Unapologetically Mundane » no i really do love ohio

Noel. No-EL. Knoll. NO-uhl.

katie ett — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:00:39 +0000

I’ve met my blogfriend and yours Noel five or six times now. We found each other through a girl I went to high school with, and I was immediately drawn to the way she can write soulfully about seriously provocative issues without turning hippie-dippy or New-Age-y. Noel’s husband was a few years behind me in school, so I was aware of his brother, and he was aware of my cousin, and Noel had been to all of my favourite places in Ohio. Like my hometown. And the one and only pizzeria in it. And the Circleville Pumpkin Show.

Noel gets mad that I sometimes mention our dates here but never show any pictures of us together, so I’m continuing the trend (mostly because I didn’t actually take any pictures of us this time around). Here’s a picture of my best friend, Tracey, holding Noel and Ryan’s son, Silas:

Did you just feel your reproductive system cry out a little? No? Mine, neither, but let me tell you that Silas is twice as cute in person as in pictures, and this was in the rain when he was in need of a nap and had just watched us gnaw on burgers at Max & Erma’s for an hour while he had, like, peas or something.

Later in the week, Tracey and I met Noel again for dinner at The Cheesecake Factory while Ryan watched the kid, and we talked about families and teaching and boys and blogs and boobs. Then we went to see My Week with Marilyn, in which Michelle Williams had my hair, and in which Hermione Granger didn’t get naked, and in which I snorted so loud when Marilyn Monroe announced that Abe Lincoln was her dad.

And thus concludes the December meeting of blogfriends who pronounce their names weirdly.

Happy Bigtime Birthday, Tracey!

katie ett — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:30:52 +0000

I know presents are the reason for the season and all, but I was really back home in Ohio for the past two and a half weeks to celebrate my best friend, Tracey‘s, 30th birthday. While I celebrated my last birthday quietly and with fingers crossed that no one would remember it was my 30th, Tracey celebrated hers with karaoke, gigantic 3-0 candles, and Justin Bieber cupcakes all around:

Tracey pretending that she’s not really into this whole party thing.

Guess who ate these in abundance and wore the Bieber rings without irony. This guy!

This is a hilarious picture until you remember that the noisemakers Tracey bought actually turned out not to make noise.

Only a party at Tracey’s house would include a bowl of just pepperoni.

Tracey totally made this for her husband’s last birthday and not for herself. Just so you know.

Tracey’s husband, Dan, presents Tracey with her cupcakes while Erin serenades her.

Graham is mesmerized by the non-noisemaking noisemakers.

Happy 30th birthday, my best best friend!

You are my life partner, my lab partner, my partner in crime, the wind beneath my wings, my baby bumblebee, the demon seed and the factor!

And I love you.

Merry Christmas + Happy New Year

katie ett — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:00:21 +0000

I’m visiting my family and friends in Ohio until

JANUARY 8TH!

I’m going to get so many presents, eat so many of those sugar cookies with the Hershey’s Kisses pressed into the tops of them, and do so many gay things with my best friend.

Like so:

I’ll miss you, blogfriends!

Deep-Fried Homesickness

katie ett — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:00:37 +0000

Thinking about going home to Ohio in a couple of days for Christmas has me really craving the kind of fair food I can only get at the yearly pumpkin festival in the town next to mine.

Is it wrong that I evidently associate my hometown with deep-frying?

Circleville Pumpkin Show 2011!

katie ett — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 15:00:36 +0000

Kamran’s been bugging me to post pictures of our trip to Ohio for the Circleville Pumpkin Show (mostly to see himself, I imagine), and I guess pumpkins are still in fashion for another week or two before the holiday sales start and my favourite Christmas song begins to wear on me after only a few days, so here’s a recap of our fun:

My best friend, Tracey, has a long-standing tradition with some of her freshman-year college friends of gathering at her house a few towns over on the Friday night of Pumpkin Show and driving down together. We always park in Ted Lewis Park and then walk up the hill to Court Street, which begins the blocks and blocks of closed streets full of vendors selling pumpkin-related everything. On the way, though, we always pass a house that sells pumpkins (on the honor system! adorably quaint!) and has this pumpkin farmer sitting outside:

Tracey, Dayna the ice skater, and Justin-who-convinced-me-to-buy-my-first-Apple-iBook

Before we had even made it one block into the thing, Tracey was already double-fisting a corndog and a bloomin’ potato that we all shared

and then we quickly moved on to calzones that my dad introduced me to a couple of years ago. I recognized the booth because the same wildly-stereotypical white trash woman was working in it, but she’s very nice and slathers the things in butter sauce before giving them to you, so I’m not judging.

