Initially, we weren’t going to host any Christmas-y festivities since we were spending Christmas Eve at Henry’s sister’s and then visited my dad on Christmas day. But at the  last minute, I decided to try to have one of those White Elephant things that people are always going on about. Unfortunately, Pittsburgh is in the middle of flu season, so party attendance was at an all-time low. We still had fun!

Blake arrived two hours early and then left after about 30 minutes, but we’ll take what we can get with that one.

I had spent literally all day dealing with Etsy/Facebook drama that really killed my mood. Seriously, it was the biggest party foul of all and Henry and I didn’t even start getting shit together until an hour before people were set to arrive. It really seemed like it was going to be a bust. Especially considering that one of my punches didn’t turn out right (that peppermint coconut crap on the right) and we all know that my parties revolve around the goddamn beverage buffet. Luckily, that red nose shit was exceptional.

Henry made bite-sized versions of the Funfetti grilled cheese we had on Christmas, but was mad because he had to use French bread since the lame Brookline bakeries didn’t have any brioche. I bet if he had a food blog, he’d have ranted about it on there by now.

Now I want to ghost-write a food blog for him. Henry’s Hankerings. I’ll porn it up real good so you won’t be able to tell if you’re reading about how to fill a burrito or knocking on backdoors in a Tijuana hostel. (Don’t mind me. I’m getting over a fever.)

Waiting.

Corey and Janna were the first to arrive, just in time to hear Chooch’s rousing rendition of Jessie J’s “Bang Bang.” We completely lost all good sense and bought him a Singing machine for Christmas, and it connects to the TV so we can all sit back and read along as Chooch sings songs brimming with sexual innuendo.

 That Time Henry Had a Friend Over.

We’re all obsessed with Trivia Crack (and sometimes Quiz Up, but Trivia Crack has my heart) so Chooch and Corey decided to try and teach Wendy about it since she’s always the last to learn about the cool things us kids are doing.

Seriously. This, for hours.

But then Chooch pulled out his Perler beads, which he has recently become obsessed with. They’re just these little colorful beads that you put down in a pattern on a pegboard and then you iron it (or, in Chooch’s case: you get Henry and not Erin to iron it because Erin is no good) which fuses all the beads together and now, hooray, you have some relatively useless plastic thing. Chooch made a Minecraft sword (see above picture) out of these things, using no pattern somehow, which I thought was pretty impressive.

“I’m going to see this on Etsy for $50, or maybe $20,” Chooch told Blake.

OK, maybe not THAT impressive. He did make me a super adorable Michael Myers though. I bet if he made O-Town perler bead guys, Amber¹ would be his best customer.

Chris came over later with her cousin, Amber, just as Chooch was preparing to sing some terrible Backstreet Boys song. You guys. Do I know how to throw a party, or what? Basically, put out some booze, choke Chooch’s neck with a bowtie, and then sit back and watch as it escalates. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to go back to entertaining when he’s out of the house. HE DOES IT ALL FOR ME.

Now that everyone was here, we got to fumble through the White Elephant exchange. Wendy was pissed because I told her that she could literally bring stuff around the house that she didn’t use, so that’s what she did and then she accused everyone else of bringing real gifts, but hello, my thing was a plastic vampire that you put on top of a ketchup bottle so it looks like it’s bleeding when you pour it out. It cost $3!

OK, bad example. My thing was fantastic and you could tell that Amber, who had picked it, was not letting that gem get plucked out of her arms.

Anyway, Wendy brought two gifts: one from her and one from Shawn, which is how Janna scored a fabulous lens cleaner kit that she can even use on her binoculars and scuba gear, and Corey got a stationery set that may have been made in the 70s.

Seriously though, the Facebook Event thingie said this:

Make a potholder! Regift that candle that reminds you of your ex-boyfriend’s grandma’s bathroom! Turn some lint into a throw pillow! Put some gasoline in a mason jar & pretend it’s moonshine!

I don’t care what you bring, just come over! I’m desperate for human contact.

Chooch totally got Chris and Amber to finish one of his perler projects for him, because he’s got that Charles Manson charm. “Here. You do this while I go and do something better.”

Everything was fine and then Marcy had to come downstairs and inspect the situation. Of course she sat with her back toward everyone though, because she’s rude.

Mid-performance.

Janna brought over a very delicious dessert dip, the leftovers of which she said that I could keep but that she would eventually need the plate back, because it’s her mom’s. This reminded me of a few weeks ago, when we went to Nemacolin Castle, and Janna’s mom supposedly gave Janna permission to just take her car since Corey, Janna and I all have unreliable cars. We had just arrived at the castle, about an hour away, when Janna’s mom called her and was all concerned because she apparently looked out the window and saw that her car was gone, so they had what sounded like an argument, even though Janna was like, “No it’s fine. She told me I could take her car, so I don’t know what she’s talking about” and I’m thinking we’re going to get dragged to the local Brownsville slammer once Janna’s mom reports her car as stolen.

Since we had met up at Janna’s parent’s house, we had to go back there to get our cars. “I’m not going in!” I cried, as Janna rolled her mom’s car to a stop. And then Corey and I joked about seeing the silhouettes through the front window of Janna getting beaten by her mom.

“Does your mom know you used her plate?” I asked, my voice cracking with giddiness at the end.

So of course, Corey and I were practically bursting blood vessels from laughing so hard, and we had to retell the Nemacolin story in a tag-team fashion for Chris and Amber, and Henry just shook his head in that “For Christ’s Sake” way of his.

