I thought of this tonight and felt a strong compulsion to repost the story about the time my friend Kristy convinced me to go to a Pittsburgh Passion game even though I hate football and it ended up being a fucking hilarious night and I even thought that maybe I would like girl football at least after that but nope, that didn’t stick. Also I can tell by that first picture that this was definitely before KpopX kicked my ass into shape lol ugh.

Anyway, here is that story. Ciao for now, my plump little bao. (I just said that to myself.)

***

When I told people I went to a professional woman’s football game last Saturday night, the popular response was, “What the hell. You hate football!”

Truth! I really do hate football, and the only thing I hate worse than football is PITTSBURGH football. Boys or girls, I hate them all the same. No discrimination here. But when my friend Kristy asked me if I wanted to go and explained that she was only going because her friend Katie plays for the opposing team, the New York Sharks, and also that we were going to drink at the Smiling Moose beforehand, I was like, “Fuck yeah, I’ll go.” I get a lot of joy rooting for opposing teams! I’m like a sports hipster, I guess.

Besides, if I was going to go to a Pittsburgh Passion game with anyone, it would be Kristy. I don’t know why, but I stand behind this statement.

Kristy even made this awesome sign to show support for her friend Katie! It was kind of adorable. I want to join some kind of team now or run for Congress so that Kristy will make a poster for me.

When we got inside Cupples Stadium, Kristy decided she didn’t want to sit in the middle of Passion fans, because Pittsburgh sports fans are a special brand of crazy. Like, bath salts crazy. Before we even made it to the stands, we stumbled upon a small group of Sharks fans with some assertive Passion broad who was trying to accommodate their seating needs. And by seating needs, I mean that they were asking to sit as far away from psycho Yinzer sports fans as possible. So we tagged along and entered the field with them, and that’s when I realized that one of the Sharks ladies was actually a part of the organization, so I started to feel really special, because that’s the type of person I am: the type that gloats when mascots or someone on a professional women’s football team payroll spends one extra nanosecond on me than the rest of the kids. It’s because I’m attention starved, OK? I will take flirtatious sentiments from anyone: in a fur-suit, NY Sharks shirt or prison jumpsuit, I don’t give a fuck.

Anyway, the Passion broad explained to us that she was unable to unlock the gate so that we could sit on the bleachers across the field from the Pittsburgh side, some lame excuse about how the Passion organization only paid for half of the stadium to be cleaned so they couldn’t have us getting our filth all over the other side of stands, too. However, what she was able to do instead was bring over extra benches ON THE SIDELINE so that we could still sit far away. There was some grumbling from the other Sharks fans about how they weren’t going to be able to see real well, but I was like, “Fuck yes.” Because if I’m going to have to watch some dumb football game, you better believe I want it to be on the field, like Jay-z.

(I don’t even like Jay-Z, but I wouldn’t mind living like him.)

While we were getting situated on our special benches, one of the Sharks ladies felt compelled to beg us to behave. Don’t distract the players, don’t get up and walk off the field during play, and basically just don’t breathe. Then she came back with her camera and yelled, “OK SHARKS FANS!” and everyone put their hands up on top of their heads like shark fins, and I had to whip my head around to look at everyone else’s so that I didn’t fuck it up because I’m a hand-gesture dunce.

“I wonder what the Passion sign is?” Kristy wondered out loud, making a diamond over her crotch with her hands. “Do they just like, masturbate?” And I died for the first of 87 times that night.

Seriously, this was our view: a recreational lesbian’s field day. I cultivated no less than 8 crushes in the first five minutes of sitting down. It’s actually kind of surprising that Christina doesn’t play professional women’s football.

“Fair warning, my twin daughters play for the Sharks, so I might get kind of loud,” an older man who bore a mild resemblance to Laura Palmer’s Dad (but enough so that I would run with it for the rest of the night) said cordially as he sat down next to me. “Wow, Pittsburgh’s sure got a big fan base. Look at that!” he enthused, pointing across the field to the home bleachers. I thought he was being sarcastic, because there didn’t seem to be that many people there, but then I remembered that this was WOMEN’S football and we all know that no one cares about women’s sports.

Passion’s Impressive Fan Base.

Did you know that the players have to pay for this shit themselves? It’s true! Kristy told me. And they all have to have regular day jobs too, unlike those fat NFL rapist douchebags. So I was able to overlook my hatred of football by convincing myself that I was actually there to support girls doing shit. Because I’m a girl.

I took this picture when we returned after halftime to illustrate how sparse the Sharks section was.

Laura Palmer’s Dad was a pretty laid back guy and I didn’t mind that he was trying to lure conversation from my clamped mouth because was mildly charming. But then 10 seconds into the game, he fucking EXPLODED with rage and bulging forehead veins.

“PAIGE!!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!!?!?!? CONTAIN!!!!! WHERE’S THE D?!?!?!?!?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME, REF?! WHAT WAS THAT!?!??! HEY REF, YOU NEED TO BORROW SOMEONE’S GLASSES BECAUSE YOU CAN’T SEE!”

And on and on and on. Kristy slowly looked over at me and we totally lost it. At this point, he was standing on top of the back of the bench, leaning against the fence behind him for balance, and every time he yelled, it sounded like angry jets were being launched from his throat and into my ears. And then another dad on the bench next to us joined in, the two of them volleying disparaging reviews of the ref’s competence back and forth between them in their thick New York accents. Laura Palmer’s Dad kept marching over to the Sharks bench and reaming out his daughters, Paige and Jenna, but it seemed like poor, fuck-up Paige was taking the brunt of it. She just stood there with her head down, shoulders rolled forward, probably wondering when she was going to have time to finish digging her dad’s grave in the woods.

Please, please, please watch this dumb video.

Laura Palmer’s Dad was screaming so hoarsely, that I feared he was going to have a stroke. I was honestly afraid to turn around to see what he looked like while verbally battering the entire Sharks team and officials. I half-expected to catch him deep-throating an entire horse out of unchained anger.

I kept getting misted with Haterade every time he screamed too, so now I can say Laura Palmer’s Dad showered me.

Meanwhile, my brother Corey was texting me because he saw my video on Instagram, so then it became even funnier to me, knowing that it was this funny to Corey, also. You know who definitely didn’t think it was “that funny”? HENRY. I kept texting him with a play-by-play to NO RESPONSE. He was just jealous because he wasn’t there and he probably knew it was only a matter of time before I fell in love with Laura Palmer’s Dad. I mean, he was totally my type. I bet he has sexually harassed an impressive amount of secretaries in his day.

Or Henry was just sleeping.

Laura Palmer’s Dad in a rare moment where his lips were demonstrating what some people might recognize as “a closed mouth.”

What? You guys don’t take shoulder selfies?

The other angry dad is standing next to the guy stroking his chin, who was actually with Laura Palmer’s Dad but not nearly as loud. Occasionally he would bellow “SHARKS!” but I felt like it was more because he didn’t want Laura Palmer’s Dad to be disappointed in him, too.

Here’s one of the twins getting berated.

And the other.

He reallllly wanted them to “contain it,” whatever the fuck that means. And see, that was a big problem, not understanding the game and terminology. I would have to wait for my Sharks peeps to cheer or clap to know how to proceed, but sometimes I was confused because the Passion fans would also be clapping and I thought we hated each other? Anyway, when one of the Sharks got the ball-thing and started booking it down the field with no one close enough to stop her, I knew to stand up and do jump-y things and yell. And I also knew that when things weren’t going our way, to blame the refs. That’s universal. And if I hadn’t known that, Laura Palmer’s Dad would have taught me real fast.

The Passion scored enough times for the speakers to bleed out “Girls, Girls, Girls,” “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” and “Single Ladies.” You know, just in case we forgot we were at a girls football game.

Too bad we were losing pretty good (I guess?) by halftime. I was pissed when we came back from not getting stabbed during our halftime drinks at Jack’s because KRISTY lied to me and we were LATE getting back to a sporting event I don’t even care about, except for when I do, so we had to stand off the field and wait for the quarter thing to end before going back to our dumb bench. THANKS, KRISTY. I was so concerned that we were going to be ostracized from our elite Sharks section. But as soon as the clock turned to 0:00, I speed-walked across the field back to our bench.

“Hurry! I don’t want to get in trouble!” I kept hissing at Kristy. And approximately 3 minutes after I said that, Laura Palmer’s Dad and Other Official-Hating Dad came together to throw a joint temper tantrum so histrionic that the ref literally turned toward us and screamed, “NO! YOU SUCK!” blew his whistle, made a violent motion with his arms, and stomped off the field.

The fucking ref stopped the game and stormed off, you guys. IT WAS FUCKING FANTASTIC!

But….then the Sharks lady (I learned after the game that she is the CEO or CFO or COO or some acronym equally as important) marched over and said sternly, “I told you that you had to knock it off. Ref wants you gone. ALL OF YOU.”

Laura Palmer’s Dad said, “No! You guys stay. I’ll take the hit on this one.” MY MOTHERFUCKING HERO. Oh god, please let me be Laura Palmer’s Dad wife. Oh, who am I kidding. Laura Palmer’s Dad’s penis coozy is good enough for me. He can scream at me to contain the D all night. Yell at me like I’m one of your disappointing twins!

“Ref wants you ALL gone!” Important Sharks Lady repeated. So we all got up and dejectedly walked off the field, Kristy with her rolled-up Sharks poster, basically the entire Cupples Stadium watching.

This is what Womens’ Football Game Ejection looks like.

And just in case one of us was planning on resisting the ref’s request, two cops were sent out to make sure we left peacefully. It was the most ridiculous thing ever and I was so afraid I was going to pee from laughing so hard.

“Womp womp,” Kristy said with mock sadness into her rolled-up poster, and that just made me laugh even harder.

Once we were off the field, we all kind of stood in a cluster, laughing nervously by the concession stand. I was glad to see that Laura Palmer’s Dad was also laughing about it and not snapping metal rods over his legs in fury like I had anticipated.

“Sorry guys,” he said, with a shrug and then he flashed that good old Laura Palmer’s Dad smile at us and I melted. UGH HOW CAN I BE MAD AT THAT.

By then, one of the Passion broads had learned about what happened, so she decided to intervene. I guess because it was the ref who kicked us out and not the actual Passion team, she let us back on the field. They tried once again to get the gate unlocked for us, but then realized no one had the key. So the compromise was to move one of the benches further away from the field and have one of the cops babysit us.

“I feel like a red-headed stepchild,” Laura Palmer’s Dad laughed as he helped drag the bench away from the rest of the benches. Kristy and I opted to sit on his bench rather than return to our original spots, because I wanted him to see that we were IN THIS BITCH TOGETHER.

I just like being a part of things, OK?

Anyway, the game resumed after the ref rubbed the hurt out of his butt, and it didn’t take long for the two dads to get all fired up once again.

“OH NOW HE THROWS A FLAG!” the other dad bellowed, his voice cracking under the weight of the sarcasm.

This was right after the ref called an illegal formation, whatever the fuck that is, and that set off Laura Palmer’s Dad and his Partner-in-Scream-Hemorrhaging all over again, to the point where I thought for sure they were going to cause us to make the 11 o’clock news. FUCK YOU AND YOUR ILLEGAL FORMATION, REF!

Our babysitter.

This lady refused to leave when we got kicked out. I guess that’s her daughter. She popped her shoulder out.

And then, after it was all said and done, Laura Palmer’s Dad STOOD ON THE FIELD, yelling for his daughters’ attention. He was relentless.

I LOVE THAT IN A MAN.