We met up with my dad at the church booth where my cousins were selling hot chicken sandwiches (an Ohio phenomenon that involves cooking chicken in its broth, shredding it, and mixing it with, I don’t know, lots of black pepper and weird thickening stuff that gives the broth this kind of gelatinous texture; it’s awesome despite this disgusting characterization) and said embarrassing citypeople things to remind my dad how long I’ve been away from home.

And then he left, and we ate some more.

• deep-fried pickles
• pumpkin whoopie pies
• fried cheese on a stick
• homemade ice cream
• cotton candy
• deep-fried s’more
• deep-fried buckeyes
• apple cider slushes

and plenty more that I’ve forgotten, no doubt.

We visited the six-foot-wide pie and posed in front of the year’s biggest pumpkin (1436 pounds!)

before sidling up to the stretch of tables, where you can buy every kind of gourd imaginable, for the obligatory sexy pumpkin shot:

And then the HOLY CRAP, IS THAT A FACE ON A PUMPKIN? shot:

We could only guess that these things were grown inside of a face mold. They had the texture of the outside of a pumpkin, so they must not have been carved later, but whatever they were, they were creepy as can be.

When we got to the usual pile of various decorative gourds, Kamran picked up one that was especially weirdly-shaped and made a freaky face for me to take a picture of. Well, right at that moment, some big dumb Circlevillian stepped away from whatever meth he was smoking and yelled,

“HEY!!”

Now, if it had been me holding the gourd, I would’ve thrown it smack-dab in the middle of his big empty head and said, “I FLEW HERE FROM NEW YORK CITY FOR THIS THING!! IF ANYONE LOVES THE PUMPKIN SHOW, IT’S ME!! YOU’D BE MORE LIKELY TO BRUSH YOUR TEETH THAN I WOULD BE TO STEAL THIS GOURD, YOU SLOBBERING BEEF-WITTED CANKER-BLOSSOM!!

But it was Kamran holding the gourd, so he quickly put it back down and apologized, and I caught this picture of him halfway between making the funny face and whipping his head around to see his accuser:

The only thing I could do to get revenge on the guy was to continue hanging around the table and taking pictures so he and his redneck cronies were forced to watch us not stealing anything. I never got this sort of treatment before I owned a pleather jacket.

(I really hope I was making this face to be funny and not because I ever really look like that.)

I enjoyed that this picture harkened back to the days of yore when I had prize-winning potatoes as my blog header image but would love to know how anyone can judge what makes a good pie pumpkin without actually using it in a pie:

Tracey and I modeled our pumpkin earrings by Handmade by Sandi maybe slightly too creepily

and then humped Justin for good measure:

At the end of the night, well past the supposed closing time, we made our way back to the cars and couldn’t resist stopping for one last hurrah as we passed the farthest cotton candy/soda stand on the strip. As we stood waiting for Kamran to get his soda, someone noticed one of these wooden cane/stick things that I would say I associate with the Pumpkin Show even more than pumpkin burgers and pumpkin cream puffs and all of those things.

Growing up, we would spend hours at the game where you won these things. For $5, you’d get 50 rings that you’d try to toss onto one of the sticks, which were standing up in holes cut through a long table. There’d be 30 kids standing around the table, trying to ring one of the sticks or hook the crook of one of the canes, which were hanging above the table even more out of reach.

It was such a status symbol when we were teenagers to walk around the Pumpkin Show with a handful of these things, tapping the ground to remind people of how many you had. And also to pretend to be blind. Naturally Kamran wanted one after hearing about how cool having them used to make us, and he finally had his chance in the last moments of the evening:

But of course he actually left it there, because we’re adults who don’t need status symbols to feel good about ourselves. Except for our phones and laptops and vacations and clothes and cars and dinner reservations.

The next night, we came back with my dad, and my sister and her husband drove up from Kentucky, and we did it all over again. And we’ll do it again next year and every year for the rest of our lives.

Adventure Time with Kat and Kam: Columbus, Ohio’s, German Village

katie ett — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:00:02 +0000

The moment Kamran arrived in Ohio on Thursday night, two hours late thanks to the rain, my best friend, Tracey, and I whisked him off to Skully’s to dance until 2 a.m. And then we went home and ate ice cream cake until 3:30.

