It was the epitome of “Indian summer” here in Pittsburgh over the weekend, so I tried to spend as much time as possible outside because pretty soon, every blog post is going to start with my signature whines and cries of OMG I HATE WINTER EVERYTHING IS GROSS AND COLD. Gotta soak up the sun while it’s still radiating warmth, you know?

I haven’t gone to the cemetery by myself in a hot ass minute so while Henry was doing chores at home, I headed off to my favorite boneyard, Uniondale, armed with an audio book (“Night Swim”) and head mercifully empty of negative thoughts and impending doom and gloom for once (this probably won’t last long but I was still basking in election afterglow).

I was really enjoying my quiet time when some utility-esque truck rolled up and two guys got out. One of them was wearing Henry clothes (ugly pants with ugly shirt) so I could tell he was some sort of maintenance worker man….I mean, the walkie talkie in his pocket was also telling. We exchanged pleasantries the first time we passed each other but then when he walked past me on another part of the trail, I kept my eyes on the ground because one hello is enough, you know? We’re established now. Let’s not get carried away.

I’m obsessed with chonky tree trunks.

In my perfect world, spring would start at the beginning of February and go until the beginning of June. Summer would be June to the end of August. Autumn (and I mean true autumn/sweater weather, every day between 50-60 degrees and leaves staying yellow and red through the whole season) would be September until mid-December. Winter/Shitty Days would be mid-December through January. That way all those OMG SNOW YAY weirdos can have their moment, too, I guess. But in my world, winter HAS NO GRAY SKIES. Every single winter day has got to have blue skies and sun.

And all amusement parks stay open with all rides running because the temperature will never dip low enough to render coasters inoperable.

After cruising around the cemetery for a bit, it became clear that the worker guys were not leaving anytime soon (I think they were just doing a sweep of the grounds?) so I cut across the street and walked around the other part of the cemetery. Uniondale is divided into three sections by streets so it seems like there are three separate cemeteries in that area but they’re all the same. I definitely prefer the one I started out at because it’s more secluded and less likely to have other people there. Not on this day though!

But then in this part of the cem, a tree cutting service was loafin’ all up on one of the paths!!

I mean, doesn’t this just look like the perfect November day? Except that it was like 70 degrees!

I didn’t encounter anyone in this cemetery (not sure where those pesky tree cutters were), but once I went back to the other section, I ran into that walkie talkie again and he STRUCK UP A CONVERSATION WITH ME so I had to hold up a finger while I paused my damn audiobook and I’m all for exchanging pleasantries, but we had already done that! Anyway, he started interrogating me on my walking habits.

“You walk a lot?” he asked, and I said yes and then he said, “About how much?” and I’m like, “I mean….every day?”

Like, did he want actual stats? Should I add him on FitBit?

“‘Cause I seen you walking here, and then I seen you walking all the way over there on the other side, too!” he said, pointing over at the cemetery on the other side of the street.

I mean, I get around, I guess. Oh, those trusty feet o’ mine.

“You come here every Sunday or something?” he pressed and now I was getting concerned even though it’s always been my dream to get picked up in a cemetery, you know, but the “you come here often?” line? Really?

I mumbled something about coming here every now and then, and then awkwardly veered onto another path so I wouldn’t have to keep walking with him.

Luckily, there was a couple chilling nearby in the grass with their dog, so I wasn’t like, fearing for my life or anything.

LIKE I WAS THIS ONE TIME!!

Then I came home.

Later in the afternoon, I threw a fit because it was still so beautiful out and I wanted to have family fun time and also get ice cream to celebrate, you know, election outcomes. We went to Bill’s in Elizabeth and they REALLY SKIMPED ON THE CRUNCHIES.

Chooch had to walk away once Henry reached the cone part of the ice cream experience. Chooch REALLY HATES mouth sounds.

Then we went to a playground in Cedar Creek park!

It took us a billion tries to get this picture! It was like a really sad tuba consolation since we haven’t been able to add to our collection of traditional family carousel selfies this year.

