*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!

(Lol clickbait.)

Henry and I were working on the Gameboy project Saturday night, being the wild and crazy kids that we are (I at least sipped on a glass of wine during the art sesh, lol ugh this lame life). The firetruck came by for a visit, which is not unusual given the crazy street I live on. From what we deduced, our neighbor a few houses down had smelled gas, so after the firetruck came, so did the gas company. This is like the third time of late that the gas company has come in for this – the last time, both local gas companies were here all day, doing their gas company things, and I guess the result was “no leak”?? I have no idea, but I really hope that if something is going on over there, someone fixes it soon. I want to move, but I’d like that to be into a new house and not a burial plot, you know? IS THAT TOO DARK FOR MONDAY.

Anyway, this was all just my usual preamble to set the scene, I guess.

Around 10:30, I decided I was done playing with clay and retreated to the couch. Right after I sat down, I heard a horn blaring and saw a blue light flash outside of the window. It was an ambulance, and they were beeping at the DRUNK WOMAN SHAMBLING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET IN FRONT OF MY HOUSE.

“Well, there’s a drunk person walking past our house,” I reported to Henry, who had asked for a Pioneer Ave update from the dining room.

Usually, I do not care much for people, but this broad was making me capital N nervous. She was D R U N K, and just like, “Tee hee, I had three Fuzzy Navels with my gal pals” giddy drunk. First of all, why was she ALONE? I opened the front door just in time to see her nearly get hit by a pick-up truck, stagger even farther into the road, where she came close to being clipped by a car passing on the other side.

Might I remind you at this time that I do not live on a quiet residential road. This ain’t Maple Street, my guy.

(As I write this, the gas company is back on my block.)

“Don’t get involved,” Henry warned, now in Dad Mode. “Someone probably already called 911. Let them deal with it.”

WOW look who doesn’t want someone else to steal the hero thunder. Mmm.

Yes, there is always the risk that the person in question is psychotic or belligerent; and yes, it’s true that, at my core, I truly do not care much for people because all of my love is for animals, but if anything happened to this broad, I’d carry that to my grave. My capacity for carrying guilt is huge. You could fill quarries with the guilt I got loafing on my conscience at all times.

I went outside. Prayed to the Kpop idols that this wasn’t going to backfire. Gently called out, “Hello, are you OK?”

She looked up at me with glassy, unfocused eyes, and this was the first time I really gained a sense of what I was dealing with: a classic White Yinzer of approx. late 40s to late 50s, possibly even younger if we’re going the “rode hard and put away wet” assumption.

What came next was a deluge of slurred words, something about trying to get somewhere, no one answering, where’s the road, etc. “I’m drunk,” she tacked on, a disclaimer that I did not need.

“OK, well, let’s stand here on the sidewalk while we figure this out,” I said, blocking her from drifting back out onto the street.

“Why are you being nice to me?” she asked, and OK I dislike people, we know this, but wow, that one made me feel something in the ice box.  I explained that I saw her in the street from my window and didn’t want her to get hurt.

She said she was trying to get to Liberty, and I was thinking she needed to go downtown and I’m sorry, I wasn’t committed enough to offer this broad a ride. If she needed an Uber, I was happy to wait there with her until one arrived, but then she finally got ahold of her friend, Lorraine. She put Lorraine on speaker and started yelling at her for not picking up, and then she goes, “THIS GIRL IS HELPING ME, HERE TELL HER WHERE YOU LIVE” and then she screamed, “SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!” to Lorraine when I was trying to tell Lorraine where we were standing. Henry was watching this from the front door and asked me later, “Did she tell her friend to shut the fuck up?” with a laugh. Yes, yes she did.

Turns out, LORRAINE only lives one block away from me, on the same street. This drunkard had actually shambled past Lorraine’s house and good thing I found her when I did or she may actually have ended up downtown at some point. Who could be sure.

So now I’m trying to get the broad to turn around so that we can start our walk to Lorraine’s.  Again, she asked me why I was being so nice. And maybe I was even asking myself this too, but dude…girls gotta look out for each other, no matter what. ESPECIALLY ON PIONEER. The residents around here are like a jar of mixed nuts, literally. Imagine ROB or LARRY intercepting. No, on second thought, do not imagine.

Rob, coincidentally, did come out of his front door during this but it wasn’t to help, it was because he waiting for his….customer.

By now, I had asked the lush for her name.

“Fred,” she spat her alleged name into the air, and if this were a graphic novel, imagine the letters F R E D  coalescing in the space before us in glittering liquor droplets, like a dive bar’s marquee.

OK. Fred.

You know, it just occurred to me that she sort of resembled Jennifer Coolidge but like, a rough blue-collared Yinzer edition, like if J.Cool was born, raised, and possibly perms hair in DA BURGH.

In front of my neighbor George’s house, Fred drew in a harsh sniff. “I smell gas!” Here is where I remind you that the gas company is still present, parked in the lot across the street waiting for more crew to arrive. Pioneer had multiple story lines playing out on this night. I explained to her that my neighbor had already called 911 about it and pointed to the parked gas company car.

“YOU’RE GON’ SPLODE!” she frantically slurred. “BUBBY, THEY’RE GON’ SPLODE YOU!”

Did I mention that she called me Bubby during this guided tour of Pioneer? But with her level of inebriation, it was coming out more like a burped “buhhhhhby.”

Now we’re about four houses away from my house, still on the same block, when we passed a parked car with people inside. PRETTY SURE they live in one of the houses on my block, so, you know, technically my neighbors. Fred, apropos of NOTHING, lurched toward the passenger window and fucking barks, “FUCK YOU! FUCK! YOU!” into the rolled-up window.

“OK, no, let’s not…no,” I said, giving her a tug to keep her moving.

“I like to FIGHT!” she cried. “I just really love FIGHTING, Bubby!!”

“Gotta stay on your good side!” I laughed nervously, while in my head I’m like “GOTTA STAY ON HER GOOD SIDE” sans laughter.

Did I tell you that we were holding hands the whole time? Yeah, we were holding hands. Looking back on this has me feeling very uncomfy now.

Fred, forgetting about the random people in a parked car that she wanted to fuck up, asked me with so much gravity to her warbled voice, “Bubby. Does your husband hit you?” (She may have said “hate” instead, I couldn’t tell, but either option is depressing.)

I said no and the ERIN IN ME wanted to use this opening as yet another platform to whine about my unmarried status, but THIS NIGHT WAS ABOUT HELPING FRED, NOT MAKING IT ALL ABOUT ME AS USUAL.

We had finally reached the next block (I could have walked here in about 30 seconds if I didn’t have a drunk lady leaning against me, nearly breaking her ankles in the wedges she was wearing.

I asked her where she had been coming from, and she said Slapshots. You guys, Slapshots is a bar on a very busy main road. It’s a very doable walk…BUT NOT WHEN YOU’RE DRUNK IN WEDGES?! I was telling my friend Nate about this at work today and he was like, “Erin. She walked to your street from SLAPSHOTS? HOW DID SHE NOT GET KILLED.”

