Hi, it’s me. Erin. Since Pennsylvania schools are temporarily closed due to COVID-19, I gave Chooch some writing assignments because I’ll be damned if his mind is going to subsist on YouTube videos and Switch games during this time. But then the school provided assignment packets so I guess I’ll lighten up a bit. Today, he has written about his favorite Korean dish, bibimbap, and he actually didn’t complain!

Bibimbap (비빔밥). Where do I even start. The Korean dish filled with crispy rice, sauteed vegetables, meat, or meat substitute, gochujang, sesame oil, and the best part, in my opinion, the egg. Bibimbap, in Korean, means: bibim: mixed together; bap: rice.

Well, I guess we can start off with a little history lesson. It is estimated that bibimbap was created in the 10th century in the Koryo dynasty by the wives of farmers who were just too busy to serve a large traditional Korean meal. Now in present day Korea, many families eat this common dish by using leftovers and mixing it together to create this fantastic meal.

Now, I have had many bibimbaps, but the best one I ever had had to be the one we had on our tour to the DMZ, or demilitarized zone. I don’t know why I loved it so much. It could have been the crispy rice, or the just perfect egg, or maybe even the delectable seaweed. Whatever it was made it very easy for me to just devour the whole Dolsot bowl.

There are many kinds of bibimbap, but the two most common are bibimbap and Dolsot bibimbap. Bibimbap is served at room temperature, while Dolsot is served in a hot pot keeping it nice and crispy while you eat it. It also differs from the region you are in, for example in Busan, we got to crack our own egg into our bibimbap and it also wasn’t served with gochujang (spicy red pepper paste).

We also had another kind of bibimbap in Jeonju, or the hometown of bibimbap. The one I had was basically just the original bibimbap, but with cheese melting on the top. I thought it was very good, because prior to my consumption of it, I was totally hangry. There is a trick to eating the Dolsot bibimbap, though. If you stir the vegetables, but keep the rice at the bottom, the rice will be crispy by the time you eat all the vegetables and it will taste 200% better, or if you add gochujang it starts to taste otherworldly.

Here I am eating bibimbap on my last day in Korea, so sad. ;-;

I did like every bibimbap I had in Korea, don’t get me wrong, but nothing compares to the DMZ one. So, if I were to make a bibimbap, I would choose Maanchi’s recipe,

But, without the meat!

Hello from Brookline. So far, there have been no reports of anyone testing positive with coronavirus in my neighborhood, big it was announced last Thursday that a student at Chooch’s school may have been exposed to it from a relative who had traveled out of state, so his school, along with 4 other schools in Pittsburgh, were closed yesterday as a precaution and so the schools could employ “electro-magnetic” sterilization, which sounds super space-y.

But then on Friday, the governor announced that all PA schools will be closed for at least two weeks, at which point they will reassess the situation. Chooch, being a kid, is excited because it’s like a snow day on steroids, except that some of us could die, but that’s OK: live it up, kids.

Because of this, our director at work gave us permission to work from home, so when Chooch found THAT out, the desirability of staying home from school was suddenly tainted, lol. MOMMY AND CHOOCH TIME. I’m going to make sure he has designated blocks of reading time, he’s going to do writing assignments, and he’s also going to watch some documentaries.

(“I’m watching one on Ted Bundy, then,” he said today, and that’s fine. He can help me design some new cards afterward.)

So it’s kind of like being quarantined, but not. Henry still has to go to work, but I am happy that I won’t need to be taking public transportation now during such uncertain, unclean times.

Then I got an email from the library, saying that after today, they are going to be shutting down until the 31st. I figured this was coming because Chooch was there on Friday and the entire children’s area was closed off, and that’s where he and his friend Markie have to go to use the computers because Markie isn’t 13 yet so he can’t use the ones upstairs. So last night, I frantically made a list of some of the books on my Goodreads “want to read” list that are available at the local branch of my library, leapt out of bed at 8am, got showered and dressed, only to remember that the dumb library doesn’t open until 10, ugh.

Anyway, I got there right at 10 and Chooch and I put on gloves that were available on a cart of sterilization products, and I acted like all those preppers hoarding toilet paper, except instead of Charmin, I had an armful of fiction.

I checked out 7 books, plus I still have 4 already checked out, so I’m hoping this will tide me over! Especially since I will have extra free time on Saturdays for a bit because Jiyong suggested that we hold off on meeting up for now, considering we meet in a perpetually-crowded Panera. Paneras are gross enough without a pandemic in the midst. Henry said he will help me practice my vocabulary though which scares me but we’ll see; maybe he will actually help.

But he will probably fall asleep.

Don’t judge me by YA/Teen Fiction selections, OK! Sometimes I like having something light to fall back on after reading something especially scary or ultra-literary.

I hope everyone’s staying safe, smart, and healthy out there and don’t forget to check in on your elders. It’s fucking scary, but we will get through this if everyone takes it seriously and stops doing selfish things.*

*(For instance, all of those idiot YouTube travel vloggers are still out there traveling for content and it makes me so angry. Especially when I see them getting all combative and responding to coronavirus-related comments with snarky slapbacks like “We’re healthy and not worried about dying from it but you do you #thumbsupemoji” NOPE. NOPE NOPE NOPE. That’s exactly what I was saying too A MONTH AGO when we started to consider postponing our trip that’s scheduled for April, except that MY sentence had a “but”: “…but I don’t want to risk contracting the virus and spreading it to those who are weaker/older/more susceptible than me, just because I wanted to go to some amusement parks and have fun.” That is the part that not everyone is grasping. We will go another time. Right now, the most important thing is to stay sanitary and informed. Fuck those people.)

UPDATE! I remembered that another library exists within walking distance so I ran down there and expanded my pile. Look, I can’t request books during this time so I need to be prepared! Worst case scenario, I start pulling from Chooch’s bookshelf. Minecraft 101, oh boy.

I’m trying to support Asian establishments as much as possible since this pandemic has stoked the racism fire. Yesterday, I restocked my snack pumpkin at Lotus Foods then got coffee at Bae Bae’s Cafe, and tonight we ordered dinner from Tong Garden.

This was my fortune, which is SO APROPOS it makes my stomach hurt.

I keep thinking that someday this will hopefully be a distant memory, a chapter in an upcoming Trump Sucks biography, a segment from VH1’s I Love the 20s that makes us groan, maybe even something that WE CAN LEARN FROM?! One day there will be a list of Worst Coronavirus Responses and the good ol’ bull-headed USA will be right at the top.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Erin Appledale (@ohhonestlyerin)

Feeling nostalgic & going through my Korea photos. I loved taking daily elevator OOTD snaps with Chooch. I’m too stressed out and tired for much else right now so here is a collection of those photos before I retreat to my corona-bubble. Stay sanitary, smart, and healthy out there, chingu.

This was actually a mirror in one of the subway stations, not the elevator from our hotel, SO SUE ME.

Maybe there will be more Korean elevator selfies in my future but right now I’m just mainly hoping that we find a vaccine for the coronavirus, the world can get back to “normal” whatever that means, and that the American racists will go back into their hidey-holes. The anti-Asian vitriol is one of the saddest parts of this pandemic. :(

It’s Girl Scout Cookie season so perhaps you want to hunker down with a plate of Do-Si-Dos as your companion-cookie of choice while reading another stupidly-titled blog post of mine. (And not Dos-i-Dos, which I originally typed because I couldn’t remember how to spell the dumb Girl Scout cookies, but apparently, Dos-i-Dos is a marijuana strain, so here’s your fun fact for the day!)

(Unless you’re a regular Spicoli and already knew that.)

(No judgment.)

I’m doing this bulletpoint-style because my mind is so fucking broken and scattered into a million dangerous shards, so buckle up, baby.

