My apartment feels so empty now. After five years of long-distance ‘nanigans, memes, food pics, sliding into each others’ DMs (and blog comment sections), and threatening each other with so many good times, Lori and I finally met in person when she came to spend five wildly indulgent days with me and Circe. As previously mentioned, Circe was not enthused, but she did shockingly well considering we’ve never had an overnight guest in the entire time that she’s been with me. Here she is in the aftermath, being exhausted and resentful. What an angel.
There’s going to be a lot of photo walls and unnecessary detail down below, so here’s the CliffsNotes: It was wonderful. I’d do it again. Did we get to everything we wanted to do? No, but we had to save something for future visits. And also I finally went through my most problematic bedroom closet and cleaned it out, which involved throwing away a lot of the empty boxes I had been keeping with no real need, which tells me that maybe we should threaten me with overnight guests more often because shit actually gets done. Also included: Lori’s bedtime set-up, because tbh I loved having that bed wedged in there even if I wasn’t the one using it. It was just so sweetly cozy.
Day 1: Arrival
Cake: Tiramisu
I can’t believe we managed to coordinate as well as we did (or that we recognized each other without help), but by a miracle of timing Lori was able to arrive towards the tail end of my bakery shift. After work we picked out two sandwiches and five slices of cake for the weekend, then went back to my place for lunch and a general settling-in. Circe, normally churlish towards people who smell like cats, inexplicably came to greet Lori of her own accord and even allowed herself to be picked up (?!?!?!), albeit only for like a second before she got mad. I was pleased. That’s not to say that she didn’t fully expect Lori to go home after dinner, but, well, some dreams are just meant to be crushed. For the record, these are the five cakes we chose, which will be important later:
- Tiramisu
- Strawberry soft cream cake
- Mocha
- Soufflé cheesecake
- Chocolate ganache
And we also had samples of the blueberry yogurt cake that was destroyed maybe a couple of hours before Lori’s arrival, only I let mine sit in the fridge for so long the strawberries grew mold and I never did taste it. ;_;
Anyway, after lunch we had a lovely chat at the table before we went out to investigate the Amish market and Snug Books, where I completely forgot to turn in my finished word search, and I did not take pictures of any of that because I suck. On the other hand, we can justifiably say that I was living in the moment, which is something I need to do more often. And I am just pleased as punch that we made it to every local bookstore I could think of, because I have been threatening Lori with a Baltimore-based independent bookstore tour for at least a year and its long-awaited fruition exceeded my wildest dreams. I honestly have no idea which books were bought where, but the entire haul appears farther down. For Snug, the haul was most probably Never Ever After (Sue Lynn Tan). Snug also unwittingly hosted our first fight(ish), when I learned completely to my own surprise that Lori – who very kindly read the manuscript of my first unpublished novel – had been picturing one of the dragons as sky blue rather than his actual green. However, this did give me some ideas………….more on this later, if I ever get to publication.
Dinner on the first night: spam pasta, by Lori’s request, because she has been bombarded with obnoxious food photos over the last five years, either directly or via blog, and I really cannot say that I didn’t have this coming. :’D Served with the pasta: Caesar salad (Safeway’s chopped Caesar salad kit is my new favorite thing) with rosemary olive oil bread and spreadable garlic herb cheese.
Day 2: Poe House + Fells Point
Cake: Strawberry Soft Cream
We celebrated Halloween by visiting the Poe house, which I had no idea even existed until Lori told me about it, and then the Poe grave in downtown Baltimore. The tour was shorter and more self-guided than I expected, but our tour guide was as nerdy as anyone could wish, besides being knowledgeable and entertaining to listen to. I made off with a rubber bracelet and two magnets from the gift shop because I couldn’t decide which one was better. After the grave we had lunch at The Horse You Came In On, where Poe is reputed to have had his last drink, and split the Buckaroo Sampler. (Lori noted that it was a good thing I was driving: I missed a turn because I was talking too much and ended up on a side street that would not have fit her Jeep.)
