of his idiotic eggs, he was sitting on the church pew (oh the irony) watching TV so I ran upstairs to get his real basket, which I’m not entirely sure he was expecting after going through the rigmarole of collecting Easter coupons.

I wish I still got an Easter basket! I am fully planning on giving Chooch an Easter basket (and any future partner/spouse he might wind up with) for the rest of my life.

Later that afternoon, we drove out to Economy Park, which we haven’t to been to in quite some time but the playground is cool because it has this big electronic game that Chooch and I always think we are obsessed with until we get there and remember that it’s broken. The road to the pavilions is closed so we had to park at the playground and walk for about a half mile (??? I’m really bad with measuring distance!), all of which was without Henry who had to go back to the car when we made it out of the parking lot because he forgot the BUNNY PLATE I bought specifically for our EASTERgayo sandwiches, so he ended up being way behind us on the walk which was hilarious to me and Chooch but probably actually super peaceful for Henry.

You might remember that I deemed these sandwiches our “new Easter tradition” two Easters ago. They are based off the Inkigayo sandwich in South Korea, which is a multi-layered sandwich served in the cafeteria to idols performing at the Inkigayo weekly music show. The idols love them so much that various convenience stores in Korea attempted to recreate them and let me tell you, we ate some v. tasty ones on our last trip! Anyway, there are several variations floating around the Internet.

Here’s my OG post about it if you’re interested!

Easter 2019: Idol Sandwiches & Crappy Woodland Treasure

After lunch, I made these lugs pose for family pictures with me. I also *tried* to coordinate our clothes so we were all wearing Easter-y pastel shades, which made Chooch happy because it meant he could wear his pink/salmon hoodie and not A DRESSY SHIRT OMG BOO HOO.

 

You guys, we got Henry to jump!!

Oh man, what a GREAT DAY, honestly. I mean, I almost threw up on a spinny thing at the playground afterward, but it was still just a wonderful holiday. I love you, Easter.

Easter Eve 2021

 holidays
Apr 072021
 

I know there are vocab purists out there that will argue that EVE only applies to the EVENING before whatever day, but I’m going to be talking about everything that happened on Saturday, pre-Easter, that was note-worthy OH WELL!

Don’t worry, there’s not too much to talk about, haha ugh covid.

In the morning, Henry and I went to some new Russian/Turkish/Easter European market that opened in Robinson. There is one right down the street from us too but this one is brand spanking new (I just literally realized that this refers to a doctor slapping a newborn?? Wow, tons of things suddenly make sense when you’re in your 40s, I guess) and 3x the size of the one by us. ALSO THE YOUNG GUY WORKING THERE WAS SO FUCKING CUTE.

I mean, they had lots of candy! We wanted to get some additional things for Chooch’s, Calvin’s, and Lily’s Easter baskets. (Henry, the laziest grandfather of all time, hadn’t even considered getting Calvin and Lily baskets, that was all me. See? I’m OK sometimes.) Hershey’s and whatever is all well and good but I do love adding some international candy flava to the holiday mix, yanno? I don’t think Calvin and Lily care yet (they just wanted their toys), but Chooch was like, “Fuck yeah, some kind of Russian juice box, thanks Easter Bunny!”

I bought a bag of these sugary corn curls based on the packaging alone, but holy shit are these GUD.

Literally thought these were BBQ-flavored marshmallows but Henry was like, “USE YOUR BRAIN, DUMDUM THOSE ARE FOR S’MORES.”

Wow.

But I bet somewhere in South Korea, you can find BBQ-flavored marshmallows.

Speaking of Korea, this joint had a decent Lotte Choco Pie selection!

I also bought some filberts, almonds, and pecans for my Buddys and Mr. Gray Guys! They LOVE filberts. The one Buddy takes them across the street and buries them at the church. Whatever makes you happy, Buddy. (It’s actually the Buddy that let me feed him outside the other day! I can tell which one he is because he has a little smattering of tawny spots on his left side by his butt, lol. I am so fucking pathetic. Please send help. Or a friend. I need a friend. A human one.

Later that afternoon, Henry and I went for a stroll at our favorite cemetery and it was OK except that I was wearing a pair of TOMS that I got last summer and hadn’t yet broken in, in an attempt to, you know, break them in, and my one heel was sah-creem-ing. Then we went to pick up our Trinidadian vegan Easter dinner from ShadoBeni, who introduced us to the famous Doubles a few years ago at a farmer’s market and I had been obsessed ever since. How lucky Pittsburgh veg/vegans are to have this awesome guy here cookin’ up delicious meatfree Trinidad cuisine!  There was no way that I could wait an entire day to eat this so Henry prepared it that evening for a pre-Easter dinner and it was ALL SO GOOD but hoo boy, I had to roll myself away from the table afterward.

