If I was a POSER, I would skip the part of Saturday where we came down from the mountain and went to our hotel in Gatlinburg and the sight of it from the parking lot alone made me throw a fit because IT LOOKED SKETCHY so I cried about how the whole weekend was awful and I just wanted to go home and Henry was like NO and I was like YES and Chooch was like *here we go* and then Henry called my bluff and said FINE and started to “drive home” and we made it as far as Pigeon Forge, past the signs for Dollywood, when I screamed, “PULL OVER, I AM GOING TO FIND MY OWN HOTEL” and Henry was like “OK YOU DO THAT” and Chooch was like *this is gonna be good* and I “found a hotel” in Pigeon Forge and Henry was like, “OK LET’S GO CHECK MOM INTO HER HOTEL” and I was like “OK but before I confirm my reservation, can we please eat lunch.”

And that’s how we ended up at Mellow Mushroom, which is tradition (4x makes it so), and then we all had a big laugh over The Fight while shoveling delicious pizza into our mouths.

And then Chooch told me my smile is just as fake as my voice.

I ALWAYS GET THIS ONE, it’s their mushroom pie and it is delectable. The waiter (super friendly chap in a cowboy hat who Henry originally thought was faking his southern twang but I don’t think so) agreed that it’s the best one.

Pretty uneventful (BUT FILLING AND DELICIOSO) lunch, which was actually welcome considering the stressful morning and high-octane temper tantrum of mine. It was nice to just sit in a booth and speak gently to each other. (Gently? Eh, we were still probably being assholes to each other but probably with more good humor and less vitriol.)

Look, so happy and fed! Hanger squashed. Real smiles! People walking by were laughing because we were laughing and this actually happened another time too, according to Henry. “That lady was laughing because she saw you laughing,” he said, slightly concerned.

After lunch, we went to the Old Mill …. something. Somehow, after two trips to this area, we had never known about this! I just happened to see it from the window when I was still sulking on the way to lunch, after the HOTEL HULLABALOO.

Look how beautiful! Once we crossed the bridge, I immediately recognized a bunch of spots from the In The Loop travel vlogs from Pigeon Forge. Legend and Molly are huge Pigeonheads (that sounded good at the time) so it all started to come back to me. We checked out a soap shop and instead of getting local soap, Chooch got a mass-produced brand name (Duke Cannon) bar of Pumpkin Spice Latte soap. I mean, you do you, Chooch, I guess.

Metal-working. Other people were taking pictures so I felt like I should too, but then I realized they were taking pictures of their family members who were metal-working with the professionals.

Next, I bought some local jams for Xmas gifts at one of the Old Mill shops. Surprisingly, this area wasn’t too outrageous people-wise for a Saturday afternoon, so we had a pretty pleasant time

We stopped in this alleged cat house but there were only THREE CATS TO BE FOUND. And then just a bunch of cat art and people clothes with cats on them. It was disappointing except for the actual cats we got to see.

Some cafe was next door. I had a pretty good apple cider chai.

By now, I was fed *and* caffeinated so I was feeling even better about life.

This picture actually became very useful a few nights later when we were back home in Pittsburgh and I lurched forward on this couch. “WAIT, WHERE ARE MY JAMS?” I exclaimed.

“……………..um,” Henry stammered.

I ran out to the car to check, we checked our luggage, but NO JAM. NO FUCKING JAM!! I started to think it was my fault. I vaguely remembered setting the bag down when Chooch and I were sitting in those adirondack chairs in the cafe. But then I was going through my pictures and cried out, “A HA!!!! YOU WERE CARRYING THE BAG AFTER THE CAFE!” So we had to have lost it somewhere between that bridge and our car. There were THREE more shops we went to before leaving: a nut place, a candy place, and a gaming place.

But as soon as I showed Henry this picture, he said, “I set it down in that planter behind Chooch when I took your picture. Fuck.”

I was already mad at him because he took the stupid picture from the wrong angle (the mill was to the left!!!) so this dumb picture ended up costing me $20 in lost goods.

I know, it’s not A LOT of money, but it’s not….NOT a lot. And it sucks, especially because I bought the jam with the intention of tucking them in gift bags for some friends.

AT LEAST HENRY MADE SURE HIS CANDY SAFELY MADE IT BACK TO PITTSBURGH.

And Chooch’s stupid soap! I should have made him carry my jam too!

Anyway, I can’t remember the name of this game store but the guys working there were FANTASTIC. They treated Chooch like a prince and when he asked for suggestions, one of the was like “WALK WITH ME, M’LAD.” I mean, not in so many words. But yeah, I would recommend this place if you’re in the area and looking for a game to play on a rainy night in your hotel, or whatever!

Oh, and the nut place we went to was full of MAGA shit so I did NOT buy a magnet even though their logo was a bad ass squirrel.

Back to the jam! Henry emailed the jam place on a whim to see if anyone turned in the bag.

“No one would have done that!” I scoffed, because my faith in humanity is at an all-time low. I mean, that’s 100% something I would have done – and been super panicked about it too. “WE HAVE TO GET THIS JAM BACK IN THE RIGHT HANDS!” as I’m darting all around Pigeon Forge like Dolly Parton looking for her car in the lot after working 9to5. (Look, that and Steel Magnolias is pretty much as far as my Dolly knowledge goes, but I am sure thankful that she has a theme park!)

“You never know, being the south and all,” Henry reasoned. “It’s worth a shot.”

WOULD YOU BELIEVE that the jam store emailed him and said that they weren’t aware of any misplaced jams being returned, but they would check with the managers of the other stores in the square AND ONE OF THE STORES CAME BACK AND SAID THAT YES, SOMEONE HAD BROUGHT IT TO THEM!

Ugh I’m so pissed that I didn’t realize it was missing while we were still there. BUT they were kind enough to issue me a refund (they also offered the option of shipping it to me but I didn’t feel like dealing with that). Whoever returned this is a true hero.

I mean OK it wasn’t like it was my WEDDING BAND (you can’t lose something you don’t have, lol) or my prosthetic thumb, but it was still a small weight off my shoulders.  I don’t have enough money for “It’s only money” to apply to me.

I did not thank Henry for getting me a refund because this was all his fault in the first place, so…

Anyway, after we left the gaming place, it was time to go back to Gatlinburg and check in.

“Don’t we have to drop Mum off at her hotel first?” Chooch deadpanned from the backseat.

Sigh.

The first time we went to Tennessee was back in 2011, with our good friends Bill and Jessi, who invited us to tag along on their vacation and subsequently causing us to fall in love with the area! The three of us woke up early one morning in an attempt to do some mountain shit. Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, I think the sole reason was because my beloved Roadside America app had suggested a place called Clingman’s Dome and it sounded super spacey and weird, so I wanted to do it. I mean, it was only an overlook thing that required a mild hike to reach, but it was still something to do.

I just had no idea that Chooch was going to have such an adverse reaction to this area! He was throwing such a huge fit (“My legs hurt!” “I’m tired!” “CARRY ME, WAH!”) that we were sincerely afraid he was going to alert any neighboring bears to our presence (though I imagine they’d probably have fled the opposite direction, take me with you, bears).

I was cruising through my old Flickr album for the 2011 trip last week, to stoke the nostalgia for our upcoming return, and when I saw the below picture, I thought, “Golly, gosh darn, wouldn’t it be a real barrel of laughs to recreate this shot with Chooch who is now 16 and taller than both of us?”

I posted it on Instagram as sort of an interest check but also to put it out there so that Chooch and Henry would have less room to decline my latest demand. I love doing that to them. “BUT I ALREADY TOLD THE INTERNET!”

We went to breakfast first on Monday with the intention of then driving straight up into the Smokies. EXCEPT GUESS WHAT YOU GUYS. The fucking ONLY ROAD that takes you into the mountains was CLOSED. I went into a tailspin over this. Henry immediately pulled into the Smoky Mountain Visitors Center while I basically cried and Chooch sardonically murmured, “Aw, that’s too bad. I was really looking forward to having  my picture taken. Shucks.” Henry was checking the GPS for alternatives but there was NOTHING. The GPS map even showed that the road was blocked off! The day before, there were high winds in the area so Henry guessed that probably a lot of branches and debris were covering the road and needed to be swept off.

I DIDN’T CARE! I JUST WANTED THE STUPID ROAD TO BE OPEN!

“Go inside the info building and ask them when it will open!” I wailed.

“They’re not going to know,” Henry mumbled, looking for something shiny to distract me.

THAT IS LITERALLY THE WHOLE PURPOSE OF AN INFORMATION CENTER, TO HAVE PEOPLE INSIDE THAT ARE PROVIDING INFORMATION!

I was just about to lose my mind when I glanced at the GPS map and noticed that the “ROAD CLOSED” thingie was no longer showing up on the map, so I whipped around to look out the rear window at the actual road and sure enough, the barricades had been removed!

I was screaming! Henry and Chooch were sighing!

The drive to Clingman’s Dome took about 30 minutes or so but it was so nice because hardly anyone was on the road. I think only about 3 cars had made it in front of us when the road opened so it was as nature intended.

What a huge difference from Saturday, that’s for sure. I believe only 2 cars were already in the parking lot of Clingman’s Dome trail as opposed to the 50+ plus the line of traffic going down the mountain that we ran into on Saturday. Has an empty parking lot ever been so beautiful.