During the final minutes of the game, “Girl On Fire” warbled out of the cheap sound speakers, and we just lost it. I wish they had put as much effort into their concession stand offerings as they did with the girl-centric stadium anthems.

Anyway, the dumb Passion beat the Sharks and I’m 99.999999999999999% sure it was fixed. We hung around after everyone left, watching the Passion do some sloppy Electric Slide thing to a really terrible pop song while the Sharks sat in a slumped huddle and cried. For a girl who hates football, I felt surprisingly really sad. Once the Sharks started to mill around on the field, Kristy and I went over to say goodbye to Katie, who hugged me twice which I thought was really nice of her but I think she was really just using my torso as a Shamwow for her sweat.

“What was going on over there?” she asked us, and we got to giddily tell the story of Laura Palmer’s Dad, a story that I look forward to retelling over and over and over again for the rest of my life.

SHARKS 4 EVA.

Hello. Here you will find the last half of the books I read for Asian Read-a-Thon. I hope that you will look at this and find a book or 8 to read. OK I’m out. Cook on, mothercheffers.

10. The Last Story of Mina Lee – Nancy Jooyoun Kim

Holy shit is this book depressing. Girl finds mom dead in her apartment. From there, the chapters alternate between the daughter trying to figure out what happened to her mom, to the mom in a past timeline where we see her journey & transition from Korea to America in the 80s. It’s your classic “children can’t see their parents as people with their own lives and history until it’s too late” type of storyline, and it hits hard. I liked the mom’s chapters better because she was such an interesting character and the daughter was just kind of like, “Oh darn, mom was a person I had no idea and now she’s dead oops.”

11. Yolk – Mary H.K. Choi 

This is the third book I’ve read by Mary H.K. Choi now and dare I say she has become one of my favorite authors? The voices she feeds into her characters feel so real and effortless that they are real people you know, and you can HEAR their voices. The dialogue is punchy and realistic, and even when the characters show shittier, darker sides of themselves, you still can’t help but root for them. You have probably not watched the Korean drama Reply 1988, but two sisters in that show reminded me SO MUCH of our main characters in Yolk. To say they’re estranged is maybe a bit too drastic, but they definitely, as two young women in their early 20s, are not regular fixtures in each other’s lives. Until one finds out she may or may not have cancer. But even with subject matter that heavy, Choi manages to bring levity and humor into the situation and you can’t help but fall hard for these people. Or maybe you can, Henry probably could. But he’s heartless and not easily moved by much.

12. All You Can Ever Know – Nicole Chung

This is a memoir about a Korean woman who was adopted as an infant by a white American couple. One of the Goodread reviews said something along the lines of “this was good but should have just been an essay” and I agree with this because it did feel very repetitive at times, though it’s so very important for us to read about and try to gain more of an understanding of how difficult it is for minorities to grow up in America, let alone ADOPTED minorities. These children essentially have their culture and heritage robbed from them and, as an American bystander, it might seem like “the prospect of a ‘better’ life” is all that matters here but imagine how lonely it is to be the only one in a family who looks different, to the point where you feel like you don’t fit in there but then you’re also not “x”-enough to fit in with people of your own ethnicity.

13. American Betiya – Anuradha D. Rajurkar

Oh the anger I felt while reading this (not because the book was bad). Basically this cool Indian girl starts clandestinely dating some cringey, clingy, super problematic white kid because her traditional family has a strict no-dating policy while she’s in school, but she’s like eff that this creepy toxic asshole is totally into me and who cares if his friends are mildly racist and they all call me Princess Jasmine and then he makes me wear traditional Indian wedding garments before fucking me what he’s so not fetishizing my culture AT ALL.

You guys, I was screaming. Fuck that guy. This girl had the sweetest, most caring family and her grandma is visiting from India and all her mom wants is for her betiya to set up a goddamn Zoom call so they can talk to the grandfather in India but she’s too busy trying to make her emotionally abuse boyfriend happy and ew, just ew. I hated him so much.

This book is meant to make you burn up inside and it did its job.

14. A Very Large Expanse of Sea – Tahereh Mafi

Another book to get the blood boiling! This one takes place shortly after 911 and our main character here is a Muslim girl – Shirin – starting a new high school, but same ol’ racism and microaggressions. Oh and not just from the students – hoo boy no no no.

There is also a romance in this one but the love interest, Ocean, is actually not a fetishizer and his feelings for her are fucking pure.

Oh, this book pumped up my heart to Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon proportions.

15. The Hole – Hye-Young Pyun

This was a quietly creepy psychological thriller about a Korean man, Ogi, who is recovering from a car accident in which his wife was killed, and now her mom is acting as his caregiver. He’s basically confined to his room and left to ruminate upon his marriage while the mother-in-law neglects him and starts digging holes in the garden.

I don’t really know what else to say about it. It was OK! But I think I was expecting it to be more scary.

16. Goodbye, Vitamin – Rachel Khong 

OK not only was this one of the best books I read for Asian Read-a-Thon, it was also one of the best books I read all year and is a new instant favorite. As someone who reads a lot of different voices and genres, it’s sometimes hard for me to pinpoint exactly what KIND of book I like, and this is it. This writing. This is my JAM.

(LOL shit here I am the day after I posted this, realizing that I never even explained why I like this book or what it’s even about. Oh well, click the link I guess?! According to Goodreads, I updated twice during the reading process to say “This book is 100% my style” and “My soul had left my body.” So, there you go!)

17. Year of the Rabbit – Tian Veasna

This graphic novel is HEAVY AF. Just looking at the cover of it is making my eyes well up. It’s horrifying and actually scarier than any horror novel I’ve read because this was TRUE. REAL LIFE. HISTORY. I didn’t know much about the genocide in Cambodia in the 70s, but now I do. This graphic novel did not hold back. It follows various members of the author’s family and the unreal horrors they endured (and not all overcame) in their efforts to escape Phnom Penh and start a new life as refugees. Totally sobering and heartbreaking, and especially infuriating to find out that only recently – nearly 5 decades later – have the people involved in the Khmer Rouge takeover been convicted and sentenced to life in prison—most of them are already dead and the ones who are still alive are already in their 80s.

I guess justice is justice, but damn.

This was definitely the heaviest, saddest graphic novel I have ever read.

18. Anna K: Away – Jenny Lee

I needed to end the read-a-thon with something light and luckily my copy of the Anna K sequel came in just in time. Anna K is a modern retelling of Anna Karenina mashed up with some Gossip Girl vibes. I mean,  it’s OK, but I don’t really think it’s AS GREAT as the hype claims. However, I did like this one because Anna K is, well, away. And not just away anywhere – she’s in Seoul! So I really enjoyed those chapters but I gotta admit, the side characters are so vapid and I know, I know – that’s the point, but they can be vapid while still being interesting. As it stands, I just really don’t “love” anyone in this series except for Vronsky, but well, if you know you know.

My other issue with this book isn’t with the book itself but the narrator of the audiobook, Jenna Ushkowitz (of “Glee” fame). Because the main character Anna is Korean American, there are some basic Korean words tossed around, ESPECIALLY when she is in Seoul. Jenna’s pronunciations are extremely jarring and took me out of the story every time. Now, I understand that Jenna is Korean, but adopted when she was a baby by an American couple, so I don’t hold this against her but I’m kind of wondering how this was allowed to pass. Am I being nitpicky? I promise you, I fucking PINKY SWEAR, that I am not trying to be all know-it-all-y about this, I mean, my knowledge of the Korean language is BASE LEVEL. But!!!! I watch A LOT of Korean programming to the point where I know what it sounds like when someone is saying an extremely basic word like “halmeoni” which means grandma, and I have never heard it pronounced the way this narrator says it and it bothered me so much. It was like listening to Henry try to say “gochujang” on repeat. Am I being dramatic? Probably! But this really kind of brought the book down a coupla stars for me.

Oh hi hello annyeong, it’s me, Erin R. Kelly. I am home now from a whirlwind trip to Cedar Point and have many many many things to say about that but first I want to give a shout out to this bitchin’ small lake town in Ohio named VERMILION. It’s about 30ish minutes outside of Sandusky (home of Cedar Point, le duh), and just super fucking adorable and quaint. We actually stopped here on the way home from another Cedar Point trip in 2019 but it was a Sunday and nothing was open expect for a Hungarian restaurant that had nothing for vegetarians except for pretzels which would have been fine if Chooch and I didn’t require a full meal every now and then (i.e. when Henry remembers).

We stopped here to eat for real this time and then walked around for a bit and I do not usually think, “BOY I COULD LIVE HERE” but the thought did cross my mind once until I remembered: OHIO HAS WINTERS AND THERE IS A THING CALLED THE LAKE EFFECT, NOPE, NO THANKS. But it was a nice and breezy 70 degrees up in that piece today and that lake air kind of brainwashed me for a minute or two. Here are some pictures before I go upstairs and hit the hay HARD-LIKE.

#SmoothMove

We ate at Big Ed’s and can I just say once again how fucking exciting it is to be eating in restaurants again?! The power of vaccinations! We chose Big Ed’s because their menu boasted, DOWNRIGHT INSISTED, that they served VEGGIE BURGERS.

However, when Chooch tried to order one, the waitress’s face fell into a GOSH DARNIT expression as she relayed the bad news that they had unfortunately JUST RUN OUT OF THEM. So I asked if they had grilled cheese, which wasn’t listed on the menu, but she said they could do that for us and I was like THANK GOD LADY BECAUSE THIS PLACE IS THE FUCKING BEES KNEES (seems like something they’d say in Vermilion) AND WE DON’T WANT TO TAKE OUR MEAT-FREE BUSINESS ELSEWHERE.

I didn’t really desire a grilled cheese because Chooch and I both had one for a late dinner the night before after leaving Cedar Point at a very suspect family restaurant that wasn’t very satisfying and had no vibes of any sort but we did have a very nice waitress named Carey who made the experience OK; sometimes the waitstaff really does make all the difference and it was the same case here, too, because our waitress was so nice that we didn’t want to be like FUCK YALL CARNIVOROUS TOWNIE BITCHES and walk out.

Plus, this place was a whole ass retro mood (ruined only by the inexplicable need to be playing COUNTRY MUSIC instead of like, Frankie Valli or that 1950s “Lollipop” song on repeat). Henry even found one of his old lunchboxes on display. (This was after he divulged in the car that one of the first CDs he bought was MR MISTER – it was a big day of Henry Stuffs.)

I appreciated that my coffee came in this old floral cup. And the grilled cheese was better than DIANNE’S FAMILY RESTAURANT or whatever the place in Sandusky was called, who cares. However, the fries were better at the “who cares” place, BUT! Don’t get it twisted because they still weren’t “the good kinds.” I have a very specific french fry palate.

This place is like, renown for their ice cream and SODA PARLOR bullshit. Like, they have egg creams (had this one time ever in 1998 at a diner in Philly after the Dracula’s Ball and t’was not for me.) and PHOSPHATES which even Henry had to google because I guess even though he is old, he is not old enough to know the simple pleasures of stool-spinning at the soda fountain after school with Sally, sipping on PHOSPHATES.

They also had a milkshake that Henry ALMOST indulged in, called the Green River and I sort of wished he had ordered it but I’m also glad that he didn’t because I kept thinking about the Green River Killer. (I mean, I make serial killer for not-a-living, so come on.

)

After we ate, we strolled around town (“to digest,” I always say because I am an Old Person now). It was seriously the most precious place, even though every wall had may flies stuck to it. I don’t know if that’s what they were but it’s what Henry said and he knows everything, so. May flies.

Look at this quaint little Ohio Venice!

There was some informational placard about this light house but I got bored.

Just looking at Lake Erie. We’ve seen it before, but you know. Lake Respect.

