Fingers crossed that this trip actually happens unlike our last international coaster trip which was booked for…the beginning of April 2020. I’m superstitious in general so I have been having mild little fits of panic over this. But at the same time, I want to open my front door and holler ONE MORE WEEK AND YOU CAN EAT MY DUST PITTSBURGH!

Just kidding. I would be nicer, maybe.

Anyway, after this coaster tour, the three of us are hanging back in Stockholm, and then taking an overnight ferry to Turku, Finland where we will begin the last portion of the trip exploring Helsinki, some of its surrounding islands, possibly Tampere (game time decision) plus a daytrip to Tallinn, Estonia.

I’m excited to dust off my vacation journal and then crack open the spare one I bought in case I run out of room in the first! I’m excited to rack up new inside jokes with Chooch at Henry’s expense! I’m excited to HOPEFULLY make new friends within Coaster Crew! I’m excited for new #carouselfies, being in new-to-me countries, eating so many cinnamon rolls, and buying Pippi merch in Sweden! Obviously excited for all the coasters too!

Not excited about leaving the cats. :( Or the airports. Or the payments I will be making for the next too many years on the loan I took out to pay for this. But, MEMRIES. I want Chooch to have all of the experiences while he is still living with us!

Ahhhhh. I’m hyper. I can’t wait to send postcards! I’m going to be really annoying (moreso) for a while but please know that I will also be very hyper aware of that.

Hello. This is a quick check in for me to, you know, quickly chronicle the haps of last weekend in case I need to look back on certain details at some point in the future. (We’ve been over this before but examples would be: 1. To prove an alibi: 2. To win an argument. 3. The world as we know it has collapsed and Im in need of a random happy memory to remind me that things were once only half-ablaze.)

(Um. Author’s Note but when I wrote “ablaze” my mind flashed back to the year of the double aughts, the first year of our Lord Y2K, when I had met some guy named JOHNNY BLAZE on WebTV – haha – and he became obsessed with me but in a cute way and not in the boiling-bunny sense, and sometimes I would come home and he would have notes taped to my front door like ERIN PLEASE CALL ME I AM BEGGING and I would be like “Aw cute” and then crumble it up and throw it in the trash, and then it happened once after I started dating Henry and he for some reason did NOT think this was cute.)

I actually have no idea what we did last Saturday aside from Chooch having sailing and then we went and got boba at Kung Fu at some point that afternoon. I vaguely recall attempting to drink beer that night and then realizing my newly-developed beer palate was a fluke and I just had a glass of cider instead. We were also researching some of the islands around Helsinki and in one of the videos, these people were walking on a trail and there was A SNAKE which ended up being some harmless BUT!!! I accidentally saw a comment where someone from Finland said that they have VIPERS there and now I am obsessed with this in the worst way possible. So now that is all I’ll be doing while I’m there, trying not to step on vipers. Walking on tiptoes around the vipers. Catch me wearing those plastic Romper Room cups on my feet all over Finland.

But on Sunday! Henry and I went for a walk on a bike trail thing out by…somewhere. Round Hill. Whatever area that is. The trail itself is boring and I had regertz as soon as we started walking because we have been there before but I forgot how dumb it is. And then you have bikers screaming ON YOUR LEFT and jingling their prissy bells. I mean, it was still nice to get out and go for a walk, and we talked about our vacation and what to do about this wedding that we are now expected to have.

Sunday was #NationalIceCreamDay which seems to happen a lot, so of course I wanted to get ice cream after our walk. Henry was like, “Where do you want to get ice cream from?” and right as I gave him my canned response* to everything, I immediately regretted it.

*(“I’m up your butt.”)

Henry groaned.

“OK, no. That doesn’t work this time,” I said, quickly retracting it.

Then we drove around and eventually stopped at COUNTRY CUSTARD COTTAGE & GIFT SHOP. We both got CLUSTERS which I guess is just their version of a Blizzard and they were good (Nutty Buddy and Banana Cream Pie) but just like the walking trail, I had regertz and wish I had just ordered a custard without all the mixins, etc.

Some old man got there right before us and said, “YEAH, I’LL HAVE  MY REGULAR” and the girls behind the counter were like, “Sir, yes, sir.” His “regular” was a sundae of some sort and now I am aiming for the day when I am an elder and have a “regular” order at the local ice cream shop.

