Oh boy, it’s part three of my April book round-up, on May 9th!

16. The Woman in the Window – A.J. Finn

Um. This book wasn’t that great but soooo many people are so stoked for it, and now there’s going to be a movie, and I’m sorry but IT IS SO CLICHE AND DONE-TO-DEATH. The twist was 100% not shocking to me at all, I didn’t care about any of the characters, and the climax was just dumb. I gave it a three though because the writing itself wasn’t too shitty but I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone. Maybe like, a teenager who is just getting into adult thrillers.

17. Everything I Never Told You – Celeste Ng

Nothing to do with the book itself, but I had no idea that Celeste Ng is from Pittsburgh, so that made me feel extra-connected to this book even though it was set in Ohio. It mostly takes place in the 1970s—and that’s tied with the 80s as my favorite era for novels—with some throwbacks to the 50s and 60s.

This is about a family really going through it after one of the three kids disappears and turns up dead. Both parents and remaining two siblings process their grief in very different ways, while trying to understand what happened to the daughter. Was she murdered? Did she kill herself? Was it an accident?

I was really attached to this family and I cried lots. I’m probably the only person left who hasn’t read Celeste Ng’s latest book, Little Fires Everywhere, but I promise that will happen soon. THIS is a book I would recommend.

18. Truly Devious – Maureen Johnson 

Another Pittsburgh connection! The main character of this book is from Pittsburgh and I think this is the book where there is a reference to one of the characters pounding on the 57 on a bottle of Heinz ketchup (if it wasn’t this book, then it was Daisy Jones and The Six, because there are characters from that book that are from Pittsburgh too!) and I literally laughed out loud because that’s such a “how you know you’re from Pittsburgh” thing.

I remember when I worked at that shitty meat place, my boss came back from a cruise and the story he was most excited to tell all of us was how he taught a bunch of people that ketchup technique at dinner one time.

Anyway, this book! It’s a YA mystery about a girl who gets accepted into this eccentric art school where a kidnapping and murder happened in the 30s. The girl is super into crime and mysteries which is the main reason why she wanted to go to this school, and while she’s there, ANOTHER MURDER HAPPENS, DUN DUN DUNNNN.

Look, I loved the atmosphere of this book and the characters. It was a page-turner for me and of course it ended on cliffhanger because it’s part of a trilogy so now I have to wait for Asian Read-a-thon to end so I can grab the second book.

19. City of Ghosts – Victoria Schwab

I, um, started reading this accidentally because I confused Victoria Schwab with her alias VE Schwab, and apparently Victoria is the name she uses to write her middle grade books. So yeah I read a middle grade book about a girl who died for a second but was brought back to life by a ghost so now she can enter a veil to the OTHER SIDE and the dead boy that saved her is like her sidekick that only she can see and it has such an adorable Casper feel to it, but I just can’t justify reading the rest of the series because I might like young shit but this was just too young. I think I would have LOVED it when I was in 5th grade though!

20. Aristotle & Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe – Benjamin Alire Saenz

The only reason I picked this up was because I saw that Lin Manuel Miranda narrates the audiobook and wow, I’m really glad that I did. Set in the late 80s, it’s about two Mexican American high school boys who form an unlikely friendship. I was just bracing myself through the entire thing, waiting for the other shoe to fall, like surely there is going to be some devastating episode, and of course there was but no dogs died or anything at least.

My only issue with it was that it’s a coming of age/coming out novel set in 1988 and there is no mention of AIDs. Like, none.

21. Six Stories – Matt Wesolowski

I came so close to DNFing this because the writing is pretty rough, but I am so glad I kept going. It’s about a teenage boy who was murdered during a camping trip with friends in the late 90s and now, present day, there is a podcast that is dissecting the cold case, interviewing the friends, parents, suspects. Because each “episode” features a different person of interest, it can get quite repetitive but I still found it compelling and couldn’t wait to finish it.

I ended up really enjoying it, and I will admit that there were numerous times when I had actual chills while reading it.

22. Daisy Jones & the Six – Taylor Jenkins Reid

This book is soooo over-hyped, I’m sorry. I gave it 3 stars for the story, but the audio book bumps it up to a 4 because it’s a full cast with Jennifer Beals, Benjamin Bratt, and Judy Greer (the character she voiced was my favorite) and it really made it feel like I was watching VH1 Behind the Music. It’s written interview-style, present-day, with the members of the band and people in their orbit talking about the rise and fall of Daisy Jones and the Six, so you get to see various situations from multiple perspectives which made me laugh several times because they don’t know what the others have already said so there’d be things like:

Pete: I remember I was wearing this orange suit. I looked so good.

Karen: Pete was wearing this ugly orange outfit. He looked hideous.

But honestly this could have been any band in the 70s. Drugs, drama, egos, secret band affairs. There was an unexpected “twist” thrown in there which I didn’t see coming and I thought it was well-done. But Daisy Jones and the other main character were so unlikeable and I was certainly not rooting for either of them.

The whole thing had big Fleetwood Mac vibes. If you’re into fictional band stuff, you would probably like this but I would only recommend reading it in tandem with the audio book! The audio book is PHENOMENAL.

23. Slay – Brittney Morris 

I don’t know what made me request this on Libby, some Booktuber’s recommendation, I guess. It really isn’t relevant to my interests at all because the plot centers around a game created by a high school senior but she goes through painstaking strides to keep her identity as the creator secret. As one of only three black students at her high school, she created this game as a safe haven for other black people, for a place where they can go and comfortably play without worrying about racism or discrimination. The game is really cool because it involves these battle cards, each of which are specific to black culture, history, sports, music, etc; for example, the Jordan card makes you outjump your opponent. One of the cards was about FUFU which is how this happened!

Meanwhile at school, our protagonist frequently finds herself in the middle of the race debates and it’s exhausting and she has to try and explain to her white friends that she is not the voice of all black people, so asking her, “Will it be offensive if I get dreadlocks?” really puts her in a tight spot.