Tracey told me I’d hate my duckface in this picture, and she’s right

I was still getting over a cold, too, so when his alarm went off that morning at 8, I was seriously dreading having to get up and spend the day in downtown Columbus. But we had decided to have Tracey drop us off in German Village before work so we could revisit some of the places Kamran remembered from the years he lived in Columbus from 2nd to 4th grade. It turned out to be one of the most memorable moments of the trip.

We started at Katzinger’s Delicatessen, where we ate bagels just piled with cream cheese while sitting next to cases loaded with rugalach and barrels brimming with pickles. It’s fitting that I never once went to Katzinger’s while at THE Ohio State University and have never once been to Katz’s deli while in NYC. Someday I’ll learn.

As soon as The Book Loft opened, we walked a few blocks through the cobbled streets and fallen leaves to explore its 32 rooms of books. It’s a creaky old building divided off into themed rooms of every shape and size.

This was the smallest room we found. Kamran thinks its doorway was hidden by a huge map the last time he visited in 2000 on his way from California to Princeton for grad school.

He bought a book on the philosopher Heidegger for himself and a book on lobsters for me, which I realize makes me sound like a child, but it’s a totally serious book!

As we left, a guy from the Human Rights Campaign accosted us and forced me to donate money to the gayz, so we had to go to Starbucks to make ourselves feel like a part of the system again. And not to be a sellout or anything, but you guys, I got a salted caramel mocha thingy, and when I put my cup down on the table next to my extra-plush armchair, the sweet caramel began bubbling through the hole in the lid. COME ON. I can’t resist that.

Across the street was the Golden Hobby Shop, which is an old school filled with gifts handmade by senior citizens. Everything seemed underpriced to us, but that may just be six years of NYC shopping talking. We couldn’t figure out how to transport 400 buckeye necklaces and some really creepy-awesome folk art cats back in our suitcases, but I can imagine that this place would be excellent for local Christmas shopping.

On our way to lunch, we saw a green Yoda pumpkin

and a beheaded Brutus Buckeye

and stopped to take pictures of ourselves being badass for posterity:

We made it to Schmidt’s Sausage Haus and Restaurant (excuse me, Sausage Haus und Restaurant) around 1, somehow thinking there wouldn’t be a line on a Friday afternoon.

After a 25-minute walk around the neighborhood, our names were called over the loudspeaker outside, and we were seated at the most adorable old wooden booth for two. We briefly contemplated ordering plated entrees but then realized we’d be idiots not to get the $9.50 ($9.50!!!) buffet, which has four kinds of sausage, two kinds of potato salad, sausage stew, sauerkraut, and everything else German you could want.

We only made it through one plate apiece, but we had a good time doing it:

And of course we saved room for their famous big-as-your-head cream puffs, which we got with pumpkin filling and which they so graciously topped with an extra piece of my very favourite Halloween candy:

I can really only remember going to Schmidt’s once or twice while living in Ohio for twenty-four years, and I’m pretty sure I was a vegetarian at least one of those times, so I wasn’t all that excited when Kamran said he wanted to relive his childhood there. Well, it really struck me while I was there how different and better it is than all of the chain restaurants I want to visit every time I’m back home, and now I know I’m going to want to go back every time I’m in Ohio. I’m still dreaming about that sweet and spicy sausage stew . . .

After filling our bellies, we walked a few blocks to Schiller Park, where we watched dogs run free, climbed the very smallest hill just to run down it, got weirded out by how into things like bones and catnip dogs and cats are, and planned to buy every one of the Victorian houses lining the park’s edges.

Kamran’s only pretending to not be sure about this whole thing

And now you should understand why I love Ohio so much and stop making fun of me.

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I Hate All Kids. Except for This One and This One and This One and That One and That One.

katie ett — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:00:46 +0000

I guess the rule with me is that I don’t like kids unless I know them. Or know their parents. Or have seen pictures of them on a blog. Before I visit my friend Katie, as I do every time I’m home, I secretly start thinking things like, “I don’t feel like seeing kids right now,” and “You know we’re going to start talking about dumb kid stuff the entire time I’m there.” And then I get there and am reminded that I actually love seeing these kids and somehow love talking about dumb kid stuff, too. Weird.

I think it helps that Maria and Baby Evelyn are overwhelmingly outgoing. They were napping when we arrived, and when Katie went to check on them, Maria asked, “Who’s here?” Katie said, “Katie, Tracey, and Kamran,” and Maria said, “I’m scared of Kamran.”

