Last Saturday, I finally invited some peeps over to eat pizza and chill in the attic/game room/lounge/ WHAT SHOULD I CALL THIS ROOM. Chooch has basically rejected it so I guess it’s mine now and I can call it whatever I want! But no, please help me.

Anyway, Corey and Janna came over AND THEN WE HAD EXTRA SPECIAL GUESTS: CHRONICA!! Do you guys know how long it’s been since I have hung out with them? Definitely since before the pandy.

I shouldn’t have called it that. Why did I call it that.

Anyway, we ate so-so pizza (from fucking ANTONIO’S – I should have went with my gut and stuck with my ride-or-die Giovanni), talked x 100, and then played some trivia game. Well, everyone played the game but me because only 6 could play (according to Chooch) and I didn’t feel like it anyway SO THERE. Instead, I fucked around with my Party!Party! app, literally the only good thing that those A Beautiful Mess bitches ever produced.

So please, be enjoying some pictures of people in my [ATTIC TBD ROOM]!

First of all, it was delivered at less than room temp. It was NOT GOOD.

Henry has suddenly decided he wants to drink wine and bought a bunch of super sweet candy wine which is kind of cute because you know, Henry looks like he should be drinking port out of a tin can.

SRS PIZZA TALKS & CHEWS.

That trivia game was hilarious from a spectator’s POV. Janna had to read the questions for Chooch’s turns and he was getting SO MAD at her for not doing it fast enough. At one point, Janna cried, “OK YOU GUYS! I ACTUALLY AM SMART, YOU KNOW!”

Corey was waiting all week for this shot lol.

Chooch looking surly either because Janna was reading the questions or because his gimp knee had him trapped up there with a bunch of mildly-blitzed adults. OH DID I FORGET TO TELL YOU THAT CHRONICA BROUGHT POST MALONE WINE?!

Henry couldn’t see the card every time it was his turn to read the questions to Janna because I refused to turn the overhead light on (IT WOULD KILL THE MOOD). During one of the final rounds, Janna was prepared and held the flashlight of her phone over the card for him. She did it with such a heavy sigh, too!

One of my favorite parts of the night was when Janna calmly said, “My sister had a baby last week…..it’s NOT cute.” Classic Janna!

What a perfectly chaotic evening!!! We gotta do this again.

Here’s our Party!Party! reel lol:

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I have so many things to say about Toronto (THE GOOD THE BAD THE UGLY CRYING AT THE KPOP CONCERT) but I am still recovering because that’s what it is like when you road-trip in your 40s, I guess.

Also, my back fucking hurts, man. I can’t remember the last time it didn’t, though.

Ok so instead of doing a full recap right now, or writing about last weekend’s pizza party which I just realized I had forgotten about already because I guess that is also what it’s like to be in your 40s.

Before we left Toronto yesterday, we made a quick stop to Kensington Market for vegan baked goods but then also walked around a bit because we needed to find a toy-snack for Chooch (literally his response any time we ask if he wants something). There was some store with an array of goods from local vendors and at a glance I thought it was going to be your standard artisan soap bullshit but it was actually a pretty wide selection of stuff, some might even say SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE.

It was on the way to the register that I saw it.

I screamed.

I BET IT IS LIKE $7383!!! I said to myself.

BUT I HAVE TO HAVE IT!

I grabbed it with a tender touch and carried it gently over to Henry.

“I want it,” I hissed.

He gave me that disappointed frown-smirk mash-up that I hate so much.

“It’s only like $20USD!!”

Yeah I know – I couldn’t believe it was that cheap either!! Skull Studio is really underselling themselves.

Anyway, look who came home with me!!!

I need Henry to make me a small floating shelf over in Clown Corner for this babe. What should I name him?? I’m getting big Charlemagne vibes.

I’m fully obsessed with him. I GOT NO REGERTZ.

I’m starting a live blog just in case things heat up but so far, it’s just us in the car listening to WDVE and eating a pathetic Sheetz breakfast. (Mandarin orange slices in a cup and unbuttered toasted croissant for me; some gross meat stick and a cookie for Henry. Mm.)

It’s 10:13 and we’re in Erie, only Erie ugh. There is snow everywhere up here and I’m not used to it!! We had been having such mild weather in Pgh!

