Another week in the books, time to purge the ol’ battered brain. (Battered as in beaten, not deep-fried carnival treat. OR IS IT A DEEP-FRIED CARNIVAL TREAT. I think there’s a recipe for that in Jeffrey Dahmer’s cookbook. What am I even talking about. I need sleep, my people.)

• At work on Thursday, Gayle sent out a department wide email about having an extra candle she didn’t need and first person to her desk gets it. First of all, there’s no such thing as “not needing a candle.” CANDLES ARE LIFE. Luckily, I sit about five feet away from Gayle’s desk, so I got up to casually walk over and claim my free candle in a cool, calm, and collected manner. In my world, that includes nearly catapulting ones self out of their chair, taking a giant lunge, and then galloping like a FUCKING RACE HORSE around the corner to Gayle’s dark abode, completely cutting off Catherine, who had dashed out of her office at the same time in an effort to be #1. BUT I WON! And I have no problem admitting to the Internet that I was prepared to throw an elbow or eight (you don’t know my body) and clothesline a person if I had to. Anyway, you’re reading the blog of a proud new owner of a SLEIGH BELLS scented candle, homemade by Gayle’s friend. I let Catherine hold it long enough to catch a whiff, because I wanted her loss to sting even harder. I care.
  • I’m not sure what SLEIGH BELLS are supposed to smell like, but I think cinnamon?
  • Apparently, Catherine and I created a quite the audible stampede, so the topic of candles became a group conversation, which inspired me to share a CAUTIONARY TALE involving candle tarts. Here, I’ll tell you, too. Pull up a seat, bring a pencil to jot down some notes, or just write your name over and over in different styles like I do in meetings, but make sure you add various accolades after it, like ‘is awesome” and “rules” and “is better than everyone in the entire world.” Anyway, my story dates back to 2005. I was home alone one day, which right away tells you that this is about to be one of the Harrowing Chapters in my life. One of the candle tarts had been burning for some time in my bedroom and I decided that I needed to change the scent immediately. Because if the wax was still in liquid-form, it should be harder to change, right? So I did the logical thing and carted the burner into the bathroom and poured it right into the toilet. Former honor student, right here! What I hadn’t anticipated was that once it hit the water, it would QUADRUPLE IN SIZE. Maybe even whatever comes after quadruple. It immediately hardened and blew up like a balloon, turned into this grotesque, elephantine wax brain, buoyantly glurging in the commode, threatening to come to life. Now, here’s the part of the story where I couldn’t quite remember the ending aside from the fact that Henry was all, “OHHONESTLYERIN!!!” when he came home from work. So later that night (we’re back to present-day now, try to keep up) I mentioned this story to Henry and he laughed without mirth (see also: disgusted sigh). In Henry’s reality, I left it I the toilet and waited for him to roll up on his white stallion, Sir Lancelot’s plunger in hand, to conquer the Yankee Candle commode coagulation. Sure, this seems plausible….but I decided that I better fact check this in the ol’ LiveJournal archives. Because I knew this was something I would have transcribed for posterity since I have no life. And here I am, 11 years later, recounting this tale like it’s the story of my ENGAGEMENT or something (thanks, Henry). LiveJournal reminded me that I was a brave girl that day and reached into the toilet all on my own and removed that chunky abomination of Midsummers Night and threw it in the garbage. However, various tendrils stayed behind, hugging the sides of the toilet bowl like waxy plankton, so I did what ANY ONE OF YOU would do and flushed. And then the toilet proceeded to run all day long until Henry rolled up on his white stallion, Sir Lancelot’s plunger in hand, to conquer the Yankee Candle commode coagulation. There. Henry’s the hero yet again. I HOPE THIS STORY SATISFIED YOU.
  • Speaking of being satisfied, I don’t get the appeal of those “satisfying” YouTube videos. They don’t make me feel satisfied! They just make me feel like I am literally watching the thing that’s happening and feeling no emotion about it whatsoever.
• The look Henry gets on his face when I get in the car & casually say, “I don’t know what I signed up for but there’s apparently no cancellation fee” could be used in place of those alarm system decals to deter burglars. Anyway, turns out it was to switch our electric over to some clean environmental thing and Henry is like blowing the top of his head off over this. He was reading the pamphlet I was given while saying “Tell me you didn’t sign up for this. This is what that guy came to the door about last week when I said NO!!” But it was some sweet college boy, and I couldn’t say no! Even though when I was walking by and he said, “Excuse me miss, do you have a second?” I said no. Yet somehow, here we are. Now I have to call and cancel but I don’t feel like it.
  • “ALL OF THESE REVIEWS FOR THIS COMPANY ARE ONE STAR, ERIN!” Henry frantically hissed. I feel like the last time I did something like this, it was for my phone (back in the landline days) and the utility company somehow managed to forward all of my phone calls to a tattoo shop in Homestead, PA. #truestory
    • But I mean…no cancellation fee…so.
• My smug face, in case you forgot what I looked like:

