Goddammit, all I wanted to do was go for a nice, leisurely family stroll around our crappy town, but dum-dum Henry left the keys in the house and started flipping out about how it was my fault because I rushed him out of the house.

I was like, “Why can’t we just go for a walk and worry about this later?” which apparently was not a Great Idea based on the look of utter incredulity Henry flashed at me.

Chooch and I carried on like cackling assholes while Henry tore apart the garage for suitable items to MacGyver a battering ram. I mean, I guess if he hot-glued together all of his old porn VHS tapes from the SERVICE, he might have something to go on.

He ignored my suggestions of calling the landlord or heaving a cinder block through the window and instead considered using a can of gasoline to burn down the front door.

I’m surprised he didn’t go next door to ask Hot Naybor Chris for a breaking and entering consultation, considering those two once helped the gas man break into our neighbor’s house in order to shut off his gas before our house exploded.

Yeah, this has promise.

“What? I coulda done it. If only I had remembered to eat my individually-wrapped prunes today.”

“NOW I HAVE HEDGECLIPPERS! THESE WILL HELP! I WILL MANICURE THE WEEDS INTO SILHOUETTES OF MY REPUBLICAN HEROES WHILE STARING LONGINGLY INTO OUR FRONT WINDOW.”

These are some of the things Henry said while Chooch and I buzzed around him like flies on a bear:

• THAT’S ENOUGH!
• YOU’RE A LOT OF FUCKING HELP.
• GO SOMEWHERE AND PLAY!
• THIS IS ALL YOUR FUCKING FAULT. I DIDN’T EVEN WANT TO GO FOR A WALK!
• FML FML FML FML FML
• YEAH, THIS IS REAL FUCKING FUNNY.
• AND I JUST KNOW I’M MISSING “SHE’S CRAFTY.” MOTHER!
• YOU ASSHOLES CAN JUST STAY OUT HERE! I’LL FUCKING WALK TO WORK. AT LEAST I HAVE THOSE KEYS.

Oh God, Chooch. DON’T POKE THE BEAR!

…or KICK the bear. Henry almost gave Chooch “orphan” status after this.

Meanwhile, I found this fucker in the garage. WTF kind of creepshow is this!? I wish I had had it for my Murder Desk at work.

I was trying to chronicle this episode from all angles, which did not please the man one bit. He made like he was going to grab my phone off me and beat me with it, enlightening me on what it must be like to work for TMZ.

After fifteen minutes, Henry succeeded in prying open the window with a pair of pliers. Now you know how to break into my house and steal our cats. Seriously, it’s all we’ve got in there. Cats galore.

Just don’t forget to bring a small child to catapult through the window. (I mean, at least he’s going IN a window and not falling OUT of a window, right?)

You know that fucker is going to go to school tomorrow and tell his teacher about how his burglar parents made him shimmy up the side of a skyscraper.

Moments later, the house keys came whaling through the window straight at Henry’s face. Chooch rules.

“ENOUGH ALREADY.”

Reassembling the window.

And he did it all so he could go on a walk he did not want to go on in the first place. In this picture, I think he’s texting his boss: OMG I IS A HEROE. I NEED DAY OFF.

A few weeks ago, I got my official notice in the mail, filled it out immediately and tucked it back in the mail slot for the mailman to retrieve the next day. When Henry came home from work that day, he saw the torn-open notice and asked, “Where’s the rest of it?”

“In the mail slot, already filled out!” I answered all incredulously, like how was this not his first guess? “I REALLY want to do this!”

“You’re fucked up. No one WANTS to do jury duty.” (Too bad at least TEN people have told me otherwise in the last day.) And then Henry dampened my parade by explaining to me the ins and outs of jury duty, how I would need to check the website on a designated date to see if I was even summoned in the first place.

Well, that day was yesterday and OMG I was!

But my joy soon turned into panic. Do you guys know me at all? I’m pretty much helpless. And now I’m expected to be turned loose into the real world, to ENTER A COURTHOUSE without setting off five alarms, to find a particular room without crying….