After Chooch realized I was taking pictures, ugh.

And then I caught him mid-stretch, looking like he’s reciting some epic Shakespeare soliloquy to the lake.

He is not happy about this picture. Good thing the brat doesn’t read my blog.

And then we left and continued our drive home! I don’t think we fought at all, either! A miracle, really.

Maybe that’s why I’m so tired right now–from containing all of my tempers.

Hello and welcome to Father’s Day 2021! Since Chooch and I failed at Henry’s birthday earlier this month, I figured we better step it up. I found this LOG THAT GROWS SHIITAKE MUSHROOMS so of course I snatched that up because I love eating mushrooms and Henry likes growing things lately, so that seemed like a win/win.

OMG this fucking log is so HEAVY!! But it didn’t seem like it was “enough,” so I thought we better also do some elementary school caliber Father’s Day art project. Henry doesn’t drink hot beverages so a custom coffee cup was out of the question, but he DOES drink iced tea and iced coffee, so I screamed, “TUMBLER!” at Chooch who was like, “OK that’s great but I’m actually in class right now so if you could NOT scream through the house, that would be so chill.”

You have to know that once I get an idea in my head, it’s all I can think about until the thing is actually tangible so I started working on it right away. We knew that we wanted the background to be pretzels because our Him Man loves himself some pretzels of all varieties.

Remember when I had Henry take a picture of Chooch and me jumping? I told him it was because I needed it for my brother’s birthday and he said he didn’t think anything of it, just figured I was doing something weird as usual, lol.  Also included: Henry’s ult bias Cha Eun-Woo from Astro, a Rip-It can since he sometimes drives a Rip-It van for work and people ALWAYS stop him and try to buy some – it’s so bizarre, Ted Nugent, a water tower from where he used to live in the SERVICE, a plane that was supposed to be an AIR FORCE plane since Henry can always identify military planes in the sky, and GOCHU-JOHN because that’s how he pronounces gochujang. Also the pretzel background doubles as his favorite color – brown.

Then I wrapped it in the circulars which is his favorite part of the mail and I always throw them out before he gets a chance to see them lol.

He was really scared this morning when I thrust each box at him, lol.  The log had him extremely perplexed but the tumbler made him do his TRYING NOT TO SMILE smile!

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Like it says in the caption – when he was admiring his new tumbler, Chooch asked him, “what kind of plane is that?” Henry squinted at it and said, “Well, it’s not American…” HAHAH I think I just googled “war plane” and never even bothered to check what it was actually was.

I was also going to include a picture of Hot Naybor Chris on it but I was afraid that Henry would never take it outside the house for fear of HNC catching him with it and wondering why Henry’s sipping cold brew out of a vessel bearing his visage.

Also, I texted my dad a picture of us at Wildwood from 1985.

He might not be my bio-dad, and we may have had some BIG UPS AND DOWNS especially in my teen years, but we get along wonderfully now (actually, ever since I moved out at age 18!!) and though we may not share blood, I definitely share a lot of the same quirks as him, that is FO’ SHO’.

And now we’re about to head out to Cedar Point for today and tomorrow, with the lowest expectations as possible because: Cedar Point. This has to be THE WORLD’S most unpredictable amusement park, honestly. Maybe we’ll even let Henry treat himself to a soft pretzel or two.

Honestly, after the miserable donut morning and the psychotic hotel switch the night before, I wasn’t even in the mood to go to an amusement park. Yeah, me, being ambivalent toward the promise of roller coasters. That’s when you know my seasonal depression is visiting (it hits me in June nearly every year for some reason and I truly don’t understand it). But Henry was like, “No. We are here and we are going” and I was FULLY PREPARED to have a shitty day, to be bumping elbows with surly crowds, to endure 60+ minute wait times.

But you guys. Six Flags America was fucking presh. I mean, I’m still operating under the impression that Six Flags is essentially the Wal-Mart of amusement parks, (change my mind in July, Six Flags Great Adventure) but I will say that compared to that shitty one in Darien Lake, NY, this one in Maryland was a HUGE step up. And hilariously, this is the one that usually gets the most hate from the coaster community!

Basically, the park is only “beautiful” in the entrance area. I thought their little main street was so cute! The rest of the park was OK, much nicer than Darien Lakes, but it’s that damn DC comics branding that turns me off.

Still, it felt more like being at an amusement park than Six Flags Darien Lake. And nearly every single roller coaster was a walk-on or station wait! This was perfect because we were only there to ride the coasters, so we didn’t have to stay all day, which had Henry making prayer hands because he didn’t want to be driving home in the middle of the night.

I don’t really have too much to say about it because we were only there from around 11:30 – 3:00 and didn’t eat or really stop at all to rest. It was constant running from one coaster to the next. I did stop once to pee and am happy to report that the restroom was clean and there was a very pleasant attendant in there keeping things sanitized and we had a friendly convo about the weather while I washed my hands and avoided looking at my frizzy hair in the mirror.  The weather that day was only in the high 70s/low 80s but it had that air of MIGHT STORM SOON all day.

Also, we didn’t eat there because true to most theme parks, the food was $$$ and none of it seemed exceptional. I mean, $12 for one slice of pizza? Hard pass. Even the soft pretzels were like $7 so made the mutual decision to get all the riding done and then eat outside the park at a restaurant (A RESTAURANT!!! IT FEELS SO GOOD TO SAY THAT AGAIN!).

Here are the coasters Chooch and I rode that day (managed to get all the credits because unlike Darien Lake, everything was running!!!):

• Firebird – a B&M floorless. This was apparently the very first B&M coaster and was originally a stand-up coaster, but was converted to a floorless in 2019, so this is relatively new! It was also nearly a walk-on for us. It was OK but after hate-eating all those donuts, probably wasn’t the best first ride? Still, pretty cool history! (You can see it in the picture above.)

• Joker’s Jinx: HOLY FUCK this was wild. I knew going in that it’s basically just a clone of the Flight of Fear coasters at King’s Island and King’s Dominion, except that those are indoor. I liked both of those versions well enough, but Henry and Chooch don’t, so I thought for sure Chooch wasn’t going to like this one much either. But WOW did this one feel different! First of all, the launch was so intense that it nearly made me drop my bowels. I expected the launch but it still somehow caught me off guard! Oh man, we laughed and laughed through this whole ride. So good, definitely a favorite of the day!
• Superman: Ride of Steel: Six Flags is notorious for cloning their rides, so the mirror image of this one is also at Darien Lake (it’s actually the one that some guy was ejected from several years ago, which is another reason why Darien Lakes leaves a bad taste in my mouth). We didn’t get to ride the one at Darien Lake anyway though because the line was consistently a 90-minute wait, running one train, and continuously breaking down. But here at Six Flags America, it was A WALK-ON, two trains were running, and ops were efficient AF. Anyway, this coaster was great and I actually would have liked to ride it a few more times, but we had to hustle. THIS WAS NOT A DAY OF LEISURE. Oh yeah, this was one of two rides that Henry actually rode that day, and this was even after we ditched him while he was in the gift shop next to the entrance, looking for eyeglass straps. Just to illustrate how empty the queue was – he was able to piss around in the gift shop and STILL make it into the station queue with us since. “Wow, thanks for waiting, assholes,” he said, shaking his head dejectedly.

• Roar: Wow, this woodie sucked. It’s crazy how many REALLY GOOD WOODEN COASTERS we’ve ridden, and how it makes the lesser-thans super apparent. This ride was weird in general because there was a security guard who was like, miming to us which seats to go to and I was like, “But can we go to the back?” and he just looked at me and I was like, “If you are saying something to me from behind your mask, I sincerely cannot tell” and finally I was like, “I don’t fucking know what this guy is saying, let’s just take the back row” so we did but Henry allowed him to assign him a seat because HE COWERS BEFORE AUTHORITY. Hilariously, when Henry climbed across the seats to put his man purse in the cubby, two kids decided to change seats and took his, but by that point, the lap bar had come down so Henry was trapped on the other side of the platform and literally every single ride attendant was ignoring him until finally they unreleased the lap bars so he could get a new seat RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME AND CHOOCH, like we told him to do from the get-go but he was too worried about disappointing the Blank Security Guard. Seriously, this was the only weird/negative experience we had all day. The attendants on this ride were so emotionally distant.

• Mind Eraser: Ughhhh I was dreading this one. Every coaster enthusiast HATES these Vekoma SLCs (suspended looping coaster) because they’re head-bangers but I honestly hate them because they terrify me. I hate that dangling feeling! But Chooch needed the credit so in line we went. We had a fun interaction with this one couple whose young son was FLIPPING OUT about not wanting to ride and they were just an adorable family, TBH, and even let us go ahead of them WHICH ENDED UP BEING BAD because our train STOPPED ON THE LIFT HILL. This is a fucking SUSPENDED COASTER, YO, so we were just up there dangling like the devil’s dingleberries and I began to panic IMMEDIATELY, like, how would they get us down from here?? A normal coaster would have you climbing out and walking down the steps at the side of the lift hill, but how would we do that?? Would we need to be rescued like Annie, grabbing on to Punjab’s unraveled turban?! But then after 15 seconds (felt like 15 minutes), the lift hill chain powered back on and we finished our ascent. And then….the ride was absolute terror. I hate these rides! I always feel like my feet are going to bang off the support beams! When our train returned to the station, the crew was totally taunting us and asking, “SO DID YOU HAVE FUN WERE YOU SCARED OMG” and Chooch and I are fairly certain that they made our train stop at the top on purpose because so many people on it were crying about being scared when we were still in the station, and if that’s the case, OMFG that’s fucked but also kind of hilarious to be trolled that mercilessly? That crew was pretty awesome. It was a party atmosphere for sure on that ride.
• The Wild One: Ugh another rough wooden coaster. This one was even worse than the other.  Nothing to report aside from the fact that there was a large family (number-wise, not weight) who was all split up in line, and the patriarch was so maniacal about getting to the front of the line, it was actually concerning. The line was not long AT ALL but he was being so impatient. Chooch and I got to skip the line because the ride attendant was looking for a group of two and as we walked down the station to get in the cue for the second-to-last row, the crazy dad LIFTED HIS SON OVER THE RAILING so he could ride with whatever lady family member was waiting to get on the same ride as us. I was like, “Dude, you need to calm the fuck down.” I can’t believe no one called him out for doing that – I mean granted, it didn’t affect much because the lady was going to be a single rider otherwise, but still, you can’t just drop-kick your kid over a railing like that!? Anyway, we ended up getting the back row after all because we were splitting up the lady from two other family members and they understandably wanted to ride in a group so she asked if we could switch and I was like, “This is the best day ever” because you know Chooch and I love that back seat vibe. Then!! And this is the best part! Before they let us go, one of the ride attendants asked the kid who was punted over the railing to get out of the train so that he could be measured AND HE WAS TOO SHORT! And do you know the lady family member who was with him was like, “Oh well, bye” and didn’t even get off with him! So this smol child had to go stand by the exit alone and wait for his entire 247382347 member family to finish riding this dumb coaster. And now crazy dad was screaming from the line, “WHAT HAPPENED?! CAN’T YOU JUST LET HIM RIDE IT ANYWAY?” and Six Flags was like, “No sir we cannot do that, that is how the dude got ejected & killed at Darien Lake because the ride attendants were like SURE MAN WITH NO LEGS THE SIGNS SAY YOU CANNOT RIDE THIS BUT SINCE YOU ARE SAYING  YOU CAN, ALL ABOARD!” So then crazy dad was like, “CAN I TAKE HIS PLACE?!” and they were like, “No you cannot, we are sending this train now, wait for the next one bitch.” It was intense. Actually, there was more action in that line than on the actual ride, which actually injured Chooch because it was so rough and he banged his elbow or something I can’t remember since it didn’t happen to me.

