The other day in group chat, I had a long-dormant memory unlocked when the subject of Girl Scout Cookie sales came up, and then Navanny shared with us that he funded his high school trip to NY by selling $1500 worth of full-sized candy bars.

It was at this moment that pea-brain sprung to life and began churning. Now, I don’t remember exact details and I think I actually gave false info to group chat when I was first regaling them with my triggered memory, but when I was in 1oth grade, I had lofty entrepreneurial aspirations and when a building down the street went up for sale, my immediate thought as a 15-year-old high school student was to buy it and turn it into a cafe.

I told group chat that it was a pizza place that had closed and went up for sale, but now that I’m thinking of this, it can’t be true because I’m pretty sure that pizza place didn’t close until much later, so it must have been something attached to it, or next to it. I think it’s a salon now, actually.

ANYWAY-V, all I remember next is finding a local candy shop that had agreed to give (???) me a bunch of chocolate roses for me to sell as a fundraiser. GOD ONLY KNOWS WHAT I TOLD THESE PEOPLE I WAS RAISING MONEY FOR.

So many questions.

Like, did I just cold call these people? Or were they advertising that their edible wares were available for fundraisers? How did I get them? Did Lisa drive me to pick it up?? I vaguely remember this being on the South Side and, being “edgy kids,” Lisa and I did hang out there quite often so maybe I saw a sign in their window?!

But still, did they just GIVE THIS TO ME?

Hilarious also that I thought, thanks to my slippery grasp* on the American dollar, that I would be able to sell like 100 pieces of chocolate and then suddenly have enough money to buy/rent a commercial building.

*(Henry wants to point out that my grasp is still just as lubricated in the present day.)

Some other spotty pieces to this story include me getting “in trouble” for soliciting my non-school sanctioned fundraising wares on school grounds. I feel like my friend Shawn Steele bought one for sure because he always did what I told him, and maybe my other friend V who did not grow up to become a member of BTS, sorry. But other than that, who knows who was buying these from me. Apparently, not enough people because the other spotty bits coming back to me involve the candy place being like HELLO KNOCK KNOCK OUR CUT IS WHERE? and my Pappap having to pay them the difference.

You would think that this would be the part of the story where I got grounded or had a “value of the dollar” lesson, but no. I never suffered the consequences back then and just went back to my old tried-and-true: inflating the cost of school lunch and then only buying a Zebra Cake and iced tea, and pocketing the rest of my Pappap’s change.

(When I told Henry this, he was like, “Do you really think your Pappap thought school lunch was that much money and wasn’t, you know, just GIVING YOU the extra money??” But I mean, when he puts it like that, it makes me look less lucrative and savvy.)

Obviously I never opened my own cafe at the tender age of 15 but I will tell you that that area is still, to this day, severely lacking in cafes!!! There is a Starbucks, a Coffee Tree Roasters, and several Dunkins. No Erin-branded cafes. I probably spent all that money on CDs, lol.

What would I even have called my cafe, back then, I wonder? In 10th grade, I was super into gangsta rap and Bone Thugs n Harmony. Mo’ Murda, Mo Mocha? Puttin’ the CAP in Cappucino? Cafe Crossroads?

Ugh, I don’t have the energy for this.

• I’m still alive. I know you were wondering (lol). But sincerely this is the sickest I’ve been in years. My fever finally broke on Monday (or maybe yesterday) and I still felt not right but had enough energy for the first time in days to at least do Pilates that night. And I started up until midnight! I had been asleep by 9 for the last several days.

• But then yesterday afternoon, a new development arose where I felt suddenly like I was at sea. It was so bad that I logged off word an hour early and you know it’s dire when I wave the flag at work. I never actually threw up but I felt green and curled up like a shivering shrimp on the couch. Henry had run out to the store before this and was like “Jesus” when he came home and saw me down for the count.
• I can’t get rid of bullet points.
• All I wanted to eat for dinner was pizza from the freezer section of a grocery store. It was all I could stomach or even think about without hiccuping bile.
• Today all I wanted was a brownie.
• Anyway, here is a picture of my Pappap’s house in springtime which is my happy place and boy do I ever need a happy place right now.