You guys. Doubles.

OH YES.

It is so messy and sloppy and spicy and ugh, just SO FILLING AND DELICIOUS!

This was after Chooch and I were like YOU ARE CHEWING SO LOUD, lol. Ah, family dinners.

Sunday Spring Shots: An Interlude

 holidays
Apr 042021
 

Happy Easter Sunday to those who care about that holiday! And if not, happy beautiful spring day in April!

We had a lot of quality time together as a family today (which is happening less and less the older Chooch gets – ugh, teenagers!) and I will definitely be recapping our Easter happenings soon. But first, here are some pictures I took after our Easter lunch at a playground!

Hey, it might not be cherry blossoms in South Korea, but these are still beautiful and give me HOPE THAT THINGS ARE GONNA GET BETTER.

He looks so freaking tall here and I hate it. Remember when he was *this* small on Easter??:

Petal Face.

(That’s my beloved sea-glass from Busan around my neck, FYI!)

Wish I could always use flowers as a mask! This picture was actually an accident but I kept it because I look v. srs. which was 100% not how I actually felt all day. Also, you can see my eyebrow piercing scar, which I often forget exists but this was a nice reminder and now I’m reliving that ER visit in my mind and cracking up. I think I have referenced it here once a long time ago but perhaps I will write an updated account of my eyebrow-piercing-gone-bad, because it was a Bad Idea from start to finish—lemme know if you want the story, haha. I mean, I have nothing else to blog about!

My signature dumb, unflattering pose.

Today was just really nice. Easter continues to be my second favorite holiday (behind Halloween, obv.).

Bangles & bengals & Bingle Bangle

 holidays, Uncategorized
Feb 242021
 

I used to be friends with this one broad who was SO UP IN MY RELATIONSHIP with Henry that it was kind of gross. And every holiday she’d be all, WHAT DID HENRY GET YOU – like bitch step off. Jesus. It was frustrating because Henry and I don’t *always* exchange gifts and she was giving me a complex about this, like he must not love me. But you know what that they say: better to have someone who does little things for you every day than big things on holidays – I think someone said that? Maybe?

Anyway, my point is that we don’t go all out for each other every Valentine’s Day, although some years are more inspired than others (like that ONE TIME I baked him a cake and will never let him forget it). This year, I did zilch for him, but LOOK AT THIS BEAUTIFUL BANGLE HE GOT ME!

Full disclosure, he knew I wanted it and went through this whole rigmarole of measuring my hand before ordering it, lol. It felt like redemption though and here’s why: I love this jeweler (Martha Rotten) so much. I bought a doll-head ring from her probably about 8 years ago and it is sooooo chunky and eye-catching, and you know, totally my style. So then one time several years later, Henry and I went to Riot Fest in Chicago and she was a vendor there!! I got to gush to her face about how much I love her work and even pointed out the ring and yelled “I HAVE THIS ONE!” and she was like “OK cool story” but in a nice way and I was psychically pleading with Henry to let me buy something but this was back when we were less financially secure so Henry answered my silent pleas with silent LOOK of his own and I was like OK WE WILL BE BACK! but of course we never came back because wasn’t it enough that we drained our accounts for a three-day music festival in the mid-west, Erin? GOD!

But every once in awhile, I revisit her Etsy shop and drool over the new(-to-me) additions. When I saw this planchette bangle, I was like I WANT THIS and sent it to Henry.

It just arrived the other day and I am obsessed. I love big, heavy jewelry so much! (This is going to make Henry’s head explode because my actual Day Of Valentine’s present was a new FitBit but I freaked out because it was too big and I was uber-aware of it on my wrist so he took it back lol. I don’t want my FUNCTIONAL accessories to be clunky!!)

Ew, ignore my awful nail polish.

Also arriving on the same day as my bangle was the F21 clothes I got Chooch during their President’s Day sale. I mean, someday when we have places to go again, we’ll at least have lots of new clothes and accessories, because online shopping is like my pandemic sport.

Anyway! Last night, I was like, “Put on this shirt and stand in front of the door” because shit is SO EXCITING around these parts.

Actually these are just tigers probably BUT IT’S MY BLOG AND IF I WANT THEM TO BE BENGALS FOR THE SAKE OF A BLOG POST TITLE, THEN BLAH BLAH BLAH.

He’s just lucky I didn’t make him put on the tiger robe too….(why didn’t I make him put on the tiger robe too!?!??!).

Welp, that’s all for me (except that the latest news in the Kpop world is that G-Dragon and Jenny from Blackpink are dating OMFG!!!).