• I’M GOING TO SEE CITIZEN TOMORROW NIGHT! Fourth time this year, plus another time too when I saw Mat on his solo tour! I can’t explain how rejuvenating this band is for me. Another show by myself, but it’s OK. Eventually I’ll start making friends. Right, Internet diary?? #pityparty #toobadsosad
• Last Monday on my lunch break, I was accidentally walking beside a man who started introducing himself to passers-by as “Satan.” This was near the Army Navy store, and that’s where the other crazy guy bought his machete!! I didn’t stick around to find out if this was going to be Machete Monday Part 2: Erin Gets Hemisected
• Henry tried to serve me the worst acorn squash tonight and I sent it back to the kitchen with a quickness. I love acorn squash, but he strayed from the tried and true path and added some strange combination of spices to it and my palate was like, “Bitch, hell no.” So then he roasted other vegetables for and practically frisbeed it at my face. What a sensitive cook.

• Sometimes Chooch goes to this super lame gaming place on the boulevard and I’m like, “Whatever, loaf with all the geeks, whatever.” And then I just make Henry deal with it (you know, the small, unimportant details such as: having money to pay, and getting picked up, etc.) but yesterday, Henry was like, “IF YOU EXPECT TO HAVE A PARTY TONIGHT, YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO HELP ME BECAUSE I CAN’T DO IT ALL ON MY OWN, SO AT THE VERY LEAST, GO PICK UP CHOOCH FROM THE GAMING PLACE WHILE I’M COOKING.” Ugh god, I can’t stand how dependent he gets on me! So there I am, bailing Henry out once again, driving to some lame ass gaming place to pick up my kid. So I go inside all huffily because why do I have to do everything, and then some guy is all, “Oh hello” and I’m all, “OH HELLO GUY WHO MILDLY LOOKS LIKE CHRIS PRATT BUT ENOUGH THAT I FIND MYSELF SUDDENLY INTERESTED IN THE GAMING PLACE.” So I collect my kid and as we’re leaving, Cute Guy says “Bye Riley!” all cheerily and I whispered, “WHO IS THAT” and Chooch (a/k/a Riley) casually shrugged and said, “The guy in charge.” We came home and I was like, “Hey Henry, I’ll be in charge of gaming place drop-off and pick-up from now on, you’re so very welcome.”
  • Chooch just told me the guy’s name is Ed. “Oh. Eh….let’s just go ahead and call him….Damon.” Ed is not sexy.

• Got a new mask for the wall! If you ever see an old Halloween mask at the flea market or thrift store, grab that shit up for me and I will trade you serial killer cards for it, or something of actual value…like a piece of Henry’s liver.
• I still don’t know what’s going on with the weird neighbors. More on that later, I guess. I’m just obsessed  now at this point. To the point of flat out stalking and spying. Eh, nothing new for me, though. #lowkeysociopath
• Speaking of, while Chooch was at the gaming place yesterday, Henry had to go to the store to get more stuff for the holiday party we hosted last night, and I actually went with him for once because it seemed the better alternative to staying home alone while Boots was next door marinating in nicotine and gin baths. Or whatever it is he does. Fucking weirdo. (I feel you, Phyllis.) So Henry was standing in line to buy CHIPPED HAM (ugh gross) and he said, “Instead of standing here being in everyone’s way, why don’t you go to AISLE THREE and get the paper plates.” And then he repeated “AISLE THREE” like four more times for good measure, and I’m like, “Dude, you can say it all you want, that’s not going to make me magically know how to get there.” I mean, god. But I did eventually find it and that’s where the real challenge began: WHAT KIND OF PLATES SHOULD I CHOOSE? So I opted for these green plastic ones, because they looked festive, and this was after much deliberation between those and ones that had snowmen on them, but those ones seemed a little trite if we’re being frank here. So I take the plates back to Henry and he had all kinds of negative things to say about them, like, “These are expensive” (????) and “How many people are you planning on feeding?” — whatever that means. So after he collected his gross bag of dead animal, we had to go back to the illustrious AISLE THREE where he completely went over my head (literally — the plates he chose were on a shelf above my head) and I was like, “Then what was even the point of you making me come to AISLE THREE and do this?!” and he was all, “I don’t know. I was stupid to think you could handle it.” OMFG, GET FUCKED, HENRY!

