Henry and those FUCKING SOCKS, tho.

Anyway!

Our Saturday was very bipolar. Well, in my head it was.

Or did I mean to say, I’M very bipolar?

Not Saturday.

Never mind.

It started out with Henry showing up at some bakery in Squirrel Hill, the name of which is escaping me, because they’re always going on and on via Instagram about how fantastical their chocolate babka is. Apparently, they use coffee and cardamom in their recipe and hello, I, Erin Rachelle, love these flavors. But every time Henry goes there, they’re sold out.

This time he was determined and got there before they even opened and managed to snag an entire loaf of the elusive baked good, even though we only wanted, like, a piece or two.

Nevertheless, he strode through the door like the loaf under his arm was actually his knight’s beistle and he had just returned from fighting a war against the Squirrel Hill serfs.

And you know what, you guys?

Not worth the hype.

I mean, the babka, but I guess also kind of Henry too? LOL j/k Henry, don’t be mad, I still need you to finish some projects.

Where was the coffee flavor? And not even a HINT of cardamom. I mean, it didn’t even taste like it was baked with cardamom IN THE SAME ROOM, let alone INSIDE OF IT.

So then he mentioned something about a vegan bakery in New Kensington that recently opened, and that is where the TOP PICTURE comes into play because I was like, “Fuck this babka, let’s go get vegan stuffs.” (Also, I should mention that 350° Bakery has RUINED us for babka because theirs’ is DELECTABLE and basically the only babka worth the calories.

It is also the only other babka I’ve had, so….lol.

IN CASE YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT BABKA IS: A babka is a sweet braided bread or cake which originated in the Jewish communities of Poland and Ukraine.

(From Food & Wine.)

ALLEGRO! Sorry, that’s the name of the bakery in Squirrel Hill. Allegro. I won’t be back for the babka, but their chocolate chip cookies are immaculate.

We made it to Sweet Alchemy right as the owner was about to close up shop for the day, but she took pity on Henry, who looked so desperate with his tap-tap-taps on her pick-up window. She still had some stuff left so we (well, Henry, I stayed in the car because I didn’t know what was going on and didn’t want to look like a fool knocking on a bakery window) walked away with some pop-tarts, a maple twist thingies, and a blueberry cake donut.

EVERY SINGLE THING WAS A SUGARED MIRACLE SENT DOWN FROM THE OVENS OF HEAVEN (the vegan branch).

Totally worth the drive out there even though we got stuck in traffic on the way back because there was a one-way lane and the road worker guy decided to let an entire biker parade pass through. I was LIVID.

“Bikers are my least favorite kinds of Americans!” I seethed at Henry who kept telling me to calm down which meant that he was about to pretend that our Hyundai Kona was his valiant steed in order to WHITE KNIGHT in style whatever fucking biker gang this was that had the audacity to hold up my day.

“And the women, especially! Ew look at them, all smug and trashy, clutching onto to the distended torsos of their MANS. So gross! FUCK YOU, INSURRECTIONISTS!” I screamed and Henry was like, “ERIN. YOU CANNOT JUDGE. YOU DO NOT KNOW THAT THEY ARE TRUMP SUPPORTERS.”

Oh, trust me, I knew! Just like I knew that if they weren’t PERSONALLY storming the Capitol on January 6th, they were watching it on the TEEVEE in their shanty by the CRICK, cheering it on, hootin’ and hollerin’. Whatever noises biker bitches make, while their burgundy lipsticks spills out into the creped skin around their too-thin lips.

UGGHHHHHHH1!!!!!

“I don’t know why you’re getting so mad about this,” Henry said as one of the bikers roared past with a giant TRUMP flag billowing in his wake.

“I just wish I had a partner who UNDERSTOOD me,” I cried, feeling alone as usual in my unwavering morals.

“Erin, no one will ever understand you,” Henry sighed.

OMG WHY CAN’T THE MOTHERFUCKER JUST WHITE KNIGHT ME FOR ONCE!!??

*deep breath*

Then we went to Target and Henry refused to buy another cardboard cat house “because we’re always tripping over the ones we already have” and huge correction there: not we, but HENRY is always tripping over them because he’s a big ass fe-fi-fo-fum oaf.

Somewhere along the way, “It’s My Life” by Talk Talk came on and I got angry all over again, this time because I was reminded of how GWEN STEFANI and her shitty cat mewling voice ruined this song for me for a long time. “She sucks,” I said to my forever audience of one, Henry. “And so does Blake Shelton. What an asshole.” Henry just kept driving in silence, probably hoping I didn’t turn on him next.

I also ranted about BTS and then cried about BIGBANG. It was a very full day of me desperately needing to hear the sound of my voice, I guess. That’s what happens when you’re in the house mostly alone all day and only communicating with your co-workers via Jabber and your teenage son sleeps until noon and then leaves the house in search of something better.

Sigh.

Then things got better that night when I made Henry watch Fear Street 1994 – it was EVERYTHING I NEEDED AT THAT MOMENT, HOLY SHIT. I mean, mostly for the music. There was one scene in the beginning that opened with Bush’s Machinehead in the background and I was AWASH, A-MOTHERFUCKING-WASH, with nostalgia. 1995, tooling around Southside with Lisa and Melissa a/k/a Martha a/k/a Poptart, rolling my eyes at their penchant for the grungey alternative things in life when I was a flamboyant yo-girl, though secretly really into their music too. Anyway, Martha LOVED Bush and I can’t believe how long it’s been since I heard any of their music, so of course after the movie was over (Simon & Kate FOREVER), I yanked Henry down the Bush rabbit hole with me, and then suddenly I was ranting with foaming lips about Gwen Stefani for the second time in one day. BUSH WAS SO MUCH BETTER THAN NO DOUBT AND HER SHITTY SOLO CRAP AND I FEEL LIKE MARRYING HER RUINED GAVIN ROSSDALE THERE I SAID IT GOD FORBID I’M SIDING WITH A MANS EVEN THOUGH WE HATE MANS IN THIS HOUSE.

(We do, me and the cats. We have a jingle that goes, “We hate mans, we hates mans, we hate mans in this house.” It’s really good, you’d have to hear it.)

I’d like to take a moment here to apologize to all of the McCoy’s patrons who had to suffer through me singing “Come Down” during karaoke every Saturday night in 2001/2002 except for my mortal enemy Christine–I hope that song haunts her in her sleep to this day lol.

Also, in that movie, they played a split second of White Town’s “Your Woman” and I was fucking drop-kicked back to 1997, driving along Rt 51 with Lisa in her Jeep, flashing a Polaroid of Psycho Mike’s weener out the window at every car next to us at red lights while this song played in the background, much to Lisa’s horror. Vintage Dicks Pics, yo.

Anyway, I would like to end this on a posi-note by sharing a live version of my favorite Bush song. i only just discovered this video the other day because now my YouTube feed is full of recommended Bush videos, in addition to the Korean and roller coaster mainstays. When I first moved into this house, I used to listen to the Cafe Del Mar remix of this song over and over and cry like a basic bitch.  When he says “we’ll wrap the world around it” I lose it every time and I couldn’t really tell you why but don’t worry,  you don’t have to deal with my sensitive music triggers.

Henry does.

LOL.

Shit this song is so good. Blake Shelton is a HUUUUUUUGE downgrade, overall.

I realized the other day that we have been to 7 parks since getting vaccinated, and not a single one is our home park (Kennywood). One day this summer!

I will try to keep this short n’ sweet because OH WOW another amusement park post, cool story, etc.

But we had fun and memories were had, you know?

The morning started off icky though because similar to Cedar Point, King’s Island also does early entry access for passholders. That fucking gold pass really ruins everything for us Kingly platinum pass holders though lol. Anyway, it was cool when we went the day before because it was so late in the day and there was no line of traffic into the parking lot, so we cruised right through the handy-dandy self-scan line for pass holders.

However, it was a different story on Monday morning. First of all, the park gate’s were supposed to open at 10:30 but the parking lot was STILL CLOSED AT 10:20ish! It was absurd! So there was a huge line of cars waiting to get in, and once the lanes opened, tons of non-pass holders were getting in the wrong lane, so then they’d realize that they were screwed when they got to the front and would have to try and cut over into another line. Then people were trying to scan the pass from their phone and it wasn’t working so a parking attendant would have to leave the lane that actually required the service of a real person to come to our “SELF-SERVE” line and it was fucking mayhem. Our line was literally the slowest out of all of them. THEN! The car two in front of us kept scanning their pass over and over again WHILE THE FUCKING GATE WAS UP! Henry actually fucking BELLOWED out the window, “THE GATE IS OPEN, GO!!!” and there was a SUPER COOL GUY in the passenger seat of the car next to us who also yelled, “PAY ATTENTION!” then he looked over at us and shook his head and we HAD A BONDING MOMENT and just now it occurred to me that he kind of looked like DUFF GOLDMAN.

We thought for sure we would see him a million times that day because that is usually how things happen with us, but alas, we never did. :(

On our walk to the front gate, the stupid NATIONAL ANTHEM started to play and 99.9 % of the people stopped walking and did the respectful thing by standing in place and removing their hats if necessary and I stopped walking too but let it be known that I was NOT happy about it!

The process of entering the park went very smoothly and Henry hilariously assumed the role as FAMILY LEADER and power walked, nay—STALKED, toward Orion for early access.

30 minutes isn’t much time to work with but we were able to get quick rides sans the general public on Orion and Mystic Timbers before the riff raff started trickling in.

We were only at the park for about 4 hours since we had accomplished everything we wanted the night before and we wanted to get a good headstart on our drive home, but I will list some of the highlights here!

• When we were in line for Diamondback (which might be my #2 ride there?! I ended up loving it so much more this visit!), I saw a guy that makes appearances in several of the coaster vloggers I follow and it wasn’t too surprising to see him because I THINK he’s a ride operator there, but on this day he was just a park visitor. I hoarsely whispered, “LOOK IT’S PAUL! FROM COASTER STUDIOS AND COASTER IDIOTS…!” but of course Henry can NOT hear whispers, probably from all that time he spent “working” on “planes” in “THE SERVICE.” Finally, he understood what I was saying and smirked. “He looks like an asshole,” he said. Later on, I told Chooch about it too (he missed out on this convo in real time because we split up in the station and he was waiting in line for the front row) and when I showed him who Paul is in one of the Coaster Studios videos, Chooch said, “Oh. He looks like an asshole.” Yeah, he kind of did.

• BLUE ICE CREAM WAS HAD! It was only 11:30am but who the fuck cares. We were running on amusement park time and to be quite frank, anytime is ice cream time. Here are some pictures of the BLUE ICE CREAM:

• After this, we got our traditional carouselfie. The BACK STORY is that while we were standing in line, Chooch started complaining because his phone that he broke last September was getting progressively worse and now he was barely able to read texts. He was all “wah wah you said you would get it fixed” and Henry totally snapped and was all, “you listen here, you little ingrate, I still have $200 left to pay on  the fucking iPhone and now you expect me to pay an additional $200 to get that thing fixed?!” And I was like “YEAH WHAT HE SAID” and then it was our turn  to mount the horses and I was the only one who was able to mimic the HAPPY FAMILY vibe, clearly.