On the way home, Henry was like, “LET’S STOP AT ROUND HILL AND LOOK AT THE AMINALS” and yes, that is spelled correctly. I was like, “Oh ho! Henry is actually suggested that we do something of his own accord, can’t wait to write about THIS in the diary” so we did that and it was pretty anti-climactic because bitch, where are all the aminals these days, Round Hill?? I mean, they still have some but I thought there used to be like, rabbits and sheep and cows, but OK.

Apparently, we forgot to give Warden Chooch our full itinerary, because when we got to Round Hill, he began sending disgruntled WHERE ARE YOU, YOU HAVE BEEN GONE FOR LIKE 5 HOURS AND SAID YOU WERE JUST GOING FOR A WALK texts.

I’d like to believe that he was just concerned, but I know him and can assure you that he wanted fed or something.

Well, I think that pretty much sums up last weekend. We’ll have to do this again sometime. Bitch.

P.S. Because I was wearing my old Hands Like Houses shirt, we put them on in the car for old times’ sake and wow, I still really like them. Any time they were at Warped Tour, you could catch me front row. (Well, front row, and off to the side. In my safety zone.)

Chooch will vehemently disagree with me on this because why would we ever share an opinion, but I have found that the courts at Settlers Cabin are my favorite and have officially declared them my “home court.” Never mind the fact that there are courts within one mile of my house in either direction. The 20-minute drive is worth it to me because there are four courts, plus a double-sided wall for solo-hitting, and it’s secluded in a wooded area of the park. Plus, the bathrooms are CLEAN AND SPACIOUS and even include a little locker room-ish area with seats. And, because I am just getting back into the game, I have been pretty self-conscious and don’t want to be playing on a court next to a playground or a busy road next to a traffic light. I AM NOT READY TO BE SEEN, OK?

Several times, we have encountered the same people there so that was cool, like we’re regulars now, you know? I always wanted to be a “regular” somewhere.

Last week, I want to say it was Wednesday evening, we arrived at the same time as a couple, presumably in their mid-30s. We were still in the parking lot getting our stuff out of the car when I already knew that the FEMALE portion of the couple was going to be a problem. It hadn’t even been 30 seconds and she was already getting on my nerves, bigly. And then we saw that they had PICKLEBALL equipment, so that ramped up the annoyance level.

They walked behind us to the courts and I fucking swear to god, this woman’s loud-ass voice, I couldn’t even. Right out of the gate, it was a work drama bitch-fest, mostly just on her end, with the guy murmuring “Yeah” and “Wow” here and there.  It was like she was setting up camp inside my skull, opening up the crinkliest package of graham crackers for her bitch-s’mores, lighting up the fire inside of me to do the roasting.

Immediately, they chose the court behind us and I said loudly to Chooch, “Move down to the next court, I can’t deal with this.” Initially, Chooch said I was being dramatic, but they (she) began to wear on him pretty soon after this. Especially when it became apparent that these two WERE HAVING AN OFFICE AFFAIR!! OMG, I kept seeing them meet at the net to embrace and make out.  It was all so much, that paired with her “I need everyone to be aware of me and the important things I’m mouth-farting into the already CORRUPT air” boombox voice had me so agitated. I DON’T CARE ABOUT STACEY’S PTO or whatever else she was bitching about! Who cares why Stacey is taking time off?! Maybe Stacey is getting skin tags removed!!! IT IS HER PTO TO USE, JUST PLAY YOUR FUCKING PICKLEBALL AND STFU, MELISSA, JESUS CHRIST.

*(I know her name is Melissa because she verbally flagellated herself by name when she hit her stupid NOT-TENNIS BALL into the net. “Oh, come on, Melissa!” *giggles and skips to the net for kissy time*)

“Ugh, she’s so fucking annoying!” I yelled.

“She can hear you! She is only RIGHT OVER THERE!” Henry hissed, and you know what, Henry? Like Stacey and her PTO, I gave no fucks. Let the bitch hear me. My son and I were busy training for the DELULU WIMBELDON HOSTED EXCLUSIVELY INSIDE OUR MINDS, so COULD THE CROWD QUIET DOWN PLEASE.

(Great, now I have “Quiet Down” in my head.)