• Saturday started with Henry taking Chooch to his future-new-school for a math placement test, which started at 9AM. Chooch was grossly excited about this and I was like, “I’ll just hang back, m8*” While they were gone, the mail came which included a congratulations letter from the school district because apparently some artwork of Chooch’s was submitted to a citywide art show thing, I don’t know, I can’t remember and I don’t have the paper in front of me, but it was chosen and we have some reception (with light desserts, lol) to go to and I’m really excited to see what the (light) desserts are and also what this mysterious piece of art is because evidently, Chooch himself has no idea what it is. I think it’s pretty FUNNY that he spent most of his life at his current school thinking that he sucks at art and dreading art class because the art teacher was such a dumb bitch who, according to an alum from that school, loves to criticize and terrorize young, impressionable children. I’ve written about her before on here and honestly, I’m kind of sad that she left at the end of last year because I never had a chance to properly lay into her with Scalding-Hot Erin Words. But, now the school has a new art teacher and THIS was the result. He suddenly remembered that he actually likes art!
  • *The last book I read was about a bunch of British teenagers, so……….
• In Korean news, I was right about something and Jiyong was wrong! And then I was so smug about it and she was like, “OK.” (I was translating a sentence and used the word “bo-tong” for “usually” and SHE SAID I WAS WRONG AND TOLD ME TO USE A DIFFERENT WORD and I was like slowly erasing my word and writing, with hesitation, her suggestion, but then she was like, “Wait….no, you can use bo-tong. Yes, that’s right.” And that’s the word that the textbook had in their translation on the next page, what what. It was a small, very small, victory. But I take what I can get.
• Later that night, Chooch needed new shoes so we went to Kohl’s and I had this really weird moment where I saw a shirt that I liked and couldn’t remember if I had it so I asked Henry, “Do I have this shirt” and he was like, “Hilarious that you think I ever look at your clothes” and then I was like, “No, I think I have it. Yeah, I do.” So I didn’t buy it, but then when we got home, I looked in my closet and couldn’t find it, so I was like, “DID I MEAN TO BUY IT BUT THEN PUT IT BACK?” and of course Henry is useless when it comes to remembering anything from a month ago, but my memory is usually pretty OK and I absolutely had no recollection of putting the shirt back, or paying for it, or ever wearing it aside from when I tried it on—that much I remembered from a month ago! Last night, Henry was getting ready to buy it online because we had Kohl’s cash, and he was going to pick it up today, but for some reason, I thought the in-store price that I saw on Saturday was lower, so I was like, “Eh, just hold off. We’ll just buy it at the store” so he didn’t buy it and good thing BECAUSE I RANDOMLY FOUND IT IN MY CLOSET THIS MORNING, probably because I wasn’t looking for it. And yes, I wore it to work. Anyway, this is my totally ridiculous cautionary tale about what happens when you have too many clothes.
• Sunday, the weather was so gorgeous! I always say that March is so underrated. I get so hopeful every time this year because we get so many little tastes of spring, a reminder to HANG THE FUCK ON, BUCKAROOS. Henry and I went for a walk in Schenley Park that afternoon and talked about the fate of our upcoming trip…
  • We ultimately decided a while back to postpone it in light of the coronavirus. I know there are so many people in America who think everyone is overreacting, and they don’t understand why we’re afraid to go to Germany when the CDC hasn’t issued any travel warnings or restrictions for that area, but look: there are more and more cases being reported daily in Germany and that general part of Europe. It is SO CLOSE TO ITALY. While all three of us are healthy people, and we’re not worried about dying from it, there are so many at-risk people out there and as much as I love having fun and traveling, I am not selfish enough to carry on with a frivolous trip where we could potentially bring COVID-19 back with us and then spread it to those who are at-risk. Nope. Nope nope nope. We will go later in the year, that’s OK. It’s not the end of the world.
    • OR IS IT?!!??!!?
• In non-corona news, I got really angry on the drive to the park, because some dumb Halsey song came on and I ranted to no one (Henry doesn’t listen to me) about how I am so ready for this trend of female pop singers singing like woodland creatures to be over. I want to drop-kick Haley’s voice back over the Bridge to Terabithia. BUHBYE.

• In around-the-house news, Henry finally hung up some of my clowns and fixed the faucet in the kitchen which has been fucked for years (really hard to turn off the cold water side) and suddenly he felt inspired to fix it but then he admitted it was really because he decided to not half-ass it for once and actually look to see that the problem was AND THEN FIGURED IT OUT LIKE A REAL BIG MAN-MAN.

•  Then I completed my 30 book challenge for the year! 30 books since January! I rule at books! I immediately set off on foot to the library to return it (there has to be some library-specific OCD sub-diagnosis for this) and then Henry drove by on his way home from The Store. He did a doubletake and I mouthed I FINISHED BOOK THIRTY!!! and I bet he was like wow obsessive book-readers make me hot. Or…not.
• Later that night I remembered that This Is Us exists so I started watching the newer episodes from the second half of this season and then remembered that this is the worst show in the world while I gagged in tears and phlegm.

Peace out, Girl Scout (but not any of these annoying ones aggressively screaming at people to buy their damn cookies on the boulevard).

Here are some photos from last Sunday before I got sick.

We had decided to kick off Henry’s Coffee Corner again (this ship started to sink before it even left the dock, let’s be real here), so he chose Carnegie Coffee, which is in…you know, Carnegie. Not something I would have picked but OK.

I never bothered to take any pictures because we got there at 1:42 and were met with a sign on the door that said they were closing at 2 for a private event so that really lit a fire under our collective asses. I wanted to just go somewhere else, because I had a book under my arm and would have liked to have sat down and read a chapter but cook on, Carnegie Coffee.

It seemed comfortable enough inside – ample seating that extended to a second floor, and you know how much seating means to me. But he staff was unsmiling, and then Henry had a weird interaction with some weird-ass who came up to him and asked if we were in line. We were, in fact, in line, but the guy said, “Oh, because the line is usually over there” and pointed to the other side of the column we were standing next to. Really buddy. Sorry we’re not fucking regulars in your dumb townie cafe.

So that really set off Henry and then I was secondhand mad about it too, especially when the d-bag actually went over to the right side of the column and stood there, like wow, you’re really sticking it to us, Line-Standing Warrior.

I got a vanilla rose latte. It was fine, but now I associate it with the stomach flu, so that’s great. Chooch got hot chocolate. Henry got iced coffee I think, who can be sure. That stringent line stander got freakin’ hot tea because of course he did. He probably took it back to his table to daintily slurp while carousing Craigslist for, I don’t know, 1950s dinghies.

(?????????????)

Then we got our drinks and left because god forbid, 2:00pm event.

It was a decent enough day, weather-wise, so we decided to take a stroll, much to Chooch’s chagrin because I guess he had important things to attend to at home? We were in the same area where Janna and I went to see that play, Mumburger, last year, so we scoped out the posters for upcoming shows for that little theater and Henry and Chooch seemed moderately interested in maybe possibly attending a future show, so we’ll see if we can shoot some culture up Henry’s butt after all.

I got to see some churches and Chooch pet copious amounts of dogs (lol, actually just 2).

Chooch was really unimpressed with both churches. OK DAMIEN.

A thing we saw.

Then we went to Fresh Thyme (Henry and Chooch love this damn market and I’m just like, OK it’s still boring) and I washed my hands there twice and lubed up with hand sanitizer, came home and started to watch Knives Out with them and then 35 minutes into I excused myself to tend to an Olympian Vomiting Event which, on a scale from Hipster After a Bloody Mary Bar Brunch to Regan’s Pea Soup, I would rate myself a solid Carnival Ride Puking Scene From “Problem Child.”

Really looking forward to a better Sunday today!

1. You Dropped Something

We had to go to Chooch’s new school for an information session on Tuesday where we learned that basically his high school is a College Lite and I had mild panic attacks listening to the student ambassadors talk about course loads and declaring your focus, and this is also how I found out secondhand that Chooch scored a 99% on the PSATs, which I learnt when I overheard him telling his friend’s mom, so that was great.

During the information session, while we were looking at slides and listening to the very young and energetic principal talk, a little girl two rows in front of me was pulling on a beaded bracelet and it snapped, sending fake gemstones scattering along the floor. Her older sister, presumably another future student of this school, helped her picked them up, but she missed two.

There was a boy in the seat behind her, and he tapped her on the back. I thought he was going to point out the forgotten jewels, but instead he was just handing her a paper that floated off her chair while she was assisting her little sister in gem retrieval. I wanted to lean forward and whisper, “YOU FORGOT SOME” but there was never a good moment. So I sat there and stared at them, feeling more and more anxious about it as the presentation went on.

Finally, it was over and everyone started to stand up to leave. The mom of the girls was sitting there, still, so I tapped her on the back. As she turned around, I said, “You dropped something,” and at that exact moment, the iced-whatever from Starbucks that was balancing on her lap toppled over, ice cubes clattering all over.