Which is hilarious, because

1) she’s never met Kamran, and
2) approximately three minutes later, they were best friends.

Here are some pictures of them that in no way capture their cuteness:

Maria put on her Halloween costume for us. When you press a button in the crotch of the skirt, it plays classical music. It looks very inappropriate until you figure out what’s going on.

I also had to include the uncropped version of the picture so you can see Evelyn swinging off the side of the piano bench in a short-lived suicide attempt.

I know this is kind of cheesy and unlike me, but I guess even I like to be reassured that babies like me:

No, really, they like the game where their dad, Nick, forces them into a box and puts the lid on, I swear!:

I love Nick’s expression in this one; he seems to be confused by one of his children quietly strangling his other one, as if this doesn’t happen on a daily basis:

For real, you can’t help but love them, right?

Noel. No-EL. Knoll. NO-uhl. (8)
Happy Bigtime Birthday, Tracey! (13)
Circleville Pumpkin Show 2011! (16)
Five Days and Fifty Photos from Ohio (26)
The Best NYC Tour Guide EVER (18)
There is Nothing Hellish About Ohio (29)
Living the Ohio Life at Three Times the Rent (17)
Circleville Pumpkin Show 2010! (21)
Ohio Weekend Photodump! (6)
Fetuses are Still Freaky (4)

Ohio Can Be Summed Up in the Following Two Photos

katie ett — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 18:45:17 +0000

This was me basically the entire time Kamran and I were in Ohio last week:

And this was Kamran:

But he totally had a great time! I think!

Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaany more pictures and stories to come.

Off to the Circleville Pumpkin Show 2011!

katie ett — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 16:00:09 +0000

Remember all of the fun of last year’s Circleville Pumpkin Show? Well, it’s happening times twelve this year, ’cause Kamran’s coming, too!

He lived on the north side of Columbus from 2nd to 4th grade and somehow had never even heard of the Pumpkin Show! You guys, it’s THE GREATEST FREE SHOW ON EARTH. Now, Kamran was a little scared when I warned him about all of the toothless and the morbidly obese people he was going to see, but then when I told him that we, too, can become morbidly obese on pumpkin burgers, frozen pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin milkshakes, pumpkin whoopie pies, pumpkin fudge, and pumpkin corndogs, he was all in.

Apparently half of the states of Kentucky and Missouri are going to be staying with my dad and stepmom this week, so Kamran and I have the pleasure of spending it at my best friend, Tracey’s, house. Which means more Cheesecake Factory, more cat pictures, more visits to the abandoned Chi-Chi’s, and more tubs of cookie dough consumed in their entirety at 4 a.m. than ever before!

Plus, now that I have a DSLR, there will be more faux-artful photographs of pumpkins THAN YOU EVER THOUGHT POSSIBLE!

Thanks to Mrs. Bachelor Girl for having this printed and mailed to me this weekend!
Such a thoughtful way to feed my narcissism.

Am I the only one out-of-my-mind excited about this?

Begin Life in Ohio

plumpdumpling — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 16:00:30 +0000

My friend Julie posted that quote a couple of weeks ago on her blog, and of course it warmed my little heart. But I controlled myself and only used one flourish when illustrating it instead of the glitter and kitten cutouts I really wanted.

Ohio in License Plates

plumpdumpling — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 16:00:19 +0000

Spotted in the Ohio Union at THE Ohio State University during my cousin’s swanky vet school graduation party.

by Jeff Hersey and Robert Swanson

Needed for my apartment. Immediately.

Five Days and Fifty Photos from Ohio

plumpdumpling — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 16:00:30 +0000

Remember how I went to Ohio on June 8th for my cousin Bethany’s graduation from vet school? No? Me neither. But here are some pictures that prove I was there or am at least really good at Photoshop!

My best friend, Tracey, was teaching a papercrafting class at the Columbus Museum of Art’s Craftacular Spectacular event, so we arrived early to take lewd pictures of her

in the “Don’t Eat the Art” exhibit

before giving in to our basest desires and dipping our hands into the rhinestone, glitter, and button bucket:

Apparently all of the students at the nearby Columbus College of Art and Design hated this sign when it went in outside the art museum (I believe it’s referred to as the “FART sign”), but I love it:

That night, we were supposed to go dancing at Skully’s as always, but I realized I’d only brought flip-flops and heels home. You can never have too many Chucks, so I was naturally pleased for an excuse to buy some new ones to leave at Tracey’s house. She was naturally pleased to be given an opportunity to step all over them with her own beer-drenched Chucks as we danced, because nothing looks so disgustingly new as new Chucks:

The next afternoon, I went to the HISTORIC Marcy Diner near my childhood home–which amazingly has a website that includes mention of the “pop” they sell–with my dad to eat $1 coney dogs. AND SOMEHOW DID NOT TAKE A SINGLE PICTURE OF THE EVENT. But you can bet it was a better hot-dog-eating experience than any I’ve had in fancypants New York City.