• Finished “We Could Be Rats” on audio in nearly one day
• Pressed my forehead to the ice cold glass of the front door while sighing, “ahhhh.”
• Ate lots of sugar. My sick body wants sugar, my sick body gets sugar.
• Threw some of the cookies Henry brought home for me back at him while shouting DISGUSTING!!!! Because am I direct conduit for the DEVIL when I’m sick.
• Watched a bunch of AP Bio and then erupted into coughing fits while laughing.
• Created an account on a global penpal site so I can find Romanian penpals.
• Questioned why I still have a fever after three days and then told Henry to “STFU dork” when he tried to mansplain health class to me.
• Forced myself to still get 10000 everyday while shuffling in place with a blanket over my head with Henry in the other room yelling at me to SIT DOWN.
• Told Chooch I have a fever. “That sucks,” he replied which is actually a lot more caring than I what I expected from him.
• Got Henry sick.
• Had insane fever dreams featuring Robin Scherbatsky and a bleeding sky and of course both my mom’s house and pappap’s house.
• Not cared about the Super Bowl even once.
• Watched old episodes of Going Seventeen and let it lull me to sleep because I guess these are what I would consider my comfort rewatches.
• Argued with henry over who is sicker and accused him of copying me.

• Remembered that I never jotted down my thoughts of breakfast last weekend with Pam. We went to the old Tom’s Diner, recently reborn as SPARKIES and I have to tell you, it did not inspire the SPARKIES within me. First of all, they did a dastardly thing by shitting their faux-rustic decor all over what was once an authentic 50s diner aesthetic. It felt jarring from the get-go, drab and bleak. I fucking hate that putrid olive color on the walls. Our server was militant and lacked personality – she made me so uncomfy and I kept profusely thanking her because she made me feel like we were impeding upon her time. The menu was stupid and expensive. I had the GREASIEST omelet of my life served with a side of burnt and dry home fries. There was supposed to be feta in my omelet bug it was clumped together in one small section which I never made it to because the grease was making me queasy so Henry ate my leftovers later that day – also got sick – and said “oh wow all of the feta is right here”. The rye toast was very good though. I will likely never go back so don’t ask me to meet you there.
• Had another coughing fit because Henry is making more Taemin pins as I type this and now the house reeks of cooked shrinky dink.
• Watched lots of Romania content on YouTube. My tax refund is burning a hole in my savings account as we try to figure out travel dates. I hope I’m not jinxing anything because I have wanted to go to Romania for like 20 years and it would be so magical to have our “honeymoon” there. (Honeymoon lol.)

• watching Henry working very diligently.

You guys I need to sign off now. I want to stick my head in a vat of Vick’s Vaporub. My lungs are craving that sweet ass eucalyptus burn.

UPDATE: Henry thinks he’s so cool because he has a fever now too (mine broke at one point today but don’t worry – I’m back in feverish action) so are now competing to see who’s is higher and I beat him by .2 degrees!!! 101.8 to 101.6 boiiiiiii.

I managed to avoid contracting any of the flus or other bugs going around for quite some time but my luck has officially run out. I’ve been sick since Thursday and just dealing with it – I work from home so it’s whatever bug Henry took my temp last night and it was 103 lol. Oops.

I was hoping I would be all better today but it’s been bouncing between 102 and 103 all day and I can’t stop hacking.

I’m really nervous about this because the Taemin concert is next Sunday. Hopefully I will be back to 100% by then but sometimes these coughs can linger and I do not want to be dry-coughing while beautiful Taemin is on stage being beautiful.

We made a bunch of pins to pass out as freebies and I fucking swear to god if I’m not feeling up to it I will cry (as will Henry because you know I delegated this project to him. Crafting makes me tired! I’m the idea person. He’s the implementer. That’s why we make such a great team lol!).

Also, I haven’t painted my nails since November. That’s how you know I am deeply depressed.

Ok I’m going to go now and continue coughing my face off while simultaneously grasping my lower back and saying, “ow” in the voice of a dying horse.

never forget that I was already on to him and have felt that he was a shitty person for yearsI wanted to get out of the house on Saturday and into the actual sunshine if you can believe the sun was shining in January.

