We spent the morning of our first full day in Williamsburg signing away our life at Kings Creek Plantation. Immediately after, we drove out to downtown Williamsburg and got sandwiches at the Cheese Shop because Jeannie told me to and even though I act all tough, in reality I do what people tell me.

Haha, just kidding. But I went along with it this time because Jeannie said the magic word: cheese.

After that, we ventured down the road into the Colonial portion of the town. All the exhibits have an admittance fee, and the resort offered us free passes to watch people churn butter and hammer iron things, god only knows what goes on in those houses, but we traded them in for BUSCH GARDEN TICKETS because please, don’t try to teach us stuff. They* don’t charge you to walk down the street at least, and to spend money in the many novelty shops, so there’s that.

*(I don’t know who “they” are. The ghosts of Williamsburg, I’m guessing.)

“What are those?!” Chooch cried as we walked down A Colonial Street, pointing to a tree pregnant with what looked like dangling alien weeners.

Henry squinted up at the tree.

“Oh, that’s a Toby tree,” he answered in his Know-It-All tone. “We used to smoke those when we were kids.”

OH HELL NO, HOLD UP.

WAIT A MINUTE.

PULL UP A CHAIR TO THE FIREPLACE, PAPA H IS ABOUT TO SPIN A YARN.

And then in true Henry form, he conveniently had nothing else to say. Just straight up sauntered away from the can of worms he left writhing in the Williamsburg heat.

“DID YOU LIKE, GET HIGH FROM IT?!” I screamed, imagining Henry lounging against a tree trunk, puffing on a “Toby,” glazed eyes seeking out fighter jets in the sky.

“What? No!” Henry answered, verbally swatting the fly.

“THEN WHY DID YOU DO IT?!” Chooch demanded.

“I don’t know. It’s just what we did back then!” He was getting defensive at this point.

I kept pressing for more information until he snapped. “There’s nothing else to say! It’s not like I did it constantly!”

The idea of Henry cutting class to smoke a fucking tree had me doing the pee-squat in the middle of some Williamsburg square while Old Folks in seersuckers and capris strolled past at a geriatric pace, taking pictures with their 35mm cameras.

I can honestly attest that I have never seen any of these trees in Pittsburgh. Presumably because Henry smoked them all.

Way to throw away your future, Henry.

“Look, I’m daddy, smoking a tree!” Chooch battle-cried, his exuberance echoing along the square, awakening our forefathers who probably thought it was time to fight another civil war.

Look at what you taught your son, asshole.

Henry’s mom has been staying at our house all week and Chooch just now tried to rat on his dad as I’m writing this.

“Did you know your son used to smoke trees?” Chooch sneered.

Henry’s mom was unfazed. “Oh, yeah. Toby trees. I used to smoke them, too.”

WHAAAAAT IS HAPPENING!?

Now she’s going on and on about it but I can’t hear her because I’m cracking up so bad.

I JUST GOOGLED IT AND IT’S A THING! Henry didn’t make it up after all!

And then we kept walking, in search of some ginger cake thing that the saleslady at the resort urged us to find. She really had the idea of these cakes super hyped up, probably as a distraction to keep reality from setting in as we signed contract after contact, and I didn’t care how much of my face had melted off in the Virginian heat: I was gonna eat a fucking colonial ginger cake.

We finally found a bakery!

The bakery has a well thing!

 

WALKING TO THE BAKERY.

And of course the ginger cake turned out to be mediocre and I was really sad.

Then I bought post cards, like this one that had Barb’s name written alllll over it. I can totally picture her loafing with this jackass and his 18th century printing press. God, I can only imagine the pamphlets they’d print together, full of anti-Bill Paxton propaganda and slang from 2005.

Then we came back to Kings Creek where Chooch and I had a huge, public argument on a tennis court because I am incapable of teaching people things, but then we managed to go to the pool without causing a spectacle, surprisingly. Meanwhile, my workfriend Colleen commented on something on Facebook, telling me that her parents live in Williamsburg and have read my blog before, so we should go visit them. I pictured her parents opening the door to find my motley crew on their front steps: Chooch and his multi-colored hair, Henry in his nondescript attire with steam billowing out of his ears and a Toby between his lips (HA), and me on the fringe of lunacy. What a fucking sight.