Unforch, another big difference was that the weather on Saturday was BEAUTIFUL, sunny and totally hoodie weather. But on this day, it was drizzling/snow-misting, windy AF, and around 30 degrees (but felt like 20 degrees).  Chooch of course was only wearing a hoodie over his t-shirt, AND SHORTS, and Henry and I just had on light jackets. This was 100% hat and gloves conditions, people.

But I wasn’t leaving without the damn picture, so we set off onto the trail at the same as an Indian family. We had only been walking for about 3-5 minutes when we all collectively realized that, “HOLY SHIT, THIS IS THE SPOT.” I mean, it was pretty much exactly the same, even the log was still there. And then I started cracking up because you’d have thought we’d had been legit hiking the side of a rugged mountain for hours the way Chooch was reacting in 2011. But nope – just three minutes!

I pulled out the camera to take the shot, BUT HENRY BROUGHT THE WRONG LENS. So, this time it was me throwing a tantrum and Henry angrily stormed off to retrieve the correct lens. Meanwhile, three of the older members of the Indian family had cried UNCLE and were making their way back. One of them stopped and kindly asked if we needed help and I said, “Oh, no thank you. We’re just waiting for—-” and I blanked, not knowing how to refer to Henry!? “—our friend.”

He nodded and kept walking, but honestly, I’m sure Chooch and I looked like suspish hooligans, loitering on the side of the trail like we had just found a geocache of drugs and gold bars and Elvis’s molar.

Henry came back, jammed the lens into my person, furiously shrugged off his jacket, lifted Chooch up over his shoulder, and hoarsely hissed, “TAKE THE FUCKING PICTURE.”

I mean, it does look like the same spot, right?? I was actually shook that we found it.

Look at Henry so far ahead of us, lol. He was DONEZO after this. It’s been 5 days and he’s still bitching about his back pain. Oops. But, at least we made the memory!? RIGHT HENRY?

Oh shit, the hilarity of the comparison of these two pictures carried me through most of the drive home. I just kept going back and looking at it and cracking the hell up. I want to say that I can’t believe they went through with this, but c’mon.

I knew that they would.

You knew that they would.

They knew that they would.

I was so angry on Saturday. Henry actually got home from work early on Friday and we had discussed leaving earlier and driving all the way through to Gatlinburg, but then he decided to take a nap until fucking 3pm, so he stuck with the OG plan of driving to somewhere in Virginia and then continuing on the next morning. So, by the time we actually got to Gatlinburg, it was 11am on Saturday. I had wanted to get up into the mountains early!

The plan was to go to Clingman’s Dome and recreate a picture of Henry and Chooch from when we were there in 2011. I was looking forward to it because it was a beautiful day for doing mountain walks, you know? Except, it was so incredibly crowded by the time we got there that we couldn’t even find a parking spot. Can you believe it?! It was like trying to park at fucking Disney, I don’t even know. And the worst part was that some BITCH in her pocketed leggings (Henry HATES when women wear these pants lol) got out of a minivan in front of us and ran through the lot which was horseshoe-shaped, when she saw that a spot had opened up on the other side. Literally ran across the grass that was separating the sides of the lot and stood in the empty spot so that none of the FIFTY (probably!!) cars in front of theirs could claim it.

When we passed her on the way out of the lot (after clearly NOT getting a spot), Henry called her a cunt and I yelled across him, “Must feel cool to be such an asshole!”

“Wow,” Chooch murmured from the backseat. Look at us, setting the Good Examples!

That felt good to get that off our chests, but it was still extremely disappointing that it was SO CROWDED up there. This was my first time really experiencing heavy crowds in nature and it was wild.  We were there at the same of the year, also on a Saturday afternoon in 2018 and it wasn’t even close to being this insane. We didn’t go to Clingman’s Dome that time around but the overlooks and parking lots for other trails were not even almost at capacity and when I tell you that there were people creating their own parking spots on Saturday, I’m not being hyperbolic.

Henry thinks it’s because people are still super-motivated to get out and do shit after quarantine, but now that everything is $$$$$$$$$$$ more people are trying to have free fun.

I was really bummed about this (and projected my dissatisfaction onto Henry, as one does) but honestly, even if we had found a parking spot, there was absolutely NO WAY that we would have been able to recreate the picture we wanted without hordes of people being in the background. So, it was for the best, and we planned to get up extra early on Monday and revisit the spot before leaving for home.

But dude, listen. The best part about this failed drive up the mountain was stopping at one of the smaller overlooks on the way back down and befriending the cutest, sweetest crow!!

He was totally chill, you can tell he was very used to people (probably not a great thing) and was like, “Sure, you can sit as close to me as you want. Can I also get into your car and go into town with you? I have some errands to run.”

“OMG I HAVE NEVER SEEN A CROW BEFORE, WOWWEEEE!”

Chooch and I were competing over who could take the best picture of the crow, but Chooch sadly won. Only because he has the new iPhone and I don’t!! I don’t even know what mine is. It was the newest one available in the beginning of 2020, the Covid edition, I guess.

ILYSM!!!!!!

I wanted him to come home with me and chase the fucking hawk away, ugh.

Such a beautiful bird! A huge highlight of the day for me, for sure.

We needed somewhere to eat dinner when we were en route to Tennessee on Friday and of course Henry put the burden on me. I hate that!! I can’t understand maps first of all, so I always end up finding a cool place, getting my heart set on it, only for Henry to say, “THAT IS NOT ON THE EXIT” like I know what that means.

I really hate him sometimes.

There was this cafe that was also a used book shop that had lots of vegan options and sounded like something I would love and I put all my eggs in that basket. Then of course, Henry was like THAT IS IN CHARLESTON, WV AND WE ARE NOT GOING THAT WAY but hello, he’s the one who was like, “Look for Rt. BunchaNumbers on the map and go from there.”  THAT IS WHAT I DID??

Anyway, I found a place in Davidson (? I think ?) WV called The Dish and it seemed appealing because they had housemade veggie burgers as well as brownies made with avocado. This seemed much better than going to a diner and getting stuck with either grilled cheese or a Gardenburger – not knocking either of these, and you know I love that greasy spoon ambiance, but I also wanted something healthy-ish.

Chooch was playing some dumb game on his phone called Bitlife all weekend and it was really embarrassing when he would say things like, “Now my mission is to become a pornographer” and the waitress would be lingering on the periphery. Or, “Great, 7 of my kids have measles and one just died.”

Henry and I are actually broken up but here is one of the last pictures we took together.

I had major regertz after seeing Chooch’s PB&J on a waffle that he ordered from the kid’s menu because he “just wasn’t that hungry” all of a sudden, but then was “starving” by the time we got to the hotel in Virginia an hour later. (I think we stayed in Virginia?? Yes, we did. I just had a flashback of passing the billboard for Dolly’s Diner and then going through the tunnel, and I think then Virginia happens.)

Oh you guys, my veggie burger was delectable. It came on a pita which was a nice departure from a typical bun! (Although the bun on ex-boyfriend Henry’s burger looked bangin’ so I kind of had double-regertz over that one.) There was avocado on this and a nice sauce that I enjoyed immensely. The only downside was that I ordered the veggie of the day – Brussels sprouts, which I love –  after confirming with the server that they weren’t going to be cooked in MEAT since nearly all eating establishments like to sully the sprouts in that way, making us veg-types the most sad. However, they gave me a baby portion! Literally like half of a palmful. I will say that they were cooked nicely and not all butter-logged and soggy. But still. I wanted more!

And then we split a warm brownie made with avocadoes, which Chooch frowned upon because he couldn’t wrap his head around this healthy ingredient substitute, but I thought it was just right.

Anyway, the whole reason I’m even writing this is because one day in the future, someone is going to ask, “What was that restaurant we ate at that one time…” and all I will have to do is check my dumb blog (if it even still exists) and scream out, “THE DISH! I WIN!” And also because I wouldn’t mind returning to this place the next time we’re driving out that way because it was delicious and didn’t make me feel shit afterward!

If you have any restaurant/diner recs that are on the route from Pittsburgh to Gatlinburg, let me know. I hate relying on Yelp, even though this time it worked in my favor!

Our Thanksgiving 2022 was quiet, small, and nice.

We didn’t want to have a big dinner because there’s only three of us and we would be leaving the next day for Tennessee and the leftovers would perish.

So we ordered some kind of lentil loaf thing from a local vegan place (they changed their name to something that I literally cannot remember but they used to be Tupelo Honey in Millville). It was good but Henry didn’t cook it right so it came out like stuffing and not so much a loaf. We also got pumpkin bars from them, and then Henry cooked a fake ham, Brussels sprouts, and mashed potatoes.
It was all we needed.

And of course, each other! Lololol.

I told Chooch that I invited Vlad to dinner and he actually went into panic mode.

(Hello, I recommend reading this post first because I will be referencing people and incidents from that!)

‘Twas the night before Thanksgiving, around 9:30 and we were doing fuck all. In fact, I had just curled up on the couch with a book while Henry was working on something at the computer in the other room. Chooch was in his room playing dumb games with his friends.

I hadn’t even had a chance to open my book yet, when suddenly…

The front door opens.

I had about .25 seconds to run through the probability of this being either Henry or Chooch. Did one of them go outside through the basement, perhaps? And now they were coming back in?

But now there was a stranger standing in the doorway. He quietly closed the door behind him, then turned back into the room.