Valentine’s Day Vegan Treats

 Food, holidays, nostalgia
Feb 142021
 

You guys, Sugar Spell Scoops has returned from their much-deserved January hiatus, just in time for Valentine’s Day! Their cupid-approved comeback featured 6 flavors, but I managed to repress my inner pig and only ordered 4. I try to reason that I’m giving other people a chance. It is literally Pint Panic during these pre-orders, you guys. Their ice cream is highly sought after and their winning reputation has been growing with each release. So, if you don’t sent a reminder on your phone and sit there hitting refresh like you’re trying to buy Blackpink concert tickets, then lolololol have fun eating your SO Delicious.

Be My Valentine is their Feb 14th spin on their famous Dunkaroo flavor, which was the first scoop Chooch ever got from Sugar Spell and I remember having flavor-remorse that day because I of course liked my choice but after he gave me a taste of his, I was straight up coveting it. So now I always make sure to snag a pint when it’s part of a pre-order! This version has chocolate Teddy Grahams and pink funfetti buttercream frosting swirls which honestly disengages my self-control and I just want to sit in a dark closet with my pint and spoon it into my slobbering mouth with my bare hands.

Chooch proclaimed Burnin’ Love as his favorite – it’s chocolate ice cream with mini chips, cinnamon and cayenne pepper. Woo boy, that subtle throat burn is perfection! Also, I have said this on here before and I’m not just being hyperbolic but Sugar Spell makes the best chocolate ice cream I have ever had and it’s even more incredible when you remember, as that rich chocolate pillow of flavor melts on your tongue, that this IS VEGAN.

AMBROSIA!!! I was determined to get this one because my mom made ambrosia for every summer cookout we had when I was growing up – to this day I’m always like “YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG” if I go to someone else’s party and they don’t have a big fucking bowl of ambrosia (or strawberry pretzel salad! If you can’t have both, at least pick one!). I did a whole post here last summer about summer picnic salads. It is actually stupid how on point this ice cream version is.

Perfect Matcha is obviously matcha, but also stawberry rose ice cream topped with rose petals! It’s mine all mine because neither Henry nor Chooch like matcha (well, I think Chooch is ok with matcha but he doesn’t love floral flavors in food) and oh baby this is so refreshing. It’s just the right amount of rose without leaving you with that cloying, accidental perfume inhalation taste in the back of your throat, you know what I mean? Sometimes, floral-flavors can be too heavy-handed, or they can just catch you off guard and leave you with a choking fit in the middle of a temple on a Hare Krishna compound when you imbibe water without knowing it had been steeped with an entire rose garden even though your FRIEND JANNA tried to warn you.

Ah, Sugar Spell – welcome back. You were missed!

Next up in vegan food pre-orders,  Onion Maiden’s occasional pop-up The Ramen returned this weekend, and I excitedly pre-ordered two bowls of spicy ramen for Chooch and me, and then the Flower People cheesecake which we will get to in a second….but first – RAMEN CLOSE-UP:

Now let’s get into this cheesecake! It’s made with ube & peach cashew cheesecake, with a soft helmet of cashew cream, chamomile, raspberry dust, and coconut.

It was so rich and dense that I willingly shared it with Henry.

We ordered two pieces though so you might catch me eating while crying in the shower because I’m going through some emotions lately HAHAHA ugh.

Anyway – back to Ambrosia Talk. Whenever Sugar Spell announced that as a flavor, I started a conversation on Instragram with Amanda (Sugar Spell’s mastermind) about how nostalgic this is and she told me that her grandma used to make a variation of it called Frog Eye Salad, which I have never heard of and became immediately obsessed as soon as Amanda mentioned that it contains PASTA.

She sent me the veganized recipe she uses and when I passed it on to Henry, he was intrigued enough to make it last night. I am here now to tell you that it is delicious and the pasta gives it the BEST texture!!

SO GOOD! And it’s not overly sugary or heavy so it makes a nice snack or a breakfast side (I may have done both today lol).

Here’s the recipe Amanda sent me if anyone is interested!

 

#Cult and Spiritual Leaders #Valentine Pack!

 Etsy Promo, holidays
Jan 232021
 

Hello here I am with more Valentine promotional content because as a small business owner, this is apparently a thing I need to do from time to time: be annoying with advertisements, LEST YOU FORGET THAT I MAKE GREETING CARDS AS A SIDE HUSTLE.

My serial killer and Golden Girls sets are still the clear top sellers (people love murder and sassy old broads and I have learned in my years running this shop that there is a definite intersection with these interests!) but I do offer other themes, like this super colorful CULT AND SPIRITUAL LEADER set that I introduced for the 2020 Valentine season, back before we knew that 2020 was going to be a real shit show.