That night, I went to a big swanky vet school soiree with my cousin, Bethany, that Ohio State president E. Gordon Gee seemed to randomly happen upon, like he was taking a shortcut through the ballroom in the student union without realizing there was anything going on in there. Everyone was taking pictures with him, and I was all, “Wait, why?”, but this is for Bethany:

The next night, I went to dinner with Bethany and her family, and we spotted this gem in the Barnes & Noble parking lot:

Afterward, we went to her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine hooding ceremony. I guess this is a hooding:

I call it a choking.

She was simultaneously totally annoyed by all of the pictures I took and secretly thinking she was Wonder Woman:

Then we went to Applebee’s (!) for drinks (!), and Bethany’s brother paid for the whole shebang but not before complaining about Bethany’s $6.50 cocktail. I was confused until they informed me that $6.50 is actually expensive for a drink, and the $16 I’m now used to paying in NYC is offensive.

The next day, my dad and I skipped church (!) and went to Rooster’s for lunch instead of our usual Bob Evans. Adventurous! Then we came back to the house and watched my stepsister, Jenny, shave her girls’ 4-H pigs, which are being kept in my dad’s and stepmom’s back yard. Appaaaaaaaaaarently, 4-H judges think they look better when they’re hairless:

I think they’re the cutest things ever no matter what:

But especially when they’re being fed marshmallows:

Before I’d come home, a giant storm took out trees and power lines all over Ohio, and my family’s compound suffered some wild damage. Not only did a tree fall over onto the front porch, but the limb of another blew off onto the garage, revealing that it was hollow inside! And full of bees!:

That night, Tracey and I went to visit our longtime other best friend, Katie, her daughters Maria

and Evelyn (who looks like Toby from Labyrinth, Tracey decided this week),

and her husband-whom-I-introduced-her-to-because-I’m-the-best-matchmaker-ever-but-only-because-I-tried-to-date-him-first-and-he-totally-rejected-me-but-I-still-love-him, Nick:

After being served dinner by Katie, we all went to the backyard so I could take wildly adorable family pictures of them:

and then we watered Katie’s garden.

Well, Katie watered her garden.

The rest of us played in the water.

Well, some of us played in the water while some of us licked the water from the watering can:

Then we went back inside to enjoy the Cheesecake Factory desserts Tracey had brought (the only Cheesecake Factory I had on the entire trip!) and to watch Katie play with her new toy:

Until Tracey got too jealous and needed to see how much she remembered from her one quarter of string instrument training while getting her music education degree at OSU:

And that was it! Tracey and I spent the next day chowing on pizza and Graeter’s ice cream at the mall, and then she dropped me off at the airport so I could return to my babyless, pigless, expensive-drink world.

Tongue-Nose-Pickin’

plumpdumpling — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 13:30:05 +0000

While in Ohio, our friend Katie’s daughter was pinching us and covering us in grass, so my best friend, Tracey, tried to distract her by getting her to touch her nose with her tongue:

This is a feat I’ve never managed to master, so I’m glad Maria couldn’t, either. But she’s a lot cuter trying than I am.

The Best NYC Tour Guide EVER

plumpdumpling — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 16:00:21 +0000

I got sick again! I’m guessing this is to spite me for all the “I’m a farmgirl; my germ defenses are country strong” bragging I do and all of the “let your kids play in the dirt so they won’t end up with pansyass immune systems like yours” advice I give.

The worst part is that it just so happened to be during the four days my cousin Will came in from Ohio with a couple of his ladyfriends for his first time touring the city as an adult. So the things I did with them included:

• dinner in my neighborhood at Lobo, followed by dessert at VanLeeuwen, neither of which I could taste

• dinner at “Top Chef” contestant Angelo Sosa’s Social Eatz with Kamran, my roommate, Jack, and our friend Nik, where I could taste even less

• five minutes on our rooftop deck before we all chickened out from the heat

Aaaaaaand . . . that’s it. On the bright side, Will and his friends totally learned how to use the subway on their own! And anyway, they probably didn’t want me along on their big city adventures, trying to convince them not to spend $300 on shoes. Although I probably could’ve prevented that pesky two-hour separation that occurred when Will decided to hop onto a train without his friends just as the doors were closing.