I couldn’t stop laughing because Henry & Chooch accidentally matched, lol.

Then we got stuck behind a pickup truck with a Trump flag billowing it like a visual fart, and we were making really exaggerated barfing noises but then I was like, “wait…did that flag say Trump 2024??” Like, they already knew that the big orange crybaby was going to lose and had a 2024 flag on standby?

Anyway, we had a lot of fun walking on the trail, and Henry was especially excited when he heard A REMOTE CONTROL TOY JET that someone was flying in the distance. Chooch and I were like, “That’s not that great.”

On the way back to the car, we saw a bald eagle! Chooch was like, “This feels symbolic…”

We got a new president AND Taemin in a cropped sweater in the same week, I am feeling so well-fed and blessed.

I actually almost (ALMOST) forgot this was dropping today because I have been so consumed and obsessed with election stuff and trolling Trump’s voter fraud hotline and laughing at Four Seasons Total Landscaping memes but then I woke up early to go to my gum doctor follow-up appointment and screamed OH SHIT, NEW TAEMIN!! So I had glorious music to listen to on the way there and back, thank you Taemin.

Then I came home and made Henry (he’s off all week!) watch the MV and then he said, “I want to hear the song with Wendy (from Red Velvet)” and I dunno why this was so hilarious to me but it was so I laughed because everything is funny when you just had a weight lifted from your heart that had been consistently compounding for four years.

Have a wonderful Monday, friendos!

(How can I upgrade my current Taemin cutout to one of him in that white cropped sweater holy shit.)

Got this image from Twitter, credit unknown!

I didn’t realize how much stress and anxiety I had been carrying until this moment, when so much of it came melting off me like Tammy Faye Baker’s makeup during a good spiritual cry.

This country is so broken and it’s going to need a lot more than this to fix it, but hey – at least we know which of our neighbors and relatives are racists now, if we hadn’t already.

I cut a friend out of my life this year because of their flagrant disdain toward the BLM movement so in a way, thanks for enabling people to show their true colors, Trump.

I’m looking forward to not having to spend holidays with my Trumper family members this year, that’s for sure. Also looking forward to having a president I can respect again, and not being embarrassed to be an American.

Let’s show the world that we can be a team player again!

Need a musical distraction from this anxiety-inducing vote-counting spectator sport?

Because the new CL single is everything.

I love it when a Queen comes back.

OK, carry on. Let’s hope that the orange toddler-tyrant will soon be officially named the loser that we always knew he was.

I’m not gonna front: when quarantine first happened, I was like,  “You know what? I’m OK with this.” Because honestly, I don’t really hang out with friends all that often anyway and sometimes I just plain don’t like obligations, you know? Like sometimes, if I had plans and then the other person bailed last minute, I would sometimes get that OH THANK GOD weight lifted from my chest. I don’t know, I have two personalities: one’s an extrovert and the other hates people, and they are always at war.

But you know what I miss? House parties. OK, that sounds much cooler than I intended, but I mean literally just little get-togethers at my house and not just because that means Henry will clean REAL GOOD beforehand and we have lots of snacks, but because it’s always cozy having a houseful of my favorites.

So I was like, “I wonder when the last game night was….” and shoot you guys, it was nearly FIVE YEARS AGO. Blake and Haley didn’t even have children yet! Chooch still had pink in his hair! OBAMA WAS STILL OUR PRESIDENT AND THE 4-YEAR NIGHTMARE HADN’T STARTED YET!

(Also, now that I’m strolling down Game Night memory lane, it’s no wonder Chooch has always gotten along better with adults than kids his own age: he grew up playing age-inappropriate games with all of my friends!)

Anyway, here’s the last game night that ever was. Maybe I will have another as soon as we’re able to go into people’s houses again (I mean, I know some people don’t give a shit and are having gatherings galore, but just to be clear: we’re still social distancing and not attending parties.)

OK, back to obsessively watching election coverage.