Things still aren’t that great, so why not grab some cards to send to your peeps that you haven’t been able to see because of quarantines, social distancing, canceled….everything? These mini cards don’t come with envelopes since they were meant to be handed out in the style of elementary school Valentine mailbox parties, but they’d be super cute tucked into letters or larger greeting cards. I like using them as bookmarks and you know what would be HILARIOUS is leaving them inside those Little Free Library books – surprise!

Anyway, feel free to peruse the post below, from January 2020 when this set was new. If you decide to purchase something, why not use the discount code DANNYBONADUCE for 20% off? Oh Honestly Erin blog readers exclusive code, lol.

*****

Hello potential customers! I am very excited about this brand new, ink-is-still-drying, mini Valentine set I recently designed! They’ve been in the works since last year, but…well…I got lazy and didn’t get them finished in time for last year’s Valentine’s Day and then I lost motivated, but the a few weeks ago, I revisited my Cult Leader folder in Bridge and powered through.

It took lots of coffee and research, because I REALLY wanted to have 16 different designs, instead of just 8×2. Needless to say, I have been having some pretty not-great dreams lately, especially Thursday night after I spent most of the day with Scientology/L. Ron Hubbard videos playing on the TV behind me while reading Aleister Crowley Wiki pages.

LE SHUDDER.

I know, you’re used to seeing serial killers in this shop, but there is a very fine line separating these deviant walks of life!

I included some televangelists here too. Sure, perhaps they weren’t actively plotting mass murders, but they were still knee deep in scandals and scams!

These are designed just like my other Valentine sets – mini cards just like the kinds the kids pass out in school, except are they even allowed to do that anymore? Did some parent somewhere make a frantic phone call to the superintendent regarding the possibility of their precious Stacy Bitchtoast getting a papercut from handling big, bad, dangerous Valentines?

Sigh. School was so much better in the 80s.

Use these to recreate those special moments from back then, when kids didn’t have gluten allergies and it was OK to wear a mask in the Halloween parade. Except now you’re passing them out to your coworkers or whatever. Maybe you live in an apartment and feel like leaving anonymous love in some of your neighbors’ mail slots? Or maybe you just feel like passing them out on a street corner next to the weirdo Jehovah’s Witness doling out doomsday pamphlets.

In this set, you can find fan favorites like:

  • Charles Manson
  • Jim Bakker
  • Jim Jones
  • David Koresh
  • Jimmy Swaggart
  • Tammy Faye Bakker (an icon, really)
  • Marshall Applewhite
  • L. Ron Hubbard
  • David Miscavitch
  • Aleister Crowley
  • David Berg (founder of Children of God)
  • Luc Jouret
  • James Arthur Ray (self-help guru infamous for the sweat lodge deaths)
  • Anne Hamilton-Byrne (leader of Australian cult The Family)
  • Victor Houteff (Pre-Branch Davidian, Shepherd’s Rod, leader)
  • Warren Jeffs (gross President of Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)

Each one has the person’s name on the back in case your recipients are like, “….who the fuck…?” then they can follow Google down the Wiki Hole!

My 13-year-old son was like, “I hope no one ever searches our computer because the shit you google for your cards is just….wow.” But then he was looking at this set and said, “Wow, these are actually really good quality.” LIKE, HELLO, I KNOW. WHERE HAS HE BEEN ALL THESE YEARS?

So in case you needed any reassuring, please accept my son’s review. I mean, he looked away from his Nintendo Switch for a whole 5 minutes to flip through this set, and that really mean something these days.

I…can’t believe people believe in Scientology. And I’m a preeeeeetttttty gullible broad.

I might have actually peaked as a card designer / dad joke writer with that Koresh one.

I stared at David Berg’s face way too long when I was making the Flirty Fishy card and I think I have PTSD now.

Anyway, thanks for letting me share! (This one lifestyle blog I hate-read always says that and I’m like….but you didn’t ask.)

$8 will get you all 16 cards, so please consider being That Creep who gives out super uncomfortable cards on Valentine’s Day! Click here to purchase, mothercheffers! And don’t forget to check out the rest of the shop while you’re there. I have everything from serial killers to the Golden Girls to the Cure to vintage porn stars….so….something for maybe not “everyone,” but a strange niche of the population, for sure.