• Batwing: We tried to ride this one earlier, after Ride of Steel, but it was down. I was worried that it would be down for the day, and of course, Six Flags’ app is worthless and doesn’t tell you ride statuses or wait times on their app!! WTF. I imagine the bigger ones probably do?! This would end up being one of only two legit lines we had to stand in all day, and it was still only about a 20-minute wait, which must have been unusual because I heard some girl say, “I literally cannot believe we’re standing in this line it’s so long it’s never like this.” But WOW were ops efficient on this one! They were REALLY doing the most and apparently that particular crew had won awards (THEY HAD BANNERS SAYING SO!). First of all, you can’t even go up to the station until an attendant assigns you a number, and then you have to tell the attendant at the top of the steps what that number is and they will show you to your row. I was so nervous that I would forget the number when it was our turn, but it was literally #1. Chooch was like, “I mean, if you screw this up….” and don’t worry I still almost screwed it up because I kept walking past the first row even after the lady was like “here is your row” and it was very clearly marked with the NUMBER ONE.  ANYWAY, this ride was terrifying. It’s a Vekoma Flying Dutchman, so after you get in, the seats fall all the way back so you’re facing upward, and that’s how you climb the lift hill – literally looking up into the sky and having no idea how much farther you have to go and I was FUCKING SCREAMING. Then as you start to go down, the train flips over so you’re facing the ground like you’re legit flying and it is…not really what I was trying to experience. I felt so helpless and like we were going to slam into the ground. I also had major deja vu feelings and afterward realized that this is a replica of a ride that Henry and I rode YEARS AGO when Henry I went to Six Flags / Geauga Lake in Ohio – it was called X-Flight then and eventually moved to King’s Island and renamed Firehawk, but ultimately was closed in 2018. Chooch loved it and I will admit that it was relatively exhilarating but I am learning that I prefer REALLY GOOD woodies (like anything RMC touches, Intamin prefabs, those fucking animals at Holiday World, The Beast in King’s Island, etc)
• Ragin’ Cajun: OMG this was so annoying because it was literally the last credit Chooch needed (we skipped the kiddie coaster) and of course the first time we tried to ride it, it had broken down. I wanted to still get in line because the maintenance men were there and they were sending test cars, but the young man guarding the entrance would NOT let us even though there was a small line leftover from the people who had already been in line and opted to stay even after the thing broke down. I was like, “WHO ARE YOU TO  TELL ME HOW TO SPEND MY TIME, SIR” but really I only said that in my head because I was exhausted from all the other raging I had down that weekend. (OMG I JUST REALIZED THAT THIS RIDE IS RAGIN‘ CAJUN HOW APROPROS LOL). When we came back later though it was working again but the line was stupidly long – I would say we waited for about 45 minutes which seems SO FUCKING EXCESSIVE for what is essentially a Crazy Mouse but I am here to tell you that this version of it spun way faster than ANY Crazy Mouse I have ever ridden. I remember someone saying that in a YouTube video about this park and I was like, “OK it’s probably not that crazy though” but HOLY SHIT it was out of control! Chooch said he actually thought it was malfunctioning. I couldn’t get my eyeballs to stop ping-ponging afterward, it was fucking insane. And when we got back to the station, it was that MEAN KID again who wouldn’t let us wait in line when it was broken down and he said something to me but I couldn’t hear him because he was wearing a mask but I’m pretty sure he was chastising me for unbuckling my seatbelt before the car was fully back to the platform and you know what, fuck off SIR.

Anyway, I think this was Chooch’s 145th coaster!! Wow, truly one to remember.

Oh! Not ride-related but the Maryland/Virginia area is having a huge cicada infestation (I kept calling them Jon Secadas and Chooch would say, “Huh?” and then Henry would mumble, “He doesn’t know who that is, Erin” and instead of explaining it, I just kept right on calling them that) and I mean, THEY WERE EVERYWHERE. My friend Jiyong had told me about this when I saw her last month because she had recently visited her friends in Maryland and I was like, “It can’t be that bad” but WOW OH WOW. Luckily, they’re harmless and they don’t particularly creep me out, but the possibility of one slamming into our face while riding coasters was a very real concern. Outside of our first hotel that I hated, there were so many Jon Secada shells on the ground that it actually sounded like we were stepping on autumn leaves. NOPE. JUST CICADA EXOSKELETONS.

Then we left and ate a late lunch/early dinner at Silver Diner which boasted a FLEXITARIAN MENU and I actually wanted to cry. Usually if we go to any kind of diner or standard American cuisine restaurant, we consider ourselves lucky if they even have a veggie burger option on the menu. Usually, I have to be grateful for a fucking veggie wrap. But this place had SO MANY Veg/Vegan options mixed in with meat foods for Other People, that it was actually hard to choose.

I ended up getting this cauliflower sandwich which was OUT OF CONTROL. It also felt good to treat my body to real food since all any of us had to eat that day were ANGRY DONUTS. And we had a very nice waiter! The whole vibe of that place was super mellow and the food was fantastic – it was really such a great way to end a successful Six Flags adventure and I’m super glad we didn’t end up going home that morning because my bi-polar inner voice was talking for me.

TO SUMMARIZE: Would I go back to this particular Six Flags? OK real talk: Only if they had a new coaster. But I did enjoy my time there! Most of the rides were mediocre but I could have ridden Joker’s Jinx and Ride of Steel many more times and I would have liked to hit up some flat rides too if we weren’t on a time crunch. This wasn’t the kind of park where I could see myself being “leisurely” at, you know what I mean? There really wasn’t any place to sit on a bench and enjoy the scenery.

The next Six Flags we have lined up (and the original one we planned on going to this summer) is Six Flags Great Adventure in NJ and I’m really interested to see if this one is more aesthetically pleasing than the other two. I have a feeling it might be, and it’s definitely larger PLUS IT’S THE HOME TO EL TORO which I have been desperate to ride ever since riding T-Express in South Korea, which was the ride that reignited my love for coasters in the first place, and El Toro is built by the same manufacturer! SORRY, I WILL GO DORK OUT ABOUT THIS ON MY OWN TIME NOW.

But first:

(Fun Fact: when I was a kid and this song first came out, I thought he was saying “every time we eat together” for the longest time.)

Just a quick little life update to talk about how I’m missing the office and while I’m sure it will still be partially a drag when it’s time to go back and the novelty of seeing everyone again and being able to go for walks downtown will quickly wear off, I will try not to take these simple things for granted again.

Two things triggered my work sentimentality:

1. WELLNESS THING

Every year, we have an on-site wellness exam thingie where you go and have your biometrics screened (whatever that means) and then something good happens with your health insurance. I participate in this every year, not because of the mysterious health insurance thing, but because I LOVE SEEING MY GOODLY NUMBERS. If you don’t know, I AM OBSESSED WITH GOODLY NUMBERS. I mean, I count calories and have been using a FitBit or other pedometer RELIGIOUSLY since like, 2012. Like, when I forget that my FitBit is on the charger and I walk upstairs to get something (usually just to stare at my glowing Cure wall, but you guys been knowing), I will throw a FUCKING FIT over those lost steps.

However, for as much as I love being fawned over my lab people (one guy tried to distract me from the finger-pricking by saying, “Did you know you can see Kennywood from here?” and when I cried, “NO WHERE?!” he was like, “*prick* Just kidding.” I will never forget it), I would still typically need someone to accompany up there (usually Amber) because I would get major Nerves. Shocking, I know.

Last year, they flat out didn’t do the screenings at all, obviously because who the fuck was caring about their HDL (is that even a thing? There a lot of acronyms on the sheet that they fill out) during the beginning months of covid, you know? Well, maybe Dr. Oz. Or like, Tony Robbins.

But this year, the Firm announced that we could participate by either having our doctor do it, or schedule an appointment through LabCorp. I opted for the latter and went through the whole fasting rigmarole, then promptly woke up this morning and PANICKED because who was going to go with me?! No one, that’s who! Time to dream up an imaginary friend, Erin, quickly! (Can you believe I never had one?!)

Anyway, my appointment was at 8 and it went fairly swiftly but the technician lady was asking me about this strange paperwork that I apparently was supposed to bring with me and I knew nothing about this do you know why BECAUSE I DIDN’T HAVE MY WORK FRIENDS HELPING ME, OK!? I had to do this by myself! The technician lady said it was OK but I could tell by her tone that it was the opposite of OK and when she mumbled something about how she needs to send it in with my blood work but that’s OK, I knew for certain that I was on THE LIST. Then she tried to cover her annoyance by saying that there are several Erin Kellys in the system and she just needed to make sure she had the right one which gave me the perfect segue into my WRONG ERIN KELLY email drama because if anyone can get me to spew small talk like I don’t sit around conversing with cats & squirrels all day, it’s medical professionals. Sitting in an exam room makes me come off as a Super Extrovert Practicing For Improv Tonight. All of that old personality that I keep stuffed deep down behind the PTSD and Ultra-Depression come popping out and the next thing you know, I have an inside joke now with Paula the Dental Hygienist and my old eye doctor is calling me a crack head.

OK OK where was I. So now the tech isn’t mad at me anymore and we’re having a great conversation, when she tells me to go ahead and extend my arm on the weird table thingie connected to the chair, and I’m still chatting away and giggling while she’s telling me now to make a fist and she’s wrapping a purple thingie around my bicep and in my head, I’m thinking, “Wow, blood pressure cuffs have changed since two years ago” and then suddenly SHE IS STICKING A NEEDLE IN THE CROOK OF MY ARM AND I GO, “Oh! Wow! That’s a needle. We’re doing this! I thought you were just taking my blood pressure” and she was like, “Oh, no that’s next” but the way she said it, it was like she thought the blood pressure part was what I was nervous about?! AND NOT THE SURPRISE NEEDLE.

Hello, I am used to the finger prick, which still isn’t a walk in Seoul Forest, but at least it’s over in .02 seconds. This went on endlessly, like who the fuck is checking my biometrics, Count Dracula, what the fuck.

Anyway, so that happened today. Oh and where all my peeps like me who weigh themselves each time they put on the next ultra-thin article of clothing, to make sure the clothes you’re wearing to the screening won’t add ounces to your weight? ‘Cuz I did that methodically in my room this morning. Super light leggings and a thin AF t-shirt FTW.

So, that was my day. Missed my co-workers mocking me for immediately swapping out the beige Band-Aid for one of the cool dino ones that I keep in my desk because you bet your ass I keep multiple boxes of Band-Aids in my desk, do you know me? Fuck if I have anything else important like Tylenol or tampons, but I got a sick array of Ikea Band-Aids, bay-bay.

2. MY DESK!!

Megan had to go into the office yesterday for IT help and she sent me pictures of my desk while she was there!!

Oh my god, I miss it. I really do. I miss my magnets and Fiji Mermaid and G Dragon memorabilia and international candy that probably already out of date when I bought it in February 2020.

The way I left my Snuggie balled up on my chair like I wouldn’t be out of the office for a year and a half tho, lol ugh.

I know I will especially miss it during the summer heat wave when I’m working in an un-air conditioned house with sweat dripping down my back.

Mostly a photo dump since I was “liveblogging” on Saturday and apologies in advance if I have already posted some of these, my memory is shot and I’m too lazy to look at that post.

We took the metro into the city because who wants to fuck with driving and parking or Ubering amirite. Also, we’re kind of dorks and like to see what each city’s public transportation system is like OK maybe that’s just me. So far, Seoul’s subway system is the mack daddy of all transits, better respect.