“Apparently, something bad happened in Brownsville that night we were there,” Janna said, her tone pregnant with somberness.

“WERE PEOPLE SLORING?!” Corey cried, because that was his favorite word the night we went to Nemacolin Castle, when we tried to start rumors that Janna had a secret life where she wore a beeper and “slored” around Brownsville.

“No!” Janna said exasperatedly. “There was a fire or something.”

And then we lost interest because it had nothing to do with neither sluts nor whores.

Chooch and the finished product of Chris and Amber’s labor. Plus his $50 Minecraft sword.

It was around 1:00am at this point and we were all super slap-happy (except Henry; never Henry), so Corey decided he was going to write Wendy a thank you note using the stationery he got from her and Meghan Trainor song titles. Because Wendy HATES Meghan Trainor and if there is one thing you never want to do, it’s tell me the things that you hate because I will use it in my Jerk Cannon for the rest of the time we’re friends. One time, Janna told me that she hates that Billie Myers “Kiss the Rain” song so I bought the CD (this was like, 1998 you guys) and put just that song on repeat one time when she came over. And she dealt with it. Because that’s what you learn to do when you’re friends with me.

As the party came to a close and Janna left with her lenscleaner kit, Corey looked at me and asked, “Does Janna even wear glasses?”

I said I didn’t think so, and then we promptly lost it all over again. Oh, Janna.

So really, not the worst White Elephant party in the world.

I think out of everything under the Christmas tree, the gift that elicited the most reaction from Chooch was the framed picture of Creepy Basement Grandma/#CookiePizza. He was like, “WHERE DID YOU GET THIS!?” and then I was all “I WENT THERE” and then we were both all, “HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAA” and basically puking into our hands, because we are that obsessed with this stupid thing. Henry just sat there and tried to fit in but we were like, “Shut up, you don’t know.” DON’T ACT LIKE IT’S FUNNY NOW WHEN YOU REFUSED TO GET OUT OF BED TO WATCH THIS WITH US WHEN WE FIRST FOUND IT LAST MONTH.

God, can you imagine being in that house with all that weird doll reviewing going on?

This gift cost $1. It’s the simple things in life, you guys:

We had some people over on Friday and the fact that we have a framed picture of some random grandma just chilling on an end table for no reason made for a great conversation starter. And then over the weekend, I got the best text ever from my brother:

#CookiePizza never gets old. Never. I might get it tattooed inside my lip. But for now, I’ll just keep it as my Facebook profile picture a little longer.

Our Christmas tradition, ever since I was pregnant with Chooch, has been to have a picnic lunch in the cemetery. It started in 2005 when I was on the outs with my family (when am I not) and refused to sit around doing nothing on Christmas, crying into my hands like my mom probably hoped. I suggested that we go eat with the dead people at the cemetery, which is one of my favorite places in the world. I expected Henry to say no, but I was pregnant and he has no balls, so we packed a picnic lunch and by that I mean we swung by a CoGo’s on the way to the cemetery and bought disgusting pre-made egg salad sandwiches, plastic bottles of eggnog, and Moonpies. See? We’ve always been classy.

Then Chooch was born and it became a tradition to pack a small lunch and take some christmas portraits of Chooch before visiting whatever family hasn’t written us off that year.

Some years, the weather is decent enough that we can actually sit down for a little bit, but usually we’re speed-eating because it’s so damn cold. It was like, 60 degrees on Christmas Eve, but the temperature dropped by Christmas. Henry made Funfetti grilled cheese (Funfetti batter mixed with ricotta–might sound gross to less adventurous grilled cheese fans, but it was goddamn delicious), which we ate so quickly it was like we were trying to eliminate evidence of a drug crime.

At the last minute, we decided to buy Chooch a camcorder so that he can finally reach for the YouTube stars. I’m lucky I was able to get any shots of him without it fully obstructing his face.

Forcing him to pose for cemetery Christmas pictures is the most stressful part of the day, and always full of fights and hateful glares, with me crying, “THIS IS LITERALLY THE ONLY PART OF THE DAY THAT’S FOR ME AND YOU’RE RUINING IT!!!!!” but it’s worth it in the end. 

I hope everyone had a great Whatever December Holiday You Celebrate! My Christmas was really nice, but then it ended pretty shittily. More on that another day. Right now, let’s talk about art-stuffs!

You guys really put a lot of faith in me by ordering custom paintings for Christmas gifts, and I am honored. Now that Christmas is over, I can show you some of them!

“Meow Meow, Motherfucker” for Janna. Chooch was PISSED that this wasn’t for him!

“You Won’t Find a Better Butter” for Corey, an homage to our Amish Day Trip in November. Here’s a video of Corey unwrapping it:

Remember when I was interviewed last year for an article on bloggers in the Pittsburgh Trib? Rachel, the journalist who write that story, commissioned a painting of wrestler portraits for her husband, who is (clearly) a huge wrestling fan. I got this one done with barely any time to spare. The best part about it was meeting up with Rachel last weekend for the Shady Art Deal because I had never met her in person before. She is so sweet and even brought me a jar of fudge (which Henry and Chooch devoured in the same day, ugh).

I think I may have posted this one already, but Wendy asked me to make a Phish portrait for her stepdaughter, who sent me a Facebook message on Christmas to tell me how much she loved it — that’s my favorite part!

Among other odds and ends, I also did a slew of those monster name paintings, a Jesus Take the Wheel-inspired painting for Chris and Monica to give Chris’s sister (I had a picture on my phone but I must have deleted it, ugh!), and a Lou Barlow portrait for Terri, which I stupidly failed to get photographic evidence of.

