Before I get into the meat of our time in Sibiu, I want to show you the cutie guest house we stayed in! I tried to pick mostly guest houses for this trip and it was 100% the way to go. We had no complaints about any of the places we stayed.

When we arrived in Sibiu, the host met us because the entrance was a sus doorway next to a storefront with stacks of empty boxes in the window. So when Henry gestured toward that and said, “This is where we were staying,” I exclaimed incredulously, “That abandoned-looking store with boxes in the window???” right as the host came out of the door next to it and greeted us warmly, lol. Oops.

She led us down a dark corridor and then through another door which opened onto this courtyard-ish area:

The one thing we learned quickly about Romania is don’t judge a guesthouse by its exterior.

Because the inside looked EXACTLY as it was pictured on Booking.com.

OB-FUCKING-SESSED. The details! The domed ceiling! HOW WAS THIS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THAT BASIC-LOOKING APARTMENT DOOR??

Our host showed us all around and said we could have romantic moments in that tub which made me have to hold back giddy laughter like I was in church. Henry just stood there, frowning. LOL.

The host and her husband (who looked like he could have been in a band, or in a cool biker gang) even had us do shots of țuică – a plum brandy which went down like liquid fire only to reignite about 30 seconds later in an intense afterburn in my chest. It was….shooooooo. Very strong. Not my favorite but when in Romania….norok!

The door to the right of the Victorian House room housed an older couple who did not speak English but were adamant about greeting “the Americans” every time they heard us coming and going. It was very sweet and they were clearly very hospitable, but it was awkward because of the language barrier and also the husband kept kissing my hand while Henry struggled with the code for the door and it was a whole thing. We got to the point where we would hoarsely whisper, “Run!” to each other every time we were leaving because a motion sensor spotlight would come on to signal our comings and goings, triggering the neighbors’ Pavlovian response. We got really good at slipping through the door out of the courtyard right as their apartment door would fly open lol.

Super nice people! But we were jet-lagged and had no energy for small talk yet.

Our host pointed out this cute little sitting area in the courtyard where we could “sit and take coffee” but after realizing we were being watched by overzealous neighbors, I laughed hysterically to Henry and said, “WE ARE NEVER GOING TO SIT THERE.” Honestly so cute though. I loved staying here and the best was that it was 400 yards from Piața Mare, a super popular plaza in Sibiu full of restaurants and shops. But since it was nestled in the middle of those storefronts, it was SUPER QUIET. I was actually very shocked how quiet it was back there.

After a day of driving and exploring Sibiu, we unwound that evening with some Romanian beer in the comfort of the Victorian House.

It was such a cozy room. Not pictured were the kitchen and the bathroom – both were super updated and sparkly – and the jar of Romanian sweet snacks left for us in the kitchen. Also,  this is where I had my first taste of BORSEC ROMANIAN BOTTLED WATER AND IT IS MY FAVORITE WATER NOW.

And our host gifted us with a heart-shaped gold teaspoon as well!

Loved The Victorian House. Would 100% stay here again and would recommend it to anyone going to Sibiu!

I started collecting magnets from all of our road trips years ago, mostly amusement park magnets adorn our fridge. I’m still a little kid about shit like this (although as a kid, I collected SPOONS from everywhere I went at the suggestion of my Grandma Kelly ❤️ and then my mom THREW THEM ALL AWAY) and I get super tunnel vision about this every time we go away. “I CAN’T LEAVE WITHOUT A MAGNET!” I’ll cry in the key of Sally Struthers Starving Kids Commercial.

I was going hog wild in Romania (even remembered to grab one in London since I wasn’t collecting magnets yet when I was last there) and as I was giddily sorting through them the other day, I realized that I FORGOT TO GET ONE IN BRAȘOV!!!

And we were there for two nights, too!! I vaguely remember saying, “no! I’m not getting a magnet from the first place I walk into. I will shop around” because I always impulse buy the first one I see only to find better ones later in other stores. Ugh. I can’t believe this oversight! Granted, I did get sick while we were in Brașov so that definitely impeded upon my desire to shop but still. I can’t believe this.

Does it count if you buy a magnet online?? I mean, I was truly in Brașov but is that cheating? What if I never make it back to get an authentic one? Only I would have restless nights over a magnet (OR LACK OF ONE).