I guess this one was OK but we only used to get there and back, no additional excursions because Henry was being a jerk about doing anything on top of the self-guided walking tour we did. Henry is such a great tourist, truly.

So glad Former Guy doesn’t live there anymore and yes Chooch, presidents live in the White House, I’m not sure who told you otherwise, probably one of Blake’s dumb friends in your stupid Discord chat.

Also, Chooch has a bruise on his arm because he’s a moronic klutz and not because Ma & Pa like to knock him around, ya hear?

A thingie.

A cool place.

The crowds were extremely tolerable the day we were there, surprisingly considering it was a Saturday and a bunch of Pride events were happening (we got to catch two small parades and it was so uplifting!).

Now here is a series of pictures of Chooch and me trying to pose naturally:

We really are the worst at having our picture taken together.

Oh also while this was going on, there was this FUCKING STUPID COUPLE that I hated who dinged their idiot scooter bell at us on a sidewalk and then wouldn’t pass us when we moved over for them and you guys, there is something about being dinged at that REALLY GRATES MY CHEESE, and it’s actually one of the few things I truly don’t miss about being downtown everyday – those fucking Pgh bikers can get fucked, honestly. Anyway,  I loudly said, “JESUS FUCKING CHRIST ARE YOU GOING TO PASS US OR NOT” and then of course they ended up essentially being on the same tourist route as us and even after they ditched the city scooters, they WERE STILL IN MY WAY and then the guy portion of the couple HAD A MR. GRAY GUY SQUIRREL come over to him and I was like, “FUCK THIS SCOOTER BITCH AND HIS SQUIRREL CHARM!”

And then Henry started lecturing me about how I’m too hateful and you know what that did? THAT MADE ME EVEN MORE HATEFUL. STFU Henry, you Mr. Rogers try-hard motherfucker.

But aside from the scooter cunts, the rest of the day was actually really peaceful and even though the Lincoln Memorial was decently crowded, we were able to have a fair turn at getting our picture and no one was being assholes and no one was hogging the good spots. It was actually a super pleasant experience.

Henry just wanted to stand next to my hot dragonfruit purse (which can also be worn as a fanny pack!!!) and who can blame him, really.

This thing is actually horrifying on person.

I know I definitely already posted this Portrait of a Tree, but bae is too presh not to repost.

Also, Mr Gray Guys in DC are so much friendlier than the Mr Gray Guys at my house!!! These guys were like frolicking right up to people and I was so jealous. I am trying so hard to get the Mr Gray Guys at my house to love me but they treat me like #1 Predator even though THEY WATCH ME WITH THEIR OWN TWO EYES (well, or one if you’re One-Eyed Mr Gray Guy) as I put their food out everyday!! They literally flatten themselves into patties and then slither away like I can’t see them.

We started walking to the Capitol Building after this but it was like we were walking the wrong way on a people mover because it felt like we just kept farther away from it so here is where unanimously decided to break for a late lunch before one of us went from craving food to craving blood, and if you know Chooch and me, you know our hanger gets dangerously close to murder.

But then we made it to the Capitol and it is such a majestic sight when it’s not infested by disgusting MAGA rednecks and QANON derelicts!

The sun was raging on us and of course no one thought to bring sunglasses (thank GOD Henry didn’t bring his Molestor-y Uncle shades). So this was a fun series of posing.

Especially when Henry made us do it again, “unless you want some stranger lady’s ass in your photo,” he scoffed. Also, that discarded face mask on the steps to the left is peak pandemic, isn’t it?

Literally blinded by the light revved up like a DOUCHE blah blah etc la la la.

Then we moved over to a shaded area and that was better but by now the novelty of posing in front of the Capitol had burned off like a vampire’s skin in the sunlight.

Here is Henry consulting his phone and then telling me that nothing I wanted to do after this was reasonable.

SO WE LEFT. Well that’s not true. We had to walk a bit to the closest metro station and Chooch got an iced coffee at McDonald’s because you know what they say, when in DC, get a coffee at McD’s, and then we saw the Bible Museum or whatever it is and I said they should have shaped it like an ark and Chooch was like A WHAT and was ready to mock me because he thought I said arch and honestly, this is exactly the type of thing we would spend 35 minutes fighting about.

Henry had to ask the fare booth dude what side to stand on but Chooch and I were already down on the platform, standing on the correct side, because we can read signs. Henry is such a lame.

And then everything went to hell from there, but at least at the hotel (before I made them leave and find another one at 10:30 at night because I was freaking the fuck out), Chooch put on the shirt he was originally going to wear that day until I pointed out that we were both accidentally wearing red white and blue and then suddenly he realized his shirt was “too short” and changed but brought this one with him under the pretense of changing into it once we got there, which of course he didn’t, just like Henry conveniently left his hat in the car and I HATE IT WHEN HENRY GOES HATLESS because he’s also a dick when his hair is free-flowing and it’s just like how my aunt Sharon was always a BITCH (sorry Sharon, RIP, I love you) on vacation when she wore her hair in a ponytail.

UGH NOW I FEEL SO STRESSED OUT AGAIN.

Whenever we’re visiting a new city (or even an old city that we haven’t been to in a minute) I like to look for fun food places to go. Usually ice cream shops and bakeries because even weekend road trips count as vacations, right? And ya gotta pig out on vacations (says the girl who is obsessed with her weight and calories and weighs herself everyday and cries over gaining several ounces, I mean, wait…who?).

I’m not the hugest donut fan, but I found a YouTube video for the best donuts in DC, so then suddenly I thought out loud, “I could eat a donut(s).” So I gave Henry my list, and then threw in Baked & Wired, a bakery I’ve been following on Instagram for several years because their cupcakes looks fancy AF and by fancy I mean CLASSY.

I actually didn’t look into any ice cream places which, if you read my liveblog, you know we had a TERRIBLE TIME finding ice cream joints outside of DC near the hotel we were staying at in Maryland. So apparently next time I should study a bit harder.

Anyway, I wanted to go to all of these places on Saturday but Henry kept trying in a million different ways, through diagrams and illustrations, in Korean, he even made a flipbook, that where we were in DC wasn’t close to any of these places and it would require various metro transfers and buses and then he was like, “LOOK, WE WILL GET UP EARLY TOMORROW MORNING AND DRIVE TO WHICHEVER ONE OF THESE PLACES YOU WANT” and I said fine but really he was supposed to know that this was not fine, I wanted it RIGHT NOW, hashtag Veruca Salt, etc etc. So this really was the impetus to my impending mental breakdown late on Saturday evening, the details of which will never be discussed and I know Henry and Chooch are already brainwashing each other to forget it.

But all of this is to say that we woke up not even early at all on Sunday and Henry was like, “WE CAN GO TO THAT ONE DONUT PLACE YOU SUGGESTED, IT IS ONLY 14 MILES FROM HERE” or 14 minutes, I can’t remember, and it was actually on the outskirts of DC so it was easy to drive there and park and silly me I’m always forgetting that cities have other, less urban, parts to them.

Here is the place. They haven’t completely reopened yet during covid so only 6 people could be inside at once, masks on, and it was takeout only. We were all able to be inside together and originally were going to get a 1/2 dozen to share amongst each other. We had one selection left and I said to Henry, “Go ahead, you can choose” because my head was still very sore and tired from all the sparking synapses and demonic voices circuiting through like my head was a switchboard to Hell.

But then when Henry confidently told the donut lady that he’d take a Boston cream, I shot him the most disgusted look like he just shat on the ground in front of the donut case. Even Chooch was like, “Worst choice, but OK cool.” (All my Boston cream bitches gonna come for now, lol.) Henry nervously looked at us both and mouthed, “what?” and I was like, “THAT IS NOT WHAT I WOULD HAVE CHOSEN BUT COOK ON.” So then we started silently arguing with just our eyeballs and eyebrows, nostrils flaring for emphasis, right there in front of the donut people and I said, “I AM JUST GOING TO WAIT OUTSIDE.” So then Henry paid and came outside and was like, “WHAT IS WRONG WHAT DID I DO” and Chooch and I were both spitting off variations of “why would you waste the last choice on a Boston cream when there were so many other interesting choices” or “YOU COULD HAVE GONE WITH A GLAZED BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT I WOULD HAVE WANTED” so he was like, “NO ONE SAID WE ONLY HAD TO GET 6 I CAN GO BACK IN RIGHT NOW AND GET MORE” and I was like, “I BET YOU WOULDN’T” so he DID and the rational portion of my mind, hidden under layers of spicy ire and roiling rage, whispered, “But we don’t need this many donuts, just be happy with the ones you got” but by now, OH YOU BETTER BUT I WAS RUNNING ON PRINCIPLE AND PRINCIPLE ALONE.

So he came out with a bag and I said, “Which ones did you get” and he said, “Mango coconut and lemon-filled” which made me scream about how I hate mango-flavored things and I don’t like filled donuts and now he was like YOU CAN SHOVE THEM STRAIGHT UP YOUR ASS THEN but of course he didn’t actually say that because he knows better but I could tell by the way he was gripping the steering wheel and waggling his mustache that this is what he was thinking.

Add to this the fact that he had to find us a park of some sort where we could eat the fucking things that no one even wanted at this point because ANGRY FAMILY and that in and of itself was a real folly. He found one park but the road to the entrance was blocked off and then he couldn’t find another way in and had to keep driving until he finally found a frisbee golf park and we were just like, “OH MY FUCKING GOD, WHATEVER, THIS IS FINE” and as Chooch and I started to walk to a pavilion, we turned around JUST IN TIME to see Henry take the box of donuts out of the car and promptly drop two of them on the ground as the box came apart in his hands.

And there were witnesses too! It was a grand fucking display! And then he picked them up and put them back in the box while were screaming at him not to!!

“THEY ARE FINE,” he said, brushing GRAVEL AND PROBABLY BITS OF DOG POOP AND DEAD WORMS off of them. OMFG I HATE HIM SO MUCH is what Chooch and I both said in tandem, sounding like twin teenagers.

And then even the ones that didn’t hit the ground got all fucked up. The only one that I really wanted, a strawberry glazed, now had NO GLAZE on it because it all smeared off onto the back of HENRY’S FUCKING BOSTON CREAM.

OH MY GOOD LORD, I WAS SO LIVID. I donut even like donuts that much but for some reason, I had so much invested in these fucking things. AND GUESS WHAT? THEY WERE NOT EVEN ALL THAT! They just tasted like ok donuts. Like, I wouldn’t complain if someone handed me one while I was enjoying a nice hot cup of coffee in the morning, but these were definitely not worth skipping a real breakfast for.

Oh and the ones Henry dropped? THEY WERE THE TWO THAT CHOOCH AND I PICKED AND WERE EXCITED TO TRY. (One was blueberry maple and one was blueberry lemon. By the time Henry scraped all of the Road off of them, all that was left was two blueberry cake donuts with no glaze or icing, aka the parts that made us want them.)

But thank god Henry’s Boston cream was unharmed!!

[Chooch’s review was, “They were alright. I mean, there was nothing that great about them.”]

I realize this was a really stupid thing to want to break up with a man over, and perhaps we can call it projection or whatever, but I’m over it now and even woke Henry up from his nap to stand above him (he always gets so scared when he opens his eyes and sees me looming above him) and say through hysterical, guttural giggles, “I’m not sorry about Saturday night because I was valid in my feelings and will not let you gaslight me, but I am sorry for being mad at you about the Boston cream donut.”

He just stared at me and slowly said, “Ok….” presumably because he was waiting for me to draw the steak knife from behind my back.