I’m happy that the Christmas rush is over because that means I’m free to accept requests again! Hit me up, homies! Either on here, or contact me through Etsy: Somnambulant Art.

EDIT!
“Jesus Take the Wheel” (where Jesus is actually Chris’s brother):

And edit again to add a picture of Terri with Lou Barlow yay!

Surprisingly, Henry’s mom was OK with this card. (She is super protective of her Golden Son!) There was a moment last night at Kelly’s house when she noticed it and we all braced ourselves. But then she started laughing and cried, “OH, THAT’S CUTE!”

Hey guys! Whether you celebrate or not, we hope that your day is fun and not too annoying.  I’m bad at holiday well-wishing.

(I only managed to send out roughly 1/4 of the Christmas cards I usually send because I really let this month get away from me. Sorry! I kept running out of stamps and envelopes and then I eventually just lost interest.)

Merry Xmas Eve, my homies! I drank way too much wine (I know, I know, “too much” and “wine” don’t belong in a sentence together) and laughed way too hard at old pictures of Henry at Kelly’s house (she spoils me with vintage pictures of him, like when he went to the prom at some other school as a “favor” to some broad and conveniently has no memory of dancing to Total Eclipse of the Heart).

Henry got his (grown) nieces One Direction makeup palettes and they were a hit. Now I kind of wish he had bought one for me too.

We’re on our way home now, behind a car with a “JAM2DMB” license plate. I’m excited to go to bed!

Something is wrong with me, I think. I’m EXCITED about Christmas. This rarely happens! Usually I’m ambivalent at best, or downright bitter and suicidal at worst. But today, the weather is really mild, almost early spring-ish, so I went for a walk on my break and stopped to pretend to care about that manger thing and then I even half-smiled at a kid. (OK, it was a grimace, but still.)

So fucking weird.

I think putting up a tree helped shoot a zephyr of Yuletide joy up my grinchy ass. We wound up snagging a surprisingly beautiful artificial at Target for 50% on Saturday, and I feel a lot better about that than pouring money into a live tree that’s only going to wind up on the curb after Christmas. Tree murder! I’m still hoping to find what I need to have my perfect Christmas tree before next Christmas, but this one will be nice to have on standby.

I think Willie (RIP) peed on our tree skirt last year, so I threw down my old Cure wall hanging. It’s better than a regular tree skirt, IMHO.

The extent of our decorations.

But I think what I’m most excited about this year is the fact that I’ve been incorporating some of Chooch’s and my inside jokes into the gifts. If you have ever had the (mis)fortune of hanging out with us, you know that we will take the smallest thing and turn it into a Kelly-Robbins Family Legend. (Please see: The Napkin Dispenser or Dawn from Eat n Park.) Two Octobers ago, we ate a diner and heard the cook call out, “FISH DINNNNNEEERRR!” and I designed an entire Valentine for Chooch out of that because we were so obsessed with mocking the poor Yankee Kitchen cook. (I have Henry, who was not impressed with our antics, on video barking, “And next time, you two can go by yourselves!”)

Our latest obsession that Henry just doesn’t understand is watching birthday party videos on YouTube (yes, still). One of our favorites is from the mother/daughter duo who review dolls and have really grating New Jersey-trash personalities. Actually, the mom is kind of Kate Gosselin-esque, which just makes the whole thing even worse. Chooch and I didn’t know it at first, but these bitches are evidently YouTube-famous somehow, and toy companies just send them shit for free. God, I hate this country sometimes.

So in this video, the annoying girl gets to have a cookie pizza for her birthday; basically just a large chocolate chip cookie baked on a pizza pan. The mom is so fucking excited about this, that she makes #cookiepizza appear on the video. This in itself makes Chooch and I cry every time we see it, but THEN the best part of the video happens: the camera pans over to the left just so, and out pops GRANDMA FROM THE BASEMENT DOOR! Oh holy fuck, our insides crumble EVERY TIME we see this, it is so fucking hilarious to us. Chooch has literally puked over this, and I usually wind up with mascara rivulets running down my cheeks. Henry gets really annoyed and leaves the room.

Sunday night, I was the last one to come up to bed. Henry asked if I turned everything off, because he knows I’m wont to leave the TV, heating pad, iron, and stove on. You know me and my penchant for nighttime chores! Anyway, I was like, “Yes, goddammit, everything is off” but then a few minutes later, Chooch came out of his room and asked, “Do you hear that?” Then he got down on all fours and placed his ear to our bedroom floor. “It sounds like the TV is on…”

“Ugh, ERIN!” Henry growled, rolling out of bed and going downstairs to shut it off. When he came back up, he said, “That fucking Mommy and Gracie show was on.” Chooch lost his shit, almost started crying, and yelled, “I PUT IT ON! I TROLLED YOU SO HARD!” I guess Chooch was controlling it from his phone, and this is just the funniest fucking thing in the world to me, knowing that Henry had to get out of bed to turn off the TV, only to see that it was on the MOMMY AND GRACIE SHOW.

Last night, after Chooch went to bed, I screenshot the moment where Creepy Basement Grandma (CBG for short) emerges from the basement (and #cookiepizza is still on the screen—best of both worlds!) and then I printed it, framed it, and wrapped it. Chooch is going to die laughing. Henry’s face became a marquee for disappointment and annoyance as he muttered, “It’s really not that funny.” BUT IT IS.

Since Chooch knows that Santa is really Erin and Henry, I’ve been having fun labeling the “from” part of his gift tags with ridiculous things, like Daddy’s Amish Beard and Summit Diner Choking Hazard.