Later that night, we went on a GHOST TOUR which I will write about at a later date. Like tomorrow. Maybe.

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Funny backstory guys! 

Just kidding. This isn’t a funny story at all. But it’s going to start out waaaay worse than it ended up being so don’t you go and get all panicky!

A week before vacation, Henry and I came  home from work to find his mom, Judy, in what appeared to be some type of shock on the couch. She didn’t seem very cognizant or coherent, and she was shaking really bad.

We thought she was having a stroke. It was probably the scariest thing I’ve ever witnessed personally. Thank god Henry was there to take action because I was one step away from joining his mom on the couch. I’m so terrible in emergencies!

Chooch was down the street at his friend’s house so while I ran down to get him, Henry called 911 and then fetched Hot Naybor Chris’s wife, Ruth, who is a nurse. She sat with Judy and pretty quickly deduced that it likely was not a stroke. 

The first responders and paramedics said the same thing, but wanted to transport her to one of the city’s hospitals that has a stroke unit, to be safe.

Turns out she had several infections and a fever that was over 104, which was what had sent her into that scary, seemingly catatonic state. Long story short, she had to stay in the hospital for a week but she is home now and well on her way to recovery. 

Scariest thing I’ve ever witnessed though, and I appreciate the one first responder who tried to quell my sobbing by looking around the house and asking, “So, who likes The Cure?” Meanwhile, the othe one was slowly looking all around my house, at the pictures of bloody Easter bunnies and cemeteries on my walls, clowns scattered about, Ouija board container of mints on the skull-covered coffee table, and then at me, and then back at All The Stuff. I was slowly trying to roll up the Devil rug with my foot. I mean, my house isn’t an in-your-face exploration into the design aethestics of a serial killer, but there’s a lot to look at. And then the more you look…the more you might start to wonder….But I don’t think about it that often because this is my normal and usually the people who come into my house are people who know me so they’re not fazed. It’s always interesting to see it through a stranger’s eyes. 

I was telling Glenn and Amber2 about this the next day and for the first time since it all went down, I laughed. “It probably looked like a spell gone wrong!” And oh how we all chuckled in unison, a real Oh Honestly, Erin moment.   

To me, the creepiest thing in my house is that pink-haired boy in the background.   

Anyway, most of the Henry Bombs from that week were shot in the hospital, so now you’ll know why. (Oh, and obviously I wasn’t running around the hospital taking pictures on that first night; these were all when we were visiting, after we knew she was good and on the mend. Good lord, that was scary.)

  

The “Headless Henry Carries A Purse While I Stuff Melons Down My Shirt” shot. Seriously, my boob looks so big and droopy in this picture. 
  

The “Henry Enjoys the View From The Mercy Hospital Elevator, Considers Jumping” shot. 

  

The “Another Day, Another Elevator Ride, Another Same-Colored Shirt” shot. 
  

The “Stalking the Hospital Men’s Room, Waiting For Henry to Emerge, Getting Weird Looks In the Hallway” shot. 

  

The “Just Came Home From Buying Food For The Dependents, Found A Different Shirt To Wear, Is It Plain Enough?” shot. 
  

The “Hot Naybor Chris Is Working On His Car So Henry Suddenly Needs To Mow the Lawn” shot. 

 

The “Balancing a TV On Your Head Takes Panache And a Stately Moustache (And a Blank T-Shirt)” shot. 

 

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What kind of a person starts to tell a story of two men, searching to reclaim a long-lost friendship over a workday lunch, and then stops in the middle of it to go on vacation?

An Erin Rachelle Kelly, apparently.

I’m sorry to leave you in the lurch, readers.