But where’s the fun in that.

Damien Jurado and the Greatness of Growing Up

plumpdumpling — Fri, 13 May 2011 16:00:16 +0000

It’s funny, growing up. When I was a wee lass of 18 at college in Columbus, freshly released from my dad’s worries about my venturing into strange neighborhoods in the big city, I’d buy show tickets months in advance. I’d skip classes to be one of the first in line. I’d be happy leaning against the stage for hours waiting for my band to appear. I didn’t mind suffering through three or four terrible local openers, and I didn’t mind waiting around in the rain and the stink of a back alley to talk to the band afterward. If I couldn’t find someone who wanted to do these things with me, I’d go alone. I saw my favourite band more than 50 times between 2000 and 2005, but that number doesn’t even begin to elucidate the sheer amount of shows I saw as a whole.

I know that I’m old because none of that interests me anymore. I don’t want to sit in a car for fourteen hours straight just to see one of my bands open for someone else in places like Georgia and South Carolina. I don’t want to stand around and listen to a band for three hours anymore, let alone the three hours before the show starts when everyone’s pushing to get to the front and I can’t drink anything lest I have to pee and the club’s playing some unknown crap over the speaker system that’s not even in the same genre of the band I’m there to see.

So last night was perfect. I went home after work, watched my “Criminal Minds”, and then took the bus down to the Mercury Lounge in the Lower East Side to see one of my long-time favourites, Damien Jurado.

Kamran met me there at 9:15, and we pushed ourselves against the wall the best we could for the 15 minutes until the doors opened. The bar area is basically just a long hallway, so everyone was touching everyone else, and there was nowhere to escape and nothing to do, and all I could think about was how miserable I would’ve been had I been there alone. The show started soon after, and we were right in front, and we hadn’t been waiting around for three hours, and we were happy.

Damien is just sort of an amazing guy. He sings these incredibly sad songs, and he comes off as so thoughtful, but there are these moments where he’ll say something so bashfully joyful that it kind of makes you wonder if his whole songwriter persona is a put-on. Last night, he told us about sitting next to a girl on a plane who was listening to music; at first, it was David Bowie, but then suddenly something even more familiar came on, and he realized it was his own song. She sat there listening to his entire album and had no idea she was sitting beside him. I just love thinking about how that must have felt.

He was wearing his Seattle uniform of flannel shirt, lumberjack jeans, and moccasins. The woman doing his backing vocals, Melodie Knight from Campfire OK, was wearing black leggings, a black tunic, a black shawl, black strappy wedges, and a black bowler hat. I said, “I think she’s dressed the way she thought New Yorkers would be dressed.” Kamran said, “I think that’s how they dress in Seattle.” I said, “That’s how they dressed in New York in the 80s.” Kamran said, “That’s how they dressed in Seattle in the 90s.” So then it made sense.

I know I won’t be able to explain how good Damien is with dynamics, the way he can have an audience straining to hear him one moment and how he can fill an entire room with just an acoustic guitar the next, and how something as simple as a foot tap can change an entire song, so I’ll just link you to some songs instead.

Here’s my favourite recent song of his:

Here’s my favourite song of his of all time:

And here’s the song that made me cry last night, because it’s so clearly written about me:

I would wonder why a man from Seattle has multiple songs about Ohio, but it just seems so obvious why.

There is Nothing Hellish About Ohio

plumpdumpling — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 16:00:45 +0000

My best friend, Tracey, picked me up at the airport Tuesday night, and we immediately went to [Giant Retailer That Goes Against Everything I Believe in but is Open at All Hours of the Night] for Cadbury Creme Eggs, Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs, and unmatched photo ops like this:

We sat around getting fat the next day and then drove the 20 minutes to our hometown to have dinner with my parents and dessert with our other best friend from high school, Katie, and her daughters. Well, the older one was already in bed, so we just fed Dairy Queen frozen hot chocolate (FHC for short, of course) to her baby:

On Thursday, we spent literally all day scrapbooking at Archiver’s and then had dinner at The Cheesecake Factory, where Tracey was less-than-pleased with the amount of whipped cream on her plate, which she foolishly considers filler:

(I gladly ate it for her, of course, and a bunch of whipped cream is way better than the PAPER–yes, I said PAPER–I found in my sandwich.)