• The park was really getting somewhat crowded noon. Not unbearably so, but the wait times for some of the coasters were around 45-60 minutes, so Chooch and I rode a flat ride and then convinced Henry to ride the rapids ride, which required us to walk what felt like a mile of empty queue to get to where the line actually ended. We ended up sharing a thingie with a couple in their…early 30s? We didn’t vibe much with them so I felt like, as a family unit on a rapids ride, we were really dialing it back. It was one of the rougher ones I’ve ever ridden and I was exciting because there was a plaque thing on our raft that said it was manufactured by INTAMIN (and it even had the patent # so I felt like I was at work, reviewing a patent matter, my job is boring sometimes, it’s fine). It’s funny how now we care more about ride manufacturers than back in the day (well, that’s not true- I was very much into dark ride manufacturers). ANYWAY the reason I’m telling you this is because later on that day, Henry was like, “Oh shit” and showed me a news article about a kid who had JUST DIED on a rapids ride earlier that weekend at another park in the US. God, you never want to think about the freak accidents that could and do happen at parks. But I was reading an article about it later and it said that this particular ride did not come equipped with the QUICK DRAIN EMERGENCY SYSTEM that the INTAMIN MODELS have. Intamin!!

• I really forgot how wonderful Mystic Timbers is. I would recommend it to people who think that all wooden coasters are rough pieces of shit, because this one will pleasantly surprise them.
• When Chooch and I were in line for the Bat, I was so angry with him because he stood there the whole time, fucking around on his phone (I thought he couldn’t see anything??) leaving me to stand there in silence, sadly watching all the friends and families having special fun time together, laughing it up, talking about food plans, etc. It’s so awkward when he does this shit to me! And then when I try to say something to him, he gives me THAT LOOK – parents of teenagers past & present, you know that fucking look – like, “You deign to speak to me in public?” I hate it! Especially when it was our turn to enter the station and I said, “Where do you want to sit? Where do you want to sit? WHERE. DO. YOU. WANT. TO. SIT.” because he was totally spaced out on his phone, but when he heard me the third time, he snapped, “I SAID I DON’T CARE.” OH MY GOD NO HE DID NOT. The whole point of this is that we were seated behind a mom and her young son – Jake – who totally lost his shit before they even sent the train out of the station. I mean, it was panic city in front of me. There is this one part of the lift hill where the suspension above makes a loud POP sound and when that happened, he fucking SCREAMED and then I started feeding off his fear and Chooch was like, “Oh my fucking god” and then I kept thinking in my head, “WHAT IF JAKE KNEW” as I envisioned the suspension breaking and our train careening into the Mason, Ohio forest. It ended up being fine and it turned out that Jake really enjoyed the ride once it hit the brake run. I started laughing when we got off the ride because he was older than I thought (maybe 9?) and his much-younger who was sitting in front of him gave him this, “You’re a fucking embarrassment” look when he got out of his seat. I guess YOU HAD TO BE THERE.

• Before we left, I bought some really cool holographic post cards (MAYBE YOU RECEIVED ONE FROM IN THE REAL LIFE MAIL, OMG) and Chooch settled on a Diamondback tshirt while Henry hemmed and hawed over hats and then ended up not buying anything because why buy a cool hat when you can get free Faygo ones from work, I guess. :/

And that was pretty much all that happened on our second day at King’s Island! The Beast hadn’t opened yet by the time we left around 2 so I’m really glad that we rode it the day before. I would have liked to have ridden Racer 76 because some of it has been retracked but the line seemed long and apparently, the retrack didn’t make it that much better, so OH WELL. We also had a fun ride on the Shake, Rattle, and Roll because the ride operator was super energetic and all about that rider-participation. I love riding shit when the operator is telling us what to shout! I wish all ride operators had that kind of fun personality. King’s Island in general is actually pretty good on that front. But I still think that Dollywood and Holiday World have every other non-Disney park in the US beat in that area!

I’m desperate to find friends to go to parks with us though since Chooch HATES HAVING CONVERSATIONS IN LINE. Someone buy a Cedar Fair Platinum Pass next year and meet up with us. I promise I won’t get you in trouble for running (lol, j/k, you will definitely get in trouble).

I had to pick up some treasures from an Instagram pal on Sunday and exclaimed, “Oh would you look at that, she lives near Page Dairy Mart. WE SHOULD SWING BY AND GET ICE CREAM.” I mean, like we ever need a reason for ice cream, though.

Chooch is too good to hang out with us now and chose one of his dumb friends over us, so it was kind of like HENRY AND I WERE ON A DATE

A SUNDAY AFTERNOON DATE.

A SUNDAY AFTERNOON ICE CREAM DATE.

There was a group of super cool friends behind us (one of them had on a Vegan Treats shirt and I wanted to hiss “WE WERE THERE” to Henry but he can barely hear me when I speak in my regular outdoor voice so whispering is not a thing we can do anymore unless I want to provoke him to yell, “WHAT’S THAT??”) and I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop I swear but one of them was practically gagging on his own tongue while vehemently describing how much he hates bananas.

“Do you just hate banana-flavored things though?” one of the girls in the group asked.

“Oh, I hate banana-flavored things AND actual bananas,” he spat with disgust, like a possessed person strapped to a bed and talking to a priest about the body of Christ.

Where am I going with this…

Oh! So the girl proceeded to tell them that the reason banana-favored things—like banana Runts—taste so different from actual bananas is because way back when the artificial banana flavor was created, it was modeled after A DIFFERENT KIND OF BANANA THAT WAS AVAILABLE BACK IN THE DAY, WHAT.

I had no idea!

Of course, Henry knew this though. He probably read a Reddit thread about it in the bathroom at work.

This also made me think about the time I volunteered to participate in a gas-mask testing experiment at the Bureau of Mines where I had to wear a gas mask and then tell them if I could smell the banana gas that was being pumped around me, but MY DUMB GIRL HEAD WAS TOO SMALL for the gas mask so they paid me for the one day but I wasn’t eligible to continue with more testing ugh now I’m really upset all over again at this memory. I love gas masks!

Henry got a Wafflonia sundae – literally a waffle sundae made with Wafflonia waffles which are the best in the city and now I’m lamenting the fact that I have not been back to that joint since Andrea visited me in 2011 and we went there and then to the Music Box Museum and she was like, “WHOA WHOA WHOA I AGREED TO WAFFLES NOT A MUSIC BOX MUSEUM” and then proceeded to have a miserable day.

Henry got bananas on his sundae and I snapped, “you should have gone with the maple option” so he sighed and called out to the ice cream girl, “can I get maple on that too?” And it really elevated the sundae to the next level, you’re welcome, Peasant Palate.

Oh, and me? I got the fresh blueberry soft serve, which is only available for a limited time because IT’S SEASONAL, but it’s so amazing and even though they have so many other delicious options, when this flavor is on the menu it’s hard for me to pass it up.

I just realized that I didn’t hate anyone in line with us. I must have been in a good mood.

It definitely wasn’t because Henry and I were semi-matching. I actually hated that. But he had his shirt on first, so…ugh. Also, I want to punch myself in my smug face sometimes. Gah. Just look at me. I’m an asshole.

(Also, I got that shirt for $5 in one of the Seoul subway stations!!! I miss shopping in subway stations!!!!)

Anyway, what a nice afternoon. I think we managed to not even fight once. If you’re ever in Pgh, ya gotta go to Page’s. Ya just gotta. YA JUST GOTTA. You might be tempted by Millie’s since they’re taking over like UPMC, but if you want a real Pgh experience, you gotta stand under a train bridge on the South Side, eating a sundae made with the famous & local Nancy B chocolate cookies, ok? This is one of the only places that are worth standing in line for, in my opinion, and on OH HONESTLY ERIN DOT COM my opinion is the only one that matters.

(I regret not taking more bites of Henry’s sundae though.)

Going to a theme park on the fourth of July seems like the dumbest idea that ever hatched from my brain-egg (so many people who know me in real life would read that line and agree that I’ve had way dumber ideas though) but listen, Linda. Listen. I had a strategy. Much like with our Cedar Point weekend, I felt that splitting one day into two half-days would be the way to go because that way we could leave the park earlier on Monday so we wouldn’t be making the four and a half hour drive home super late on Monday night, while still getting in some night rides on Sunday. If we didn’t have those Cedar Fair passes, we definitely couldn’t do something like this because that would be pay park admission for two days PLUS PARKING for two days!

Have you been to a fucking amusement park in the 21st century? Parking is outrageous – usually about $20!! In some cases, that’s not much less than the actual park admission!

We rolled up around 6:30/7:00 and the parking lot was packed so we were like “aw shit son, did we make a huge mistake?” but also we weren’t too worried because even if it was very crowded, maybe we could get on some flat rides and just, I dunno, enjoy the scenery. But you guys, guess what?? Apparently everyone was waiting in line for Invertigo and Flight of Fear because the wait times for nearly every other coaster was 45 minutes or less! Orion was listed as 30 minutes so we went straight to the back of the park to take that new-new for a spin.

Daebak…..Orion is technically a giga coaster because even though the lift hill is just shy of the 300 foot mark, the drop itself is 300 feet so most sane people are counting it as a giga. Of course there are the naysayers out there but I say: is it a fun coaster? yes? then who cares?!!?

This is the problem with labels!

The line would have probably actually been about 30 minutes as stated if King’s Island didn’t have such a high line-jumping problem. OMFG it was insane the amount of people cutting in line. Some of them would go through the unmanned Fast Lane entrance knowing that they wouldn’t be checked until they got to the station, and then slyly slid into the general line before the Fast Lane line started up the steps. Other people just blatantly cruised under the empty switchbacks and then pushed through everyone to get their ONE PERSON PLACEHOLDER. Literally, this one guy who was a few heads in front of us started jumping and waving and I was like OH GREAT but then only one person joined him so then I was TOO PISSED because Orion seats four people across and they don’t generally use single riders to fill empty spaces as far as I’ve seen at King’s Island so I figured that dude would have just been sitting alone anyway and now he has someone else to sit with him so this won’t affect us…

AND THEN 5 MORE PEOPLE JOINED HIM. And they had no shame at all. Just shouldered their way right the fuck in and a bunch of us just watched this play out, totally appalled, and of course not DARING to say anything to these YOUNG ENTITLED PEOPLE because you can’t fucking say shit to this shitty generation without worrying about getting kicked in the head. This line was set up in a way that made it entirely too easy for this shit to happen and there wasn’t a single KI employee around to watch for this shit. I don’t care how much “line jumping” signage they have – these kids know that there will be no repercussions so they just do what they want because ENTITLEMENT.

Aside from that, the ride was great. Maybe a little underwhelming? It’s only the third giga I’ve ridden (wow I really tried to spell that with a “wr”) and I would say that it’s less forceful than Intimidator 305 in King’s Dominion, but the second half is more interesting than the second half of Millennium Force in Cedar Force. Overall, I though it was solid! You just can’t beat the views on Millie, and I ALWAYS gray out on I305, but did not gray out on Orion, sadly. I need to ride it more times though because I didn’t gray out on Millie the first couple times I rode her either!