Chase’s Slutty Grandma is from a different birthday video, you guys. Try to keep up. We call her “CSG” for short, and the really scary thing is that I referred to Creepy Basement Grandma as “CBG” last night and it only took Chooch a few seconds to figure out what it stood for.

“Creepy…Basement Grandma?!” he screamed, and then we were doubled over, in utter hysterics, while Henry sighed miserably.

And this was before we ever referred to her as Creepy Basement Grandma. We are on the same fucked up wavelength and Henry is so fucking jealous.

I can’t express enough how thankful I am to have spawned a child who finds humor in ordinary, mundane things. Being able to have inside jokes with him has made our relationship so ridiculous and I love it. AHHH, I’M SO EXCITED FOR CHRISTMAS!

***

While I was on my break today, I called Henry and said, “Remember when Chooch put the Mommy & Gracie Show on and trolled you so hard?”

“He didn’t troll me ‘so hard’,” Henry sighed.

You guys, today entertainment blogger Spencer Blohm is going to share some of his favorite unconventional Christmas flicks, so hopefully you’re done with all your holiday preparations/money hemorrhaging so you can just curl up on the couch all weekend and binge on some seasonal moving pictures.

—————————————————–

Some Christmas Films for Those Sick of It’s A Wonderful Life

Rudolph, Elsa and St. Nicholas have a monopoly on Yuletide entertainment. The same Christmas movies show year after year, swamping the airwaves and hogging the hearth. Now that you’ve got the tree up and all of that, Since when did tradition degrade into conformity? Break away from Bing Cosby and walk through a different wonderland with these six eccentric Christmas movies.

5. Ernest Saves Christmas

He’s back, Vern! Ernest P. Worrell, played by Jim Varney, is on a mission to replace the elderly Santa Claus – a difficult thing to do in sunny Orlando, especially when Santa (alias: Mr. Santos) has lost his magical bag of toys. The Santa-to-be, played by Oliver Clark, is auditioning for a C-level horror film called “Christmas Slay.” This holiday classic comes fully equipped with inflatable lawn decorations, a sleigh spaceflight, and just enough ho-ho-ho’s for the whole family.

4. Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

For those who enjoy some horror with their hot chocolate, “Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale,” will send viewers scurrying for pillows to plug their chimneys. Following in the grand Victorian tradition of telling ghost stories in the swampy shadows of a Christmas fire, “Rare Exports” follows three reindeer herders who uncover the original Santa Claus in the windswept glaciers of Lapland, only to ruefully discover that he has no interest in bringing toys to well-behaved children. A black satire, the film won a confetti of awards and 3.5/4 stars from critic Roger Ebert.

3. Scrooged

Bill Murray plays Frank Cross in “Scrooged.” This underhanded black comedy reimagines Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” without ghosts proper. A taxi cab driver, a life-size pixie and a spectral television visit the ruthless Cross and reprogram his cold, calculating heart. Upon its release in 1988, it became the 13th highest grossing film of the year, thanks in no small part to the rousing soundtrack composed by Danny Elfman, the musical wizard behind Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” The film enjoys enduring popularity, thanks largely to frequent matinees and DirecTV marathons throughout the month of December.

2. The Family Stone

Rife with award-winning performances, “The Family Stone” is a 2005 comedy-drama film that follows the inevitable bamboozles and shenanigans of an uptight career business woman caught in the midst of her boyfriend’s rambunctious family at Christmas time. A melodramatic romantic comedy, the film revels in the rhythm of domestic life and the screwball love it thrives upon. And what better time than Christmas to celebrate the odd, lovable nature of family, in spite (or partially because) of all the friction? Did we mention it has SJP?

1. Trading Places

With apologies to the timeless “The Prince and the Pauper” tale by Mark Twain, this 1983 comedy stars Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy as the desperate pawns of a social experiment. Murphy rises from the slum to become an investment broker, and Aykroyd falls from his Wall Street perch to steal meat as a Santa doppelganger. Little do they know that their fates are cast by two wealthy Duke brothers playing a bet. Even though the hijinks occur over the Christmas season, what cements the film as a holiday icon is the timeless message of equality, white or black, rich or poor.

So have yourself a merry little Christmas, and check twice if Santa comes knocking.

Spencer Blohm is a freelance entertainment and lifestyle blogger who lives and works in Chicago. So far this holiday season he’s managed to watch Elf three times but has yet to finish his Christmas shopping. You can follow him on Twitter at @bspencerblohm

I’m having major Christmas tree apathy this year, and not just because I need to find a new tree topper since I decided that I am done with Jonny Craig. DONE WITH HIM! FOR GOOD! Seriously though, I have been using this as a tree topper since 2011, ugh. Change is hard. The good news is that I have finally nudged (OK, knocked out and shoved) Henry on board with my ideal Christmas tree-that’s-not-a-tree that I have been dreaming about having since high school.

The good news is that I have finally nudged (OK, knocked out and shoved) Henry on board with my ideal Christmas tree-that’s-not-a-tree that I have been dreaming about having since high school. Unfortunately, we haven’t yet found the perfect specimen because Henry only gave me the green light a few weeks ago and these things take time. Last week, I was talking to The Processor Formerly Known As Mean Amber about the roadblocks I was running into while searching for my future Christmas tree.

“Like, most of the ones that I keep finding have hair. I don’t want one with hair. I want one that’s androgynous,” I was whining right as Nate walked by and stopped in his tracks, because this was clearly his kind of conversation.