We locked eyes.

My mental People Rolodex is flipping at warped speed: WHO IS THIS MAN. DO I KNOW THIS MAN.

Now the man’s eyes are flicking around my house. “Oh…shit. I walked into the wrong house.”

“Yes,” I managed to whisper, half-paralyzed, not quite with fear but surprise. Shock.

This happened so quietly and calmly, that even Henry had a delayed reaction at the computer, not quite sure what is happening.

“Wow, this house is….I should go,” the man said, and turned to leave. Now I could hear Chooch creeping on the steps. He apparently thought it was Blake dropping off Starbucks for him after work and was shocked to see that, no this was not Blake.

“Yes, you should go,” I agreed, and now it clicked where I had seen this face before: he is one of the people moving in with Rob (please refer to previous post!) and he had also come over to Ruth’s on Monday to make sure was OK. Plus, I had seen him several times over the weekend moving stuff into the house.

So a stranger, but also a neighbor. But still a stranger.

“Do you mind if I just stand here and look around for a minute?” he asked.

Now here is the point where my constant need for praise and attention drop-kicked any remaining supply of rationality out of my cranial trap door. Since the pandemic, we have barely had anyone over here aside from family, Verizon guys, and plumbers. So I was kind of like, “YES, YOU MAY” which I know pissed Henry off, but hello I would like to note for the log that Henry was the last one in the house and didn’t shut the door all the way, so this is a very BLAME HENRY situation we have on our hands here. Also, passive Henry never once attempted to intervene.

Also, this guy was fucking high. Imagine walking into my house for the first time, incapacitated. This was around the time he finally introduced himself as Robert, the boyfriend of the girl also moving in with Rob who Rob said was his daughter but GET THIS: she is actually the ex-gf of Rob’s son, Brandon!? That is…weird? Right? That she’s living with her ex-bf’s dad and her new bf?

“Do you get high?” he asked, to which I immediately said no. “Oh, well do you mind if we smoke pot over there?” he asked, and I said that I didn’t care what he did as long as it wasn’t in my house (??) and he goes, “No, I mean, you can’t smell it through the walls, right?” I had to explain to him that he didn’t just walk into the wrong SIDE of his new house, he walked into the wrong house entirely.

“Well, we don’t share any walls since you’re all the way over there, so no, we can’t smell it,” I explained and then in my head, thought, “LOL that’s Ruth’s problem.”

Man, this guy (who was born in 1988, a fact I will never forget because he told me like 1,988 times and I wanted to be like, “THAT’S WHEN G-DRAGON WAS BORN!” but you know, we just met) had questions about everything. First, he asked if everything in here was for sale, like he thought this was a lighting store or something?

He’s still standing at this point, and I’m sitting on the couch wondering how much longer this was going to last before I had to tell him to leave. He was very quiet, calm, polite, totally high though. Henry wanted no part of this at all and LET ME DEAL WITH IT?! He told me later, “Oh, you seemed to have it under control. I assessed the situation and he didn’t appear to be a threat.” WOW, way to be the man of the house. Not to white Knight Henry, but imagine a petite Seth Rogen and that’s basically what walked into our house.

But then Robert started talking about the drama that happened the other day. “What the hell was up with that??” he asked, and I was like, “Buckle up, Robert, I’m an expert at Pioneer Ave information.” So now Robert is sitting on the couch and we’re chatting like old broads at tea time. I forgot that I used to be good at conversationing and peopling! Anyway, the irony was not lost on him that he essentially did the same thing as Johnny Cash, just in a much less sinister context.

You guys, he LET ME TALK ABOUT KOREA and that is all I ever want, truly.

I would also like to memorialize the fact that prior to this, I had put on a YouTube video about various things to do in the Smoky Mountains, nature-wise, and another extremely boring video had started playing with a super old man narrating in in a dry voice, like something you’d have watched in school on a day when you have a sub and they have nothing else to give you, work-wise. I desperately wanted to change it but the remote was on the other side of Robert. So I let the boring ass video play on like in some old bitch living in a wood-paneled RV.

I mean, that seems like the type of TV someone like that would watch.

About 30 minutes in, he mentioned that he was born in Romania and I almost lunged at him in excitement.

“I AM OBSESSED WITH ROMANIA,” I said in a very serious fashion, and he was caught off guard by this.

I will say it was frustrating though because he couldn’t remember anything and asked me numerous times what my name is and how long I’ve been living here. Henry said he texted Chooch at one point and said, “It’s like a revolving convo.” I demanded a screenshot of these texts for journalistic purposes:

Typical Chooch, only cares about his drink, zero concern for Mum’s safety.

Apparently during other parts, Chooch was hovering on the steps listening in and he and Henry were communicating through facial expressions. I wish I could have seen their faces when ROMANIA came up because I’m sure Henry closed his eyes in defeat and Chooch gave his fists a “NOW SHE WILL NEVER LET HIM LEAVE” shake.

So yeah, Robert moved to the States with his parents from Romania when he was 7 but he still speaks Romanian fluently and was just there this year to visit family! HE TAUGHT  ME HOW TO SAY HELLO HOW ARE YOU IN ROMANIAN BUT I ALREADY FORGOT.

Anyway, he stayed for an hour and then we wished each other a Happy Thanksgiving, he apologized again, and that was that. I got up and immediately locked the door behind him.

I immediately texted my brother, Corey, because he is so invested in the Pioneer drama.

Truly! That was not how I saw the night going. Look, I am clearly starved for conversation! I knew this was filling a void when I abandoned all of my filters and started giddily telling Robert about the squirrels. “And they love grapes, but they call them by the Korean word, podo!” (Henry texted Chooch at this point like, “great, now she’s talking about the squirrels.”)

Anyway, Corey and I are now exclusively referring to Robert as Vlad so as not to confuse him with Rob.

Chooch cautiously came downstairs a few minutes later. “OMG did he finally leave?” he asked, and then gave me a very disappointed head shake. Turns out he wasn’t worried that this guy was going to murder me, he was just annoyed because Blake had left his Starbucks in a bag on the porch and Chooch didn’t want to have to walk past Robert. He apparently texted Blake said he couldn’t get it right away because some guy was in the house.

Blake goes, “Who, dad’s new boyfriend?” (When Henry heard about this he mockingly laughed and said, “wow you guys are all so funny.”)

Chooch said, “No, some guy living with Rob. He just walked into our house.”

And Blake said, “Oh cool.”

OH COOL????

“I just can’t believe this happened two nights after you were telling me about the other time someone walked into the house,” Chooch said, and my mind is also a little blown about that too. WHAT DOES IT MEAN?! (Aside from us needing to triple-check that the door is locked.)

***

“Wow, you wanna talk about someone who can talk…” Henry sighed, after Robert left.

“Oh I know right, I didn’t think he was ever going to leave!” I said.

“I was talking about you,” Henry frowned.

:(

I bet Vlad doesn’t even remember being here.

Pardon moi if I have already mentioned this, but last winter, the new jackass priest at the church across the street put up a sign prohibiting people from parking in the church lot overnight. This presented an issue because that’s where a bunch of us on this block parked because our street is notorious for hit-and-runs. I mean, if you’ve even casually read this blog or followed me on Instagram over the years, you have probably known about at least one incident. In fact, Henry was even interviewed about this on the local news!

As you can see in the picture below, there are two driveways for four duplexes to share. House #3 has two residents and SIX cars. SIX!!! Two of them are FREE CANDY vans that don’t run and are just rusting in the back, a minivan that used to be permanently parked in the church lot was moved behind House #1, one was being stored in the garage of House #2 while the house was vacant, and then two of them are actually used daily.

The people who live in House #7 are just as bad. One of their cars is literally a Yellow Cab minivan. They also had a bunch of cars that were broken down and being “stored” in the lot across the street, in addition to someone’s extremely noisy work van (we’ll get to this in a second), so it’s actually no wonder the priest flipped his shit.

OK, now please familiarize yourself with the cast of characters as detailed below:

1. Multi-unit house not affiliated with our set of duplexes (they have a different landlord). Residents include Chooch’s friend Marky who lives there with his grandparents, some older lone guy who recently broke his knee and fell in front of our house at 1am after getting out of the hospital and Chooch, unbeknownst to us, went out to assist him; a…strange older couple who we never have had any interaction with but Hot Naybor Chris refers to them as Johnny Cash and Buttcrack (her ass crack really does make an absurd amount of appearances). For the sake of brevity, we will henceforth refer to them as JC & BC.
2. There used to be a couple from Kentucky who lived here and the cops were there so much, they should have been helping with rent. Tons of domestic issues. They were smoking with Marky’s mom and stepdad one night and caught their couch on fire. The husband reminded me of Johnny Craig. Anyway, they’re gone and now Rob* is moving in.
3.  HNC and his wife who hates the squirrels and is the Pioneer parking dictator.
4. The coolest people on the street!
5. Henry’s older son Blake and his fam.
6. Two older brothers. One is George and I don’t know the other guy’s name. They are nice enough but they did have an Oz sign in their yard for this last election, so. I think the daughter of one of them lives there too? She owns a boutique on the Boulevard and seems cool. They also have a cool dog named Zeus. Overall, no issues with these people but we also keep our distance all the same.
7. Chooch’s nemesis Larry and his wife. She seems sane. I think she is also somehow related to one of the brothers next door to them? Daughter, maybe? I also think that their young adult son and/or daughter has been living there too?
8. IDK, seem normal, no interaction
9. IDK, seem normal, no interaction but it’s worth mentioning that this is the unit where my favorite ex-neighbor ROBIN used to live.
10. Jackie’s house, has been there since before I moved in back in 1999. Not a rental unit. At this point, me, Jackie, and two other non-rental houses on the other side of her are the OGs of the block.
11. The yellow lines that HNC’s wife had painted on the curb because she can’t pull out of the driveway if people park too close. If you park over the yellow lines, she will call the police on you. She did that to one of my old neighbors, but that was probably also because she was black. Sigh.