• GUYS KURT TRAVIS HAS A NEW BAND AND I’M SWEATING A LITTLE DO I HAVE A FEVER MAYBE.
• I was off on Friday and it was glorious. I need very little! That’s not true! I made EGGS. Like, how do people even know how to cook eggs, my good god. It was so frustrating! My brow was furrowed and dotted with beads of sweat. I think I scraped Henry’s dumb pan. I somehow twisted the eggs into a knot when I tried to flip them? Part of the yolk was cooked solid and the other part was not cooked at all. I mean, I ate it anyway, but I felt myself getting food poisoning mid-bite. Henry came home and I told him about my disastrous turn in the kitchen and he asked, ‘Well, what were you trying to do to the eggs? Scramble them?” And I said, “Uh no, I was trying to makde dippy eggs, obvi.” And then he was like, “No, please don’t try that again” and said he’s going to teach Chooch how to make them so at least if Henry isn’t home and Chooch is, Chooch can just take care of it for me. Thanks, I think.
  • I luckily did not get sick and die like I anticipated!  I kind of wanted to though because Henry said, “Oh you’ll be fine” and just like, laughed it off, so I wanted him to feel super guilty and sorry that he said that, and didn’t take me to the ER to have my stomach pumped like a real soulmate would have. Probably. Jack probably would have done that for Jennifer on Days of Our Lives.
• Speaking of DAYS, RIP Stefano DiMera. </3
  • Literally, Chooch just said, “Days of Our Lives? What is that?” and I’m like HOW HAVE YOU NEVER HEARD ME TALK ABOUT THAT BEFORE, SON!? So then I had to explain to him what a soap opera is, OMG, and how before he was born, Henry and I would “tape” each episode on the VCR and then watch it while eating dinner, because Henry and I have always been a super hot and exciting couple. Envy us.

• Um. I’ll leave you now with this picture of Drew, who is pissed because I moved her wheelchair and also put lights on it. And then had like 20 people over last night which frightened her and made her squeeze in between Henry’s dresser and the wall because she is the complete opposite of my old cats, who were always like, “PARTY’S HERE! WHERE MY PARTY PPL AT?” Seriously, my original cats (well, minus Willie) were fucking attention-starved party…well…animals. They were always up in it.

CIAO FOR NOW. I’m off work tomorrow too so who knows what tales I’ll regale you with! I HAVE NOTHING ELSE GOING FOR ME.

Some things:

• I hate that I share “sore winner” traits with Trump. At least I have (marginally) better hair. 
• I had the day off today and had every light on in the house for no reason other than I’m wasteful, which Henry was not thrilled about when he came home. 
• The Affair is back on and I still hate Noah!
• Watched the Gilmore Girls reboot over the weekend and my heart feels like it free-fell through a paper shredder. Lisa and Octavia texted me to make Henry:Luke comparisons and I’m like IKNOWGUYZ! I thought a lot about it during my day of doing nothing, and it made me wonder if he was sent to me by my Pappap, because NO ONE else could have the patience and ingenuity to make me happy. Henry is the ultimate Luke. Sorry, but this year has promoted me to whatever level is above emo and all I do is think about super mushy things and cry my ugly face off. 
• Don’t worry, no GG spoilers.
• Remember the derelicts who are working next door? Well, they apparently were fighting so bad at 2am that Henry woke up and wondered if he should call the cops but someone beat him to it, so awesome – the people who aren’t even technically living next door to us have already had the police break up a domestic dispute. HOW DID I SLEEP THRU THIS? I let myself down. 
• I want to adopt something, maybe a kid,  but Henry said no. :( Maybe I’ll just do an imaginary adoption after I get imaginary married. 
• Bumper cars are expensive. 