You haven’t missed anything aside from us having a heated argument over why I get emails for other Erin Kellys- I’m telling you, it has something to do with the dots in gmail addresses but Henry keeps saying it’s an issue with all the places that are sending emails to other Erin Kellys, for instance, one of them recently signed up with Duolingo and I kept getting her PRACTICE YOUR IRISH reminders so I UNSUBSCRIBED her and Henry blamed Duolingo.

I actually got annoyed that I snapped, “I AM ENDING THIS CONVERSATION NOW BC YOURE GOING TO MAKE ME BREAK SOMETHING” and bitch, it’d likely be his glasses.

10:46am: Literally if I didn’t start conversations we would just drive in silence forever. The only time Henry ever talks out of turn is to say something stupid like, “look at the plane” and I’m not going to look. I’m just not.

Now we’re arguing about the border already and we’re still like 60 miles from it. I said that he’s going to get all nervous and stammer like he does every time when they ask us what brings us to Canada (NEVER FORGET WHEN WE GOT SEARCHED BC HE WAS BEING SO SHIFTY) and he said, “IM SORRY BUT I WOULD PREFER TO BE IN CHARGE WHEN IT COMES TO TALKING TO AUTHORITIES BECAUSE GOD FORBID YOU SNAP OUT AND LAND US IN JAIL.”

Wow. Actually I did have a scenario play out while I was washing my hands in the GetGo bathroom back in Erie where the border person asks us why we’re going to Canada and Henry says “UH UM C-C-Concert” and when they ask who we’re seeing and Henry wipes the words “Kang Daniel” from his lips along with all of his panic perspiration, they go, “oh is that one of the members of BTS?” and I get out of the car and flip it over in rage.

That’s the scenario.

11:04am Ugh I just opened the Ticketmaster app to double check the start time for tonight and SAW THAT NCT DREAM TICKETS ARE GOING ON SALE THIS FRIDAY and now my nerves are sizzling. Please pray for me on Friday.

11:26am: pee stop at what used to be my fave rest area in NY but now everything but the convenience store is closed??!!

Struggled with the sink as per yuje.

11:55am: here we go!

Henry did it! That took less than 4 minutes total! We had a nice lady who asked us rapid fire questions, which Henry answered with hesitation yet somehow she felt that he wasn’t hiding explosives up his asshole so she said ENJOY and now here we are in Canada, eh.

1:07pm: at Odd Burger!! We chose the location in HAMILTON because I knew I couldn’t make it to Toronto without lunch.

ok what a great experience!! First of all the Odd Burger guy walked me through the whole menu when I excitedly blurted out ITS MY FIRST TIME HERE which wasn’t necessary but a nice touch! I made Henry add a tip because of that and he grumbled but did as I said.

Anyway, I made Henry order the Famous Burger because it’s what I really wanted but knew it would be too much. It’s supposed to be a vegan take on the Big Mac and I would say that they succeeded. That shit was GOOD and actually made me realize that I must miss McDonald’s on some subconscious level.

I ordered the Chikun Cordon Bleu because I can’t say no to fake chicken sandwiches.

It was like a 1/3 of the size of Henry’s burger but just right for me. The chicken was so crispy!! I really liked it a lot.

We also split an order of the wingalings with Korean sesame sauce and those were a delight (also the odd burger guy’s favorite menu item – he told me so while Henry was in the bathroom; we really had such a great, deep convo).

Ugh I wish Pgh had anything like this. Pgh sucks.

We’re back on the road and Henry just said that he liked the wings. “The sauce was good too.”

“IT’S MADE IN HOUSE,” I screamed and Henry said, “Yes you told me that like three times already.”

Sorry. That was my big takeaway from the personalized tour I got of the menu.

2:58pm: at hotel. Should I wear this to Kang Daniel?? It’s very cold out and this is cozy. I’m leaning toward YEA vs NAY.

4:45pm: fought for an hour, parked near the venue, took a subway, and now we’re on a streetcar. Henry is on my last nerve.

6:12pm: we’re at Fresh having apps before Kang Daniel because everything else was an epic disaster (fine, hyperbole) but nothing worked out so we came back to where we started (LONG STORY SHORT) and Henry is still annoying but at least Fresh is nice. Gonna post this now because it’s almost time to get in line for Kang Daniel who will undoubtedly save this dreadful evening.

Now that Henry doesn’t have any pressing home projects to finish (well, except for the Seoul subway sign which he is finally able to resume work on now that the attic is done!), and the weather was so nice, we spent a leisurely afternoon out of the house (Chooch didn’t come with us because of the whole “Can’t Walk” thing but truth be told, he likely wouldn’t have come with us anyway because of the whole “Teenage Boy” thing).