“What room is it?” Barb asked me and I told her it was 3-something. “OK, so take the elevator to the third floor—”

“BUT WHERE ARE THE ELEVATORS, OH MY GOD BARB?!”

There better be attendants at every corner, waiting to point me in the correct direction.

“Will I have to talk to people?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Barb said. “You might get asked questions.”

“IN FRONT OF PEOPLE?” I cried.

And then I found out that this doesn’t even mean I’ve been chosen? I have to sit there all day, in a room I may or may not find, waiting to see if they want me?

Talk about my life story.

Henry agreed to drive me down there tomorrow morning so I’ll have one less thing to worry about, like: WHEN SHOULD I GET OFF THE TROLLEY? AND THEN WHAT?! And then he tried to explain to me how to walk to work afterward. Seriously. I do not understand downtown Pittsburgh. There are roads and people and buildings; lots of them.

Today on the way to work, I pointed at every building we passed and asked, “Is that the courthouse? What about that one?”

“We’re not even on the right side of town,” Henry mumbled exasperatedly.

“You said you were going to show me!” I wailed, about to get hysterical. I have lots of…complexities, we’ll call them…when it comes to going somewhere alone for the first time. I like to over-think things until I’m sure that I’m going walk into a building for the first time and promptly fall into a hole to a land of Katy Perry-soundtracked church sermons and food overrun with crunchy onions because how would I know that it was there when I HAVE NEVER BEEN THERE BEFORE.

“I am going to show you,” Henry said. “Tomorrow morning when I drop you off in front of it.”

Then he tried to explain to me how to get to work once I’m released.

“This is too confusing,” I sighed as he was trying to point out landmarks. “It’s a good thing my phone has a compass.”

“Yeah but do you even know what direction to go to begin with?” After his question was met with silence, he said, “Didn’t think so.”

I was starting to feel OK about it at work as my co-worker Cheryl said, “Oh you’ll be fine! You mostly just sit around. And then you break for an hour and a half for lunch—”

An hour and a half? NINETY MINUTES?? What the fuck am I going to do for ninety minutes? Find a bathroom stall in which to tremble and cry?

Barb did her best to comfort me. “I’m trying to think if there is anywhere to eat inside the courthouse,” she mused, knowing full well that if I attempted to stray outside, I might never find my way back and wind up having to change my address to:
Someone Guy’s Occupy Pittsburgh Tent Some Random St.
Pgh (I think), PA.

“If you need to, you can just call me. I’ll come find you,” she promised, and that made me feel like maybe I could survive this day.

“Just stand outside and shine a mirror into the sun; I’ll follow the light signal,” I said, trying to complicate this into some failed Choose Your Own Adventure book.

But then Wendy came over and said, “Fool, just walk outside the courthouse and look up. You can see our building, duh.”

Why does this have to be downtown? Why can’t it be on a farm that’s easy to find and full of boughs pregnant with apples. (My apple obsession is still going strong. More on that later.)

So that’s where I’ll be tomorrow if you need me, walking around in circles and looking up at the sky. I should probably take that bloody pie server thing out of my purse first, though.

Besides, Chooch has been in 4 different costumes  in the last week, so I opted out on his behalf.

And what the fuck do sinners know about saints, anyway? I only know St. Francis, and that’s because I’m a spoiled brat who got to go to Assisi four times as a child, though all I really learned there was:

1. don’t piss off monks, particularly monks near chains
2. the hot chocolate there sucks
3. when you break something in a gift shop, run

So, short of strapping a bird bath to the front of Chooch, I really had no other clues and sent him to school in his street clothes.

Two kids in his class were already there when we arrived this morning: one girl was wearing basically a white potato sack with gold ribbing along the collar; her mom is one of those broads who has to have her hands in everything so I rolled my eyes and thought to myself, “Of course she’s dressed up.” Another kid hadn’t put his on yet. Chooch was looking at me with these sad eyes and asked, “Why don’t I have a costume?”

“Because we don’t do saints,” I whispered, pretending to lovingly smooth out his hair but really that’s our secret code for “STFU before you embarrass mommy.”