****

Rise & Shine! It’s Game Night!

January 2016

Party People

• Kara
• Corey
• Chris and Monica
• Blake and Haley
• Aaron and Erica (I think — drinking does not allow me to remember names)
• JANNA – WHO WAS THE LAST ONE TO ARRIVE

In my quest to be more social, and to satiate Chooch’s constant desire to play games, I planned a small game night for January 23rd. The theme was BREAKFAST FOODS, because God forbid I should just have a regular game night and let my friends bring a simple bag of Fritos. I had big hopes and aspirations for this game night: a waffle bar! some type of OJ punch! egg things!

But this before I knew we were getting a kitten(s).

So instead of an elaborate spread fit for the gods of the A.M., Henry half-assedly churned out ONE VARIATION of waffle (PLAIN) and made some crappy chili chicken dip to meet the “savory” quota, leaving me to my own devices to come up with other dips.

I went with the exotic Nutella; the opulent purple Funfetti frosting straight from a can; and a maple fluff worthy to coat the gullet of the worlds most renowned gourmands.

A/K/A maple syrup mixed with Marshmallow Fluff.

Thank god for my back-up plan: CAP’N CRUNCH PARTY MIX. And no I didn’t use a recipe! Instead, I concocted it in my head, at work, and bounced ideas off of Glenn.

“What else should I put in my Cap’n Crunch party mix?” I asked him.

“What all have you got so far?”

“….Cap’n Crunch.”

“……”

A day later, I shouted, “PEANUTS! Peanuts would go good in a Capn Crunch party mix, right?”

“Sure,” Glenn mumbled.

In the end, I went with honey roasted peanuts, pretzels, and then I attempted to drizzle white chocolate over it but newsflash: I don’t know how to drizzle white chocolate, so it wound up hardening very quickly and then I decided to just go with white chocolate clumps.

“I like how some of the pretzels have white chocolate on them,” Chris said in a very complimentary manner which I greatly appreciated.

“Thanks! I did that myself. They’re HAND-CRAFTED.” I literally was so angry at the white chocolate that I started smashing mounds of it against the pretzels as a form of torture. I showed you, white chocolate.

Then I dumped a bunch of sprinkles on it. Then I made Henry go and buy me chocolate chips, and hooray, that shit was happy to be drizzled.

It worked. This shit was teeth-rottening divine.

Keeping with my staunch theme of breakfast foods only, Kara brought delicious chocolate-filled croissants and mini muffins; Chronica brought monkey bread which we were all eagerly awaiting since they texted me a picture of it and my phone promptly got passed around; and JANNA WHO WAS LATE brought a French toast casserole. She was late because the casserole was still in the oven when game night was scheduled to start and I was like, “WHY DID YOU WAIT SO LONG TO PUT IT IN THE OVEN THEN JANNA.”

Whatever, it was really good even though she was an hour late.

And when Blake arrived with his posse, he was carrying a bottle in a bag and I thought to myself, “Oh my god, Blake is like an actual adult now! He brought something to game night!”

YEAH, A BOTTLE OF MAD DOG FOR HIMSELF!

We played Taboo first, because I forgot until the last minute that our Catchphrase broke a long time ago and we never replaced it, because why would we ever think to replace my FAVORITE GAME NIGHT game. Taboo is basically almost the same game but it just doesn’t feel right in my hands.

Game Night: Round One was kind of utter pandemonium because Janna spiked her casserole with Robitussin and some of us couldn’t seem to grasp the “every other person is on your team” concept and Chooch threw a fit at one point and there were close to four separate conversations going on while the person holding Taboo was shouting out clues and then Corey kept hitting the wrong button and Kara looked like she was about to lose her fucking mind.

However, there was a highlight! And that was when it was Henry’s turn and all he said was, “Erin has one…”

My mind reeled. I have many things! What was a thing that I have?! A complex? An estranged mother?

Meanwhile, Monica was already calmly suggesting, “A blog.”

First guess. And she was right!