Anyway, here are my new magnets for the collection:

WHAT SHOULD I DO?? Buy the one I found on eBay? Make my own out of one of the pictures I took while there? Maybe that’s the way to go. Calm down, Erin. No one cares.

Our first full day in Romania was Saturday, October 11th. We didn’t freaking go to bed until 4AM because by the time we landed in Bucharest around 1:30AM, retrieved our baggage, had a tense interaction with Enterprise re: the rental (we almost weren’t able to get it because Henry was banking on using my credit card for the security deposit and the guy was like NO, SHE IS NOT THE ONE ON THE RENTAL AGREEMENT and for some reason, switching the whole thing over to me was going to raise the rates by like $200?? I don’t know what was going on but it was confusing and also boring at the same time, and I can’t remember how it played out now but we obviously had a car while we were there so yay), went through the whole “bells and whistles” walkthrough with the guy who drove us from the airport to the Enterprise lot (he was awesome), drive the 17 minutes into Bucharest, figured out where to park at the hotel, checked in, and then decompressed it was 4AM. What a long ass fucking travel day(s).

Our car for the week :)

I didn’t mention this but there were the most annoying two British women seated behind on the flight to Bucharest and THEY DID NOT STOP TALKING TO EACH FOR A SECOND. They even went to the bathroom together. I was annoyed because I was tired and wanted to sleep but could still hear them tittering about even over my headphones, and then they were playing a card games using the tray on the back of my chair and whatever this game was, it entailed lots of SLAPPING THE CARDS. It was like a fucking preschool class was stuffed into one seat directly behind me. I was so agitated. I kept calling them Becky and BobbiJo.

Anyway, when we landed, NO ONE was talking but them. They were loudly cackling and exclaiming, “WE’RE IN ROMANIA!” but not in a sweet, awestruck way. It was in a “this is so fucking ridiculous, Romania is so weird” tone and THEN THEY STARTED MAKING VAMPIRE STEREOTYPES, referencing motherfucking TWILIGHT and saying things like, “BETTER HIDE OUR NECKS.” I was so ashamed. Read the room (plane), assholes. Apparently they were only going to be there for 14 hours and in the pieces of convo I couldn’t manage to avoid, it sounded like at least one of them was in the dental field and I am going to guess they were there for some dental convention or something because one of the things I learned over the years in my Romania research is that a lot of foreigners will go there for dental school and/or medical tourism specifically for dental work.

Becky and BobbiJo had gotten under my skin so badly that I continued to reference them through the first half of the trip. The one directly behind me was the worst of the two. She was wearing green overalls with some pattern on it that may have been pencils or crayons, I don’t know, but something that a preschool aide would wear. She was the worst.

(They also verbally exchanged A LOT of recipes.)

Ugh.

OK, so that Saturday morning, we got started on our drive to Sibiu at around 10:00AM. Yes, much later than we had originally wanted but bro, we needed to fucking sleep. There were no alarms set. We are old people.

Outside the hotel (Scala Boutique)! Pretty sure I was oscillating between squealing, “we’re in ROMANIA!!” and berating Henry for taking shitty pictures of me. This post is just going to be a bunch of pictures from the car window, just letting you know now. We didn’t stop much – two or three gas stations – because we just wanted to get to Sibiu. It was around a 4 hour drive because the main highway to get there was closed at one point and the detour was the backway through the countryside and mountains. I was absolutely DYING at the views and also LOL @ me for bringing books and honestly thinking that I would get ANY reading done on this road trip. The only time I wasn’t looking outside was when I was writing in my vacation journal about all the things I saw when looking outside.

Just….goddamn. Every time I’d say, “OK this is peak Romania, nothing can top this panorama”, we’d turn a corner and Romania would be like, “LOL, u thought.” Even during rainy / overcast moments (the weather there changes on a dime!), the scenery was incredible. THE ROLLING FOG!!!

This was still in Bucharest. I just liked how that building looked. Is that OK?

Outside of Bucharest, we stopped at a gas station and blindly got a pastry at the connected bakery. We didn’t know what it was and the cashier said in a surly manner, “That’s CHEESE.” We were like, “That’s OK, thanks” and I appreciated that he was trying to help us in his own little way since we weren’t helping ourselves, lol.

Anyway, can I just tell you that this fucking ring of salty-cheese-filled flaky buttery dough was so fucking good that I actually think it might have been my favorite thing I ate there?! FROM A GAS STATION? We were supposed to be sharing it but after giving Henry one taste, I said, “OK this is mine now, say goodbye.” I never did get to have another one while we were there and I kept trying to get things that seemed comparable to it but nothing ever matched up.