I think the message conveyed in this book IS SO IMPORTANT and all white teens should be required to read it, honestly. I was very invested.

24. Red at the Bone – Jacqueline Woodson

I started reading this on a whim after watching a video spotlighting the Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist. I didn’t know anything about it to be honest, sometimes I just compulsively add books to my “want to read” on Goodreads, all willy-nilly, and every so often, I find a diamond in the rought. This was one of those diamonds.

It starts out with a girl’s 16th birthday, and from there, the book is told in vignettes, from the POV of various family members of the 16-year-old, exploring race, class, sex, teenage pregnancy, death. There’s a lot of power packed into this small novel, and I cried heavily. I can’t even really summarize it here without starting to get all choked up again.

If you’re looking for beautiful literary fiction, this is it. I’m obsessed.

25. Roanoke Girls – Amy Engel 

Oh shit, this cult-like family thriller is just flat out nasty. I could feel my visage setting in “stank-face” mode numerous times as I made my way through this one, and all of the characters are just straight-up despicable, but hoo-boy I couldn’t put it down. I recommend if you love digging through dirty laundry.

26. Girl Made of Stars – Ashley Herring Blake

This is one of the last actual library books I had left on my TBR shelf wheelchair. (Now I only have one left, but I keep putting it off because it will be last actual book to hold in my hands until the library reopens!!) I left this one for next-to-last because I wasn’t in the mood to cry and I knew going in that this would definitely trigger the tear ducts because I have seen it recommended in so many of my favorite Booktubers’ videos. It’s about these high school twins and the moral conflict that the sister twin goes through when her brother is accused of raping his girlfriend, who is also one of her best friends.

DANG. This book took me on an emotional ride, and it was not of the peaceful Sunday drive variety, either. Definitely a heavy-hitting YA that made me think of all kinds of uncomfortable hypotheticals.

I felt like it was almost perfect but there was something about the main character that made her unlikeable to me. Like, all of this shitty RAPE stuff was happening and she somehow kept making it about herself and I wanted to slap her.

***

OK, let’s bury the April books now. 26 was an insane amount of books to read and I promise once lockdown is lifted, I’ll probably be back to 10-books per month. I mean, as of this writing, I’ve read 77 books this year. 7-fucking-7. That’s ridiculous. Now I gotta get back to my #Asianreadathon, which is going swimmingly! One week in and I’ve already read one book that was so good, I had already known in my heart that I was going to give it 5 stars after the first 50 pages. May is going to be a good book month!

Here are some things (FIVE to be exact) that I will be talking (TYPING) about today. Put your reading glasses on. (Speaking of, I need those now I think.) But first, random picture of Drew and a dead plant in a pumpkin planter.

1. Geromino Jeff

The other night, I was laying in bed, trying to fall asleep, when OUT OF THE BLUE (or, in Korean, kapchuggi) I had this vivid flashback to the time my ex-boyfriend Jeff  told me this story about how when he was super little, maybe like 4 or something, he was in the backseat of his mom’s car, and somehow, as she was driving down the road, he managed TO FALL OUT OF THE CAR?! This was clearly the 80s when kids graduated from car seats at age 1 probably, so I’m sure he was just popping a squat in the back without the confines of a Graco straight jacket holding him inside a cushioned bucket, so I guess back then something like this happening was more plausible. If I remember the story correctly, his mom didn’t notice right away so he was just like, chilling on the side of the road, I guess. I think he said it wasn’t a major highway, and he didn’t get hurt, so I imagine it must have been a small, back road in their hometown (he grew up in a hick-ish town about an hour outside of Pittsburgh where you could essentially fall out of your mom’s backseat and not see another car pass you for quite some time while you’re crouching in a field of cattails next to a rotting possum carcass.

Now, me being me, I latched on to this story HARD and made him tell it to me over and over like it was my favorite page in the Fucking Bedtime Stories for Young Adults Who Should Still Probably Be Living with Their Parents book. That’s my sociopathic personality—Ruby—winning out against the other more reasonable, empathetic ones.

Sometime after this, Jeff and I went out to dinner with his mom and stepdad, and my dad. I was 19 years old and had much less of a filter than I do now, so without even thinking about it, I blurted out that Jeff had told me the story of how he barrel-rolled out of a moving car except that I start cracking up so bad that I could barely finish saying it and I was also crying & choking because my giddiness comes at me HARD. In my dumb head, I assumed that Jeff’s mom would join me in laughing at this hilarious memory, but she was HORRIFIED and said, “That was one of the worst moments of my entire life” and then the tone grew super somber except that I still wanted to continue laughing so now I was in physical pain trying to use all of my power and brain-drawer of sad memories to stifle it.

Later on, Jeff’s stepdad asked me how the job search was going which was great because I told Jeff earlier in the day to make sure no one said anything about that because I didn’t want my dad to know I quit my job because then he would figure out that my mom was paying my bills, so it was a great dinner.

Anyway, the whole point of this was that when I remembered it the other night, I started involuntarily cackling, like side-splittingly, to the point where Henry woke up and mumbled, “What” with a sludge of reservation in his tone because my laughter scares him lots. So I told him the story and he slurred, “Yeah, you told me that before” and fell back asleep WITHOUT EVEN A TINY CHUCKLE. Wow, Team Jeff’s Mom, I guess.

2. Zoinks

Wednesday night, Chooch and I went on a stealthy nighttime stroll around the neighborhood. There are less people out at night now which makes social distancing easier but it’s also sketchy because, you know, Brookline. So we stick to the sidewalk on the main road to be safe DON’T WORRY! On our way back, we were in the middle of a conversation (thankful I have a teenager who still talks to me but also sometimes he talks too much; I’m never satisfied) when a car full of young people drove by and screamed something in jibberish at us from their open windows. Look, I’m a highly sensitive person, so not only did I scream, nay—shriek, but my feet fucking left the ground. Like the force of my startled yelp boosted me into the air long enough for my fucking feet to pedal the air.