This was right before Kara ripped off her face to reveal the Directionator. LISTEN TO HER READ THE DIRECTIONS AND FOLLOW ALONG, PEOPLE. Together, we can all get through it.

This is the first time I didn’t take a picture of my dumb beverage buffet. I made a punch that was supposed to be a screwdriver but it wasn’t (the recipes on Smirnoff’s website are lamer than your average lifestyle blogger) so I changed the name to Good Morning Punch. It was OK. Nothing fancy like you’d typically expect at my ragers.

Corey and I made Janna tell her harrowing tale of Robitussin codependency, like this was a surprise intervention. No one laughed nearly as hard as Corey and I did, if at all.

The last game we played was Likewise, and I was on a team with Erica (really hope that’s her name). She chose wisely because we dominated. If her name really is Erica though, I sincerely regretted naming ourselves the A+ Team when E² was the clear choice. We did butt heads a quick second though when the prompt was “something unusual at the beach” and I wrote down “Igloo” because hello, that’s unusual. We had a slight argument about it but I got way and no one ended up getting any points for that round anyway, soooooo.

The last question was beautiful singer or something and I was trying to send ESP waves to Henry and Corey so that they would write down Robert Smith but they kept smirking at me confusedly, so we ended up going with the obvious choice of Justin Bieber, matched two other teams, and FUCKING WON.

BECAUSE THAT’S ALL I DO IS WIN.

And we all lost at Cards Against Humanity to a nine-year-old*, and then Chris taught Chooch how to crochet while Monica tried to get us to guess “Janna fondling breasts coated with Robitussin” during some late night charades.

*(To be fair, Monica tied with him.)

The end.

Hello. Checking in. How are you? Numb? Optimistic? Drunk? Like maybe you’re finally waking up from a four year nightmare? Chooch and I have been so on edge (Henry is ambivalent as always). Like, all day I kept calling Henry and screaming things like DO YOU THINK BIDEN COULD REALLY TAKE MICHIGAN AND WISCONSIN and he’d just be like *noncommittal grunt*. I wanted to reach through the phone and shake him!

Like, YOU WERE IN THE SERVICE, DUDE! PLEASE CARE ABOUT YOUR COUNTRY, YOU MILQUETOAST FAKE PATRIOT!

But Chooch has been my little election buddy. He kept running downstairs in between his classes, yelling things like, “IF BIDEN CAN WIN *INSERT STATE*, HE’LL WIN 11 POINTS!” Because when you look at it like it’s a video game with a score, what teenager WOULDN’T be interested? Also, Chooch fucking hates Trump’s guts, so he’s pretty invested in this. I didn’t care about politics at all when I was his age, but also, we didn’t have a president as fucked up as the one we have now (but hopefully not for much longer).

Anyway, now it’s much later at night and I’m a lot calmer.

How are you? You good? Hanging in there? Need some cat pictures? I gotchu.

Our cats fucking love these stupid holiday cat scratchers that Target is always schilling to us crazy cat families. We never put away the one that we got them last Christmas, so Chooch connected them and now they have a Christmas villa.

They were upset at first because they REALLY like the Halloween hotel one that we bought them earlier this fall, but then we showed them that it was just moved to Chooch’s bedroom so now they’re happy again.

(They REALLY love these things!

)

Penelope has resting bitch face. She’s actually the sweetest cat ever.

I mean, no really.

Henry still hasn’t finished the coffee table. Don’t even get me started. But he’s off all next week and I have a TO DO list all scribbled out for him. He doesn’t accrue any PTO at Erin Appledale Inc.

Well, I’m off to, I dunno, do late night Pilates or something before camping out on the couch all night again, with CNN on in the background, waking me up every hour in a fucking panic. I mean, that’s not what I did last night or anything.

I woke up this morning and like probably most Americans, vomited over the side of my bed into my Victorian chamber pot. Presidential elections should not incite these kinds of full-body emotional meltdowns.