This was a village called Tigveni according to the geotag on this picture. I loved the red roofs and flowers!

Ciofringeni field.

Haystack and haystack skeletons!

My phone says this was Budesti – Racovita. Who the hell knows though.

This was probably around the time we started noticing DOGS EVERYWHERE. Pretty sure they were strays. Nothing we read or watched prepared us for this. The cats were expected because I feel like that is most places outside of the US, street cats living their lives like it’s NBD. But I’m not accustomed to the dogs.

I loved all the different town/city/whatever markers that we’d pass by.

After noon, we made it this beautiful area. Râmnicu Vâlcea, allegedly.

I didn’t get any good ones captured, but once we were on the country roads, there were a bunch of roadside memorials that began to pop up and some of them were very detailed. We were on some seriously curvy roads with little shoulder so it wasn’t always possible or safe for Henry to stop just so I could snap some pictures.

Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in Călimănești. Again, would have loved to have been able to stop but we had to get to Sibiu!

This seemed like a nice little mountain resort area. Traffic definitely slowed through this area and we saw legit gypsies (I know that’s a bad term – I think “Romani” is what we’re supposed to use??) going from car to car trying to sell some flimsy wooden knives or something. Henry was like “hard no” but they didn’t stop at our car anyway because they hit the jackpot with the car in front of us. The driver was giving them money and bread. Then a girl came running over from the gas station parking lot (we were in stopped traffic going up the mountain) and the driver gave her food too. What a nice person!

LOL, I promise the pictures get less “drive-by” once we make it to Sibiu. But I was in my “bitch ain’t never seen a mountain” era, I guess.

These Jesus crosses were e v e r y w h e r e. In peoples’ yards, even.

OK, in about an hour after I took this last picture, we will have made it to Sibiu and of course forget about all those deep blue skies throughout this post – it was gray and raining by then, lol.

After a miserable day of travel, we are home! And I have been wide awake since 2AM ofc. Just some quick thoughts off the cuff because I missed blogging so much but I didn’t bring my laptop with me and I absolutely hate trying to blog from my phone:

