Still not feeling fully myself. I slogged through the workday yesterday (it’s amazing how it’s even a struggle working while sick even when you’re in the comfort of your own home) and I ended up getting a bit of my fever back last night. No more stomach issues since mid-Christmas Day at least! Anyway, in an effort to not get too behind in blogging, let’s look at pictures of pre-Christmas Eve dinner. I love setting things up while Henry is killing himself at the stove!

LOL I actually have no idea how to set a table. And crinkled napkins give it a rustic flavor, I feel like right? Or is Garbage Xmas the theme I was shooting for?

At least I straightened the fork before taking this picture.

Janna’s family was sick, so Christmas was postponed for her. I said, “NOT SO FAST” and invited her to our hobo Christmas Eve dinner. Our table, even with the leaf in place, isn’t meant to seat more than 6 comfortably so she and Corey had to squeeze in together at the end. I suggested that she just eat in the living room at the coffee table but Henry was like, “Erin.”

:D

Anyway, Janna’s family is Norwegian and she brought over a batch of her mom’s homemade krumkake – they were delightful! They’d kick pizzelles’ asses in a street fight.

Clown Buffet continues to be the best part of the house currently.

Poor Penelope doesn’t know yet that people are on their way. DON’T GET TOO COZY.

I can tell that I took this picture after some guests arrived because I see Corey’s “World Famous” spinach dip and rolls displayed in all of their “rogue recipe” glory up there. OK, this confirms that I’m still not ready to talk/think/write about food so I will end this here. Bye byeeeee.

Dude you guys. I have very little to say about Christmas Day because I legit spent 99% of it in bed with a stomach bug. I was able to come downstairs for about an hour that morning, having written off the night before as “too much mixed wine at Christmas Eve”  but then I quickly realized that nope, oh nope, this was a bug that was going to accompany me throughout the entire fucking day, ho ho ho.

Christmas Eve was much more festive so I will recap that once I am 100%. But for now, here are the only pictures I took along with a recap of who all gave Chooch his presents which is my favorite part of wrapping gifts!

He actually said, “Wait…who’s Doug? Oh, that guy.”

Waiting for Henry so he could start opening all of his presents from “other people.” This was the year of vinyl. It’s pretty much all he wanted.

Opening Penelope’s present for her because she was being a weirdo.

I got Henry some tool thing that I always see commercials for on YouTube. I dunno if he will ever have a use for it, but you’re welcome, from: Project Manager.

A selection of people from whom he received gifts this year:

• Fleece Radkins’ burrito
• The duct tape on Purple Pants‘ purple coat
• Justin signing Balder (“Wow, now I get presents from activities.”)
• The girl you sat behind on the Racer
• Your Czennie parents (Czennie – what NCT calls their fans. Chooch was pissed about this one lol)
• Marshall’s cigarette butt in Gronalund
• Raine’s dad
• Suez (one of my many nicknames for Drew and probably the one that Chooch hates the most)
• Unfinished college apps

I got a bunch of NCT Dream stuff, a new LALA coat, some Lolavie hair stuff, and probably bed sores from all the bed-laying I did :(

.

Way back in September, we were on our way to Chicago for Riot Fest when I randomly started talking about whether or not we’d have a Christmas party that year. I am always on the fence with this. I love having parties, I really do, but I always get really stressed out and sometimes end up not even enjoying it. Plus, I just don’t really care about Xmas that much. I started thinking about how people have Friendsgiving but I also kind of think that’s corny and giving A Beautiful Mess, so I definitely wanted to make up my own holiday.

It got me thinking, what’s the Korean word for “friend”?

Chingu.

And I would still want to have the party in December.

So…Chingumas. Boom. Done.

I googled this, in English and Korean, and nothing comes up so I think I might have literally invented it!? I excitedly texted Chooch from the car and he of course didn’t respond so I had to follow up hours later:

UGHUGHUGH.

Then the next day, we met my friend Vicki who works in the law firm’s Chicago office for breakfast and before we even sat all the way down, I blurted out, “VICKI I HAVE TO TELL YOU SOMETHING THAT NO ONE FROM OUR GROUP KNOWS YET” to which she responded with a pallid-faced, “OMG what?”

“I think I invented a new holiday!” I cried. She slapped a hand against her chest and sighed, “Oh, Erin!” I guess she thought I was going to tell her I was quitting or something.

We hit up H-Mart before leaving Chicago the next day so that we could stock up on all the Korean alcohol, boiii, since Pgh sucks in that regard (you can get soju at some liquor stores but I have not seen a great selection of flavors nor have I seen makgeolli which is my fave Korean sul).

And then I proceeded to embark on a willy-nilly, haphazard invitation spree. Jessica, the only thing I miss about Facebook, THE ONLY THING, is the ability to create a FB event, add everyone I want, and then easily keep track of the RSVP list, post updates, delegate food-bringing, etc. Now, I am inviting people on Instagram. Via text. Over Jabber at work. On It-Will-Always-Be-Twitter. And then I promptly cannot remember who I invited and who I didn’t invite. So the week before the party is inevitably spent terrorizing people, asking, “PLEASE REMIND ME, ARE YOU COMING TO CHINGUMAS?” and then they reply with, “PLEASE REMIND ME, WHEN IS IT?” and it’s a hot mess. And then I always forget to invite people because I’m in my early onset dementia era, I think. Or I need to start keeping an actual planner like people did in the 70s or whatever.

Anyway, Chingumas was last Saturday the 9th and guess what?? My great friends Bill & Jessi came all the way from Michigan on Friday to spend the First Weekend of Chingumas with us! I had every intent of decorating early, doing food prep early, etc etc so that on Saturday, we could relax a little and spend time with them.

Did that happen? FUCK NO. We were panic-everything’ing the whole fucking day. It was a dumpster fire. Henry was so behind on food-making, I wasn’t still decorating when people were beginning to arrive, my heart rate was rabbit-on-the-run levels of Next Stop: Heart Attack Land.

I mean, look Linda, listen: it was fine! It really was fine. Even though people were arriving while I was roaming around aimlessly, muttering over and over, “Wait, what was I doing? Why did I come in here?” and then Chooch had to help me cut out my idol food labels because I don’t have eight hands and Henry was still preparing food so the kitchen was a shit house and UGH. He had to give me a quiet pep talk as I was contemplating drowning myself in the kitchen sink.

Megan’s Famous Cheeseball: Korea Edition! It had gochujang in it, which was the secondary theme of the party – so much food had gochujang in it and I was happy because this is one of my favorite things ever! (It’s Korean red pepper paste, in case you were wondering, and it is fucking spicy and perfect.)

But you know what, he was right. It was fine. I was OK. It was OK. The food got done (although he forgot that he was supposed to make mini grilled kimcheese so that’s great, thanks). People were eating and drinking and laughing and my work friends were mingling with my non-work friends and my friend Cara that I have known since Kindergarten but rarely see showed up with a Seoul Box for me and she seemed to be OK being thrown to the wolves aka my other friends, and Bill and Jessi’s presence kept me calm, and Chooch had four of his friends over and they were like “This is good food” and everyone was calling the kimbap “sushi” even though I had a cut-out of Sana from Twice announcing that it was kimbap but you know what, this was just the first Chingumas. Baby steps.