Originally, we were just going to go for a walk at the cem, but then I wanted to go to Sugarspell Scoops even though we didn’t partake in the pint preorder, because they were doing a limited run of a special flavor paired with a Limousine Beach flexi disc and I wanted it. I wanted it bigly.

On the way to the cem though, I screamed, “WHAT IS THAT” as we drove past a storefront called VENDOR BENDOR and I caught a glimpse of the writing underneath that spelled out something about INTERNATIONAL SNACKS IN VENDING MACHINES. Henry made a quick turn and found a parking spot right next to it because we are not the types of people to pass up the opportunity to splurge on int’l snacks.

We spent entirely too long there and then only got 5 things lol.

I’m pretty well-versed when it comes to Asian snacks, but I have to admit that I’m not very knowledgeable about IRISH treats, but I have heard of Tayto because it’s also the name of an Irish amusement park! (Well, it was up until 2022 and then the sponsorship ran out so now it will be renamed, which means the POTATO MAN MASCOT will probably also be retired and now I’m sad that I didn’t make it there in time to experience this.)

Anyway, all of this is to say that we got the cheese & onions Taytos and I am a fan, sign me up for the club, here are my dues.

Um, those Big Foots are also straight up magic. The Korean sweet potato treats were delicious as expected but the UK Monster Munch thing was not that good.

Then it was cemetery time!

Henry was being annoying.

I was so excited because after years and years and years of the mausoleum being locked to the public, it was open! We were walking by and I noticed that for the first time in years, there wasn’t a sign on the door instructing people to go to the office for visitation access so we tentatively tried the door and BAM, ACCESS. I got to pee inside the mausoleum like old times!!

THAT NATURAL MAUSOLEUM WINDOW LIGHT, THO.

Then Henry took this dumb picture of me.

Last stop: Sugarspell! I didn’t get anything to eat right then because I knew I’d get a stomachache, but we got a sundae for Chooch (actually it was a banana split-type thing and in his text to Henry, he said, “Make sure they give me a banana” because one time Henry got a sundae there that was supposed to have a banana and Amanda (we’re on a first name basis with the owner, *blows on nails*) forgot to put the banana in it and then realized it later and was like OMG and I was like “who cares, it’s just Henry” and she was like NO I HAVE TO MAKE THIS RIGHT so the next time Henry went in, she gave him a random banana and now it’s like a thing and I thought that Chooch was just being CHEEKY (lol I have never used that word IRL before, only just when I do Austin Powers cosplay in your nightmares) but when we came home, he said, “No. I was being serious. I didn’t want them to forget my banana.”

Wow. OK. Calm down. We have bananas in the kitchen if needed. Sugarspell Standby Bananas.

Um anyway, how cool is this collaboration. I love them so much, everything they do is so brilliant and cool! AND THIS FLAVOR IS RUBY CHOCOLATE. 

DE-LEC-TABLE.

Came home and played with my cats and squirrels. That was Sunday. Today is Monday. But nothing happened today except work stuff.

I’m going to sign off now because tomorrow Henry and I are going to Toronto for the Kang Daniel concert and I still have no idea what I’m wearing but apparently it needs to be warm AF because it’s still Actual Winter in Toronto. I was really starting to get used to not wearing a coat, too. Well, hopefully my next couple of blog posts will be more interesting.

*Well, mostly final form! There’s still some art/photos that need to be hung. But this is the gist of it and I’m so happy – it’s colorful, cozy, and fun!

I’ve had these wooden crates since I lived in my first apartment back in 1998. I have no idea where they come from, but I painted them with leftover paint from when I had the GREAT IDEA to paint rocks for my patio, which was basically just Janna and me full-on dunking the rocks into the paint cans, resulting in the patio (let’s be real, it was more just a small concrete slab) to get splattered with paint and this ended up being one of the many thing referenced on my eviction notice lol. (I 100% deserved to be evicted from that place. I was a wild 18-year-old with no job or responsibilities, living in a loft townhouse fully paid for each month by my mom. When I say it was like one continuous party for an entire year, I’m not exaggerating….)

But, yeah – the crates! I guess they’ve been chiling in the attic all these years. We used one to store some of Chooch’s games until we get the actual shelves in the closet sorted.

I got that lamp at a flea market years ago.

I took all of those last night before we had a pizza party. Here are some from today in the daylight!

I still love this view so much!