“Did you just actually SCREAM? Oh my god, you’re so embarrassing,” Chooch muttered.

“Why, did you know them!?” I cried, hand still clutching my pearls.

“No! But now what if you inspired them to turn around and do it again? Oh my god, I hate you. You’re like Shaggy from Scooby Doo!” and then he kept yelling ZOINKS at me and I was like STFU.

It was scary, OK?!

Not as embarrassing as the time Henry and I were walking and some kid yelled out of a moving car (without falling out of it, a la Jeff), “Your shoe’s untied!” and I was like, “OMG thank you so much!” and bent down to tie my shoe which was not in fact untied because it didn’t even have laces.

“You’re an idiot,” Henry muttered and left me there to figure it out on my own.

3. Fufu for MeMe

A few weeks ago, I read this book called Slay and in this book, there was the briefest mention of a Ghanaian comfort food called FUFU, which is a soft bread-like foodstuffs made from plantains and cassava, which is then used as a serving device for soups or stews, such as PEANUT STEW. I of course latched on to this, the greater message of the book flitting out of my brain like a spurned butterfly of social consciousness. I started sending Henry recipes for it, which then turned into him watching one YouTube video after another of Ghanaian women churning out fufu on their stovetops, until he was finally ready to commit to the cause.

And this is how, Sunday evening, our house was ALIVE with appetizing African aromas. Henry was unhappy with the consistency of his final fufu, but it tasted AMAZING. You just plop a fistful of it in a bowl and pour whatever soup or stew your heart desires (I mean, you have to make it first, don’t just expect your heart to conjure it up, unless you’ve got that kind of magic, and if that’s the case, do you need a roommate?) around the fufu hill. To be most traditional about it, you should pull pieces of fufu from the mound and press them down into tiny bowls in which to scoop up the soup.

The fufu was a fucking delight, but the stew was the real winner here. It was filled with sweet potatoes, tomatoes, some other things probably, with fresh peanut butter used in the stew-y part, and garnished with peanuts.

I mean, it doesn’t make for the most attractive meal, but WE EAT WITH OUR MOUTHS, NOT OUR EYES.

In one of the books I read earlier in the week, they had Persian jeweled rice so now I’m hounding him for that and he’s all, “ORANGE BLOSSOM WATER? I NEED ORANGE BLOSSOM WATER FOR THIS?” Lol. No one ever said being with me is easy.

4. Subway Update

Henry is slowly but surely making progress on my massive Seoul subway wall art. I think he now he has all the lights in place, but they haveto be adjusted so that they match the colors of the lines they’re representing, and he still needs to get a sheet of plexiglass to attach the actual subway map to, then he has to build a frame for it, and finally attach the sound box thingie that will enable it to play the actual subway jingles at a press of a button.

Pray for him.

5. Nightmare Nun

Wednesday night, I had this awful dream where I was a kid, maybe 7 or 8, and I was speed-walking along a street in my old hometown, Old Clairton Rd, with a mom who wasn’t actually my IRL mom, and a man who was a plain-clothed priest. We were in a hurry yet trying to remain inconspicuous, because presumably someone was after us/me. I kept hearing this low, demonic grumbling all around me, coming from the trees and empty houses. We were headed toward my old middle school and then turned down a road that I used to drive on all of the time when I still lived out that way yet I can’t remember the name of it. There were people standing outside of their houses on this street and they were yelling things at us, but the priest kept shielding me from them and was shouting, “DON’T LISTEN TO THEM” over and over and this when I realized that something was wrong with me, and I was crying but they kept dragging me along with them, down this residential street which was never scary to me at all in real life because it’s like the quintessential suburban utopia, houses with actual flower boxes hanging outside of their windows and shutters painted thoughtfully to match the aesthetics of the rest of the house – you know these houses. WHERE FAMILIES ACTUALLY SIT DOWN AND EAT DINNER TOGETHER, probably. But whatever.

In real life, when you get to the bottom of this street, there’s an intersection with other residential streets, and then they all spill out onto one main road that take you past the police station. But in my dream, there was an empty parking lot at the end of the road, one that hadn’t been used in some time, so there were cracks in the pavement with weeds growing through them. I know this because I was walking with my eyes down. We all stopped here in this parking lot and I turned around to say something to my mom, but before I could finish, she started to scream and as she screamed her mouth grew wider and wider until the red-tinged silhouette of a nun came out of her mouth and FLEW INTO ME WHILE YELLING A BUNCH OF SCARY JIBBERISH and in real life, I woke up SCREAMING THE JIBBERISH THAT THE NUN WAS SAYING and my cat Drew woke up on my chest and looked at me over her shoulder like, “THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU” and as I waited for my heart rate to go down, I realized that the jibberish the nun was saying was the SAME JIBBERISH THOSE KIDS SCREAMED AT ME EARLIER THAT NIGHT FROM THEIR CAR.

****

Welp, that’s all for me. Gotta get ready for my loathsome Friday late shift. :(

I thought that I could just split my April round-up in half, but then I realized that I read, um, 26 books so we’re slicing this into thirds. I know, 26 books seems like bookhead status but FULL DISCLAIMER: a lot of these were audio books because I have quickly realized that listening to audio books while working from my home is saving my sanity. Obviously, once I return to the office, my monthly book count will go back down to sane person levels because I don’t like listening to things / wearing earpods at the office, so I’m really living it up and trying to get in as much good reads as possible while under lockdown. It’s giving me life and distracting me from all the chaos happening outside, OK? WOULD YOU RATHER I DO DRUGS?! God.

Anyway, let’s get into this second part of my book round-up. As always, I’m sucky at synopses, so click on those handy-dandy links to find out more about any book that seems interesting to you!

