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
I would make an Ohio/hell joke here, but I think it’s pretty clearly much more like heaven.
29 Comments
OOooh I LOVE THIS!!! No wonder you shun Florida and the rest of those sunshiney places for Ohio. It looks AWESOME. And very very filling.
A+
I’m always under the impression that the weather in Ohio is actually quite nice. And it is, compared to NYC. But I realize most of the reason I feel that way is that in Ohio, you’re either in your heated/air-conditioned house or heated/air-conditioned car. What a life.
Thanks for the updates on your family and your Ohio visits. This is all news to me and I live just a half country block away.
Haha! They keep things pretty quiet over there at the compound, I guess. I always think of you whenever we drive past your house, though!
I love the influx of Cadbury chocolate at Easter time. It doesn’t really matter where you buy it, as long as you get to eat it. And your dad’s compound is totally turning into Animal Farm. Those pigs are up to no good.
Seriously, if Peeps manage to stick around all year now by being Christmas-themed, Halloween-themed, 4th-of-July-themed, and whathaveyou, there’s no reason Creme Eggs aren’t available whenever I want them. Maybe they’re trying to do that whole you’ll-eat-more-of-them-if-you-get-them-less-often, but I’d have one a day for the rest of my life if I could.
Also, I really enjoyed “those pigs are up to no good”. Oh, the visuals.
Kaydence, huh? Ta-dah! http://www.babynamewizard.com/node/33365
In other news, I do not like Cadbury Creme Eggs. But I love Cadbury Just About Everything Else, and I love eggs. Actual eggs, I mean. I don’t understand what I’m missing that everybody else is getting.
Are you kidding me?! When Katherine told us the future baby’s name and said she was embarrassed that it was from American Wedding, I had no idea what the movie was. When I found out, I was obviously horrified, but I really do like the name. I just had no idea everyone else liked the name. Gross!
To like Cadbury Eggs, you basically have to have grown up eating plain spoonfuls of sugar while your parents weren’t looking. I can see how that wouldn’t exactly be your thing.
That’s not a Man Spatula, that’s a slatted, flatback shovel. Of which I approve, mind you…
Tell the girl that putting the pigs under a heat lamp in no way turns them into bacon any faster. But I appreciate the effort.
If you don’t need a shovel to lift my dinner, I’m not interested. I’m not quite sure you’re right about the bacon thing, though. I’m not saying PETA would approve, but who knows what would happen if they kept gradually increasing the temperature of that lamp. But hey, if warmer and warmer water lulls a lobster to sleep before you boil it, maybe that’s the most humane thing for those pigs.
your dad is adorable.
and seriously, seriously, did your cousin buy that spatula from a joke shop? i would say it’s about the size of my chest.
Aaron, I would’ve thought you’d spent enough time in the U.S. to know that that’s just how things are here. The mini Blizzard from DQ still has 18,000 calories, and the smallest house in Ohio is 220,000 square feet. Or, like, 50 bazillion meters, if that makes more sense to you.
I think my dad’s pretty cute, too. And everyone says I look exactly like him, so . . .
I must actually be a bad feminist, because I didn’t find anything wrong with “man spatula” until you pointed it out.
Awesome! I wrote it without thinking and then caught it on the read-through. Maybe you should watch some “Extreme Couponing” so you can be as empowered as I am.
I love everything about this. I love talking about food that — if I actually ate it — would cause immense amounts of guilt (cheesecake factory! cream eggs! Have you ever had the orange ones???), I love Ohio, I love hating on *marts, I love babies, I love compounds as long as they’re not, you know, the genuinely crazy child-bride ones. . .
All that to say: I approve. Carry on.
I love this comment! And I love the orange ones! And the caramel ones! But the original are still where it’s at for me, and Tracey and I planned to make Cadbury Creme Egg cupcakes until we read that other people already had and decided to just eat more instead of baking.
Approval noted and appreciated.
Whipped cream is never, ever filler.
Agreed! It makes everything creamier! And also fills me up so whatever I’m eating it with can make me sickly full! Which I guess makes it filler. But good filler!
OUCH! My head!
I think I was just hit by… falling prices?! (Either that or a piece of the LARGEST TEACUP I have EVER seen!) :)
Yes! All of those . . . ceramic bunnies? . . . can be yours for the low, low price of $10 and your feelings of self-worth! What a savings!
I’m glad you enjoyed Ladies 80’s even though I can’t get over it being called Retro Night with ’80’s and ’90’s music. Makes me feel really old. When I first saw the picture of the hogs I thought it was one of those whole hog bbq’s except fancier since you could cook 2 of them at once. :)
Eww, I didn’t realize it was being called Retro Night now. I guess all of my mentions of Ladies 80s here in this blog are now a part of ancient history. I really love the 90s music, though; I was listening to Gordon Lightfoot and Nanci Griffith in the 80s.
I WISH my family had its own 2-hog-BBQer. That’s how you know you’re upper lower class.
Tracey’s hair is gorgeous, your dad looks like the nicest guy in the whole, wide world, and I’m pretty sure I want to move to OHIO! now.
It’s quite close to PA. Just saying.
Hey, get out of here, you temptress!
Oh, my dad is quite the charmer once you get past that making-people-cry-while-playing-Euchre thing. And Tracey’s hair IS gorgeous, only I’m trying to convince her to make it blonder so people will automatically assume I’m the smarter BFF.
WAIT. so your best friend’s name is Katie?
And your name is Katie.
I can’t … I can’t compute…
Well, my BEST best friend is Tracey. But our other best friend is Katie. I deemed myself Katie #1 in high school, so she became Katie #2. You can imagine how well THAT went over with her.
That is an ungodly amount of whipped cream. I’m with Tracey on this one.
And I will fight you for that princess cake.