(Sometimes when I write on here, I pretend like I’m the Pope standing on a Vatican balcony and the four of you readers have multiplied like Gizmo getting baptized and now there are thousands of you listening to my bullshit stories with salivating stroke-mouths.) But the fact is, NOTHING HAPPENED. I left the invitation on Terry’s desk on my last day at work before vacation, and then waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Glenn came back from lunch that day and said, “So, are you dying of anticipation?”

“WHAT? WHY?!” I cried, swiveling around in my chair to look at him with my wild, manic, IN-THE-MIDDLE-OF-A-SCHEME eyes.

Glenn, looking mildly off-put by my intense reaction, said, “For your vacation…?”

“Oh. That. Yes, I’m dying of anticipation,” I sighed, sad that Glenn wasn’t referring to Terry confronting him about LUNCH.

And then more of the nothing happened. The whole day was just a giant, wasteful, disappointing heap of Nothing wrapped in a bullshit Steelers Snuggie.  WHY DID I EVEN BOTHER?! Terry walked past once, en route to the bathroom, and NOTHING. Not even a sly smirk or confused shrug.

Later in the afternoon, I walked past Terry’s office and casually glanced through the doorway, and you might need to know that This Girl’s definition of “casual” is:

adj. Saucer-eyed, hair-tugging lunacy-state.

Back at my desk, I blurted out, “I JUST SAW TERRY.”

Glenn answered, “Ok. And?”

“HE WAS ON THE PHONE.”

“Ok.”

I had to pause and wipe away the tears with the back of my hand and re-learn how to breathe without sucking back in my giggles.

“MAYBE HE WAS MAKING…..A LUNCH RESERVATION!” And then the psych ward laughter tumbled out of my mouth and fell into my hands and I had to blanket my head again.

Glenn’s response to this was some variation of “WTF.”

And then he got up to leave for the day.

“Have a good vacation,” he mumbled.

“HAVE A GOOD LUNCH WITH TERRY!” I blurted out in my signature bray, which oftentimes leaves people wondering if I’m having a true medical seizure and should we call 911 or nah?

Then I went on vacation. I checked in with Amber² and Allison last Thursday, but they said that no lunch plans or awkward conversations or friendship bracelet swaps had gone down in my absence.

But then on Friday, Amber said that she finally broke down and asked Glenn if Terry had said anything to him about the invitation. Glenn was clueless so Amber showed him the picture of the invitation on my blog and of course he was like WTF. So then a dialogue was finally opened and Terry brought the invitation over to show Glenn. Amber texted me this picture and it made me squeal in the middle of Savannah:

I wasn’t sure if Terry would appreciate having his mug posted on the Internet;  maybe he’s wanted in one of those Dakota parts for scalping Michael Buble tickets. We don’t talk very often so I’m not sure that I could rely on my go-to Bambi-like eye blinks while adorably cupping my chin with my hands. This usually gets me out of all the pickles and jams, but for all I know, Terry hates adorable things.

I sure do love pickles and jams.

Today was my first day back to work after vacation and we all got to laugh heartily about the Lunch Invitation.

I like to look at it as a real team building exercise and it’s shocking that I still haven’t been promoted to Law Firm Camp Counselor.

“Didn’t you wonder why I was acting so crazy last Friday?” I asked.

“Not really,” Glenn shrugged. “I thought you were just being simple.”

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I’m the type of broad who gets super sensitive and sad on her birthday. It’s all that emo I listen to, I know, I know. But my 36th birthday was a very pleasant one, aside from a fight that Chooch and I had that night over dinner because we are literally the same person and turn into psychopaths when we’re hungry and the restaurant I picked (Tortuga’s in Thunderbolt, if you’re curious) ended up not having the same menu I saw on Yelp and the waitress was annoyed when I whimpered, “But I’m a vegetarian” and then I started CRYING AT THE TABLE and Chooch was all OH NICE ONE, MOMMY and then Henry was like, “Um, why don’t you go wait in the car and I’ll get this food to go?” 