Surprisingly, for a Fourth of July evening, this park was NOT all that crowded. I couldn’t believe our good fortune.

We made it on the Beast (aka Daddy) in about 15 minutes. Chooch and I were in the back seat and I fucking swear to god at one point I thought we were popping off the track. How do you explain the Beast to anyone who hasn’t ridden it? It is A PSYCHO MACHNE. Totally brutal yet somehow not as painful as some other ratchety woodies. I’m obsessed with it.

Henry for some reason didn’t ride Mystic Timbers with us in 2019 but this time he did and now understands the hype. If you don’t like wooden coasters because of the roughness, you gotta get your ass on a newer GCI because they are so smooth while still fucking FLYING over that track.

Next, Chooch and I knocked out the two kiddie coasters that he missed in 2019 because of rain. This yellow thing was surprisingly fun even though it was ONE TRAIN OPS.

I was obsessed with the two little boys in line in front of us because they were so adorable and I think Chooch was jealous, well then maybe he should pay attention to me!!!!!!!! Anyway it was funny because they kept calling their mom over to the fence to tell her things, and we kept calling Henry over too, like two needy children.

Tightwad Hank was so angry that I wanted to purchase this picture, because UGH MONEY, NO SPEND! but I just think it’s funny because I look petrified on a kiddie coaster and Chooch is trying to calm me down, when really I was squinting because the camera flash hurt my eyes. No, really! I’m serious! OMG I WASN’T SCARED, OK!?

Then we kind of just wandered around for a bit, got some snacks and waited for the fireworks show to start. Our strategy was to hang out near the entrance of the Beast, which was going to close down during the fireworks and then reopen after. We thought that would be a good time to get a night ride, but I kept saying, “I don’t think ALL of the rides are shutting down during this, maybe we should get in line for Diamondback,” but Mr. I Am King’s Island Mgmt was adamant that ALL RIDES were stopping during the fireworks and that we would get “stuck in line” if we attempted to ride Diamondback at that time.

Well, that motherfucker was INCORRECT because almost every ride was still operating except those in the area where the fireworks were being set off (Orion, Racer, Beast) so we could have been getting flung around over those sweet-ass Diamondback hills instead of sitting on a wall waiting out the fireworks THANKS HENRY. And after all that, Beast never reopened for the night! A bunch of us were viciously yelled at by an older park employee to vacate the area (ok, maybe VICIOUSLY is the wrong word but he was definitely an asshole).

Chooch and I took that opportunity to jump on Diamondback finally and the line was so short, only about 15 minutes! We sat in the last car and it was the best ride I’ve had on it, super memorable, whereas the last time we there I only thought it was “OK.

” Always re-ride coasters, because you never know when something is going to go from mediocre in your eyes to fucking DOPE AF.

Chooch whined about playing games as usual. This pisses me off so much. I keep waiting for him to outgrow this obnoxious penchant to waste his parents’ hard-earned cash on RIGGED CARNIVAL GAMES but it has yet to happen and now I’m starting to panic a little but eventually this will be someone else’s problem so I just have to wait it out I guess. Good luck to his future dates/partners/spouses.

I had to drag his ass on Adventure Express because he’s too “cool” to ride “lame” mine train rides now apparently. But even he couldn’t deny that this was FUCKING AMAZING AS A NIGHT RIDE. I even declared at one point that it was my favorite ride in the park when he gave me a disgusted look, I walked back on my opinion and edited it to “second favorite.”

After this, Banshee was a FIVE MINUTE WAIT. Literally almost a station wait, I couldn’t believe it because this is one of their premier coasters, and I’m pretty sure Chooch waited in line for about 90 minutes when we were there in 2019 and that annoyance definitely swayed my opinion at the time. But this time? On a beautiful summer night? It felt like a masterpiece. It was Henry’s first time riding it and his review was, “It was good.”

So there you have it!

After that, we were the sole riders on the Bat. Chooch and I took the last row while Henry claimed the front. It was….as scary as I remembered. From the concerning popping noises as you’re ascending up the lift hill to the precarious feeling of being suspended above pitch black landscape, I was screaming the whole time. Chooch declared this to be his favorite ride in the whole park because apparently Chooch is able to claim underdogs as his #1 but I’m not.

OK, cook on.

That stupid boomerang, Invertigo, was a goddamn walk-on at this point of the night (it was around 11:35 and I was panicking because I wanted ride on Adventure Express before the park closed at midnight!!) but Chooch had to get this dumb credit so on the dumb thing we went. Ugh, it was awful, just awful. I hate boomerangs with my whole damn heart.

We got off that motherfucking whiplash factory around 11:45 and started to run toward Adventure Express, where a passing King’s Island kindly murmured, “Please don’t run, guys.” Chooch and I stopped to a fast walk and I could feel Henry, yards behind us, shaking his head disapprovingly. We somehow managed to get Henry to ride it this time, though he was NOT as happy about it as we were. The only downfall this time around was that there was this SUPER drunk white trash dad in a wife beater leading his ragamuffin family through the queue and I was so pissed because they took up all of the back rows and I was like “JUST SIT IN THE FRONT, I WANT TO BE AS FAR AWAY FROM THIS ASSHOLE AS POSSIBLE” because he was scream-shouting to his family the whole time and no way did I want his beer breath pelting me on the back of the head.

Anyway, this ride was somehow even more fun though because Henry looked so pained and this was making me scream, “I’M GOING TO PEE MY PANTS!!!” over and over and he just kept grimacing at me which, I know what you’re thinking, “isn’t that normal?” and yes. Yes it is.

After we got off, we realized we had time to get one more ride on it before the park closed. STUPIDLY, we followed white trash family who cut through from the exit ramp to the fast lane entrance (I think that’s what was happening?) in order to bypass walking all the way down the exit ramp and getting back into the regular line. I didn’t know what was happening at the time so we followed them like lemmings and then the ride operator yelled over the speaker “PLEASE DO NOT CUT THROUGH THE LINE, GO BACK TO BEGINNING OF THE ENTRANCE” and I was like “I SURRENDER!” like, I would be the worst criminal because the moment a cop started yelling through the bullhorn, I’d be all, “YOU CAUGHT ME! BOOK ME, DANNO!” Chooch and I turned around as we were told to do because even though we get excited and might lose our rule-abiding minds for a seconds, we are genuinely not assholes when it comes to respecting park employees. They have a tough job, dealing with assholes all day! HOWEVER, the white trash family just PRETENDED to turn around, but then they went right back to what they were doing, beat us to the ride station again and hogged the whole back car AGAIN. What fucking assholes!! The WORST PART is that when Chooch and I got to the station, the ride attendant at the end of the queue looked Chooch dead in the eyes and said in a low, stern voice, “Do not run.”

Chooch was so flustered! “I wasn’t running,” he hissed at me as we were buckling our seatbelts. “I did like, a light jog around one corner back there to catch up with you, but I WASN’T RUNNING.” I was mad too because why they gotta target us when White Trash Family were the REAL offenders??

Meanwhile, a bunch of other people had done the same thing that White Trash Family did by cutting through the Fast Lane line so the ride operator once again got on his speaker thing to admonish them BUT THEY DIDN’T LISTEN so he had to sic the Mean Guy Who Yelled At Chooch on them and they weren’t allowed to ride – PUT THIS TEAM ON ORION, PLEASE. They were INTENSE with their rule upholding.

But, I felt like an asshole since first I was associated with White Trash Family’s line jumping, and now I was associated with Chooch’s running-not-walking. So, this ride was a bit uncomfy.

Also, Henry didn’t come back on with us because when were walking down the exit ramp after the last ride, he spotted a skunk in the grass next to the ride station and was STILL STANDING THERE narrating his internal nature show in his head when we got off the final ride of the night.

And that’ll do it for Day One at King’s Island! I was pleasantly surprised at how wonderful it turned out. I didn’t think we would stay all the way until midnight but we did and it was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. Especially considering that a lot of parks seem to be closing around 7 or 8 this season, I guess because of staffing reasons??

I personally DO NOT care about the fourth of July AT ALL but it was really nice to be at a beautiful park during it because their lightning was magnificent.

We went back to the hotel and fucking crashed HARD.

Earlier tonight, henry was at “the store” and I was working (ugh Friday Late Shifts are the bane of my existence but I think this may have been last one???). Chooch was moping around being super high maintenance, whining about needing iced tea and, I dunno, dinner probably. I wasn’t listening.

Then he went outside & began half-assedly fiddling around with his semi-broken bike. Don’t ask me what’s wrong with it. It’s rideable but it comes with a loud clang and grind, like a steampunk symphony announcing your arrival.

“Rob and Larry are out here,” he said when he came back in the house for a second. “Maybe they’ll fix my bike since he won’t.”

He went back outside and turned on the Sad Boy heavy sighs and long face routine until one of our neighbors, George, took the bait and came over to check out the Broke Down Bike.

I ran up to my bedroom to snap a picture to send to “At The Store” Henry in order to emasculate & deadbeat-dad him.

THEN! The neighborhood Corgi Dad also stopped by and offered to take a look-see! I was dying. Then I was like WHY DOES THIS SEEM FAMILIAR oh yeah – because his Woe Is Me theatrics was honed by being the understudy to YOURS TRULY.

Too bad Hot Naybor Chris wasn’t home, because he FOR SURE would have been game to get greasy.

Finally henry came home and was all OH FOR CHRIST’S SAKE and got his tools. Evidently, CHOOCH wrecked his bike & is lying about it which makes Henry even less inspired to put on his Dad Cap and help out ol’ sonny boy.

“I’m going to get him a fucking tricycle,” Henry mumbled later on. This bike is really pissing him off and I’m loving it.

OK that title is pushing it because not all of the books I read in June were winners, let me tell you that right now. Well, here is the first half of the stack!

1. The Divines – Ellie Eaton

I guess this is dark academia? Maybe? Except that I actually liked it? Also, I’m not actually sure I know what the dark academia genre actually entails, but it’s about a girl in some private girls’ school in England. I mean, isn’t that how most of these synopses start out, lol. We bounce back and forth between the girl’s experience at school, to present day where she’s an adult and trying to come to terms with AN INCIDENT that we don’t really get the full picture of until toward the end of the book. Honestly, I thought that the writing was great and engaging, and I really liked this – the ending made me go “wow” and laugh.

I don’t know. This was good!

2. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo – Taylor Jenkins Reid

STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING. NOW GO AND READ THIS BOOK. (Actually, finish reading this blog post first, I’m desperate for readers lololol.) Just like with Daisy Jones & the Six by the same author, I kept putting this off because I was sick and tired of Booktube qtipping their dick holes over it but then audio book became available on Scribd, and well….I fucking fell hard for this damn book. Similar to Daisy Jones, a fictional actress in her 70s is giving an exclusive tell-all to a writer, in which she reveals the history and stories behind all 7 of her husbands. You guys, how is Evelyn Hugo not real?? Taylor Jenkins Reid writes her characters SO FUCKING WELL that you will honestly forget you’re reading a fictional account of a fake actress’s life.