After eating breakfast which I couldn’t even taste because even my palate is numb I guess, I started watching The Unicorn on Netflix because I needed a mediocre American family sitcom with short episodes to keep me from my thoughts. It was ok! I will probably continue watching season 1 and then wind up getting attached only for it to get canceled.

Now it’s 10am. I spent the first hour of my work day not being able to log on and waiting for the help desk to, you know, help. That really added a few BPMs to my Election Day heart rate.

But I would like to take a moment here to show you the gallery wall in my “office area/dining room” which henry helped me achieve. It took a lot longer than you’d think but it was worth it to have happy images in front of me all day!

The desktop background of the computer is also a picture from Seoul so it blends right in, see also: what is obsession?

Probably 75% of the frames were purchased at various Goodwills and thrift shops for this very purpose but it also resulted in Henry crying out, “WHAT THE FUCK SIZE EVEN IS THIS? THEY DON’T MAKE PHOTOS THIS SIZE!!” more than once and then we learned that something happened to Henry’s brain somewhere along the way and he can no longer “do measuring” so every time we had photos printed, there would be like 3 that suddenly didn’t fit into any of the frames, so that was the catalyst to several spats, lol, noooo not Henry and me, we NEVER argue.

Way before we started to redo the dining room, I had the idea to do a gallery wall with frames that matched our dining room table chairs, and then that turned into, “but we should also paint that wall” which turned into, “Well just one painted wall is dumb guess we should do the whole room” which turned into, “Wait, put stripes on this part of the wall” which turned into, “let’s just make the room completely unrecognizable because, corona.” All in all, it’s comforting to me and makes working from home less sucky!

I saw these little clipboard frames at Michaels and felt they would be perfect to fill up the smaller gaps while displaying travel ephemera like ticket stubs and metro cards. I was way too excited about this and Henry was like *ambivalent nod of semi-approval-ish*.

Boarding pass from Incheon to Tokyo and bus ticket to Ildong from when we went to stay at G-Dragon’s pension!

Instant coffee from our hotel in Busan!

I’m obsessed with the one of the palace guards.

Now it’s 10:30 which also turns out is PUZZLE TIME and the cats are HERE FOR IT.

We all need distracted. Currently looking for Obama coffee mugs.

I started a HELP ME UGHHHHH email chain with several work friends and now we’re talking about stress-eating Mad Mex and that sounds like a great idea except that on Election Night 2016, we went to a nearby Mexican restaurant and I will never forget how sick I felt with  both a plate of enchiladas and a giant TV screen displaying polling results in front of me. We know the outcome of THAT election, so now I’m afraid that getting Mexican food again will jinx it, ughhhhh what to do.

11:30. Do I have the attention span to start an audiobook to help me get through the work day? I’m not sure. Everything fucking sucks. My brain is full of thought marbles.

It’s 1:17. I just ate a bagel and a sad Boca burger for lunch. It was unfulfilling. Everything is sad today.

3:33 now and I’m just numb-ish. Chooch and I went for a walk during my lunch break. I returned two books that I DNF’d (TWO DNFs!! Who even am I?!) and then we did our usual stroll about Brookline, critiquing people’s landscaping. I have two hours left of work, which has been OK and since several people are off today, I’m providing backup for some things that I haven’t done in a while so it’s kind of giving me a fresh outlook, in a way, and also sort of keeping me distracted but now Henry is home and he hasn’t voted yet and I am practically about to shove him in a wheelbarrow and push him across the street to our polling place.

OK he just left to do his civil duty! Godspeed American Hank.

4:40: My friend Nate and I are chatting about thirst traps so this feels more like a normal Tuesday now.

Sort of.

Guys, did I tell you that YG Entertainment officially confirmed that THE KING, THE LEGEND, KWON JIYONG-SSI, G-DRAGON, GD, is finally working on a comeback?? That’s the pillow that I’m screaming into today.

Speaking of G-Dragon, this older Mino song came on our Spotify playlist over the weekend and it made me miss Taeyang and BIGBANG in general so much that it felt like I had the air knocked out of me.