Then we went to Skully’s for Ladies 80s and had THE BEST time. We got back to her house from dinner around 9:30, and I was hinting practically the entire way home that I didn’t really have the energy for dancing. We kind of hemmed and hawed for a while, and when Tracey’s other friend canceled on us, I was especially ready to sit down with a tub of cookie dough and call it a night. But Tracey was really pushing to go for some reason, and in the end, I knew I’d end up having a good time, but it turned out to be THE BEST time. There were enough people there that we didn’t feel exposed, but there weren’t so many people there that we couldn’t bust out our incredible dance moves, and they’ve started playing 90s music now, so we totally got to relive junior high with Blur and Nine Inch Nails.

The next night, I celebrated my stepbrother’s daughter’s second birthday with my very festive dad:

my spectacularly vested stepmom:

and this CRAZY PRINCESS CAKE that I probably deserve for my next birthday:

Saturday night, I convinced my cousin Ethan and his wife, Katherine, to hold a party so I could see his baby, Kaydence, and take sort of creepy photos of Bethany, my twin cousin (we were born 47 minutes apart!), resting her head on Kaydence’s butt:

Instead of the roadkill his mom promised, Ethan made us these awesome grilled burritos so he could use his MAN SPATULA (or, for my feminist friends, his larger-than-normal spatula that in no way makes it manlier than any other spatula):

We played tons of six-handed Euchre, and since my dad was on a different team, he made someone else cry instead of me. YES!:

even the baby knows Euchre is serious bizness

Now, my dad lives on what he lovingly refers to as The Compound. A couple of years after my mom died, he married my awesome stepmother, Lois, whom he went to high school with and whom I’ve known my whole life, and he moved into her house a few miles away from my childhood home. She lived right next door to her dad, and when he died last year, her daughter moved in there with her husband and twin daughters. Her eldest son, meanwhile, converted the barn in between the two houses into this beeeeautiful home for his wife and daughters, and my dad built another barn behind his and Lois’s house. So it’s basically three big, ol’ farmhouses in a row out in the middle of nowhere. The Compound.

Anyway, arriving home to The Compound on Saturday night, I noticed for the first time that my stepsister’s girls are keeping their 4-H pigs in a little hut out back with a heat lamp built in to keep them warm. My dad, the farmer, scorns them for this, of course, but I think it’s cute. The only problem is that when you look out the back door, it appears that the poor little piggies are being

SWALLOWED BY THE FIRES OF HELL.

I would make an Ohio/hell joke here, but I think it’s pretty clearly much more like heaven.

What Kind of Pathetic Daddy’s Girl Spends Her Fake Spring Break in Ohio?

plumpdumpling — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 16:00:29 +0000

I’ll be visiting my family and (real, not-just-out-of-convenience) friends (haha, just kidding, wonderful and supportive NYC friends) in Ohio for the rest of the week!

So far, my plans include:

• reluctantly eating home cooking when I know there’s a Dairy Queen 10 miles away (which in no way reflects the quality of the home cooking)

• photographing one of our scrapbooks for a brand new blog-in-the-making with my best friend, Tracey

• dancing at Skully’s on Ladies 80s night, which now apparently includes 90s songs (blasphemy!)

• making Dishy’s pumpkin whoopie pies and some sort of (hopefully many sorts of) cupcakes

• planning entire days of scrapbooking based around where Tracey and I want to eat beforehand and afterward

• getting sprinkles for the first time ever on my favourite ice cream from the best ice cream parlor in the whole world, Graeter’s

• trying to figure out why my parents’ TV is always set to the Hallmark channel whenever I turn it on

• as little else as possible

PUMPED!

Living the Ohio Life at Three Times the Rent

plumpdumpling — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 17:05:09 +0000

Last Friday, I was alone. I knew Kamran would be at the library all night with just over a week left before the bar exam, so I’d planned for many hours of one-on-one time with the DVR and “Criminal Minds”. But right about quittin’ time, I started feeling like I wanted to do something. I thought about how ironic it is to live in New York City and keep a blog about it and then sit home quietly eating bon-bons on a Friday night.