(Lol came here a day later to say it was actually February now that I think about it! Calendars are cool.)

It was pretty cold – for a while we didn’t see any other walkers and it was kind of creepy. Not to mention icy. Dangerously so. I kept hoping Henry would fall hahaha.

This place is actually quite boring if you ask me BUT it’s dear to my heart because this is where the infamous VAMPIRE THING happened which I kept referencing that day and Henry was getting so annoyed and then after I called him a cunt for the 87th time, threatened to push me into the frozen lake.

We both said simultaneously that that kid in a hoodie and shorts reminded us of Chooch. :(

I was talking about how disgusting it is that people actually go out on frozen lakes to fish. “How do they know the ice won’t crack??” I cried and Henry was like, “Well, considering there’s a big crack right there, I wouldn’t go near it” and for some reason this was so funny to me, Henry being an ice crack inspector suddenly.

GOSH WHAT CAN’T THAT MAN DO.

#eyeroll

Sickening.

Anyway, that’s all that really happened. We just ranted about Trump and I probably also threw in some Blake Lively hate because I AM OBSESSED with following all of the It Ends With Us legal drama ever since it started, being a Forever Anti. I stand by the fact that she was THE WORST part of Gossip Girl – insufferable, untalented, had the most boring scenes. And I am LOVING the fact that her precious husband RYAN REYNOLDS is now showing his true colors to the rest of the world and never forget that I was already on to him and have felt that he was a shitty person for years, thank you very much. I hope they both just go away.

Um, what else. Then we went to Sheetz so I could get a hot bev because that area doesn’t believe in cafes I guess, and then we stopped at some place called AUGGIE’S BEER WAREHOUSE where I got a 4-pack of a Voodoo IPA that was on sale for $12.99 but the guy rang it up as $26 or something and Henry just…paid it? Without question?

I was like, in my best non-Karen voice, “Um, excuse me but I think that it was marked down to $12.99” and the guy immediately saw that I was correct (it wasn’t his fault anyway – he scanned the barcode and didn’t see the BLACK ON BLACK MARKER that had the sale price written on it. So, he refunded us and I made some lame joke about I WAS GONNA SAY, WOW THAT’S SOME OUTRAGEOUS TAX HAHAHA ugh to really try to diffuse any lingering scent of KAREN that might have been hanging in the air. When we got to the car though I was like WOW YOU WERE REALLY JUST GOING TO PAY DOUBLE AND TAKE IT!

And Henry was all, “I wasn’t paying attention…”

Oh, even better. Glad I was there to be his shopping advocate?!

But yo, this is one of my new faves and I would gladly go back and pay full price for another 4-pack!

Well, that’s all I have for now. I had to reschedule my therapy to today because I was asked to come into the office yesterday for this crazy long and intense meeting that I was very appreciative of being included in but between that, a work post-holiday get together at a bar on Mt Washington, and then an EMDR session today, I am so wiped out. My therapist knows me so well now and when I was telling her about yesterday, she was like, “Oh wow, that is A LOT for you, that’s really an atypical day” and I was like, “YOU KNOW THAT’S RIGHT.” More on all of that later, it was actually a good day just overwhelming, and I have to cuddle with Peenlop now.

Today I am going to talk about some of my latest obsessions because if there is one thing synonymous with Erin Rachelle Kelly it’s “obsessions.”

1. Marching band jackets

G-Dragon recently performed at Taeyang’s concert in Korea and he was wearing this DARLING and REGAL cropped  marching band-esque jacket which probably cost something akin to a down payment on a house.

So, I started searching eBay for marching band jackets which sent me on a spiral Saturday night.

I found one from some high school in California that is also apparently RON HOWARD’S alma mater, I guess. I said the size out loud which was very foreign to me (36L).

“Is that a big size?” Henry asked.

“I dunno! I wasn’t in band. Well, I was but I quit before I got that far because I chose tennis. Which I also quit. Because all I do is quit. I’m like the opposite of DJ Khalid.”

2. FUNERAL CAKES

I’m back on my Romania kick – we are tentatively planning our belated honeymoon Transylvania tour for hopefully sometime late summer. To prepare, I have been trying to read some books that take place in Romania. In the one I just read set during the 1970s Communist-era, there was a reference to something called COLIVA and the footnote said that it was food prepared for and associated with funerals in Romania.