Then, since the weather was absolutely perfect, we spent the afternoon walking around Fell’s Point, exploring the shops and the waterfront. I was proud of my restraint in the spice/tea shop, in that I managed not to buy their entire stock of spices and in fact did not buy anything at all. It was a different story at the candy shop, where I could not talk myself out of a bag of sea foam, which I’ve never had but had read about in one of my parents’ cookbooks, which I read repeatedly growing up and have since stolen from their shelf. I was a weird kid. Go figure. I can’t say I knew what to expect, only that it wasn’t what I expected. I’m going to have to revisit that recipe. I do not remember it having chocolate. I’m not mad about the chocolate, I’m just mildly puzzled. Either way the candy was good.
Midway through the afternoon we stopped at a lovely coffee shop/bakery, where I (professionally) had to try the iced caramel latte. Lori introduced me to buckeyes, an Ohio specialty of which I am now a fan, and we also tried the sea foam. After Fell’s Point we dropped by Charm City Books, which hosted that amazing Shady Hollow murder mystery party last year. I again bought books, but, also again, I don’t remember which ones. Think it might’ve been The Enchanted Greenhouse (Sarah Beth Durst) and Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea (Rebecca Thorne). Really wish I’d thought to take individual haul pics, but here we are. I’m Carolyn and I suck at my own hobby. Though looking at the final haul photo is helping quite a bit. On the way home I suddenly remembered that Ivy Bookshop exists, so we made an unscheduled stop. I remain astonished that I did not buy anything. I quite literally do not know how I did it. I did buy something at Safeway, where we stopped after Ivy because I was running out of leftovers containers and we were in serious trouble. TIL that Ohio does not have any Safeways, which is why Lori had never heard of it.
Dinner: Japanese chicken curry ramen with miso soup and rice. Curry was enhanced with my grandfather’s Chinese strengthening soup, made by my mother. This was another request that I brought on myself because I take a lot of pictures of my curry and I know it.
Day 3: Monster of a Show
Cake: Mocha
Pre-gaming: A kimchi taste test with the three kimchis I have in my fridge – Jongga, baby radish, and Mother in Law’s – and the Cleveland Kitchen kimchi Lori brought, eaten with leftover rice and miso soup. We agreed that each kimchi has its strengths and none of them can really be considered better than the others. It’s not really apples to oranges, but it’s sort of the same idea.
And now, the moment I had been waiting for: the intersection of two of my best ride-or-dies, otherwise known as Lori and Heather. I am a dumb-dumb and I double-booked myself for this weekend, i.e., I agreed to go to Monster of a Show with Heather and then went and scheduled a long weekend with Lori completely forgetting about the monsters until it was too late. :’) Because I’m a hermit and I never go out unless I am dragged, I had no idea that this show even existed until Heather sent me a link and an invitation. I’m so glad she did, because my mind was BLOWN. I have a shitload of business cards for artists I need to follow. Lori and I were particularly obsessed with the gorgeous, dreamlike watercolors painted by Joanna Barnum. I am not kidding when I say it was a full-blown (internal) fight to limit myself to two. If I had won the Powerball in time, I would’ve left with one of everything. Ultimately the fox and the raven won because they were giving me some real Vera and Lenore vibes, and the cosmic sea otters won because I was not physically capable of leaving the building without them. That show was everything I never knew I needed, I am so inspired, I will be back, and I now want to exhibit at future shows. Now if only I would fucking draw.
After the show we had a wonderful lunch at Miss Shirley’s – the pulled pork grilled cheese was perfect, as were the grits – and then we ended up playing a shitload of Tiny Bookshop back at my place. Dinner thankfully did not involve any cooking or cleaning up on my part, because it took place at my favorite Chinese restaurant. I have only ever gotten takeout or DoorDash here. It was nice to finally visit them properly. Then after dinner Circe ACTUALLY SNUGGLED WITH LORI ON MY BED AND PURRED HER LITTLE HEART OUT, holy shit. I do not know what inspired that, but that is a birthday gift I will never be able to top. The pics say it all.
P.S. Snug Books had a table at MoaS. They were right by the door. It was rude. I had completely forgotten they were going to be there even though they themselves had told me they would be only two nights earlier, and then they went and caught me on my way out. I walked out with a book of watercolor tutorials, because Joanna’s paintings primed me for any kind of tutorial-looking thing and I am nothing if not a giant sucker.