The Rescheduled Xmas Picnic 2020: Good Food & Near Death By Snow Ball

 holidays
Jan 052021
 

Henry and I started having these dumb cemetery picnics back in 2005, during the Christmas when I was pregnant and my family abandoned me, lol. This sounds like an episode of Teen Mom but I promise you I was 25. Anyway, it was kind of cute and I was happy that we were doing our thing on the holiday instead of relying on other people to invite us over and feed us like we’re a joint charity case, so it became something that we kept doing even when things were better and drama-free – we’d always carve out some time in the afternoon for a quick sandwich at the cem before heading over to my grandma’s house or whatever. And the last several years, we found out that this one amazing bakery called Pink Box is open on Christmas Day so we started going to a different cemetery that’s down the street from Pink Box and I gotta tell you, it’s a really delicious tradition to have!

This year though it snowed really bad on Christmas Day and to be honest, I was content hanging at home where it was warm and cozy. We waited until the weekend and had our belated picnic on a much warmer day (I mean, it was like 30 degree probably so not “warm” but better than a snowstorm, I guess). This meant that in addition to Pink Box buns, we were also able to hit up the neighboring Allegro Hearth Bakery for some plant-based sandwiches to go with our desserts!

Kofta melt. It was sooooo good.

One of the many bad things about Covid is that there’s been such an uptick of people strolling through the cemeteries. We used to hardly ever run into other people there, especially in winter, but there were motherfuckers sled-riding there that day, for Christ’s sake. I was so indignant and enraged about this but I mean…we were there to eat sandwiches and buns so….I guess we’re just as motherfucker-y as the sledding motherfuckers.

I mean, if you think just because your kid is 14, you can stop screaming basic common sense things at him like DON’T STEP ON THE ICY POND, DIP SHIT, you would be sadly mistaken. We seriously screamed it 3x each until Henry was like, “Fuck him then.” Parenting! We’re great at it!

Then I took this dumb picture of us MOMENTS BEFORE CHOOCH CHUCKED AN ICE-ENCRUSTED AT MY FUCKING EYEBALL AND RUINED THE WHOLE FAMILY BONDING EFFORT. In his defense, he was trying to hit Henry (which would have been fine, lol) but he missed and woooo boy did that sucker sting. I think it hurt even worse because it caught me so off guard and maybe I had a lot of pent up stress and tears in me and it unleashed a wave of emotion and possibly bi-polar enhanced histrionics which, looking back on it now, even I can admit was over the top and uncalled for.

First I was really pissed and then I just started sobbing uncontrollably to the point where Henry was like “um, there there” and cautiously put his arm around me which Chooch was like “….” and the dead people were like “Oooh, action!”

“WHY DOES EVERYONE HATE ME SO MUCH?!” I screeched, scaring off any bird that hadn’t been chased away by the vocal power of my initial outburst.

I was stalking back to the car, sensing that Henry and Chooch were mouthing shit to each other behind my back LIKE THEY ALWAYS DO, when I suddenly felt inspired to hit the dumb kid so I turned around and slapped his arm but only ended up hurting my hand in  the process and then we both started laughing and I screamed I HATE YOU while still laughing but also crying too and I noticed that there were two people who had been walking behind us for this whole shit show AND I DID NOT EVEN CARE.

Anyway, I was fine but I made sure to complain about my eye hurting all day even though it really didn’t.

And that’s the story about how sometimes you don’t need extended family to create drama on a holiday when you’re perfectly capable of stoking those flames yourself. The end. I’ll take a bow now.

New & Improved #SerialKiller Mini Valentine Set!

 Etsy Promo, holidays
Dec 312020
 

Hi hello what’s up hola *hello in ASL*.  I have been wanting for quite some time to give my original serial killer V-Day sets a refresher because let’s be real – I made those YEARS ago and my design style has graduated to, I dunno, 6th grade level Photoshop skill? I was especially unhappy with the backs – they were just sloppy, if we’re being honest. But I just kept putting it off, especially this year because while I’m very lucky to have a job that has seamlessly transitioned into work from home status during the pandemic, the last thing I want to do is finish my work day sitting at the computer and then…continue sitting at the computer.

But I really felt inspired and refreshed last weekend so I hunkered down on Saturday and got ‘er done, boys. Well, the first set, anyway. Maybe set #2 will happen this weekend??

I’m so much happier with the new backs!

I love these cards so much because they bring back fond memories of Valentine parties in elementary school, when we all got to fuck a shoebox with a glue stick and crepe paper and then run around stuffing Scooby Doo sentiments into everyone’s “mailbox” even if we didn’t like the person because THE TEACHER SAID. My favorite part was the candy and cupcakes though. I was a fat kid.

And then in fifth grade, I was the fat kid with a perm.

AND BRACES.

FML.

But I somehow still got Valentines so I didn’t hate the damn day.