*OK, we’ll start this with a backstory about ROB. When I moved here in 1999, Rob and Jackie were married and had a son named Brandon. I think Brandon was somewhere between 10-12 and he was a little punk, if we’re being honest. I was 20 when I moved here and Brandon and some other neighbor kids glommed on to me IMMEDIATELY. I kind of became the resident babysitter, except that I wasn’t getting paid. But it wasn’t all that bad. I always had friends here with me and we would play with the kids in the yard. Brandon could be a super dick though and to this day, I am still convinced that he broke into my house through my basement in 2001 and stole an entire CD rack from my house. Even when I confronted Jackie about it, she didn’t deny it on his behalf, just said that if he did it, she unfortunately had not seen any of the CDs in her house. I was actually JUST thinking about this other day too when the whole Hoobstank topic came up because the night I was robbed, I was at the Dave Navarro show at Metropol and Hoobastank opened for him. I was with my friend Wonka and as we were leaving, the singer of Hoobastank (they were not well-known at all yet, no radio “hits”) was handing out samplers. Never one to pass up a CD sampler, I of course took one and I went to walk away, the singer called out, “Wait! Don’t you want me to sign it?” So that is why I have a signed Hoobastank CD in my collection, OK? God.

Then Dave Navarro said hello to me and let me take his picture as he was getting into his car and I floated home on Cloud Nine….only to see that the glass of my basement window had been broken.

Meanwhile, Brandon’s dad was the Street Drunk. Everyone knew Rob. He’d get hammered and like, stand in the middle of the road naked. There was this one story I had heard about how he was getting on a plane shortly after 9/11 and started screaming about terrorists and had to be dragged off the plane.

Rob and Jackie live far enough down the street that I haven’t had much interaction with them over the years, but Jackie has always been very kind to me and we still say hello to each other in passing. I have to laugh though because there used to be a kid that lived next to her who Chooch and Marky used to play with and for some reason they would always go in Jackie’s backyard and then she would yell at them. Chooch haaaates her to this day and calls her The Witch but if you ask me, this was just karma for all the times her dumb kid would darken my doorstep.

I guess it was about a year ago, I kept noticing that Rob was in and out of Larry’s house (House #7). I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but it somehow came up in conversation when Henry was talking to HNC one day that Jackie had kicked Rob out and gotten a restraining order against him SO HE MOVED IN WITH LARRY. Oh, I bet Jackie fucking loved that, still having to see his ass every day.

So then the NEW PARKING DECREE was issued and Rob, no longer having a driveway, had to start squeezing his noisy-ass work van onto the  street. Now, this is city parking and no one can “claim” that a particular space is theirs, as much as they want to. Most people just bitch about it quietly but NOT HNC’S WIFE. All it took was Rob parking his van ONE TIME in front of HER HOUSE for her to straight-up threaten him with a baseball bat. I’m not joking – it was a whole fucking confrontation and I have it on video. This was in April.

Things got pretty quiet on the parking front for a while. In fact, I eventually realized one day over the summer that I hadn’t seen Rob’s van in a while so I figured he must have moved, but then I quickly moved on because I didn’t actually care that much.

Two weeks ago, Henry and I were getting in the car to leave and HNC was fiddling around with one of his broken rapist vans. I asked him how he was doing and he groaned, “Oh just lovely. I’m getting a new neighbor. DEAD ROB.”

“Dead Rob?” I asked, not following.

“Yeah, you know, Rob from down there? He died then came back?* Anyway, his mom up to died and he sold her house and now he’s moving in next door to me.”

*(UM NO I DIDN’T KNOW THIS??? I GUESS THAT’S WHY HE DISAPPEARED FOR A WHILE? WAS HE IN REHAB OR SOMETHING?)

“I haven’t told Ruth yet,” Chris went on. “She’s not going to be happy.”

Then I immediately remembered their April altercation and had to chew on the inside of my cheek to keep from squealing. I managed to wait until Henry and I  pulled out of the driveway before LEGIT CACKLING over this. If you don’t know, HNC’s wife is like Pioneer Enemy #1. There is not a person on this street who has not suffered her wrath. I try very hard to tread lightly even though I want to confront her so bad every time she calls the squirrels bastards.

So HNC had to remove his spare car from the empty house’s garage since IT AIN’T EMPTY ANYMORE, FRIEND, and now street parking got a bit trickier because Rob has two cars that he needs to park on the street since HNC takes up the entire bottom of the driveway (we’re so privileged and grateful that he cleared enough space for us to park our two cars, thanks so much for providing us with space that we’re already entitled to according to our lease, but mmmm).

If you please go back up and refer to my handy illustration, you will see that there is a WHITE CAR parked in front of HNC’s house, owned by Johnny Cash and Buttcrack. Now, legend has it that HNC asked them nicely to kindly start parking their car farther up the street, more toward their own house, so that HNC can park the car that he actually does drive in front of his own house. Allegedly, they said they would and I guess they did so one or two times, but then reverted back to parking in front of HNC’s house. HNC says it’s because they like the convenience of this spot in that it enables them to more easily make a U-turn when leaving? This is such a wild rationale to me. I mean, that reason just seems dumb.

So HNC (or Ruth, I dunno – I wasn’t there) had to ask them again. Now, this is where things get curious to me because whatever happened next caused JC and BC to go over to HNC’s house on Monday afternoon. I was sitting at my desk working and Henry had just walked out the door to go to THE STORE when he called me and said, “JC and BC just walked up to Ruth’s house, get ready.” So of course I whirled around to look out the window. From my vantage, I couldn’t see JC because he must have been too close to Ruth’s front door, but I could see BC, who was standing on the sidewalk casually slurping on what appeared to be a milkshake.

Then I heard GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE! *SLAM* GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE! *ANOTHER SLAM* and then JC & BC retreated. Henry had just reached our car in the lot (we still park there during the day until the sign changes and says that we can’t) and said that he turned around in time to see JC lurching and slurring (Henry’s imitation of this was priceless, honestly) and Ruth slamming the door. “I guarantee she calls the cops,” Henry said when he called me again from the car.

Several minutes later, cop shows up. I was desperately trying to hear what was being said but there is never a reprieve from the traffic on this fucking street. But I could tell that Ruth was crying and she was obviously explaining the parking situation to the cop. Then the cop walked over to JC’s house. Henry was home at this point, and I said, “Fuck it, I’m going out there.” I mean, I wanted to know. And I didn’t want to rely on whatever secondhand nonsense HNC was going to give to Henry later.

Ruth was fucking shaking on her porch when I walked over. Rob, in the process of moving in, also came over to comfort her, which I thought was decent considering she had just threatened him with a baseball bat six months ago. But then as he walked away, she looked at me and said with total contempt in her tone, “And you know where HE came from” and pointed down the street toward Larry’s house. I’m actually surprised she didn’t spit at him as he was walking away. Good ol’ Ruth.

But then she went back to be being shook and told me the story:

She was in the kitchen baking a pumpkin pie (this was a key element to the story, apparently, because I have heard her tell the story so many times now and it always starts out this way) when she heard a light tapping. She assumed it was Rob hanging up pictures next door. Then suddenly, JC is storming into her house, lurching at her and slurring angrily (her imitation of this sounded just like Henry’s, like someone who had just woken up from oral surgery had immediately gone to a haunted house and was trying to scream with a mouthful of gauze and novacaine. She said that the only reason her door was even unlocked was because her daughter was on her way over. And I get it, a Monday afternoon, broad daylight, you don’t really think twice about unlocking your door in preparation for someone’s arrival. I can’t fault her for that.

But how fucking horrific, to be in your kitchen, listening to the radio and baking a pie, when some fucking drunk derelict comes bursting into your house?? And I am in no way condoning this, but it begs the question….what was the actual impetus of this? Like, what EXACTLY was said to them over this stupid parking situation that caused the guy to be that angry (he also seems a bit off too, to be frank) that he is going to walk right into your house when you don’t answer?!

There are missing pieces here. Or…maybe he’s just that fucking weird that this seemed OK to him??

Anyway, the cop came back over at this point, so I excused myself and went back into my house.

“WAS ROB HOLDING A SHOT GUN???” Henry asked me.

“No, it was like, a vaccuum cleaner from the 80s,” I clarified, and that became my favorite part of the whole debacle. I can’t explain it, but I get big Beetlejuice vibes from Rob and him loitering on his porch with a vaccuum nozzle while in the middle of a neighborhood dispute is exactly the image I want to use on the imaginary cover for the straight-to-video VHS tape of this volume of the Pioneer Tales.

After the cop left, I went back over to Ruth’s because I genuinely felt bad and wanted to give her my number in case anything like that happened again. She invited me in and went through the whole ordeal again in depth and man, the image I have in my head of this weirdo pushing his way into her house, ugh. Shudder City.