“Well, now I dropped another thing!” she said with a laugh BUT I DON’T THINK IT WAS A HUMOROUS LAUGH.

“Good job,” Henry muttered and I was like, “I DIDN’T MEAN FOR THAT TO HAPPEN!” I was just so concerned about those stupid gems and I didn’t want them to leave and realize they didn’t get them all. It could have been some meaningful bracelet!

“I doubt they would have given that kid anything of value,” Henry said and THAT IS NOT WHAT I MEAN, MEANING AND VALUE ARE NOT THE SAME.

Ugh.

2. Flippin’ Fun

If you’re here for the latest in the saga of Hot Naybor Chris and Slut Life, then, well, stay here. It’s getting RILL PETTY, you guys. Like, almost even too petty for the likes of me, and we all know I’m stuffed to the gills with that there ‘pett.’ HNC called Henry the other day and luckily I was home so I was able to hear the tale about how Slut Life left his car running in the driveway, so HNC went over and knocked on his door.

No answer.

HNC went in his house and got a beer, then sat on his porch to wait for Slut Life to emerge, but now Slut Life had shut the door!! (Sorry, I had to seek out Henry to fill in gaps of the story but Henry just admitted that he wasn’t really listening to the phone conversations; wow, much neighborly.) So HNC went over and kicked the door this time and now Slut Life answered.

HNC: STOP PARKING IN MY PARKING SPOT!

Slut Life: I WENT TO THE CHURCH* AND THEY SAID I COULD PARK WHEREVER I WANT!

But when HNC did Slut Life’s voice, he made it all high-pitched and whiny and I almost peed my pants.

*(There is a church across the street that allows us to park in their lot.)

Henry is so over this drama but I can’t get enough. And then I noticed two things the other day:

• Slut Life put up a “privacy curtain” on the side of his porch, presumably to block out HNC’s side of the house, but it’s basically just a window blind and it got all torn up and twisted in today’s wind storm.
• HNC’s wife has one of those yard banner stakes in the ground next to their sidewalk and she had a banner hanging for every fucking holiday. Well, now Slut Life has one on his side of the yard and it says FLIPPIN’ FUN. WHY IS THIS SO FUNNY TO ME.

3. NEW NCT127 VIDEO!!

I missed these boys!!

4. Exciting Journal Page Showing

I thought it would be fun to grab an old journal, open to a random page, and take a picture to share a page of my past with you provided that it’s not one of the pages where I drew a map to the buried body, etc. So for today, you get this one, which is ironic because I was just watching Finch videos last weekend, I guess because I had on an Armor For Sleep playlist on YouTube since I was so excited about buying tickets for their anniversary tour, and Finch is just a natural progression from there.

Anyway, here’s a page from 2003:

Also, I have vague memories of that gas mask thing, which present themselves every now and then in conversation but it started to become one of those things where I was like, “Did I dream that? Did I really do it?”

I wonder what I bought with the $50. Probably more CDs to join Finch.

5. Lunch Break Tackle

Wednesday afternoon, (good lord I couldn’t remember how to spell ‘after’ and kept trying to get away with ‘aftner’) I was doing my thang, on the phone with Hank-a-lank, walking down the street alongside of the Benedum Center. I was just about to cross by the entrance to the alleyway where the buses and trucks park to unload for the shows at the Benedum. We call it “Cellphone Disco” alley because there’s this weird red LED thing with a sign above it that says Cell Phone Disco. It’s like, art. You know how that is. Just look, don’t ask.

Anyway, I’m just about to step off the curb to cross in front of the alley when I get body-slammed out of the blue by the backside of some youngish guy who had come tearing out of the alley. He had hit the ground right before me and did a weird spin in the air, which is how he ended up hitting me with his back.

At this point, my gut instinct, I’m sorry, was to scream my fucking face off. It was my best haunted house scream. The quintessential “where’s my Scream Queen crown” shriek. The IS SHE SEEING TAEMIN FOR THE FIRST TIME OR BEING STUCK WITH A CATTLE PROD??? wail.

Time stood still.

My perpetrator was now spinning around to face me. He clasped both hands on my upper arms, maybe to comfort me, but probably just to regain his balance. “Sorry,” he panted, face all red from the, the what? The chase? Was he being chased? Because after this strange 1/2 second of intense eye contact, he spun around and took off down the sidewalk, in the direction where I had just come.

“What the fuck was that?” Henry asked slowly. And now I was laughing. Like, cracking up. Adrenaline, I guess? The relief that it could have been something fatal and it wasn’t, it was just some harmless guy (or was he?! I MEAN WHY WAS HE WAS RUNNING HE DIDN’T LOOK LIKE A JOGGER) he essentially provided me with the most human contact I’ve received outside of the house in…weeks? Months? When was the last time someone touched me!? I DO NOT EVEN KNOW.

Meanwhile, not one single motherfucker on that street stopped to see if I was OK. Seriously. Not even a curious rubberneck, a lookie-loo. My scream was traveling down that block, too. STRONG ECHO.

But man, I sure did send the pigeons flying.

Anyway, I put a moratorium on the walk for that day after nearly getting tackled to the dirty street by some stranger, so I circled back around and headed back to work. And then, a block away, I SAW HIM AGAIN. He too had circled back around, but the opposite way, so now we were walking (yes, now he was walking, and looking extremely winded) toward each other. I tried to get a stealth-shot, but it came out blurry since I was moving.

My would-be assailant (far-left), cats & dogs:

[ETA: An hour after I posted this, Henry went to the store (of course). He just came home and reported that Slut Life took down his wind-mangled privacy curtain and threw it into a garbage can on his porch. Things move fast around here! WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT, ONLY TIME WILL TELL.]

Hey-o, the month is over and here I am with a run-down of the books that helped me pass the time & forget that it’s winter. Somehow, I started the month on a weird possession kick. I guess because I started watching these “Booktubers” (god, I hate that term, it’s so dumb, like me) talk about their latest favorite horror books because that is my genre of choice but I have been so far-removed that I needed guidance on where to start, who’s on trend, etc.

One interesting thing to note is that I read two books, by chance, that each referenced the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 which I never knew about and I actually thought it was made up when I read it in the first book, but by the second reference in a different book, I was like, “HMM MAYBE I SHOULD GOOGLE THIS…” Oh, and also two books featured broads pissing on a grave.

(The weird coincidence for my January books was that two of them used the word “palimpsest,” what a random-ass word.)

The hits-n-misses were pretty even, I would say. As I did last month, I had hyper-linked the titles so you can get legit synopses, because my book summaries tend to be major mouthfuls – I have definitely bored Henry to tears on our walks around town!

1. Saturday Night Ghost Club – Craig Davidson

This book came up in so many BookTube horror recommendation videos, and I picked it up because it’s an exorcism plot. I knew going into this that a lot of people were crying that it was an Exorcist rip-off, but to the author’s defense, it does clearly reference that in the book. I’m really torn with this one. It started out just fine and actually made me jumpy because, and here is where Henry will roll his eyes but he can cook on because he pointedly refuses to watch horror movies revolving around churches and exorcisms BECAUSE HE IS SCARED, I truly believe that people can become possessed. In fact, I went through a heavy phase in 9th or 10th grade where I actively tried to let the devil in. “I used to stand at my bedroom window at night, facing the woods and cry ‘HERE I AM DEVIL, I’M READY!” I guess I was too eager. Satan wants someone who plays hard to get. He wants the chase. When I told Chooch about this era of my life, he just murmured, “Wow. Good job.” He doesn’t care about my sordid past.

• I appreciated that each chapter was named after a song from the 80s;
• The edition I got from the library was really cool because it was like a high school yearbook:

THIS BOOK. It was one of my favorite books of the month, and year even though we’re only 2 mths in. I didn’t know much about it going in and I think that’s for the best because once…the thing…starts happening, I was like, “OK, we’re doing THIS? Let’s go.” The writing?
*Italian finger kiss, washing hands first though* The characters? LOVED THEM ALL. The dialogue? Yep, I can hear these bitches in my head. I was so excited about this book that I couldn’t even talk about it without getting choked up and it’s not a SAD book. It’s hilarious! It’s scary! It’s bizarre! There’s a crazy twist! This book was totally my style, from the writing to the plot. If it wasn’t a library copy, I would have kissed it with tongue.