One of my favorite parts was when Glenn and Amanda arrived and some of my non-work friends were like, “Yes, we know Glenn” and Glenn was like, “No…I don’t think we’ve met” and then they realize, “Oh shit we know him from Erin’s blog” or whatever, and thank god that he is OK with that HAHA. I mean, is he though? Eh. Probably.

Thank god you can’t see the sink in this shot because it was FULL. The perils of not having a dishwasher.

I feel like I spent the first 30 minutes walking around with an industrial roll of tape, and then at one point asking, “Why am I holding this?” You can see it laying on that white stool back there. I set it down and then forgot about it for hours until I found it later laying on the hand chair and then finally putting it away.

I guess I’m including all of this because I am marginally concerned about my brain health and want to have this on record. Maybe I’m just tired. Maybe I should start taking naps?

Maybe I should also include the guest list before I start forgetting names and faces as well:

• Bill & Jessi
• Amanda & Glenn
• Janna
• Cara
• Megan
• Sami
• Lori
• Sandy
• Nate & April
• Wendi & Ben
• Margie
• Shawn & Jess
• Chris & Monica
• Corey
• Lauren

Chooch’s Crew:

• Ben
• Daniel x 2 (aka The Daniels)
• Zakk

We made tiramisu and I know you’re asking right, “Why would you make a traditional Italian dessert for a party celebrating Korean culture?” and I will tell you why: one of the first things we realized on our first trip to Korea was that HOLY SHIT, they love tiramisu in that country! You could go into any cafe and expect to see some type of tiramisu in the dessert case. Tiramisu almonds.

Ya gotta just take my word for it, OK? Tiramisu is ubiquitous over there and we love that.

In the beginning of the party, I was panicking that I wasn’t going to get enough pictures which has been a problem in the past, so I literally just ran around in photo attack mode which my GUESTS FUCKING LOVED, I WILL TELL YOU THAT MUCH especially when I posted some of these on Instagram to their great “I wasn’t ready!” chagrin. Corey and Chris look like I dragged them in my house off the street and tossed them back there, which to be fair is kind of the strategy I had for accumulating party guests back in my early 20s. I mean, I have kind of changed my ways and I, you know, play by the book these days, sort of.

You can tell I was frantically taking these and people were like, “AREN’T THESE BLURRY??”

“No!” I yelled over my shoulder, moving on to my next target. Flash forward to the next morning, oh man, a lot of these photos are blurry!

I was going to only play kpop but I feel like people wouldn’t have been able to handle ALL KPOP ALL THE TIME so I used last year’s Xmas Party playlist which seemed to be ok for everyone.

LOL MARGIE and her shot glass of soju lol.

Tiramisu!

Henry also made a large platter of tteokbokki and the other sub-theme of the night was, “This is spicy but I like it!”

Still on my photo-attack tip.

Here’s Henry finally getting a chance to explain the nitty-gritty electrical deets behind his Seoul Subway sign. You can’t see her, but Margie was listening intently so that she can make something similar for our next department meeting. So when Sue says, “Margie, can you pull up the numbers?” Margie can share her screen to show her gigantic light-up sign of our new business intake monthly stats.

I don’t know what was going on here but when I reminded people of the hashtags that I wanted them to use on Instagram, Nate seemed very annoyed so I left the Back Porch Club alone after that.

Megan and Janna used to live on the same street but then Megan moved because she didn’t want to live on the same street as someone who can’t pick Haechan out of a crowd of 9!!!!

My favorite part of the night was finally getting people to try makgeolli and I’d say it was a hit! Hope they didn’t like it too much since it is so fucking hard to find around here.

OK, I have been writing this for way too long.

Wendi and Ben! We almost had two Wendi/ys here but Wendy-with-a-Y was sick :(

Lori and Sandy and the Rush Audit Light!

Cara! We almost had two Cara/Karas but Kara-with-a-K was sick :(

Chronica!!

Nate and April!

Jessi and Bill!!

Margie and Lauren!

Herbert and Megan!

Chooch and Wonka talking about Computer Science thangs. Chooch became the man of the hour after his friends left and he was available to be verbally accosted by all of the adults wanting to drill him on his college plans. I tried to ask him a question later that night after everyone left and he said, “I’m all out of talks. Come back another day.”

Wow.

Megan and me! Also, my gochujang cookie looks like it has Mary or Jesus on it!?

Jess and Wonka!

Corey!

Freaking precious.

I think this one needs framed???

Glenn and Amanda!

I dunno, I think it was fun! It seemed like everyone else did too so I guess we will try it again next year with maybe more advanced Korean culture components. Photo cards, maybe?? An NCT member line-up match game?? Hangul crash course?? Korean drinking games?!

Hello from the other side of Trudy’s blinding lights! She is fully dressed and ready to face another December holiday head on. I do have to admit that I am way less into decorating her lately and prefer to let a few strings of lights and her rockin’ bod do the talking, you know what I’m saying? Less is more in the case of Trudy.

I still asked Janna to come over and we admittedly just sat on the couch, wine in hand, watching Henry fuck with the lights. Then I strangled her with some garland, topped her off with her Santa hat, and found a pair of daisy sunglasses which were calling her name.

I mean, it’s hard to fuck it up, really. She’s already such a dish that it’s essentially just gilding the lily, AS THEY SAY (I learned that from TERESA STRASSER on While You Were Out!).

Then I made Janna watch a bunch of NCT Dream stuff and roller coaster vlogs while we ate Chooch’s homemade version of Chipotle guac. It was a nice night, overall! And I’m so happy to have the room awash in Trudy’s majestic glow once again.

Hi from the other side of Thanksgiving. I hope everyone had a GRAND day spent with the people of their choosing and eating whatever the hell you wanted, or doing nothing at all. I kind of think that this is an overrated holiday, probably the one I’m least excited about mostly because of my past struggles with family and forever food phobia.

I try to “get into the spirit” some years, but this year we chose to have a lowkey, quiet dinner catered by The Zenith (bless them) with some pumpkin burek from Jak’s Bakery as an extra treat.

Chooch actually came out of his lair!

Action shot of Henry serving us. He was mad because I chose small plates to use but I thought that they were cute!

Zenith Thanksgiving dinner! All vegan.

Pumpkin soup included! It’s my favorite part. I always love Zenith’s soups.

Bulgarian pastry filled with pumpkin courtesy of Jak’s Bakery. We first discovered this place at a farmer’s market in East Liberty numerous years ago, I want to say pre-pandemic so perhaps 2019? Jak was just getting started then and now he has a brick and mortar bakery which is opening this Sunday! That same farmer’s market was also the first time we had vegan Trinidad food from ShadoBeni and he also has his own space now! Love that for both of them.

Henry found this Henley in his dresser of unworn clothes so now watch him wear it constantly all winter, as he is wont to do with one article of clothing. Usually, it’s the same goddamn flannel.

Chooch was annoyed that I took this picture. “REALLY. DO YOU REALLY NEED A PICTURE OF YOUR GLASS??” Yes, actually. I collect glass memories. Thanks for asking.

THE BEST PART. Zenith pumpkin bundt cake. Oh sweet Jesus.

Chooch didn’t get the color-coordinating memo. It’s fine.