I brought that rocket cat house up to the attic in hopes that the cats would be inspired to hang out but….not yet. I’m still working on them lol.

The fringe curtain makes you think you’re entering a new dimension. (Maybe that’s just me.)

I hope that Chooch loves this room as much as I do, but knowing him and his enthusiasm limitations, I’m going to say at most he just “likes” it. Teenage boys though amirte.

Anyway, now that this is finally complete, guess what Henry is working on now? THE NEW SEOUL SUBWAY SIGN, WOO HOO! He hasn’t had a chance to work on it since the beginning of December. Let’s see how long he makes it this time without having to stop and take care of a hole in the ceiling or whatever. IT’S ALWAYS SOMETHING.

I don’t feel like counting today so let’s do freeform and not limit ourselves to just five things, k?

• I found out the other night that Henry has NEVER SEEN STEEL MAGNOLIAS. I am shook over this. I have been quoting from and referencing this movie ever since I saw it as a kid and he has not once in the 21 years we’ve been not-married has he once stopped me and asked, “Wait, what is that from? Oh, I have never seen that.” NOT ONCE!! Wel, until the other night. So, once! HE DIDN’T EVEN KNOW WHAT IT WAS ABOUT. I rapid-fire listed off the entire cast to him and he was like, “No, this still doesn’t tell me anything” so then I made him watch trailers for it on YouTube and then an entire episode of Donahue (LOL) with Olympia Dukakis, Sally Field, Shirley MacLaine, Dolly, and Julia Roberts (and later – Tom Skerritt!) which just made me remember how much I despised Phil Donahue as a kid. What an asshole he was, truly. But also, the audience members were FUCKING ME UP. They all looked like Barb from Stranger Things, basically. Even the men. Everyone looked like a mom back then.
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• Because I’m a big person, I can be real with you and say that after more than a decade of hating on Miley Cyrus’s music, I actually finally like one of her songs and Chooch pointed out that it’s probably only because she SORT OF sounds like Lady Gaga in it (“Flowers”) and I think he might be right. This song does give Lady Gaga vibes. But yeah, I like it so much that it’s the ONLY non-kpop workout routine I will do on the Give Me Five Thailand channel.  But yeah, I truly can’t believe I like a Miley Cyrus song. Who am I becoming. A 1990s mom in the Donahue audience.

PHUCK YOU PHIL.

• I was talking to HNC’s squirrel-hating wife the other morning. Cross-driveway relations have been calm and peaceful lately probably because it’s still winter-ish so she’s not out there trying to crucify my Buddys for digging up her plants lol. Anyway, we were talking mostly about Chooch’s injury and I have to say, it’s nice of her to be concerned about him, actually. But anyway, she was then telling me about how her 18-year-old granddaughter went to Georgia recently for a concert and because I’m a judgmental bitch ass, I scoffed in my head, “Pfft, probably some lame country singer” but then she gestured toward me and said, “It was that NCT, actually” and e-friends, when I tell you that I made my screechy voice ricochet up and down the driveway and bounce off the houses like a tennis ball when I yelled, “OMG I LOVE NCT!” – I’m downplaying it a bit. I kind of had delayed embarrassment that settled onto my mind after I went back in the house.
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  You know the kind, where you suddenly an instant playback of what you did and the only correct reaction at that point is one of OH SHIT LOL? Yeah, it was that. Anyway! After my outburst, she goes, “Yeah I know” and that’s when I realized that she was gesturing at me when she said “NCT” because I was wearing my NCT sweatshirt. Love being so dense.

• Went to dinner at Scolio’s with some friends last week and had to boomerang our wine bottle, which I kept as a souvenir because…that’s just what I do. I keep things. Yo, when we were cleaning out the attic, I found a PENNY in a ziplock bag with a piece of paper from a hotel that said, “LUCKY PENNY FOUND IN THE BOTTOM OF THE SAUNA AT OUR HOTEL.” It was from 1989!!! Did I throw it away after finding it in a box in the attic? NO, I MOVED IT TO ANOTHER BOX!!!!

• Did you read my story about the drunk Yinzer Jennifer Coolidge?!!?
• This morning, I was trying to hand Chooch his crutches when he was getting out of the car at school and he was like, “I DON’T NEED YOUR HELP, YOU’RE SO EMBARRASSING” so I said, “WELL I CAN’T JUST SIT IN THE CAR BECAUSE THEN I LOOK LIKE A DEADBEAT MOTHER” and his friend Zakk was just standing there like, “THIS IS WHY I KEEP MY EARBUDS IN.” Chooch-on-Crutches has got to be in Top 3 least favorite versions of Chooch.