In the meantime, we might be getting a friend’s old artificial tree so we can at least avoid the whole live tree hassle this year. (I feel so guilty having real Christmas trees! Throwing them out afterward is such a sad feeling).

This probably reads as me hating Christmas. I don’t hate Christmas. Not even a little! I grew up around beautifully-decorated Christmas trees and I love looking at OTHER people’s beautifully-decorated Christmas trees, but I just don’t care about having my own beautifully-decorated Christmas tree. Maybe if I was part of the Horton or Brady clan and everyone came over to my house to hang their own signature ornament upon a bough, I would be more into it then, probs. Perhaps it’s time to reschedule that Pornament Party I had to cancel a few years ago and we can have ourselves one swingin’ tree trimmin’.

Or…I could just leave Chooch wrapped up in lights and garland for the remainder of the holiday season.

Oh, this chokes? Fine. Forget it.

Throwback to that time in 2006 when I tortured Chooch with clowns at my grandma’s house on his first Christmas. MEMORIES! (Also: DROOL! He was teething pretty badly.)

Henry and Chooch met me downtown after work and we walked around, pretending to be a normal family who gives a shit about looking at Christmas things. I thought maybe Chooch would resist getting his picture taken with Santa, since he’s “at that age” and knows that “Santa” is really “Erin and Henry,” but he was like, “No it’s cool. Let’s do this.” I much prefer this Santa over the mall Santas, because it’s only $5 and all proceeds go to the food bank. (You can also pay in canned goods.) The mall Santas are such a racket! Fuck them and their overpriced “portrait packages” and long lines of screaming babies. Ugh.

When given the option to either sit on Santa’s knee or stand next to him, Chooch shrugged and went for the knee.

And then it was, “I want a new cat….and, I don’t know. A flat screen TV.”

So obviously I’m going to find him some wooden Archie Bunker box TV set, complete with rabbit ears.

I was adamant on not making a big to-do over Thanksgiving, because it seemed stupid to have Henry slave away in the kitchen, cooking what would essentially be three separate meals since none of us eat the same things. (Chooch mostly just eats bread, cereal, and ice cream, anyway.) But, ever since we ate at this Lebanese restaurant last week and the waitress broke my heart by telling me that they no longer serve vegetarian moussaka, having that for Thanksgiving was absolutely all I could think about. Moussaka brings back such beautiful memories of this one time I was in Greece and my Aunt Sharon was like, “You’re not going to like that” and I was like, “Bitch please” and then to be honest I can’t remember if I liked it.

So, Henry slaved away in the kitchen making my motherfucking vegetarian moussaka while I painted cat heads on the wall and then took copious Call of Duty breaks (I’m obsessed, you guys; I’m even dreaming about it now). Also, Chooch and I spent a large portion of the day watching our new obsession on YouTube: birthday party videos.

Let me back up. Earlier in the week, Chooch was watching YouTube videos on TV, which normally I hate when he does that because who wants to sit there and be forced to watch the dumb shit he likes? (Mostly stupid videos with people screaming about Minecraft.) I was reading a book, so at first I wasn’t paying attention. But then something made me look up and I asked, my question plump with disgust, “Are you watching some kid’s BIRTHDAY PARTY?!”

“Yeah,” Chooch answered mindlessly, and I proceeded to tell him how dumb he is for watching stupid shit like this, but before I knew it, I was shouting, “WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT?!” and then after three more birthday party videos from the same family, I fucking knew all of their kids’ names and found myself tweeting things like, “Chase’s grandma is such a slut” and “Mike’s birthday cookies are lame as fuck.” And then I was sitting on the edge of the couch, mocking this family with such robust zest, that Chooch threw up from laughing so hard and I was yanking the Xbox controller from him so that I could find more birthday party videos, like this one of some awful girl and her awful mom who review dolls on YouTube and are both just awful human beings altogether (and of course, also YouTube famous). I was so pissed because the girl got to have her birthday party at a roller rink that was 8374028347 cooler than any of the rinks around here. Fucking YouTubers.

We even watched a birthday party video that was in some other language. French or something. Who has time to tell? And some bitch’s pool party where Diego totally had the hots for Momo. (Every time we reference these videos, Henry gives us really mad looks.)

Then Chooch found a “Taylor Swift-themed birthday party” video. And that is how we became obsessed, in all of the negative ways, with a family that goes by the SHAYTARDS.

And they’re Internet famous too, apparently, but I can’t figure out why because they’re boring as fuck. But…they’re loud. And I guess that’s all that matters? The PAY ATTENTION TO ME volume of our voices?

“The ShayTARDS!?” I cried in disbelief. “Is this really what they call themselves?!”

Chooch, still hiccuping from his puke-laughter, nodded his head. “They’re like, famous on YouTube,” he explained. “But NOT as famous as Pewdiepie.” (Pewdiepie is his ultimate mancrush.)

So then I spent the day before Thanksgiving reading about these a-holes at work and trying to drag Mean Amber down into my hateful abyss.

“WALT DISNEY BOUGHT DADDYTARD’S COMPANY FOR 500 MILLION DOLLARS, AMBER. WHY, AMBER, WHY!?”

“You’re still reading about them?!” she asked, because this was approximately three hours later.

“Yes,” I admitted. “And apparently, the leader of this stupid family is obsessed with unitards, so that’s where their awful names come from.”

Seriously, Babytard? Brotard? Princesstard?

Chooch was calling me Mommytard as a joke at the store last weekend and it was so embarrassing! And this family SHOUTS these names at each other?!