6. Heretics Anonymous-Katie Henry

8. Your House In On Fire, Your Children All Gone–Stefan Kiesbye

My friend Elissa recommended this to me and it was a fucking JOY to read after Kill Creek. The horror was so perfectly subtle, so real. Each chapter alternates between several children growing up in what appears to me a semi-rural German village…in the 60s? 70s? Did we ever really know? The cruel things that they do each other is scarier than any haunted house/possession plot, in my not-quite-obtained English degree opinion. Loved this one – thank you, Elissa!!

The other day in the car, we had the regular radio on (weird, I know) and the intro to a very familiar song started to play. I screamed, “OMG IS THIS—-” but then it morphed into some dumb song which was decidedly not what I thought it was going to be. Yet another homogenous rapper sampling a really great song from my youth, that’s all. 

Meanwhile, Henry was still shook because if there’s one thing he loves to experience while driving, it’s my random, sudden loud outbursts from the passenger seat.

I had to Shazam the song on the radio, because I couldn’t for the life of me remember who sang the sampled song, other than it was three girls from the mid-90s who were signed to Michael Jackson’s label. 

Turns out the rapper is some Canadian, Tory Something (I already forgot) but now that I knew that, I was able to Google to find the name of the group AND IT WAS BROWNSTONE. Holy shit, I hadn’t thought of them in years and years but I had their debut CD and this song was a mixed tape staple of mine. Of course, I put it on Spotify while regaling Henry with the highlights of their Wiki page, such as how ONE OF THEM WAS FOUND DEAD in 2015?! She cut herself after falling in her home. Ugh.

Anyway, here is the song, please revel in its luscious R&B tones:

Oh man, this song brings back so many memories of crying over Justin Kail in 10th grade, lol. I was so pathetic.

This past Saturday night, Henry and I went to Sugar Spell Scoops because two of the Saturday flavors were calling to me: black forest and coffee cake. But as we walked in, and I mean literally as we crossed the threshold, BROWNSTONE’S IF YOU LOVE ME started playing, almost as if Henry had called ahead and requested it (that would never happen). This was such a mind-blowing moment for me that I blurted out to the shop owners, “JUST THE OTHER DAY I COULDN’T REMEMBER WHO SANG THIS SONG BECAUSE SOME RANDO RAPPER SAMPLED IT AND I HAD TO GOOGLE IT AND THEN I DID A BROWNSTONE DEEP DIVE, AND I CAN’T BELIEVE IT’S PLAYING RIGHT NOW.”

They just laughed and one of them commented upon how the shop’s playlist is so random, but that’s just it: it’s not a song that you would typically hear on the radio anymore, let alone a vegan ice cream shop’s soundtrack. WHAT ARE THE ODDS. 

I dunno, but it made my scoops taste that much better. (Not that they ever need any help!)

It reminded me a little bit of the Boz Skaggs Rabbit Hole. 

On that note, I’m going to put on a Brownstone playlist while I continue recovering from the awesome stomach bug I caught after spending the last week sterilizing everything and taking my temperature every 20 minutes after so many people at work contracted the flu. At one point in the middle of the night, I was laying on the bathroom floor, sobbing into a towel, and promising God that I would be good if he would just put a moratorium on the vomiting. Ugh.

BIGBANG win:

BTS win:

If your answer is: One has clear displays of respect on both sides and one clearly lacks that, you’re correct! One of the things I loved about Kpop when I first got into it was how there seemed to be a distinct lack of arrogance among the bigger/senior groups. The Asian culture of bowing as a sign of respect is not tossed out the window once a certain level of fame is achieved, but watching BTS’s recent music countdown win, I think they’re maybe spending too much time around Americans lol.

BIGBANG are legends but stay humble and never act like they’re above their industry peers even when those groups are clearly in awe of them. BIGBANG FOREVER!

Last week, Indiana Beach announced that it’s not going to open for the 2020 season and I was like WHAT YOU SHUT YOUR FACE INDIANA BEACH. While we only ever visited this amusement park once, it gave us a lifetime of memories (such Hallmark words coming from me, I must definitely have a fever, let me check—99.4!!!! THAT’S GETTING CLOSE!!!). I actually had been tossing around the idea of trying to make it back out to this park this summer, and I’m bummed that it won’t happen now (unless someone buys it! CEDAR FAIR?! THE KENNYWOOD PEOPLE!?!?) so I have been mourning the loss of such a unique, historic park by watching YouTube videos of my favorite coaster enthusiasts having fun on the Lost Coaster, which was one of the most unique coasters I’ve ever had the pleasure of riding.

I’m taking a break from my obsessive-compulsive temperature-taking and ritual hand sanitizer application to share with you, today, my day at Indiana Beach from 2014. RIP to a super quirky, incredibly fun amusement park in some small town in Indiana. Sigh.

****

My criteria for planning a road trip is pretty simple:

• Are there friends along the way that I can impose upon?
• Does my Roadside America app approve of this route?
• Are there amusement parks in the vicinity?

I’ve wanted to go to Indiana Beach (fun fact: not actually a beach) for awhile now, and it seemed logical to combine this with a long overdue visit to Michigan to hang out with Bill, Jessi and Tammy and also meet up with some other ladies I have been Internet friends with for YEARS. (More on that later!)

We had to drive through actual farmlands to get to Monticello, Indiana, at which point a man of about 100 years of age collected $7 from us and told us where to park.

Which was “anywhere in the wide open, empty parking lot.”

We got there right when the park opened, and not only was it a ghost town, but none of the rides were running. We roamed around for awhile, getting turned away from the Hoosier Hurricane and wasting time at the shooting gallery. Also, the humidity was so bad that it felt like Hell with the lid on; my face took on the sebaceous sheen of a glazed Christmas ham in no time. It was disgusting. But not so disgusting that I would consider visiting the dilapidated water park portion of Indiana Beach, which was included in regular admission because the lazy river wasn’t running. God only knows why not.

No thanks, dirty pastel water slides. God only knows what kind of fungi you’re getting ready to launch into my vagina. (I have phobias, OK?)

Chooch killed some time at the shooting gallery, while I paced around, waiting for the adjacent Frankenstein’s Castle to open their dumb doors already. I refuse to partake in the shooting galleries at amusement parks because HENRY won’t teach me how to aim. So I almost never hit anything. And then I pout, which morphs into an inevitable Hulk Rage later on.

Fuck you, Henry.

Lame Henry didn’t get the ride-all-day wristband because he’s too old to have fun at amusement parks now. But he sure does enjoy the ones with free general admission so that he can walk around and complain for nothing. I promise you, we broke up at least 87 times that day.

The main (OK, the only) reason Indiana Beach made my list is their staggering collection of THREE dark rides. Two of them, The Den of Lost Thieves and the most-anticipated House of Frankenstein were basically the last rides to open that day. But oh, were they worth the wait.

The Den of Lost Thieves is a shooting ride, which I generally do not enjoy. Kennywood took out a great dark ride, the Goldrusher, and replaced it with a modern shooter-type dark ride and the only thing remarkable about it is how incredibly boring it is. I would gladly bypass this one every time we visit Kennywood, but Chooch always drags me on it. I hate waiting in line for it too! You wait and wait and wait only to get put in this holding room, like a foyer, where they force you to watch some animated portrait on a wall telling you the story of Ghostwood Estate and then the door opens and it’s a fucking free-for-all. Everyone pushes their way through so even if you were the first one in line before entering that room, chances are you’ll take a fanny pack to the groin and wind up 17 people back.

So when I realized that the Den of Lost Thieves was also a shooting ride, I was like, “Damn, we drive 8 hours for this?” But it turned out to be FANTASTIC! Old, musty and full of old-school scares. I loved the shit out of this ride. Especially since I got more points than Chooch.

Another dark ride in the park doubled as a coaster! It was called the Lost Coaster of Something I Forget Who Knows. There was no one in line when Chooch and I walked past, so I shoved all of my belongings into Henry’s chest and bolted for it.

“Um…it’s gonna take a few minutes,” the older, orange-shirted ride operator said. “It got stuck, and I’m waiting for someone to push it back out.” Oh OK, no big deal, you guys. Rides get stuck like all of the time, right? And probably not back-to-back times, right?

He said something about the cars not being “properly weighted” and I was like, “Oh well if you’re looking for all of the weight, you’ve come to the right thunder thighs.” Four more people joined us right as a mechanic came grunting out of the fake cave, pushing the double mine cars in front of him.