Meanwhile, some middle-aged doucher rolled up with his broad-trophy. And by “rolled up” I mean that the parking lot was not close enough for this asshole, so he drove past the lot and INTO THE FUCKING GRASS in front of the courts. Here, let me show you an illustration:

Makes sense though, seeing as though it looked like he was traveling to an international PICKLEBALL TOURNY, what with the amount of baggage he brought with him. Yes, of course he and his picklebabe were there for there for some sweet ass wiffle ball thwopping action. Specifically, he was there to INSTRUCT her by double-paddling balls against the wall. (I don’t know why I made the wall red in my DIAGRAM when my BeReal up there clearly shows that it’s green?)

These two were dressed in crisp, freshly-pressed yuppie athletic wear. She was wearing a prissy little visor and khaki shorts and he was dressed like he was going to take the yacht out for a spin after. Even though he was RIGHT THERE on the other side of the fence from me, I kept imagining that it was actually Ben Stiller reprising his role in a Dodgeball reboot, but make it Pickleball. And she, bless her heart, went through the whole rigamarole of stretching, squatting, side-bending, just for him to mansplain the “sport” to her and then tell her “NO, DO IT LIKE THIS. OK, MOVE DOWN THERE NOW” after she was cramping his wallspace.

She eventually gave up and sat at the picnic table, doom-scrolling on her phone.

Then, and this normally would have PISSED ME OFF, they lugged out a huge Bluetooth stereo. It almost looked like a karaoke machine, like this was no little portable speaker. It was a whole-ass UNIT. So, they fire this bad boy up and suddenly, Chooch and I are hitting balls to the soundtrack of KISS FM.

Now, the reason this didn’t anger me was because it served as a distraction against MELISSA’S incessant jawing. If they had put on a country station, or like, some jam band, then perhaps there’d have been an issue. Then they changed it to Khalid, and turns out, I like Khalid. (I had to ask Chooch at one point, “Who sings this” and he said, “Khalid?! EVERY SONG HAS BEEN KHALID.” Sorry for being a stupid old lady who only knows Korean hits, son.)

Henry still maintains that he thought this was incredibly rude and uncouth of them and he’s probably right because they were playing it pretty loudly and you know, how presumptuous to assume that everyone there wanted to listen to your music.

Chooch said at one point, they were slow-dancing. Sad I missed it.

Meanwhile, MELISSA and whoever were packing it up and I was so relieved. “They must have MOTEL RESERVATIONS,” I said loudly, and Henry was like, “OK, stop.” Chooch laughed though and that is all that matters.

Then their court was quickly replaced by a grizzled coach and his teenaged protege (j/k, she was not very good) named JULIE. The coach was giving big Richard Dawson vibes, IYKYK. Like, to the point where after Captain and Tenille packed up their DJ equipment and peeled their car out of the grass, I was nervous to leave the girl alone with him. Luckily, we saw that her mom was sitting in a parked car, waiting for her, so that made me feel better.

“He looks like he just the bar and came straight here,” Henry chuckled as we walked past their court on our way out. Leave it to Henry to chuckle at what could have been A GROOMING IN PROGRESS.

They were there again last night, and I told Chooch he should ask the dude if he could join the lesson.

“Nah, I’m good,” Chooch said. And then there were two college-aged-ish guys on the court behind us and one of them kept roaring FUCCCCCCKKKKKKKK!!!!! every time he missed a shot, which was a lot. They actually had arrived at the same time we did but Chooch goes, “No, they’re leaving. You can tell because that one guy is so sweaty.” Nope, just arriving! The sweaty guy was also the FUCCCCCCKKKKKKKK!!!!! guy.

Bonus court content: Two weekends ago, a grandma brought her two young grandsons to hit against the wall while she sat at the picnic table with her dog. At one point, the youngest one had to go to the bathroom so she let him go off alone. After a few minutes, she started to get alarmed and asked the older one, “Does Ollie always take this long?”

“Is he pooping?” the kid asked.

The grandma said, “I’m not sure, I think so?”

“Oh, well if he’s POOPING, then yes.” I don’t know why, but this just cracked me up so bad. Ollie and the Slow Bowel Movements.

Jesus Christ, I’m having a lot of fun immersing myself back into the tennis world.

Buddy’s got one hand on him’s walnoot

And the other one is givin a peace sign

Sorry. I cracked myself up for a good while earlier when Buddy came to visit and these revamped lyrics trumpeted out of my mouth. Henry was like “ok.”