Oh and by the way, these were vegan donuts and Henry had no idea until I mentioned, hours later, that Donut Run doesn’t even come close to matching Onion Maiden’s vegan donuts. AND they have interesting and fancy flavors that are actually good (like matcha and rose!) and don’t make me feel sick afterward.

And that’s all. My post about donuts. In case you were wondering, when I do get in the mood for a donut, my go-to’s are SUGAR and GLAZED. Rarely do I fuck with cream or jelly-filled, but I might do a sourdough or blueberry cake if I’m feeling like stepping out of my comfort zone. You feel me?

Hello. It’s 7:42am and we are about to depart from our luxurious gravel driveway in Brookline to begin our little weekend road trip to Washington DC and Maryland, aren’t you so excited. Originally we were just going to go to Maryland on Sunday to see if we have better luck at that Six Flags but then we decided to make a weekend of it and visit DC since NONE OF US EVER HAVE if you can believe that. We were supposed to go in 2019 the day after the Super M concert but Chooch was all, “wah I have a test and I can’t miss school!” Ugh. Scholastic Chooch is annoying.

As usual, refresh for new updates throughout the day OR DON’T this is a free country.

Henry is already so annoying. He was wearing a white shirt with stains on it and I called him out on it before we left so then we had to wait for to rifle through his pile of Faygo shirts before he decided on an ugly gray button-down that I hate and I was wailing, “why can’t you just have a cool T-shirt collection like normal people this is so dumb!” I literally can’t stand it.

7:53am: only made it two miles before HNC texted henry and said, “you’re probably driving but call me when you can” and now I’m panicking because what if it’s about the squirrels and henry is like I AM NOT CALLING HIM BACK WITH YOU TWO IN THE CAR. I WILL CALL HIM WHEN WE STOP AT SHEETZ. So now I guess I will stew in my anxiety until Sheetz.

8:28am: Obligatory Sheetz stop. I got the Protein Showdown like I always do but Henry called it the Protein Showtime and it’s not even that big of a deal, I admit, but Chooch and I are heckling him hard.

8:33am: BIG UPDATE. Henry called back HNC at my incessant urging and apparently a piece of slate fell off his roof and hit his car and he wanted to know if anyone heard it. Henry said no but Chris should have just called me because I HEARD SOMETHING. We could have masterminded a great conspiracy theory together. Hopefully he’s not going to blame the squirrels because I actually think Mr Gray Guy may have been the culprit.

9:25am: we just crossed over the Youghiogheny reservoir thingie and Chooch said, “that looks like Bambi water” whatever the fuck that means and then Baekhyun’s “Bambi” came on Spotify.

That’s all.

10:07am: Hello from the Love’s restroom. Nothing to report. It was crowded so I couldn’t take my traditional road trip bathroom selfie. Then I came out and appear to have lost my family.

Found them, call off the APB.

You can always count on Love’s for clean bathrooms and gross accessories.

11:19am: there was all this traffic because of a truck that was trying to move over and no one was letting him and there was all this maniacal swerving happening. Henry was like turning inside out on his mad effort to defend the truck driver so I said, “why don’t you just pull over and give him a hug. Maybe you could…BUMP DOLLIES.” And then I was choking on my mirth as usual, and henry was pursing his lips trying not to give me the satisfaction of emitting even a sliver of a laugh.

“Those kinds of truck drivers don’t even use dollies,” was his eventual comeback. He sure showed me. Truly.

12:02pm: ugh I had to pee in a legit gas station bathroom:

Henry was like IT WAS NOT THAT BAD and ok at least the toilet was clean but I was afraid Jason Voorhees was going to burst out of that closet like the Kool-Aid Man but bloodier and less fruity.

Also I wish I was this skinny:

12:15pm: Air Supply’s Even the Nights Are Better just came on the Yacht Rock station and I screamed REMEMBER WHEN WE SANG THIS AT NORAEBANG IN KOREA to Henry and both he and Chooch mumbled no which is surprising since I sang my part with such epic gusto.

On the metro thingie getting ready to go to DC and Henry has already caused a commotion trying to get the metro cards thank god the fare booth recognized us a TOURISTS (Henry’s wearing his man purse, so) and came over to help us before henry made a fatal mistake.

It us.

I made Chooch sit in front of us in case I want to chat with him and that already had him set off so then when I told him to take our picture, HOO BOY.

2:04pm:

3:08pm: have had many arguments with SON OF THE YEAR so far but the best one was when he insisted that presidents don’t live in the White House ok cook on.

Also, I hate scooters.

3:36pm: I like to read up on cities before I go there but nothing I read or watched could have prepared me for the actual assault of ice cream trucks and their demonic competing music box sirens.

4:04pm: BIBIBOP STOP

SOOOO satisfying like bibimbap but make it a salad.

4:35pm: We’re enjoying all the little pride parades cruising around town and Henry said WOW THEY ARE EVERYWHERE and I thought he meant like OMG THE GAYS but he was talking literally about the VEHICLES in the parade.

Also how perfect is this tree it’s like God drew it in his mind and projected it here.

5:54pm: on the metro back to Maryland. It was a full day of walking and I am ready to not do that anymore and go enjoy a nice iced coffee somewhere and relax, my peepee heads.

Here are some pictures of chooch and me being blinded by the fiery sun in front of the Capitol. Also, we almost got ice cream from one of the pushy ice cream trucks near there but henry only had a $1 cash on him!!!! What a cheapfuck!

6:19pm: Just got back to the car! When we got back to the New Carrollton station, chooch and I noticed a girl who was also on the same metro as us going into DC! I was like “what are the odds?!” And Chooch said, “I dunno like 5 or 10” whatever that means.

Oh and just for the record I wasn’t ready to leave but Henry and Chooch were like “no, it’s time.” I can’t wait until I’m older so I can travel with my friends! Literally the same thing I wrote in every vacation journal growing up!

6:32pm: We’re at our hotel and it’s across from Mary Main cannabis dispensary and Henry said, “in case you Wanna get hiiiiiiigh” and the way he said it made both Chooch and me very uncomfy.

7:02pm: omg Henry thought the AC was broke and went to the front desk so they sent him back with A Guy who was like “you have to turn it on” and chooch and I were holding in our giddy squeals then the front desk called and Chooch picked up AND DIDNT SAY ANYTHING bc he doesn’t know how to use a real phone??!! So he threw the receiver at henry. It was a whole thing.

7:17pm: Henry did NOT go here because he wasn’t good enough.

Anyway, we’re en route to Old Alexandria for ice cream.

8:58pm: so funny story. We did not get ice cream in Virginia because there was nowhere to park in old Alexandria and the other nearby places had massive crowds and I was like, eventually, screaming that I was not waiting in a line of that length for two flavors of custard. So we started to head back in Maryland which had nothing near our hotel and that’s why we ended up in Virginia in the first place, and I found a place on Yelp called Ice Cream Sweet Shoppe which was closing in 30 minutes. We managed to make it there and THE JOKE IS ON ME, U GUYS, because it was a fairly dingy joint in a rundown shopping center in a sketchy area, slinging those ubiquitous Hershey flavors. Don’t get me wrong, Hershey ice cream is legit tasty and the flavor options are staggering, but I could walk down the street from my house and get this same ice cream from our neighborhood ice cream shop, Scoops. When we’re in other cities, we want real local shit, you know??

But the young guy scooping for us was super nice and pleasant so it wasn’t a total bust.

I got Llamalicious and then traded Henry for his Rocky Road because mine was good but just too CLOYING. (Cake batter with ribbons of frosting.) Henry almost didn’t have anything to trade me because he initially LEFT HIS ICE CREAM IN THE SHOP.

What a fucking experience. Now Henry hates Virginia and also this part of Maryland where he keeps missing exits and really no one is to blame for that but him.

[ETA, the next day: so I never officially signed off on this fucking live account because after we got back to the hotel I just snapped, had a psychological meltdown, because the hotel was so awful and loud and the night just totally unraveled and I was like I MIGHT KILL MYSELF not even making light of suicide but being extremely transparent and honest here. Anyway, it was pretty bad there, and overflowed into the morning but now I am better thanks for asking.]

I don’t think anyone is surprised to know that I read a ton of books by Asian authors on regular days, no prompt needed, but there is something about the challenge to read ONLY these types of books for an entire month that makes me stupidly giddy because I am a simple, simple person. And with May being Asian American Pacific Islander month, it’s the perfect time to broaden your horizons, learn about other cultures, and open your eyes to the FUCKING MADDENING RACISM AND MICROAGGRESSIONS that other people live through every day.

There are various readathons out there with an array of prompts, but I honestly just like to try and jam in books from as many different Asian countries as possible, translated works, memoirs, graphic novels, horror, thriller, romance. Gimme it all.

I went hard this year, reaching 18 books by the end, but not as hard as last year which had me finishing something like 26 or 28 books by the end!? HOW!? SRSLY HOW DID I DO THAT.

Anyway, here are the first nine books I read in May!

1. Leave the World Behind – Rumaan Alam

Um, what a wild start to the readathon. So, this is a thriller but it’s a slow motherfucking burn. There was so much build-up and tension, the kind that gives you a kink in your neck because you were sitting in a weirdly contorted, bracing-for-things-to-take-a-turn position.

I can’t really say if I liked it as a whole but the way it ended really satisfied my literary side but I bet Rumaan Alam would think I was an uncultured dumbo if we ever sat down for a conversation, that’s for dam sure.

2. No One Can Pronounce My Name – Rakesh Satyal

I LOVED THIS BOOK. I LOVED EVERY FUCKING CHARACTER. We follow two leads: Harit and Ranjana, two unrelated Indian Americans whose lives eventually cross paths and their friendship is everything. I LAUGHED, I CRIED, ETC ETC. But honestly – white people need to get a fucking grip when it comes to pronouncing names, honestly. People of different ethnicities should not have to change their real name to fucking BOBBY or JOHNNY in order to make it easier for dumb white people. We need to put in the fucking effort.

3. Rent a Boyfriend – Gloria Chao

This was very predictable but really charming, and all the food references made me so hungry. But basically, our main girl is going home to visit her Taiwanese parents and hires a fake boyfriend through a legit service called Rent for your ‘Rents, in an effort to get them off her back in regards to  the REALLY SHITTY GUY they want her to marry. But evidently, renting a boyfriend is a very real thing in some Asian countries to alleviate the pressure put upon women by their parents to marry.

4. The Way of the Househusband Vol. 1

I’m not a big manga person, but this one was so fucking cute and I loved the illustrations. It’s about a former Yakuza (Japanese gangster) who is now a househusband and it was just so pure. Again, I’m not a big manga person but I could see myself continuing on with this series!

5. Know My Name – Chanel Miller

Hi. I started crying just by typing out the title of this fucking powerful, strong, beautiful, sad, maddening, depressing, empowering, fierce, inspiring memoir. Good lord, if you haven’t already read this, please do yourself a favor and pick up a copy.

In case you don’t know who Chanel Miller is, she is the “Emily Doe” read out loud in court a letter she wrote to the motherfucking Stanford swimmer who sexually assaulted her and left her next to a dumpster. Chanel Miller is a hell of a writer and she will be your tour guide into the depths of hell she experienced during the trial. The way she was dragged and pushed around was nearly as bad as the crime itself. Just so infuriating to read and you know I’m not a hugger, but I wanted to hug Chanel a million different times while reading this. If you pick it up, be prepared to want to set men on fire, to openly weep, and to march up to your teenager’s room and scream reminders at his face about how you will not have his back if he EVER DOES ANYTHING LIKE THIS TO ANOTHER PERSON REGARDLESS OF GENDER, CONSENT CONSENT CONSENT.