The ride operator seemed confident that we had enough bodies to successfully propel the mine cars from start to finish, so we loaded up with me and Chooch and some lady and little girl in one car, and a guy and kid in the one behind us.

Awkward thing about this ride: four people fit in a car, but the seats face each other, so unless you’re with three of your homies, you get to stare at strangers for the next two minutes and I hate that you guys. Looking at people who are looking at me, it’s just…ew. Not for me.

This ride was pretty thrilling and volatile, just like a relationship with me! All of the ups and downs and whiplash and violent shoves. Will you need a PFA? Maybe! And then…nothing. It just stopped, right in the middle of the dark cave.

“Is it supposed to do this?” I asked the people in the car with us.

“I DON’T THINK SO BUT THE STEEL HAWG GETS STUCK ALL THE TIME,” answered the little girl in an octave only little girls can manage.

****Mental note to be wary of the Steel Hawg. (Which never opened that day anyway, so moot point.)

Anyway, guess what guys? We were stuck! I think this may have been my first time ever getting stuck on a ride, too, so thanks Indiana Beach! That’s a cherry I sure needed popped.

As if it wasn’t hot enough that day, now we were stuck inside some muggy faux-cavern, in a near-enclosed car, with no rescue in sight. I had sweat rolling into my eyes and mouth, I could feel it dripping from the backs of my knees, my whole person was slick with the moist essence of PANIC.

And I had these strangers staring at me and I had nothing to say other than nervous laughter and then the kid in the car behind us started to cry and his dad was mouthing off about how this was such BULLshit and Chooch kept meowing and I was like, “WHY IS NO ONE TRYING TO COMMUNICATE WITH US OVER AN INTERCOM OR MORSE CODE OR CROP CIRCLE?!” And then finally, after a good FIVE MINUTES OF NOTHING, that same disgruntled mechanic came trudging up the track behind us, shouted an answer to a garbled voice over his walkie talkie, fumbled with some switches in the breaker box next to us, and then said “Enjoy your ride” just as the motor kicked in and we went STRAIGHT DOWN A HILL. Oh that’s right, we were stuck on the zenith of a hill and had no idea because it was so dark in there. So…that was definitely a thrill.

Meanwhile, Henry had been dreaming of buying a taco all day. That’s what he’s thinking about in this picture, as a matter of fact. Indiana Beach has a taco stand that was apparently featured on the Food Network for some reason. I love me a good taco, but I knew that Indiana Beach was for sure not going to have a meatless option. So Chooch and I decided to get pizza and then Henry was going to get his coveted taco afterward.

Except that Chooch only ate one slice of his personal pizza and Henry acted like a motherfucking martyr and ate the rest of it. Like, who cares? Sometimes I think he does this shit on purpose, like he’s some Leftover Scraps Hero. OK, you ate three small slices of crappy pizza, good for you.

Oh, you ate the rest of Chooch’s waffle for breakfast? Well, FUCK Henry. Thanks for taking one for the team. Shit.

I knew all of his moaning and groaning over this would eventually paint a bigger picture, and I was right: Now that he had eaten Chooch’s pizza, he was “too full” to get a taco, and that was ALL THAT HE WANTED, you guys. A fucking taco, but now Chooch and I had ruined his life by having the audacity to get pizza for our own lunches. Last time I checked, no one was forcing pizza down Henry’s enlarged hatch.

I kept coaxing him to get a taco, but he was being such a bitch about it. He was acting offended almost, like he was on a porn diet and I was trying to get him to succumb to peer pressure by showing photos of naked broads going to town on tacos.

So bizarre. Maybe he’s trying to fit back into his SERVICE costume?

Wistful thoughts over the taco stain on his shirt that could have been.

Dreaming of brushing a taco with his moustache bristles to the tune of a Selena song.

He had his chance right here! Going, going….

Gone. This was right after he said, “I DON’T WANT ONE NOW. JUST FORGET IT.” Oh wow, someone’s come down with a case of the Erins.

Imagining a lake where all the sailboats are tacos and he’s a great, venerable taco sailor.

Not buying a taco.

Yeah Henry. Don’t forget. Bitchbaby motherfucker.

(I think Mexico might find it hard to believe that the world’s best tacos are in Indiana.)

Honestly was about to scratch a Will on my leg with a paint chip from this sad, downtrodden Paratrooper—it was such a janky ride! On one hand, I was like, “At least if we’re flung from this shoddy piece of mechanics, we have a 50/50 chance of hitting the lake and surviving” and then on the other hand I was like, “EW I DON’T WANT TO TOUCH THAT GROSS WATER!”

I’ve only ridden on one set of Paratroopers more run down looking than this one, and that was at the Washington County Fair.

A fresh coat of paint goes a long way, Indiana Beach. Just pretend like each umbrella is one of Tammy Faye Bakker’s eyelids. Go wild!

Faces of Paratrooper survivors.

That guy has what we call 1950s Indiana Swag.

I love the Tilt-a-Whirl so much but not on days where elves are spooning viscous scoops of oil from my facial pores to use as liliputian love-stick lubricant. Let me spell it out for it: IT WAS HOT AND HUMID. I can’t ride spinny rides when I’m in the throes of heat stroke. But Chooch rode this three times in a row. God, good for you, Chooch. Why don’t you just write a song about it on your dumb keyboard, ugh.

Obligatory ice cream cone shot. Can I get any more predictable.

Seriously, these guys. I was obsessed. Also note: this was pretty much how crowded it was all day until late afternoon when the water park mysteriously closed down and a horde of Indiana’s finest invaded the park like beached whales.

Pale, so pale, very pale beached whales.

This is not where I got my ice cream.

I haven’t even finished writing about this park yet and I’m already trying to con Henry into taking us to another one. I’M NEVER SATISFIED. Just ask the doves when they cry.

I read some reviews online (because that’s what I do: read amusement park reviews all day long; I don’t have any friends to occupy my time, remember?) that complained about the employees were terrible. This was definitely not the case on my visit, because they clearly know I have a blog and want all of the glowing words written about them. I will say that I didn’t have a single run-in with surly orange-shirts all day. And I even left the park with two favorites: the dude from the Lost Coaster ride and this sweet Russian broad from the Hoosier Hurricane.

The Lost Coaster guy reminded me of the Salute Your Shorts camp counselor, Ug, in that he thought he was way cooler than he was and tried to act tough by yelling things like, “LIKE DON’T SIT ON THE RAILING!” But I guess he was still more intimidating than me because Chooch never listens when I tell him to get off the rail but when Ug hollered it, Chooch hopped off with a quickness.

I accidentally left my phone on the ride and realized it about 3 minutes afterward. When I ran back up the exit ramp to the ride platform, he was checking the next riders’ seat belts and casually holding my pink cell phone and it just made me crack up so bad.

“Hey, that’s my phone,” I said in faux-outrage and he put his hands up.

“I tried to chase you down but you were already gone!” he explained, handing it back over and we both had a good laugh. Why, I’m not sure. But I think I probably was definitely in the beginning stages of heat stroke by then so everything was funny to me except for things that Henry said/did/didn’t do because those things just made me inexplicably ANGRY.

OK, now let’s talk about the Russian. (I mean, after I type out hundreds of words that seem totally unrelated to a Russian broad, of course.)

A few days before we left for our road trip, Chooch acquired some sort of cut/scrape thing on the top of his ankle. Something about he went to kick a soccer ball, missed, tripped over it, bent his foot all the back and scraped it against the sidewalk. Then he proceeded to wear Converse high-tops, which ended up rubbing his scrape raw while forming a blister all at the same time.

So now he had a mutant cut/blister injury in addition to his foot hurting in general from being bent all the way back. He would be fine in the morning, but once he started walking too much, it would aggravate the wound and make his ankle get all red and slightly swollen.

The humidity that day, and also the OINTMENT (I love that people hate that word) that Henry slathered on the wound, made Chooch’s ankle too MOIST (hahaha) for Band-Aids to stay adhered for very long. So when were walking up the metal-grated steps of the Hoosier Hurricane coaster, Chooch forgot how to walk and fell, banging his ankle against the metal edge of the step below him, knocking off the Band-Aid and making him wince in pain.

Henry wasn’t with us, since he wasn’t RIDING anything that day, so I had to try to be a mom and tell Chooch things like, “It’s probably going to be fine” and “You’ll probably still have a foot after all of this is over” and “PLEASE START WALKING, I REALLY WANT TO GO ON THIS ROLLER COASTER.” As soon as we made it into the station, a super sweet Russian girl took down the chain for us and said to Chooch, “Oh no! What is happened to you?” But Chooch was still blinking back tears so I had to do my best to make it look like I hadn’t abused my child.