Um, anyway. Back to Thanksgiving. One of the videos we found as we fell deeper and deeper into the birthday party video rabbit hole was a BIRTHDAY PARTY MAKEOVER with two horrible brats who somehow have like 7000 subscribers and I’m like, “STOP JUST STOP.”  We decided to watch this one again on Thanksgiving and tried to get Henry involved but after 30 seconds, all he had to say was, “What is wrong with you two? You’re both idiots” and then he went upstairs to take a nap or find a new family on Craigslist, whatever he does when he finds himself with 6 minutes of solitude.

Five minutes of this video was spent dotting 7 different kind of concealer under their eyes. They’re 12…how dark could their circles possibly be? Last night, I said to Chooch, “Can you imagine if daddy had his own YouTube channel? It would be so boring. Like, ‘Hi guys, sup. Today we’re going to watch NCIS together. But first, let’s take a nap.'” And then Chooch laughed so hard that he threw up all over the floor but at least he’s finally been mopping up his own puke-laughter now so I don’t really care. Puke away, young man. Puke away.

The holiday season is a really weird time for me. I’m obviously pretty nontraditional, so the fact that we didn’t have some elaborate family dinner to attend didn’t necessarily cut me deep. Sometimes I really miss my mom and having a big dinner to look forward to, but if I think back at the collective Thanksgivings I’ve endured over the years, it’s probably a blessing to my sanity and emotional foundation that this marks the fourth year of our Mexican standoff. Still, I want Chooch to have SOME semblance of a holiday, so we stopped over my dad’s later in the evening. (Also, I wanted my SHOOFLY PIE!!)

As soon as we got there, Chooch ran off with Corey. When I went to Corey’s room a few minutes later to see what they were doing, I found them watching a Shaytards birthday party on Corey’s laptop.

“They’re seriously called the SHAYTARDS?!” Corey cried in concern when I walked in. But then he quickly became obsessed with them too.

They were also ghost-hunting and taking weird selfies:

Meanwhile, I spent some time firing off questions at my other brother Ryan. I don’t get to see him too often so I don’t know much about his life. Then we talked about the summer we hosted a French foreign exchange student, which was probably the best summer of my childhood and it comes up at least once at every holiday. MEMORIES. Then my dad served up some traditional T-giving staples: turkey, stuffing, rolls, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes. I filled a plate full of all of the carbs and then hounded my dad for shoofly pie. If you were following along the saga of the shoofly, you know that my dad made a special pilgrimage to Amish Country a few days before Thanksgiving to load up on cheese, licorice, and other fine foods, including THE PIES. Apparently, my dad’s go-to bakery is called Miller’s and he gets real weird talking about it. I asked him where it is and he paused for a just a beat too long and muttered something about “back roads” and “hard to find” which is why I’m 110% certain that “Miller” is my dad’s Amish mistress.

Anyway. He cut me a slice of Miller’s shoofly pie and I took a huge, inaugural bite because I had been waiting my whole life for this (read: two years; it has literally been less than two years since I last had shoofly pie but it was in Pennsylvania Amish Country). And my first thought was, “Holy motherfucking molasses.” Seriously, it was so forceful, like someone had shoved a molasses-soaked ball gag in my mouth.

Thick, gooey, molasses. It was like a big, hearty, blackstrappy FUCK YOU to the face of all the assholes who tromp on into Ohio, sniffing around for a pie that is native to the Pennsylvania Dutch. I mean, if you’re hard pressed to understand without the guidance of a sports analogy, I guess you could say it would be like knocking on doors in Cleveland looking for Steelers fans to hug.

I felt my dad watching me expectantly as my lips instinctively curled back into a mouth-flinch.

“Wow,” I coughed through the gooey treacle. “That molasses really hits you.” But I kept forking tiny morsels into my mouth because I didn’t want my dad to think I was being an unappreciative bitch on Thanksgiving, of all days.

“Here,” he said, sliding another slice onto my plate. “Try the shoofly pie I bought from Der Dutchman.”

Yes, my dad bought two different shoofly pies because he is goddamn thorough.

The Der Dutchman version was way less gooey, less molasses-y, and had a harder crust on top. At first I thought I was going to prefer it, but then I quickly found myself yearning the tongue-numbing brutality of the Miller’s pie. It appears I had acquired a taste for it.

At first I thought it was terrible, but then…well, I still thought it was kind of terrible but I didn’t want to stop eating it. So I gladly took the extra shoofly pie home with me and struggled to swallow a slice every day over the long Thanksgiving weekend.

I think I will forever associate Thanksgiving 2014 with YouTube birthday party videos, shoofly pie, and, inexplicably, this Europop hit was the soundtrack to it all:

I feel like all we did was laugh until our faces hurt. (Or, in Chooch’s case: puked.) I was totally thankful for good humor, Henry’s delicious rendition of moussaka (the bechamel sauce, can I just face plant in a pot of it right this second?), time with my family, The Law Firm giving us two days off, and having a kid who doesn’t give a fuck about “Frozen.”

If you’re reading this, I hope that Thanksgiving was everything you wanted and that you got to stuff yourself silly with all your favorite November foods!

Since we had no big plans for Thanksgiving this year, most of my day was spent working on the living room makeover we started last week. If you can believe it, I painted this cat-head wall all by myself! Well, Henry had to open the ladder for me. But still! I just made a stencil and sponged the paint right on the wall. It’s definitely imperfect, which was hard for  me, but I knew going into it that it was going to be that way. Our walls are textured, so it makes clean lines pretty impossible to achieve.

