It Takes a Child to Raze a Village

Riley turned 13 midway through January, and it seems like we've been finding a trail of destruction everywhere we've gone.

Coincidence? I'm not sure.

Peddling

We kicked off the new year with a trip to Peddler's Village. (Riley had expressed interest multiple times since our last visit back in July, and Athennia also wanted to grab something we saw back in the summer but didn't commit to buying at the time.)

Things looked a tad different than they did mid-summer...

The Cloak and Wand—a store full of Harry Potter-themed whatnottery (and the primary reason Riley wanted to come back to the Village)—was closed for New Year's Day; but, we made out quite well otherwise:

I snagged a beautiful glass mosaic bowl; Athennia bought me a tiny hedgehog figurine; and when we made our way all the way to the outskirts of the Village to pick up a honeybee painting we saw back in the summer, Athennia found a lovely set of beehive bookends to go with it. (Pictures will be included in the "house tour" down below.)

Riley insisted that she wanted to check out the carousel and have lunch at the Giggleberry Fair (or the Dingleberry Fair, as I insisted on calling it—because I'm a mature adult.)

But, sure enough, we got there only to find that it smelled like—in Riley's words—"bad cheese and crusty feet." And, I couldn't help but point out the illogic of expecting a place called the Dingleberry Fair to smell good.

We made the best of it anyway...

When we got home, we watched a few episodes of Impractical Jokers together, and then Riley asked if I would watch an episode of South Park with her.

Fun fact: South Park actually debuted way back in 1997 when I was 12, except my overprotective parents didn't let me watch it even though all of my friends did. And, with Riley turning 13 in a matter of days, we didn't have much time to break the mold!

The Chaos Begins!

Two days later, we were craving some Qdoba for dinner. But, of course it was a Tuesday—which usually meant that neither Larry nor Nai'mah would be working.

This time was no exception... but we had front-row seats to watch a PECO crew come out and work on a blown transformer just across the street...

Then, two days later, we decided to have burgers for dinner. Naturally, the frozen patties were all stuck together—something that seems to be mandated by quality control before they're allowed to leave the processing plant. And so, we needed to whack them against something to get them unstuck...

Things came apart, all right! But it didn't quite go as planned. So, you know how rock beats paper? It turns out that frozen beef beats porcelain, too.

House Tour!

I snapped some pictures while our house was all nice and neat in preparation for company coming for Riley's party; so, here's a quick tour of the apartment...

This is our new honeybee canvas...

And, my new mosaic bowl and hedgehog figurine (hard to see, between the bowl and the snowman)—and Athennia's butterflies (which I recently rehung about nine inches higher so they aren't half hidden behind my books anymore)...

We're making use of our matching corner shelving units—one of which you may recall that we snagged for free last month when Amazon delivered it to the wrong house and then told us to keep it along with the free replacement they sent out...

And, some artwork in our bedroom—thanks to a tapestry that my best friend Fotini bought me when we were living in Grenada together, which I never got around to hanging anywhere until now...

Riley's [Early] Birthday Party

On Saturday the 7^th, we celebrated Riley's birthday. But, Taylor seems to have dropped off the face of the earth as of late, so Athennia didn't bother inviting her. And then, my sister's entire family ended up sick and didn't come.

We made the best of it though!

We ordered pizza from Bambino's, and then I surprised Riley with a pack of Beanboozled jelly beans she had mentioned while we were at Friendly's a few nights before New Year's Eve :)

Beanboozled is basically Russian Roulette, without the permanence...

Is everyone ready to rethink their life choices? Let's do this!

Riley was the first one to call it quits...

Then Kitten...

I toughed it out through a few nasty ones, until I got "dead fish."

But even though the jelly beans felt like the gift that kept on giving, it was time to open some actual presents...

Athennia gave Riley a garnet ring (her birthstone).

She and I jointly gave Riley a handheld video game console that emulates a few hundred retro games. (Thanks to my cousin Pete for the idea: he showed his off when we visited at the end of December, and Riley enjoyed playing with it.)

My parents gave Riley a Barnes & Noble gift card.

And I gave her a decorative sign to commemorate her borderline-pathological love for cats...

And of course we had cake...

...ice cream cake, to be exact!

This girl loves cats so much, she will literally draw Garfield anywhere she can...

Then we closed out the party by making my parents watch the first half of Zombieland with us (brought about by the fact that I put Cheers on last time they visited us, and I thought it would be funny to show them what Woody Harrelson has been up to since his days pouring drinks).

After they left, we finished watching Zombieland and also watched Equilibrium—which I knew Athennia would appreciate, in the vein of 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and other such takes on a dystopian future full of surveillance, censorship, and soul-crushing authoritarianism.

And, with the party officially over, Penny decided to make an appearance...

The Khaos Kontinues

A few nights later we felt like having another low-key but fun "birthday dinner"; and so, I looked for somewhere local that seemed like it would be worth checking out.

I settled on Marie's Kozy Korner a short distance down the road in Fairless Hills. And boy, was it anything but "kozy."

For starters, we had to drive past the infamous M...

Anyway, we arrived at Marie's and everything seemed great at first: The place looked kozy enough—and it was mostly empty, save for the barflies; so, there were plenty of open tables.

The bartender asked what we wanted to drink, got Riley her Pepsi, and invited us to sit wherever we wanted until she had a second to bring some menus over.

No problem.

Then, after we sat there waiting, she hit us with the news that we would have to get our food to go, because kids can't be in the bar after 9:00 P.M. (She said it was totally fine for us to remain seated at our table while we waited for our food to be prepared though—which I found odd, given that it was already in the vicinity of 9:10.)

At any rate, we placed our order and sat there for another 10-15 minutes—during which, I'll note, the bar did not implode and Riley did not sprout horns and go apeshit on the other patrons. (Weird. At least if you feed gremlins after midnight, you effect actual consequences. This whole "out by 9:00 P.M." thing was getting less spectacular by the second!)

Then, the bartender finally brought out our food and the bill... to inform us only now that it's "cash only." Fortunately, we had cash on us to cover the tab—and didn't have to resort to the nearby ATM, where I'm sure the service fee would have been outrageous.

But, in hindsight, the entire transaction felt like deliberate predation at literally every step:

• don't tell us we have to order our food to-go until you've already soaked us for a for-here Pepsi that we would not have otherwise ordered
• don't mention your arbitrary "no kids after 9:00 P.M." policy until you've kept us waiting long enough that we're basically committed to placing an order at this point anyway
• and, don't tell us it's cash-only until we've already racked up a substantial tab

Needless to say, we will not be going back. And with this being Riley's introduction to teenagehood, I wouldn't be surprised if she takes vengeance by terrorizing the townspeople! One thing's for sure though: she won't have much luck trying to sabotage their highway system: it's already been destroyed by years of neglect!

And finally, we had burgers for dinner again last night, before heading to Barnes & Noble at the Neshaminy Mall—where none of us found even a single book we wanted (which is actually nothing short of astonishing, since we're all card-carrying book-hoarders looking for any excuse we can find to buy more books).

Alas, the logical world seems to be spinning off its axis as of late. But any correlation between recent events and Riley's entry into teenagehood is left to our readers to determine.

In the meantime, we'll probably be watching South Park :)