“There is first aid down there,” she said, pointing over her shoulder. She was really concerned about Chooch’s ankle, which was really endearing. But then we got stuck standing awkwardly next to her while we waited for the coaster to come back, so she made broken-English small talk about the weather.

“It is hot,” she said in a staccato.

“Yeah,” I agreed, struggling for words. And then after a stretch of about 30 million acres of silence, I thought of something else to say. “That, uh, humidity makes it worse.”

“Oh yah! The humidity is worst!” she agreed, and I thanked the arrival of the coaster for interrupting our cliche weather discourse.

She made sure Chooch and I were safely buckled into our seats and then said, “Enjoy ride!” and I secretly hoped it was meant just for us and not any of the other sweaty bastards behind us.

After we got off the ride, Chooch ran ahead of Henry and me because he knows everything, including the way to the first aid trailer. Eight-year-olds don’t need parents, you guys. By the time we caught up and walked into the first aid trailer, Chooch and the park medic were just sitting there silently, Chooch on the edge of the bed and the medic at his desk.

“He just came in and sat down,” the medic explained. “Said he was waiting for some people.”

And then Chooch relayed the entire, sordid saga of the Origin of the Wound.

He loves to talk about it. Last night, as soon as we got to his piano lesson, he sighed and mumbled something about his foot hurting. (Side note: that fucker is pretty much healed by now, so I guess he’s experiencing fantasy pains similar to Henry’s imaginary war wounds that don’t exist because Henry was never in an actual war when he was in the SERVICE.) “Oh no, what did you do to it?” his piano teacher Cheryl asked.

“Ugh, why does everyone ask me about it?” Chooch cried and I was like, “OH OK, MY LEFT FOOT, MAYBE BECAUSE YOU CAN’T STOP BRINGING IT UP.”

Here’s Henry re-doing Chooch’s Band-Aid 3 minutes later.

There was another Russian girl working the Cornball Express, another roller coaster, but she wasn’t as nice. I mean, she wasn’t a dick head or anything, but she didn’t go out of her way to smother us with attention like Hoosier Hurricane did. The other Cornball Express girl routinely helped me unbuckle my seatbelt all 137 times we rode that coaster (honestly, there were no lines to wait in). Chooch, who had quickly mastered the secret of the Houdini-approved seatbelts, kept crying out, “Oh for Christ’s sake, mommy!” Before eventually just not waiting for me anymore.

I seriously have never struggled so hard with a seatbelt in my life. It was almost embarrassing. Ok it was embarrassing.

After hours of stalking Frankenstein’s Castle, those fucking garage doors were finally a’lift and we had the confusing task of trying to add dolla dolla bills to the Indiana Beach cash card thing. I forget to mention that this is one of those amusement parks where, if you don’t want to plan on riding much, you can load money onto credit cards and then scan it before you get on the rides. Even the ride-all-day wristbands have barcodes on them and everyone is required to stick their wrist under a scanner at the front of all of the lines. Waldameer Park in Erie does this, too. It’s annoying, but whatever.

Anyway, Frank’s Place wasn’t included in the ride-all-day admission price. Some dark rides are like that and while I’m not exactly sure of the reason (Chris? Can you help here?), I have a few theories, mostly that it’s a restoration thing. It was an additional $3.50 per person and BE STILL MY HEART, Henry actually paid for THREE. At first, I thought maybe there was some sad albino kid in line behind us, tugging on Henry’s bland heart strings and making him do charitable thangs. (I didn’t want to end on a rhyme. You understand.)

But no, he was paying for himself! Henry was finally going to not sit on a bench with his nose pressed against his phone, looking at Pinterest! (Honestly, Chooch and I made fun of him from every line in which we stood. Because why not.)

As soon as the ticket booth broad granted us admission, our nostrils were slammed with the unmistakable vintage bouquet of moth balls and Aunt Edith’s cedar closet of muumuus. It’s a smell that I love because it means old school amusement park. Fuck those flashy sterile, steel concrete jungles known as Six Flags.

I want that fancy dark ride musk.

If they bottled it as perfume/cologne, that’d be a surefire way to get me into your backseat.

(Oh come on, don’t pretend like you thought I was classy.)

“I just paid $3.50 to walk through a fake castle with two screaming d-bags. I bet that taco would have also cost $3.50 and have been way less annoying.” – Henry, if he ever thought about anything.

After sitting on a bench and listening to a crackling recording about what scares we were about to encounter, a disinterested young Indiana Beach employee opened a door and ushered us in for the “OMG crashing elevator” segment. At first I thought this was going to be totally lame, and that part was, but then she opened another door and set us free, on our own, to shuffle through the guts of a mostly pitch-black haunted house.

Here is Henry’s review:

It was fun. I got pushed through by two scared little people. That’s about it.

Wow. Titillating as always.

There were no scare actors, just the effective non-use of light bulbs, enclosed animatronic displays that managed to pop on when I was always the most unsuspecting, moving floors and enough enclosed spaces to make a claustrophobe fake their way through the rosary.

THIS IS A CLASSIC DARK ATTRACTION. One that keeps it real and doesn’t rely on modern, high-tech scare tactics. Let me put it this way: there are chicken doors located throughout the length of the castle and if Henry hadn’t gone in with us, I guarantee the first one would have a chunk taken out of it in the exact outline of my body.

This is the type of haunt you want to walk through with the person you’re obsessively crushing on or maybe the hipster you just met IRL on Tinder and want to terrorize in the dark with rusty hedge clippers while wearing your mom’s skin on your face. Butterflies!

I’d go back to Indiana Beach every summer just for another 10 minutes inside Frankenstein.

YEAH, YOU READ THAT RIGHT.

I bought tickets to the 15 year anniversary tour of Armor For Sleep’s “What To Do When You Are Dead” album and now I have a little over 4 months to prepare my heart for the inevitable suffering it’s going to endure that night. Goddamn this album was my audio Bible for some Big Times in life.

In other news, a bunch of people at work have the flu, and one of them had been handling food for a Fat Tuesday party at work but thankfully I was off that day and never ate any of the leftovers the next day but great – now I have a new sub-phobia to add to my growing list of food fears. I might take the day off every time there is an office party now. TERRIFIC.

I am fixated on taking my temperature now, it’s like my new nervous tick.

Today I texted him, freaking out because my temperate was 99.4.

BITCH, BEST BELIEVE.

I only took my temperature twice at work though because it makes beeping sounds and it is SO QUIET in our quadrant and I didn’t want people to be like WHY ARE YOU CONSTANTLY TAKING YR TEMPERATURE and then an Erin has corona rumor will start probably, so then I was going to take it to the bathroom but I didn’t want to just traipse around with my fancy forehead temperature reader. I considered shoving it in the waistband of my pants but would that be worse?

I don’t know if it’s psychosomatic but I feel like I have the flu-chills now so THAT IS GREAT. I already told Jiyong I can’t meet tomorrow because I might have the flu by then, who knows? I guess I’ll know.

Current temperature: 98.6.

I don’t even know if that title makes sense because I don’t really understand ARMY terms.

Remember a few weeks ago when we were chilling at my dining room table, sippin’ lukewarm tea from chipped cups, and I told you that our neighbor HNC hates his newish neighbor? He’s this single guy who moved in after that fucking loud ass-crack baring dumptruck-driving slob-boy and his mom moved out last year. At first, he seemed normal. Ex-bartender, probably in his late 30s, doesn’t seem trashy but he does seem to hover dangerously on that Ed Hardy line, so who can be sure.

He moved into the other side of HNC’s house, so we don’t have to share a wall with him and have to deal with him as intimately as the HNC clan, but as I have explained in the past, we have a shared driveway which separates both houses. All four units have their own garages, but they are your typical narrow city caves that you can potentially park your car in, but who wants to chance nicking up  their paint job, you know?

But this guy doesn’t care, so he actually uses his garage. I have an issue with this only because he comes home after midnight every night, stereo BLASTING, and leaves his car idling in the driveway, which is right beneath my bedroom window, while he fucks with opening the garage door. So I am propelled out of sleep by his car’s bass. If there is one thing to know about me, it is THAT I FUCKING HATE THE SOUND OF BASS. Unless I’m at a concert or it’s coming from my own car, I absolutely cannot stand the sound of someone else’s bass seeping through my walls.