You cannot just stumble into West Liberty Avenue in a drunken stupor and expect to live. That road is fucking busy, always. Fred must have had a goddamn angel gliding above her this night.

♣ Slapshots

♠ Lorraine’s house 

♥ MY HOUSE WHERE I FOUND FRED IN THE STREET

Trying to make small talk as I led her across the street like a school crossing guard with my arm out to stop oncoming traffic, I asked Fred if Lorraine was her friend, or sister, or…

“SHE’S MY BEST FRIEND!” Fred shouted. “I had another really good friend too but she hanged herself last year. It’s been a really bad year.” And then, a quiet burp pushed out the rest: “I’m so depressed.”

Honestly, same, but I was also relieved that we had successfully crossed over Pioneer while she was spilling these dark truths.

Before I had a chance to really unpack what Fred was saying, A COP ROLLED TO A STOP NEXT TO US. because of course, this was bound to happen. I had seen him earlier when I first went outside to get her out of the street so I’m sure he was just circling the block LIKE THOSE MOTHERFUCKING HAWKS, hoping to have a reason to cuff some chicks, let’s goooooo.

“Everything OK here?” he called out of his passenger-side window. My natural instinct is to sneer in the faces of cops, but I just wanted this expedition to end without escalation. GET FRED TO LORRAINE’S. IGNORE BOOBYTRAPS. DODGE DISTRACTIONS. DON’T LET FRED FALL. DON’T LET FRED ENGAGE IN FISTICUFFS. UNLOCK LEVEL LORRAINE’S HOUSE.

“Yes, we’re fine. I’m just getting her to her friend’s house right down there.”

He gave us a douchey invisible hat-tip, before setting off to look for other ways to meet his ARREST quota.

“YOU’RE AWESOME!” Fred screamed at his patrol car, and then as he drove away, she tacked on, “YOU FUCKING PIG.”

Classic Fred.

You guys, we made it to Lorraine’s. I knew this because Lorraine had said it was the only house with a tree in the yard after I asked her to repeat her house number for the third time back when we were on the phone, because I was too distracted by Fred’s precarious swaying to retain the 4 digits she kept giving me.

And then Fred recognized her car parked on the street so that was the clincher.

“Let me drive you home, Bubby! You have to let me drive you home!”

Um…no way was this broad getting behind any wheel. I told her that I was fine to walk back (literally took me a minute) and that the only thing she should be doing was going into Lorraine’s house, hydrated, and getting some sleep.

And now Fred had half-crashed into me, half-pulled me into a hug. “I can’t let you leave!” she cried into my shoulder.

Oh my god. Get it together Fred.

Of course, Lorraine had a steep set of steps leading up to her house, so that was a treat. I was walking behind Fred, I don’t know what I thought that was going to do – she’d have taken us both out if she fell.

Once we made it to Lorraine’s porch,  Fred just opened the door and walked right in. My heart started racing, hoping that this was the right house and we weren’t about to get our faces shot off. Fred ran/stumbled straight ahead and faceplanted HARD into a black leather couch. Lorraine was sitting in a recliner next to the door, with her back facing me. She looked over her shoulder and said “Thanks.”

That’s all. Just thanks.

I mean, I wasn’t looking for cash (although Fred was trying hard to give me money) but the way this bitch was just like BIG SHRUG really pissed me off. OK, maybe this is Typical Fred Antics but c’mon you dumb bitch, this is your friend and she was literally out in the wild of Brookline, where she could have been picked up by a rapist, taken to the drunk tank by that smarmy cop, GOTTEN FLATTENED BY A TRUCK…Fred’s night could have ended up in so many worse ways. The fact that Lorraine didn’t even at least stand on her porch to look for us? That really pissed me off. Fred deserves better.

I’m sure Fred forgot all about this immediately upon hitting the couch, but I think I will remember Fred forever.

***

My entire body wasn’t even in the house yet before Henry’s rang.

Hot Naybor Chris: “What is going on out there??”

Ah, Pioneer Avenue’s tagline.

Duuuude, We had a pretty productive weekend, I’d say. Put some finishing touches on the game room that Chooch has lost all interest in so that’s fantastic, I guess it is my room now. My favorite thing that we finished this weekend is this bitchin’ Gameboy art:

I found the Gameboy a few mths ago when we were still in “cleaning out the attic” mode. I guess it was mine?! Was it?!? It came with a camera attachment though and that does seem somewhat familiar. I immediately started screaming about we should frame it and make it some type of rad art piece since, you know, this room was originally meant to be….Chooch’s game room. 

I had a vision of a totally bitchin’ frame with 90s abstract designs made from Sculpey, and that is exactly what happened thanks to Henry and his willingness to go along with everything I say with little to no deviation.

He did the zigzags and I did the dots. He used Sculpey but I used some kind of air-dry clay which required me to hand-paint each one the next day so I really regerrrrrted my decisions then but nonetheless, I think both of our shapes came out quite nicely!

This is what we were in the middle of doing Saturday night when there was a DISTURBANCE ON PIONEER, but I will recount that tale in a separate post. I am too mentally drained to use my words, so here are some more pictures (or, as one of my co-workers says, “pict”) of the Gameboy piece, which by the way I failed to mention, is also FUNCTIONAL ART – Henry Velcro’d it the backing so that it can be taken off and played if anyone ever pops over with a pocketful of Gameboy cartridges, because we surely do not have even one.

I WONDER WHERE THEY ALL WENT??

Henry was sitting up here by himself today, listening to an audiobook on his Bluetooth. So now when we can’t find Henry, one of us will say, “Have you checked the attic?”

I don’t want to totally junk up this wall with too much stuff, but I would definitely like to add a few more things at some point. I also cannot find a good spot for this fucking chair!!! I have moved it like 8x. I know in my heart that it belongs in this room but nothing had felt right to me yet. I will keep trying.

Janna and Corey are coming over next Saturday for pizza, snacks, maybe games in the room that was intended for hosting game nights so maybe we should actually do that. And probably by then I will show pictures of the other side of the room because it’s finally finished. Jesus, I was gung-ho about this project up until Chooch hurt himself and now I’m just like, “who cares.”

I will say one thing though!! This whole process has kind of made me want to start making paintings again!? Just little ones. And no customs.

*sorry I needed the alliteration, I CLAIM POETIC LICENSE.

Since I have been sorting through boxes of my entire life’s history, I’ve been unearthing some really…interesting shit. I will say that the prospect of becoming a certified hoarder in my elder years has really terrified me into pitching a ton of stuff, mostly the boxes upon boxes of pen pals letters. Because let’s be real: when am I ever going to read those?? And when I die, Chooch will definitely just have all of my stuff 86’d anyway so might as well lessen the load now.

Anyway! I thought, wow, what a fun Friday Five it would be to share some of the handwritten notes I’ve unearthed recently. I actually had so many options, but I narrowed it down to these five for today and maybe I will do more in the future, LIKE A SERIES??

1. AARON LOVES ERIN

I have definitely posted about this on here before, but it was a very long time ago and I think I just transcribed it. But today you get the ACTUAL LETTER.