9. 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl – Mona Awad

I picked this up because I read Mona Awad’s “Bunny” earlier this year and loved it. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this – each chapter is a different vignette from the life of this overweight girl, from the time she’s in high school, until an adult, with several chapters swapping out the POV with various men in her life. As someone who started obsessing over their weight in 5th Grade, this book slapped me hard. I can’t tell you how many times I looked up from it and yelled, “OMG RELATABLE” at Henry, who was like, “WAIT WHAT BOOK IS THAT I THOUGHT YOU WERE READING SOMETHING ELSE” and I just laughed, like, “bitch please, I been done with that one.”

At some point in the main character’s life, she manages to lose a ton of weight, and it made me take a good long look at myself because it’s like, “Oh look, you’re so skinny now but you’re no happier because now you’re terrified of food and everything is measured and you’re still self-conscious and everything feels weird on your skin and OMG UGH WHY.”

There’s a chapter from her husband’s POV and it is heartbreaking to see what it looks like from his eyes, how he’s walking on egg shells around her when it comes to food and she’s still comparing herself with women who are “skinnier” than her, and it’s just like, “OK I get it I will try harder to chill out.”

This book is definitely not for everyone but it resonated HARD with me, the writing was top notch, and also the author name-dropped the goth band London After Midnight which I hadn’t thought about for years.

I’m obsessed with Mona Awad.

10. Shadow & Bone – Leigh Bardugo

I kept hearing so much about this Russian-flavored fantasy series on Booktube and apparently there is a TV series coming out at some point, so I bit the bullet and got the first book from Libby.

You know, it was OK. I didn’t really get a good feel for the world that Leigh Barduga is building here, and I didn’t feel very connected to the characters, but now this one expat I follow on YouTube who lives in Seoul has just gotten into this series and she loves it, so I guess I will give the second book a go? I actually had it on my Libby shelf but I returned it because my entire May TBR is dedicated to #asianreadathon, and THEN I FOUND OUT LEIGH BARDUGO WAS BORN IN ISRAEL. So it would have counted for Asian readathon. Goddammit.

11. Attachments – Rainbow Rowell

People either love Rainbow Rowell or hate her. I think this was the first I’ve ever read of her though and you know? I really liked it. It was kind of slow at first but the characters were lovable and the story was SO CUTE. It reminded me of my old office job at MSA for some reason.

This would probably a good book to read on a plane or the beach WHICH IS MOOT RIGHT NOW.

I wasn’t very gung-ho about the end, it was wrapped up way too nicely and felt pretty implausible, but it still made me cry a little (the happy kind) because I’m very unbalanced right now.

12. China Rich Girlfriend – Kevin Kwan 

Yeah, I’m sorry, but I fucking love this series. And also, remember in my last wrap-up when I wrote about reading the first one and I said that I know this is wrong to think but I kept picturing Nick as Siwon from the legendary Kpop group Super Junior even though HE’S KOREAN AND NOT CHINESE, in this book, there is a scene where a bunch of Chinese ladies see Nick and start fawning over him because they think he looks like Kim Soo-Hyun WHO IS A KOREAN ACTOR THANK YOU VERY MUCH, KEVIN KWAN.

But yeah, if you want a fun and outrageous read, this series is it. I still have to read the third one!!

13. Blue Lily, Lily Blue – Maggie Stiefvater

This is the third installment of the Raven Boys cycle and I fucked up big time with this one. I was able to snag the audiobook for it and it’s narrated by Will Patton whom I never had a strong opinion about before until now: FUCK YOU WILL PATTON. YOU RUINED THIS BOOK FOR ME.

OK, he didn’t fully ruin it. I still loved it because Raven Boys, but his narration was fucking awful. He did all of the voices so wrong and some of the female voices he did were so grating and obnoxious that I kept having to turn the volume way down.

Quick summary: 4 teen boys, 1 teen girl, a raven, and a bunch of middle-aged psychic ladies on a mission to find a thing.

I have one more book to read in this series and I am still very much a Gansey-stan, don’t think anything can change that for me at this point, and I would like to mention that I listened to this during a Thursday late shift and we had takeout from Mandy’s Pizza which has an entire separate vegan menu and I ordered a ham & cheese hoagie with vegan mayo and HOOOO BOY I will always associate this fantastic hoagie with this book and it feels like the warm essence of childhood in my belly.

14. After Dark – Haruki Murakami

This is the book that inspired me to write my Denny’s Memories post a few weeks ago.

I really enjoyed this book a lot. There really isn’t any big climax or anything, it’s just a very quiet book about several people and how their stories intertwine throughout the middle of the night in Tokyo. I really enjoyed it. It’s a good ‘rainy day with a cup of tea’ book. I dunno why I said that because I rarely drink tea at home, but there you have it.

15. I’m Thinking of Ending Things – Iain Reid

YES. So many big fat yeses on this one. Holy shit, I loved this so much. To the point of obsession. Henry and I listened to the audiobook together (lol, we’re That Couple). I always see this in videos for horror novel recommendations but back when I was going to the real library, none of the branches had a copy of it. But now that I’m on that online library tip, I found the ebook AND audiobook on Scribd, and since it’s pretty short, I thought it would be a good one to save for a weekend so that Henry could listen to it because our new pandemic past time is listening to audio books together while walking in a cemetery.

And even in broad daylight, almost from the very get-go with this book, listening to it while strolling through a cemetery gave me THE CHILLS. Henry was like, “No” when I asked him if he felt the same but he claims that nothing ever scares him which is a lie because one time he told me that he was scared of falling out of the sky and landing in the middle of a pile of mangled metal in a junkyard which sounds specific.

OK, quick: this book is about a couple several months into their relationship, on their way to meet his parents for the first time, and she is having this inner monologue with herself the whole way there about how she’s, you know, thinking about ending things. There is a lot of dialogue and story-telling between the couple, which really made me root for them, in some odd way. Like, I wanted her to change her mind because he seemed OK.

I’m not some big audiobook advocate (I’ve said before that I prefer to also have a print copy so I can read along), but I DEFINITELY RECOMMEND THE AUDIO BOOK for this one and you will see why but I can’t say because it’s a major spoiler.