I am hard-pressed to believe that every single child is going to come trouncing into the classroom in some ridiculous robe. You can’t have saints without sinners, right?

I had Henry bake cookies last night so I’d have something to contribute to the party, thereby acknowledging that this is a day to celebrate fictional Biblical characters. Hopefully chocolate chip and sugar cookies will suffice. I don’t know what these crazy Catholic schools do and as long as there aren’t any goats or rams being slaughtered on stone tables, they can have a fucking ball over there playing saint-related games and singing Biblical ballads. I just don’t need any detailed accounts.

“He could have been zombie Jesus,” Henry said when we were on the phone a little while ago and I think he was only semi-joking. I also think he doesn’t know that Jesus isn’t actually a saint.

Maybe we’ll pull that one out for the Easter party. They already know we’re fucking idiots.

[ETA: Apparently there is a feast involved in this holiday and now my interest is officially piqued. Maybe next year.]

[ETA pt. 2: The teacher told Henry that when the priest went around asking all the kids what saints they were dressed as, Chooch said he was God. Also, judging by all the shit Chooch brought home, all the other parents treated this as a Halloween party. NICE TO KNOW. There needs to be a handbook for heathen parents who send their kids to Catholic school.]

It was pretty stupid.

Or: That Fucking Tomato, The Sequel

Before Barb left work on Monday, she had to go and fuck up my whole world by offering me an apple. I just smiled and said thanks, but what was really happening at that moment was that a vignette of cumulative  botched apple-cutting situations began whirring around in my head,  my inner-wrists started tingling at even the suggestion of wielding a paring knife, and my teeth were curling back inside my gums at the thought of biting into a whole apple.

Meanwhile the ghost of Johnny Appleseed openly mocked me from above my desk.

It just sat there all night, to the left of me, this glowing red/yellow orb of temptation. If I had been the original Eve, the Bible as we know it (and I don’t really know it) would be drastically altered, because I have a feeling Adam would have been too busy exploring holes with his dick to cut a fucking apple.

We might all be walking around nude right now.

Eventually, I tossed it into my purse, thinking I would just find some way to eat it at home. And by that I of course mean Henry would put a Gerber bib on me and slice the apple into Erin-appropriate wedges.

That night at work, I ate peanuts and Halloween candy instead. Fucking apple.

***

I forgot the apple was in my purse until the next morning and Henry had the audacity to not drop everything and come home from work wearing his produce armor to cut my fucking apple.

“Where did you get an apple?!” he asked, probably thinking I was trying to eat random growths from neighborhood trees again.

Gee, I don’t know, Henry. An old fucking lady brought it up to my cottage window while goddamn bluebirds sang Disney songs behind her.

“Barb gave it to me last night and I put it in my purse! Don’t act like you don’t go through my purse!” I answered defensively, like I was trying to deny an affair with a bait shop owner.

(This all happened via Facebook; look at me, making it appear that Henry and I have real life conversations that don’t take place via the Internet, text, and Post-It Notes!)

Seriously, when will apples shake their stigma? WE NEARLY BROKE UP OVER THIS.

I had people on twitter sending me tutorials but the first I watched said I needed a melon baller and I started to break a sweat because I was pretty sure we don’t have a melon baller and also because I think I used a melon baller as a torture device in a short story I wrote a long time ago.

I decided to just wait for Henry to come home from work.

***

Henry hadn’t yet had a chance to get both feet through the door before I was blocking his path and shoving an apple-fist in his face.

He looked tired and disgruntled.

“Give me the fucking thing,” he said, snatching the apple from my hand. As he disappeared into the kitchen, I heard him grumble, “You’re pathetic.”

Nice to know he worries about my safety and the possibility of apple-induced arterial spray.

He practically frisbee’d a plate of shoddily-cut apple wedges at me before storming out the door to pick up our son, who will have to learn how to cut his own apples if he ever so much as dreams of eating one when Henry is away from the house.

This was definitely the product of a pissed off man with a knife. I call it Henry Sliced the Apple: the shocking conclusion to How Will Erin Eat Her Apple?