While Henry was cleaning up (LOL), Chooch and I retreated into the living room where we continued our tradition of watching & heckling random birthday party videos on YouTube. There were some real…winners this time. This one family was so annoying – it was like a biker gang married into a family of WASPS, first of all, and it was A JOINT PARTY for a 2 year old (boring safari themed and no one cared about her) and an 8 year old ginger (NERF-themed complete with garish blue and orange cupcakes?? ugh ew). It was a pool party to boot, so when it was time for NERF tag, we saw soooo many biker butt cracks. It was actually scarring. But our main takeaway is that in addition to singing the birthday song, they also sing some JESUS LOVES YOU verse, AND THEN it ends with some bizarre ditty about making your favorite dish and then everyone pauses for a dramatic beat before screaming FISH??

The fuck?

“Is this is a real thing?” I cried, because I grew up JUST SINGING HAPPY BIRTHDAY and didn’t even know anyone personally who did the stupid “cha cha cha” bit until much later in life and even learning about that was extreme for me. I guess because I’m just generally not into singing Happy Birthday to begin with? I usually just mouth the words at parties (unless it’s for Chooch, then I will sing, ugh) and I HATE HATE HATE having it sung to me. So when I come upon families that turn this into a whole fucking concert, I feel alarmed.

“I can’t find anything on Google,” Chooch reported back. “It must be something these idiots made up. Also, the grandma makes me uncomfortable.”

“Oh yeah, I fucking hate that bitch,” I agreed. “We should start singing the fish song at our birthday parties and then somehow make it go viral so then that family will find out about it and we can have a public feud over who created it.”

Chooch is not on board with this.

Then Henry stormed in and said to Chooch, “MOVE OVER, I AM GOING TO SIT WITH YOU GUYS, MY LOVING FAMILY.” And that was fine for about 5 minutes until Chooch and I both started to fixate on Henry’s heavy, whistle-y breathing so he eventually threw tantrum and went upstairs while tossing insults over his shoulder the whole way.

Henry did eventually come back down and we watched travel vlogs on YouTube (I finally got him to seriously answer my “Top 3 Places You Want To Visit” question which he has NEVER done in the past – Italy, Switzerland, Thailand), and then I stayed up late working on my gem painting while listening to Britney Spears’ memoir on audio and crying because Team BritBrit 4L. I’d like to punch her parents and sister in their fucking faces.

So, yeah! A typical Thanksgiving here at the Oh Honestly Household. I do wish we were going to Dollywood or somewhere fun this weekend as TRADISHUN calls for, but it’s fine. Saving money is good. Sigh.

But there are still things to look forward to this weekend! Such as:

• hopefully seeing PAM from COASTER CREW this afternoon!?
• the Annual Lighting of Trudy later tonight
• Saturday is wide open, endless possibilities (watch me do nothing)
• daytrip to Maryland on Sunday specifically to go shopping at HMart
• I’m off on Monday from back when we were supposed to go away this weekend, so…TBD for now, I guess.

Wow, why do I even bother acting like Halloween is my favorite holiday? The last handful of 10/31s have been eh, blah, meh, boo. WTF man. I mean, I’m probably sounding super dramatic and it honestly wasn’t BAD this year but just…boring. Cold. Kind of sad because my child is 17 and hasn’t asked me to help him with a costume since 8th grade I think! But I still take the day off work (I use my floating holiday and request the day in the beginning of January every year, why am I so lame) under the pretense that I’m going to live my best creepy life on this day, take a blood bath while listening to the Suspiria soundtrack, etc.

This year, I…read a book. Went for a walk. Watched Taemin videos. Helped my new neighbors. I didn’t even bother putting scary music on during TRICK OR TREATING (well, I did put on some creepy MTV Euro playlist from the 90s and some of the videos were making me very uncomfy in a big way).

And you know what? This year we beat our record of least amount of trick-or-treaters: 2. TWO FUCKING KIDS. And that was only because I verbally accosted (in a friendly way) when they were walking past my house with their dad on their way home from better streets I guess. I was like, “TAKE A WHOLE BUNCH” and literally let them walk off with fistfuls.

Meanwhile, the day before, Chooch decided to go to Spirit and buy a costume to wear to school. I was so excited that he did this of his own accord and that I didn’t positively ruin Halloween for him by following in my mom’s footsteps and hijacking his costume ideas every year. (Sike, love you, Val! I fondly look back on my old costumes every year even though they were borderline traumatic for me at the time LOL.)

He came home with this big blow-up Garfield, totally random but it made me laugh. FOR A STORE BOUGHT COSTUME, THAT IS.

I’m actually surprised that he was allowed to wear it at school, considering how schools have been no-fun zones since Columbine and food allergies.

His school is basically on the Pitt campus and he said that after school, he was a celeb with the Pitt students, people were asking to take pictures with him. “It was totally worth the $60,” he texted me.

SIXTY FUCKING DOLLARS. Oh well, he has a job again and used his own dumb money so what do I care.

I was also happy that he and a bunch of friends went trick-or-treating too! Like a last hurrah, which I think is so important. I know a lot of you Karen types out there don’t think that teenagers should be welcome to trick-or-treat but in my opinion, if you’re wearing a costume, in the Halloween spirit, and not being an asshole, you are welcome to my candy.

Especially if you’re dressed as Michael Myers. And an adult. Please have my candy.

The night before, we took pumpkins over to our new neighbors’ house and helped them carve their first jack o’lanterns! That was really special! We have to communicate through Google translate but it’s worth it. I can’t remember how much I have mentioned about this because so much has happened in the two weeks since they moved next door to us, but they are an Afghan family consisting of a single mom and her three kids: 16, 13, 10. She is from Afghanistan, her kids were born in Russia, and they came here after living in Turkey for the last 6 years. I don’t really know the full details of their story yet because it’s so hard to communicate, but the sitch doesn’t seem great and they were placed here by a refugee agency who is doing the BARE MINIMUM to help. When I say that they are coming to us for everything, I’m not exaggerating.

It’s been really exhausting (being a good person is hard work!!! My inner demon has been fighting tooth and nail on this) but it’s worth it to make them feel comfortable and welcome. I just wish this fucking agency would work a bit harder to get them situated and introduce them to other Afghans or even just anyone who speaks Turkish which is the language they appear to default to, because while it’s OK to hang out and be neighborly here and there, THIS AIN’T 227.

Sorry, j/k. That was mean. But I am trying to establish boundaries because this lady doesn’t realize it yet, but I am literally the last person that anyone should use as their crutch. YOU GUYS KNOW.

So yeah, this October started off strong, but then I gained a spare family and now I just feel very tired, stressed (last week was REALLY bad because of all of the caring I was doing and I was losing sleep over it) and disoriented. Add to that the fact that I barely see Chooch anymore because of his extracurriculars and job, and I’m just like…lost. I don’t know. It’s weird. I’m weird. NO YOU’RE WEIRD. GO AWAY.

Hey, it’s me on my 44th birthday. It’s been a pretty low-key day. Nothing from Henry as usual, got rained out on tonight’s tennis sesh, and didn’t do anything adventurous. But, don’t cry for me, Blogatina because we leave for vacation on Thursday so I actually sabotaged my own day by canceling the day trip that we were originally planning on taking to Cleveland for a SHINee 15th anniversary cup-sleeve event. I guess that’s the Lilliputian adult version of me living inside my head that made her concerns heard for once, like, “Bitch, why you about to spend $$$ on a roadtrip four days before you leave for a trip that you couldn’t afford?” And I was like, “OK Tiny Bitch, I hear you. God!”