A short while later came another explosion of expletives outside. I looked out the window just in time to see Ruth’s daughter Ashley rushing through the yard, screaming, “IF YOU FUCK WITH MY MOM AGAIN, I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU” as her husband was trying to hold her back. Then about an hour later, ANOTHER screaming match happened. I tried to get this on video but of course, fucking traffic and also there is no good vantage point from the inside of my house to be able to capture what goes on over on that side of the yard. But this time it sounded like both Ashley and her husband and both JC and BC were screaming threats and insults at each. Ashley and her husband kept sneering at them for being alcoholics and saying things like, “I can smell the booze on your breath from over here!” and then the cops showed up again, this time because JC called them and said he was assaulted by Ashley’s husband which I’m pretty sure is not accurate, but ok.

Later that night, Henry and I were telling Chooch about everything he missed when he was at work. I was reminded of the time when I first moved in and there was a guy named Paul who lived in House #5. People were constantly mistaking my house for Paul’s, peering into my window and calling out, “PAUL!” and I’m like, “Nope, next house.” Paul was basically like an eternal frat boy and was probably definitely selling drugs too, because he was very popular and always had people coming in and out. I told Chooch about the time that I had just gotten into bed for the night and stupid Jeff, my then-boyfriend, hadn’t shut the front door all the way which I found out when we were laying in bed and heard the front door open.

Then, footsteps.

The fridge opening.

Beer bottles clanking as they’re being put into the fridge.

Then, footsteps on the stairs.

Jeff, manly as he was, was straight-up cowering behind me in bed.

“Paul?” a stranger’s voice called out from the midway point of the steps.

“No, wrong house,” I replied.

“Oh fuck, I’m so sorry!”

Footsteps more frantic now, fridge door opening, beer bottles being removed, front door closes.

“Oh my god!” Chooch said.

“Yeah, it was scary and weird,” I laughed. Because I wasn’t murdered that night, so I can laugh.

There was also this one time when I had several friends over and we were all sitting outside drinking some shitty Smirnoff Ice probably, when some people got out of a car and started walking down my sidewalk toward my porch. We were all sitting on the sidewalk and these randos just like, stepped over us and kept walking.

“Watch this,” I mouthed to my friends, and then counted down 3….2….

The randos walked right onto my porch and opened my front door.

“Wrong house!” I called over my shoulder. “Paul lives down there.”

Paul still lived there by the time Henry had moved in with me, so he is also aware of this legendary part of Pioneer’s past. We shared some more Paul stories with Chooch and then briefly wondered whatever happened to him.

And then the next day, this happened?!

Highly doubt they were trying to reach THAT Paul, but still spooky!

I was telling some co-workers about this and how you know, once Paul moved away, random strangers stopped walking into my house and BOY, SO GLAD ABOUT THAT, DOT DOT DOT.

PART 2, TOMORROW.

My brother Corey and I were traipsing down Memory Lane the other day when I referenced the time that my childhood best friend and I were “professional junior bridesmaids.

” Corey was like, “Whoa whoa whoa, back up.  I don’t remember this??” To his credit, he was like 2 years old at the time and too concerned with drinking “strawbeddy” milk to notice his teenage sister walking down aisles in pink taffeta.

(Was it taffeta?)

(Do I even know what taffeta is?)

As I was filling in the missing pages of this chapter of the Kelly Family Story for him, it made me realize how actually fucking ridiculous this whole thing was. Let me tell you about it.

The year was 1992. My aunt Susie was planning a wedding with her fiance, Mark (he was fucking awesome, btw, and played in a cover band called Le Chic!). I don’t know whose idea it was, but I somehow got locked in as “junior bridesmaid.” And because my BFF Christy was basically an honorary family member to the point where my Pappap once offered to take her to Europe with us but her parents said no (I was sad!), she was also offered a supporting role in The Wedding.

If you’re reading this and you know me personally, you will remember that this was basically the impetus of what would become a lifelong fear of food / eating disorder / etc. for me because I was a preteen FATTY and my grandma made sure I was aware of it. God forbid I should ruin Susie’s wedding with my fat ass registering seismic activity as I Stay Puft’d my cankles down the aisle. So this was also the year that I became exercise-obsessed too. I was on Slim Fast (yep, at 11! Ask me about the lingering effects that had on my psyche) and working out with Denise Austin and Gilad every day. I remember feeling awesome at the last fitting when my dress had to be taken in, but also thinking that I was still fat.

Speaking of the FITTING, some memories I have of that:

• being pissed because the adults got to drink champagne;
• obviously hating Susie’s choice of dress for us (and let’s be honest, it was probably my grandma’s choice);
• the saleswoman’s name being Rosemary but calling her Rosethorn behind her back because she kept sticking us with pins;
• maniacally singing “Pop Pop Goes the Weasel” (some inexplicably popular pseudo-rap song that was v. popular in 1992?!) in the back of my grandma’s car after leaving the dumb bridal shop to the point where my grandma legit lost her shit and yelled at us. God first, I’m fat then I’m annoying on top of it all.

Fast forward to the wedding. I was 12 by then, I think?

Corey asked who even was in the wedding and all I could remember was Susie’s friend Lori was a Girl Scout (no, not like, in her youth – she was STILL a Girl Scout somehow? I can’t remember what the deal was but I know that Christy and I were majorly side-eyeing each other over this, back when we didn’t know that side-eyeing was a thing) and had once dated former Pgh Penguin Phil Borque but back when he was in the farm league.

Interestingly, my mom was not in the wedding party (she probably opted out because anything that puts even a background spotlight on her is not my mom’s jam) and either was Sharon, the eldest sister, but this is not shocking because Susie and Sharon hated each other.

Luckily, I found these pictures. I have no idea who any of those dudes are or the first lady, but the blond is my cousin Zita: former lingerie model and former girlfriend of former Red Wings Chris Chelios. Lots of hockey…connections in this wedding party.

Susie and Mark have since divorced but Susie is still married to that hairstyle. (Not even knocking her – that coif works for her. I literally can’t imagine her with any other hairstyle. It’s her signature!)

But where this gets kind of weird is that my cousin Zita’s brother Chris (also my cousin, obvi, but also has the distinction AND HONOR of being my godfather) was also slated to get married that year, two months after Susie. So he’s at the wedding with his fiancée, you know, and someone on that side of the family thought it would be adorable if Christy and I donned the dresses again for a second strut down the aisle, this time at the wedding of Chris and Laurie.

I mean, I barely knew Chris, if we’re being honest. Super nice guy, but our families didn’t like, hang out. And Christy CERTAINLY didn’t know him! But yeah, OK. Sure. This is normal. We will be in your wedding too! Wearing the same dresses! Knowing NO ONE in the wedding party!

This wedding was actually kind of fun though. I have a strong memory of getting into the limo after the ceremony to go to the reception. The wedding was at some really nice church downtown, I think? I don’t know, but the reception was at the Embassy Suites near the airport, and I remember it being fancy AF. So, we’re in the limo, right? And all the adults are popping the champers and just, you know, popping off in general too. And this one groomsman, he was really starting to get loose in the limo and the lips, and he looked at me, gestured at me with his sloshing glass, and said, “Your aunt Susie is A BITCH!” Christy and I were like, “Ooooooooooh!!!!!” Anyway, he went on to tell us that he was IN LOVE with her in high school I guess, and she broke his heart or something, I don’t know, but Christy and I were sure to report back to Susie on this later.

The other thing I will never forget about this wedding was that the bride’s younger brother looked like a young Mario Lemieux (hockey again) and Christy and I were LUSTING.

At the reception, we mostly just ran around letting everyone wonder who the fuck we were, but at one point Zita snagged us. She was with her then-boyfriend, some much-older rich guy. She joked that we would also have to be in their wedding. “It’s going to be in Bermuda! We’ll fly you there!”

They never got married, and Christy and I never got another gig as the Pinkies. Probably for the best considering NEITHER COUPLE made it to their 10th anniversary.

Cliff the Plumber returned to my house this morning, with some broad in tow. His wife? Sister? Just a random apprentice? I have no idea, but their working relationship was stressing me the fuck out. Cliff spent most of the time working through the hole in the ceiling while she was in the bathroom getting lowkey berated by him. I say lowkey because he maintained a monotone through it all, even when a piece of a pipe fell down and hit him (Henry said he thinks it hit him in the head lol) and she was like, “Are you OK?” and he very dryly said, “No. I’m not OK” and then continued working. Later, he quietly monotoned, “Ow.

That went in my eye.”

o.O

I work from home, and my desk is literally in the dining room where he was working so this was awkward AF. I usually use Jabber to chat with my work-friends, but I didn’t want CLIFF to see that I was giving plumbing play-by-plays so I was covertly texting from my lap under my desk, like he was my manager or something.

At one point, Cliff had to go out to his van and when he opened the front door, he said, “Hi squirrel” so that was nice of Cliff to acknowledge that this is Squirrel Town.

But back to his plumber lady. He kept asking her questions through the hole and when she would respond, he would exasperatedly huff, “I can’t hear you!