HNC has an an issue with the garage-usage because his kitchen is right above new guy’s garage, and new guy often leaves the garage door open while he’s out and since it’s winter, the cold air turns the cement walls of the garage into a veritable freezer, which affects HNC’s kitchen above.

So HNC will close the dude’s garage door when he leaves it open, which makes new guy get super passive aggressively belligerent. He wrote IN BALLPOINT PEN on the garage door “No trespassing” but spelled it “truespassing” so maybe HNC should counter with a dictionary page taped next to it.

In addition to my bass beef, I also had negative feelings toward the new guy because I had attempted numerous times to say hello to him and he ignored me each time and I HATE BEING IGNORED and also I am the Pioneer Ave OG Neighbor so better respect, bitch. But then my beef turned raw and murderous two weeks ago. It was FEBRUARY 12TH, NEVER FORGET. I had just come home from work, stepped inside my house long enough to grab the books I needed to return to the library, and then left again. As I was starting to walk along the sidewalk that crosses over our driveway, new guy came BARRELING up the driveway from his garage and NEVER EVEN STOPPED WHEN HE GOT TO THE TOP. He was going to just shoot right out onto the road, I guess, and then saw me at the last minute, but only after I had jumped back. Now that he was blocking the entire sidewalk with his car, I had to walk BEHIND HIM, through the driveway, to get to the other side of the sidewalk. I screamed, “YOU ASSHOLE!” at him, and I think he had turned around to say something shitty back to me, even though I couldn’t gear because all of his windows were up, and then in a flustered huff, he floored it and pulled out into oncoming traffic because he was too stupid to look, so a car blew their horn at him and he had to slam on his breaks and I just laughed and skipped away happily up the sidewalk, library books in my arm.

Apparently, HNC witnessed this but didn’t know it was me, because he was telling Henry about how the neighbor almost hit someone and Henry was like, “Was it Erin?” so he said maybe, unless new guy makes a habit of almost hitting pedestrians when he flies up and out of the driveway, and this could be possible!

Monday morning, I was walking to the trolley and HNC texted me! He said he was going to call the landlord that day and wanted to get an accurate account of what happened to me before he made the call. I was so excited! It was like giving a statement to the police, except I don’t hate HNC and I hate the police, so I was polite and didn’t use a shitty teenaged tone with him like I would have if it was A COPPER.

HNC asked me if I noticed if the garage door was open that morning, but I sadly did not, and the only thing I could offer was that when I was working from home last Thursday, new neighbor, who used to have a SLUT LIFE sticker on his car so let’s just call him SLUT LIFE from now on, came home in the afternoon blasting, and I mean blasting, Miley Cyrus’s “The Climb” a song which I only know because ex-bff was obsessed with it when it came out because she likes shit music.

I felt really smug and satisfied that I got to be a big fat tattletale because we all know that is how I truly identify: BIG FAT PETTY WHISTLEBLOWER. Helping HNC made me feel like I was  part of a real gang, you know? Like I finally belong somewhere, my window-peering skills are being utilized after all these years.

However, after I hung up, I thought about HNC calling the landlord. That asshole didn’t do shit the whole time we had a heroin-ring kingpin living next door, or Boots who was over there Hulk-smashing the property and raping people. (Allegedly. But I really believe he was.) And the landlord was all, “Well, they’re paying rent, so. Call the police.”

And that’s what he told HNC about Slut Life, until HNC countered with, “HE WRECKED INTO THE GARAGE DOOR, FYI” and I guess that got the landlord’s attention because it’s a new garage door and he only cares about superficial shit like that.

I happened to have the day off on Tuesday when I heard a truck door slam and someone talking in  the driveway. I immediately locked the deadbolt (lol) and ran upstairs because I always have that underlying fear that someone has come to take me away. But when I got upstairs and spied out of Chooch’s bedroom window, I noted that it was some lady from a GARAGE DOOR COMPANY. She was assessing the damage (to me, it just looks like a little dent, but what do I know about garage doors) to someone on the phone, and I was frantically texting Henry pictures and as many of the fragments of conversation I could pick up over the steady traffic outside.

Henry was just like, “OK cool” because he has literally no investment in this drama at all.

THEN HNC CALLED HENRY AND RELAYED THE SAME INFORMATION BECAUSE AT THE SAME TIME I WAS SPYING FROM CHOOCH’S WINDOW, HE WAS SPYING FROM HIS BASEMENT DOOR!!! And then we both reported back to Henry, like he’s some Yinzer Charlie and we’re his bumbling amateur spy Angels. EXCEPT THAT HENRY NEVER ASKED TO BE IN THIS POSITION! But he has somehow found himself caught up in the middle, listening to reports from both me and HNC, and what he chooses to do with his information is beyond me but probably involves pouring it straight into the commode from the other side of his head, and flushing.

WHO KNOWS WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT.

WILL SLUT LIFE HAVE TO PAY FOR THE NEW GARAGE DOOR (the quote was 0!

) OR WILL HE SAY HNC SABOTAGED HIM? Oooh, winter is really heating up here on Pioneer!

I don’t have too much to say about this past weekend. It was a….weekend. Not terribly exciting, but definitely not terribly…terrible either. Henry pissed me off Saturday morning on our walk to the post office though because I started to recount all of the things I have been asking him to do around the house and how he has done none of these things and then I got mad because DO NOT TURN ME INTO A NAG, MOTHERFUCKER. And then there were these two old ladies walking in front of us and I couldn’t get around them so I was stuck walking in between them and Henry and it was really awkward and I was trying to contain my psycho-level anger.

Once I finally managed to blow past those old ladies, I had just stepped onto Brookline Boulevard right before some older man who stopped to pick up a dollar on the sidewalk outside of the Teen Center and in my head I was screaming THAT COULD HAVE BEEN MY DOLLAR IF THOSE FUCKING LADIES HADN’T HELD ME BACK, FUCCCCKKKKK.

Henry is lucky that the library is just on the next block from the post office, so I went there while he was in the post office and perusing the stacks really brought down my heart rate. They didn’t have any of the books I had requested yet but I ended up grabbing one that my favorite BookTuber talks about a lot even though it’s a YA Fantasy/Supernatural, leave me alone, OK.

When I left the library, Henry was coming out of the bakery and handed me a cookie. Usually, he gets two peanut butter and two chocolate cookies. “I only had a dollar on me, so I could only get two cookies,” he said, after I was like WHERE IS MY SECOND COOKIE.

UGH IF I HAD BEAT THAT MAN TO THE ERRANT SIDEWALK-DOLLAR, WE COULD HAVE HAD FOUR COOKIES!!!!

God, that sounded like we live like peasants.

Then I ate lunch while watching YouTube videos about books. “She organizes her book shelf by color? I hate her,” Henry spat all judgmentally but to his credit, she really was pretty annoying. Alphabetization or GTFO, am I right?

Later, Henry dropped me off at Panera for my weekly meet-up with Jiyong, and then he went to the Asian market to get ingredients for banchan. My Korean lesson was fine, but Panera was extremely crowded for some reason and only one cashier was working so we had to stand in line forever, and then I had to stand and wait in another line for my chai latte, and some Spicolli-type kid was like, “I like your shirt.”

“Thanks!” I said too-eagerly because a younger guy was paying attention to me, hooray.

“Yeah,” he said in a surfer-y tone.

My “shirt” was a pink sweater with sheep on it, one of which is black, so I was able to use it as an example of an English idiom later in the afternoon because yes, I actually teach Jiyong English crap sometimes too!

But before that could happen, I had to continue waiting for my chai. Why they couldn’t give me a buzzer thing for that, I have no idea, but I ended up standing there for at least 8 minutes, most of which were devoted to feigning interest in this strange old lady’s rant about how Door Dash ruins everything, and how she owns a pizza shop in Plum and blatantly refused to sign up for Door Dash but then she started getting Door Dash orders and was like WTF and she called them and said, “REMOVE MY PIZZA SHOP FROM THIS SERVICE I DID NOT SIGN UP FOR THIS” and they told her that someone clearly did and she was like, “WTF” and then she started getting complaints because Door Dash was delivering way farther than her normal jurisdiction so customers were getting cold pizza, or the cheese was sliding because these Door Dash drivers weren’t her actual drivers and now she’s getting bad reviews and it IS DOOR DASH’S FAULT.