In a nutshell, it’s described as a “sweet pudding made from boiled wheat” and it’s traditionally feasted upon during ST LUCY’S DAY celebrations. Now, this is appealing to me as well because as saints go, St. Lucy is one of the coolest. I was talking about this in group chat and Glenn was acting like I had made her up? He was like, “if you say so” when I said she’s the saint that holds eye balls on a platter, as if this hasn’t been something depicted in artwork for centuries?

IF YOU SAY SO?

I was really mad for like 1/3 of the day when he said that. YES, I DO SAY SO, GLENN.

Look, it’s a statue of St Lucy that was made BECAUSE I SAID SO:

Anyway, we’re now going to start celebrating St. Lucy’s Day in our household because I want to eat coliva but I want to EAT IT FOR THE RIGHT REASONS, if you know what I mean. I already added a reminder in my phone.

3. Being a beer snob

I don’t know who this new Erin is but I am very confused by her. I spent my whole teenage and adult life up until recently despising beer so much and now I am obsessed with trying all the different kinds. I look forward to the weekend because sometimes we go to the beer distributor and build our own 6 packs which is exciting and fun for me (see also: life is meaningless with Chooch in college, so on and so forth).

Sometimes I made Henry watch beer videos on YouTube.

“What if all of a sudden I became a brewer? And I was real serious and wore a lab coat? NO –  I WORE A MARCHING BAND JACKET.”

Full circle.

Anyway, I think for our ANNIVERSARY lololololololololol we are going to Cooperstown, NY to visit Ommegang Brewery which specializes in BELGIAN BEER and are also a sub from one of my fave Belgian brewers, Duval. I mean, this is assuming that I’m still into beer by the end of March. You know me and whims and how they blow freely with the breeze.

This was the beer that got me on the ol’ Google Horn. I mean, the can alone is ADORBS and I actually still have it sitting in the kitchen because I can’t bear to pitch it and I want to do art with it.

Which will inevitably require metalcutting tools which means I will be delegating the art to Henry.

4. CLIVE PEARSE

This is a blast-from-the-past obsession from a younger Erin with greener infatuations, but remember a few years ago when I posted about finding this AUTOGRAPHED HEADSHOT OF SOME BRITISH TV/RADIO PERSONALITY when we were cleaning out a closet or something?

Well, that was in 2018 and this bitchin’ piece of history has been floating from one junk drawer to the next before eventually finding a home between the pages of a notebook. BUT DRIFT NO LONGER, SWEET CLIVE PEARSE – you finally have a home:

Why am I seriously such a loser.

There is a dumb story behind nearly everything in my house but no one ever asks when they come here and boy, are they missing out.

On that note, I just yelled, “WHAT ARE YOU GETTING ME FOR VALENTINE’S DAY, YOU CUNT?” to Henry and now I shall close my laptop and try to find something productive to do. Like, search for more marching band jackets. Janna if you’re reading this and you still have your band jacket, give me it.

I opened this up and then immediately had my daily hard cry and now I can’t remember what I wanted to say. These crying jags are really getting tiresome. Between desperately trying to ease into some sort of “new normal” and shaking with rage about EVERYTHING happening in this country and broken society, I just want to disappear for a while. Even if that just means sitting in a dark closet for a few hours.

Or a tent. A kids tent. The vinyl play tent kind. I had one of those in my first apartment but god only knows what became of it. I remember baking Jeff a pumpkin pie and making him eat inside the tent even though it was way undercooked and raw (this all so euphemism-y and it was so chaste actually).

Today I realized that I missed the anniversary of the day we adopted Drew and Penelope from Sandy’s friend’s parents’ basement (lol) by a week. So then I made the fatal error of going back in my blog and reading those posts from the first few days after we brought them home and I had to shut it down real quick. I knew I would be really sad about this for a long time but I didn’t think that my grief would be almost at the same level as it was over the summer after Drew died. I feel so stuck. We did talk about this in my session on Tuesday and I think we are going to revisit EMDR with this and try different positive reinforcements or whatever, I can’t remember now because my brain feels like it’s stuffed with faux fur.