It’s like my dad always said: I have a personality only a prisoner could love.

2. A Postcard from my Grandma

1989! This would have been my first trip to Europe, but no mention of all the times I embarrassed my grandma by being a frumpy fatty. LOL, jk kind of. I don’t think I have ever noticed how my grandma’s handwriting fluctuated between lowercase and uppercase – I do that too for sure but not that harshly! The randomly capitalized “e”s are really intriguing to me. I wonder what that means, from a handwriting analysis standpoint? Any pros here wanna weigh in?

P.S. LOL @ how she accidentally signed the card with their names and had to scratch it out.

3. VANETTA ROCKS

You guys, when I found this card, I literally said, “AWWW” out loud. Vanetta was the teenaged daughter of the people who, many moons ago, lived next to Hot Naybor Chris except that it was so long ago  that he didn’t even live there yet! Her family had already been living on this block for some time before I moved in back in 1999 and they had at least 3 other kids (I want to say two younger girls and a boy). You know I hate me some children, but I really, truly enjoyed the presence of these kids. They were just…really good and sweet. Back then, neighbors used to actually talk to each other and we’d have small block parties from time to time. I can remember one of the girls (Kristen I feel like her name was?) having a birthday so I went out and got her a present which probably wasn’t anything wild but I fully remember her being so appreciative.

Really liked that family a lot. Now Vanetta – she was the oldest and I feel like perhaps she was a half-sibling to the rest? I think she had a different dad and she was very sweet but kind of troubled. She glommed on to me pretty quickly because I wasn’t that much older than her, but older enough for her to feel “cool” to be in my presence? I will admit that she could be kind of annoying and a pain to get rid of, but at the end of the day, I did really like her. Obviously you already know by the card above that I let her come to X-Fest with Wonka and me and she was OVER THE MOON about it.

Her family ended up moving to Florida and I was so sad to see them go, but Vanetta stayed here with her dad, except that she ended up living in A MOTEL down the street for a while!? I’m not sure whatever happened to her but I would like to find out. I don’t know her last name, not sure that I ever did. Wherever she is, I sure hope she is doing well.

OH! One other funny Vanetta thing is that she was one of the first people to find out about me and Henry when she was coming over to knock on my door one day just as he was leaving and it was SO OBVIOUS that we were TRYSTING because he was leaving with wet hair after showering here. I just remember her looking at him, and then looking at me, and then looking back at him – you could hear the wheels grinding in her head!

OH! One last funny thing is that I’m pretty sure I threw out the referenced picture in that card because OMG EW I LOOKED FAT. Ugh, I hate myself bigly.

4. OLIVIA

OK OK OK, so the first time my grandparents took me to Europe, there was another girl my age on the same trip with her parents! Her name was Olivia and we became BEST FRIENDS. I can remember her parents & my grandparents scheduling phone calls for the two of us periodically after returning home from the trip. I would be so excited, waiting for the phone to ring at my Pappap’s house, thinking that it was so amazing a telephone could connect me to this girl from the west coast. Honestly, these phone calls probably only happened once or twice, lol. Sadly, my friendship with Olivia did not last very long but I bet if social media or at the very least cell phones had been prevalent at the time, maybe we’d still know each other at least at arm’s length?!

Props to her parents for including my beloved stuffed animal in the salutation, lol.

1

I FORGOT HOW COOL SHE WAS! Very Blossom-esque. Actually, perhaps she was a year or two older than me.

I was…not a cute child. LOL.

5. You guys, it’s gon’ get dark…

I actually just found this tonight when I was looking for something else and it knocked the wind out of me a little bit. So…apologies that this is about to get fucking dark, but this letter is from THE SHITTY MEAT COMPANY owner’s son, Eric. Now, you might remember that Eric sexually harassed me here and there during my 4-year tenure at this shitty job. A lot of it was suggestive, or inappropriate comments (like, “Would you fuck Stacy Dash?” Literally, the fact that I remember this one like it was yesterday….), almost threatening (“I’m going to come to your house tonight and have sex with you”), to downright blatant physical assault (RUNNING INTO MY OFFICE AND GRABBING MY CROTCH WHILE I WAS AT THE FILING CABINET, FILING INVOICES).

This was from 2000-2004. I was so young. So green. The world wasn’t what it is now. I worked at a family-owned company with no HR. Was this what the professional scene was like? Who knew!?!

Some things you need to know about Eric is that – AND I AM NOT EXCUSING HIS BEJHAVIOR – he was VERY emotionally undeveloped. This guy was in his 30s and literally had the maturity of a middle schooler. He was helpless, extremely unintelligent, just fucking clueless. His mother basically did all of his school work for him so that he could coast through high school and it showed. It really showed. On the other side of that letter up there, he spelled “imagine” as “amagin” and “celebrity” and “celiberty.” That….that was Eric.

So, the reason I have these letters is because, a few mths before everything came to a head at that place, resulting in me and Carol to walk out and me win a settlement after having a mediation with the EEOC (oh, looking back at it now, after #MeToo changed the climate of this shit, the sum I received was PATHETIC), Eric’s parents made him check into a rehab facility several hours away. He was an alcoholic and I *think* cocaine was his drug of choice? I’m not sure. But this man was so unstable and toxic.

His dad came into my office one day and asked, LOL nay – instructed, me to write Eric a letter. “It will make him feel better,” Joe said. And because I was FUCKING YOUNG AND STUPID AND THOUGHT THAT BECAUSE MY BOSS WAS TELLING ME TO DO SOMETHING NOT IN MY JOB DESCRIPTION, I STILL HAD TO DO IT EVEN IF IT WASN’T EVEN WORK-RELATED, I wrote the fucker a letter.

You guys, the day Carol and I quit, we had a screaming match with Joe. I said the shittiest things to him about Eric. It was 4 years coming. So much pent-up vitriol.

A few days after we quit, Eric had left the second rehab facility that he had begged to be transferred to because it was in Florida and it was more of a work-release type of situation where he was able to leave and he had a curfew?! I remember thinking that this sounded like an awful idea, and of course he ended up getting in trouble for breaking curfew too much and I’m sure other things happened that I can’t remember because I truly have SO MUCH of that time blocked out in my mind, but long story short, he either left or got kicked out and his MOMMY had to fly down there to bring him home, and a day later, he was speeding down Rt 837, hit a tree head on and died.

Fucking died.

A few days after I had a screaming match about him with his dad.

When I say that this happened in 2004 and I am still deep in my feelings about it to the point where I sometimes get so choked up that I can’t speak and have to just wave a hand in the air and change the subject, I am not kidding.

Yeah, so this letter. Ouch. The other one was signed FRIENDS FOREVER.

FRIENDS FOREVER, you guys. This man was so oblivious to the fact that I fucking hated him…yet at the same time, I had so much pity for him as well. His parents let him become that man. They did him no favors.

So wow – on that dark note! I’m about to go chug a glass of wine, me’thinks. Should this be a series?? NOTES FROM THE PAST? You tell me.