There isn’t a single boring part of this book and I lost my mind by the time it ended. And by that I mean it came oozing out of my eyeholes in the form of TEARS. Solid 5 star book, please someone make this into a TV show or movie (TV show would honestly be so good).

3. True Story – Kate Reed Petty

Man, I already forgot most of this lololol. I remember thinking that it was very ambitious and ALMOST well-done, but also very repetitive and too long. There was an entire chapter about a guy in a cabin that literally made me want to scratch through my skin because it was so dull. Also, every man in this book can get fucked by a barbed wire ice pick, for real.

4. Finlay Donovan is Killing It – Elle Cosimano

YOU GUYS if you’re one of those “beach reads” people, I would recommend this one. It was so entertaining, the dialogue was snappy, the plot was cute but dark, and the characters were so delightful, even when they weren’t supposed to be. Basically, Finlay is a crime novelist who gets mistaken for a hit lady and every other chapter had me shouting, “No no no that’s a terrible idea!” but then cracking up because oh, Finlay, how will you get out of *this* mess?

I’m so glad that this is going to be a series!!

5. Crying in H-Mart – Michelle Zauner

Crying in H-Mart is lodged in my heart like a bullet of sadness. I knew that this had a lot of hype surrounding it but I would have picked it up anyway because it has H-Mart in the title and hello, that’s my favorite grocery store in the world.

I don’t even know how to talk about this book without crying like a bitch, but in it, Michelle Zauner writes about her relationship with her Korean mother, specifically what it was like to watch her succumb to cancer and scramble for ways to maintain the Korean side of her identity. If you’re into Korean culture (specifically Korean food), you are going to latch on hard to this book, the reading of which will be soundtracked by the sinister rumble of your stomach as Michelle describes food in PRISTINE DETAIL. But even if you know nothing about Korean things, this is still an amazing book that speaks honestly and from the sad bullet-lodged heart about strained and complicated relations between a mother and her daughter. I just thought it was so raw and beautiful and also, Michelle Zauner is the front woman of Japanese Breakfast, so if none of the other endorsements I gave you made you want to pick this up, maybe that will because Japanese Breakfast is A++++++++++.

6. The Girls – Emma Cline 

This is essentially a retelling of the Manson murders. I would recommend just reading Helter Skelter or something. I mean, this book was fine, but also kind of boring.

It did make me want to read more  coming-of-age books set in the 60s specifically during the FREE LOVE era but make it interesting, you know? I do think the book cover is striking. I give that a higher rating than the actual book, which again was FINE but just…not as graphic and bloody as I wanted it to be, I guess

7. What’s Mine is Yours – Naima Coster

Oh ho ho ho fuck this book so hard. I have debated whether or not to even spend a single second giving any type of review of this because I hated it so much. Like, I gave it a 1-star on Goodreads only because Goodreads doesn’t let you give you zero.

I only picked this up because TIME told me in the was one of the books so far in 2021. Well, fuck you TIME, you have SHITTY taste.

First, let’s talk about the characters. They could have all died in quicksand for all I cared. Not a single redeeming quality to ANY OF THEM. Every single person – UNLIKEABLE. And I get that sometimes we’re actually not supposed to like a character; OK cool but at least make that person INTERESTING. None of these people were!! They were like FUCKING SIMS. Two entire families we followed and not a single person to root for except for the FAMILY DOG and don’t even get me started on that!!

Now, how about the SLOPPY TIMELINE JUMPING. Wow. Some writers can really pull this off with aplomb (looking at you, Evie Wyld, my love). But this book had the most confusing timeline switches and it really didn’t even make that much sense to me. I had a really hard time following along (and I was eye-ball reading this, not doing the audiobook, so I can’t even blame it on the narration or zoning out), and if the whole reason behind this was just to be able to have a “reveal” or “twist,” well it wasn’t necessary because I thought it was pretty obvious very early on what was going on. But again – didn’t care.

And the matriarch of one of the two families was so shitty and trashy that I absolutely loathed every chapter that featured her. LACEY MAY  – what a fucking name. This is not a spoiler at all but the writing was so shitty that there were numerous mentions of LACEY MAY kicking the family dog in the ribs, but then in one of the later timelines, there’s a mention of her spending a lot of time at her daughter’s dog kennel because being around dogs made her think of their old family dog.

….oh you mean THE ONE THAT SHE KICKED???

It made no sense to me. I fucking hated this book so bad. Could not even picture a single character in my mind, that’s how one-dimensionally written they all were.

Oh and the book cover is ugly too.

Sorry if this is your fave, but I vacillated between being glad I read a library copy, and actually kind of wishing I owned the copy I read so that I could have ripped it apart and burnt it when I finished.

WOW I’M GLAD I’M ENDING THIS BLOG POST ON THIS NOTE BECAUSE NOW I AM ANGRY ALL OVER AGAIN AND REQUIRE A COOL-OFF WALK AT…9:57PM GREAT.

The day before we left for our little 4th of July weekend road trip to the Cincinnati-ish area of Ohio, Henry happened to see in whatever newsfeed he gets on his dumb phone that Stricker’s Grove, a small family-operated amusement park outside of Cinci, was going to open to the public on July 4th – THE DAY WE WOULD BE IN THE AREA. Why does this news require CAPSLOCK, you ask? Because this place is only open 4 times a year (the rest of the time they rent out to corporations for company picnics, etc) so the two wooden coasters inside this small, roadside park next to a fucking cornfield are considered RARE CREDITS.

I did quick math in my head and realized that if we stopped here before hitting up King’s Island, one of those two coasters could be Chooch’s 150th, which would be way cooler than anything at King’s Island, which is easily accessible!

One hiccup though was that we had plans to meet up with Christina and their fiancée Katie before going to King’s Island in the evening. Luckily, they were both on board with the change in plans and we arranged to meet at Stricker’s Grove at noon, when they ALLEGEDLY OPENED.

As previously whined about in my liveblog from Sunday, we quickly learned that while the park was open at noon, the rides were not scheduled to operate until 3pm! Which would have been helpful had they put this info on their website and not just their Facebook page, because hello, not everyone is on Facebook! (Also LOL @ the fact that someone just realized two weeks ago that I’m not on Facebook anymore when it’s been FOUR YEARS (June 2017, baybay) so wow, that was truly a solid friendship.)

Also LOL @ the fact that Christina have literally not seen each other in person (and barely even spoken) since 2012 (2011, even?!) and the very first thing I said to them in lieu of “hello” was “CHRISTINA I DON’T THINK THIS PLACE IS OPEN?! GO ASK!!”

If you are a real one, you know that we ended up leaving and getting lunch at Hyde’s, and then returning at 2:30. And good thing we didn’t wait any longer because while the line to get ride tickets was short at that time (see above!), within an hour the line was practically snaking out into the parking lot which means nothing to you since you have no frame of reference as to the PARK LAYOUT.

Daddy Warbucks purchased enough tickets for Chooch and me to ride both coasters and the carousel. But then we still had to wait for the gate to the ride area to open! I was so pee-jiggy! I sat with Christina and Katie under a pavilion while Chooch played skeeball only to have his tickets thieved by some rural child / future farmhand.

Then I noticed that people were gathering by the gate so we all walked (well, mine was more of a “I WANT TO RUN SO BAD RIGHT NOW BUT I WILL POWER WALK LIKE I’M HEADING TO MY WALLSTREET OFFICE” psycho-gait) over to join the small horde. I was getting angry because people kept passing us but I was trying to be calm and normal for Katie so she shouldn’t be completely turned off by my abrasiveness. Also, she is recovering from a broken fibula (??? some leg bone??) and I was being compassionate and considerate to her slower-pace because yes Henry, I can be a nice person!

However, as soon as the gate opened, Chooch and I were like SEEYA WOULDN’T WANNA BE YA and blew past everyone. Henry was happy to have friends matching his pace this time around.

We decided to ride the smaller of the two woodies first so that #150 would be Tornado, Stricker’s main attraction. We were in line behind a young guy wearing in B&M t-shirt (that’s a coaster manufacturer for you all you non-nerds reading this) and Chooch wanted to ask him what his favorite B&M is but then didn’t because he was afraid he’d ask Chooch the same and Chooch couldn’t decide which one he’d choose.

See also: Chooch never initiates conversations with strangers.

We made it on the second train of the day and I was fully prepared for some back-crunching action, but HOLY SHIT – this little guy was smooth AF! I heard that it had been retracked in like, 2017 or 2018 I think and I’m not sure if they did even more recent work on it but that wood felt and looked fresh, like it just came straight from the roller coaster forest. I mean, the ride itself was a very tame kiddie coaster at best, but the fact that it was running like slippers on silk made it seem exceptional. We could NOT stop gushing about how surprisingly good it was! And they sent us through twice!!

Then we ran over to the Tornado while our FAN CLUB continued to stand in their little huddle, probably talking about Faygo flavors and not acting as the paparazzo that Chooch and I truly deserve. Anyway, here’s a picture in line with a cornfield behind him.  We only had to wait for train and then we made it on the next one! This place ruled! We literally knocked the two coasters out within 10 minutes. THE HUSTLE.

Again – what a fucking smooth-ass ride! Stricker’s props to you for taking premium care of your rides. Again with the fresh track feel, and not only that, but the coaster LOOKS good too. I don’t know what I was expecting – something akin to Blue Streak at Conneaut I guess?! That bitch is a real back-breaker.

Weirdly, Tornado didn’t seem to have any signage, at least not that I could see?! Maybe it was on  the road side? So I had to just deposit Chooch in some random spot in front of it for his commemorative 150th coaster photo op.

This coaster was really quirky and fun. I’m so happy we got this lucky chance!

And here’s the Teddy Bear cutie. <3

After this, it was CAROUSELFIE TIME! Woo! (Remember when people used to say “woot” all the time? I really disliked that. IT RUBBED ME THE WRONG WAY, one might say.) Stupid Henry needed to lean the other way but he’s rude, so this is an accurate portrayal.

I got my foot caught in that pole when the horse was lowering – it was actually scary. Also, Katie said my hair is very thicc and that made me happy. We are keeping Katie.

Not winning.

(Also, Chooch and Katie bonded over Pokemon here. Christina tried really hard to insert themselves into the discussion but Chooch was not impressed. Because he’s my kid.)

So then Christina was like, “OK I will win his love through materialism, just like I did with his mother” except that they failed here too.

We dragged Katie and Christina on Teddy Bear after this because they had enough tickets and I swore on Taemin’s military beret that it was NOT rough and wouldn’t hurt her leg.

Henry’s One Job was to take a picture of us all on this, but aside from a picture of his finger, and a close-up of the people in the front row, this was the only picture he managed to eke out.

Christina and Katie both agreed that it was a smooth operation and even gave Chooch and me the rest of their tickets so we were able to ride the flying dumbo ride even  though we actually wanted to ride some spinny thing but we needed two more tickets and Henry, his mouth twisting around a piece of hay, was all I AIN’T WAITIN’ IN THAT LINE FOR NO MORE TICKETS, RIDE THE DUMBO OR LEAVE.