“Wow, I never thought about that,” I mumbled, literally not giving a single shit about this and then my chai latte was finally put on the counter so I just walked right out of the conversation while she was still talking, I am not very people-y but somehow, strangers always want to talk me up and I just don’t know what else to do since my resting bitch face and standoffish vibes are clearly not strong enough, so I guess my next step is to stand in a corner flicking a switchblade.

By the time I found Jiyong in the bowels of the Panera dining area, my face was flushed and I was sweating. Then I pulled out my textbooks and a lipstick fell out with them and rolled across the floor so I had to chase it, and then when I picked up my pencil, my grip was too lax and I flung it over my shoulder, so that was how my lesson started, aren’t you sad you’re not teaching me things too?

There was this one word in our lesson that I was tying my tongues in knots trying to pronounce, and of course it means “I forgot” which is a really important word that I should know since I’m always forgetting my vocabulary, and Jiyong kept making me repeat one of the sounds over and over and FOR SURE people were spectating this and I was like “IGNORE THEM IGNORE THEM IGNORE” but then I worried that I sounded like I needed medical attention, but luckily, no one rushed over to see if I needed CPR or whatever.

Later that night though, for the hell of it, I opened up my Naver app (basically the Korean google), tapped the microphone icon, took a deep breath and spoke into it.

AND IT KNEW WHAT WORD I WAS SAYING:

I excitedly sent it to Jiyong and she was excited for me and I hope she patted herself on the back because she is really making me work for this!

Then Chef Henri made vegan Korean chicken for dinner and we feasted like wangs (that’s “king” in Korean!).

Sunday was a real laid-back, no plans, let’s buy Erin new clothes, kind of day. Sometimes you need a day like that, you know? It was super-relaxing and I snagged a mound of clothes from the clearance racks at H&M, which is the only store I ever have success when it comes to sale items. I know so many people who find the cutest things for cheap at TJ Max and Marshalls, but HOW?! I walk in, get super angry, and walk right back out. I need to know the secret. Should I self-medicate beforehand?! Is that the trick??

Well, H&M will just have to be my go-to for cheap clothes until I find the will to look up “how to shop at TJ Max” on YouTube. Because you fucking know there are videos for that shit.

Let’s see, Chooch and I fought on Sunday about mechanical pencils because I told him that I learned the word for it in Korean (phonetically, it’s “sharp” pencil but the Korean pronunciation is “sha-pu” – Jiyong told me they call it that because literally the lead is sharp and my mind was blown). Then I started complaining about how I have to use Chooch’s mechanical pencils for my Korean lessons and they are so crappy and cheap so he was like THEN DON’T USE MY PENCILS!!! And I said that’s fine, because Henry is going to buy me a good mechanical pencil, and um, this really set Chooch off for some reason, lol.

“WTF SHE gets a GOOD one now!? I asked you to get ME good ones and you said no!” Chooch cried.

“Yeah, because you always give your pencils away to your dumb friends!” Henry yelled back, defensively, so then they started fighting over that and I sat back an waited to get tagged back in.

Ah, the Murder House.

Speaking of Murder Houses, the hotel Henry booked for the first night of our trip is super creepy, on a German hillside in the middle of nowhere, basking in its Bavarian-ness. I’m super stoked about it. Surely someone has been murdered there.

We have a little more than a month before we leave for our mini-theme park Euro-trip so I’ve been spending most of my free time scouring the Internet and YouTube to ensure our itinerary is as padded and stacked as possible because I am super high-strung when it comes to DOING THE MOST AHHHHHH WE’RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME!

Now, I have previously been to several places we will be hitting on this trip, but I was a kid and sadly, unless I pull out the old travel journals, I have very spotty memories of these times which is pathetic because some of these cities I have been to more than once.

For instance, my only memories of Amsterdam:

• Getting stuck in the elevator of the Pullman? Astoria? hotel we were staying at;
• My Pappap finding a piece of glass in his dessert at the same hotel’s restaurant (I have a vivid memory of the dessert being a peeled pear, like straight of a can, sitting on top of a chocolate sauce pool);
• Another time being in Amsterdam as a surly teenager and having a huge fight with my aunt Sharon and writing horrible things about her in my vacation journal, and then going on a tour of a diamond factory and her buying me a diamond ring for my birthday and being all, “Dear diary, I take back everything I said about Sharon; I was just tired and hungry. Oh yeah, and she bought me this cool ring!” And I definitely probably didn’t use a semi-colon though because I’m sure I didn’t know how to use those yet, but I mean, do I really know how to use them now.

And Cologne:

• Milling about in a courtyard and walking along some slanted brick thing, the kind of things that usually have a tree or flowers in the middle, and I lost my balance and fell, sending my camera skidding across the courtyard, batteries popping out and rolling all over the place, and I skinned my knee too probably, that sounds about right;
• Another time we were in Cologne and I was like, “OH HAY GUYS REMEMBER??” And then I began to do a mocking reenactment of The Fall and then accidentally fell again and injured myself;
• I think it was also that last time, I spotted these two people who looked like the Gorgs from Fraggle Rock. The lady was straddling the man on a bench and they were slowly rocking back and forth and I was like look at those people, they look like Fraggle Rock and Sharon was all OMG THEY ARE HAVING SEX and then slapped her hand across my eyes and lead me away.

Brussels was the only city in Belgium that I’ve been to and we’ve opted for Bruges instead on this trip, but either way, my only memory of Brussels is seeing the statue of the peeing boy and fighting with Sharon.

We were honestly the WORST travel partners. I mean, it was ok when my grandparents used to travel with us because I could at least seek refuge and reprieve from Sharon in their room.

Anyway, now it’s hours later and this post inspired me to dig through the treasure trove of photos I took from my Pappap’s house when we were cleaning it out in 2016 and I actually found a photo that Sharon took of me in 1995 standing in front of that dumb thing I fell down when I was 10 and you can tell by my scowl that I loved having my picture taken. And right after this was when i was like HAHA I WAS SO STUPID LOOK AT ME I’M ERIN FROM 1989 NOT KNOWING HOW TO WALK and then I accidentally fell down.

Yeah. You’re welcome.

I also found a picture of this guy I was in love with from one of those trips and I have been wanting to write a travel memories post about him for quite some time now so maybe that will inspire me to do so someday when I feel less lazy.I really got away from my point here which is I really appreciate that I had the opportunity to do so much traveling as a kid and thank God I kept travel journals else I would barely remember anything. For instance, we are going to Frankfurt and I have to actually flip through those ancient tomes* at some point because I am not sure if I have been there before?!?! That’s…pathetic.

*(The best edition is the one where I was going through a phase when I spelled ‘really’ as ‘rilly’ and replaced any ‘s’ at the end of a word with a ‘z’ just BCUZ KAY GUYZ? And every paragraph was in a different color ink. Would you believe me if I told you I’m actually less obnoxious now?)

I tried to get Chooch to start vacation journaling when we took him to Disney in 2016 but he is super not into that at all so I guess at least he has my blog to fall back on. For instance, when we were hate-watching these dumb Australian travel vloggers who were in Savannah. They went to Leopold’s for ice cream and I shouted, “WE WENT TO LEOPOLD’S WHEN WE WERE THERE TOO!” and Chooch was like, “I wonder what flavor I got” and I said “Probably something dumb, here, I’ll check my blog.”

“Yep, as suspected: Probably Something Dumb,” I happily reported back.

I think I veered off track somewhere up there but the whole point of this post is that this is my first time traveling to this region of Europe as an adult and without the shackles of an organized bus tour so we will be in full control of the things we do and I want to make sure we do the right/best/most funnest things and eat all the good foods because unless stroopwafels weren’t a thing yet in the 90s which I find hard to believe, our stupid tour guide never made sure they found a way into our mouths, not a single time I was in Amsterdam, how can that be so!? That is just an example of the things on my Erin Returns: The Redemption Trip.

That’s just a name I thought up on the spot. It’s subject to change, a work in progress. We’ll see where it goes.

That’s all for today. I’m revisiting Jillian Michael’s Body Revolution program and today I started Workout 5 and still feel slightly nauseous from that so I think I might go and dry heave into a waste basket and then put myself to bed early WHO CAN BE SURE.

(Do I have a waste basket though? Is it just a garbage can?)