Anyhow, here’s a quick recap of my birthday.

It started a few days later when Wendy gifted me with a pineapple purse at work on Thursday! I swear to god, some of my quirkiest purses are courtesy of WMM. She has her finger on the gifting pulse, that is FOR SURE.

Then yesterday, I stopped by Megan’s to check in on her cat while Megan and Eric are out of town and she left me birthday goodies! I took this picture of the Robert pendant she got me while I was still at her house as proof that I was already wearing this t-shirt – what a happy accident! She also made me a root beer pie like the one she made for the last pie party! Totally spoiled me!

This afternoon, Janna came over (HER MOM HAD TO DROP HER OFF BECAUSE JANNA LOCKED HER KEYS IN HER CAR YOU GUYS!!!!) and after we had a social hour where I tried once again to get her to identify Haechan from NCT, Henry drove us to Butterwood Bake Consortium which I haven’t been to in several years but always have the fanciest cakes with major tea party ingredient vibes. It was so hard to choose, but I went with a vegan blueberry cake with UBE BUTTERCREAM; Janna got a blueberry tea cake with like, orange curds; Henry got some cardamom tea cake thing; and Chooch got a strawberry cobbler tart or something.

Henry’s tea cake which was also supposed to be mine but then he rudely ate the last bite even though I wanted it and he never even bothered to ask, so REALLY racking up the points here, buddy-bud fuckhead.

Look how beautiful Janna’s was!

Anyway, the one downside was that we had to sit outside in the “courtyard” which was basically like a slab of broken concrete surrounded by weeds and a parking lot, all because these two asshole women were taking up two different group spaces amongst the two of them. One was sitting in an armchair in front of a table meant for 4, reading a book. I guess I can overlook this, but the only bitch WAS EATING WENDY’S at another table meant for a group. JUST BLANANTLY EATING HER DISGUSTING FAST FOOD IN THIS MAJESTIC BAKERY, but OK, bitch. I can’t believe the Bakewood staff was allowing this. Maybe she had ordered a drink from there to get around it, but still, are you fucking kidding me?

Our table and chairs wobbled bigly. On my birthday. But whatever. You shove that big bitch Wendy’s meal in your stupid fucking face. KIND REGARDS,

THIS 44-YEAR-OLD MEGA-(K)ERIN.

P.S. Is this Taemin’s way of acknowledging my birthday??!! Wearing a Robert Smith shirt at the Waterbomb after party?? Normally I’d chalk this up to his stylist being like “here put this on” but this is the second time I’ve seen him wearing a Robert shirt so maybe he actually is a fan??

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Good morning from Cedar Point! Expecting it to be packed today as usual but at least it’s something to do.

Walking to SteVe, immediately.

Visiting Daddy on Father’s Day! Love you Papa SteVe!!

11:13am: Literally the best experience we had on SteVe. Wait was estimated at 40 min and it took less than that, no breakdowns while we were in line, and they let Chooch and me have the back. I love this stupid fucking psycho coaster so much!

Henry got front row and is so smug about it.

Now he’s making us wait in line for Maverick which is broken down and I hate this gamble!!! It almost never works out well for us.

me: new thing! Since I’m liveblogging let’s take a selfie in every line we wait in.

Thanks Chooch.

11:38am: Fuck you, Maverick. Moving on because I couldn’t take hearing the bitch in front of me talk about her basic bitch interests anymore.

11:54am ditched Henry, now in line for Iron Dragon 🐉

ALSO, Chooch hates my new selfie rule.

iron dragon was way FUNNER than I remember FYI.

12:45pm: got lunch at the new pavilion and the service was TRASH. the roll was the best part of the meal. Views are nice though!

They’re playing retro ragtag covers of shitty pop songs though and a Taylor Swift one is on now so that dragged down the lunch review.

Chooch bonded with a guy in the bathroom over the awful music. “I didn’t think they could make Taylor Swift worse.”

12:54pm Gatekeeper selfie!

everyone hates me!

That was the best Gatekeeper ride I’ve ever had!

1:29pm: Carousel line selfie!

1;51pm: Choochs phone just died and he wants to go home because now he will either have to talk to “us guys” or look at the sky LOLOL.

Waiting for out old car thing! Henry can’t hear.

We got the slowest car here and people are on our asses. Chooch is so pissed. He just said he feels like Janna lol hi Janna!

2:03pm: RAPTOR’S LINE IS LIKE 10 MINUTES!!

Ok I’m saying it: Raptor is my favorite B&M invert. I SAID IT.

now we’re in line for the new Wild Mouse which is an HOUR wait and the guys in front of me are wearing patchouli and chooch is being pissy.

Pissy “I wouldn’t be in a bad mood all day if I had a belt” Chooch.

3:08pm: Still in line. Some little kid the next row over tapped me on the shoulder and said excuse me you have a bug on your shirt and of course I always think I’m the butt of a joke so I panicked but I did indeed have a MAYFLY on my shirt so Henry got it off for me which then turned into me blaming Henry for not doing a better job guarding my person from bugs and other harmful things.

3:14pm: Still in line but maybe another 15? At least people here aren’t assholes like at Canada’s Wonderland.

I asked chooch if he is immediately going to add this to his spreadsheet and he said I CANT MY PHONE IS DEAD. lololol. Also “Call Me Maybe” is on right now!!

3:53pm: that was the best Wild Mouse I’ve ever been on! It was trimless! Henry bit his lip lol. We got the pink car!

Now we’re in line for Gemini which only I am excited for!

The way I have to beg for these selfies though.

ugh stupid Henry has to treat himself.

5:01pm:

Rode MaxAir, it was fine.

Now Chooch is spending money. He won a medium sized prize!

5:11pm: We left! Bye bye Cedar Point!

Some thoughts from the car:

• Raptor was a big highlight – from the delightfully enthusiastic dad & 2 kids in front of us to the overall fantastic ride, I declared that it was my second favorite ride in the whole park.
• SO MUCH TAYLOR SWIFT WAS HEARD TODAY.
• This was the first time we didn’t ride Millie and that felt kind of weird. We were actually only in that area once, even.
• This was the best ride I’ve ever had on Gatekeeper. I even grayed out!
• I got stapled on Gemini so that wasn’t very enjoyable.
• We didn’t ride Magnum! I will only ride it if it’s a station wait bc I do like it but it hurts!
• I thought the addition of Wild Mouse to the revamped boardwalk area was really cute and fits nicely with the theme. It just sucks that it’s such a short ride and will probably always have a long wait because even the shittiest Wild Mouses in other parks get notoriously long waits. But I thought the theming was super eye-catching and I also liked that they were playing legit beach music in that area. I did suggest to Chooch that they should play the Back to the Beach soundtrack and he rolled his eyes at me.
• Only lowlight really was MAVERICK (so sick of that one breaking down constantly) and the service we experienced at the new Grand Pavilion. The cashier was nice though, I should specify that the coldness was reserved for the people behind the food counter thing. Not a single person made eye contact with us or smiled. It made me so uncomfortable and I almost didn’t even want to order anything from there.
• The cookies were back to being good!! I feel like the last time we got them from the bakery they were really dry and stale. The snickerdoodles were sooooo MOIST today.
• Overall, it wasn’t really crowded there at all for a weekend. I wish we were had been staying over though so we could have stayed until close because I can only imagine how many more rides we could have made it on. Every time I checked the ride times, SteVe had never gone past 60 minutes which is unheard of. But I was content with the one ride we got on it this morning, especially since we only had to wait about 30 minutes!
• Maybe someday, someone will actually want to come with us?? I tried to get my brother to come with us but he promised our dad he’d go over for a visit and, oh yeah, I guess it was Father’s Day after all lol.