I texted Henry and told him to take a picture of us, but as usual he ignored me because he was probably trying to act like a big shot in front of a new person (“I DRIVE AROUND ON A PALLET JACK, KATIE. DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT IS? IT IS A PIECE OF FINE MACHINERY THAT ASSISTS ME IN LIFTING CASES OF JUGGALO JUICE, NOT THAT I NEED ASSISTANCE.“) so then I texted Christina and said, “Henry is ignoring me, take our picture” and .003 seconds later, they turned around snapped this:

Like, wow. The effort is…palpable here.

Anyway, hours later, they were like, “Oh shit, sorry I’m just seeing this text now” so they actually just happened to take that picture of us randomly, at the same time I asked. SO WEIRD.

That cornfield tho.

Chooch really didn’t want to sit together but I made him.

Stricker’s was really popping off by this point! Henry DEFINITELY wasn’t buying any more tickets now.

Stricker’s Crew.

Then we got us some patriotic ice cream. Mmm’erica.

Here’s Chooch with his skeeball ticket trade-ins.

He might’ve had enough for a full hand of digits had he not let some mulleted toddler snatch his tickets!

Then we sat under the pavilion again and chatted and I was trying really hard to not be rude by checking the time constantly but my internal Type A child was screaming, “MUST GO TO KING’S ISLAND. THE BEAST IS CALLING.” So eventually we had to say goodbye which was sad but I know that we will be seeing everyone again because it was such a nice, easy reunion and Katie is a true gem, so I only felt A LITTLE bad saying goodbye.

Tornado from the road! There is literally no fence around it.

This was the best picture I could get of the sign because Henry wouldn’t pull over and made me take it from the car window. The actual worst.

Anyway, what a weird little hidden gem outside of Cincinnati! If you’re a coaster fan, ya gotta try to get out there and get those elusive creds, and then go to Hyde’s for some pie.

On our way from King’s Island this afternoon, we stopped at Rt 73 Diner in Wilmington, Ohio. It was a semi-rural looking area BUT I looked ahead and saw that they had VEGGIE BURGERS on the menu and I wanted that.

Chooch made us sit at one of the high-top tables which I never prefer but it was better than the tiny table we were also offered in between two giant parties of people. But that is besides the point.

When our waitress came over, it was pretty obvious she was borderline flustered. Then when she asked us how we doing, she responded to our reciprocation of the question with a very sarcastic, “Oh I’m doing just great.

”

Henry blurted out, “you look great.”

“Really?” she asked, looking up from her order pad.

And you guys…

He fucking said, “No.”

No!!!

Chooch and I were ready to slide under the table to shield ourselves from the eye-daggers she was launching at Henry.

I didn’t even know how to save him from that one aside from explaining to her what I thought maybe had happened, which was that his first response was supposed to be matching her sarcasm, meaning she looked the opposite of great so that when she asked him if he meant it, he said no. But I honestly didn’t want to walk into that fire, backdraft-style. So instead I just mumbled, “coffee and water” when she asked for my drink order.

Henry was perplexed when she left and chooch and I finally were free to voice our discomfort. He had no idea that what he said was insulting!

“You might as well have just told her to smile more,” Chooch cried.

So then Henry was pretty much ducking every time she came near us and I was trying to overcompensate by bubble-wrapping our table with pleases and thank yous.

Henry had the poor timing of snagging her when she was en route to another table, and asking, “can we get some napkins?” She gave him a really tight smile and actually spun on her heels to go back and get us napkins which she didn’t SLAM into our table but she also didn’t set them down GENTLY.

“Wow she really hates us,” Henry said sheepishly.

“Yeah, you literally made her hate us right away, after the first thing you said!” Chooch yelled.

“Just don’t ever talk again,” I pleaded.

Then as we were leaving, Chooch stood up right as she was about to pass from behind him and almost made her slam into him.

For what it’s worth, she really did look great regardless of the quality of day she was having. She reminded me a bit of our friend Dawn from Castle Blood and Dawn is pretty AF!

(Also during this lunch, Henry was trying to tell me shit about the recent semi-derailment of the coaster El Toro in NJ. “I already told you everything you just told me,” I said. Henry said that I didn’t “do a good job” giving him the facts BUT LUCKILY a fellow man explained it better so now Henry understands. Is it still mansplaining when it’s man-to-man? Or is it just plain explaining?)

Henry left the waitress a hearty tip and then we ran out of there. My veggie burger was super good, though the jury is out whether or not she spit in it. Hopefully just in Henry’s burger!

P.S. one of the waiters (maybe the owner?) opened a large freezer behind the counter and there at least 15 boxes of BOSCO STICKS all stacked up in there. Whyyyyyy. They’re fucking haunting me!

GOOD MORNING it is 7:00am and for the first time, we’re actually leaving the house when we said we were going to! We’re en route to the Cincinnati area for some King’s Island action and possibly some other fun! I guess I will live blog but the drive through Ohio is historically boring so we’ll see how that pans out?! First I have to finish a book I’m reading though. You care.

Haha j/k I forgot my purse so we had to turn around.

8:31am: HOLA I finished my book (That Summer – Jennifer Weiner). I liked it. Also we went to Sheetz about an hour ago and Chooch pulled an Erin and pouted about his breakfast burrito BEING DISGUSTING but then didn’t really tell us why other than it wasn’t heated up.

SHEETZ SELIFE WHAT WHAT.

9:27am: I do not appreciate that this piece of shit parked next to us at Loves.

9:44am: big microburst argument between chooch and me, perpetuated by the innocent action of me handing him an empty bag of Quest chips to put in the designated garbage bag in the backseat and he apparently WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF CLEANING UP A MESS and ripped the bag from my hands and let it flutter to the floor so then I snapped and he clapped back and Henry was like stop please and the song “Reminiscing” was on the Yacht Rock station so I spat something about reminiscing to back when I didn’t have a kid yet and henry was like WOW and the yacht rock station guy said something about how two is better than one and Henry bitterly mumbled, “not always” while looking back & forth between Chooch and me. Wow.

10:44am: speaking of yacht rock I feel like if there was a yacht rock prom, Michael McDonald would be a shoo-in prom king.

12:40pm: sorry, I forgot about you, Blog! We made it to Strickers Grove around noon where we met my old friend Christina and their fiancée Katie but the rides don’t start until 3???? The whole reason we woke up early was to go here before Kings Island because it’s only open 4x a year and there are two rare coaster credits we need but now we are going to eat first and go back ugh I hate when plans change!!

1:55pm: We had the most awesome waitress at Hyde’s and equally as awesome fries even though they’re crinkle cut and Henry bought me a t-shirt so I can rep Hyde’s even while in Pittsburgh BUT they didn’t have the one I wanted and I misunderstood what the cashier said so now I have a Hyde’s shirt that says Pie or Die on the back which I guess is cool and now I have something to wear to the pie party should I choose to have one this year.

The cashier had already gone back to the get the shirt in my size so I said “now I can’t change my mind, I’m basically married to this one” and Henry said, “I didn’t pay it for yet so you’re not married to anything.”

And I said YEAH I KNOW, IM NOT MARRIED TO ANYTHING. Thanks for the reminder.

2:17pm: Henry’s checking out whatever Christina is dragging under their car because every man feels compelled to point it out to Christina.

2:24:

4:58pm: You guys we just had a really great time at Stricker’s Grove even though it’s like 95 degrees out! And we got there just in time – about 40 minutes before the rides started running, and the lines for tickets were very very short. The lines were so long after the rides started. I’ll do a full recap in a separate post but it was really cool to get these two new coaster credits! Now we’re going to check into our hotel, change clothes, and head on over to King’s Island!

5:38pm: Having technical difficulties with our hotel reservation. But Henry was all AHA HERE IS MY EMAIL CONFIRMATION and what will happen next who knows but I want to stay here bc all of their art work is King’s Island-themed :(

Finally success! Booking.com didn’t send the reservation over to Hilton so they had to redo it but now we have a room and they upgraded us too!

7:14pm: We’re in line for Orion now so I think I will probably end this live blog either FOREVER or JUST FOR NOW.

I’m really just trying to ride the rides now, BRUH (sorry, I hate that word so much lol).

Ughhh I’m still so annoyed about this day but I will still take time out of my v. important life to write about it I GUESS.

On Sunday, Henry and I toyed with the idea of driving out to Waldameer Park because they have a new spinning kids coaster and they retracked their best coaster, Ravine Flyer II. But Chooch was all, “Jim-Jim wants to hang out and he doesn’t have a phone right now so I have to sit here all day like a lady-in-waiting and hope that he stops by like he said he would.” Henry still wanted to go but it felt WRONG to go without my coaster cred-collecting partner in crime, so instead Henry and I went to Moraine State Park for a hike(ish).

I should have known immediately that it was a bad idea when we parked and were met with all these WARNING signs about HUNTERS and DEERS and ARROWS.

ARROWS!!!

I was NOT trying to get impaled by Daryl-fucking-Dixon that day so I was straight panicking about this and Henry kept stammering on and on about how it wasn’t deer hunting season and I was like, “THEN WHY ARE THESE SIGNS HERE” and he was like “YOU WILL BE FINE” and then I cried, “BUT WHAT IF SOMEONE IS OUT HERE HUNTING ANYWAY HUNTERS ARE DUMB” and he was like, “Well the chances of you getting hit by an arrow aren’t very good because they’d have to be aiming for you” and I was like, “BUT I AM NOT WEARING BRIGHT ORANGE LIKE THE SIGN SUGGESTS” and finally Henry said, “Look, if you get shot with an arrow it’s because someone was actually aiming for you, OK” and then we heard voices over yonder and I fucking screamed, “ARE YOU HUNTERS?!!?!?”

“You’re an idiot,” Henry seethed.

They didn’t answer me though.

Anyway, the trail we were on was boring We went over a stupid bridge over top of algae-laden water.

There were people kayaking there and I said, “Ew gross” and Henry was mad at me again.

Then we saw a bunch of signs about ticks and Lyme disease so I forgot about Death by Arrows because now I was too busy obsessing over blood-sucking ticks.

Everything was fine until we veered off the main trail to visit some butterfly garden thing and I wanted Henry to take my picture sitting on this pergola thingie and he was taking really ugly pictures of me so I snapped because it was still June and the case study I performed on myself several years ago proved that June is the worst month for my temperament. *shrugs*

So you know what I did? While Henry was peering into a pond and smiling at tadpoles, I ran away. Originally, I was just going to walk back to the car…

…except I got legit lost.

I mean, I had a sneaking suspicion that something was wrong when I started passing shit that I didn’t recognize, like a field with tall bird houses strewn about, a really terribly-stenched pond, and then suddenly I was walking UNDERNEATH A HIGHWAY!? I was really getting scared. Meanwhile Henry was texting me and even though I was scared I was still in Psychological Game Playing Mode so I wouldn’t give him straight answers. Also to be fair, I had no idea how to answer his “where r u” inquiries. This went on for about 30 minutes until:

Henry said he figured I went back to the car so he started heading back that way (except that he was actually going the CORRECT direction) and then he got nervous when he passed two people who also passed us when we were heading the other direction and he thought, “Oh great, they saw me going into the woods with a woman and now I’m coming out alone” HAHAHA I wish they had called the police! Henry would have been SO HAPPY since he fucking stans the cops so hard.