Today is the anniversary of…that day, and my new thing these last several years has been to celebrate my Pappap instead of moping / feeling sad / being depressed. He was only part of my life for 16 years, so it’s really nuts for me to grasp the idea that I’ve been living life without him longer than with him now. Damn. I can only hope that I have even half that much of an impact on someone’s life one day!

Anyway, here are three photos featuring my Pappap over the years!

This had to be us at Kennywood. I wonder what ride it was?! Henry suggested Jack Rabbit at first but I honestly can’t imagine being game to ride a rollercoaster at that age – maybe, though?? The station looks too open though, so then Henry suggested the Little Dipper. It was open until 1984 and this photo was probably from 1983 so maybe! But…I doubt it.

This may have been pre-Erin Pappap! That’s him and my MOMMY in their Gillcrest pool, which was one of my favorite places of all time. My Pappap’s pool in the summer, absolutely nothing was better. I would give anything to go back to the mid-80s for one sunny July afternoon, honestly. My Pappap didn’t go in the pool much by the time I was born, but he could ALWAYS be found sawing logs in a lawn chair.

In fact, he had his own lawn chair that no one else dared use, and I will never ever ever ever forget us attempting to normalize a Pappap-less world by celebrating someone’s birthday or some summer holiday by having a cookout/pool party like we used to, and my dad laying back in The Lawn Chair and BREAKING IT, causing my aunt Sharon to completely melt down. It was baaaaad. She wouldn’t let anyone touch the chair, it just pretty much stayed out there like a wrecked relic, making us all miss better times.

When I say my family collectively handled my Pappap’s death poorly, with handsome amounts of dysfunction and enough trauma to last several lifetimes, I’m actually downplaying it. None of us mourned his death like healthy people. I was (am??) scarred for years and years afterward to the point where I used to not even be able to THINK of him without bursting into tears, let alone talk about him like a functioning human with normal emotional health.

It was really hard when Chooch was a baby too, because I spent so much time bobbing around in my feelings, wondering if my Pappap knew that Chooch was here, wishing that Chooch could know him, needing his stability in our life.

But…I think I reached a point where I feel that he would be proud of me, and that he would approve of how I have been living my life (well, maybe starting within the last 10 years, lol). And that makes it easier for me to think about him and smile at the memories instead of sob uncontrollably.

OK enough for the heavy hoo-haw, here’s a totally groovy shot of my grandparents and people I don’t know (actually, both of those men bookending the shot looked very familiar to me though and their names are on the tip of my tongue). Is this the 60s? Early 70s? Not sure, but grandma, your hair! Woof! My grandma had some AMAZING hairstyles over this years and this was not one of them. Nope.  Anyway, I feel like this was from a group vacation. Bahamas, perhaps. I think they used to go there a lot. I could ask my mom but I think she still gets upset when he comes up so I try not to talk about him too much with her. I don’t know. His death really fucked us up. You wanna talk about the glue holding a family together. We felt that.

Sorry, I didn’t intend this to get heavy! I am not sad or depressed today. I’m fine, and just wanted to share these but then the thoughts started and now here I am analyzing an irreparable situation that shouldn’t have went down the way it did, but here we are!

When I came here to update the dumb blog just now, I accidentally clicked on my “about me” page and el yikes-etta that bitch is so obsolete. I should probably update it but who even cares. I keep hearing that “blogging is making a comeback” so maybe.

OMG speaking of blogging, I just flashed back to when I was an active participate on this website called BLOG FROG which was meant to be a community for bloggers to make friends but it was 99% mommy bloggers and when I tell you I didn’t fit in…

I still used to sign up for these things called “blog hops” though which was where you would join what was essentially a blog chain where you be put on a list and everyone on the list would go to everyone’s blog that day and leave a comment but it was SO APPARENT that most of the bitches weren’t even reading the blog posts and were just leaving stale comments such as “STOPPING BY FROM BLOGFROG” and that was so infuriating. It cracks me up and also pisses me off when I go back to past blog posts and stumble upon these generic-ass comments from MOMMY MARY IN MEMPHIS or whatever.

Most of them don’t even blog anymore!

BUT HERE I AM, OUT-BLOGGING THEM ALL.

Well, now that I got that fun memory purged from my system, may I present to you a series of photos from today? We are finally sort of not tied to home projects so it was nice to get out of the house for a bit. First, we went to SugarSpell to pick up our pints and also snagged a Love You to Death sundae to share as sort of a belated Valentine’s Day date thingie.

It was so delicious! Chocolate / coffee / vanilla scoops, chocolate fudge, chocolate dirt, whipped cream, and chocolate skull cakes from a bakery they recently partnered with. I love their sundaes so much but when I know that I’m going to have one, I usually make sure I skip a meal which is GREAT RIGHT, BUY MY FUTURE DIET BOOK CALLED “HOW TO FUCK UP YOUR BODY 87 DIFFERENT WAYS DON’T CONSULT A DOCTOR FIRST.”

43 and still having the food-strugs. It’s fine. I’m fine. LOL ugh.

Anyway, we ate the sundae in a grocery store parking lot before going to the nearby Burger King to grab an Impossible Whopper for our invalid son who was home and wouldn’t have come with us anyway even if he wasn’t on crutches. #ThatAge

That banana bread one might be my new bae.

RETROWAVE INTERMISSION:

We came home to feed Chooch and put the ice cream away, and I panicked because I hadn’t seen any of my Buddys since YESTERDAY AFTERNOON. You guys, there are at least 6 of them that live in the trees in our backyard and are there every single day, WHERE DID THEY GO?? There were three Mr Gray Guys out and about all day so that’s good but the Buddyless trees has been very concerning.

We did end up seeing two later in the day PLUS A VISIT FROM MY BEST GIRL BUDDY who was outside screaming because she wanted food and then she climbed up the side of our house when I opened the backporch window and met me halfway as I hung out with a peanut. I fucking love her. We hung out in the backyard for a bit while she frantically ran around burying all the peanuts I gave her. My favorite thing is how gently she places her paw on my hand to steady herself when she stands up.

Ok anyway!!! Henry and I left again later in the afternoon to go for a stroll at Calvary cem because it was nearly 60 degrees! I was finally able to wear the sweater duster he bought me for Xmas and made him take pictures of me in it even though I have been feeling pretty disgusting body-image wise lately. I know I need to get over it. No one gives a shit what I look like and I shouldn’t either.

We always have a nice time at Calvary Cem. It’s one of the few cems left that isn’t overrun by annoying joggers, etc. since cemeteries became so popular during the pandemic. I am still so angry that my beloved Homewood Cemetery is SO FUCKING CROWDED every time we go there now. I almost suggested that we go there today but then stopped myself because we were having a nice day and I didn’t want to ruin that with ANGER.

I always get so mad at Henry for taking shitty pictures of me but then I have to remind myself that he is taking normal pictures of a shitty-faced person, lol.

This one would be my favorite if he hadn’t cut off part of my shoe!!

I dunno – he was taking practice shots but I thought my hair looked cool here so I kept it.

Here I am in the middle of saying something profound I’m sure, like later when I told Henry that his butt is a mausoleum and then lamented the fact that I don’t have a band (or any musical abilities) because I just knew in my heart that this would be a great song.