The end.

This was one of the nicest Mother’s Days I’ve had in some time (minus the SHAVED ICE incident) and I’m so glad that Chooch and Henry were both on board with my idiotic wish if driving 3 hours for vegan junk food.

I really really really enjoyed our post-lunch digestive walk about the nearby rose garden. We were laughing (OK I was laughing) at one point when I realized that all the other mothers there that afternoon were dressed in spring dresses or some type of feminine equivalent and here I come in my pink vans and NCT127 shirt, bitches.

You know, becoming a mom is one of the best decisions I ever made in my whole entire life, but going hand-in-hand with that was my decision to not lose myself when becoming a mom. Sometimes I wonder if Chooch would have preferred a real MOM-mom in lieu of the landychild mom he was born to. Hold on, I’m going to ask him. I’ll report back.

WELP, HIS ANSWER WAS AN EXTREMELY PUT-OFF “I DON’T KNOW.”

Cool. Cool cool cool.

Also, check out that mini-bitch ruining our photo!!

I was going to try and remove those people from my picture but then I felt too tired/couldn’t care anymore.

Two crazy parts about yesterday:

1. we didn’t fight at all (EXCEPT FOR WHEN THE SHAVED ICE THING HAPPENED)
2. we didn’t encounter any annoying people anywhere we went

Let’s be real though for a second – I have to plan my own Fun Times or else we’ll just stay home and I’ll sit here all day waiting for something that’s never going to happen. I think that’s why I actually like stupid Miley Cyrus’s “Flowers” – because that’s basically me even though I’m not single (or am I??).

Sometimes you just gotta make your own happiness, you guys!

(I should put this disclaimer in all of my blog posts but please be advised that I write most of my posts from my phone and sometimes words get autocorrected answers* I don’t notice, or I just create typos all of my own volition but I’m a stoop in that way. Apologies in advance. Bueno bueno.)

*(SEE???? Just swerving by a month later and noticed this. I guess that was supposed to be “and”??)

Hello good morning sweateeees I wasn’t going to LiveBlog but now I feel like it. It is currently 9:27am and we just had a fun stop at Sheetz in Wheeling. Some broad came rushing over to me and legit cried, “I JUST HAVE TO TELL YOU THAT I LOVE LOVE LOVE UR SWEATER. ITS FANTASTIC!” And it was a really nice Sheetz moment, you know? Chooch came slithering around the corner and hissed, “WHAT did she say?” Because as you know, Chooch hates it when I am the recipient of compliments.

Then as we were walking away from the check out, someone came up behind us and fucking ROARED their cigarette order in a marbled slur, making us all whip our heads around to see TO WHOM THE VOICE BELONGED. As expected, it was a very large (in height and girth) truck driver.

11:02am: at a rest stop somewhere in Ohio and I just screamed out the name of a coaster enthusiast that I have been trying to think of since last night and no one cares lol. (It is SLOAN by the way – I kept saying “it’s an ambiguous name and also the name of a character from a popular 80s movie” like I knew the name the whole time but was just trying to get other ppl to guess??)

All you have missed so far is me bitching about social media attention-grabbers.

11:29am: Chooch just asked if we were going outside anywhere, like…we didn’t just drive all the way to Columbus to sit in the car, so…?

I asked why and he said, “because somehow* I got Dunkin all over my shirt.”

*SOMEHOW. Because he is still a child!! Henry just said, “I guess we need to start bringing the diaper bag with us in the car again.” Honestly!! 17 years old but some things never change.

He just asked for an I Love Ohio shirt to change into lol.

Waiting for our fooooood!

Lunchin’ with Mikey!

Ok, this has got to be top 3 best vegan places I’ve eaten at, now that we’ve had two experiences I feel like I can safely and confidently say that. I got the fish sandwich and nearly wept into it.

General Tso’s wings – amazing. Chunky bois. Lotsa umami. Chooch got the sandwich version, and Henry got the Buffy Mac which is a chicken sandwich with Mac and cheese on it.

We were all satisfied. And also happy that we got there within five minutes of the lunch time rush, phew.

Meanwhile, since seventeen year old still travels like a toddler and ended up arriving in Columbus with stains and spills all over his shirt, we had to buy him a shirt from the place we’re eating lunch at and now it’s like he’s That Guy who wears the band’s shirt to their concert OMG no lol.

1:12pm: we just left some rose garden thing and it was a nice way to digest after that filling lunch.

We managed to not fight once! Chooch was mostly distracted by the online auctions he’s bidding on.

1:51pm: SOUND THE BUZZER! Henry finally managed to ruin my day!!!!!! We went to Belle’s Bakery because they presumably have shaved ice which I stupidly thought was the Americanized way of saying they have kakigori. Since the bingsu place is closed on Sundays, I figured the Japanese version would suffice.

It was REALLY crowded so Henry said he would wait in line and then me and Chooch walked over to a Japanese gift store, at which point I lost him, but then found him again when he texted me and said he never left the store??

Anyway, when I saw Henry walk out of the bakery with literally just a cup of shaved iced a la Rita’s, I was sooooo mad. He at that point went back in and got the matcha soft serve that I had specifically asked for, in a separate cup, but it just wasn’t it, dawg.

I really thought it was going to be the GOOD “shaved ice” and not “actual shaved ice” so I poured bigly but now we are going to a vegan bakery to salvage the day.

Meanwhile, Chooch has been bidding on a “smart oven” all day, whatever that means, and keeps giving us updates.

2:12pm: just stopped here for spoiled son to get a game:

It was actually less creepy inside.

Healthcare send Heidi phone why need like cell? I have Spotify I don’t know why you talking about quiet woman here this time I think you would like that I thought of you like to wait for you little while 70s hits really put its way.

^^^^^ UM my phone auto-typed that based on the convo Henry and I were just having. Definitely leaving it in haha. 

2:37pm: Happy Little Treats!

Lady working here was very nice and the bakery itself is a delight! Interior design inspo….???

I got the cherry almond Poptart and it righted the wrongs created by Henry and Belle’s Bakery. It was JUST RIGHT.

3:59pm: We’re finally making our way home after taking a detour to NEWARK, OHIO which I am here to confirm is basically as a smaller but still shitty version of Newark, NJ. We went there because they had a gaming place but their board game selection was really slim so we walked in and basically walked right back out and Chooch was embarrassed about this for some reason.

I made Henry drive us through “downtown” and it was pretty shitty but the courthouse was pretty.

Then we passed the Longaberger Basket building!!

True story: I dated a guy briefly in high school whose mom was a Longaberger salesperson and every time I would call their house, the machine would say YOU HAVE REACHED BARB* FROM LONGABERGER BASKET” and it always sounded wrong to me, like she had meant to say “longberger” without the “a.”