• I miss Romania but am so so so so so happy and content to be sitting here at 5:55AM with my precious Penelope purring on my lap <3
• Happy to have A CUP OF COFFEE – “long blacks” are not for me!
• My favorite Depeche Mode song – It’s No Good – came on in the rental car (I miss that car) at 3:30AM on the way to the Bucharest airport yesterday and now I will forever associate it with Romania. I have only ever heard that song out in the wild once before and that was a million years ago at lunch with Kara, Chris, and Christina at The Library.
• Henry dumped half of his chicken tikka masala all over him on the flight from London to DC and I was so embarrassed. He just sat there with a clump of it in his fist while he continued to shovel more in his mouth and then he stunk like a food truck for the rest of the day.
• “We” drove 1,111 miles through Romania!
• I can’t choose a favorite part but I truly fell in love with the Maramures region and Sighisoara.
• Rural Romania has a HUGE amount of stray dogs, alarming even. I wanted to take them all home. (Even the vicious ones that tried to attack our car from the road.)
• I came back weighing a few ounces less than I did when we left thanks to whatever food poisoning / stomach virus I contracted last Thursday – it’s always something with me! I am still not right.
• Turns out that Henry and I actually can travel without Chooch as a buffer and get along mostly OK! (I mean, there were moments, and let’s just say that when we were seated in different rows from each other on our last flight home last night, I counted that as a blessing, lol.
• The only thing I found actually super overrated on the MOST DO list from all the “travel vloggers” was this bookstore. I was so stoked to see it but it was just…I dunno. A bookstore. BUT!!! A non-radio song by The Cure came on while we were there and I was like, “OK, this the vibe.” But if not for that, I wouldn’t have stayed there for more than a few minutes.
• I would go back to Romania in a heartbeat – especially to explore some of the other regions we didn’t have time for. I’d like to see Timisoara and Constanta / the beaches. The Black Sea. And definitely do the Maramures drive again. It was absolutely breathtaking. BUT!!! Korea is still bae. Korea is still where I would live if I wasn’t a person lacking the ability to get rid of her  “things.” (You’re a pack rat, Erin. Call it by its name.) (OK thanks but I prefer MAXIMALIST.)
• I have never traveled somewhere before where both there and back flights were so incredibly botched. I know it could have been way worse and we could have been faced with full on cancellations, but it was a headache both ways and I am actually so glad Chooch wasn’t there because he and I would have easily feasted off each other’s frustrations and irritability, and it would have been so much worse.
• Romanian pop music is chef’s kiss. We went to bed every night with one of the music video channels on and there were times when a song would arouse me from a deep sleep because it was that good. My Shazam got a ton of use!
• 1,111 miles and probably 1,111 new photos on my camera roll now.
• We stayed in some of the most memorable guest houses ever and I’m so glad we went that route over hotels.
• I sent so many texts to Chooch that started with, “OMG you would be so embarrassed if you were right now – [insert one of the many embarrassing things Henry did here].”
• Gelato is huge in Romania. My favorite flavor that I tried was rice pudding with prunes from Vice Cream in Bucharest- DON’T HATE. It was delicious.
• Once again, every airport personnel / TSA agent we encountered both there and back were lovely EXCEPT  THE ONES IN PITTSBURGH. Literally some of the nastiest, looking-for-an-argument people I have ever encountered have been employed at the Pgh International Airport. They get our trips off on the wrong foot every single time. This time I got ridiculed by some asshole who, as I was waiting for my turn to go through the body scanner, opened a door and yelled at me to “slide over.” There was a person in a wheelchair to my right so I assumed she was asking me to move out of the way so that the person in the wheelchair could go through the door she opened, so I took a step back and she yelled, “NOW WHERE DID SHE GO????” because she evidently wanted me to move over and go through a different scanner instead of the full body one because the line was getting too long. MAYBE USE YOUR FUCKING WORDS THEN, BITCH because to me “slide over” meant “get out of the way of the oncoming wheelchair.” I feel sorry that these people are affected by the shut-down but the truth is, a lot of them are always this fucking rude. (In Pgh, anyway.) I still said HAVE A NICE DAY!! to every single one of them, though. And not even ironically.
• For as annoying as those “perpetually connected” bottle caps are in Europe, I was super annoyed this morning when I untwisted my bottle of American water and I had to chase down the cap after it frisbee’d out of my fingers and went rolling across the floor.
  • (My favorite water brand in Romania was BORSEC, by the way. I just let Henry know that he can buy me a 6-pack of the 50.7 oz bottles for $29.99 on Amazon.)
    • (But, fuck Amazon.)
• The agent we got at the MPC line in Dulles was so nice in a very laidback way. He asked questions about why we were in Romania (yes, I know, it’s his job but he made it feel like he was genuinely interested) and even asked, “Did you go to Castle Bran?” HELL YEAH WE DID. Henry let me answer the questions thank god and as we walked away, I said, “And that’s how you do it.” HE IS THE WORST AT ANSWERING THESE BANAL QUESTIONS!
• I don’t know what’s in the tap water in Romania and while it renders it unsuitable to drink, it was incredible for my hair. Every day was a good hair day, it was amazing. 11/10, would happily wash my hair in Romania again any day.

Get stoked for what will likely be several mths of dragged out vacation recaps, you know how I do.

We’re in Cluj-Napoca (THE BIRTHPLACE OF BELA KAROLYI BTW REMEMBER WHEN I WAS OBSESSED WITH HIM) and apropos of nothing, we see this large silk screen of another man I’m obsessed with, Robert Smith, covering this window as we crossed the street. Had to stop for a picture.

When we were driving to our hotel in Bucharest (at 3am never forget I know I won’t), we spotted numerous posters of this same image hanging in various spots in Old Town so now I’m on a mission to find out why. They’re not concert posters…

It’s giving me the feels though because EXACTLY 25 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK, I saw the Cure for the first time in Canberra, Australia. (And met them!)

Anyway!! It’s 5:46am and we’re getting ready to embark on the Maramures portion of the trip. It already feels like our time in Romania is half over but it’s not. The “do t wanna leave” panic is strong with this one.

I knew I was going to love it here. I knew. Decades of dreaming about it, numerous failed attempts over the last 15 years, and here I am, with Henry who might not always understand the root of my obsessions, but he’s here for it and that’s all I can ask for!