When we were finally reunited, I started laughing hysterically while Henry was stepping into a full-body frown and that’s basically what it’s like to be in a relationship with me: A GAME THAT GOES TOO FAR.

Then we went to get ice cream which was honestly the only thing I definitely wanted to accomplish that day and Henry knew that because the night before I said, “I don’t care what we do tomorrow as long as it involves me deep-throating an ice cream at some point” and then I also reiterated the sentiment when I woke up the next morning. I needed a cold wet treat like some people need church.

Henry took me to this dumb place that had TOO MANY CHOICES when all I wanted was soft serve so then my brain started to short circuit while looking at the menu and then I panicked and ordered a twist but now it suddenly didn’t seem good enough after being presented with OPTIONS.

LOLOLOL that dumb face.

Anyway, we sat outside in the 95 degree sun and I was so angry because we were right next to the highway and the wind kept blowing my hair in my face and every time I would stop eating to move my hair back, so much of the ice cream would melt!! And you know what I did?? I blamed HENRY and I blamed that dumb ICE CREAM PLACE and then I THREW MY ICE CREAM IN THE GARBAGE and stormed off to the car!!!

Henry had that “oh boy here we go” far-away trauma stare in his eyes (actually, it looks pretty much like the picture above) and the drive back to Pittsburgh was super icy. He kept trying to make me still want ice cream though because if there is one thing he is so great at in this relationship, it’s sabotaging my diet.

So he stopped at this place called CUSTARDS and we were in line forever and then I lost my shit because another window opened and the girl was like I CAN TAKE WHOEVER’S NEXT and that was US except that the old bitch behind us was like YA BOI IT ME and Henry let it happen! So you know what I did? I said loudly, “LET’S JUST GO” and stormed back to the car for the third time that day. He was so mad! Haha—that’s all I was trying to achieve, I just wanted him to show his true anger instead of being like YOU ARE SO CUTE AND CUDDLY WHEN YOU ARE ANGRY TEE HEE because that shit is so lame, just fight back with me until I get the giggles and then we can move on with the day and go back to pretending that I don’t have numerous psychological disorders (both diagnosed and not lolol).

But then he went back to being determined to get ice cream into my system in an effort to cool off my boiling blood, so he went to some Tastee Freeze shack near his work where we have gone numerous times before and I got a small twist in a DISH because the only thing I want dripping down my wrists is diamonds (j/k I’m into cheap costume jewelry but I recently remembered the time that my grandparents bought me a tennis bracelet and where the fuck did THAT go, I wonder).

Then I ate my ice cream and was fine for the rest of the day. (I think. That was 5 days ago at this point.)

Oh and Jim Jim never showed up, apparently, so we COULD HAVE went to Waldameer after all 😩.

Me, my parents, & my brothers went to Cedar Point in August and stayed at the Radisson Inn. We went to the park the two days we were there and my dad & I rode all the rides, including Iron Dragon, Magnum XL 200, Corkscrew, Demon Drop, and of course Disaster Transport. A lot of the time our little “outing” was not all that great. But all in all I got to tell all of my friends about it. It was really kind of an exciting trip. 

That was what I wrote in my vacation journal after I went to Cedar Point for the first time in 1991 and boy don’t you wish I was still that succinct?? Also can we talk about how it was “not all that great” but also “really kind of an exciting trip”? Holy mixed signals. BECAUSE I KNOW MYSELF, I am able to read in between the lines and deduce that my parents probably fought the whole time, my dad and I probably fought the whole time, my brother Ryan and I probably fought the whole time, Corey was a baby and probably did nothing the whole time, and I probably had both parents tell me NO I’M NOT BUYING THAT FOR YOU the whole time.

Well, I will try to be short & sweet while telling you about the second day of our most recent Cedar Point “outing” which actually was ALL GREAT and I would have told all of my friends about it if I had any friends HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAugh.

Since we are Platinum Pass holders (pause for some fingernail blowing), we got up early on Monday so that we could be at the park by 8:30, which is when the parking lot opens. It was actually raining super hard when I woke up and I was straight panicking. Henry went out to get donuts since some hotels are still kind of “ehhhhh” about offering free continental breakfast since we’re still technically not out of the pandemic woods yet. All I wanted was a glazed and a sugar after that fuckarow with the vegan donuts in Maryland. Just keep it simple (stupid), you know? Henry can’t remember the name of the place he went to but it was some local joint and they really delivered. I mean, not actually delivered, he had to go and get them himself.

Chooch tried some of my glazed and declared that it was the best glazed donut he ever did have and I wouldn’t go THAT far but it was very good and satisfied my need for sweet morning carbs.

(Henry just shouted “House of Donuts” from the other room, so now you know in case you are ever in Sandusky and feel like smashing Chooch’s Best Glazed Donut declaration.)

By the time we ate our donuts, the rain stopped and the sky was turning blue! And when we got to the park,  there were only two cars in line in front of us at the parking booth thingies!! AND THEN SOMEHOW WE WERE THE FIRST, LITERALLY THE FIRST, PEOPLE IN THE PARK! They actually let us in a little bit before 9 and it was so exciting! Our game plan this time around was to hit Millie first since we didn’t ride it the day before. Steve (Steel Vengeance) isn’t included in early entry on weekdays so we didn’t even waste our time running there.

Millie!

There were these two little pre-teen girls who ran head of us and Chooch and I were cracking up because there was a third girl who was like, “I am not running” so they kept turning around and screaming, “COME ON KYLIE!!”

Chooch was like, “Dad is our Kylie.”

Oh man, Millie in the Morning. Better than a cup of fucking coffee. And we were on the first train out of the station!! I couldn’t believe how fantastic our day had started off. And, spoiler alert, it stayed that way. Like I said in my last CP post, I learned the hard way that the trick is to go in with low expectations. This park is so quirky because of it’s lakeside location (high winds can force them to shut ‘er down) and it’s called The Coaster Capital of America* for a reason, which draws hoards of people.

*(It is called that, isn’t it? lol.)

I grayed out on Millie!

Next, we ran over to Maverick. It was still testing so they hadn’t even opened the line yet, but a pretty decent one had already formed. However, they opened it up after about five minutes and by the time the line stopped moving, we were inside the main room of switchbacks and only had to wait for about 15 minutes. AND CHOOCH AND I GOT FRONT ROW!!

Also, I forgot to mention that when we were in line for Maverick the day before, Toto’s “Hold the Line” video randomly started playing on the TVs and I never noticed until that moment how much the singer resembles Hot Naybor Chris so I started screaming about it and Henry did that frown/smirk/smile thing he does when he doesn’t want to encourage me and Chooch tried to hold firm to his disapproval of my comparison until he finally couldn’t help it and he started laughing.

“YOU KNOW IT’S TRUE!” I screamed.

God, and then Maverick happened and that ride is just bonkers. As if I wasn’t already giddy!

We ran over to Steve after this. It still wasn’t open yet but a hefty line was starting to form so we hurried up and got in place. I had fun watching the family in front of us play Heads Up while Chooch did Chooch Things on his phone and overall ignored me. Henry actually was about 20 people behind us because he had to go to the bathroom first and I refused to wait for him; however, he was at a point in the line where it had turned back on itself so we were actually facing each other. When the entrance opened and the line started moving, he did something we are FULLY AGAINST and casually line-jumped and tagged along with Chooch and me as we moved past him. It was so obvious but he was pissed because he had witnessed half a family blatantly cut in front of about 50 people to rejoin the other half of the family, so felt like he was owed something I guess, who knows. I don’t think anyone really cared that much, tbh. But now I wished I had screamed LINE JUMPING IS CAUSE FOR REMOVAL OF THE PARK like my friend Christy and I used to at Kennywood when we were kids because we aimed to be the most obnoxious, something I CANNOT RELATE TO AS AN ADULT.

There are free lockers now in the queue and they are so cool! There used to be pouches on the ride where you could put your small items like keys and phones, but I’m sure people were fucking that up so they removed those and installed these super slick lockers and it’s really cool because the line splits – if you have NOTHING AT ALL ON YOUR PERSON, like you can’t even have stuff tucked away securely in a sealed cargo pocket – you can continue through a metal detector. Otherwise, your entire group is directed to the lockers, after which you can reenter the second line and basically I’m explaining this poorly but you barely lose your spot in line at all because they only send so many people past that point at one time.

I just thought it was super efficient and if you have ever been on Steve, you know that having empty pockets is an absolute MUST for safety reasons. This coaster is a fucking force of nature, you guys. I absolutely love it and found myself tearing up while we were in line (which was only about 30 minutes once the ride actually opened, and would have been less if fucking FAST LANE hadn’t opened at the same time, now that early entry was over).

I was getting RULL NERVY though because the sky had darkened and I swear I felt a few raindrops. I have only ridden Steve twice before and BOTH TIMES it broke down while I was in line. So I was like please let’s not make this a threepeat.

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Oh good lord, this ride. It almost makes me want to understand physics and engineering, etc etc numbers and nerds.

Henry and Chooch went on the drop tower thingie which is basically the one ride that I will not ride at any park unless super-pressed because I find them unenjoyable. Besides, I thought it was funny that this was some weird FATHER/SON ride experience because when do they ever.

They were assigned seats and we supposed to sit together in a two-seat grouping but some old dude decided he was going to sit there so they ended up having to split up and Henry was really angry about this for a while even after they got off the dumb ride. I was watching it all unfold and it was pretty dumb. I guess the guy even asked Chooch if he wanted to sit with his dad and Chooch was like “Yeah…” and the guy was like “oh well” and pulled down his restraint lol the audacity.

Oh yeah! Chooch and I rode the antique cars while Henry waited for the Bosco Sticks cart to open. We have been trying to eat a fucking Bosco Stick since 2019 when Carrie was like, “You have to eat a Bosco Stick, they are my favorite things and we can’t be friends anymore if you don’t eat one.” We tried the day before but THEY CLOSED LITERALLY AS WE WERE GETTING INTO LINE. This time, they hadn’t opened yet because the cashier hadn’t showed up. So Chooch and I rode Sky Hawk (their version of Kennywood’s Swing Shot) and then the antique cars.

Here you can see Steve hulking in the distance like a dream boat.

Um, and here’s Henry hulking in the distance like a…nightmare barge.

Henry’s phone takes the worst pictures.

STEVE <3

Anyway we gave up on Bosco Sticks after this because who has time to wait for some mysterious cashier, you know?

Besides, Chooch had an appointment to get bit by a goose.

Literally.

“He didn’t bite me, I was feeding him!” he yelled later when he saw that I had tweeted about it.

“Yeah, feeding him your finger,” I verbally shrugged.

We got Dippin’ Dots instead of Bosco Sticks (we knew we were leaving around 2 and stopping for lunch so we just wanted something snack-ish) and I started dwelling on the fact that Dippin’ Dots are still around. Like, who would have thought their novelty was this long-lasting? It’s fairly incredible.