*I actually can’t remember her name now just that she really didn’t like me which is on brand because none of my boyfriends moms ever liked me. Most of my friends moms don’t like me either so I guess it’s a “me” problem.

5:07pm: at a rest stop in Ohio somewhere between Zanesville and Wheeling. When Henry and I were getting out, Henry was being deaf as usual so Chooch said, “OMG I said it twice…three four times” harkening back to our second time in Korea when Henry flipped out on us at a cafe in a Jeonju (while sharing bingsu, coincidentally!!) because we were moving him and he said something about how “OK! You don’t have to repeat it twice three four times!” Of course, Chooch and I latched on to this and STILL reference it. So today in retaliation, Henry said, “fuck off two three four times.” OOH OK TOUGH GUY.

After peeing, Henry proceeded to do some weird ceremonial circling around the car and he was making us so nervous. Chooch kept yelling WHAT ARE YOU DOING I WANT TO GET HOME (apparently “getting the circulation flowing”) and at this same time I noticed that Chooch had a bag of HOT MUSTARD Doritos in the backseat with him so I exclaimed “Ooh I want to try it!” Chooch got real triggered by this and snapped I DONT WANT TO OPEN THE BAG so I said, “Wow, OK. It’s Mother’s Day but whatever” and he shouted OH MY GOD and threw the bag at me.

Hot mustard Doritos are good, you guys!!

7:50pm: Hello, checking in from home. Henry pretty much IMMEDIATELY went upstairs and collapsed into bed which is making me really scared to get old(er) because this was just a day trip? We didn’t do that much? He went to be bed at 11pm last night and we didn’t wake up to start getting ready to leave until around 7am. I was up until after 2am chatting with Janna and trying to teach her the names of THREE NCT members. Just three! I’m the one who should be passed in bed but mmm. Cook on, Henry.

To summarize, today was really good aside from the SHAVED ICE incident!

Piggy-backing off my last post, here is the goddamn ice cream cake that ruined my Sunday when JOHN from Baskin Robbins left his half-hearted voice mail telling me that there would NO CLOWN CAKE FOR ME THAT DAY. I’m glad we went with it and just waited the extra day though because it really was so fucking cute and also hilarious to watch Chooch roll his eyes when he saw it.

“So, really this was all about you. If you would have just got the cake from Dairy Queen like I asked—” Chooch started, but I cut him off to tell him that sure DQ is great but they don’t have a fucking adorable CLOWN CAKE.

“Yeah, again, this was all about YOU and what YOU wanted,” he said.

“You mean, what I wanted FOR YOU,” I corrected.

“Mm,” he grunted, but c’mon, he loved it. WHO WOULDN’T LOVE A CLOWN CAKE (other than the billions of people who hate clowns)?!

Henry’s clumsy meat-fists smudged the “Riley!” on the first chocolate message board. Good job, asshole! The second one says “Cool. Mm.” as an homage to his irritating signature text response to basically everything I send him and the worst part – THE WORST PART – is that he learned this from me. Sit down, Taylor – I’m the problem.

He claims he wasn’t “admiring” it, but rather inspecting the various scoops which the BR website bills as “the store’s most popular flavors.” I guess that’s how they get away with not leaving it up to the whim of the customer. “No, we can’t use your scoop preference because it goes against what the store has deemed its most popular and why would you want anything less than the MOST popular?”

And here he is disputing the alleged “most popular” flavors because he worked at a Dunkin/BR for THREE MTHS you guys, long enough to run the data. I will say that the first cone I grabbed had some REALLY SWEET raspberry type of flavor that was not great so maybe Chooch is on to something. What if half is the most popular and the other half is comprised of the underdog flavs that they need to get rid of.

THE NOSES WERE FROZEN MARASCINO CHERRIES. Also, this flavor was butter pecan and I have to believe that this is a top flavor. I looooove butter pecan (and pralines and cream!).

Chooch refused to pose for a good picture so this is what he gets. Also, Henry’s fashion is…something else.

This is also how he looks at me every morning when I try to start riveting conversations with him and his pal Zakk on the drive to school.

Janna came over to celebrate the jerk! What she didn’t know was that he had big plans for us to play Trivial Pursuit. Henry was like, “THANKS, I’M GOOD” and retreated to the basement, but Janna was trapped. Chooch and I immediately ganged up on her and board game-bullied her mercilessly until the very end when we turned on each other. First of all, I was cheating bigly every time it was my turn to roll and I kept saying, “Well, you read the rules, Janna, and I’m pretty sure this is correct” but then when she tried doing it, Chooch and I were unanimous in that, “No, we’re not doing that anymore, Janna. You have to go back.”

My favorite moment (OK second favorite) was when I read this question to Janna, something about how do you measure an earthquake, and she kept saying, “Oh man, it’s on the tip of my tongue. I can’t think! It’s….you know, the ‘something’ on a richter scale, ugh what is it??” and she just kept saying this over and over in different variations, looking for something that had to do with the richter scale. “The….hertz? Ugh, I don’t know!”

“It was Richter Scale,” I said, putting the card in the discard pile.

“I said that!” she yelled.

“Mmm, not in the right context, though,” I shrugged. And Chooch agreed.

Have you ever played games with me? Now imagine playing with me AND Chooch. It’s basically like if the Mad Hatter and March Hare had a game night instead of a tea party.

So, what I’m saying is…

POOR

JANNA

Anyway!! Once it became clear that I had a good chance of winning, Chooch suddenly switched allegiances and conferred with Janna to win-block me.

“Ooh, this one! This one!” Chooch hissed, and Janna laughed conspiratorially. They were SO SURE they got me, guys.

The question was, ‘What’s the good kind of cholesterol?”

Oh, did I sock the smugness off their faces the moment I screamed, with NO HESITATION, “HDL!!!!!”

“Goddammit,” Janna sighed, and Chooch cried, “SERIOUSLY??”

Yo. I take the Wellness exam every year at work, since 2012? 2013? I am OBSESSED with my numbers, and I legit have been known to brag about my HDL.

I ran down into the basement to excitedly huff, “Henry guess what I won!” and he muttered, “Yeah, I know. I heard.”

LOL.

Anyway, that’s how Chooch spent his belated birthday celebration that he didn’t want to have but then agreed that we could have cake with Janna and that was it. No hoopla. No ‘happy bday’ singing. NO FUN FOR MOMMY.

Then I spent literally the next two hours making Janna watch NCT stuff. What a great birthday party for me! Janna was able to name two NCT members – Mark and Johnny – and was really proud of herself but she couldn’t even remember the name of the bias she picked last year!!

(IT’S TAEIL BTW.)

Apparently it’s National Pretzel Day which means absolutely nothing honestly – I’ll care about a National Whatever Day that gets me a day off work. Until then, it’s all nonsense.

I do love pretzels though. But not as much as HENRY, who eats pretzels as a form of therapy I swear to god.

So I went through my blog and collected some photos of him enjoying a pretzel. I was actually surprised that I couldn’t find more than this, though there were a lot of references of him eating pretzels, just without photographical evidence. I guess I need to do better.

Here he is at Busch Gardens Williamsburg, paranoid that someone’s going to pickpocket his pretzel.

Sometimes he treats himself to an entire bag of soft pretzels. I feel like this might have been his birthday gift to himself one year but then Chooch and I shoved our grubby mitts into the bag when he left it briefly unattended.