6:30: I sat down to watch more episodes of The Unicorn and now that Henry’s home, he usurped my personal space and started laughing too hard and saying things like WHO IS THAT GUY and WHAT SHOW IS THIS and like, go watch one of your dumb cop shows and back off my wholesome sitcom about a widower with super annoying friends, for gods sake.

Look, I can’t do this. My body is straight up sizzling. I think I’m going to get drunk and set things on fire. Hopefully we come out the other side of this with the outcome we want and this country needs.

Oh my god, BARF VOMIT GAG.

Welp, to use the most annoying phrase of all time this side of “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”:

IT IS WHAT IT IS.

Luckily, we’ve had, what, 7 months to get used to dashed plans and all the dusty nooks and crannies of our homes, so it wasn’t like Halloween was THE MOST DEPRESSING day of the year. And ironically, it managed to be one of the only Halloweens in recent years where I didn’t flip out over last minute costume malfunctions or the general concept of things not going my way.

God forbid.

I mean it was annoying when, for the second year in a row, Henry’s son took the kids trick or treating in some uppity suburban utopia which is whatever, but they live RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO US and couldn’t be troubled to bring the kids over for a second so we could at least see what they were dressed as. No, we instead had to find out the next day via Instagram. How fucking precious.

Oh well, they’re not even my actual grandkids so what do I care. It’s just outrageous how self-centered and oblivious that generation is. The one after the millennials. What are we calling that shit? Generation Z. Thanks, Google. Actually, looking at the dates, those two are actually the combined forces of Millennials AND Generation Z! No wonder why they have literally no life etiquette or courtesy. Or, as we call it in Korean, noonchi. 

It’s the 눈치 없다 generation.

I think Chooch was actually more upset about this than me, and Henry just shrugged it off entirely because Blake is just like him so he doesn’t really have the room to complain.

But whatever, on to better things.

Like Chooch’s costume!

We knew he most likely wasn’t going trick-or-treating this year (you know, being a big bad ninth grader and all), but it didn’t feel right not making a costume. I mean, nearly right up until the end I had begun to accept that my career as Halloween pageant mom really, truly was over.

“But Erin, you say that every year, etc etc.”

No, for real this time!

But then the damn VP debate happened and the fly nested in Pence’s helmet hair for a hilariously long amount of time, and the Internet went nuts over it, and I started screaming CHOOCH, WE HAVE A COSTUME!

We bought him a gaming computer a few weeks ago so he is pretty much at our mercy, at least for the next couple of months. So he was like, “Yes, ma’am that surely seems like a great costume idea and I will happily wear it.”

It also ended being one of the cheapest costumes we’ve made, as well! Those glasses were $5, the ski mask was from Henry’s work, the wings are made from wire hangers and wax paper, Pence’s face is made from cardboard we already had, and a few sheets of foam paper that came to like, $5. Oh, and the pipe cleaners were about $3, if even that. And Henry probably used a Michaels coupon because he is a seasoned craft store shopper.

Man, we just couldn’t help ourselves.

And yes, I made sure to give Pence pink eyes since his eyeballs were basically bleeding during that debate. What a gross man.

Most of the day, aside from costuming, was spent working on projects around the house and before we knew it, it was time for trick-or-treating to start. It wasn’t canceled or anything in our area, but we wanted to make sure it was safe on the off-chance anyone actually came to our house  (we live on a busy street so most of the kids tend to stay on the inner streets). I set up a bowl of candy on one of our wheelchairs and nestled a bottle of hand sanitizer next to it. We hid our Echo under a porch chair and had haunted house music playing all night which upset our cats bigly.

Last year, we only got one kid. This year, during a fucking pandemic, we got 4 groups! Plus the pizza delivery guy who I called back to the porch and forced to take some candy, lol.