When I woke up Monday morning, I was on the heels of some very real and vivid dreams about giant cardinals that were supposed to be her, and I just lay there in the dark crying, and my mind was spinning with all of these memories of her and suffice to say, the next two nights I slept on the couch because I was feeling super averse to the bedroom after that. I did sleep in bed last night though and it was OK.

It’s just weird because when my friends are like “how are you?” I just say I’m fine because it seems like saying, “I miss my fucking cat and I can’t stop crying” makes people feel uncomfortable, I don’t know. So instead, I’m like, “please watch this Kpop video I’m obsessed with” because I don’t know how else to really function right now, not to mention the high anxiety caused by Trump not just every single day but multiple times a day, basically hourly. If I could just punch him repeatedly in the face while kicking him in his shriveled carrot dick, it would solve a lot of issues in one fell swoop. Dare to dream.

OK I’M DONE.

MOVING ON.

When I was in elementary school, I was super into collecting stickers and had a ROBUST repertoire of sticker books. I remember specifically having a big, deep purple tote bag that was stuffed to seam-splitting proportions with some of the books and I loved sitting on the floor and taking out all of the books so I was surrounded by them, the fruits of my dedicated card shop and drug store scouring, gumball machine treasures, card pack freebies. Puffy stickers, scratch n sniff, holographic – I had no favorites, I loved them all. (I did have a special book just for Scratch-n-Sniffs though!)

Anyway, my therapist was like, “Is there anything you can do to get some of that old happiness back?” when I was telling her that I have taken to reading old blog posts from the past 8 or 9 years before bed so I can try to fall asleep with happy thoughts of when things were better and we were still all together as a family and we went on road trips and had both cats and I didn’t cry every day.

I didn’t really have a viable answer to that right away, short of going back to carrying around my security stuffed animal, Purple. But now then I started thinking about those stickers apropos of nothing and maybe I should collecting something simple like that again? Something that will give me joy when I find a thing I was looking for?

Like, maybe JUST STICKERS?! Let’s not overthink this, Erin.

My sticker book story has a really tragic ending though because as I got older and wasn’t collecting them anymore, I moved my treasured accumulation to the basement and at some point MY DAD THREW THEM ALL OUT without so much as a heads up. (It was probably during one of our many I WISH YOU WERE DEAD standoffs but still, it was MY property. And by the way, he also threw out my entire collection of Rainbow Brite dolls, Sprites, Starlite and all!

Dude, I can FEEL THAT YARN HAIR IN MY FINGERS like it was yesterday!

EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM – IN THE TRASH. Can you even imagine?? All of my Babysitters Club books – gone. Sweet Secrets, too.

This…is not making me feel any better, lol.

Maybe I don’t want to start collecting stickers again.

 Maybe I’ll just stick with collecting kpop biases lol.

I got this text from Chooch the other day and it cracked me up so bad. His dining hall has an app I guess where everyone can request songs and then apparently you can thumbs up or thumbs down the requests (here you can see Chooch thumbs downed the Earth Wind & Fire song “because my friend requested it,” he said in his defense. Isn’t he so much like me??!! I would be Janna’s biggest thumbs downer if we were part of this dining hall experience).

Anyway, I was stoked to see the SVT song in question because that one IS SO GOOD. I kept sending him different performances of it and he refused to watch (not even the one from Glastonbury! Or maybe it was Lolla Berlin I can’t remember).

Then!! He texted me a picture of the laptop of the girl sitting next to him in one of his classes – she has not one but TWO pictures of T.O.P.’s Squid Game character Thanos and I was like TELL HER YOUR MOM LOVES BIGBANG.

“She doesn’t know who that is,” he said. “She only knows him from squid game” but then he said he didn’t even ask her so WHO KNOWS – this could have been my future kid-in-law but sure. Cool.

Other incidents I think I already logged here:

• Someone was writing STREAM SEVENTEEN LOVE FAME MONEY on white boards and he accused me of breaking into the dorm lol
• He had to critique someone’s essay in his English class and it was ABOUT THE GLOBALIZATION OF KPOP and he said his feedback was “you forgot to mention that bts only sings in English now” lol snap. Apparently it was moot though because she only had one source to cite and it turned out to be some high school kids paper so she had to pick a new topic.