FALL VIBES IN FEB.

ACTION SHOT of me standing up / turning / trying not to lose my balance.

Yeah so anyway, I really love this duster. It is the most cozy and soft plus super …

what’s better than mid? Max. It is the max.

I’m glad Henry bought it for me after I sent it to him 27032740924820358340975 times on Instagram last fall and said GET ME THIS NOW OR FOR XMAS. He opted “FOR XMAS” which was fine but just so you know, NOW is always the best choice.

sup internet people. this was supposed to be a friday five but then Chooch had a half day and went over to Carnegie Mellon University to play soccer which I knew was happening and he does this a lot so whatever. But then Henry called me around noon because he was on his way to pick Chooch up because he fell and heard something snap!? You KNOW I got Jello legs immediately and started heavily panting, “OMG OMG OMG” as my voice gradually increased octaves.

“This is why I’m the one going to get him!” Henry said, before saying those 2 words that all women are so desperate to hear: CALM DOWN.

We love that.

Anyway, they went to Children’s Hospital because he couldn’t walk. They were there until nearly 6, mostly just waiting because it was so crowded, which prompted Henry to angrily text me about how “most of these kids could have went to the regular doctor!!!” LOL poor Henry. My friends at work kept me sane so I wasn’t fully melting down at least. Especially since Chooch responded “no” to all of my SRS INQUIRIES:

• DO YOU THINK IT IS BROKEN;
• IS IT BLEEDING;
• ARE YOU CRYING

His x-ray came back clear but they want us to schedule an MRI in a few days after the swelling goes down. I would also like to point out that it took both Henry and Chooch 5 hours to tell me that it was specifically the knee that’s hurt. So now he has a knee immobilizer and crutches and is MISERABLE. I haven’t seen him yet this morning but I’m bracing myself for what the day has in store.

In other not-Friday Five news, I got my hair refreshed on Thursday. I felt so bad because I went there straight from work and was basically emotionally closed off by then. I can’t explain it but the 2023 work vibes have been complete ass. I hope something changes soon, either there or within my broken self, because I am so on edge and irritated every day.

Anyway, here is my dumb hair. I got more purple peek-a-boos, I dunno why, I don’t go anywhere for anyone to see it lol. Wait – I do have to go to the library today so I guess my security guard friend Robert will see it, lol.

I was chilling alone in my seat for a bit when one of the other stylists, whose station is right behind where I was sitting, came to get her shit and said, “Bye honey.” I dunno why I responded this way, but a torrent of enthusiasm shot off of my mouth-cannon as I yelled, “BYE!” She…wasn’t talking to me, it turns out. I didn’t realize another stylist was out of my view and that’s who she was talking to. It wasn’t that big of a deal but I was already in a fragile state and in the span of .0003 seconds went from feeling included to a complete stoop. I don’t know why I responded with so much eagerness, like an orphan being tossed an ounce of attention.

Oh well, I got over it (she says 25 years later after referencing this moment for the 87th time).

Drew waiting patiently for Chooch to come home from the hospital.

THERE HE IS, MY BROKEN BABY!!!!!!!! He was so mad that I was waiting at the door. I tried to make him hug me but he was like, “Please stop.” Then Henry was outside moving the car so Chooch had to ask me, Helpless Mother, to take him shoe off and it was a real ordeal. “YOU COULD MAYBE UNTIE IT FIRST??” he yelled as I tried to yank it off and then I was laughing so hard that I almost peed my pants, and now Henry was back in the house, just in time to help him up the steps because believe me when I tell you that BOTH of us would have landed our asses back in the hospital had it been me helping.

Then I found out that Henry consoled him in the hospital at one point by saying, “At least it’s not your mother sitting here with you.” OK WOW. I was laughing though because Megan kept telling me at work to seriously leave if I needed to but I knew that no one wished for my hysterical presence so the best thing I could do was stay home, work, and wait.

Oh, and Chooch got a deck of cards and a word search book from a candy striper while he was there so that was probably a really big deal for him because he’s like me and loves:

• attention
• free toy-stuffs

My new thing is trying to contain the squirrels to the backyard so that they have more coverage if the HAWK comes back. This means that now when I tap on the backporch window, they know it’s FEEDING TIME and start popping up in the tree branches. One even popped out from under our car and looked up at me with his arms at his chest, like, “who? me? food?” This one Buddy always takes a peanut and leans agains the base of his treehouse to eat it. Sometimes he’s even propped up by an elbow and it kills me. I blurted out, “HE LOOKS LIKE TOM SAWYER” and this comparison really did not sit well with Henry. He could not wrap his mind around why Tom Sawyer would be the first person to come to mind so I got RULL defensive and had to google TOM SAWYER to show him depictions of the boy sitting on logs, eating apples, etc.

He still said it was a stretch and I said HE’S a stretch.

TELL ME YOU SEE IT TOO.

I have to go now. I have things to do today. Maybe.

Do not mind the dirty floor – we haven’t gotten to that part of the attic refresh yet, lol. But yeah, I just wanted to dump some more progress pictures here! One of the final “bigger” projects was creating a snack bar out of an old TV that we got from some dude in Greentree (we got the smaller one that we’ve been using in the kitchen from him too).

I knew that I wanted to incorporate this bigger TV into the attic lounge (I haven’t settled on what to call this room yet – the game room? the lounge? Erin’s Dream Room? I mean, technically it’s meant to be an extension of Chooch’s room but I have a feeling I will be up there a lot lololol) and then it hit me – a mini snack bar!

Dude, Henry really excels at taking my ideas and making them tangible things. OK not always on the first pass, let’s be real. We have had many “YOU DIDN’T LISTEN TO ME!!!” moments when he goes rogue and does something completely out of left field because our psychic connection was on the fritz.

Or, you know, because he DIDN’T LISTEN TO ME.

But this time, he did good. Even down to the legs he bought for the TV! He bought them without consulting with me and they are actually perfect.

I have at least one photo that I want to hang on that blue wall, but I have to make a picture frame for it first. I don’t want to put TOO much there because the faux-fur portion of that corner and the TV need to take center stage. But that wall still needs at least one photo. It’s definitely going to be the one I took last May of Chooch riding Magnum at Cedar Point.

We used this super-textured silver sparkly cardstock for the interior. I wanted something cheap and easy to replace since this TV will be used way more than the one in the kitchen, which just serves as a cute vessel for our Echo, so we were able to line the inside with wallpaper from Gillcrest, knowing that it shouldn’t get too much wear.

I love how sparkly the inside of this one looks against the blue neon!

But yeah, this was just some old-ass brown 1980s box TV that Henry gutted and painted. I chose the blue/green combo because I really don’t have much of that in our house (the Korea coffee table is blue, green, and pink, but it’s a different blue, so there). I originally wanted to cover the top and sides with some kind of vinyl print but I couldn’t find anything that really popped out for me. Then when we were fur’ing the wall over there, I said, “Why don’t we just use faux fur on the TV too?” SOME PEOPLE MIGHT SAY “NO ERIN THAT’S TOO MUCH” and that’s exactly how I know it’s JUST RIGHT.