***

When I got to work later that day, I regaled Barb with the horrors of what had come to be known as Applegate. I did a lot of hand-wringing to further illustrate the distress her stupid apple had put me under.

“Oh, honey,” she said in her Babying Erin Voice,  which you might have figured gets a ton of use. “You should have just used the apple corer we keep here.”

WHAT APPLE CORER.

I took a picture of Barb demonstrating, so I could look back on it for reference.

That night, Barb left me another apple, the apple corer thing, and an assignment: to try it by myself.

I waited until everybody but the late shift people had gone for the day, just in case I wound up causing a scene. You never can be too safe. My first attempt propelled the apple with great force against the kitchen wall, knocking over the paper towel holder. (Speaking of the paper towel holder: The roll was empty the other night and I put a new one on all by myself. So now no one can say I haven’t helped out around there.) I think I didn’t have it properly centered because I might not have been paying attention.

My second attempt sent me lurching into the kitchen counter, but I did reach some low level of success. I couldn’t get the blades to split the apple the whole way through and wound up having to break it off the corer thing, but this was a win as far as Things Erin Tries To Do In The Kitchen goes.

Then I happily ate my apple, while  saying, “I did this myself!” to everyone who walked by. (And by everyone, I mean just Carey.)

And that is how I learned to cut an apple at work.

(You should see me with an orange.)

That’s a loaded question. I suppose I do like tomatoes, but only on certain occasions, in certain foods and sliced in certain ways.

But this was coming from a co-worker that I’m not very close with; not wanting to engage her any further by revealing intimate details about my dietary habits, I settled for a simple, “Sure.”

And then there she was, standing before me with a carton of cherub tomatoes.

“Here, take one!” she said eagerly, arms extended like she was handing me a birthday gift. “It’s like an explosion of flavor in your mouth!”

Stunned, I stuck one tentative hand beyond the plastic covering of the carton and right smack into the warzone of small red torture devices.

Never do I just EAT A TOMATO. Oh, I know all about you fools who shake some salt on those motherfuckers and eat ‘em like a goddamn apple. But that’s not for me. Put it on a grilled cheese, for sure, but someone gives me a whole entire tomato and it’s getting chucked for fun.

What a Normal Person Might Do:

• Politely decline.
• Pretend to have gum in their mouth.
• Puncture their breast implant and run.

What Erin Does:

• Accept the challenge.

I felt backed into a wall by then, anyway. My hand was already instinctively in the carton (actually, by this point, it was stuck in the carton; have you seen the gargantuan rings I wear?) so this was definitely the point of no return; and she was standing there all excited and wide-eyed, waiting to become Tomato Bros with me. I was willing to tell her what she wanted to hear just to make her go away.

It was the size of a fig, the one I withdrew. Instead of biting it, I sighed heavily and popped the whole thing into my fake-smiling mouth.

My molars squished into it and sent guts of the tomato gushing through my mouth; the wet, gelatinous texture made my sad tongue curl back in terror. This was definitely not a good time for my taste buds, or my gag reflex for that matter. I’ve had an easier time getting through reluctant, obligated blow jobs.

That’s about when the tang of bile began to slowly crawl up my throat like a geriatric geyser. I was still chewing and smiling while she stood there expectedly, praying that she doesn’t notice I’m dry heaving with zipped lips. And then of course, a veritable reel of disgusting images played out inside my mind, because why wouldn’t I want to think about:

• snakes engulfing writhing rodents,
• Snooki’s kooka engulfing writhing rodents,
• Sarah Palin as President, and
• Grandma Cleavage modeling her new Irish Snuggie,

while I’m hosting what I can only describe as Satan’s sour semen on the bed of my tongue.

The short version: It was yucky, you guys. :(

My body was trying to reject it into my cupped palms but she just wouldn’t walk away.