Also speaking of “Thanos,” my old T.O.P. Valentine has been selling thanks to his renewed popularity!

That’s all for me, reporting from the tail end of the longest Monday ever.

I splurged in December and bought myself this precious coat from Unlogical Poem (one of my favorite online clothing shops if you just know) but because I’m a loser, I have only worn it out of the house once but it was just to Corey’s house for Christmas Eve and I can promise you not a soul there commented on the rustic beauty of this coat’s design.

My hair looked ok today (my face, eh, that’s another story, thanks Saturday afternoon beer fest) so when Henry and I decided to go for a walk* I said, “OK don’t panic but I want to wear my chicken coat and you can take pictures of me.” Henry was not a fan of this plan but I recently made him watch a tutorial on how to get dad’s ok at taking pictures and he followed it to a T!

* (the temperature was deceptive!!! It was so much colder than 36 degrees, I was crying at one point but then feared my tears would freeze to my contacts so I reeled it in

We went to Calvary Cem which is usually lacking foot traffic but of-fucking-course everyone and their mail carrier was out and about. Even bicyclists. So annoying.

You guys though this coat is my everything.

And I think it looks cute with my pink Vans!

“Now take one of me pretending to be cold even though I’m not pretending.” Honestly my hands were pinker than my shoes by the time we got back to the car, it was so bad. And for some reason, for as many times as we come to this particular cemetery, we always end up on the path that takes us the farthest away from the car so the walk back was brutal.

At the time I bought this, it was the only one of the site and then it was immediately marked “sold out.” I know I have seen other pieces of clothing on their site using this fabric but I think this particular coat was OOAK which makes even special-er.

(I WONDER IF G-DRAGON WOULD LIKE THIS.)

But yeah, if there are two things to note about me it’s that I love having cool coats and immature purses (some purchased from the kids section of Target, no shame in my purse game).

Checking in to say that this day was initially headed south on the back of a torpedo straight into the bowels of hell – Henry and I had walked to the library and I was struggling to get one of my books to scan out. Henry made some snide observation about how I “always have problems with that” which is actually sooooo hyperbolic because literally maybe only twice? Three times, tops?

“MMMMmmmm….???” Henry grunted in response, with an implied tone of U SURE BOUT DAT.

You guys. It was the sass for me. I big nope. I always hate white men so much and then Henry had to go and throw his hat in the shit-eating misogynist cishet ring? Ah hell no.

I felt the rage surging, nerves trembling to the beat of some gross 2000s NICKELBACK jock jam that was now, in my mind, relaxing the words coming out of Henry’s mustachioed maw.

I slammed the books down, grabbed my receipt and said I AM DONE. YOU CAN DEAL WITH THIS and left Henry behind to bag up my books as I stormed out of the library.

I walked home a healthy distance in front of him. Then I had to wait on the porch because I didn’t have a key :(

When Man let me in the house, I proceeded to storm past him to the kitchen so I could make my lunch and while in the throes of CHEF HELL, every single thing was setting me off and I was slamming pans and then I couldn’t get my container of vegan cheese to fit in the drawer I always keep it in in the fridge so I THREW IT ON THE FLOOR AND LEFT IT THERE while screaming about how I hate men and how Henry should be happy because as usual HIS KIND are in charge so ITS HIS WORLD and then I saw if I had a knife I would have stabbed him in the library.

All the while he was folding laundry at the dining room table. I finished COOKING MY LUNCH (literally I just heat up a pita in a pan and put vegan cheese and Tofurky deli slices on it so when I say COOKING that is pretty much the extent of that. If you want to picture me braising things, flipping patties of indiscernible origins over a high flame, and having flour on my cheeks, that’s fine too though.

While I was eating my pita, Henry quietly walked into the kitchen and put away the container of vegan cheese I had left to die on the floor hahaha.

Anyway, I’m ok now. Henry apologized. I am still a woman on the edge though. Literally I cry everyday whether the origin of the tears are RAGE or SORROW or sometimes a COMBO MEAL of both with a side of accelerated heart rate.