I’m really having so much fun playing around with this room, like a literal blank canvas. I wish this was my job, haha. (Honestly, though, I’m trying to convince to start a furniture refurb / home decor side business. I think he would be so good at it!)

I think Chooch is secretly stoked on how the TV turned out too even though he just continued to sit there, putting a puzzle together, while side-eyeing us as we got it set up & stocked.

Sorry for all the attic updates. It’s probs boring but unless I fucking die in this damn house, I would like to have these pictures and details for the future. You know, so when I’m rotting away in a white-walled nursing home, Chooch can say REMEMBER WHEN YOU MADE US LIVE IN PEE WEE’S PLAYHOUSE and I will say NO because probably by then I won’t even be able to remember what flavor of Jello was on my dinner tray the day before, and he will have to pull up pictures on his phone or whatever information transmitter we’re using in future times.

And this has been the latest attic update. OH! I also finished painting the closet door in the attic but that side of the room still has some miscellaneous items strewn about so I will wait until I can take a cleaner picture. I’m sure you just SIMPLY CANNOT WAIT.

I know that Chooch doesn’t have much time left at home before he’s off to college (well, unless he stays local which remains to be seen I guess) but I REALLY wanted to get him his own hang out space to enjoy for the rest of his high school days. We’ve really made a lot of progress since the weekend and I’m getting so stoked for him to be able to finally use it! (Probably definitely for sure more stoked than he is, lol ugh boys.)

We (“we” – oh how the sides hurt from the lols) tackled the faux fur wall over the weekend and I’m really pleased with how it turned out! Praise be to Father Henry for being such a trooper and hanging this shit while having sneezing fits as the wall literally shed into his face.

He burned himself on the glue gun and stabbed himself with a razor in the process but man, the end result was worth it, I think!

Some people, maybe: “Henry how’d you get those burns and cuts? You musta been building something BIG MANLY over the weekend like a LOG CABIN.

”

Henry: *disappears into a bush of frowns*

There is a chimney/bricks on the other side of this corner and apparently it had been leaking at some point, which we didn’t know because we never go in the attic really before now. The plaster was crumbling around the ceiling, so Henry had to knock even more of it down to fix it, but again – we don’t own the house and it just wasn’t worth all the effort he was putting into it. So, once he determined that there was no longer a leak (I mean, I guess lol), I suggested that we just cover that part of the wall with faux fur.

Then I came out of fake art hibernation and painted this pizza to hang there because I knew that the wall needed ONE FUN PIECE OF OUTSIDER ART but I didn’t feel like looking for something to buy online and I needed it NOW NOW NOW anyway, so I painted this pizza myself.

It’s actually quite large!

Durrr, Erin’s Dumb Art is back.

I put minimal effort into this, literally painted it on my lap while rewatching The Hills, season 1 last night.

This corner isn’t finished! We are in the process of getting an old box TV prepped to be the SNACK VESSEL for the room, and it will live in this corner too. I also need to get a fun novelty rug for that area and then it will be photo zone-ready. My brother already asked to have his updated realtor headshots taken there haha.

Anyway, the only big thing left is the table, which Henry is picking up tomorrow and then we just have to paint it. Other than that, I have to paint the closet door and then start hanging stuff on that yellow wall up there., probably get some plants…and then it will be pretty close to completion!

Who wants to come over for a pizza party!?

I am happy to report that about 90% of the shit stowed away in the attic has been sorted / pitched / donated / neatly stored. It feels SO GOOD, like the biggest weight lifted off my shoulders. I finally, after 35 years, felt it was the right time to throw out the boxes of penpal letters I’ve been, let’s face it, HOARDING. I did keep some from various prisoners, strictly for the LOLs, and I considered keeping the ones from ALISHA OLMSTEAD but after she SNUBBED me on Facebook several years when I sent her a message like HI WE WERE PENPALS ALL THROUGH MIDDLE SCHOOL AND HIGH SCHOOL AND HAD A WRITING CLUB TOGETHER AND MADE SLAM BOOKS FOR EACH OTHER HOW COULD YOU FORGET ME I felt there was no reason to hang on to those, since most of them were probably just her gushing over JONATHAN BRANDIS AND CHRISTIAN BALE anyway. (Newsies and Ladybugs were here favorite movies, lol ok.)

I even threw out photos of bad times, bad people. Typically, I would keep everything like this because I am a memory pack rat, but pictures of Psycho Mike got ripped up, a picture of me at McCoys sandwiched by two QUEEN CUNTS who I wouldn’t care at all if I found out they were dead sorry but that’s real talk also got thrown out but now I wished I had ceremonially set it aflame first. Oh well.

A card from Christina – bye bye.

A weird ass letter written to a still in utero Chooch from a crazy lady from Philly who I knew from LJ – balled up and slam-dunked into the garbage bag.

It was cathartic. Like being reborn. I am ready for this new era.

Anyway, there were tons of things from my past that were unearthed and definitely are staying, some of these things I’m even going to keep out instead of hiding away in a box.
I found this peeled apart Polaroid of my best doggo Dazee and me from what appears to be 1995. First of all, LOVE THAT LOOK ON ME LOL. I’m pretty sure I also lined my lips like a fool back then too. Also, I went through a weird red hair phase – not ginger but like maroon somehow??

I just know that my mom HATED it haha.

Ugh but man, my old bedroom, how I miss thee. Also, you can blame my mom for my persistent itch to spray-paint every piece of furniture that crosses my threshold. She started it by spray-painting my bedroom set purple and yello!

I’m not kidding when I say that in one fell swoop, I pulled four of the most life-changing books out of a box. These four books are forever favorites, I can look at each of them and be transported to very specific eras of my most formative years, right down to where I was when I was reading some of them.

For instance, I still lived in South Park when I read Wait Until Helen Comes and it terrified me. Both Ghost Story and the Sins of Rachel Ellis were books I found in my Pappap’s house, presumably either my mom’s or aunt’s when they were young: Rachel Ellis is probably why I ended up with an old guy, and I have a VERY SPECIFIC MEMORY of reading part of Ghost Story when I was in high school, sitting in the living room which we rarely used, home alone on a bright, sunny summer day, and getting full-body chills because this book scared me so much. Peter Straub quickly became one of my faves after that and I have always wanted to re-read this one but am so worried that I won’t like it as much now that I’m older and rarely affected by a horror novel.

And The Westing Game taught me to put bourbon on a toothache. Literally one of the greatest books of all time. I suggested that Chooch read it for a book report in grade school and as much as he wanted to NAYSAY, he admitted that it was fucking fantastic. Just one of the best books ever and all kids should experience it.

Then Henry found a leftover invitation from Chooch’s 1st birthday!! 

View this post on Instagram

Henry and I worked so hard on those and I don’t regret it at all. Best Son only turned one once, after all!

We are so close to being done with the attic space.

I will share more photos of the progress later this week but for now, here’s Drew timidly venturing up there for the first time since this overhaul began and seeing THE DEADLY DISCO BALL OMG.