” like it’s her fault she has to communicate around a corner and through a hole, you know? My two least favorite moments were:

1. when he slightly raised his voice and said COME ON, MAN. DO I HAVE TO COME UP THERE?
2. when he lost his patience and snapped COME DOWN HERE NOW. And then he met her at the bottom of the steps (RIGHT NEXT TO MY DESK, FYI) and said, “You’ve done this a TRILLION TIMES. WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?” She sputtered out an excuse but he didn’t hang around to hear it – he was already on his way up the steps to DO THE FUCKING JOB RIGHT.

I kept furiously texting Henry (WHO HAD FALLEN ASLEEP ON THE COUCH, BOY I’M SO GLAD THIS FUCKING HERO CAME HOME FROM WORK TO BE HERE WITH ME DURING THIS TRYING TIME) things like, “Can you please turn the TV on so there is some kind of background noise, because this is fucking awkward!?” You know what he put on? Some video of someone walking around a town and not speaking. There was like NO SOUND.

The whole thing took a little less than 2 hours, thank god.

Afterward, they were washing their hands in the kitchen and openly discussing all the stuff in there. “That is really cool.” “Look, it’s Pee Wee!” “Oh, that must be from a pinball machine.”

Then CLIFF spent some time admiring Henry’s Seoul Subway Sign and Henry kept saying, “I AM MAKING A NEW ONE. IT’S GOING TO BE BETTER” and Cliff was like, “OK calm down.”

I mean, he didn’t say that but he was probably thinking it. Or maybe I was just thinking it loud enough for all of us.

The good news is that we FINALLY have new pipes, can use the shower again, and THE TUB DRAINS IMMEDIATELY so we’re not basically standing in bath water when showering. It only took actual decades for this to happen.

The bad news is that there is an even bigger hole in the ceiling and we are at the mercy of the landlord and whichever one of his goons he chooses to send to “fix” it. Henry is certain it’s going to end up being him so he’s prepared to bill the landlord himself.

Our Christmas party is less than a month away and I have a pretty good feeling that this hole will still be there, so if you see pictures of a random swath of Christmas wrapping paper taped to the ceiling, that’s uh….JUST PART OF THE XMAS DECOR, MOVE YOUR EYES ELSEWHERE.

Hey from Pittsburgh. Today was actually quite action-packed as far as neighborhood dramzzzz goes but I will save that for maybe tomorrow because your girl’s gonna need more brain power as this will require some backstory for your reading pleasure.

So, for today, I’m just checking in with some quick updates:

• CLIFF THE PLUMBER showed up at our house yesterday morning and was like THIS IS NOT WHAT I WAS EXPECTING which translates into THIS IS WORSE THAN I IMAGINED. He had a NOT HAPPY look on his face and kept sighing heavily. I mean, we have been telling the slum lord for YEARS that this was going to happen but he chose to ignore it and only SOMETIMES would actually send someone to do a quick fix. Then it would inevitably start leaking again and the ceiling would once again fall apart, rinse, repeat.

  Henry even patched the ceiling several times himself over the years. Anyway, CLIFF is coming back tomorrow morning to hopefully fix it for real. He said the pipe was so old that he could SQUEEZE it. My favorite part though was when he started to go upstairs and mumbled, “This is….interesting” because of the cloud LED ceiling I guess and then as he was leaving the house, he called out over his shoulder, toward the corner of the living room where all the cat houses are, “goodbye cats, I know you’re in there somewhere”. And then as he was walking out the door, “This…is a fun house.”

• Henry always does this awful choke/hiccup thing that makes Chooch and me immediately groan and then mock him. Over the weekend, I finished my latest piece of performative art called Henry’s Choking, causing him to say he hopes that’s how he dies and then he stormed off LOLOLOLOL
• Chooch made me do Heardle the other day because it was someone I liked and he figured I would get it immediately. I did not get it immediately. In fact, I did not get it at all and it didn’t even sound remotely familiar to me. “It’s someone you like! I distinctly remember you talking about him in the car one time.” This still told me nothing. Anyway, it ended up being Frank Ocean?! I was like, “Um, I liked Frank Ocean for like a millisecond before he got popular?! I definitely have never talked about him and I certainly wouldn’t have ever guessed this because I don’t remember a single one of his songs?!” THEN A FEW DAYS LATER he was doing Heardle again. He played the first second and I immediately said, “Oh, that’s Carribean Queen by Billy Ocean.” Of course I was right, and then Chooch snapped his fingers, “THAT’S who you were talking about in the car! BILLY Ocean.” Yes, that checks out. Anyway, the amount of times I get Heardle in the first guess drives Chooch up a wall. To be fair, this only works if the song is pre-2000s.
• In more Heardle news, he was making me do today’s Heardle and I was like, “I truly do not know” and for some reason I asked, “Is it Hoobastank?

  ” He goes, “Is that the band Bill really likes?” This made me pause because you might not know Bill but I know Bill and Hoobastank is 100% not a band he would like.

  So I shot Chooch with a series of question marks and he expanded upon this by saying, “Yeah because remember when we were at his house over the summer playing that game and he got so excited about the Hoobastank shirt?” UM YES BECAUSE IT WAS A JOKE?! I texted Bill later to tell him that now Chooch associates him with Hoobastank and he was like, ‘OK please fix that though.”

• I finally framed the french fry bag that I brought home from Mr. Happy Burger last year! Only because I recently found it stuffed into a pocket of my travel backpack, LOL oops. Anyway, I love the orange and green so much! Coincidentally, we just bought paint samples in those same colors the other day but not because we’re pairing them together. I love the garishness of this gross 1970s color palette but only in small increments – even I have my limit!

• I will end with a MV for Monday! I love B.I. so much!

OMG when I unearthed this picture, I involuntarily lurched into full-body cackling. No, listen, Linda. Linda, listen. You have no idea the significance of this. June 1992, weekend road trip to Lake Chataugua for Liz’s birthday, accompanied by our other pal Kim; Liz’s parents and younger sister, Jane; and their golden retriever whose name I honestly cannot believe I momentarily forgot.

But before I tell you, can we first appreciate my denim shirt from Merry-Go-Round (probably, I’m assuming – that was my favorite place to shop in 1992 and also where I would later discover Cross Colors and Karl Kani and undergo a full-fledged lifestyle change which is something that probably doesn’t sound like me AT ALL), my TWA travel bag from a previous trip to Europe with my grandparents (UGH I WISH I STILL HAD THIS) with my vacation journal tucked like precious cargo in the front pocket, MY BANGS AND STUPID BUMP-THING THAT I ALWAYS DID (also, this was my SECOND PERM as if getting ONE PERM wasn’t enough for an entire lifetime and beyond), and in my hands is my Walkman which has one of two cassingles in it: “End of the Road” by Boyz II Men, or “Damn…” by Sophie B. Hawkins. When I say those are the only two songs I listened to over and over that weekend, I am being sincere and without an ounce of hyperbole, not even a spittle of exaggeration.

(OK, I also listened to the “Damn…” b-side A LOT too.

OK OK OK, so this picture cracked me up so hard because this was the day that my all-time favorite non-word was accidentally created.

Basically, Jane meant to say “probably,” but then she said “smrobably” instead. That’s it – that is the whole fucking story. Something that took exactly one second to enfold has made this much of a lasting impression on me that I THINK ABOUT IT SO OFTEN and even sometimes say it without even thinking! If I recall, Jane got pissed at some point because we wouldn’t stop saying “smrobably” and then she and Liz got in a fight about it and also this was the weekend that I learned what “unilateral” meant, through the context of Liz’s mom yelling at her for making unilateral decisions.

And then there was the whole PANOVISION debacle that is also something that I think of A LOT. Basically, it rained the whole time we were at Lake Chataugua so we decided to go to the movies at some point. I can’t remember what else was playing but it must have been really dumb stuff for us to unanimously agree to see Far and Away (or maybe it was just Liz who chose it and this was the impetus to the infamous unilateral decision dressing-down??), the very forgettable Cruise/Kidman movie.

Kim was like going off the rails, gushing about how this was going to be so exciting because it was filmed in PANOVISION, so then Liz and I were like stoked too and the whole time we were watching it, I kept waiting for something to happen? Like, something pano-y? BUT IT JUST LOOKED LIKE A REGULAR MOVIE!?!? Ever since then, I notice the stupid “Panovision” logo at the end of like, EVERY MOVIE IN EXISTENCE, and it reanimates my annoyance all over again.

I texted this Lake Chataugua picture IMMEDIATELY to Henry with the caption “smrobably” and he was like, “???” WHY, AFTER 21 YEARS, CAN HE STILL NOT ACCEPT THAT THIS IS BASICALLY A CORNERSTONE OF MY LINGUISITIC HISTORY, A STAPLE IN MY VOCAB.

(I think he’d like to put a staple in my tongue sometimes when I get on these smrobably kicks.)

OMG SHOULD I GET A SMROBABLY TATTOO. SMROBABLY.

(Wait, did we spell it “smrobably” or “smrobly”???)

1. Suburban Hell – Maureen Kilmer

Horror Lite. Like, the book equivalent of saying you want to watch a horror movie and then settling on Hocus Pocus. Good for people who aren’t really into horror but want something comfortably spooky to read in the fall. It was fine.

2. The Roughest Draft – Emily Wibberley / Austin Siegemund-Broka

Yeah, that’s what this book felt like, alright.