We I needed to get the fuck out of the house – January is so suffocating. I can’t breathe. Cold. Gray. Wet. Ugh.

So we picked up some buns at Pink Box and then did a quick walking tour at the cemetery before the gates closed.

“TAKE PICTURES OF ME,” I demanded. “I HAVE NO BLOG CONTENT.” Seriously, what am I supposed to be recapping? Every day is the same. Work was annoying and stressful. I got mad about something. Made a shitty lunch. Drank too much coffee. Exercised. Ate soup. Watched k-content. Bed.

Snooze alert.

No commentary or captions other than: it’s us at the cemetery. The end.

Henry bought me a Taemin lightstick for the concert next month. It arrived on Monday and I had to DROP EVERYTHING to search for batteries and then take photos.

I am so ready but also OMG I AM NOT READY!This is Lee Taemin we’re talking about here. Lee Taemin.

DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG I HAVE WAITED FOR THIS.

Every time I have a kpop concert the pipeline I think about making freebies and I never do it because I’m lazy but this time I really going to try to get something done because it’s such a special event and my fellow Taemints / Taemates (I like Taemints better but I guess since he left SM he had to change his fan name) we’re psychologically damaged trying to get tickets for this so I want to contribute to the mutual Taemin love that I know is going to be flowing in full force.

I can’t remember if I mentioned it here but it’s at the Chicago Theater and that place looks so majestic. I asked my work friend Vicki if it’s haunted and she said she wasn’t sure but it has to be. So I’m excited for Taemin, this theater, and getting to stay in actual Chicago proper and not out by the airport like we usually do because the concerts are usually always in the arena out that way. And it is such a sad and boring area but don’t worry, we will be there 3 weeks later for the NCT127 concert lol fucking Chicago man. But still, better than Newark obviously!! Just so tired of that drive.

But still – CHICAGO. Love that damn city. With the exception of the time we went to see ATEEZ in August (and this was nothing to do with ATEEZ and everything to do with me being sincerely suicidal no sugarcoating), I have made so many beautiful memories there. I hope Taemin loves it too. <3

Weekends in January, man. Cold, dreary, gray, boring. But still somehow zip by just as fast as any other weekend, god-fucking-dammit. This past weekend for us was calm and quiet. Henry wanted to make more kimchi (I have been having withdrawals) so we went to our fave Asian market in the Strip (WFH, in case you care) and I was constantly in everyone’s way as usual. It’s like I’m planted in grocery stores as an obstacle for shoppers who actually know what they’re doing.

I mostly just look at the fruit, the drinks, and the snacks of course. They didn’t have my favorite Kit Kats this time (they’re like, wheat biscuits?? I don’t know, I don’t read Japanese, only Korean) but I did snag the milk tea ones again and a new-to-me French Mont Blanc variety which is right up there with the wheat biscuit one now. So delightful. I am not on a mission to have real Mont Blanc after googling it because I am not up on my French desserts but anything chestnut is a greenlight on my dessert highway.

That….actually stopped making sense to me as I was typing it.

Wait also here is some great history on how this French dessert became popular in Japan! 

Because I always have to circle back to Korea, this reminds me of how tiramisu is curiously popular over there. Like, nearly every cafe has some rendition of it and there are even bakeries devoted entirely to tiramisu. As someone who grew up eating homemade and rum-drenched tiramisu made by our family friend from Italy, I can appreciate this!

The only other thing that comes to mind about Saturday is that I, after 40+ years of eating my popcorn this way, suddenly wondered if liberally spraying it with Pam butter spray was a detriment to my health and decided to Google it. According to REDDIT EXPERTS, I should be ok. This is good news because I sincerely don’t think I can break that habit now. My aunt Sharon put me on this path when I was super little and she would make legit popcorn on THE STOVE and then spritz it with Pam.

Then Sunday afternoon, I was like “enough is enough, I gotta spend time outside breathing in the air” so Henry and I went to the cemetery where Barb is buried. Of course because of all the snow, we were unable to see the exact burial site but we did spend some time walking around and I hope she could sense that. I am still not fully finished processing her death – between her and Bambi, within 6 mths, it has been so confusing and traumatizing. I didn’t mention this in the Chingumas post but when I was in the kitchen chatting with Glenn and Sean, Sean goes, “Is Barb Riley coming?”