Even now, as a grown as adult, I like passing out Valentines at work. I passed the serial killer ones out one year to mixed reviews. My one co-worker received an Albert Fish one and sent me an email that said, “OMG I just Wiki’d that guy. He was so terrible! Why would you give me that card?!”

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Surprisingly, no one reported me to HR.

Life is all about taking risks, you know?

This set includes 16 different designs! Can you even imagine? They do not come with envelopes though because they’re mini-cards. There are so many uses for them! One of my customers told me that she hid all of them around the house for her husband to randomly discover as he went about life. I thought that was so cute!

The backs include the names of each hellion in case your recipient isn’t as up to speed on their murder shows as you and me. So I guess you could even say that these are EDUCATIONAL TOO!

They could even be used as gift tags! Party favors! (REMEMBER PRE-PANDEMIC PARTIES??)

What are you waiting for?? Go grab a set!

I also have sets for vintage porn stars, cult leaders, Golden Girls, The Cure, and you can find several kpop sets in my KPOP SHOP as well!

Christmas 2020

 holidays
Dec 282020
 

I have honestly no complaints about this Christmas. It might have actually been one of the only ones where I didn’t cry or pout or smash glass, if we’re being real here. So here are some photos from our super cozy day at home!

When I woke up that morning, I had no expectations. Henry and I don’t always exchange gifts because we’re so focused on getting shit for our spoiled son who wasn’t supposed to get anything this year because we got him a brand new gaming computer in October and he was all, “THIS CAN BE MY EARLY XMAS GIFT, I WON’T EXPECT ANYTHING ON XMAS!” but of course I was like, “We have to get him some little things just so he has something to open on Christmas” because you know that’s the real meaning of Xmas, come on. And then that slowly morphed into DID WE GET HIM ENOUGH, MAYBE I SHOULD JUST GET HIM MORE THING” and then he ended up with a decent stack and do you know what that little shit said he liked the best?

These dumb stress bands I bought him because he said he wanted stress toys. They’re just these floppy rubber colorful strips that he can pull on and he has been walking around with no less than two of them in his hands at once, ever since Xmas, like he’s the Stress Cowboy.

So dumb.

But before any of that happened, we all came downstairs and I was prepared to get comfortable on the couch and watch Chooch tear through his gifts, except that I was met with a gigantic blanket-covered lump in the middle of the room, and Henry and Chooch were standing there staring at me expectantly, until I yelled, “IS THAT FOR ME?!” and it was!

You guys, I have four wheelchairs now!!!!

Henry said Chooch only knew about this for less than one full day because he can’t be trusted, but that he actually bought it awhile ago and it’s been in the garage ever since. Hot Naybor Chris helped him get it in there apparently and asked, “You guys going racin’ or something?” and I can totally picture him saying this which makes it even better!

And then Chooch made me a card inside which he wrote lots of sappy shit that he never ever ever would say out loud and I just kept saying, “I hate you” over and over while trying not to cry. This was the best Christmas I’ve had in a while!!

“I can’t believe he finally wrote on the correct side of the card,” I said to Henry later, of our genius son who is the biggest stoop when it comes to cards, letters, and envelopes.

“Oh, that was his third attempt,” Henry sighed.

The cats got a new tunnel for Henry to trip over and kick 87 times a day! (The amount of cat toys strewn about our house every day is actually really hilarious. I’m pretty sure they have more toys than Chooch ever did.)

Drew always has to be in the thick of things.

Chooch got an egg maker thingie and also an air fryer. He did not, however, get anything from wine.com. I just used the box to wrap something else! I FUCKING SWEAR!

Chooch loves Uniqlo, so I got him a coat which I think looks so nice on him but he’s just like, “I DON’T NEED COATS!” Because, you know, teenagers don’t get cold. Hoodies or GTFO.

And also this Keith Haring x Mickey Mouse sweatshirt. He loves Keith Haring! I hate how grown-up he looks here though.

Our joint gift to Henry was originally that he could eat and breathe all day without us complaining about how loud he was being but that turned out to be something that was just way out of our budget so we reneged after about an hour. (If you ask Henry, he’ll probably say we didn’t even last that long.)

Then it was time for dinner! Henry pre-ordered two Christmas dinner kits from our pals at Zenith and then made himself some gross meat-laden stew in his PRESSURE COOKER which he remembered he had on the night before Xmas Eve when we delivered cookies to Wendy and Shawn and crock pots somehow came up in conversation (I zoned out for most of that segment because it was too Adulting) and I guess that made him feel inspired to use it.

“Is that the thing we used to make the hot chocolate for the hot chocolate bar at our Xmas party last year?” I asked.