Day 4: Ellicott City + H Mart
Cake: Soufflé Cheesecake
We have been plotting a joint H Mart shopping spree for years, in fact pretty much ever since I first told Lori, via text, about the adult Disneyland that is H Mart. We started with lunch in Ellicott City because that chicken shawarma pizza was always going to make a reappearance on this blog, then scooted next door to visit Backwater Books, where I picked up The Hummingbird’s Daughter (Luis Alberto Urrea). I actually saw this book the last time I was at Backwater, but decided against it at the time. So I’m not actually sure what changed my mind on this visit, except that Urrea has been on my list for a while. This is because he is one of the authors mentioned in Myriam Gurba’s side-splitting review of American Dirt (Jeanine Cummins). I refuse to read Cummins, but I will read the writers she ripped off.
After the bookstore we proceeded to H Mart, where we went a little bit crazy. The haul photo above is entirely Lori’s. I for some reason did not feel a need to document my own haul and I have no idea why. All I can say is that I suckered out at one of the sample stations – we picked a really good day to go to H Mart, because there were so many samples being cooked while we were shopping – and bought a package of kimchi udon soup. That udon is going to be living rent-free in my head for a while and I need to take a picture of it so I remember which one to buy on future trips. I don’t believe for a second that they were actually running out, the way the sample lady claimed. Dinner was entirely Korean: I had been wanting to introduce Lori to my favorite stir-fried sausages and potatoes, and with those we had rapokki, sundubu, and a rolled omelet that to my own surprise came out completely fine. Even if it could’ve been a little bit neater, it was rolled and it stayed rolled, and I was shocked happy. And kimchi, of course. Lots of kimchi.
After dinner came the food coma crash, when we hung out on the couch/air mattress and I read Lori’s brand-new copy of Junji Ito’s Cat Diary while Lori got through almost my entire Cat + Gamer collection – quite happily, I should note. I love it so much when my friends become obsessed with my favorites.
Day 5: Departure T_T
Cake: Chocolate Ganache
Our final day ;_; I tried to take Lori to a funny little mall store called Typo and failed miserably when they turned out to be closed and possibly out of business, which sucks because I liked them. The trip wasn’t a complete loss: I picked up some cookies in the food court as a consolation, even though I was 100% planning to buy them anyway. I think Lori might’ve liked something, but the guy who sold me the cookies had even worse customer service than mine, and he booked it almost before I’d even finished paying for my cookies. We swung by Fresh Market on the way back to pick up milk and green onions (and a few other things – I ended up with four things and needed a fifth, so it was really lucky I found a cheap family pack of chicken thighs >_>) and then had lunch at home. I had been wanting to introduce Lori to my favorite Fujianese peanut noodles but had never found a place to wedge them in until we decided not to go out for lunch. We had the noodles with leftover scallion pancake and spicy fried chicken. I had forgotten how much I love these noodles.
Dessert was the final slice of cake. After four days of politely trying to give each other the chocolate coin that comes on top of every slice of bakery cake, I compromised and cut today’s coin in half. It did not go well.
Aftermath
Cake: Gone T_T
It took me a full week to get up the energy and the will to deflate and pack up the air mattress, exactly as I knew it would, which is why I scheduled my post-trip cleaning for this past Saturday. And also I just really, really liked having a lovely daybed in the living room. Unfortunately, this did strange things to Circe’s appetite; she normally eats like a neglected horse, but her eating schedule got thrown off by the visit, and it took it a few days to recover even after Lori had gone home. She is now back to normal, to my intense relief, and I do think it helped that the air mattress finally went away, and the living room went back to the way she expects it to look. This past week, even though we have been back on our usual routine, she has been more reticent about attacking her food the minute it’s set in front of her. The last few days, however, she has been gobbling like nothing ever happened, and I am so glad.
As far as the effects on me: I have once again become accustomed to my household of one, but there was an adjustment period that I did not expect. I am not a social creature; I have learned through experience that I cannot live with other people, no matter who they are or how important they are to me. But I didn’t have that feeling with Lori, and I think, in another life, we could have been the happiest housemates. I would not have been bothered by the shared living spaces the way I have been in the past, (1) because Lori isn’t a big TV-watcher, as I myself am not, and (2) because even if she was standing in the middle of the kitchen I would still go into it and we would probably cook something together. (How do you kill an introvert? You put a stranger in her kitchen and watch her starve to death. I took this deeply personally. But it is also gratingly accurate.)