Glenn and I exchanged nervous glances and I whispered, “Barb passed away last year.”

Sean was like, “NO. Are you being for real? And no one told me??” I felt awful. Just awful.

When I say that these people I work with / have worked with are like family, I mean it. Losing such a prominent mom-figure has been rough on a lot of us, even though she had left the firm so long ago.

I’m big allergic to snow, but look at me. I survived.

Then we went to Crazy Horse Coffee where I had a flat white and we split banana bread. It was nice.  But then I got bored so we came home.

I’m watching Lovely Runner and thought it was funny that one of the characters was wearing a Cincinnati t-shirt because 1. random 2. I was just talking about Cincinnati on the way home from the cafe and also fun fact, I still have to sing the “C-I-N-C-I-N-A-T-T-I” song from the Babes in Toyland remake in my head to be able to spell it.

(Henry just walked out of the room humming the Going Seventeen theme song, pop off Kpop Dad.)

In other extraordinary weekend news, I forgot that the band Cold started following me several years ago when I posted on instagram that I still have a Starburst that their singer gave me in 2000 and then this happened:

I was so excited and sent it to chooch and he thought for a second it was Coldplay and was like “but why.”

I truly don’t think there was anything else of note to write about here. I made some new Kpop cards for Etsy and Henry did a trial run of pendants that were trying to make in an effort to expand our inventory.

Being at an age where time feels so precious I hate saying that I can’t wait for winter to be over but I truly hate it so much. I miss the simple things like being able to comfortably go for walks in the morning, you know? The simple things.

Anyway. That was my weekend. Boring but cozy I guess.

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Dear Friday Blog Readers,

Hello, are you out there?

I mentioned in my Chingumas post that Henry made me a doorbell finally after years of me saying that I wanted a very specific Kraftwerk song as a doorbell and he just finally decided that he would work on that this past November and because nothing ever is easy around here, it turned into a much bigger project than he had hoped for it to be, requiring him to go into the basement and run wires through the wall, etc.

That was fun for him, probably. I mean, what else would he be doing? Sitting in his underroos, eating cereal and watching NCIS? LOL yeah right, he’d be doing one of the other 259 projects on the list, probably.

I had a fleeting thought about blueberries and my eyes started burning with tears so I guess blueberries are still on the No No List because I relate them to Bambi. Is it abnormal that I am still crying every day over her death?

Another thing I’m upset about is the LA wildfires – I can’t think about it without crying and losing my mind. Of course I feel terribly for the people, and the animal lover in me is broken just thinking about the pets and wildlife. I can’t handle it. Sometimes I wish I lacked empathy for real haha. Ugh.

Penelope is very much in her Enhypen era. If I put their videos on she will stop and stare at the TV. So now I started getting more heavily into stanning them and she accused me of copying her.

I miss him. :(

I think I’m in an OK place right now, mentally. I feel more stable and calmer than I have in honestly more than a year. Part of me wonders if I’m just numb, but I don’t think so because I still feel about 60% sad on a daily basis – so I’m definitely still feeling things. But it’s just a general “sad about the world” feeling that can’t really be helped. I saw someone post on Instagram that they have guilt – similar to survivor’s guilt I guess – because they’re still waking up every day and going to work while tragedy is happening all over the world. How do you move past that?? Because this is where I am now. Not knowing what to say or how to help.

On that note, these are pretty much the only things that were on my mind today so now I’m going to go and desensitize myself with Kpop content & start gathering pictures for my Taemin freebies that I’m making for his concert next month. Because if anything is going to make me feel at peace, it’s looking at Taemin’s face. <3

Henry got me this Seoul skyline ring for Christmas and it is so special. <3

In other news, I made Henry do a Paul Eugene seniors aerobic walk to the oldies workout tonight because god love Paul Eugene. We were doing low kicks when Penelope walked into the room. Henry jokingly pretended to (gently) kick.

Right then, Paul Eugene said, “Don’t kick the kitty!”

I really needed that moment of levity so much today!

Anyway, this has been a general Tuesday in the life of Erin.