This all went down in about 30 minutes and then everything was fine. Henry defused yet another bomb. The waitress got the cook to make me a fried green tomato panini and Henry drove to some parking lot and then Chooch and I walked on the beach for a little bit after we ate and it was nice. (Henry hung back in the parking lot shadows like the Salem Strangler.) And some teenaged girl enthusiastically told me that she thought my outfit was cute, like I wasn’t some 36-year-old out-of-touch hag! In my head I was like CAN I HUG U but in real life, I mumbled, “Thx.”

  
Before things went awry. 

Other than the Dinner Disaster, every thing else was wonderful. On the eve of my birthday, we checked into our hotel in Savannah and I was greeted by this:

  

The sweetest birthday basket from my sweet friend Octavia, which also included a small toy fox, because Emarosa. <3 Such a thoughtful touch! Octavia would go on to spend the next day showing us around Savannah and making our first time in her city totally fun and unforgettable. (All of that gets its own post, coming soon!)

Meanwhile, friends and family were sending me birthday wishes, photos of cabbage & Robert Smith & clowns, and proof that they listened to Emarosa in my honor. 

My favorite, from Allison: 
:):):):):)

We arrived home from our vacation around 1:09AM this morning and a package containing THREE LITHOPS FROM KENDAHL was waiting on my porch!! Talk about getting a second wind! I left Henry on the sidewalk to deal with our luggage (lol, like I’d have helped him otherwise) and promptly potted my new succulents instead of going to bed like I had spent the last hour(s) in the car whining about wanting to do.  

The Kendahl Family! Bradley, Robert, and Barbara (named after three of my favorite singers, Bradley Walden, Robert Smith, and Barbara Streisand):
  

This morning, Hot Naybor Chris gave Chooch a bag of our mail, which included a package from Brandy. LOOK AT THIS MASTERPIECE:

 

I cried real tears. It means so much to me and I can’t wait to put it on my desk at work, where I can look at it everyday!  I’m surrounded by caring, thoughtful, GOOD people and that makes me feel less alone and a little less jaded, too. I try not to let my birthdays get to me, but I always lose that battle. So thank you to everyone who reached out and made my birthday less painful. 36 is a big number! 

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I wasn’t going to liveblog on the way home but let’s face it: what else is there to do when I’m in a car with Henry?

8:47: Henry is acting like a goddamn martyr because he has been doing all of the driving. We still have 7 hours left of the trip (we left Savannah late yesterday and drove to Charlotte, NC) and we’re all kinds of DONE. Henry didn’t even feed us dinner last night! I HAD CHEX MIX. :( Also we have been looking for a post office since we left Savannah yesterday.

8:48: Chooch: Where are we doing for breakfast? Henry: the post office.

Seriously though we spent so much time driving in circles yesterday because I typed “post office” into google and it told me to go to Orangeburg, SC. So that is how we ended up driving all around an industrial park in Orangeburg, SC looking for a post office so I could mail my postcards only for Henry to realize that my inability to read maps, or properly Google things for that matter, had led us straight to the Industrial Packing Supplies building. “Here it is!” I announced triumphantly. “THIS ISNT ANYWHERE CLOSE TO BEING A POST OFFICE, ERIN” Henry spat.

Ladies and gentlemen, Orangeburg.

But we got to see a rainbow!

9:20: we’re at the Tupelo Honey Cafe and Henry is currently not speaking to us.  lol forever.

This is definitely the type of place you come with people you enjoy talking to over brunch and HENRY IS NOT THAT PERSON LOL. Oh well, at least I have my backup: Chooch.  

Henry’s omelette came with a flower on the plate and now he’s even surlier. I had a delightful sweet potato pancake with peach butter and soysage and Chooch had eggs and homefries and actually ate the whole thing. I love this place but Henry is like exploding with hatred right now. He hates how all the men here are dressed in the same brand of strange-hued, fitted yuppie shorts.