We ended up finishing this later that night, sitting in the dark on the back porch and I WAS SO SPOOKED. Even Henry was like “That was good” and that is a big review for him!

There’s supposed to be a movie coming out for this, directed by Charlie Kaufman, and Toni Collette is in it, so this better actually fucking happen because I am this book’s number one fan.

************

OK, I’m ending this portion of the April round-up on that note, because what a solid read. Actually, a lot of the April books were solid. Stay tuned for part 3!

I had a mental health day scheduled for today. The place where I work encourages that we use our PTO during these homogeneous, blended-together-into-a-flavorless-smoothie days and I’m normally of the mindset that I won’t take a day off unless I have something to do, but look Linda, give me a day where I don’t have to sit at my home computer and join group calls and I will gladly take it.

Henry came home early because of house bullshit, and then we took an hour drive out to this old-ass cemetery I used to really like called Livermore, because I figured we’d be pretty safe from other humans out that way. Anytime we have ever gone there, it’s been, well, DEAD OH HO HO HO HO. Plus, there’s a nice walking trail nearby that takes you over the spot where some town was purposely flooded and now it’s called Devil’s Seat, I don’t know, I’ve only ever quickly glazed over the facts but the whole area is supposed to be haunted and I fucking swear to god that the first time Henry and I went pre-Chooch’s Earthly Arrival, something grabbed my pant leg.

JUST SAYIN’.

Anyway, enjoy some pictures. It was a dreary day (I think it’s been that way every time we’ve come here) and we almost turned around and came home halfway there because I was being bitchy and whiny. A regular day.

YEP IT’S STILL CREEPY THERE.

Choochy Loggins.

This is just how he looks at me now. 14 is so great. 13 was too.

Right before I took this, I walked over and pretty sure Henry was trying to count the rings on the tree which is such a Henry thing to do.

Some kind of gross tombstone funk. Henry probably knows what it is but I purposely didn’t ask him because he’s so annoying when he knows answers.

My mom joked, “school field trip lol?” But yeah, actually let’s go with that! There’s like history here, plus Professor Henry pointing out wildlife. I think this counts. Maybe I’ll have Chooch research the town flooding and blog about it separately.

Coincidentally, I was checking my blog stats on the way there (I like to see what’s being viewed so I know if I’m being stalked by past friends searching their name on my blog, or if Jonny Craig is in the news again because the views on my JC-centric posts will skyrocket in that case, lol) and I saw that one of my old Livermore Cemetery posts was just viewed today! WHAT DOES IT MEAN.

Chooch chucked a pine cone at me really hard and it hit the back of my thigh and I started screaming and then Henry yelled at Chooch HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I WIN.

It didn’t even hurt that bad.

America: IT IS WEIRD WHEN ASIANS WEAR MASKS.

Also America: GUYS CHECK OUT MY ETSY FOR HARRY POTTER PANDEMIC MASKS!!!!

Fuck America.

This tombstone looks like the tooth (OMG RIGHT WHEN I TYPED ‘TOOTH’ THE BOOKTUBER ON A VIDEO I HAVE ON IN THE BACKGROUND SAID ‘TOOTH’ WHAT DOES IT MEAN) of a baby giant.

We did not keep out.

LOL.

A bunch of trees were cut down from the perimeter so it doesn’t have as much of a secluded feel anymore.

Which is too bad.

Ah, springtime in the haunted boneyard.

All in all, it was a fine day. Chooch found a geocache but couldn’t open it and then apparently we “left him” so he threw it back on the ground and ran and it wasn’t because he was “scared” or anything. It *almost* felt like the Old Days because we were in the car for more than an hour like we were actually going somewhere. Which is what you used to do.

Go somewhere.

*cries*

For this week’s thrilling installment of THINGS AROUND THE HOUSE, let us ooh and ahh at this tin collectible beverage mug that I insisted Janna buy for me at the Fayette County Fair in….2013? I’ll tell you in a minute when I do an archive deep-dive in order to copy&paste that old blog post here because if there is one thing QUARANTINE has taught me, it’s to recycle/reuse/regurge those old-ass blog posts because hello lazy me. 

Anyway, I wanted to share this here today because all these years later, I still smile when I see it! I never did it use it to chug additional servings of root beer from the comfort of my own home, but I have since repurposed it into a planter. JANNA I BET YOU DIDN’T THINK I WOULD KEEP THIS – actually, you’ve known me too long and my pack-rat sentimentalism is no mystery to you.

Because county fairs are possibly another thing that’ll be missing this summer, here is that the blog post that includes not only delirious fun on rickety death trap rides, but also the origin story for THE CHUCK WAGON SODA VESSEL. 

(And I was off by two years. This happened in 2011!)

******

Spending a birthday at the county fair seems like a great idea on paper: gut-churning rides, complimentary (if not downright sleazy) carnies, fried desserts (calorie counts are nil on birthdays, everyone knows that), the cacophony of laughing children and tractor pulls (forgetting for a moment that I hate children and anything with even the slightest redneck-tilt).

Yes, a perfect day!

But then you add in Henry, whose face threatens to crack a million different ways if even the slightest hint of a smile creeps upon his lips; Blake, who is apparently an 80-year-old retiree in an 18-year-old’s body, adverse to sunlight and complaining of back pain and lethargy all day; Chooch, who is a little motherfucking birthday killer-in-training who makes the day all about HIM HIM HIM; and Janna, who won’t ride anything aside from a carousel and a 20-second-long Haunted Mansion ride that Henry’s SAT score out-scares.

Not to mention the fact that these assholes weren’t constantly fawning over me and winning me plush Family Guy characters. IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY, NEED I REMIND YOU.

Blake and his new friends, planning their upcoming move to Florida.

Awkward Standing.