• Henry won’t stop talking to me from the other room and I getting really mad. CAN’T HE SEE THAT I HAVE MY BLOGGING HAT ON.
• Today I saw someone spell broccoli  as”brochli” and I am to the point where I don’t know what to think anymore, come n’ get me, gaslighters, that I actually googled it before making fun of the spelling in case it was some new hybrid vegetable that they’re serving up at all those pretentious FARM TO TABLE establishments. No, just an idiotic spelling error. This same person also spelled potato as “potatoe,” so congrats on winning the Dan Quayle Vegetable Spelling Bee.

• My NCT Dream bias Renjun released this today and I am in love.
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• I just glanced over at Henry who is at the computer doing greeting card orders and he was full-body flailing to Aespa’s “Girls” but no, he does not like Kpop. I force this on him and he is miserable, he hates it so much.
  • OMG I just realized that he is trying to do the actual choreography, my face skin is flaming on his behalf.
• I had two different nightmares about the hawks this week. They have actually ruined my life.

Well, I think this is all I feel like writing right now. It was another long and frustrating week.

Dear Internet Log,

Today Chooch had an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon at Children’s Hospital. I actually decided to tag along for this even though I get so queasy with even the tiniest injury.

“Great news!” I said to Chooch on Monday after my half-day was approved. “I’m coming to your appointment on Wednesday!”

“Thats….not great news for me at all,” he mumbled. OH, THE LOVE. I CAN FEEL IT.

Anyway, I’ll skip over all the parts where Henry had parking garage rage and made us get out while he continuing circling for a parking spot and then Chooch fucked up the self-check in by insisting on doing it himself and then we got an ERROR at the end because DUH HE IS A MINOR so we had to check-in with a real person and I was so mad.

Henry had joined us by this point so now Chooch and I got to complain about his heavy breathing which sounds even heavier behind a face mask so then Henry got all up in a snit and dramatically moved to a seat across from us.

Enjoy the show, everyone!

I was pretty impressed with how seamless everything went aside from Chooch fucking up the self check-in, though. We were even called back to the exam room 10 minutes early!

The first doctor came in and made Chooch bend his leg and he was being a big baby about it but there was also a part of me that wondered, could he be—-nah. No, is he….? Don’t say it, Ma. IS HE FAKING IT?!

She left the room and said that the main doctor would be in soon and we were like, “Bye and sorry our son is a baby.

” (OK he actually wasn’t being a baby, I just wanted to pretend for a second that he was handling this the same way I would have.) But then about a minute later, she came back in.

“Actually….” she started, “I took a look at the x-rays that were taken at his emergency room visit, and there is a fracture.”

THERE IS A FRACTURE AFTER ALL!

She pulled it up on the monitor and was like, “See?” and I nodded. Sure. Yep. I see. It was like being shown Chooch’s sonogram all over again. “Mmm, yep, I see it, totally a boy….”

BITCH WHERE.

Anyway, for a very brief window, I felt moderately relieved. This is good, right?? A fracture is better than a ligament or whatever, right??? Like can we just slather on a bone coozy and call it a day!?

But then the main doctor came in – ALSO VERY AWESOME, I WAS SO PLEASED – and did the same types of probing around the knee and forcing Chooch to flex his leg. He pulled up the x-ray and explained things a bit more, which I am sad to say did not really help my extremely non-medical brain. I cannot compute these things and was too busy feeling nauseous at the mention of these internal pieces that it was hard for me to focus.

But the gist, according to Henry, is that the doctor said IT FELT LOOSE whatever that means, and then he was explaining the fracture in greater detail – it’s a nondisplaced tibial spine fracture.

Again, whatever that means.

He then explained that when “most people” injure their ACL, it’s a tear, but with Chooch, his pulled from the bone!? At least that’s what his assessment is pre-MRI. I do not know what this means, but looking at the paperwork, if his assessment is correct, this might be able to heal without surgery, and just continued brace-wearing (they gave him a much better one) and physical therapy.

But it all comes down to the MRI, which is 2 weeks away.

There is also a large effusion. #whateverthatmeans

So….we know more now but also still feels like being in the dark.

Then we went to Patron for dinner. This has been my “What was the point of Mother coming to the knee appointment?” blog update. Thanks to all who have checked up on my idiot kid with the bum knee!