3. A Dowry of Blood – S.T.Gibson

Oh snap, I just realized this is #1 in a series! If you love anything Dracula-related, pick this up. It’s written from the POV of Dracula’s medieval peasant bride, as she’s explaining to Dracula why she…did what she did. I thought this was damn near perfect. I only wish I had been reading it under a tree in a cemetery. Yep, this was the perfect October read.

4. Her Majesty’s Royal Coven – Juno Dawson

HOLD THE PHONE. IT’S A 5-STAR READ. Phew, these come by so rarely anymore, so when I find one, I want to caress it tenderly and let it take Henry’s spot in bed. I can’t believe I almost returned this to the library before even trying it because I was overwhelmed with my TBR and didn’t “think” I would like this. OK, it’s about WITCHES. I was worried that it was going to be super dense with way too much world-building, but luckily, it’s similar to Harry Potter in that it takes place in the world as we know it, just….with witches existing.  The chapters rotate between the POV of a group of adult friends who all grew up together in witchdom or whatever, but as adults, we see that some of them have chosen different paths. There is a lot of LGTBQ+ discourse in this, gender identity, friendship, betrayal, BIG ASS PERSONALITIES THAT MADE ME FALL IN LOVE. I just loved it – it was exciting with biting dialogue and I actually understood the political shit going on. I can’t wait for the second book in the series!!

I could also see this being a really great TV series.

5. The Lost Years – Mary Higgins Clark

ONE STAR. It makes sense that I liked MHC’s books in middle school. But as an adult? No thanks. The way she writes, at least for this particular book, it’s like she assumes her readers are morons. Information is repeated OVER AND OVER. This book was lame & totally boring.

6. Daisy Darker – Alice Feeney

Oh wow, I forgot that I gave this 5 stars too! A 4-star for a thriller is usually very high for me, but there was something about this book that made me go all the way with it. The setting, the characters, the grandma, the VIBE. I kind of had a feeling about the twist but it was still a great time. It was cozy and perfect for October!

7. The Last Housewife – Ashley Winstead

Um, the fuck was that? I loved Ashley Winstead’s first two books with my whole damn heart and thought this was a shoo-in for the 5-star club. Wrong, bitch. First of all, it felt like someone else was writing this. I mean, it was borderline embarrassing to read at times. And the plot…no. It just didn’t work for me. I have this 3 stars but it was really more like a 2.5, Bob. I was not thrilled at all while reading this, and all of the characters were so painfully flat.

8. The Butterfly Garden – Dot Hutchison

…but then I read this one and it made The Last Housewife seem, you know, not so bad. Yeah, this was just so bad. I had a very hard time following the timeline, I didn’t care about the main broad/victim, the whole butterfly garden in general was like, “Wait, what? Huh?” No, this was trash. I should have listened to my favorite Booktuber Kat when I saw that she gave it a 2 and said “criminal minds s11e14 in a nutshell.” YES, THIS. GENERIC. And the parts with the cops were like, so stereotypical. This is apparently a series and I will not be reading any more, lol.

9. The Book of Cold Cases – Simone St. James

You know…I liked this. I wasn’t sure at first and thought I was going to be disappointed, but it was pretty interesting. I gave it a 4, maybe realistically it was more of a 3.5, but I was rooting for the main character pretty hard (she was a blogger lol) and the mystery kept me hooked.

10. We Spread – Iain Reid

OK. I went into this with the wrong mindset. I read “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” several years ago and love it so so so much, like, became obsessed with it and googled it and watched the movie (eh) so my expectations of We Spread was tainted. This isn’t horror. This was fucking sad. This is about aging, growing old, losing yourself. Iain Reid s a crazy-good writer, but I only gave this a 3 because this wasn’t what I wanted. This was definitely a “It’s not you, it’s me” situation going on here. I went in for the horror, thinking I was going to be scared to death, but instead all I got was….being scared of death.

***

So overall, not the best month for books. But hey: two 5-stars! That’s pretty fucking alright.

Here we have a collection of things that have been happening.

I’m in a bitter battle with a HAWK. We had a showdown two Fridays ago. Let me set the scene: I was sitting at my desk, dutifully doing my job, when I heard a weird animal cry. The squirrels will do a chitter every now and then, but this wasn’t that. This sounded like a distress call. I got up and went to look out my front window just as A HAWK came swooping down from across the street, straight at my window, at which point he dropped down at the last second to the area under my window. “OH FUCK NO!” I roared in my guttural battle voice and I went barreling out of the front door like one motherfucking pissed off Kool-Aid Guy.

The hawk looked at me like, “the fuck is this?” and he flew a few houses down and landed in Jackie’s (Jackie the Witch, if you’re Chooch) yard. I stomped my ass over there, hollering “Go! Get out of here!!” to this piece of shit predator. Some dumb old man (a random one, not Henry) interrupted my full-body SHOOING and STAMPING and asked me what was going on. I didn’t want to be like SQUIRRELS!!! so instead I cried, “PEOPLE LET THEIR SMALL DOGS AND CATS RUN AROUND OUT HERE AND I DON’T WANT THIS HAWK TO GET THEM.” This seemed more reasonable and less “I am the neighborhood squirrel protection society president.”

“He must be hungry!” the man laughed, rooting in his pocket for his ancient cell phone to take pictures of this stupid asshole bitch bird. “WELL HE CAN STARVE BECAUSE HES NOT FEASTING ON MY BLOCK!!” I hissed in response, but it was more like a wail in the key of Sally Struthers.

Oh, this man was PISSING me off. I just wanted him to fuck off so I could continue stalking the hawk who was now perched menacingly on a light pole across the street, but he was just doo-wah-diddling about, smiling at the dumb thing and struggling to work his phone.

My squirrels were DISTRAUGHT and I never want to have to see my favorite Girl Buddy cry and shake the way she was as she hid between HNC’s garbage cans.

This bitch fucked with the WRONG CRAZY LADY. I bought this ugly fake owl thing because hawks are stupid and supposedly will think it’s real and go somewhere else, and I’m about to hang several disco balls in the back porch because they hate…dance parties? Sike, I guess they hate reflective things.

COME AT ME NOW, BITCH BEAK.

(Henry, somewhere in the background, reminding me for the 87th time that they’re federally protected while Chooch is like “I swear to god if you end up in the emergency room…” This is my new life, in case you have been wondering what I’ve been up to. My Google searches are all variations of HOW TO FIGHT A HAWK at this point.)

I am now in the market for chain mail, a potato gun (to hopefully get it hooked on veggies) and a SHIELD. When I say that this has consumed my life…I mean, you read this dumb thing so you know how I am.

(Also: how do I get crows to live at my house. They came out at one point to help and all that was missing was KIM CARNES “I NEED A HERO” playing in the background.)

Henry and Chooch got me this kombucha when they were at the store together (I’m sure that was fun) simply because it has a squirrel on the bottle. I am a kombucha addict though so I would have drink/drank/drunken this even if it had a hawk on the bottle.

J/K, I have standards.

Chooch has been working at Dunkin’ for several weeks now and has still not been trained, lol, ok cook on Dunkin’. No wonder their coffee drinks taste different from one location to the next. No one even showed him how to work the register but he said it was similar to McDonald’s so he just started using it. At least we know that Chooch can persevere when left to his own devices.

Also! This is the kind of Dunkin’ that’s split with Baskin Robbins so I might be asking him to bring me a milkshake home at some point, even though I recently started Noom again. Did I tell you that, Blog Diary? It’s not a big deal but after so much traveling and eating amusement park food all summer, my jeans were starting to get a little tight. I have to go all in when it comes to “dieting” – I know, in the Year of Our Lord 2022 we should be celebrating our bodies and not dieting but look, my weight directly affects my mental well-being – so I can’t just “eyeball” it or whatever. I need to be honest with my food logging and you know what holds me the most accountable? Knowing that I paid for the goddamn program and hoo boy do I hate wasting money. So yeah, when I’m doing Noom, I am DOING NOOM. Plus, I like Noom because it’s realistic and doesn’t restrict or deprive you. It relied heavily on the psychological part of weight loss and teaches you how to identify and combat (or compromise with) triggers.

I’m doing it in tandem with my beloved Jillian Michaels’ Body Revolution and I’m already getting my muscle definition and waist back!

Oh and the best part about Noom is that it teaches (and ENCOURAGES) you to treat yourself so I was able to share this pumpkin cinnabun sundae from Sugar Spell Scoops with Henry yesterday without feeling like a failure. <3

This was not sponsored, lol. I just really swear by Noom! If you want to try it, I can send you a referral link thing!

I was thinking about when we saw some of Seoul Fashion Week the first time we went to Korea and looked it up on YouTube just for fun and found myself in the background of someone’s video LOL.

I’m positive people mock me behind my back. “Did you know that Erin Kelly has been to Korea?! *huge eye roll*” I can’t help that it’s pretty much all I want to talk about 24/7. It was never a “vacation” to me. It was like a legit pilgrimage, and I have never in my life felt this way about a place before, like I had been there extensively in another life or timeline. For instance, before we ever went there, I would (and still do) watch vlog and vlog on YouTube of people living in Seoul, or travel vloggers taking a train to Jeonju. I’d watch K-drama and variety shows and feel this really crazy sense of familiarity in my heart?? And I know it’s some special weird-ass thing because I have been doing research for our summer coaster trip (NOT in Korea, sadly) and while I am VERY EXCITED AND STOKED for this, everything obviously looks so, well, foreign, to me and I am very interested in everything I’m watching and reading into, but it doesn’t feel the same? It doesn’t feel like a warm, cinnamon-and-persimmon scented embrace?!