10:05: One of the guys in yuppie shorts was asked to leave a few minutes after they got there because his female yuppie-partner was so drunk that she was laying across the table and the chairs and Henry said her dress was like wide open. They were walking back to their yuppie car in front of us and she was definitely drunk. It was a good example for me to show Chooch that rich people act like trashy assholes sometimes too. He’s learning lots on this vacation!

10:10: I enjoyed my time at the Tupelo Honey but Henry did not. “My food wasn’t from scratch!” he just whined. “The mushrooms and peppers in my omelette were from a CAN! That’s not FROM SCRATCH. They LIED.” Maybe a Bloody Mary would have helped him not notice.

11:22: Just left the Dale Earnhardt Headquarters, lol. I was like WE HAVE TO GO TO MORRISVILLE and Henry was all YOU HATE NASCAR THO? I just wanted to go and laugh.  

Me: Do you think they’ll have Tony Stewart stuff here?

Henry: THIS IS DALE EARNHARDT’S HEADQUARTERS WHY WOULD THERE BE TONY STEWART STUFF HERE.

Me: Do they have the car he crashed in?

Henry, appalled: NO! I HIGHLY DOUBT IT!

WHO KNEW?!

Chooch: Where are we again?

Henry’s favorite part!

Me: Do you think they have the outfit here that he died in?

Henry, mumbling at this point: Probably not.

At least it was free! Chooch got a souvenir penny but selected by mistake Dale Earnhardt Jr’s signature to be imprinted on it. I’m going to add an extra Jr to it so it’s like the band. (Even though they changed their name to Jr Jr a few weeks ago.)

I’m pissed because I wanted a magnet to boast that I was there but the gift shop didn’t have anything specific to the headquarters. Not even a Dale Earnhardt Headquarters is For Lovers t-shirt. I ended up getting some dumb NASCAR-ish photo magnet so I can just put my picture with Chooch in it I guess. Sigh.

Chooch’s main takeaway from this joint is that Henry looks like Dale (negative) and that we’re shitty parents who took him on the worst vacation ever because we wouldn’t buy him a notebook with Dale Earnhardt’s racing number on it. Cry it out, bro.

11:50: I think it’s safe to say that Henry reaaaaaallllly hates the Roadside America app. Also, my postcards were mailed. I know you were concerned about how that was going to play out.

12:07: Just accused Henry of not having any fun this whole trip and he said “I never said that. I’m just sick of you two.” BUT THEN HE SORT OF SMILED A LITTLE. So I took that as my opportunity to demand iced coffee.

2:02: We just left Mt. Airy, NC, the home of Andy Griffith and a Mayberry shangri-la.

Chooch was like “This is great but who the fuck is Andy Griffith?”

We skipped the actual Andy museum tour, but there was a free Chang and Eng gallery in the basement that we were able to quickly access.

Roamed around Main Street for awhile and then visited Wally’s Service which is where you can take tours of the town in an old Mayberry squad car.

I went inside to get my dad a coffee cup and to also snag some postcards since we had previously driven past the post office so I could easily mail them. Chooch almost made it out of the store without incident but right as I opened the door to leave, he barely touched a toy car on a shelf with one finger tip when the woman behind the counter snapped at him to not “play with the cars.” OK BITCH BROAD. HAVE A NICE FUCK YOU.

There was a replica of the jail next door so we stopped over there for some photo ops. Chooch took this one of me and then posted it on Instagram without my permission but luckily the cell bars and my layers are blocking some of my fat bulges.

Encountered a rude bitch lady in there, too. She was just a tourist like the rest of us so I don’t know where the superiority was coming from.  
And now Henry is pissed because we’re back on the highway, stuck on accident traffic and Chooch and I keep unplugging the GPS in orde to charge our phone/Nintendo DS.

3:02: Still sitting in traffic approx. 5 miles away from Mayberry. The Hells Angels are with us, though!

 

3:52: Henry made us pee at idiot Love’s, a gas station that was infested with people who, like us, had been sitting in traffic for over an hour, but of course they were all way more annoying than my perfect family.