“No! That was a CROCK POT!” Henry cried because apparently he has tried to teach me the differences of these two kitchen gadgets in the past but I’m too obtuse to retain it.

Or care.

The best part of Zenith meals is the VEGAN BUDNT CAKE. This one was apple and I wanted to ride my new wheelchair to the nearest courthouse with the cake strapped to my lap.

You know, so we could be married.

The cake and me.

Henry was making lots of mouth-sounds with his stew, and I really think Chooch was about to pack up a hobo sack and hit the road.

Chooch’s face is perfect lol.

Actually getting along.

Afterward, we watched Die Hard (Chooch is going through this phase where he wants to watch “classics” which basically are just movies from the 80s so that doesn’t make me feel like a fucking old hag or anything) while Chooch attempted to make a gingerbread house and hurled the box across the room after 10 minutes, which is way longer than I would have lasted, so good for him.

Anyway, while watching Die Hard, I realized that I have never seen Die Hard. The end.

Christmas Eve 2020: It Was A Good Eve

 holidays
Dec 272020
 

Henry and I both had Christmas Eve off from work and it was really nice to just hang out and chill. Regardless of the pandemic, the holidays aren’t TOO stressful and busy for us because it’s usually just the three of us anyway. The last several years, we’ve gone to dinner with my mom and brothers but that’s usually just on a random night around Christmas. Obviously that didn’t happen this year!

Henry and I left Chooch at home and went to do some last minute Xmas shopping which wasn’t as terrible as I  thought it would be, though we did see a big fucking maskless douche-couple at Target. Which reminds me: the night before, we stopped by Wendy’s house to give her a tin of Chooch’s cookies and ended up having a really nice socially-distanced catch-up sesh outside of her house – it was the first time I’ve seen her (aside from WebEx video calls) since last March! (Actually, that’s not true – we waved to each other through my window last April when she dropped Sarris Candies off at my house.) Anyway! The reason I bring this up is because Shawn (her husband) was ranting about plumbers who came to their house and were free-lippin’ it and I was like “????” and then “…..” and then “!!!!!” because that’s the best term for it EVER. Fuck the free-lippers!

So yeah, aside from those two inconsiderate, selfish ‘MURRICA motherfuckers, we were able to grab the remaining things we needed with little to no conflict, and the lady who rang us at Target was amazingly In The Spirit and it was kind of nice.

I spent a good portion of the afternoon working on a work-related digital Xmas card and it turned out fine in the end but for some reason I was a maniac about it and Henry was like, “Please don’t burn down the house, I spent so much time painting the walls this year.” Once I got that finished and emailed, I felt like I could DO ANYTHING. Like liquid weight was just dripping off my shoulders. That’s the best feeling. It was like Xmas Vacation could officially start at that point!

I always wrap presents as they’re purchased since Chooch obviously knows they’re not coming from Santa. This is super fun for me because you can see Chooch going slowly insane for the weeks leading up to Xmas, as he tries desperately to figure out what’s inside each box. He guessed one of them correctly this time (he wanted stress toys and somehow knew exactly that’s what was inside one of the boxes and I was so stunned that he guessed that I stuttered which was a dead giveaway lol) but for the most part, it brings me great joy to watch him get curiosity twitches.

Anyway, my favorite part of this is thinking of who I can put on the “from” line. This year we had:

  • Taemin’s Eye Patch
  • Buddy (our fave squirrel)
  • Crushed Ibuprofen
  • Spoiled Almond Milk (he was in the middle of fighting with Henry about how the milk is always bad)
  • Kat from Paperbackdreams (our favorite Booktuber, and the present was cologne from a company called Imaginary Authors)
  • Library Security Guard P.S. Read a Fucking Book (the security guard at the library knows me by name and always chats with Chooch and me! He is so freaking nice!)
  • Larry’s Son who Shovels Diligently (Larry is Chooch’s nemesis who lives on our street and his teenaged son was out there shoveling immediately after a snowstorm while Chooch was lazing about watching TikToks)
  • Future Nephew (yes, Blake’s wife Haley is expecting their third child, and the gift was a stress ball, lol)
  • Raine’s Dad (of SIDEWALK DRAMA FAME)
  • Trump House Guy (this house up the street has all kinds of grotesque Trump flags and we hate the guy that lives there; the other day we were driving home from somewhere and Chooch and I pointed to a guy walking his dog and how we talked to him a few times and Henry was like “that’s the guy that lives in the Trump house” and I was like “is not” but he was like “is too” and OMG CHOOCH AND I WERE SO NICE TO HIM UNWITTINGLY!!!!)
  • The Real Christina Goosterjuice (Chooch has been calling our cat Drew Goosterjuice and I was like STOP CALLING HER THAT, THAT’S MY NAME and he was like NO I MADE IT UP and I was like NO YOU DID NOT and proceeded to tell him about how when I was in high school, there was this guy named Dave Osterhus in one of my classes and I can’t remember the exact context now but there were several us sitting at a desk or table and someone was making fun of his last name and then someone else was like “yeah, and his cousin Christina Goosterjuice” and I was VERY LIKELY the only person who laughed at this and EVEN MORE LIKELY the only person privy to that exchange WHO STILL THINKS OF THAT FICTIONAL NAME TO THIS DAY and even NAMED A PAINTING AFTER IT which is how I proved to Chooch that he clearly picked up on that name from me, by googling it and showing him that the only result is a post from OH HONESTLY ERIN called CHRISTINA GOOSTERJUICE.
  • The Mommy & Gracie Show (RIP) (this was the YouTube channel that started our obsession/tradition with watching birthday party videos on Thanksgiving but then GRACIE got older and decided that she didn’t want to be in MOMMY’S videos anymore and then MOMMY took them all down and now we can’t watch the infamous HASHTAG COOKIE PIZZA video anymore)
  • That kid’s Woobie (SEE BELOW, RE: MR. MOM)