Roller rink snack bar softie. Even in motion, looks like he’s dunked that sucker into some cheese plz.

That time he took a detour in Amish country, following signs to the elusive SMITTIE’S SOFT PRETZEL truck that ended up disappointing him, boo hoo.

Sometimes he is too tired after making separate dinners for me and Chooch, so he ends up eating toast and pretzels.

This was on the way to see Chiodos in Columbus many moons ago and I know he was angrily grinding away on some salted twists because the accompanying blog post said so.

Well, that’s all for today because I am exceptionally tired. I have that “I’ve been crying all day” full body exhaustion going on except that I wasn’t crying all day? Just once when I was watching some broad’s recap of the Chicago NCT Dream concert LOL ugh grow up, dumb ass.

Apologies for this hasty, moments-before-leaving-for-school poor quality photo of my SEVENTEEN YEAR OLD. I’m lucky he allowed this to happen at all – we were soooo close to fighting about it and I was just about to pull the I DON’T ASK MUCH OF YOU Card when he was like, “OMG TAKE THE PICTURE.”

Just another BITCHY MORNING. Speaking of, this one day last week, we started fighting in the house (by fighting, I do mean bickering) which carried over onto the porch as we walked out the door. But HNC and his wife were also leaving their house at the same time, so the four of us stopped and looked at each other and then HNC said, ‘That kind of morning, huh?” which prompted Chooch and me to start poppin’ off over top of one another, like:

“HE STARTED IT”

“NO SHE DID”

“HE’S ALWAYS SO MOUTHY IN THE MORNING!”

“SHE GASLIGHTS ME!”

“HE KNOWS EVERYTHING!”

And HNC and his wife were just like, “OK cool have a nice day, you two.”

***

Isn’t funny how moms act like so shocked every year when their kids have a birthday, like, “How are they X-years old now?!!?”

Guilty.

Every single year. It me.

I don’t remember much about my pregnancy other than being absolutely miserable and terrified, feeling absolutely possessed by the devil, do I have enough minutes on my pink Razr to call the Vatican, but one thing that has remained firmly lodged in my mind is someone – can’t remember who, though, maybe the Vatican exorcist – said to me, “Once you have kids, time moves so much faster.”

Probably I was like, “LOL OK lame ass,” after that person walked away, but HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS, truer words. These last 17 years have slipped straight through my fingers LIKE SANDS IN AN HOUR GLASS SO ARE THE DAYS OF OUR LIVES AFTER HAVING CHOOCH.

I’m usually pretty self-deprecative up in these parts but I am just going to go on the record here and say that I think Henry and I did a pretty smokin’ job raising Chooch, even though we saddled him with a nickname that he has grown to hate and can’t shake, sorry RILEY. But to be honest, he made it so easy. He is so smart and independent all on his own – we have never had to intervene with school stuff or nag him to get his work done. For example, over the weekend, I walked past his room and he was “studying math” at his desk for an upcoming AP test, without anyone telling him to. I mean, I didn’t even know this test was happening until I had to pay $100+ for it. Then I FULLY knew.

Anyway, the kid is a solid 4.0 student, is hilarious, sarcastic, and basically just my favorite person in the whole entire world OK? Don’t tell G-Dragon and Taemin.

AS SUCH, I really wanted to do something for his birthday, or at least give him money to go out with his friends, but he has been so adamant about not wanting to do anything, so then I was like FINE I WON’T EVEN HONK THE HORN AND SCREAM HAPPY BIRTHDAY WHEN YOU GET OUT OF THE CAR AT SCHOOL.

And then, of fucking course, at 4:30 today he texted me and asked, “Are we doing anything tonight?” UM NO. NO WE ARE NOT AND HERE IS WHY. BECAUSE YOU SAID YOU DIDN’T WANT TO DO ANYTHING AND GOD FORBID I SHOULD PRESS THE ISSUE.

So of course, now I just feel like shit for not planning something anyway, but you just never know which way the wind is going to swing his mood. Maybe he will be amenable to a dinner out this weekend, who knows?! He at least hung out with one of his friends after school for a few hours, and then Henry got him a piece of pie from Eat n Park. Woo hoo, happy birthday!

(OK yeah we’re at least getting him a proper cake of some sort this weekend, whether he likes it or not.)

(YOU GUYS HE’LL BE ABLE TO REGISTER TO VOTE NEXT YEAR WTF.)

Yesterday was my mom’s birthday!

A few weeks ago, my bro Ryan suggested taking her out to dinner, “or we could just have it in your new game room” he quickly added on, lol. I thought that would be better because it’s more casual and we’d be able to lounge around and chat for as long as we wanted without getting stink eye from the servers, like YOU PAID YOUR BILL, NOW GTFO”.

I immediately also offered to order the cake because I this is the most important task and I take my Bethel Bakery cake-ordering EXTREMELY seriously. Bethel Bakery is the Kelly Family standard, the only bakery that we trust to bake our cakes. Always and forever. So the gospel sayeth.

Since this was Ryan’s idea, I assumed that he had made our mom privy to the details, but I texted him anyway to make sure it wasn’t a surprise because I wanted to ask her what kind of food she wanted, and he was like, “Oh yeah, I mentioned it to her but that was a few week ago” and then  when I texted her a week ago about birthday hang-out food options, she was like, “When is this lol?”

Sigh.

She said pizza was fine so my other brother Corey said he could handle that. I gave Ryan the BEVERAGE task.

Long story short, Corey eventually settled on Jets Pizza (although there was a RANCH SITUATION where they said they were all out of their HOUSEMADE RANCH causing Corey to spiral out so they managed to make some appear for him, I don’t know, I was almost passing out from hunger at that point because I usually eat dinner at 5:30 and it was now 7:30 and excuse me if I wasn’t capable of paying attention to anything other than the sweet stench of Detroit-style cheesy carb slabs) and Ryan picked up two bottles of wine from Sheetz (yessss, Sheetz wine, lol!).

Oh! While we were waiting for Corey to arrive with the pizza, we were all hanging out in the living room and I had one of my beloved RetroWave channels playing on YouTube. Ryan was like, “Dude, I think I listen to this too….” and then I started name-dropping some of the retro wave bands like FM 84 and The Midnight and he was like, “YES, and their songs play with old scenes of 80s movies in the background, right?

” and YES! I was so excited about this, knowing that my brother listens to the same stuff while working. Chooch was groaning bigtime because he hates retro wave.

You guys, it was really nice hanging out in the attic lounge, eating pizza, drinking sweet, cheap wine out of Solo cups, and telling old ass stories of our childhood.

While we were eating the pizza, I kept saying, “But seriously, didn’t some celebrity came to Pittsburgh and then became obsessed with Jets?” and no one believed me. “No, I swear, and the only reason I remember is because it’s someone I hate” (and what I left off was that I also had a Jets-boycott because of this but didn’t want Corey to know because he would panic about bringing Jets pizza into my house but that was literally like a decade ago and I truly don’t care—that much—anymore) until Henry finally googled it and announced, “It was Jay Leno.”

“YES, THAT’S IT!” I said with a snap if only I could actually snap.

“That’s….a really weird person to hate,” Ryan laughed. “Like, who hates Jay Leno?”

UM, THIS GIRL, SINCE THE 90s. And also Conan 4eva..

AND THEN, CAKE.