Also, I listened to this on audio because Chanel narrates it herself and Henry listened to parts of it too when we were in the car and even Henry, milquetoast white man, was like WTF IS THIS INJUSTICE and I was like WELCOME TO BEING A WOMAN, HENRY.

Alsox2, do not read the one star reviews. Just, if you have even a sliver of feminism & girl power in your being, avoid the negative reviews because it is VICTIMEBLAMEVILLE up in there.

6. Interior Chinatown – Charles Yu 

Seriously one of the most creative books I’ve read. It’s written as a screenplay for a procedural cop show called Black and White, where the two main cops are, you know, Black and white, and our protagonist Willis is desperate to become a character greater than Generic Asian Guy. It plays on Hollywood tropes and Asian stereotypes to illustrate what it really feels like to be Asian American, in a super inventive way. Definitely will be picking up more by Charles Yu.

7. Days of Distraction – Alexandra Chang 

Not to be stupidly punny here but while I enjoyed this book overall, I did oftentimes find myself distracted/losing interest. It’s about a woman in her early 20s, working in the tech field (her job sounded so fucking stressful and terrible and I have actually been more grateful to be working at a law firm TBH) and then deciding to dump her job and move cross country with her boyfriend. I think I would have found this extremely relatable if I were younger and less settled in my life, but I did enjoy the way this book was written – almost in LiveJournal-esque vignettes. There is also some exploration on biracial dating (the boyfriend is a white guy) that was really interesting from an outsiders viewpoint, how he just wasn’t able to see the racism where it was so obvious to her.

But yeah, if you’re looking for a book full of action, this is not it. If you like reading lots of internal monologues while you’re living through your own quarterlife crisis, you gon’ like this one.

8. A Sweet Mess – Jayci Lee

Man, I’m so mad that I didn’t like this as much as I thought I would and I spent more time thinking about all the ways it could have been better instead of actually enjoying the story. Also, it’s a romance and I’m not a big romance reader and can be super picky about that shit. But the gist of this is that our main lady owns a bakery in a small town in California, and then, by way of a SWITCHEROO, some very famous food critic passes through town and eats a disgusting cake from said bakery and eviscerates the baker in whatever famous magazine he writes for and now the bakery is losing business and even though the critic has since realized there was a mistake, he refuses to renege his review because he has never before done that and has to KEEP HIS INTREGITY, PEOPLE. It’s such a weak storyline. Anyway he finds a different way to make it up to her by getting her a spot on his famous friend’s cooking show that is about to start production but oh yeah did I tell you that he had a one-night stand with the baker before he wrote the review (they didn’t know who each other were at the time) and so now they have to FIGHT THEIR FEELINGS for each other because HIS CAREER WILL BE RUINED if the public finds out he SLEPT WITH HER and then gave her a spot on the show.

It was pretty….lame.

Weirdly though, they go to some place called Moonstone Beach which apparently is a real place that I had never heard of and then I recently read another book that also mentioned it so now I guess I need to go to Moonstone Beach, let’s go.

9. Last Night at the Telegraph Club – Malinda Lo

How beautiful is this cover, tho. And also a historical fiction that’s actually interesting and informative with a Sapphic coming-of-age romance? Bro, put my name on that sign-up sheet behind Todd’s desk, which is where the sign-up sheets always were when we worked in an office and had food parties.

Anyway, this is set in SF’s Chinatown during the Red Scare and centers around a lesbian club called the Telegraph Club, and it was fucking wonderful.

***

OK there’s the first 9. I’m tired of typing and I really suck at book reviews, but I liked all of these except for A Sweet Mess and if I had to recommend one it would be Know My Name – support Chanel Miller. She is really making an impact, so fuck you, Brock Turner, you piece of shit.

Oh SHOOT are you guys in for a treat (“You’re not,” says Henry). I found Vacations with Erin Vol. 3 in the attic (thankfully before the Man in the Attic came back for seconds, j/k I think one of my dogs chewed on this when I still lived at home) the other day when I was looking for old books to drop off at one of the Little Free Libraries down the street from me and so tonight I flipped open to a random page and started to read aloud to Henry, which is truly his favorite thing ever, listening to me fast-talk through super dramatic episodic capsules of my youth.

I landed on a page from when I was in Cordoba with my aunt Sharon in 1992 and she kept ditching me (I was 12!!!) for other people she liked better in our tour group. OK, here it goes:

***

[Sharon’s] back and she wants me to go on a stupid gay [EDITOR’S NOTE: sorry!! I was 12 and this was the 90s, I don’t use that word in that way anymore!!!!] carriage ride w/ her, Janet, Alisha, & Athena. NOT!! I wanted to go for a walk not a group gathering on a carriage. SHE can go, since she ♥s deciding things for the both of us. Well, I’m sick of her little ideas. She can go mingle by herself w/o me. ALone. She won’t even notice that I’m not there. I’d feel left out like I normally do when we’re w/ THEM. [EDITOR’S NOTE: I vaguely remember Alisha and Athena being in their early 20s and getting ALL OF THE ATTENTION everywhere we went and me, as a spoiled Leo, could not fucking handle the injustice of it all] Sharon would probably treat me like a child like she usually does when THEY’RE around. I wish she’d just leave. Good, there she goes. Everytime we’re gonna go somewhere by ourselves, we usually end ↑ in a group. I absolutely hate that. I wish Pappap & Grandma were here. Then I wouldn’t be so bored. I wish I could call them, but it would cost them too much. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Um, my Pappap was literally a millionaire, lol.] And I don’t wanna complain to them anyways. Hey, she’s back. Oh, she just went to the bathroom. You’d think she’d take the hint since I’m not talking to her. Why doesn’t she LEAVE? I could have stayed home & she wouldn’t have cared. She just uses me as a companion until like, the first day. Cuz then she makes frenz & totally drops me & acts like I’m just a mere child & she’s like my guardian or something [EDITOR’S NOTE: I mean, this was basically the nature of our relationship, so….] A babysitter – that’s it. Oh, now she’s trying to suck ↑.

Ugh. I was laying ↓ & she came over & said, “Are you mad at me? Tell the truth. Do you feel like I’m neglecting you?” She wanted the truth so I said, “Since day one” & she goes, “THEN TO HELL W/ THIS VACATION. I THINK THIS IS THE END OF YOU & I GOING ON VACATIONS TOGETHER.” She has quite a lot of nerve! She’s gone now but before she left she kept trying to suck ↑ by asking me if I wanted a churro. Ha! Yeah rite. Give it ↑. She’s trying to get me even fatter but I don’t know why. Aren’t I fat enuf?

Well, it’s only 10:00 but I might as well go to sleep now – what else is there to do in this dungeon cell?

—THE NEXT DAY—

Today we leave for Madrid. A six hour drive. Let’s see how long I last. Last nite I finally fell asleep after many distractions. First, the TV kept going ↑ in volume, & then Sharon’s makeup bag fell off the bathroom counter & it was SO loud. “Elvira” was on & it brought back memories of how Daddy used to make us watch her Halloween special every year. I don’t know what time Sharon came back. She was probably having so much—-

***

And then it continues on into VACATIONS WITH ERIN: VOL 4, which I do not have access to right now because it’s tucked away in a trunk and it hurts my back to open it so CLIFFHANGER. But yeah, that was a little peek into how fantastic it was to travel with me back then! (Somewhere, Henry is reading this, eyebrows a’quiver, thinking, “BACK THEN??”)

Wow, that was fun. I like transcribing. Maybe I will do this more often and then you guys can feel just as tortured and violated as Henry does when I cry out VACATION JOURNAL STORY TIME! and he gets this really scared rabbit look in his eyes. His favorite part of tonight’s story time was when I got to the part where I found out Janet, a lady on our tour, says the word “decrepit” too and then I interrupted my reading to scream, “I USED TO SAY THAT WORD ALL THE TIME DO YOU KNOW WHY BECAUSE SCOTT D*MBAUGH SAID THAT WORD ONCE IN 7TH GRADE AND I WAS OBSESSED WITH HIM AND SO I STARTED SAYING IT TOO AND IT BECAME MY FAVORITE WORD” and then I went back to the reading the next line which was LITERALLY, “I thought me and Scott were the only ones who knew what that word meant! SIKE!”

LOL I WAS SO OBSESSED WITH HIM (I mean, he was the first person I stalked, so) THAT I EVEN NAME-DROPPED HIM IN MY VACATION JOURNAL WHEN I WAS THOUSANDS OF MILES AWAY IN SPAIN. That is true, dedicated obsession. Also, I stuck an asterisk in his last name up there because I wrote about him once on here and one of his CO-WORKERS FOUND IT and told him!? AND THE BLOG POST INCLUDED A FUCKING PICTURE OF AN ASSIGNMENT THAT I KEPT WHEN HE WAS MY SCIENCE PARTNER IN 8TH GRADE BECAUSE I WANTED TO ALWAYS REMEMBER HIS HANDWRITING AND NOW HE KNOWS. That was cool. So cool. Really cool. I’m cool. Totally fucking cool. It’s cool.

Going to google him now TTYL.

I pulled Chooch away from his stupid “whatever it is he does on the computer with headphones on” for an entire 5 minutes BECAUSE I AM THE WORSTEST MOMMY IN THE WORLD. Literally he acted like I asked so much of him and honestly these teenage years are killing me dead, you guys. Killing me fucking deadzo. All I wanted was one good picture of us jumping across the street at the church for something I’m working on, not actually making him GO INSIDE THE CHURCH for MASS.

ALTHOUGH MAYBE THIS IS WHAT NEEDS TO START HAPPENING.

I mean, look at that face! The Pet Shop Boys could have used it for the cover of the What Have I Done To Deserve This single.

What else fun Erin&Chooch stories do I have to share…oh! Here’s one. We were walking down the street the other day and his friend’s little brother was outside. I think he’s like 3 or 4 or who cares. Anyway, he called out, “It’s Riley and the Blond Girl!” and this cracked me up because I think only HNC and his wife know my name out of everyone who lives on this street and I have lived here almost the longest, so that’s cool, being this popular. But also, the Blond Girl and not Riley’s Mom? Kills me.

Oh here’s a weird one. Last Friday, the radio in my bedroom was playing “Electric Avenue” and I almost knocked on Chooch’s bedroom door to tell him that the song he likes was on the radio but then I stopped at the last minute and thought, “No. It’s not this song. It’s that other song” and I couldn’t even remember how it went in my head, except that the word “stride” was in it and I was like, “OH WELL, IT WILL COME TO ME LATER PROBABLY” and I went back downstairs. A few minutes later, LITERALLY JUST A FEW MINUTES LATER, LIKE TWO SONGS LATER PROBABLY, I had to run back up to my room for something AND THE SONG I COULDN’T REMEMBER WAS ON! It’s that “Nothing’s Gonna Break My Stride” song from the 80s, so this time I *did* knock on Chooch’s door and I told him the whole story and then finished it with, “And now that song is on!!!”

Chooch just looked at me, sneered, and said, “Well, I do actually like Electric Avenue too so nice try.”

SEE THIS IS WHAT I DEAL WITH and as I type this, it occurs to me that he only talks to me this way because he has spent his formative years listening to me talk to Henry that way, so….good job, Blond Girl.