On a lighter-hearted note, this is my final trip haul, obviously not including the H Mart goods that got piled indiscriminately into our shared cart. Most of these – excepting the books – came from MoaS. The Poe magnets and bracelet of course came from the Poe house; the magnetic dragon bookmark was a gift from Lori, who got one for each of us when we visited Snug; the theology sticker came from Fell’s Point, from the same shop that was selling the immigrants shirt; and the candies also came from Fell’s Point. There was a mildly embarrassing moment when I became convinced I had lost the little dragon magnet next to the theology sticker, and in fact became so obsessed with finding it that I low-key convinced myself it had fallen out of my bag at Miss Shirley’s, but Lori found it almost instantly in my stack of business cards. =_= In my defense, I was picturing it as bigger than it is, so I didn’t think to shuffle through the business cards because I thought it would stick out like a sore thumb. It is now safe on my fridge, where it belongs. The “Well, actually” sticker is going in my Kindle case, and will be handy every time I try to watch yet another movie adaptation of some book I’ve read and basically memorized. (Yes, I’m obnoxious. Shut up.)
My favorite might have to be the messenger bag, bought from Amy Begg Marino, which has already gone out of the house with me; but I also love that the wooden bookmark has a tassel Circe probably won’t try to destroy. I live in hope. Out of the books, I am most excited about The Enchanted Greenhouse, tied with Never Ever After. My problems with Tan’s prose will most likely remain, if the Celestial Kingdom series can still be considered a fair example of her work, but I do so love her characters/stories/worlds, and I can be swayed by the absolutely breathtaking art displayed on the cover (beneath the jacket) and inside cover spreads.
Final thoughts: I love absolutely everything we managed to cram into this one tiny weekend. Five days really felt more like two or three, possibly because we did so much and still did not have enough time to do everything we originally envisioned. I would do all of it all over again in exactly the same way. But it wasn’t just the outings: I also lived for the quiet moments, whether we were playing Tiny Bookshop and/or Animal Crossing on two different screens and basically ignoring each other, or eating cookies over the sink (because I’m a monster and I will go to war against crumbs on the floor), or reading in the same room and interrupting each other to show our favorite comic panels, or even just sitting at the table silently reading the same article – which, as it happened, was Myriam Gurba’s corpse-making American Dirt review – from our respective phones and snort-laughing over our favorite lines. That is the kind of connection I love best, because we didn’t feel like we had to entertain each other. We were just there in the same room, and we entertained ourselves without thinking about it, and it was enough.
Notes for myself for next time: I wish I had had the will and the foresight to start cooking dinner earlier, to be perfectly honest. :’) We did better on Korean dinner night, when I think we did start cooking before 7 or 8, but dinner was still late af because I am a slow chef and I have never been anything else. Even with Lori’s enthusiastic help – I quickly learned that she loves to cut vegetables – I am just so fucking slow and a little disorganized. I also, next time, need to take a picture of my fridge, which was packed past the point of utility and begging for the sweet release of death by the time Lori went home. I remain abjectly grateful that about half of the leftovers went home with her. Ideas for future trips include the National Aquarium, the local cat café(s), even moar restaurants, a tour of the local secondhand bookstores, scenic drives around the quieter local neighborhoods, etc, etc. I think the Chinese place will have to become a staple of any and all future visits because we both now love it so much, and the slice-a-day approach to cake was a stroke of genius that must be repeated. We both got used to splitting a slice of cake at the end of the night, and neither of us wanted it to end. I still have leftover carrot cake in the fridge that I wish I could share. Of course, as long as I’m spinning fancies, I also want the next trip to last at least a month.
The final tally:
- 1 joint TBR spreadsheet created
- 2 major (positive) kitty interactions
- 2 iced coffees drunk
- 3 Poe-related places visited
- 3 grocery stores patronized
- 4 independent bookstores supported against the wishes of our own bank accounts
- 5 days spent in each other’s company
- 5 meals cooked
- 5 slices of cake consumed
- 6 restaurants patronized
- 10 books read (1 novella, 1 graphic novel, and 8 mangas)
- 15 books purchased
- 1,909,283 houses/churches/public buildings admired
- 23,782,732 borderline unhinged conversations
- 593,478,372,340 items purchased at H Mart
- ???????? hours of Tiny Bookshop played
- ???????????? books added to TBRs
A most excellent weekend.
I was not expecting so many emotions upon reading this. I miss you and Circe already! ❤️
Now hang on… is the post title alluding to my height?! 😭😂