Back when I was super into writing fake poetry in high school, I even wrote a poem about it called DIP DIP DIPPIN’ DOTS. It was part of my KENNYWOOD SERIES. MAYBE I WILL POST SOME OF THEM ON HERE SOMETIME BECAUSE I STILL HAVE THEM PRINTED OUT IN A BINDER I KNOW YOU ARE SHOCKED.

In line for our beloved Spaghetti Noodle. I want to get one of those shirts made that have like a list of names on it – I don’t know what the origin is behind those, but for instance you might see one that says:

Ross &

Rachel &

Phoebe &

Monica &

Joey &

Chandler

You know what I mean? Those rando shirts? I want to make one that has our Cedar Point roller coaster nicknames on it.

Millie &

Steve &

Spaghetti Noodle &

…Maggie?

I dunno, I just made that last one up because I feel like I would want at least four names on it and we sure do love Magnum.

But yeah Spaghetti Noodle is fantastic and so underrated. This was actually the first time we had to wait in line and it was still only about 10 minutes, if even that. I busted my hand really hard getting into the queue for the front row though. I hit off the clasp (?) of the gate when I spun around while walking to say something to Chooch. The top of my hand hit it real hard and it didn’t break skin but it did something bigly to something underneath, that’s for sure, because I couldn’t make a fist for the rest of the day and it was, some might say, TENDER. I was worried I chipped a bone or something. I mean, I hit that thing so hard that it actually undid the lock and the gate swung open (it was the employee gate to get on the other side of the queues) and it made such a loud bang that I’m shocked no one bothered to even look over to see what the hell my dumb ass had done.

Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, it still feels kind of TENDER.

That was the last ride we rode that day. Then Chooch wasted money on basketball games and a CP hoodie, and we left. :(

Seriously, this trip completely redeemed CP for me and it’s actually one of my favorite parks now. Everyday I have been whining, “When are we going back to Cedar Point??” and I know we will probably go back at least one more time this season, but hopefully more! It was really nice to have gotten all of the coaster credits out of the way (minus the kiddie ones) and actually slow down the pace a bit, ride some flat rides, and enjoy the scenery!

UNTIL NEXT TIME, CP. I MISS YOU SO MUCH ALREADY.

P.S. The next day at work, I messaged Carrie and told her that I still haven’t been able to stick a fucking Bosco Stick in my mouth and she was like, “Do you mean cheese on a stick?” BECAUSE THAT IS HER FAVE THING TO EAT AT CEDAR POINT NOT BOSCO STICKS. I have no idea how I got it in my head that it was Bosco Sticks, and HILARIOUSLY we were at the cheese on a stick place for a hot second while Chooch was thinking about what snack he wanted.

Then last weekend I was looking at the menu of some restaurant about an hour away and THEY HAVE BOSCO STICKS. I feel attacked.

There was a Pride event happening in Millvale on Saturday and when I saw that Bitchy Vegan Homo from Cleveland was doing a pop-up there, I sent Henry out on a quest for vegan baked goodness. Selfishly, I stayed home because PEOPLE. Honestly, if it was just a Pride event with no vegan stuff happening, I would have gone, but you add vegan stuff to things like this and it draws out all the vegan assholes, ISTFG. Henry was so pissed too because he even left the house well before the thing started at noon, got a good parking spot, and he said just as he was walking over to the BVH booth, some vegan biotch came power-walking out of nowhere, beat him to the booth, and loudly declared that she HAD A LOT OF STUFF TO BUY.

Oh man, I’m glad I stayed home. It sucks because I have lived a meat-free lifestyle since the 90s but have never ever ever felt like I belonged in that community, ESPECIALLY the vegan branch.

Nevertheless, Henry powered through and brought home a bounty of delicious animal-free treats.

Maybe it’s because I grew up with Rainbow Brite in my life but you cannot convince me that a cake will not taste extra-delicious if it’s rainbow-colored. I’m sorry. This cake made me feel like Starlite was taking me on a stroll through a motherfucking meadow in spring, OK

There’s just something about a pretty cake. I’m not saying it’s because I ate some of this cake that I ended up having a fabulous Saturday, but I’m also not saying I don’t believe in CAKE MAGIC either. (Those brownies were the unsung heroes though, holy shit, make me a retainer out of these brownies and watch me not care about flashing poop-smiles.

It’s 87 degrees in my house  you guys sorry if I’m slurring.

Later, I saw someone tag this neon rainbow sign on Instagram and got excited because it’s from Target and I declared that I needed it right then and there because I really appreciated the uneven arches and I knew exactly where I wanted to put it and Henry was like, “I GUESS WE ARE GOING TO TARGET” and so we did and I bought it and then I also went to the Vans store and bought new Vans in the shade PINK LEMONADE and I felt like I had literally showered in the sun’s summer rays that morning because everything was JUST SO PLEASANT AND GOOD. BREATHE ERIN BREATHE.

Also the girl who helped me with my shoes at the Vans store had tattooed knees and the most perfect chill disposition (a prerequisite for working at the Vans store, which means I could never work there because I CAN BE TOO UPTIGHT AND PEOPLE-HATING) and can you really ask for anything more in a retail experience?

This is what the downstairs looks like at night, I love it so much, being awash in color and mood-lighting.

Basically, it is always Pride up in here and I hope that this is a place where anyone would feel welcome and comfortable! Just….probably not on 90 degree summer days.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go back to sticking my head in the freezer.

After we checked in to our hotel last Sunday night, I wanted to drive to where we could see Cedar Point because it looks so pretty at night and I wanted to try and get a shitty iPhone picture of it. Henry was all *grumble grumble grumble* and Chooch was like, “Yeah, you two have fun, I’m staying in with the Disney Channel.” Henry was so annoying about doing this but eventually found a marina park thingie where we were able to park and walk out onto a dock while old men were fishing and that was kind of creepy. It was SO DARK and I was pretty terrified because you could hear the lake water sloshing up against the pier and I did NOT want to fall in, also I kept having visions of a murderous fisherman a la I Know What You Did Last Summer coming out from the shadows and pushing us over – after stabbing us with his HOOK HAND FIRST, UGH.

OMG and then there was lightning and I was so freaked out but also couldn’t look away.

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Then we went back to the room and crashed because we had to wake up early on Monday morning for Cedar Point, Day 2 EARLY ENTRY BABY!

I will be the first to admit that I said a lot of mean things about Cedar Point after the less-than-awesome experiences we had during the 2019 season, BUT! I was willing to give it another shot now that things are normal-ish again and our Platinum passes are still valid. Also, my friend Carrie loves this park lots and I want to love it too! So we decided to give it another chance. Plus, Chooch still had three coaster credits he needed that we missed when we were there in 2019, so we knew we eventually had to suck it up and go back.

However! This time I lowered the bar, A LOT. We knew for sure that we didn’t want to go to a weekend, so Henry and I both took a random Monday off of work. But then Henry suggested that we leave the day before and stay over, that way we didn’t have to leave super early on Monday morning to get there by 9 for early entry, and we could even spend some time there on Sunday if we wanted. I agreed to this,  figuring that if it was super crowded on Sunday, at least we weren’t losing any money on parking and admission, and we could just walk around and be leisurely instead of worrying about the rides and crowds.

We left home around 11:30AM that Sunday and Chooch and I made it two hours in the car before having our first fight over the phone charger resulting in me screaming, “THANKS A LOT YOU JUST RUINED THIS ‘HOWARD JONES PLAYING ON THE RADIO WHILE I’M WEARING A HOWARD JONES SHIRT’ MOMENT!” Ugh.

We got to the park around 3:00. The weather seemed OK and based on the parking lot, it didn’t seem like it was going to be too terribly crowded! We saw that the wait for Blue Streak–one of Chooch’s elusive credits that really punked us HARD in 2019, I wasted so much time in this fucking line with NO payoff!–was only about 25 minutes so we hopped in line while Henry went off to do Henry Things (pee).

After about 10 minutes of waiting, the train ascending the lift hill STOPPED. Chooch and I made ARE YOU KIDDING ME eyes at each other. I couldn’t understand what was happening though because the ride attendants were still loading the train in the station and no one in there seemed uber-concerned that a train was just chillin’ on the lift hill. Then one of the ride attendants rad out of the station with a bucket and proceeded to jog up the lift hill to the waiting train, at which point a man in the third seat tossed something in the bucket. I dunno if it was a phone or a camera, but he definitely had something he wasn’t to have and they fucking stopped the ride because of him and I was INFURIATED. Not that they stopped the ride, mind you, but that some moron refused to follow safety guidelines in the first place. There is a reason they don’t want you to bring that shit on the rides, and it’s not because they care that you could lose it. It’s because PEOPLE CAN GET FUCKING INJURED. OMG I hate everyone, I fucking swear to god, I just want to ride roller coasters and there always has to be people ruining that for the rest of us.

And here’s why I was DOUBLY mad: as soon as the ride attendant made it safely back to the station, they resent the train on the hill and then a few drops of started to fall, which lead to the dreaded, “Ladies and gentlemen, operations are temporarily suspended due to inclement weather.” FUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKK!!!!!! Of course there was a mass exodus, but Chooch and I decided to stay in line. I mean, we had to ride this thing eventually and the sky was still bright blue while it was raining so we felt confident that it would blow over quickly, and it DID but they still had to send like 10 test trains it felt like, so we ended up standing in that line, in total for nearly an hour I would say. Because of course as soon as they reopened the line for everyone, the Fast Lane people came running in like bulls and they were letting SO MANY of them on each train, it was fucking frustrating.

But, the whole time, I refused to let this get me down. I kept telling myself, “What else would you be doing if you stayed home? Watching YouTube videos? Going for a walk?” It was fine. I was at a fucking theme park, in line to ride a roller coaster. Breathe out the bitchiness. The one small relief was that we were in line with this big group of 12 and they were actually quite pleasant. We even managed to get on the same train as them, in the back row!

OMG fucking finally, here we are! On the Blue Streak! Was it worth it? I mean, no. But it wasn’t terrible! It was a fun little out-and-back but holy shit, this damn coaster always has a super long line. So I’m glad that we got it out of the way as soon as we got there, because it was like a monkey on our backs, for real.

The next coaster Chooch needed was Iron Dragon. I’ve actually ridden Blue Streak and Iron Dragon before, on one of the times I had visited as a kid. I was especially excited about this one because Henry decided to ride it too (actually, I think it was only because I dragged him into line by his arm).

I really like this coaster. I think my exact review was “That was so precious!” It’s very gentle and the views are beautiful. I like that it goes over the water!

The final credit (not counting the kiddie coasters which we didn’t care about this time) that Chooch needed was Maverick. This was the one that I was most concerned about because I have never ridden this one either and EVERYONE IN THE KNOW loves this damn ride and some people even go as far as to say it’s the best ride in the park. I wanted to know why! But in 2019, it broke down the first time we were in line during early entry, and then anytime it was running after that, the wait time was consistently at like, 75 minutes to 120 minutes. That’s a lot of minutes, fam.

Chooch always looks like this now when he’s with us. The age 15 is AWESOME!

Anyway, I know I said I wasn’t going to let people get on my nerves, but there were two families in front of us in this line (that may have been 45 minutes if it weren’t for Fast Lane!!