Drew sat near this bag, knowing it was full of treats, and would casually gnaw at the handles whenever she thought no one was looking. Little jerk!

Later that night, we started to watch Christmas Vacation because apparently Chooch has never seen it but it was clear that he was NOT FEELING IT right from the get-go so then I remembered that recently I was talking about Mr. Mom and Chooch had never heard of it so I was like WE SHOULD JUST WATCH MR MOM and Henry was like “goddammit” because it took him forever to find somewhere to stream Christmas Vacation for free but it only took me 5 seconds to see that YouTube Movies had Mr. Mom available so that’s what we did and I was so ready to flip a table and possibly a chair or two if Chooch ended up not liking it because my love for that movie is deep and complicated (OK it’s not that complicated but I have loved it since I was a young child and thought Michael Keaton was amazing and Teri Garr was so pretty and I HATED ANN JILLIAN AND THEN SHE WAS ALSO IN MY FAVORITE ADAPTATION OF ALICE IN WONDERLAND AND IT WAS VERY CONFUSING FOR ME and I also cried a lot as a kid over the Woobie because I was super-attached to a stuffed animal named Purple WHO IS STILL MY BEST FRIEND AND I STILL CANNOT SLEEP WITHOUT HIM AND IF YOU THINK HE HASN’T BEEN TO SOUTH KOREA, THEN YOU ARE A FUCKING STOOP).

*deep pants*

*passes out*

Anyway, Chooch admitted that Mr. Mom was excellent and I knew he wasn’t lying because he was actually watching it and not fucking around on his phone and then I was like ARE YOU GOING TO TELL YOUR FRIENDS YOU JUST WATCHED A GREAT MOVIE WITH YOUR COOL AF PARENTS and he was like “let us not go that far, Mother.”

You know, it was just a really nice day which turned into a cozy night and I went to bed feeling content and relaxed.

Xmas 2020 In the House! (Literally…in the house.)

 holidays, Uncategorized
Dec 252020
 

Hey everybody, just wanted to pop on here and share our annual Christmas card and wish everyone a Merry Christmas or just a happy Friday, whichever works best for you! I went the slightly tacky route as a little parody of those Christmas letters tucked inside cards, you know the ones That Aunt always sent to everyone detailing the triumphs and travels of the family and it always made you feel inadequate and, you know, lesser than. There was a friend of the family, the mom of someone I went to school with, who sent shit like that in her card every year and we were always like GO TO HELL. I wonder what that letter would look like during Covid times…?

So this was our version – every single picture is us at home because quarantine. No vacations, no amusement parks, no concerts…but we still had fun together. And that’s alright.

We are spending the day as just a trio, plus two sleepy cats, which is how we would have done it regardless of Covid, but I hope those of you out there accustomed to big family get-togethers have found alternate ways to be happy and safe today!

It’s currently 3:30 and none of us have fought yet so I’m gonna go ahead and say we’re on track for Xmas 2020 to go down in the books as “one of the better ones,” even though snow and poor road conditions are keeping us home from our traditional cemetery “picnic.” We’re doing it tomorrow instead and that’s fine by me because it will be a whole ass 10 degrees warmer then!

Anyway, I’m going to go back to the book I’m reading while Chooch tests out all the kitchen appliances Santa drop-kicked down the chimney, and Henry works on…whatever he has left to work on.

I’ll be back later with a more detailed recap of Xmas and Xmas Eve – stay warm and cozy, you people!

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