I don’t know what it means. But both times I left South Korea, I quite frankly felt I was going to die. OK that was dramatic, I just felt like someone cut into my chest, removed half of my heart, and left it in Seoul.

:D

You guys, I recently found out that Chooch not actually did academic shit in Mexico, but he did it well! Yay, Chooch!

Oh yeah speaking of Noom!! They color-code foods: green / yellow / orange f/k/a red but that made people feel like red meant STOP DON’T EAT or BAD BAD BAD but really it just means that it’s the most calorie dense food and should still be enjoyed, but just in moderation. I accidentally discovered that Kemps froyo (green food) and Olipop Root Beer (yellow food) makes the best “diet” root beer float! Of course after discovering this, every store Henry has gone to since then has not had Olipop in the root beer flavor, sigh. 

The childs, enjoying one of the last warm days on the porch :(

What else have I been up to?! Here are some shows I watched:

• Watcher (loved it)
• Midnight Club (liked it)
• Derry Girls final season (mildly disappointing, but love the show overall)
• The current season of The Crown (almost finished, thoroughly depressing, Diana Forever)

OMG I have to go. NCT127’s Killing Voice (which I have seen 87x) just came on YouTube so now I need to go and watch this and smile like a deranged person.

I took a casual dive in the photo vault again the other night and this time landed in the Wildwood stash!

Always stoked to share pictures from the best time of my life, sigh.

My grandma looks like she actually loves me here! Probably because it was before I got fat, ugly, permed and braces.

(You think I’m kidding – lol.)

Dude. I have the most vivid memories of this boardwalk ball pit. I looked at this picture last night and literally felt like I was in the balls again. IN THE BALLS.

Being the most cute. Can you tell that Gizmo is in my lap!? Super quick back story: My aunt Sharon (mom’s oldest sister) never came to Wildwood with us. It was always just my immediate fam (ugh when RYAN was born and started tagging along) and my grandparents. But on the morning we were leaving for this particular summer’s trip to Wildwood, she presented me with a white box that had holes poked in it the top. She told me not to open it until we got there, and I was DYING, YO. Every time we hit a bump, whatever was inside would squeak and I was so certain it was alive.

This was the year that Gremlins had come out and Sharon had taken me to the theater to see it.

I was 4 and it was SCARY to me so we had to leave once the gremlin action started. But then I was like, “Never mind I want to go back” so she took me back to see it again and this time I made it through the whole thing and never walked out on another movie again until Dolores Claiborne in the 90s. (I was with my then-friend Keri and we were like, “Why isn’t this movie ending? How long is this movie?”)

I had Gremlins on the brain for a GOOD while that year and was 100% positive that Sharon had found me a motherfucking mogwai. I mean, it had to be that, right?

Well, technically it was, but man was I disappointed when we got to Wildwood and I ripped the lid off the box only to discover that it was not actually a living, breathing mogwai but a stuffed Gizmo that squeaked when shaken.

I clearly loved it though, considering he’s in like every picture of me on the piers, lol.

My mom looks very excited to be co-holding Gizmo.

LOL this would have been my dad’s first time at Wildwood with us. ALSO OMG BED BUGS! I have no recollection of ever playing that but certainly remember that it existed.

Happier times, haha.

This picture must have been the next year’s visit because that baby is RYAN UGH (j/k I like hm now) but I’m including it here because of my dad’s interesting early 80s attire. I can promise you that if we were able to pan out right now, you’d see that his shorts were essentially hot pants. And he probably had socks up to his knees.

Well, happy Friday! I’m about to go and erase this past week from my brain – it was long and annoying.

I love October so effing much but – oof – it is so bittersweet. I always have that “I’m running out of time!!” sensation so I’m not always living in the moment because I’m internally panicking about not being able to do everything, but no, I don’t want haunted houses to be a year-round thing because that kills the novelty and anticipation. I think it all boils down to exactly what the doves have been crying about: I’m just never satisfied.

Anyway, here is a round-up of the last haunts we squeezed in during the final days of October.

FRIGHT FARM! WOO! This was Henry and Zakk’s first time here, but Chooch and I are seasoned pros by now. I was so excited for Henry and Zakk to experience what is essentially the granddaddy of farm haunts. First of all, this photo is blurry because I WAS SO FUCKING COLD. Literally shivering and wishing I had brought gloves in addition to the knit beanie and boots I was already wearing.

Henry was a big fan of the snack options. It gave him something to do while we were watching for an hour-ish for our group # to be called. At least we didn’t have to stand in line!

Zakk’s new girlfriend. Chooch was jel.

Anyway, some quick thoughts:

• An actual line-dance happened when Flo-Rida and Kesha’s “Timber” came on, and I was extremely uncomfortable about that.
• An older man behind me on the hayride kept announcing everything that was about to happen to his companion, Ruthie. I kept looking behind me and Ruthie was legit recording the whole thing with her phone so I think she was aware of it.
  • Literally, the whole damn thing!!
• Hayride portion was sick as usual, possibly the best hayride around.
• Once we got to the haunted house part, we had to stand in line with like, and I’m not exaggerating here, 12 different large groups of extremely loud and inebriated people?! All the guys looked like people Blake would be friends with. It was so annoying, yet somehow the line moved extremely fast because most people were standing in clumps waiting for their friends to use the porta potties so everyone was just cutting past them. But then the kid manning the entrance to the walk-thru was letting huge groups go through at once so that was a major haunted house foul, come on kid.
• We were the last people in the group that got sent in, but somehow a group of 5 TOTALLY HIGH/DRUNK ASSHOLES caught up to us. They were insufferable. I don’t like making a scene (LOL ok) but all I kept thinking was that we drove an hour to get to this place and then paid $100 for admission, so I was not about to let these assholes fuck with my night. “Look, I’m going to pretend like I have to tie my shoe so that they’ll go past us,” I whispered to Henry who probably didn’t hear me because he can’t hear anything anymore. I dropped into a squat to fake-tie my shoe while dramatically saying, “UH OH I HAVE TO TIE MY SHOE, YOU GUYS CAN GO ON AHEAD” but then they were going to STOP so I hurriedly waved them past while I did the worst shoe-typing pantomime which involved me fluffing my laces and then IMMEDIATELY standing back up once they passed us – it was so obvious but….they were so stoned, so it probably seemed normal to them. We caught up to them at the checkpoint for the actual haunted house (the first part is mostly outdoors) but I flat out said to the girl manning the door, “I don’t want to go in with those people” and she said, “Oh yeah, no problem,” letting the door close behind them. “I could tell by your face that they were annoying you.” Other groups had caught up to us by then, but she was a fucking sweetheart and let just the four of us go inside alone and NO ONE BOTHERED US (well, aside from the monsters, but we want to be bothered by them) so YOU’RE WELCOME FOR SAVING THE NIGHT WITH MY FAKE SHOE ISSUES, GUYS.
• Look, I’m not straight-edge or a NARC or anything, but there is nothing worse than being sober in public while a bunch of jackasses parade around you in a state of extreme intoxication. TIME AND A PLACE. TIME. AND. A. PLACE.

It was like 40 degrees but go on with your shorts and t-shirts.

I’ve seen this one in the haunted listings for years and years but for some reason, we have never gone. I was tired of spending lots of money on these haunted nights so when I saw that this one was only (“only”) $15, I penciled it in. Plus, the entire proceeds go to ANIMALS!!! We love that.

Also, that’s Henry’s “Leave My Woman Alone, Chainsaw Guy!“ face. Lol j/k, he moves out of the way for them.

Anyway, this was fantastic – so reminiscent of the ones I used to go to in the 90s with Christy and/or the LAME crew. I was laughing so much and one of the guys was wearing a Sloth mask and he followed me for a LONG WHILE and then growled, “SEE YOU LATER TONIGHT” and it was sinister yet HOT?!

There was a middle school-ish aged girl dressed as a dead cheerleader and she stole the show. I made sure to tell her that when I saw her outside of the trail as we were leaving (wait – she WAS supposed to be part of the trail, right? WAS SHE AN ACTUAL DEAD CHEERLEADER???) and she giggled and then skipped off. It was adorable.

The last haunt of the season was last Friday night – Wells Township Haunted House, and oh you guys know EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED THERE, LOL.

Honestly, though – aside from my WOUND – this was still one of the best haunts I went to all season, if not ever. I just love how balls to the wall it is, I don’t mind being touched at all; in fact, in one of the first rooms, someone was VICIOUSLY tickling my sides, like they were relentless about it. I was SCREAM-LAUGHING so hard into Henry’s back, literally almost peed my pants which is how you know it’s a good haunt!

I would not recommend this one to anyone with depth perception (lol, it me) or mobility issues because one of the scariest parts is not knowing where you’re going, if there are steps coming up (usually the have someone guiding you but there was one part where I had to toe the area in front of me and holler, “THERE’S A STEP!” to Henry who at some point got behind me and I don’t know what’s scarier: being in the lead or in the back!

Well, that completes the 2022 Haunted House Circuit. It was a good one, for sure, but you know…the older I get, the less people I can find to go to these with me – especially now that I almost lost a foot to a chainsaw guy. I’m sure that’s a sign from the universe saying: FIND GROWN-UP HOBBIES. Pfft, yeah no thanks!