My mom HATES pictures but I snuck this one and I think she knew it lol.

“I ordered almond cake with raspberry filling,” I said.

“I hope you like that!”

“That’s what my wedding cake was,” my mom said, with no emotion in her voice so I couldn’t really tell if this was good or bad. It turns out it was good in that she likes the flavor combo and perhaps that is the only thing that she ended up liking about her wedding lol. Hashtag Divorce.

My mom was sad because she brought treats for her grandcats but they of course hid in my room the whole time. Drew came out 5 minutes after everyone left and immediately was like, “Cool, give me some of these and thank her me.”

But yeah, it was just really nice that we got together on a day that wasn’t Christmas or whatever! I definitely want to do this more often. Ryan and I used to be so close as kids — well, let’s not go that far, we did fight a lot and there was A TON OF JEALOUSY on my end, but we were horror movie aficionados together, loved TMNT, and had a shit ton of inside jokes back then. Every time we get together as adults, I’m like, WHY DON’T WE DO THIS MORE OFTEN?

Life is so weird.

There’s this trendy waffle joint that opened in Oakland somewhat recently, like within the last year. I drive past it whenever I take Chooch to school and I always whine about wanting to go but then we never do because Henry and Chooch don’t get stoked about things like this the way that I do.

I got over it after a while but apparently Corey mentioned to Chooch at some point recently that he wanted to go so then suddenly it became appealing to Surly Teen.

Chooch and I were both on Monday in honor of MLK Jr Day, so it seemed like a good opportunity to try some Smashed Waffles with Corey.

First of all, I was sulking because when I looked at their menu online the other day, there was a waffle under the SWEET SECTION called the John Lemon, which was, you know, lemony. I had my heart set on that one and the Cereal Killer because you know me and Fruity Pebbles as a topping.

But then we got there and IT WASN’T ON THE MENU. Chooch pressured me into choosing the SEASONAL WAFFLE so I did and immediately after paying for our order, I looked up on the digital screen just in time to see a picture of the HOT CHOCOLATE WAFFLE so I cried out, “Is that the seasonal waffle?!” and Chooch was all, “Yeah, that’s what I was trying to tell you.”

BITCH, WHEN?

I 100% would NOT have ordered the seasonal one had I known it was HOT CHOCOLATE, which was essentially just a waffle with chocolate syrup and marshmallows?!

I was BIG PISSED about this, and then I was even more annoyed because the seating options were not ideal and Chooch and I tried in vain to get Corey to grab a recently vacated table next to the window but some dumb trio of girls practically knocked him over and managed to claim it even though COREY WAS STANDING RIGHT NEXT TO IT.

They just wanted it more, I guess.

So we stuck with our sad wobbly table by the restrooms. Don’t worry – I complained about that AND my ordering regrets the whole time, in perfect Erin fashion.

The waffle itself was actually pretty good but the hot chocolate one just really set me off. I wish I had done with Corey and Chooch did – they both got a breakfast sandwich AND a sweet waffle. My two sweet waffles were very unsatisfying. This was 100% more of a “fun snack” during an outing than a lunch. It just didn’t cut it for me and I had to make toast when I got home later!

I did get a pretty delicious latte though but now I forget which one it was – I think it ad honey and cinnamon in it!? It was pretty wonderful, to be honest.

Every time a young person walked past the window, Corey would blurt out, “do you know them?” to Chooch since we were on his school turf. I love how when I do that, Chooch gets so bitchy, but it was SO COOL AND FUNNY WHEN COREY WAS DOING IT. Ugh, Chooch.

After that, we walked around for a bit even though Corey was lowkey worried about his car getting towed, lol. Once Chooch and I realized that Corey had never been to the top-ish of the Cathedral of Learning, we were like, “Oh no, you gotta do it, let’s go” and it made me laugh a little that Chooch is so well-versed in the inner workings of the Cathedral when I’m the one who actually went to Pitt and had classes there! The Secret Life of Chooch. I know he also hangs out around the CMU campus too…? It moderately concerns me that I have no idea what he’s doing after school, because it’s definitely not “immediately coming home.”

“What if we could see your car getting towed right now?” Chooch said to Corey, which made him belt out one of his signature SUPER BOISTEROUS BELLY LAUGHS in the VERY SMALL observation area of the Cathedral.

Damn, this view never gets old. I love the Cathedral of Learning so so so so much. It was the best part of Pitt.

This rando’ storage nook was open!? Corey tried to get me to take some marketing award that was stashed in there.

I felt like I had chocolate on my face from the HOT CHOCOLATE waffle, but I guess I didn’t after all.

CATHEDRAL SELFIE! Not pictured: MY DOUG PIN.

Sadly, none of the nationality rooms were open that day so we couldn’t show Corey all that funnery that takes place on the lower levels of the Cathedral. I love taking people there when they come to Pittsburgh to visit. The Cathedral is just, ugh, so good. But then when we left, I stepped off the sidewalk slightly and it caught me off guard to where I thought I was going to fall so I overcorrected myself too zealously and tweaked my back and now my already-effed back hurts even worse than usual. Yay, 40s.

That was a really fun afternoon! But then a few hours after we came home, THE HAWK CAME BACK and was perched on the telephone pole in front of my house so I was freaking the fuck out, telling it to go fuck itself, clapping real loud, stamping my feet – you know, the usual things that you do when you’re trying to get a fucking hawk to fuck right off because you’re protecting your squirrel family. Henry came home from work while I was out there staring the fucker down (this had been going on for 20 minutes by then) so Henry joined me but his role in all of this is more of a WILDLIFE OBSERVER, like he will stand there calmly with his hands clasped behind his back, smiling dreamily, lost in the awe-inspiring moment. The opposite of me, obviously.

Then Henry did something really stupid and said, “Usually when there is one hawk, there is another nearby—oh look, there it is!” and then pointed across the street at the church where another MUCH LARGER HAWK was perched ON THE FUCKING CROSS and as if on cue, turned and flew toward us, landing on a tree right across the street. SO NOW I HAD TO FUCK WITH TWO HAWKS.

While this was happening, Chooch left the house to go to the mall. When he walked down the sidewalk under the telephone pole where Hawk #1 was sitting, the hawk looked down at Chooch and did this antagonizing bob and weave like he was going to dive on him!? I HATE THESE FUCKERS SO MUCH!!!!

“Can’t I call the mayor?!” I cried to Henry, after he said that the game preserve, etc. wouldn’t do anything if I called because, once again, these assholes are FEDERALLY PROTECTED.

“No, you can’t call the mayor!” Henry yelled.

So then I had a great idea. I suggested that we get Blake to pretend like the hawk tried to take his toddler Milo.

“And then I can call the mayor and tell him that he needs to get someone to Brookline to remove the hawks and release them in some mountain in West Virginia, probably,” I explained, the plan coming together to quickly in my head.

“But the mayor will want to see Milo and then he’ll wonder why he doesn’t have any wounds?” Henry questioned, always trying to find PLOT HOLES in my stories.

“Well, of course Milo won’t have any wounds, because I stopped the hawk from reaching him!” I yelled, like try to keep up, idiot. This story is brilliant actually because I get to be a hero AND have the hawks evicted.

I’m going to talk to Blake about this, get him up to speed so that he can corroborate my story once the mayor and the news crews get here. Probably Biden too.