On that note, I have to go. I finished my rewatch of Laguna Beach (I can honestly say that I appreciate Kristin so much more now that I’m an adult LOL as if I wasn’t already a grown up whenever this show originally aired too but YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN) and am now onto my first ever rewatch of the Hills, as well as the Whitey Port reaction videos (hat tip to Megan for suggesting those!).

Man, I miss this era of TV a lot a lot a lot.

Billy, we got some straight up JAMS to listen to together today. During my work day, I tend to put on “retro synth” playlists on YouTube. Most of it is instrumental which is good for me because I need to con-cen-trate on what I’m doing or I will get yelled at.

Probably not, but maybe. You never know. A passive aggressive call-out, at the very least.

Anyway, I need to have background music on to block out the perpetually shrieking children next door, but if I play kpop, then I get way too into plus my ears will start subconsciously perking up every time I hear a word that I recognize and then I feel compelled to look up the lyrics to see if I was correct, and it’s just a whole thing that will deter me from the work at hand for a solid 10 or 20 or sometimes longer if I’m at that point inspired to get up and see if Give Me Five Thailand also has a cardio workout to the subject song.

See what I mean? I can’t Kpop and review engagement letters at the same time.

But synth is wonderful because it puts me in a very relaxed, comfortable zone. HOWEVER, every so often, a song with vocals will pop on that stops me dead. Here are some of the recent ones that I have been fully fucking with.

And this last one especially made me call out HENRY BRING ME MY ROLLER SKATES. It has become a sensation at work, too! Even GLENN liked it!

This is bigly inspiring me to want to have a party.

OK, it’s Friday night. An exceptionally annoying work week is officially behind me. Your girl is about to drink some wine and make a playlist for a party I will probably never actually move forward with because I am lazy and constantly distracted but at least I’ll have a sick playlist.

January was such a fantastic reading month for me. I can’t even get over it. It reinstated my bibliophile status, I think. Revived my love for BOOKSBOOKSBOOKS. Basically, I quit listening to Booktube. I pulled from various Best of 2022 lists from reliable sources like Time, etc. I think where I was being led astray with Booktube is that I was watching these channels because I liked the personalities, but then I started to realize eventually that my tastes just didn’t align with most of them. Like, I love Kayla from Booksandlala but what she considers horror and I what I consider horror are very different.  I have also found that I gravitate more towards literary fiction and less towards the magical realism shit that she is obsessed with.

Anyway, who cares. Here are the books I read in January, all 14 of them! They were mostly all 4 and 5 stars, maybe one or two 3-3.5 in there.

1. Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting – Clare Pooley

Right off the bat – five star read. This book has humor, humanity, and the found family trope that I love so hard. Most of it takes place on a train / subway where a group of passengers become forced to interact with each other after one of them nearly chokes to death.  It mostly centers around Iona, a sort of “washed-up” socialite whose current employer at a magazine is beginning to find her to be irrelevant. Iona has a very strong, abrasive personality that makes the other passengers either despise her or admire her. I adored her. I adored all of them. I am crying right now as I remember how fucking precious this book is and how much it almost made me miss taking the T to work because now I want to actually strike up conversations with the regulars who I used to see every day and assign monikers to based on their fashion choices or whatever.

Well, anyway, this book made my heart grow a size or four. Then I’m sure I had the sound of a child screaming and it immediately shrunk again.

2. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow – Gabrielle Zevin

Baby, believe the hype. Solid five stars and I am still thinking about it and getting choked up. I have read from  this author once before and genuinely liked it so I was excited to get into this one. However, and I don’t think this is just me because I read other raving reviews that agree, this book starts out slow. Like, not BAD, but knowing that this was on so many Best of 2022 lists, I was confused and really wondering if I was missing something. But then before I had a chance to DNF out of spite (I WON’T LIKE YOUR FAVORITE BOOK, AND YOU CAN’T MAKE ME), it hooked me. I can’t explain it, because this book is basically about two childhood friends who meet again when they’re in college (different colleges, same city) and decide to make a video game together.

The characters, their relationships, the blurred lines, their history…it was all so perfectly executed. There is a HUGE TRIGGER WARNING – I don’t want to spoil this book for anyone so you might want to look it up but there is a big traumatic thing that happens, and it wrecked me. I mean, I felt like I was being scooped raw by a melon baller, the pain was real. This will definitely end up being one of the best books I read this year, no cap or whatever Those Kids say.

P.S. Henry also read it and loved it, but he claims he didn’t cry. I mean, I SOBBED.

3. The Hero of This Book – Elizabeth McCracken

Sweet and oftentimes LOL funny, is this a memoir or fiction? Either way – it was a lovely read. 4 stars.

4. Vladimir – Julia May Jonas

This was a TRIP. The writing was so fresh, the characters beautifully-flawed. I laughed out loud numerous and could clearly hear the protagonist in my head, but my favorite part was the fact that Chooch had to pick this up from the library for me haha.

Anyway, 4.5 stars. Loved it and if this was Jonas’s debut novel, then I cannot fucking wait to read the next one.

5. Twenty Years Later – Charlie Donlea

This was recommended to me by my friend Eve – THANK YOU! What a unique thriller! Part of the plot revolves around an unsolved murder, the suspect of which is presumed dead after being in the WTC on the morning of 9/11. The other part follows a TV personality in present day, who resurrects this cold case while also trying to hide from her own unsavory past. I needed a good thriller, and this was it. 4 stars! Didn’t see the twist coming. (Either one!)

6. The Book of Goose – Yiyun Li

What an elegantly written, intriguing story of a childhood friendship between two girls living in rural postwar France. Honestly, Fabienne was a bit of a cunt and I wanted Agnes to haul back and clock her. But yeah, if you’re in the mood for something beautiful and literary, try this one – it’s another 4 star for me, fam.

7. Bad Dolls – Rachel Harrison

You know I tend to SORRY NEXT when it comes to short story collections, but I had to exception for Rachel Harrison, I just love her so. There were 4 stories in, one was a 3-star, 2 were 4-stars, and one 5-star about a bachelorette weekend. One of the 4-star stories was a SUPER RELATABLE tale about a savage diet app that actually had me wishing it was real because sometimes a bitch be desperate.

This was a fantastic, quick read and just what I needed  – something fun that I could listen to while taking my frigid winter morning walks. 4.5 stars overall (is that how averages work!?!?).

8. Perfect – L.A. Kessler

This one was also an audiobook, and I chose it in a whim through Scribd. I just needed something to listen to for when I walk and nothing was really looking too compelling to me. I haven’t heard of this author or this book before. It was fine! It was entertaining for sure but, and maybe this was because of the narrator, it kind of had a Christopher Pike feel to it, especially the scenes were people are killed. It’s like, “Oh OK, this person is dead now, moving right along.” Like I would have read this SO HARD in 9th grade and thought it was the coolest book ever.

It was actually pretty creepy, I’ll give it that much. Will I read the rest of the trilogy, probably not, doc.