In more ways one it has taken forever to get here, but we made it! We left the house around noon on Thursday (EDT) and flew to Chicago where we were supposed to have a 5:00-something overnight flight to Heathrow, land 8:00am London time and then get on a connecting flight to Bucharest at 9:15am which would have put us here around 2pm Romania time on Friday. But right before boarding the London flight, they made an “oh btw” announcement that “a door” needed to be fixed and maintenance was on their way. First it was a “20 minute” delay. Then an hour. Then, “they asked for another hour.” It turned into over three hrs and our chances of making the connecting flight went out the window. The ONLY other flight that day was at 8pm, putting us in Bucharest after 1am. Not great but at least the flight wasn’t outright canceled but believe me that I had wished it was after we FINALLY boarded only to get EVERYONE situated and a flight attendant to come on and say yeah sorry but we have been informed that maintenance needs to check on one more thing and everyone has to deboard. Oh yeah and bring all your stuff with you. Everything.

The outcry! I was just freaking out like, is this plane safe? Are we ok? I overheard a flight attendant tell the ppl behind us that it was actually the door where the inflatable evacuation slide is. “Believe me, you don’t want that inflating in-air,” he said and that was an image that was seared in my mind from that point on.

You wanna talk about a rowdy group of passengers. Most of them were already drunk from the first round of delays and a group of the rowdiest ran right back to the bar across from our gate (K15, never forget). So by the time we reboarded (the whole crew was over it by then and allowed us to just bunch into crowds and get our passes scanned out of group order), some ppl were so trashed that I was worried we were going to be a dystopian in-air social experiment but almost everyone fell asleep / passed out immediately.

And then we got to take the Heathrow Express to London for some blessed open air / no-airport quality time. It wasn’t the worst layover that’s for sure.

However, by the time we touched down in Bucharest, picked up our rental, drove the 17 minutes to the city and checked in to our cutie hotel, it was after 3am. (Side note: that airport was BUSY for being after 1am and Bucharest was still bumping at 3am.)

We left the next morning to start our Transylvanian roadtrip, and I was so sad to check out because it was so pretty/creepy there! And both women we talked to at the desk were so nice. The one the next morning especially! She gave us the sage advice of “don’t feed the bears! They are not pets.” (It’s a real problem with tourists here – way worse than me and the squirrels!)

Well, we are currently in Sibiu and I woke up in the middle of the night and decided to just check in and share photos of the Scala Boutique Hotel!

It looks like he’s peeing on the door?!

From this morning!

Courtyard view.

Initial thoughts: Romania was worth the wait 100%! We have had some really nice interactions with a bunch of people here so far and also Sibiu has a small Korean store called Komart lol. Had to throw that in there.

P.S. you know what’s funny/sad? I have wanted to come here for so long that I already had a “Romania” category on my blog, probably from 2007?? After several failed attempts, I finally made it! Grateful that Henry was on board with this :)

(Hello, I recommend reading this post first because I will be referencing people and incidents from that!)

‘Twas the night before Thanksgiving, around 9:30 and we were doing fuck all. In fact, I had just curled up on the couch with a book while Henry was working on something at the computer in the other room. Chooch was in his room playing dumb games with his friends.

I hadn’t even had a chance to open my book yet, when suddenly…

The front door opens.

I had about .25 seconds to run through the probability of this being either Henry or Chooch. Did one of them go outside through the basement, perhaps? And now they were coming back in?

But now there was a stranger standing in the doorway. He quietly closed the door behind him, then turned back into the room.

We locked eyes.

My mental People Rolodex is flipping at warped speed: WHO IS THIS MAN. DO I KNOW THIS MAN.

Now the man’s eyes are flicking around my house. “Oh…shit. I walked into the wrong house.”

“Yes,” I managed to whisper, half-paralyzed, not quite with fear but surprise. Shock.

This happened so quietly and calmly, that even Henry had a delayed reaction at the computer, not quite sure what is happening.

“Wow, this house is….I should go,” the man said, and turned to leave. Now I could hear Chooch creeping on the steps. He apparently thought it was Blake dropping off Starbucks for him after work and was shocked to see that, no this was not Blake.

“Yes, you should go,” I agreed, and now it clicked where I had seen this face before: he is one of the people moving in with Rob (please refer to previous post!) and he had also come over to Ruth’s on Monday to make sure was OK. Plus, I had seen him several times over the weekend moving stuff into the house.

So a stranger, but also a neighbor. But still a stranger.

“Do you mind if I just stand here and look around for a minute?” he asked.