I wanted to tell my Internet friends (read: YOU) about the three dumb things that happened at the tennis courts the other night but it was around 90 degrees today and I wasn’t inspired to do anything other but sit here and read with sweat in my eyes. We did take a boba break in the afternoon so that was nice.

Also, here was Chooch’s sailing OOTD. I wasn’t awake yet when he left this morning so I didn’t know that he took my Versace sunglasses that I bought in Italy in the 90s??!

In other news, it seems that I am not actually on the beer bus after all. I have struck out with every beer I sipped tonight and then said, “you know what? I’m just going to have kombucha. I need something refreshing and beer ain’t it, son.”

So far, the only beer that I liked so much I can’t stop thinking about it was Hitchhiker’s Jelly Donut. Henry went to the nearby bottleshop earlier and they don’t have it anymore. I guess I should just stick with wine and cider.

Or, you know, water.

Hello from the road to Georgia! It’s around 7pm and we’re in West Virginia somewhere I think. I’m not liveblogging but I had meant to do a Friday Five today and then I was too busy/distracted so instead I want to tell you something exciting, Blog-friend! Well, exciting to me.

So after Chooch had sailing on Saturday, Henry and I decided to go to Dick’s to get him a tennis bag because he had been toting his racket around in a drawstring (he brought it to sailing because he was going to be playing afterward – Bucky St. Johns back there, lol).

While we were there, I was wistfully running my fingertips over the strings of several Prince rackets. “Maybe we should get him a second racket. You know, it’s good to have a spare,” I said.

Henry saw right through this and was like, “if you want to get yourself a racket, get one” to which I would gasp, “oh no I couldn’t I just really couldn’t” like a 1940s starlet.

But of course I ended up walking out with my first racket since probably 1996. And as soon as Chooch came home later that, I started hounding him. “When are we gonna play? Do you want to go somewhere and hit?? WHEN WILL WE BE PLAYING TENNIS?!”

You guys, we ended up going that evening to Settlers Cabin and it was awesome because no one was there so I didn’t feel so self-conscious. I mean, as expected, I was awful but Henry gave me a great backhanded (TENNIS PUN) compliment by agreeing but saying that “you can tell that you used to play though.”

Wow.

And then we played on Sunday too! The most fun part is that we make Henry be our ball boy and you know we berate him to death. You know it.

And then we played again on Monday and Tuesday even though the weather was stormy. Monday night we were hitting against the tennis wall and I will tell you what, I started to feel like some of it was coming back to me! I wasn’t overthinking the grips anymore and I was just whaling the balls back against the wall to the point where I got a blister on my thumb and a bruise on my shoulder from where the racket was hitting (old habits coming back hard!).

Haven’t had a chance to play since Tuesday but whoa baby am I happy that I picked up a racket again! I will probably never be “good” at this juncture of my life but it’s great exercise and fun that Chooch is into it too, and plus Henry is like our little bitchy fan boy so that’s fun too.

Look at how tennis-y he looks!!

They make me so happy. 💚 🌱

Jesus Christ, that’s a wrap on junior year! I had been driving Chooch and his pal Zakk to school every day since Chooch busted his knee in February and then once he healed, I was somehow LOCKED IN to this stupid mom-Uber role. I am really looking forward to shutting off my 6AM alarm for the summer, boy-o!

Anyway, check out this kid, man! It’s so crazy to look at the comparisons from first day to last.

He thought he was going to get away with NO PHOTO because there were actual sheets of rain falling from the sky this morning, but come on, sir. Pics or it didn’t happen etc etc blah blah blah.

This was a whirlwind year. He did his Mexican homestay thang, maintained his 4.0, worked at Dunkin’, busted his knee, joined a secret sailing club, hated/loved reading 1984 in English, became obsessed with debating, chose The Cure for a “greatest band of all time” video argument he had to make (after first choosing Imagjne Dragons for literally no reason), acted like he hated his English class yet somehow this was the ONLY class he obsessively talked about all year, and continued to grow taller than us.

I’m proud of this big lug! Sure he can be frustrating AF with his monotone retorts of “mm cool” and “but did I ask,” but he is a good kid and I’m excited for him to probably not wake up early enough at all this summer in order to have Summer Breakfast Club like the old days. WE WILL SEE.

Anyway, time to start panicking about senior year!