At first glance, I was like, “Aw shit, this fair might be pretty good.” I mean, it was run by Powers Great American Midway, after all, and I am obsessed with them. However, it was only about half the size of the Big Butler Fair, and I’ll tell you: That fair can spoil a bitch. Power’s light blue unit brought along some choice rides. (Is it sad that I know which “unit” PGAM deployed to the Fayette County fairgrounds? Maybe I look at their website too much.) And I saw lots of familiar carny faces, one of which was Kirk’s! I didn’t talk to him, though. What’s the point when my lame non-carny boyfriend was glued to my side all day?

But the layout of the fair sucked. And it was super muddy and smelled like sewage, but that was probably because Henry kept standing so close to me. Still: 100% better than the shitty Washington County Fair. (I go to county fairs a lot. It’s kind of become A Thing.)

You know you go to a lot of fairs when you start to recognize carnies, is all I’m sayin’.

Blake: Jeepers, it’s so hot! I think I’m dying! And I left my cane at the home and missed my 3:00pm dinner! I wonder if Dad has any individually-wrapped prunes in his pocket before I pass out.

Thank God Lisa and her husband Matt met us out there a few hours after we arrived. They joined us in standing around awkwardly, which is something that people need to master before even attempting to hang out with me. (I suggest going to a crowded store and standing right in front of a doorway or at the top of an escalator for practice. Do not move when you find that you are blocking foot traffic, and ignore the scowls you inspire. Only then can we hang out.)  Lisa was in a really good mood and I like to think it’s because she knows how delicate of a situation my birthday is, like the entire premise of Speed, with less bus more birthday cake, but actually Lisa is always pretty chill and somehow wasn’t completely put off by the foul moods of my companions who need to be reminded that SOME PEOPLE AREN’T LUCKY ENOUGH TO GET TO GO TO THE FAIR.

Fuck!

Within minutes, Chooch claimed Matt and I’m sure everyone at the fair assumed they were father and son after that. I’m sorry, Matt. But Henry and I were relieved to be off the hook for awhile.

***

A week before the fair, I was on the phone with Lisa.

“I hope the fair is a good one,” she said thoughtfully.

“Um, Lisa? Of course it will be. It’s run by Powers Great American Midways,” I informed her haughtily.

“I don’t know what that means.”

THAT’S BECAUSE SOMEONE DOESN’T READ MY BLOG.

***

Lisa and Matt agreed to ride the Orbiter with me immediately after they arrived. I was SO EXCITED. Finally! I get to ride something moderately extreme! But then we got in line and I saw it said “No single riders” and those asshole words are ALWAYS BEING SNEERED AT ME at fairs because I am perpetually single in this world of grinding traps of pleasure (amusement rides, not vagina dentata).  I looked at Janna who had accompanied us to the line and she said no before I even asked her. Way to tag along on something you’re not a part of, then Janna! So I had to run over to Henry and Blake, who had combined to form a Dildo-ic Duo while Chooch rode some stupid train operated by Kirk.

I hadn’t even approached them yet and I was already absolutely wailing about how Janna ruined my life and wouldn’t ride with me and Blake, while I was still approaching them mid-run, said no. Henry, however, said: “Fine.”

“What?” I asked in surprise.

“I said fine,” he sighed.

I guess he was trying to make up for the fact that he failed epically in the birthday present department once again. (Seriously, he got me a shirt that I already have, which proves that he doesn’t look at me. Ever.) This was the SECOND ride he rode on! (We rode on the Swings when we first got there. They made him sick.)

Oh, I was so happy! And the best part was that it took so long for the ride to get loaded to capacity, that Henry and I had plenty of time to talk about Jonny Craig!

Henry bitched about the Oribiter for the rest of his time at the fair. “I have cold sweats,” he kept complaining, though I’m not sure to whom because last time I checked, his mommy didn’t come with us and she’s the only person who gives a shit about him. He didn’t ride anything else after that, though I kept trying to con him into being my partner on the Skydiver, since it’s less commitment that being my partner for life. He kept saying, “We’ll see,” which everyone knows means NO.

After Chooch and Matt, Lisa, Janna and I had our turn at sliding down the Fun Slide, which I hadn’t done since I was a kid and good goddamn is that scary. Ascending the steps alone made me clutch my heart. I felt like there was going to be a religious cult waiting at the top to push me back down the steps into God’s eternal arms. It was like walking into the hospital on D-Day and wanting to run back out the doors but having 3 nurses pull you back in because “that baby’s gotta come out one way or another, sweetheart!” Longest climb of my life.

“I’m scared,” I told the Mexican carny who smiled, probably assuming I said, “Let’s go fuck behind that lemon cart you pushed across the border.” What? The Pennsylvania border, you guys.

Lisa thought it was the funnest thing at the fair, Janna had no comment, and I was just glad I didn’t slide through piss, shit, vomit, a chewed-up wad of Skoal or semen. And by “it,” I mean the Fun Slide, not Mexican carny sex. I know you were probably confused.

Things took a turn for the worse when I decided I was ready to eat something and made everyone halt and bow to my whims. I ended up getting a small bowl of haluski, which seemed like an OK choice as far as keeping my stomach lining primed and at the ready for vigorous riding.  (And yes, finally I’m talking about sex!)  Besides, it was either that or throw away 16 years of vegetarianism for some unidentifiable meat on a stick. There was some lame square dance bullshit happening inside the 4H building, so we all sat around and pretended to care about that while I ate. (Lisa really did care, though. She likes the simpler things in life.) This was about the time Chooch turned into the biggest prick of all the fair, and Blake did nothing but antagonize him which only increased Chooch’s crowd-drawing by 500%.

I attempted to not look like I belonged to the two of them by focusing my attention on the asshole inside the 4H building who was singing the most ridiculous square dance songs for these idiotic plaid-tastic children to clomp around to. I almost wished he had CDs for sale so I could buy one and break it in front of his face. God, get fucked with your pathetic farm melodies, douchebag square dance warbler.