Once the shelves were dry, I was able to finally put everything back in its place after a week of tripping over clown dolls and other oddities (and I do mean oddities). The problem with this shelving unit is that it so easily becomes a catch-all for junk and I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure this doesn’t start happening again, even if it means throwing out all of the things that belong to Henry and Chooch.

I just noticed that this picture below is blurry. I really need new contacts.

If you’ve ever been to my house before, you might remember that this area was white. As is EVERY SINGLE ROOM IN THE HOUSE. For years and years I resisted painting the walls or really doing anything at all home improvement-wise in this place because it was meant to be a stepping stone until I found somewhere else to move to. (Which, at the time, was going to be out of state.) Then I started dating Henry and you know, routines are so easily fallen into. We went through a few years of pretty awful financial strife/unemployment issues which put me into a pretty bad depression and general state of “IDGAF” and the whole house kind of started to crumble, literally, along with my will.

We’re in a good place now, at a point now where we actually probably could realistically buy a house, but I want it to be right and not something I rushed into. I don’t want to buy something smaller than what we have now just for the sake of owning a house, and I definitely want to make sure I like the area. So…I am being patient. And while I’m being patient, I’m going to make my current house feel like home. Because it honestly hasn’t in a very long time.

And to do that, I NEED COLOR AND WEIRD THINGS. My first apartment had glow-in-the-dark Slinkies hanging from the ceiling, but I resisted the urge to bring that back. (Maybe in the bathroom, though? Henry?)

Friday and Saturday was spent printing out new pictures for the walls. That part still isn’t finished but it’s almost there!

Henry was annoyed because I painted the  top of this table with red glitter and he’s so over glitter. I would glitter the ceiling if he would set up that fucking ladder for me.

For years, I kept saying I didn’t want to put the effort into this place because it wasn’t worth it since we don’t own it, but it realllly affected my mental state. Most times, I didn’t want to come home because I hated being here so much. It didn’t reflect who I am and I eventually even stopped having game nights and other parties here because I felt so uncomfortable. Especially when our front porch steps were crumbled for the last two years! That was finally fixed last month though, so it’s less slum-y here now.

Henry found that swag light at Goodwill last summer. It’s the perfect addition to the Beverage Buffet.

The next room on my list is the dining room (where the Get Stoked sign lives). We have major clutter in that area because it’s where we make our serial killer cards, so it looks like a craft store was looted up in there. I haven’t decided what I wanted to do in there yet though, and I’m sure Henry is standing in a corner somewhere, clenched, praying that it won’t involve stripes or gold glitter or gold glittered stripes.

But now that I just typed that…

The true test was when my friends came over last night for game night and everyone had such nice things to say! Corey even made a Snapchat story about it, so that’s how I know it looks a lot better in here, haha!

The best part is that even having game night here last night, the house still looks clean! (Except for Chooch’s abode. That room is a lost cause.)

After coming up empty on our quest for shoo fly pie in Sugarcreek, it was getting late so we decided that it was time to head out of Amish country and heed the final Post-It note on our dad’s itinerary: The “Hardware” store.

First though, Corey’s GPS took us down what I referred to as the Las Vegas Strip for craft fanatics. Literally just one long sprawling road of shop after shop boasting rustic Amish wares. There were people and cars everywhere and it took an ungodly amount of time to crawl through the traffic lights. Looking out the window at all of the window fluttering from shop to shop like locusts with too much money, I felt eternally grateful that I was there with Corey and not some middle-aged broad with a hankering for quilts and Christmas wreaths. It brought back flashbacks of the time we went to Lancaster in 2010 with Tommy and Jessy. Jessy insisted on going inside every last shopfull of overpriced, commercialized pieces of “Americana” while Chooch, Henry, Tommy and I stood outside shooting ourselves in the face with finger-guns.

Finally, we made it back onto a peaceful, country road, drove past Heini’s and waved goodbye, and then felt scared when we witnessed the second Amish person that day staring vacantly at a burning pile of leaves.

The sun was setting when we pulled into the Lehman’s parking lot. I still don’t know why our dad calls it the hardware store, maybe it used to be one? When we walked in, I noticed that it did have kind of an industrial, saw-dusty smell. And then, right away: BIRDHOUSES!

Honestly, I have no idea what about me gives my dad the impression that I’m an avid looker at birdhouses, but there you have it. The wall of birdhouses that my dad was sure would please my eyeballs. I wonder if he’s confusing birdhouses with the frog hotels I used to build when I was a kid? And by build, I literally mean I would tape a bunch of boxes together and cut doorways in them and then fill them with Barbie furniture and, obviously, frogs. Way cooler than birdhouses, dad!

We rounded a corner and it suddenly became very clear to me way our dad loves the hardware store so much: novelty beverage. He is what you’d call a soda savant. A pundit of pop. A carbonation connoisseur. He has numerous vintage Pepsi machines around his house, and I’m not sure what the contents are like now, but when I was a kid, you could go out to the garage, skirt past one of his vintage cars, and grab an ice-cold glass bottle of Barq’s Root Beer out of one. It’s one of the quirks that make him who he is: he loves old shit.

My dad was kind of leery of Henry at first because of the age difference and the whole IMPREGNATING ME OUT OF WEDLOCK situation, god forbid. But then one year, Henry brought him an entire case of Faygo root beer in vintage-looking glass bottles and my dad, holding one up to the kitchen light, breathlessly said, “Oh man. Oh my god. You can’t find these anymore!” They’ve been beverage-buddies ever since.