Now here is the point where my constant need for praise and attention drop-kicked any remaining supply of rationality out of my cranial trap door. Since the pandemic, we have barely had anyone over here aside from family, Verizon guys, and plumbers. So I was kind of like, “YES, YOU MAY” which I know pissed Henry off, but hello I would like to note for the log that Henry was the last one in the house and didn’t shut the door all the way, so this is a very BLAME HENRY situation we have on our hands here. Also, passive Henry never once attempted to intervene.

Also, this guy was fucking high. Imagine walking into my house for the first time, incapacitated. This was around the time he finally introduced himself as Robert, the boyfriend of the girl also moving in with Rob who Rob said was his daughter but GET THIS: she is actually the ex-gf of Rob’s son, Brandon!? That is…weird? Right? That she’s living with her ex-bf’s dad and her new bf?

“Do you get high?” he asked, to which I immediately said no. “Oh, well do you mind if we smoke pot over there?” he asked, and I said that I didn’t care what he did as long as it wasn’t in my house (??) and he goes, “No, I mean, you can’t smell it through the walls, right?” I had to explain to him that he didn’t just walk into the wrong SIDE of his new house, he walked into the wrong house entirely.

“Well, we don’t share any walls since you’re all the way over there, so no, we can’t smell it,” I explained and then in my head, thought, “LOL that’s Ruth’s problem.”

Man, this guy (who was born in 1988, a fact I will never forget because he told me like 1,988 times and I wanted to be like, “THAT’S WHEN G-DRAGON WAS BORN!” but you know, we just met) had questions about everything. First, he asked if everything in here was for sale, like he thought this was a lighting store or something?

He’s still standing at this point, and I’m sitting on the couch wondering how much longer this was going to last before I had to tell him to leave. He was very quiet, calm, polite, totally high though. Henry wanted no part of this at all and LET ME DEAL WITH IT?! He told me later, “Oh, you seemed to have it under control. I assessed the situation and he didn’t appear to be a threat.” WOW, way to be the man of the house. Not to white Knight Henry, but imagine a petite Seth Rogen and that’s basically what walked into our house.

But then Robert started talking about the drama that happened the other day. “What the hell was up with that??” he asked, and I was like, “Buckle up, Robert, I’m an expert at Pioneer Ave information.” So now Robert is sitting on the couch and we’re chatting like old broads at tea time. I forgot that I used to be good at conversationing and peopling! Anyway, the irony was not lost on him that he essentially did the same thing as Johnny Cash, just in a much less sinister context.

You guys, he LET ME TALK ABOUT KOREA and that is all I ever want, truly.

I would also like to memorialize the fact that prior to this, I had put on a YouTube video about various things to do in the Smoky Mountains, nature-wise, and another extremely boring video had started playing with a super old man narrating in in a dry voice, like something you’d have watched in school on a day when you have a sub and they have nothing else to give you, work-wise. I desperately wanted to change it but the remote was on the other side of Robert. So I let the boring ass video play on like in some old bitch living in a wood-paneled RV.

I mean, that seems like the type of TV someone like that would watch.

About 30 minutes in, he mentioned that he was born in Romania and I almost lunged at him in excitement.

“I AM OBSESSED WITH ROMANIA,” I said in a very serious fashion, and he was caught off guard by this.

I will say it was frustrating though because he couldn’t remember anything and asked me numerous times what my name is and how long I’ve been living here. Henry said he texted Chooch at one point and said, “It’s like a revolving convo.” I demanded a screenshot of these texts for journalistic purposes:

Typical Chooch, only cares about his drink, zero concern for Mum’s safety.

Apparently during other parts, Chooch was hovering on the steps listening in and he and Henry were communicating through facial expressions. I wish I could have seen their faces when ROMANIA came up because I’m sure Henry closed his eyes in defeat and Chooch gave his fists a “NOW SHE WILL NEVER LET HIM LEAVE” shake.

So yeah, Robert moved to the States with his parents from Romania when he was 7 but he still speaks Romanian fluently and was just there this year to visit family! HE TAUGHT  ME HOW TO SAY HELLO HOW ARE YOU IN ROMANIAN BUT I ALREADY FORGOT.

Anyway, he stayed for an hour and then we wished each other a Happy Thanksgiving, he apologized again, and that was that. I got up and immediately locked the door behind him.

I immediately texted my brother, Corey, because he is so invested in the Pioneer drama.