• Someone bought two sets of my Dahmer Christmas cards! This is definitely my most popular Xmas card design. Today, I made a new BTK one for this year, so you should ch-ch-check it out!
• I also painted something today and did gospel aerobics so I guess my day off wasn’t TOO unproductive. 
• Oh and I listened to Balance & Composure! You’re shocked. 
• We’ve had these cats for almost a year & everyday we have to get them to remember us, like it’s 50 fucking First Dates.  They give us Stranger Danger stares and then, “Oh yeah, you guys.” 
• My tattoo is still in the OMG ITCHY phase and I’m driving Henry nuts with my whining but that could be any day, really. 

• Chooch ruins every picture on purpose. He has to actually try though, whereas it comes naturally for me. I win again! SUCK IT! IM THE BEST AT BEING UGLY!
• I still like The Walking Dead. Sorry, guys. 
• Henry’s eating yogurt. 
• He just said “So what? You’re so dumb.” HE CALLED YOU GUYS DUMB. 
• This one time last week, Gayle sewed a pompom back on my poncho thing and it was a super big deal (for no one but me):

• I bought an old wheelchair over the summer but everyone is too afraid to sit in it because the seat is like wicker sort of so it’s just been chilling here looking pretty but then I decided to use it as a supplement to the beverage buffet, so it’s now a bar cart! We’ll see how well that works when I have a holiday party here in a few weeks. 

• I’m a sad doll lately. 
• I offered Henry one bullet point but he said no. 
• When I woke up Saturday morning, I became extremely sad that Henry isn’t Dracula. Ugh. 
• I changed Penelope’s name to Peen Lop. She answers to it. 
• Remember when Henry told me I was overreacting over the people next door and now he’s complaining about how they woke him up at 2am? LOL. 
• Last week I was on my way to work and someone sat next to me on the trolley which is usually never good and then to my surprise, he said, “Erin?” So my knee-jerk reaction was to say no but then it ended up being my high school Lawson so it was OK! I haven’t seen him since I was 17 so wow, that was a long over-due reunion. Lawson was part of L.A.M.E. (Lisa/Ang/Melissa/Erin – the boys in our crew didn’t get to be a part of the acronym) and man we had some ridiculous/fun/stupid times together. I never see anyone I know on the trolley (mostly because I hide behind my hair) so that was a really great start to the day!
• I briefly considered learning how to cook but then I got bored before I could finish the thought in my mind. 
• OH YAY THE ASSHOLES NEXT DOOR ARE HOME. 
• I don’t have another show to go to until December 12th :(
• OMG for like 7 years I’ve been telling Henry I want Flex Seal (I might need it for something—YOU DONT KNOW WHAT I DO) and he’s always waving me off but a commercial for it just came on and now all of a sudden he’s like “That’s what we need.” UM NO SHIT?! Apparently, he has an actual use for it and doesn’t just want to buy it because it seems like a cool thing to have. 

• Peen Lop, boys and girls. 

That’s all. You’re dismissed. 

Last Saturday was such a day of highs and lows that I have been putting off even summarizing it because I get so angry and then happy and then angry and do you see how this is a cycle!? But here it goes.

• It started out on a high. I woke up and listened to music, which is my favorite thing to do. Weekend music is the best because I’m not in a rush trying to get ready for work or whatever, so I can just be LEISURELY with it and really hear it. We listened to the new Saosin record, and by we I mean me and Drew. Drew loves the record player.