Then we ate pizza and just chilled without having any arguments! It was actually a really nice, cozy Halloween in spite of the state of the world. Here’s hoping Trump gets voted the fuck out and we can get legit adults in the White House who will focus on working with the rest of the world to find a way to kill covid. Props to everyone who celebrated Halloween responsibly!

I woke up at 5:30 this morning for some unknown reason and the very first thing that popped into my head was “Versace wallet” which I haven’t thought about in along time since I don’t use it anymore because it just became too worn out serving me for a good 15 years (I bought it in Italy when I was in high school!).

(LOL @ “I” bought it. My aunt Sharon did.)

From there I thought about how UTTERLY OBSESSED I was with Gianni Versace when I was a teen in the 90s. Like most of my friends were into Devon Sawa (probably) and I was like “yeah but how about that Gianni Versace tho.”

I will never forget in a million years where I was when I learned of his murder: standing in the laundry room of my parents house, on the (landline!!) phone with Lisa, who had called me from the house she nannied at just to break the bad news to me. I remember sliding my back down the wall and landing in a fetal position on the floor, crying.

From there I thought about those kids Lisa nannied. What were their names? It was a boy and girl. Eventually, I remember their last name was Hayes. Couldn’t picture the mom but I remembered the dad. They never minded me hanging out over there while Lisa was nannying and we even used their house to film scenes for an English video. I vividly remember one of those scenes being a montage of Ken and Barbie with R Kelly’s Bump n’ Grind playing and I cannot for the life of me imagine what that could have possibly had to do with ANY English project we ever worked on together lol.

There was also a time over the summer of 1996 when we took the kids to Denny’s and I can vividly recall BLASTING “come on ride the train (and ride it)” and screaming along to it so I wonder what sort of lasting impression I had on those poor children.

From there I thought about Lisa going to college and the Hayes going the au pair route. One was Petra from Croatia and another was Jasmine from Australia but I can’t remember the order in which they arrived. They both had very short hair so it makes me wonder if Mr. Hayes had a “type.”* Anyway, I liked Petra better but Jasmine was nice too and what I remember the most about her is that she personally knew the singer from SAVAGE GARDEN, probably from school or something, I can’t remember now, but I used to tell people this for years like it was the biggest deal in the world that I knew someone who knew the chica cherry cola singer guy.

*Lisa had short hair too but I don’t think that happened until after she stopped nannying. Also I’m going to text Lisa today and see if she still talks to that family and/or any of the au pairs.

This is also how I learned at the age of 18 what an au pair was and I thought that was a really cool job and considered it briefly until literally everyone in my life pointed out that the main purpose would be taking care of children, not just living in someone’s house in another country. And yeah, ew.

Anyway!! Of course after I woke up this morning I had to dig out the ol’ Versace wallet (Chooch immediately tried to steal it) and it’s like a fucking time capsule. My goddamn learners permit is still in it, for God’s sake! I’m such a fucking pack rat when it comes to sentimental shit. Hopefully, empty pizza boxes and newspapers and general dirty refuse don’t become sentimental to me one day because it’s a slippery slope between innocent pack-ratting and hoarding, I’ll tell you that.

P.S. here is a picture I found of Jasmine during her au pair stint! This was from Lisa’s pre-birthday party dinner in 1998 at The Office Lounge (literally the only time we ever ate there and I honestly have no idea what prompted this). Me, Janna, Jasmine, and Lisa.

I remember there was this big-ass foam leprechaun hat for a St.Patrick’s Day Bailey’s promotion that was going on and I begged the waitress to let me have it and she was like, “OK” and then it moved around my house in various locations, always in the way, until Henry was finally like, “So can we throw this out?” one day and I was like, “Ugh fine” but to be fair, it was SUPER DECREPIT AND GROSS by then. So see? I’m able to be somewhat flexible in my pack-rat ways. Don’t you love when a blog post comes full circle??

 ETA: Lisa just replied to me and yes, she keeps in touch with the daughter and both of the au pairs but I was wrong: Petra is from Slovenia not Croatia. Now you can go about your day, knowing the answers to these pressing queries.