Someone else walked by and she turned to offer them their own cherub (who tossed it into his mouth like he’s some Huck Finn motherfucker, I might add; I might also add that his name is MITCH, the worst Facebook friend in the whole world, and you know why I can add that? Because HE DOESN’T EVEN KNOW THIS EXISTS BECAUSE HE NEVER CHECKS IN WITH HIS STUPID FACEBOOK FRIENDS.), affording me a few seconds to openly cringe and emulate the No Bueno! grimace a baby makes when being force-fed organic mashed peas. I definitely didn’t want to swallow, so I tucked it behind my teeth, under my tongue, if I could have dripped it down into my bra, I would have; and then I choked out a strained, “It’s really good, thanks!” Like it would have killed her if I told her the truth, as if she grew this bitch in her own goddamn garden from seeds extracted from her loins. And then I couldn’t hold on to it any longer—I swallowed. I mean, it might as well have been a load of ejaculate so why the hell not?

“An explosion of flavor, right?!”

Yes, something like that.

Gross.

We did agree on one thing though—Clingman’s Dome. It’s an observation tower about a 45 minute drive up into the higher elevations of the Smokies. We decided to wake up early to do this in case Bill and Jessi had any plans for us in the afternoon.

This entailed waking Chooch up. When it comes to slumber, Chooch is a little divo. You let him wake up on his own, else you’ll have a snapping piranha on your hands.

Which we did yesterday morning. However, at least we made it to Thursday before our child to returned to his old ways of being a noncompliant asshole. What a great run we had.

The whole way up the mountain, he made his presence known in the backseat as he bucked and kicked at the back of my seat and allowed Satan himself to use Chooch’s mouth as a death threat portal. There were several times I had legitimate chills.

If you’ve ever seen Back to the Beach, think of Bobby in the backseat, only younger and way more sinister than sarcastic. Henry even turned around a few times a la Frankie Avalon and threatened to bust him in the mouth. IT WAS AN AWESOME JOYRIDE UP THE SIDE OF A FUCKING SCARY MOUNTAIN YOU GUYS. My nerves were not shot at all.

We saw another bear though!

“Oh shit, that’s a cub. Bye!” Henry yelled, flooring it.

It only got worse when we reached our destination and freed him from his cage. Thank god there was barely anyone there when we arrived because he was being so loud, so disrespectful, so spoiled-5-year-old that I came very close to making him a permanent fixture of the Smokies.

And this was before we realized it was a half-mile hike uphill from the parking lot to the tower. Oh, how he wept and shrieked, “MY LEGS HURT OMG IM DYING!” after taking two steps.

The elevation was 6600 feet and we quite literally had our heads in the clouds. It was so hard to breathe to begin with, and then you add in the accelerated heart rate that Chooch had given us and we both were sure we were going to go into cardiac arrest.

He finally stopped screaming near the top, only because two hikers emerged from the woods and Chooch is extremely vain just like me. But he refused to go all the way up to the tower because there were about 8 people there, opting instead to hang back on the curved ramp with his arms crossed and the surliest visage I think I have ever seen on him.

And of course we couldn’t see shit through the clouds, but despite that and the fact we have an asshole kid, it was still cool to be there, inhaling clouds.

Chooch was fine after that because we were leaving which is what he wanted.

Captain Surly-Sack.

This will probably be the only thing about this vacation that Chooch remembers when he grows up, creating a vitriolic aversion to Tennessee. I’ll be sure to blame it on Henry.

The other day, Sandy and Barb were complaining about a co-worker who was coughing and sneezing all day.

“There goes Typhoid Mary again,” Sandy said, all annoyed.

“Oh, I know what you mean. Yesterday, Chooch sneezed like eighteen times in succession and I was like, ‘God, get a life!’” I said, feeling a real sense of camardarie.

“You told him to get a life?” Barb reiterated.

“Well yeah, because he was annoying me. I mean, who needs to sneeze that much?”

They both laughed, but I guess I kind of saw how maybe I could have chosen my words better. Or, you know, offered him a tissue instead.

***

I hurt my back today. I started to notice it while I was exercising, but I’m on an intense “I’m Fat and Should Die” kick so I sucked it up and continued through the pain. By the time I was done, I was laying on the floor, whimpering and unable to stand up.

Chooch took no pity on me.

“Stop being a crybaby,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt that bad, let’s go outside.”

So we went outside, where I writhed on the front porch and reminded him every 3 seconds of the excruciating pain I was in.