Corey got the Bacon Soda just because, why not? He said the reviews online were like, “This is the best thing ever!” but that it was literally the most disgusting thing he’s ever drank and that it didn’t even taste anything like bacon. There was a PB&J soda that I was tempted to buy, but I ended up buying Chooch some kind of zombie drink that he actually drank so I guess it wasn’t too vile.

A Lehman’s worker walked by, pushing a cart of shopping baskets. I followed her and asked if I could take one. “Oh!” she cried cheerfully, handing me one. “Please do! It would make me so happy!”

Uh…FRIENDLY PEOPLE MAKE ME NERVOUS!

Then some man kept trying to talk to us because this is what happens in Amish Country: everyone forgets that it’s 2014 and wants to start talking to their neighbors. It ‘s uncomfortable for people like me who assume that they’re only being spoken to as a decoy while a pick-pocketing is taking place.

Anyway, the rest of the store was full of housewares, food mixes like split pea soup, and then an entire showroom of vintage stoves and furnaces, which my dad probably kneels before and prays.

And then we saw an Amish person! I felt like an asshole after I took this because I had literally gone the whole day without violating one of the basic rights of the Amish, but at least this picture is blurry, so maybe it doesn’t count? It was interesting to  note that Lehman’s was the only place we ventured all day that had Amish shoppers. Right before we left, I noticed that he was looking at a rack of Amish Country postcards.

“Do you think he’s looking to see if he’s on any of them?!” I whispered to Corey. And then I started to wonder if I’m accidentally on any Pittsburgh postcards. That would be horrible/awesome.

By the time we checked out, it was 6:00 and we still had something like a two and a half hour drive home, so we said goodbye to Amish Country. BUT NOT GOODBYE FOREVER.

****

We stopped over my dad’s last night for Thanksgiving (and so I could claim one of the shoo fly pies he special ordered!) and I got him to talk about Amish things for nearly 3 hours. He mentioned the Amish roofers and I had to pretend like I hadn’t seen 54548 pictures of them, courtesy of Corey. And then he was like, “Do you guys like apple cider?” And then, taking two frosted mugs out of the freezer, he said, “Well, you’ve never had apple cider like this!” and then handed us two ice-cold mugs of glorious Amish nectar.

“Did you guys go to the hardware store?” he asked me excitedly, and I know he knows that we did because Corey showed him the novelty beverage he bought, but I figured he just really wanted to hear about it again. While I was telling him about our experience there, he got this faraway look in his eyes, like he was trying to mentally trace our footsteps through the blueprint of Lehman’s.

You guys. Not only did my dad get shoofly pies, but he got THREE of them from TWO different bakeries! The one bakery, he’s still being pretty vague about it so Corey and I are convinced that this supposed bakery is actually the kitchen of his Amish mistress’s farmhouse. But the third pie came from goddamn DER DUTCHMAN are you kidding me!? We ate there that day! When I mentioned that to my dad, he was like, “Yeah, Corey told me he had a CHEESEBURGER. Who goes to an Amish-style restaurant and eats a CHEESEBURGER?!” he asked in rhetorical disappointment.

“I had a grilled cheese,” I laughed, and my dad just sighed. We are clearly not doing a good job filling those Amish boots. He was also disappointed that we went to Heini’s Cheese Chalet and not Walnut Creek Cheese House, because Heini’s is a disgraceful tourist trap.

Then, after offering Henry thirds of Amish beef sticks and licorice, he told me about this annual Amish auction he goes to in June, where the local Amish fill a schoolhouse with all of their wares and you bid on all of their meticulously handcrafted goods which immediately depreciate once you bring it back to your house of whores and inverted crucifixes.

Apparently, they set up tents and serve homecooked meals all goddamn day while all of their horses and buggies are parked on a giant hillside and everyone acts civilized and peacefully.

“You never hear anyone yelling at their kids!” my dad exclaimed, shaking his head in disbelief. “They are SO WELL-TRAINED” as I’m standing there repeating, “Turn the flashlight off. Turn the flashlight off. Stop shining the flashlight in our eyes. Put the flashlight down. Put it down. Give me the FUCKING flashlight. Get your shoes. Put your shoes on. Put your shoes on. Put your FUCKING SHOES ON” to my disobedient spawn.

“I’ll give you the information for that auction when I get it in the mail,” my dad said, walking us to the door.

Great. Hopefully that have Amish Kid Prison where I can send Chooch while I’m mocking people fighting over quilts.

Corey texted me this photo that he found at our mom’s a few weeks ago. I’m not sure what holiday this is, but let’s pretend it’s Thanksgiving….2002? I can’t remember my hair being that short but I guess it was. Or maybe that was the year I Britney Spears’d my scalp and took to wearing a wig.

Anyway, this picture made me laugh because my face looks like a melting ham and Henry appears to be auditioning for a spot on a romance novel cover. And then there’s my grandma. ;(

***
The only thing I remember from bartending school, aside from the fact that my partner’s name was Milt, was that Thanksgiving Eve is supposedly the busiest night for bars in our country. I only attempted to go to a bar once on Thanksgiving Eve and started to have a panic attack before I was even able to shove my way through all the assholes crowding around the door.

Needless to say, I’m at home right now watching the Penguins game. I finished my Cure wall and I guess we’re going to start re-hanging our pictures after the game is over. Major party time.

Haha, just kidding. Henry will be doing that himself while Chooch and I play Call of Duty—I AM GETTING REALLY GOOD AT IT!! I still need someone to start the game for me though because the menu is so confusing.

So…happy Wednesday night!