9. Sophie Go’s Lonely Hearts Club – Roselle Lim

I was so close to DNF’ing this. I just could not connect with it and picking it up had become a real drag. But, just when I was telling myself, “Finish this chapter and then call it,” something changed. I can’t pinpoint it, it probably was a me-problem, something with my attitude, but I was suddenly ON BOARD and then the rest of the book was just a sheer delight (ok that’s not true, it had some sincere sad moments and the main character’s strained relationship with her mom stressed me out bigly). I also loved the tiny sprinkling of magical realism that was involved in that Sophie, a professional matchmaker, could see ribbons attached to peoples’ hearts and knew when there was a love connection by the way ribbons would react when two people were near each other.

Sophie moves into a new apartment building and immediately targets a group of elderly men, called the Old Ducks, as potential clients. Each Old Duck is adorable, even the one who is super grouchy. ESPECIALLY the one who is super grouchy – I actually pictured him as Glenn throughout the entire book. The Old Ducks and the FOOD were the real stars of this book.

4 stars, glad I gave it a chance! (I think this is another one that Eve suggested, so thank you, friend!)

10. All This Could Be Different – Sarah Thankam Mathews

Solid four stars, but dayum did it give me anxiety. There is A LOT going on here but in general, books about young adults out in the real world, trying to stay afloat and not perish financially, emotionally, and mortally, really makes me sweat. Our main character S is actually not very likeable but hoo boy did I feel for her. Her parents are back in India after her father takes the fall for a crime, leaving S behind in America as a teenager. Now she is out of college, being strung along by a boss who promises to sponsor her for citizenship, living rent-free in an apartment above the racist property manager who makes her life hell (this is where I was REALLY secondhand misery), becomes obsessed with and eventually starts a relationship with a girl she sees in a hardware store, but in the midst of all of this she is also developing beautiful precious friendships with some people who become her family. Love me a found family saga!!!

I can’t explain this book as well as it deserves, but I really fucking loved it and couldn’t wait to pick it back up every time I put it down.

11. Britt-Marie Was Here – Fredrik Backman 

My least favorite Backman book, but still better than most books I’ve read – that should tell you something. He has definitely become one of my favorite authors at this point. The way he crafts his characters! The dialogue! The SUPER DIFFICULT BUT LOVEABLE protagonists. The way he makes you want to live in a small town! From the telephone check-ins Britt-Marie forces upon a girl at the unemployment office to the begrudging companionship to finds in a rat, to the character in  wheelchair known solely as “Somebody,” to SAMI <3. This book gave me so much to think about, so much to love. 4.5 stars.

12. Signal Fires – Dani Shapiro 

Five stars, and I’m not ready to talk about this, I’m sorry. It got me good. Tears, lots. I love you, Ben Wilf.

;(

13. The Me You Love in the Dark – Skottie Young / Jorge Corona (art)

Finally, a graphic novel/comic that I actually liked! The story was decent but the art was excellent. Artist moves into a haunted house, becomes close to the ghost that haunts it. 3.75 stars.

14. Kindred – Octavia Butler

I want to read more classics this year and this was an excellent start. I don’t really think it needs much introduction, and I’m just sorry it took me so long to read it because it was brilliant. This book is obviously a classic for a reason, extremely intense, emotional and throught-provoking. I wish I had been required to read it in high school, to be honest. Solid 5 stars, everyone should read this once in their lifetime.

***

k, bye!

You know how when you reach the levels of STRESSED THE FUCK OUT that you can hear your blood bubbling? That’s where I am this week. To calm down, I opened up my blog archives and allowed myself to get deep down into my Korea-feels. I love the photos in this post so much and wanted to post it again, also because I am too stressed and irritated to construct new content, even the shitty, bare-minimum kind that you’ve come to expect here. I think this is now the THIRD time I have reposted this since 2018 but I D G A F. MY BLOG MY RULES. WAH.

We woke up early on a Saturday morning and set off for some palace-touring. As I mentioned previously, our hotel was in a great location, and we were able to walk to several of the Five Grand Palaces of Seoul! Probably would have been a faster/easier walk if we weren’t following Henry’s lead, but….as Henry said, “WE GOT THERE, DIDN’T WE?!”

Wow, tough guy.

I wanted to start with Gyeongbokgung Palace first, but Henry was all, “my way or the highway” or some other Dad-ism, so we went to Changdeokgung Palace first.

I know, it’s hard to keep the names straight! But the one that starts with a G is like, the most popular one, I guess.

In hindsight though, our crazy walks are something I look back on now and laugh about. I miss it! We saw a lot of crazy shit this way and it reaffirmed that we definitely were better suited sans itinerary. As much as I loved the European adventures I went on as a kid with my family, it was so much better not to be tied down to a group agenda and panicking every day because you’re close to missing bus call.

For this trip, we had a list of things we wanted to do, and we played it by ear. Sometimes we didn’t know what we were doing until after we woke up that morning! It was slightly stressful for me at times because I’m an undercover control freak, but I quickly learned to just go with it and maybe that’s why we managed to make it through our Korea pilgrimage with minimal fighting.

Donhwamun Gate, the largest of all palace gates. Get on Donhwamun’s level, other gates. 

According to Wiki, this Palace literally translates to “Prospering Virtue Palace.” It was the second palace to be established after Gyeongbokgung, which is the one I wanted to see first but that’s OK Henry, fuck up the chronological order!

The original palace was built between 1405-1412 but burnt down during the Japanese invasion in 1592 and again in 1623 but each time it was rebuilt, and the reconstruction remained true to its original form. It’s incredibly humbling and sobering to be walking around grounds filled with so much history and tragedy.

Chooch might have a future as a Walmart greeter, you guys.

We got there early enough that it wasn’t flooded with tourists yet. Look at the mountain peeking out back there! I believe that’s part of Mt. Bugaksan. One of the things I didn’t know about Korea until I started marinating in a KOREA 101 bath is that Korea is like, 70% mountains! And almost everywhere you go in Seoul, you can see them. It’s one of the things I loved so much about this city, that no matter how urban and cosmopolitan it feels in one direction, if you pivot another way, you’ve got a mountain looming over you, or a Palace’s ancient presence behind you. Seoul has everything. Seoul IS everything.

Injeongjeon Hall

This is the throne hall, where all The Big Events took place back in the day, like coronations and poisonings probably.

This is the inside of Injeongjeon Hall.

I bet lots of scary people have mingled under those chandeliers.

And now please enjoy some gratuitous spring flower shots:

The spring buds were like celebs, man. There were some cherry blossoms that you couldn’t get anywhere near because of the throng of older people with their tripods and huge lenses.

It was so deserted in this area that I was afraid we weren’t supposed to be there. Those trees though.

I was so glad that Chooch got to experience all this history! He was really into it.

This was before ancient Korean spirits possessed Chooch and me and gave us the ability to lacerate Henry’s feelings with our hunger-driven words.

Because we would never normally be mean to Henry.

Lol.

I had to go for my annual wellness test this morning at work, and when the lab tech was getting ready to take my blood pressure, he said, “Just think about things that make you happy.” And immediately, in my mind, I was walking the peaceful grounds of Changdeokgung again.