In the middle of the Chooch & Blake: American Assholes show, there was an older lady sitting nearby (the blond Peg Bundy in the background of the above picture) who said about Chooch, “Boy he sure is cute” but what she meant to say was, “Damn, child. Your mama needs to put you in a cage because you are acting like one hell of a mother fucker.” And then to me, she said, “We just ate some fried Oreos for dessert. Boy they sure were good!” and what she meant by that was, “Bitch, why don’t you go to the other side of the fairgrounds, far away from me, and choke your bastard child on some fried Oreos, because he is being one hell of a mother fucker.”

Chooch flipped over a chair in response while I pretended that Janna was his mom.

The square dance brigade had some young child canvassing the area with literature. He approached me with his stack of white and green papers and said, “Would you like one, they’re free?”

“I want a green one,” I said with just the right drop of bitchy entitlement. He looked slightly stunned, like no one had ever bothered to make a color request before. While he shuffled through the stack in search of a green one, I said smugly, “It’s my birthday.”

Lisa and Janna were watching this pan out. Lisa looked mildly amused and Janna looked like she was bracing herself for the ‘splaining she was going to have to do to the kid’s mom by the time I was done antagonizing him. This is just how I talk to children: in a very demeaning, ironic way. They seem to like it.

Meanwhile, the guy who was inside singing the square dance “songs” promised “this next one” would “speed up.”

“You should join our square dance group!” He sounded nervous, slightly intimidated by me. Just how I like boys to be.

“I’ll think about it,” I said, as I folded up the paper. (The age limit is 20, by the way. THAT KID RULES FOR THINKING I’M NOT OLDER THAN 20.)

“This next one” still hadn’t “sped up.”

“Dylan!” a lady called from inside the 4H house. “Come dance to this last song!” Sure, maybe there was some plaid lass inside who missed being partnered-up with Dylan, but I have suspicions that this lady just didn’t want him near me anymore.

“Yeah!” I yelled in my best “I’m riding the Wacky Worm, motherfuckers!” impression and when he looked at me all startled-like, I gave him a thumbs-up and said, “Do it! Wooo!“

Lisa hadn’t heard the lady call for him in the first place, and admitted later that she thought I was just spontaneously excited, though she was confused why I was telling some young boy to “do it.”

Then I called Dylan my “new son” and Chooch got all upset. I win at parenting.

I have no recollection of Henry being anywhere near us that whole time.

Oh apparently he was off supporting his cocaine habit.

I told Dylan I was going to watch him, but that was actually the time we rose up as a group and went to the petting zoo. Fucking with children is the one true talent your God gave me.

Here is all I remember about the petting zoo: I relayed my birthday woes to a camel and then Chooch fell in a pig sty and Henry had to take him and Blake home.

Coincidentally, my night really picked up after that! Janna bought me root beer in a tin mug from an old broad who tried too hard to sway our decisions and Lisa and I rode the Gravitron with the cast of Jersey Shore. It was fabulous!

Lisa encourages me to take pictures of every little thing she does. She’s like Chooch, but grown.

The only downside to the Fair: After Hours (read: After the Douches Left) was that neither Lisa nor Matt would ride the Zipper with me. I was only able to ride it once, earlier in the day before Blake’s desire to drink a glass of Metamucil and take a nap got the best of him. We talked a little bit about music while trapped inside the Zipper’s jaws, but I could tell he wasn’t having too much fun.

Everyone is growing up but me.

Janna, Lisa and I rode this moderate thrill ride called the Tornado, which is pretty tame but Janna was still clutching her rosary and trying not to re-eat her haluski while Lisa manually spun our car around on top of giving Janna dating advice. My favorite part was when the ride ended and Lisa’s safety bar didn’t release. She pulled it toward her, hoping it would spring back, but it only made it tighter. I fetched the carny and then ran away to stand outside of the ride’s gate by Matt, who had been relegated to little more than a Purse Tree at that point.

The carny gave Lisa a hard time for awhile before manually releasing the bar for her. As she and Janna approached Matt and me, Lisa yelled, “And I love how Erin just ran away!”

Behind her, looking a gorgeous shade of gangrene from her jaunt on the Tornado, Janna irritably mumbled, “Yeah. She does that.” Possibly Janna’s way of suggesting that Lisa spends more time with me.

Janna bought* me a birthday ice cream cone from a girl who had been punched in the eye. Lisa opted for more scatastically phallic fare. Then we said goodbye to the fair and immediately upon leaving the parking lot, Janna’s GPS lured us out onto un-lit backwoods lanes and I’m not going to lie: It was scarier than riding the Zipper in a lightning storm with the cage unlatched. This was after Janna got raped by a bug.

(* This mostly happened because when Henry left the fair, so did my money.)

Happy fucking birthday to me, to me, to me.

Now that Chooch’s online schooling is in full effect, things have gotten more interesting during STAYATHOME, especially when we both have to be on calls at the same time. For instance, two weeks ago when I was trying to do a WebEx with a coworker in Chicago just as Chooch had to join a call with his Gifted Center sculpting class.

“I dunno, I guess he has to make something out of things found around the house,” I explained to Vicki as Chooch scoffed in irritation at me and took his call onto the back porch.

Somehow, this turned into a partner-project, because Chooch is just as helpless as me but when we join forces, we can sort of get things done, leaving about 75% of the rest “for Dad.” I remembered that I had a container of craft bullshit under my bed which also happens to contain a bunch of serial killer cut-outs from when I used to handmake my serial killer cards back in the day. So out of everything in that container, Chooch came down with a picture of Ted Bundy’s head and a piece of white foam paper.

“I’m going to make a white VW with Ted Bundy inside,” Chooch said with a shrug. And then added, “I know that’s the exact car he drove because I watched that Ted Bundy movie.”

And he watched that movie because way back in Week One of Isolation, when I still had energy and motivation and tried to make a school schedule for him, one of MOMMY’S ASSIGNMENTS was to watch a documentary. “Can’t I just watch this Zac Efron Ted Bundy movie? That’s kind of like a documentary” and I gave in pretty easily because I had my own shit to do. BUT SEE?! It ended up having value! My teaching skills are on point, you guys.