Then he scraped himself and got all Wounded Animal on me, but I scoffed. “You didn’t care about my back, so I don’t care about your scrape!”

Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say. I only found that out when I came to work and told Barb and Kaitlin about how much of a bastard my own son was being to me while I clearly have a broken back.

“Erin!” Barb exclaimed. “Who’s the adult here?”

“But he hurt my feelings!” I argued.

“Yeah, but—he’s five!”

I mean, at least I’m not hitting him in the face with hot frying pans, right? Is that not good enough?

Well then, I guess tonight if you need me, I’ll be sitting in my room working on the parent rosary.

“I have to have it,” I blurted out to the guy working the photo booth. Suddenly, $10 seemed cheap for a memory that will last a lifetime. I couldn’t stop laughing the whole time we waited for it be printed. Janna seemed considerably less amused, but every so often I’d get a nervous laugh out of her.

I couldn’t wait to show Henry when we met back up with him and Chooch. I began laughing all over again, that insane staccato chuckle I’m notorious for when things have reached the Apex of Giddy. I even cried a little; people were looking at this point.

Henry looked at the picture and just frowned. He was probably angry that I had the audacity to spend my own hard-earned money on such frivolties instead of Desitin for his sweaty summer balls.

This picture is so fucking bad, it’s amazing.

1. If I look like this on a ride that isn’t even scary, I can only imagine how I’ll look if I ever find myself hunted in an Alaskan* forest by Michael Myers carrying a boom box that’s a’blast with Katy Perry’s Worst Misses. Coincidentally, this is also what I look like when Henry makes me have sex with him. :(
2. This was taken .002 seconds after Janna cupped Josh Groban’s balls and then died of happiness. What a peaceful corpse she makes.
3. Someone once told the guy in the front seat to treat every moment in life like it’s a deodorant commercial.

I have more pictures and shit to say, but this was the definite highlight of my day. I hope that when I’m on my death bed, someone shows me this, because that’s really how I’d like to peace out.

(*Alaska scares the shit out of me.)

At first, the baby Aquasaurs were little flecks, the same way sea monkeys start out in this scary world, but after about a week they pretty much began doubling in size overnight.

Every night.

There are some in the tank that are so gigantor, I have to turn away in fear, cupping my hands over my mouth in case the dry-heaving escalates to something more fruitful. (Literally; I have been eating a lot of melon these days.) One is at such a maximum girth that I promise you he casts a shadow over the room when he swims to the front of the tank.

The fact that I’m so freaked out over these bastard sea monsters only makes Henry and Chooch like them even more. Last week when I was at work, Henry emailed me a video he took with his phone. I assumed it was going to feature our child doing something douchey, I mean adorable, but no. No, it was the FUCKING AQUASAURS.

I coughed deeply and violently, swallowed my tongue briefly, and then deleted it.

THEY ARE EVEN BIGGER TODAY. I didn’t believe Chooch when he said, “Mommy they’re even bigger today!” BUT THEY ARE EVEN BIGGER TODAY. Some of these fucking nasty, slimy, forked-tail pieces of sea-shit are rivaling the size of standard goldfish. (I JUST SHUDDERED AND I CANT EVEN SEE THEM FROM WHERE I AM SITTING.)

MY FEAR AND DISGUST OF AQUASAURS VALIDATES MY USE OF CAPS-LOCK.

The only bright side to this whole pet debacle is that at least this isn’t something that can be extracted from the tank and thrust at my face in a taunting fashion. I mean, I think Chooch knows that. I HOPE Chooch knows that.

I was in Wendy’s office earlier tonight, trying to explain to her these obnoxious “scientific delights.” She went to YouTube and proceeded to find the most revolting Aquasaurs videos known to man.

Like this one:

Some of my work friends are grossed out by the sea monkeys on my desk but I guarantee, once they watch this video, the sea monkeys will seem like cuddly kittens to them. I very honestly do not even have my feet on the floor right now because I’m so afraid one of them is going to escape and slurp up my leg and turn me into an incubator for a new species and OMG NOW I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT THAT.