) that were so fucking annoying. The ones directly in front of me consisted of a super-amorous parental unit (the father-half had A VERY EXPLOSIVE LAUGH) and their teenage kid who kept clinging to the dad and it was v. uncomfy. They kept engaging in moderate rough-housing which would almost always have one of them stepping backward into me and I was like PLEASE SOMEONE SWITCH SPOTS WITH ME I HATE THESE PEOPLE and no one would, and then the family in front of that family were very yokel-y and had a kid who insisted on sitting on the dirty ground the entire time, scooting forward on her butt each time the line inched ahead. The whole family just oozed laziness and I was like ERIN JUST STOP LOOKING AT THEM, WE ARE GOING TO BE A NICE PERSON TODAY REMEMBER so I tried to just watch the stuff that was playing on the TVs but then a JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE video came on and I started screaming I THOUGHT HE WAS CANCELLED but I guess not because too many white ladies like him, fuck Britney Spears, I guess. And then one of the guys behind Henry was like IS THAT HIS WIFE when Jessica Biel showed up in the video and I wanted to be like YES AND HE CHEATED ON HER but I reminded myself again that we were going to KEEP TO OURSELVES AND HAVE A GOOD DAY and not be ERIN BUTTINSKI.

I am trying to work on myself, you guys!!

From the Maverick line, I could see my BAE Steve (aka Steel Vengeance for the non-enthusiasts) and I was tempted to leave the line and succumb to Steve’s pull.

But I stayed in line and I’m glad I did because Maverick did NOT disappoint! BELIEVE THE HYPE! Holy shit. What a relentless ride! And the ops were bangin’ – they were running five trains and assigning seats like drill sergeants.

Afterward, Henry was hemming and hawing about riding Top Thrill Dragster. He didn’t get to ride it with us the last time because we shoved all of our stuff at him and ran into the queue, and he didn’t feel like fucking around with a locker. But since it was FATHER’S DAY, Chooch and I convinced him to get in line for that while we rode Magnum. (Time out to give a huge shout out to the Magnum crew because they run a tight fucking ship over there – super high energy!)

We still had time after that (Magnum was pretty much a walk on) so we decided to ride the Music Express because we realized that we’ve never ridden any flat rides (aside from that racing carousel thing) here because we were so busy trying to get all the coaster creds. It feels SO FUCKING FREEING to not have a mission now! We can just stroll about and hop on a fucking flat ride, take a twirl on the goddamn Music Express if we want!

Chooch is not sunburnt – that’s the filter I used!

Ugh, look how much bigger his feet are than mine! Also, I’m officially the shortest person in m household now.

That was fun! But we didn’t want to stray too far away after this because we needed to be available to take pictures of Henry’s Big Father’s Day Ride, lol.

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His review: “IT WAS AWESOME.” Lol.

Then we just strolled around and enjoyed not having to beat any clocks or whatever.

It was getting close to 8 (when the park closed) and Chooch and I wanted to get a ride on “spaghetti noodle” a/k/a Wicked Twister before we left. When we were walking through the queue, some guy was yelling, “That’s BULLSHIT” because an employee measured one of the kids with a stick and deemed them too short. I get really mad when people take shit out on ride attendants. That guy is literally doing his JOB to keep you and your family SAFE. Why would you want to argue about that? They have height restrictions for A REASON. Go the fuck home if you’re going to act like a bitch.

Anyway, god bless Spaghetti Noodle. This ride looks so boring, like a one-trick pony, but it FUCKS ME UP every time. Henry was buying cookies while we were on this, btw.

We had JUST ENOUGH TIME to jump on Tiki Twirl, better known in my heart as the CALYPSO. Kennywood had one of these rides years and years ago and no one remembers it! People act like I’m nuts, so I wonder if they weren’t there for very long? In any case, I get really excited whenever I see these at another park because it’s one of my favorite flat rides.

We experienced another Bitch Dad yelling at a ride operator on this ride, because the ride operator opened the gate for all of us to get on and Bitch Dad was like, “I’m waiting for my daughter to come back in line, my wife had to take her to the bathroom” and the ride operator was like, “I’m sorry sir but we locked the entrance gate because this is going to be the last ride of the night” and Bitch Dad was like, “OK but I have to wait for my wife to bring my daughter back in line” and the ride operator basically repeated what he already said so Bitch Dad was like, “OK cool but can’t you just let them back in line” and the ride operator (who was like 19 btw, poor kid) said, “I would love to, sir, but I can get in trouble for that” so Bitch Dad spun around in a huff to leave and barked, “WELL I GUESS I SHOULD HAVE JUST LET MY DAUGHTER PISS ON THE RIDE THEN.”

Don’t these people ever get exhausted from being such cocksuckers to the service industry? I say thank you to ride attendants/operators when I get off of every single ride. Because seriously, thank you for helping me to have some fun in life. Thank you for showing up and doing your job. I’m sorry that you have to put up with fucking entitled assholes.

LOL, here’s Henry waiting for us. We were so worried that he was going to eat all of the cookies.

Wow, this little half-day at Cedar Point totally exceeded expectations. We got to ride lots of things, the weather was wonderful after that brief little rain shower, and we didn’t fight!

We went to a family restaurant called Dianna’s after we left because we were fucking starving. Chooch and I were wailing, “WE HAVEN’T EATEN SINCE WE  GOT LUNCH AT SHEETZ!” and Henry was like, “Yeah well I haven’t eaten since breakfast!” and I said, “What? Why didn’t you get anything at Sheetz?” and he said, “Because when we were there, I thought I had already eaten lunch, but I realized later that I was thinking of yesterday’s lunch.”

Maverick I’m sorry but that quote was the highlight of my day, lol.

These are some things that happened way back in Baby Face Erin’s life that I still think about occasionally like wow what an impact, who knew.

The Acting Class

In the winter of 7th grade, my friend Liz convinced me to take some kind of acting class with her at the Pittsburgh Play House. I can’t for the life of me imagine why I would have said yes, if my mom forced me to do it or if Liz just made that compelling of a case for it.

Because I have never in my life been interested in acting, not even when I was super little and my grandparents used to say I should be in soap operas because of the way I could turn on the tears (and it’s true even in present day that I am a master class in drama but ONLY ON MY TERMS, THANK YOU).

OK so now I’m taking these classes with Liz, I think they are on Saturday afternoons or maybe mornings, and the class is small and cold. I vaguely remember us being the younger people in the class and failing miserably when we had to pair up and shadow each other with our eyes closed. There were legit strangers in the class who succeeded in this exercise better than Liz and me who were, at the time, best friends and spent a ton of time together. Well, we definitely could not feel each others QUOTE UNQUOTE ENERGY, that’s for sure.

But the whole reason I’m telling you this now is that there is ONE INCIDENT involving ONE PERSON that flashes through my mind every now and then and I wonder now if it actually seared a bit of trauma into my brain. Anyway, here is what happened. There was one guy in the class who at the time seemed so old, like he could have been in his 20s, but now that I’m thinking about it I bet he was only around 17 or 18. One of our assignments was that we all had to make up a skit (and no I have no recollection of what my skit was, I either blacked it out or quit going before it was my turn to perform, either option seems very On Brand). The skit that the guy acted out for us involved a poker game that got super heated, explicit, and VIOLENT. I remember VIVIDLY that he was was swearing loudly, kicking over chairs, maybe he even flipped over the table?! I just know that I was TERRIFIED because it didn’t seem like he was acting at all, but it seemed like he was actually projecting some REAL LIFE aggressions onto us and I knew at that moment that:

• this class was not for me
• I never wanted to play poker

I also vaguely remember the acting teacher stepping in and gently putting a moratorium on the skit.

The reason I was thinking about this recently was because we were in the car a few weeks ago going to Buffalo and, coincidentally, Neneh Cherry’s “Buffalo Stance” came on and I always associate her with this time in my life because that same year she had released a new album that I used to play on repeat because IT WAS SO GOOD and I started playing some of the songs off it for Henry that day and he was like, “No, I really promise you that none of these songs sound familiar to me at all” probably because this was when he was in his COUNTRY PHASE and playing VOLLEYBALL with the GUYS AFTER WORK while I was in MIDDLE SCHOOL.

Anyway, my favorite song from that album was MOVE WITH ME.

This inspired me to message Liz on Instagram and ask her:

• if she remembers this
• did this even really happen

And she confirmed that yes, she too remembers it. We also reminisced about the time her mom took us to eat at the Elephant Bar after one of the classes, which honestly was worth the torture of those classes because that restaurant was the best place we had in our little area of the South Hills and I’m actually surprised no one rioted the day it closed. THE CEILING FANS WERE MADE TO LOOK LIKE ELEPHANT EARS, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE!

THEY HAD THE BEST PEANUT BUTTER PIE! IT WAS LIKE EATING ON THE GOLDEN GIRLS’ LANAI!!

When the Elephant Bar closed, by dad went and stole the big metal ELEPHANT BAR PARKING sign and gave it to me. It was in my kitchen forever and now it’s in the garage. I’m hoping someday when/if I ever buy a house, to have a good spot to hang it. It’s huge!

Do You Even Know How To Answering Machine?

You know how when something humiliating happens to you, that’s always the memory that stays the most VIVID, like fucking TECHNICOLOR VISION, in your goddamn memory pouch? Never mind all those blissful, happy moments that you want to sew into your hippocampus like a serial killer patching up his lampshade with victim skin. This isn’t the MOST HUMILIATING thing that has happened to me by a longshot but it was one of the first ones that really made a lasting impression on me and I think about it A LOT, more than a normal human ever should, because I am just pathetic:

I was in elementary school, maybe in 2nd grade? 3rd? And I was calling my BEST FRIEND CHRISTY who never made me take an acting class, and for the first time ever, I was met with the fuzzy SORRY WE MISSED YOU greeting of an ANSWERING MACHINE. At the sound of the beep, PANIC SET IT. I had no idea what to do! So I hung up! Then I called back, prepared this time for the BEEP, and ready to say “HI CHRISTY IT’S ERIN CALL ME BACK” but instead I started talking before the beep!!! The THIRD TIME, I think I might have said “Hi Erin” instead of Christy, and then made some sort of painful, strangulated cry and hung up again. I so vividly remember doing this AD NAUSEUM because I wasn’t comprehending that my fuck-ups were STILL BEING RECORDED AND SAVED even though I wasn’t saying, “OK BYE” at the end. Like hello CHILD ERIN, answering machines can’t intuit when to step in and erase someone’s ERRONEOUS RAMBLINGS.

Otherwise, we never would have gotten that classic FRIENDS episode where Monica leaves a message on Richard’s answering machine!

YOU KNOW!?!!

Yeah, so I left probably between 5-10 messages where I cut  myself off with frustrated exhales and screams and no one ever mentioned it to me but I bet her parents or older brother listened to them all and snickered before telling her to call her neurotic friend back and maybe consider writing her a script to use next time she calls.

I still panic to this day when I have to leave a message for someone, especially at work, thanks CHRISTY’S ANSWERING MACHINE.

In case you were wondering, my face was flushed and I was so disgusted with myself while writing this DUMB STUPID IDIOT MEMORY UGHHHHH BEEP.