He grabbed the box that my vintage lightswitch plate was shipped in, thinking he could use that as a shadowbox-type thing. I found a pair of never-used chopsticks from Noodles & Co (we have an entire drawer full of good chopsticks that we use!), so I flung those at him and shrugged. You never know!

I was sitting at the desk, working, during all of this when I noticed a toy T-Rex that I had spray-painted gold years ago when I was making dinosaur ring-holders (I go through phases) was standing in front of me so I tossed that at him and said, “Here, you can use this too.”

Then he found out that the project was actually a mobile, so the chopsticks were perfect after all! And he decided for a third item to make a model of the coronavirus out of clay and thus, the Dangerous Things mobile was born.

Of course, he left everything in an unfinished heap on the table for a week until late Thursday night when he pulled Henry out of bed because he needed help attaching the mobile to the top of the box, lol. Henry was so happy to help, as always!

Everything was all well and good after that. He snapped a picture and posted it to the classroom message board or whatever it is that they’re using, thinking that would be the end of it.

But then the next day, he had another group call, which turned into a VIDEO CALL so that everyone could share and explain their projects. We both started panicking because he didn’t really put much effort into this and now he was going to have to be like “say hello to Ted Bundy” and I don’t know this teacher and sometimes I really don’t think like a real mother when I’m like, “YES THESE ARE GREAT IDEAS THAT ARE NOT CONTROVERSIAL OR PROBLEMATIC AT THE VERY LEAST FOR 13-YEAR-OLDS, DO IT! HERE’S A SEVERED FINGER THAT YOU CAN ADD TOO!”

I sat there, trying to work, while listening to this call happening behind me, and this one totally suck-up kid was like HERE IS THIS DELIGHTFUL MOBILE THAT I MADE FOR MY MOTHER FOR MOTHER’S DAY of stfu are you kidding me, that’s an instant A. Art teachers lap that shit-milk up!

Chooch and I exchanged horrified looks.

“I can’t show this” he said at the same time I said, “You can’t show that.”

But then some other kid went after that and her’s was just like, a string of crumbled crepe paper so I said, “OK look – yours is better than that one so I guess just go ahead and show it” and he was like, “Christ.” But he did it and I had to get up and walk away at one point because I couldn’t stop laughing.

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I had stopped recording right as she said, “Well Riley, I’ve gotta say, this is really unique and creative, the most unique one yet” which, I have to say, as his mom, it felt like she was saying that to me and I did the Champion Fist Shake over both shoulders right there at my makeshift work desk.

Oh man, that was a great moment which made up for all the trash moments during the earlier parts of the week.

I wish his old art teacher at his regular school could see it. She was such a bitch to him.

Later that day, the teacher sent everyone their project evaluations and instead of being pleased that he earned a 25/25, all he could fixate on was that said that she loved “Jeffrey Dahmer in his car” and Chooch flipped out and was like OK BUT IT WAS TED BUNDY.

Hi guys! I’m up bright and early to tell you about the readathon I joined for May! May, as some might know, is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, and in honor of that Cindy from Read With Cindy has created a month-long readathon to get people inspired to read books written by Asian authors, includes Asian characters, or has some kind of Asian content.

Now more than ever with pandemic-fueled xenophobia and hate crimes happening all around, it’s important to show our Asian community some love and solidarity—which obviously should be happening on the daily and not just for a singular month—and this is a really great and fun way to not only support Asian authors, but also learn more about cultures and heritages that differ from our own, which is a huge reason why I gravitate to books written by POC in general. So when I found out about this readathon via Booktube, I was ALL IN. Henry and Chooch were like, “Oh my god, get out of her way.”

There are prompts/challenges that you can follow, or you can just be like me and compulsively add all of the Asian authors to your To Be Read shelf that are available!

I will post Cindy’s explanation video here, but I also wanted to list the books I chose, mostly to hold myself accountable to actually reading them but also to give some inspiration and recommendations to anyone considering maybe picking up one or two for themselves – come on, you know you want to get in on this!

The books that I currently have available, all queued up and ready to go:

• Miracle Creek – Angie Kim (Korean American; currently reading)
• Hotel Iris – Yoko Ogawa (Japanese; currently reading)
• Life – Lu Yao (Chinese)
• Braised Pork – An Yu (Chinese)
• The Girl in the Tree – Sebnem Isiguzel (Turkish)
• My Year of Meats – Ruth Ozeki (Japanese)
• I Believe in a Thing Called Love – Maurene Goo (Korean American)
• A Thousand Beginnings and Endings – multi-genre anthology of short stories by modern YA authors of Asian heritage.
• The Book of M – Peng Shepherd (Indian/American)
• Tiny Pretty Things – Sona Charaipotra (Indian)
• This Time Will Be Different – Misa Sugiura (Japanese American)
• Your House Will Pay – Steph Cha (Korean American)
• The Stationery Shop – Marjan Kamali (Iranian)
• Rebel Seoul – Axie Oh (Korean American)

Ones I have on hold:

• I Love You So Mochi – Sarah Kuhn (Japanese)
• Anna K – Jenny Lee (Korean American)
• Kim Jinyoung, Born 1982 – Cho Nam-Joo (Korean)
• Do Not Say We Have Nothing – Madeleine Thien (Chinese Canadian)
• In Order to Live – Yeonmi Park (Korean)
• Wrath & the Dawn – Renee Ahdieh (Korean American)
• Written in the Stars – Aisha Saeed (Pakistani American)
• Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line – Deepa Anappara (Indian, this one has like a 7 week wait so I likely won’t have it in time for the readathon, sadly)

Here’s a handy document of Asian authors and books that Cindy and others have compiled to give you that nudge you might need. 

And finally, here’s Cindy’s explanatory video:

If you’re thinking of participating, let me know! Maybe we can buddy-read one of these books together?!