Then over the weekend, the same radio station played both songs again, just in reverse order, three songs apart from each other AND I FUCKING FLIPPED OUT. Also, this same station plays American Pie (one of my most hated songs) nearly every day and for what purpose?!!? I don’t understand how a radio station that’s supposed to be playing a mixed bag of oldies and current hits continuously plays the same old songs when there are like millions to choose from – you’re a fucking variety station! Does someone need to give them the definition of variety?! I only keep the radio on because it comforts me to hear wafting away up there in the distance while I’m working (Henry always marvels at how you can barely hear it downstairs but the moment one of my jams comes on – like “In The Air Tonight” – I will stop everything and holler, “STFU MY JAM’S ON!”

I guess it’s time to go back to playing Spotify at night, though because fuck that station, also the DJ in the morning is a real asshole IN MY OPINION.

Anyway, do you like our shirts!?! I made Chooch wear that one to coordinate with me. Mine is from Noo Works and his is from some alley boutique in Harajuku OMG wow we are cool people.

This was the “Winner” of all the pictures. It’s annoying because we can never jump in tandem.

Well, that’s all I got. I started watching “Feel Good” on Netflix and now I would rather drink my iced coffee (Henry bought himself an iced coffee maker for his birthday which is great because now he can use his birthday present to make me iced coffee, I love when I win other people’s birthdays) and watch that before passing out because it’s 875457 degrees in my house and I just exercised.

ETA: several hours I came up to go to bed and that fucking Break My Stride song was on again!!! Was it even played that much in the 80s?? WHY NOW?

I am super selfish every year on Henry’s birthday (yes, just that one day) because it always rubs in my face the fact that he is so much older than me and I know, anything can happen, but it still sends a torrent of morbid thoughts through my dumb head.

Add to that the fact that I went walking in Jefferson Memorial Friday morning and Sunday morning, and the same old man was sitting in front of what I assume was his wife’s grave, reading a newspaper and drinking coffee. I just lost it when I saw him Sunday morning. Simultaneously the sweetest and saddest thing ever and it made me SORT OF CARE ABOUT HENRY ugh.

I guess I like him. I dunno. SHUT UP.

Anyway, back to Henry’s birthday, I guess.

Sigh. Unlike me, Henry never really wants to do anything big and bombastic. So we ate lunch at home and then went to Settlers Cabin for some hiking action.

Thank god Henry found one of his favorite things on the trail – A BENCH. He loves him a good bench. Especially at amusement parks.

Chooch was being super annoying and I told him to just go walk by himself. It was 90 degrees and my moist skin glaze was giving me BITCH POWER. I guess I should explain that it wasn’t that he was trying to talk to us about his life or anything like that, but that he was playing POKEMON GO and narrating the whole process which really gets under my skin for some reason I guess because it’s something that I AM NOT A PART OF.

But honestly, we had fun screaming, “HI BUDDY!” to all of the squirrels and then we saw a shit-ton of chipmunks which is endlessly interesting to me because Henry and I were just discussing not too long ago that we haven’t seen chipmunks…around town in years upon years. Like, I’m talking about the 90s maybe!

I thought that maybe we were both nuts but then Haley mentioned the same thing when she was over here several weeks ago and I was like IF HALEY HAS NOTICED THIS THEN IT MUST BE CREED. I finally felt inspired to google that shit after our hike and apparently it’s a true story and has to do with food supply, etc etc boring snore nature stuff.

Anyway, I declared that we shall call chipmunks “chingu” which is Korean for “friend,” so similar to Buddy but MAYBE COOLER? Sorry, Buddy.

Then we emerged into this clearing where the trail split and had no idea which way to go so we dumbly listened to Chooch and then got lost, which prompted Henry and Chooch to look at their respective maps on their phones and scream at each other and then Chooch was like, “THIS IS THE PATH HERE,” flashing his phone at Henry, to which Henry cried, “YOU’VE BEEN USING THE POKEMON GO MAP?!?!?!?!” But it’s OK that Chooch got us lost, you guys, because he found a fucking Pokestop in doing so.

Spoiler: we made it out of the woods.

THEN WE GOT ICE CREAM. I can’t remember the last time I had a good old fashioned soft serve?!

Birthday Boy got a FRUITY PEBBLE blizzard-type thing (it was called a snowstorm?) and I was jealous because I didn’t know that existed there and perhaps that’s what I would have also ordered. :(

Then I made him stand by this wall because matchy-matchy. Then later that night, Henry made us sing to him ugh:

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Later that night I was still stressing out about this dying thing. Panicked, I said to Henry, “I hope I die first. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t know HOW TO DO ANYTHING. YOU HAVE TO TEACH ME OMG UGHHHH!!!”

Henry calmly replied, “I’ve tried.”

Overall, I think it was an OK day but then, it wasn’t my birthday lol.

I was going to live-blog this day but then I didn’t and now I wish I did.

After we bailed on Six Flags, we drove to Buffalo (maybe the outskirts?) to a vegan junk food joint called Big Mood.

Checking out local vegan places is my favorite thing to do when we go on road trips!

Big Mood’s dining room is open but we opted to order online and take the food to a park because it was such a beautiful day. After we placed the order, we had 20 minutes to kill so we decided to walk around the area, which had some pretty impressive motherwhomping mansions. As usual, we didn’t wait for Henry so he had to hustle to catch up. He’s used to it.

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We stopped briefly to ogle two bunnies in one of the yards. Henry and I continued walking but of course, Chooch lingered a bit longer. Next thing we knew, he was being interrogated by a man in a car. All I heard was Chooch nervously say, “No, I was just looking at the rabbits. Rabbits. The rabbits in the yard.” And then he ran to catch up with us.

“WTF was that?” I asked, and Chooch said it was the HOMEOWNER who just happened to be coming home AT THAT EXACT TIME, rolling up beside Chooch on the sidewalk to slap him with an authoritative, “Can I help you?”

Leave it to Chooch to make rabbit-watching look suspicious. It would have been better if this happened when Chooch was pulling the waistband of his jeans away from his body to demonstrate to us how big they are (see that previous post where I recommend that he wear a belt and he acted like this was the dumbest suggestion of all time), because to a casual observer who took us for burglars, it looked like Chooch was showing us all the goods he stole and stashed in his pants.

We left that street (it wasn’t even a gated community or anything so dude needs to step off) and rejoined the riffraff on a main street. There was a buffalo statue in front of a building and I said to Chooch, “Go stand by that buffalo.” What follows is real life dialogue from that moment, which is 100% accurate because my phone had been accidentally recording for over 5 minutes after Chooch got yelled at.

C: No

Me: Yeah.

C: No.

Me: Henry, go stand by the buffalo.

C: Yeah, you.

H: I…stood by something today already.

C: I ALREADY STOOD BY TWO THINGS! YOU!

H: You stand by it.

C: No. You didn’t stand by anything.

H: I stood by the…..[indistinguishable murmuring].

C: OK COOL (this is our go-to, ‘fuck you, we’re done talking’ sign-off)

H: *says something provoking that I can’t make out*

C: I literally….It’s your turn. I got the fountain picture. Go.

M: You two are both assholes.

H: I’ll do it.

C: Yeah, now you’ll do it. (As we already walked past it!!)

H: Well, now she’s doing that thing she does where she pouts.

M: That’s not what I’m doing.

It was 100% what I was doing.

Then Chooch found some dried out seed pods from a tree and we talked about that for a while.

Got our food!! I got this Sante Fe chicken sandwich and adored the fact that they call their fake chicken patties “zero clucks.” We drove for a while until we found a good place to sit at a park (on bleachers with like a constant swarm of people milling past us so of course I was like THESE PPL ARE MAKING ME NERVOUS and Henry and Chooch just rolled their eyes because oh look, Erin’s being Erin). Oh man, this sandwich was delicious and FILLING.

Stupidly, we wanted to venture out to the American side of the Falls after this, forgetting that it was a holiday weekend on the tail-end of a pandemic so….yeah. That place a  mad house and we weren’t willing to pay $30 to park so we figured it was time to call it a day and start the drive back home, which was fun for Henry because at this point, Chooch and I were fucking SLAP HAPPY. The only thing Henry hates more than Chooch and I fighting is Chooch and I laughing so hard we are either puking (Chooch) or pants-peeing (me).

Henry had to get gas, leaving us hyenas in the car. Henry’s phone was connected so when he paid for the gas, the text message from the bank popped up on the car screen with a prompt to reply, so I hit the microphone icon and frantically tried to scream FUCK YOU as Henry’s reply to the bank’s text, but it kept coming out like FWAHAHAHAHAHAHA YOOHOOHOOHOOHOOHOHOHOHOUIWUQUP, launching Chooch and me down a laughing spiral for a good hour, making me feel like I popped blood vessels in my eyes; Henry, meanwhile, didn’t laugh once, but did try to kick us out of the car once.

Then we went to the NY Tourist Center which was fanc-ay!

The lighting in the bathroom was excelsiur.

I tried to hide from Henry while he was going to the bathroom but somehow, when I was still outside running to a different entrance to use for a sneak attack, Henry and Chooch managed to leave the bathroom and even proceeded to “fake leave” me behind, nearly running me over in the process when I came flying out of the building. All of this happened after I started to lurch at a man coming out of the bathroom who was definitely not Henry and then I had to play it off like I had just tripped on my way to look blankly at the vending machine.

Went to Six Flags, had more fun at a tourist center. Sounds just like us!

I was even a super sweetie and drove the last hour so Henry could sleep

***

The next day, I mentioned something about the drive home and Henry said, “You mean when you were doing 85?”

I paused. “Well…the speed limit was 70, so.”

“You were doing 85!” Henry reiterated, his tone flecked with slightly more hysteria this time.

“Oh my god, were you spying on me?”I cried, and you can imagine the incredulity.

“My eyes would automatically fly open every time the car lurched forward,” he said, and by now I was bored of the conversation and only like talking about myself when it doesn’t involve someone accusing me of doing something wrong, THANK YOU V. MUCH. Luckily, it’s easy to flip the switch on Henry. You usually just have to point out the window and yell, “OH LOOK AT THAT PLANE” and then he’ll be all concerned with trying to identify it. This also works with birds, cars, 1970s porn plots…

Then Henry and I went for a walk at the Homewood Cemetery on actual Memorial Day and saw this zombie ground hog, which was basically the highlight of the whole weekend for me:

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Yaaaaaaaa, it’s Friday and I spent all of my energy power-walking in the cemetery, working, crying over The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (I’m like 5 years behind on that hype-wagon), more power-walking, and then exercising so here are five songs that I have really been liking lately.

CIX – Cinema

Chooch and I saw them at a living taping of The Show in Korea and I desperately hope that we get to see them again!

AB6IX – Close

The vibe of this video, though.

Olivia Rodrigo – Good 4 U

BTS fans hate her so I love her.

SHINee – I Want You

Not a new song but one that always makes me want to go run through a meadow or whatever.

Chiodos – The Words ‘Best Friend’ Become Redefined

I put on one of Chooch’s old (suuuuuper old – it was an XS!!!) Chiodos shirts yesterday and felt overcome with nostalgia so naturally I had to cue up some of my fave Chiodos songs while wearing it. Man, I miss that scene SO MUCH sometimes, but I don’t miss the person I was back then AT ALL.

(Yes, it’s signed! So it doesn’t get worn much.)

BONUS: Chuck Mangione – Feels So Good

I got a Chuck Mangione pin in the mail yesterday (for another dumb kitchen project, stay tuned or tune out) and it prompted me to go into full-fledge dance party mode when Chooch had the audacity to say that he didn’t know who Chuck MANJONE (his failed pronunciation) was. I was doing a REALLY GOOD horn impression too and Chooch shouted, “THIS IS SO ANNOYING, I’M MOVING OUT” and the cats were like, “TAKE US WITH YOU.

”

You know what didn’t feel so good though? This whole work week.

On that note, I’m OUTTA HERE.