Mar 13 2012
Homewood Cemetery Family Bonding
Sunday was so beautiful. After the hockey game (PENS WON, FUCK YEAH), I suggested that we spend quality family time outdoors, so we went to the cemetery like anyone else would do. I chose the Homewood Cemetery on this particular day because it has a pond and it’s been awhile since we were there last. So many great memories were made in this place. And it’s where Chooch was conceived!
(Kidding. No really, it seems like it would have to be true, but it’s a joke.)
“Look at that tree!” Chooch yelled, pointing to some weird, ugly, low-to-the-ground clump of vegetation. (Not the tree in the above picture.) He covered his mouth and giggled obnoxiously. Not even plants can escape his scathing mockery.
“That’s not a tree,” my Pointdexter Eagle Scout boyfriend corrected. “It’s a rhododendron bush.” And he even pushed up his glasses as he said it.
“Oh boy, I always forget that you’re a nature know-it-all,” I mumbled, picking up my pace. He gets on my nerves with this shit. If it’s not moss education or bird identifying, it’s smug bush naming.
Ever since that one dickhead made a comment about how I post too many Instagram’d photos, that’s pretty much all I want to do. AND I THINK I WILL. I am full of self-righteousness these days. (I know, what else is new.)
This is like the most anti-Chooch bench of all time. Love to all? Yeah right. He divvies his love in tiny increments between our dead cat Speck, Star Wars, wii and whichever girl he’s fake-hating at school this week. (Names will forever be omitted for the sake of all those Catholic school families who do not want to be associated with any of the Satanic smut on this website.)
This is part of the maintenance building, but it reminded me so much of the Bayernhof Music Museum, that I had to take a picture and send it to Andrea. I should have waited until much later that night, though, so she would have had horrific nightmares of vagina dentata, where the dentata was actually the thrashing lid of a music box. She told me I’m evil — only to my favorites!
It’s a wonder he didn’t fall into the pond. I almost fell into the pond when I was yelling at him about falling into the pond. One of these days, I really am going to fall into a pond and I’ll be part of that small percentage of people who wind up with some nasty parasitic worm swimming up their nostril (I’d say kooka, but I’ve already mentioned vagina once and I’m trying to keep this a Catholic family blog), but if it’s the kind that will make me lose weight, I’ll be fine with it.
“CARRY ME, MY LEGS HURT! I’M SO BORED!” He says bored when really he means LAZY. This kid has so much energy and I have seen him run laps around most other kids on a playground, but if we’re anywhere else where he has to walk like a normal human being, he gets all bent out of shape. Not like I walk like a normal human being, but I can at least walk uphill without having a major fit about it.
(Mostly.)
Chooch and I spent most of our walk bickering with each other. I told him lies about cemeteries and Henry would sigh and say, “No, Chooch, that’s not true.” Then he would threaten to hit me with sticks and I would retaliate with threats to leave him there alone over night.
During one of our typical banter sessions, I was frustrated to the point where I said he was my least best friend.
“Yeah, well you’re my frenemy,” he retorted with a smugness.
On the way back to the car, we passed a couple sitting on a secluded bench behind some overgrown bushes.
“WHAT ARE THEY DOING, LOOKING AT DEAD PEOPLE?” Chooch shouted in his normal high-octave voice.
Henry tried to shush him, but then I noticed what they were actually doing so then Henry turned his futile shushing onto me.
“Chooch, do you know what they’re doing?” I asked mischievously.
“WHAT? WHAT ARE THEY DOING?!” he asked, stopping in his tracks and craning his neck toward them again.
“They’re MAKING OUT!” I yelled, and Henry shook his head and walked away while Chooch and I cracked up like two five-year-0lds.
Who needs a playground when there are cemeteries?
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“If it’s not moss education or bird identifying, it’s smug bush naming.”
Wow. Henry knows a lot of things about a lot of things, yet he refuses to elaborate on Ted Nugent.
Incidentally, I enjoy your photos, no matter how you take them. Man, no matter what you do, someone’s gotta be jealous of you.
Seriously, on both counts!
Love the Homewood Cemetery. I used to walk my dog in the Smithfield Cemetery all the time when we lived there. I don’t think they allow dogs in any of it any more, but they used to allow them in Smithfield and we’d go every day.
Remember me? How the hell are you doing? Congratulations on the full-time gig. Can’t believe how much things have changed…your writing is still brilliant. Chooch is so big now! And so funny about being tired. My kids are the same. Tearing up and down and around the house, practically on fire, practically in orbit. But then we go for a normal 20 minute walk and they are complaining…”I’m tired. My legs hurt. Can I sit?” Anyway, smug bush naming seems like an interesting hobby (if you read into that statement a little closely).
I DO remember you, old LJ friend!! I’m doing well, how about yourself? Miss seeing your name ’round these parts.
That is a pretty bad ass cemetery. Is that a fucking pyramid? Is someone buried in it? Like a family of Egyptians or something? That is way cool.
I LOVE YOUR INSTAGRAM HYPSTAMATIC pics! All of them!
Thank you!!
Someone is definitely buried in there! At least one person. Henry looked it up and was telling me about it but I wasn’t listening to him as usual. :(