I thought about calling my former NYCBFF, Beth, but then I remembered she moved to San Francisco. Then I thought about calling my current NYCBFF, Ash, but then I remembered she’s trying to save money to buy a house and move somewhere even worse, Connecticut. Then I thought about calling Chantee, but then I remembered she’s busy rigging rich people’s taxes for the next two months. And on and on. I went through a mental list of each and every person I know in NYC and found a reason not to call any of them. And I felt like if I was just going to sit around on my couch, I might as well be sitting on a couch with my BBFF back in Ohio.

But just then, my NYCBFF IMed me and said she’s now a bazillionaire, doesn’t need to save all of her money anymore, and wanted to hang out! So I went to her luxuriously large apartment in Queens, and we got into her brand new CR-V, and her husband drove us to The Cheesecake Factory. Which was in a mall. In Long Island. Full of people in not just Juicy Couture velour tracksuit bottoms, which Ash says is okay, but the whole tracksuit.

It was the very un-NYC-est thing we could do and also the un-suckiest.

Living in New York City is HARD

plumpdumpling — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 17:00:14 +0000

My boyfriend and I like to talk about how people who don’t live in NYC shouldn’t be allowed to complain about things. It’s not that we don’t think other people’s problems are valid; it’s that problems that are manageable elsewhere are compacted by 100 here.

Hate sitting in your freezing car while it warms up? Hate driving in snow? Try waiting out in the cold for the bus. Try walking through the snow while cabs spray dirty slush onto your slacks.

Think your groceries are too expensive? Don’t have the money to eat out? Here, we pay anywhere from $1 extra to literally twice as much for the same things I used to buy in Ohio. Our grocery stores have one brand of some things and no brands of other things. We go to crappy chain restaurants in Times Square just for the novelty and drop $25 on the plates we used to pay $5 for in our homelands.

Wish you owned your own home? Think your kitchen’s too small? Want more storage space? Hate not having a guest room? Need a new washer/dryer? YOU ARE RIDICULOUS.

I don’t mean to pretend like there aren’t a million benefits to living in NYC, and obviously I love it enough to have spent five and a half years here. It’s just that sometimes I look at my friends lives, and they just seem so easy. I mean, not to put my best friend on the spot here, but she has a bazillion-room house in Ohio with a guest bedroom, an office, and a craft room that she had to put something like 3% down for. (Here, it’s no less than 20% down–even that’s oftentimes not enough–and we’re talking 20% on half-a-million-dollar one-bedroom condos.) She has a two-car garage, every retail giant imaginable right down the street, two personalitied cats and a place to put their litter boxes, the ability to do her laundry right in her house, and three bathrooms that ensure she, her husband, and I can all poo at the same time when I visit. That’s livin’ the dream, man.

But sometimes–and I don’t intend at all for this to sound mean–everything outside of NYC all seems a little generic. Everyone has their carpeted floors and their beige walls, their drive to work with their favourite radio station, their Walmarts and their Red Robins. They have boxes of decorations for each of the holidays and garages full of lawn-trimming equipment, a TV in every room and newspaper clippings of TVs they’d like to buy. The idea of once again having church-going homophobe friends who birth a bunch of babies because they mistakenly think their DNA’s worth passing on sort of makes me sick to my stomach.

Of course, it also seems very familiar, and I’m nostalgic enough to be attracted to that. Sometimes, when my best friend sends me a recipe for homemade Pizza Rolls and I look around my boyfriend’s 250-square foot studio and notice he has no oven, I think, “I will look back at this time in my life someday and ask myself, ‘HOW THE HELL DID I SURVIVE THIS?”’ Sometimes I think about the one-bedroom apartment my boyfriend almost bought, and I crave that extra room and a TV for it. Sometimes I crave an apartment in someplace like Los Angeles or Irvine–places that seemed so not New York City not so long ago–where my boyfriend and I can cook dinner in a room that isn’t also his living room, dining room, office, and bedroom.

How old do you have to be before you can’t live like a college student anymore? But how much will you miss it when you’re not?

“Lost” is So 2010, Apparently

plumpdumpling — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 17:00:05 +0000

Yesterday, I wore the t-shirt my best friend, Tracey, got me for Christmas with the Dharma Initiative logo from “Lost” on it

where the Dharma in the center is replaced with an outline of the state of Ohio, and not a single person so much as commented on it.

Tracey and I both know it’s basically nonsensical, but still. WHY HAVE I CHOSEN ALL THE WRONG FRIENDS?

Unapologetically Mundane » no i really do love ohio

Noel. No-EL. Knoll. NO-uhl.

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