Also, we’re currently in Virginia. Henry has said that he hates approx. 87 times today. I said I was sorry for breathing and he laughed sardonically and cried, “No you’re not! Who are YOU kidding?!”

And then his idiot self bought Chooch CANDY. Yes, that makes sense.

Chooch just asked if today is August 1. Like, get a fucking calendar.

5:06: Octavia recommended a pit stop in Pulaski, VA so that’s what I’m making Henry do right now and he’s pissed. He has reached the point where he only communicates in head shakes and moustache twitches.

But first, this overlook thang!

5:33: Huge fight because Henry wouldn’t stop anywhere “downtown” Pulaski and then some guy came out of nowhere doing about 70 almost wrecked into us, Earnhardt-style, but now we’re sitting quietly at Tom’s Drive In while a big table of locals talk in hushed tones about Chooch’s hair.

 The man standing is really excited because he went outside to buy the newspaper and it was from TOMORROW! A paper from the FUTURE and it only cost A DOLLAR!

Ah, local flavor.

5:57: Thought Chooch was staring at one of the younger girls this whole time but eventually realized it was the OLDER GIRL WITH PINK HAIR. She came over before she left and said, in the perfect drawl, “I like your hair…” And Chooch’s face almost burst into flames.  

 It smells weird in here and there’s no a/c but it was worth it for the people aspect. The two young kids working here are super personable.  

Cheapest meal on the whole trip, not counting the CHEX MIX DINNER I had last night.

6:52: We’re stuck in traffic again! Henry pointed out that we still have five hours to go before we’re home. “it’s like we made no progress today. It’s like we went BACK IN TIME” and now he’s muttering. Then Chooch asked him what our next vacation is going to be; Henry turned around and breathed fire into Chooch’s face.

7:34: Listening to a Koo Koo Kanga Roo podcast where someone said “follow your dreams.” Chooch freaked out because he thought they said Paul Eugene. Now he’s calling us Ma and Pa and I’m freaking out.
9:24: Three hours from home but at least we’re in West Virginia now! Stopped at a gas station in Mt. Nebo for refreshments; it had the cutest diner attached to it.

 West Virginian coffee station. I was pissed when I learned that there was a Sheetz down the street. “Why,” Henry sneered. “You hate their coffee too.” It’s true, but really it’s just their iced coffees. They just always taste so gross to me, like they use Lip Smackers for their flavoring.
  
The bathroom was sketchy upon initial entrance, but the stalls were surprisingly clean and provided great reading material. 

 THREE MORE HOURS.
Idiot Chooch got a bag of BBQ chips and is eating them with open-mouthed panache. YELLING AT HIM HELPS NOT.

9:52: Chooch is sleeping! FINALLY! I’m so excited that I licked Henry’s arm!

10:42: Henry just sped up at the same time someone was creeping up on us from the right lane and I screamed, “STOP TRYING TO RACE HIM! OH GOD, HE MIGHT SHOOT US.”

“Why is he going to shoot us?” Henry (kind of) laughed.

“I don’t know! Maybe he’s in a gang!” I defensively reasoned.

“The pick-up truck gang?” Henry sighed.

IT’S BEEN A LONG DAY. So long that Henry just deliriously whispered, “Bye bye, Guy from Ontario” when some car that Henry recognized as one that passed us twice while we’ve been on this this highway in WV, drove away down the last exit.

10:53: KNUCKLE PUCK, CARRY US HOME. I just want to wash my face. For hours.

11:22: Pennsylvania just welcomed us. One more hour!! I hope henry doesn’t think I’m going to help carry anything into the house. Lol.

11:45: Fuckface Henry stopped “to get gas” at Sheetz so now our arrival has been pushed back to 12:45. WHYYYYYYY, TONYA HARDING???? WHYYYYYYYY? Anyway, I went into Sheetz to pee and Talking Head’s  “Psycho Killer” was playing. I got really paranoid.

12:18AM: Carly Rae Jepsen and her sweet pop sensibilities carrying us down the home stretch.

12:44AM: OK WE’RE HOME GOOD NIGHT.

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