Truly! That was not how I saw the night going. Look, I am clearly starved for conversation! I knew this was filling a void when I abandoned all of my filters and started giddily telling Robert about the squirrels. “And they love grapes, but they call them by the Korean word, podo!” (Henry texted Chooch at this point like, “great, now she’s talking about the squirrels.”)

Anyway, Corey and I are now exclusively referring to Robert as Vlad so as not to confuse him with Rob.

Chooch cautiously came downstairs a few minutes later. “OMG did he finally leave?” he asked, and then gave me a very disappointed head shake. Turns out he wasn’t worried that this guy was going to murder me, he was just annoyed because Blake had left his Starbucks in a bag on the porch and Chooch didn’t want to have to walk past Robert. He apparently texted Blake said he couldn’t get it right away because some guy was in the house.

Blake goes, “Who, dad’s new boyfriend?” (When Henry heard about this he mockingly laughed and said, “wow you guys are all so funny.”)

Chooch said, “No, some guy living with Rob. He just walked into our house.”

And Blake said, “Oh cool.”

OH COOL????

“I just can’t believe this happened two nights after you were telling me about the other time someone walked into the house,” Chooch said, and my mind is also a little blown about that too. WHAT DOES IT MEAN?! (Aside from us needing to triple-check that the door is locked.)

***

“Wow, you wanna talk about someone who can talk…” Henry sighed, after Robert left.

“Oh I know right, I didn’t think he was ever going to leave!” I said.

“I was talking about you,” Henry frowned.

:(

I bet Vlad doesn’t even remember being here.

On the phone this morning with Henry, I was spazzing out about a horrible dream I had about Jonny Craig, in which he was so much of a crack addict that he was beginning to lose his teeth. Even now, when I shut my eyes, I can see him with his mouth open all wide as he’s singing, and he’s missing a front tooth and the one next to it is all snaggled and he looks like he should be selling blow jobs at a truck stop in West Virginia, not touring the country with a Scene-popular band. (Except that in real life, he’s not even doing that.) And when this was happening in my dream, Sandy was there with me, seeing it all for herself and in my head, I was thinking, “Oh god, oh fuck no.

Why does he have to be flapping open his crack-obliterated maw right now in front of SANDY? She’s going to torture me with Photoshopped portraits of his new tooth-lite look.

” I was really panicked about this, not worried that Jonny Craig was about two hits away from stealing from kids (oh wait), but panicked because Sandy was going to make fun of me.

Henry laughed disgustedly. “That’s not so much a dream as it is reality.”

“YOU DON’T KNOW THAT’S HE’S LOST ANY TEETH YET!” I cried in defiance.

In other parts of my dream, I was on a cruise with Andrea, but the cruise ship was actually just a docked Motel 6 which at some point we were driven off of by Romanian gypsies so of course I woke up with my extreme yearning to travel to Romania rejuvenated. This clearly means that Andrea is supposed to go with me.

I’ll start looking at itineraries, Andrea, while you get your palate primed for some placenta pie.

ROMANIA 2012, HOLLA.

My Romanian travel brochure arrived today and has pinned my interest right up against a tree trunk like a frat boy fresh from a kegger.

Suspiciously, there has been little mention of the local cuisine so I wiki’d it last night and I’m happy to report that I’ll be losing a lot of weight during my sojourn, which is great because I’ve been looking into stocking my closet with some of those hot goat milking dresses the broads wear in the field.

Also, families sacrifice pigs for Christmas, so if you’re into that you should think about calling your travel agent on the ASAP.

Today, I sold a Lizzie Borden card and a 10-card set, which puts me approximately $30 closer toward my final destination of Romania. Henry’s not invited, since he wouldn’t take me to the hospital. He can have fun staying home in gay Pennsylvania while I’m off riding donkeys and wildin’ out on Romanian date rape drugs. I can’t wait to taste Romanian pie and pee in their toilets. With a little conniving and perseverence, this dream might be realized by next summer. It’s only my dying wish, you know.

It’s not too late to purchase holiday cards. Send me to Romania. If you’re lucky, I’ll get stuck over there and wind up living a meager existence hauling oats in a field with no Internet. And then I’ll lose a wager with a gypsy over who has a bigger ballsack – the town cobbler or the albino who lives under the bridge and inspires dark fairy tales – and next thing I know, I’ll have a gaping hole in my side and my kidney will be chilling out on ice. Don’t you want that for me? Tell people about my cards; make your dreams (and mine) come true.