• And then came a low! One of my friends on Facebook posted about the Hamilton/Mike Pence debacle. I commented, saying something about how Trump’s tweet regarding it was probably the funniest thing I’ll read all day, and there were maybe two or other people who commented as well. No one was particularly heated with their words. But then, THANK GOD, some dude rolled up and started off his comment with: “I only see women commenting here, so I as a man shall interject.” He went to essentially offer nothing of importance or value, but thanks man, for reminding me that my vagina renders my opinion useless! Seriously, what the fuck is wrong people. My friend’s post had literally nothing to do with gender. NOTHING. I am so easily ruffled anymore that this actually came close to making me grab a hammer and go hogwild on gender barriers. I started to reply to this asshole’s comment, but then stopped and asked myself: “Is this worth it? Do you really want a bunch of Facebook notifications ruining your evening?” No. No, I didn’t want that. So I closed out of Facebook and Henry gave me a hug and muttered something about “Please don’t lop off my penis, please remember I’m not one of the bad guys. I am a feminist. I PAY MY DUES EVERY DAY BY LIVING IN THIS HOUSE WITH YOU.”
• Henry and I met Blake and Haley at the Smiling Moose for dinner. This is one of my favorite places, with some really grade A company, so this automatically goes into the “high” column. I was still kind of simmering over the mansplaining incident, so I had TWO BEERS and if you know me, you know that I’m not much of a drinker anymore (drinking made me fat as fuck in my 20s). I had two pumpkin beers because I’m still taking baby steps. However, I finally had Pumpking after years of being told that, as someone who can barely gag down a Summer Shandy, I wouldn’t like it. WELL JOKE’S ON YOU FOOLS BECAUSE I DID! It also made me pretty drunk, though. And also if you know me, you know that me being drunk can go one of two ways: adorably precocious or FUCKING BELLIGERENT BIOTCH.

• Which leads me to the ultimate low of the day: the Hands Like Houses show at Diesel, where I was a FUCKING BELLIGERENT BIOTCH. Now let me make some excuses for myself here, because I truly believe that my environment had a lot to do with my intolerance for humanity. Diesel sucks as a music venue. It’s a nightclub and should only be used as such. I had one good experience there and it was last June when I was at a show with only 20 other people. It was chill as fuck. This show was way too crowded for this venue, and also it started an HOUR EARLY with NO NOTICE, so by the time we got there, not only did we miss the first band (Out Came the Wolves) but all the decent spots were taken. Also, since the show was on a Saturday night, this brought out all the fair-weathered concert goers who were mostly there to party and get drunk, and apparently Diesel wasn’t relegating the drinkers to the upstairs area like most clubs do. Nope, they were ALL AROUND ME, sloshing their Bud Light around and putting my surly face in the background of all of their salacious Snaps. By the time The Color Morale came on, I was so angry that I was shouting at people and making angry, intense eye contact at the Tallest Guy In the Room who felt compelled to STAND ON A PLATFORM in front of me. I HOPE HE THOUGHT I WAS A WICCAN BECAUSE THAT’S THE VIBE I WAS GOING FOR WITH MY WITCHCRAFT GLARE. And then it was time for co-headliner Our Last Night, who I have seen twice before and they do nothing for me, and by this time, it was so crowded that I couldn’t breathe and so many people were scream-talking around me and I just kept running my mouth, and running it and running it and running it, and Henry was giving me  the “Please, not here, not now. Please don’t make me take a punch for you. I only LOOK rugged, but 16 years with you has turned me into a pile of buttercream and craft patterns, PLEASE DON’T MAKE ME BE A MAN.” I knew that I had to leave. I love Hands Like Houses, but I was honestly losing my fucking mind, standing in that sleazy pit of Big Night Out yinzers and so I looked at Henry and said, “We need to leave. Like, now.” And Henry did a little twirl before happily leading me out of Diesel, but not before I loudly scoffed, “THIS VENUE SUCKS” as we walked past the asshole in charge, who apparently admitted that he knew for hours that the show’s time was pushed ahead but was “too busy” to update the Facebook event page. Fucking amateur.
  • Two small highs happened though, one was the numerous times I got to see my Aussie baes in HLH milling about behind the scenes and I got all day-dreamy thinking about them taking me home to Canberra with them, where I could relive the week I spent there in 2000. And the second was when Garrett Rapp from A Color Morale was being accosted by fan-bros right behind Henry, and I tried to push Henry into him while shouting, “HENRY THERE HE IS! TELL HIM WHAT YOUR FAVORITE SONG IS!” And Henry’s frown grew so large that he was able to step into it like a pair of pants and disappeared into the world of Leave Me Alone.
• On the way back to the car, we past the old Schwartz Market, which was full of art now. I slowed down a little to get a better look, at which point some hippie woman smoking in the doorway said, “Come on in!” and grabbed me by the arm and led me through the door, at which point Henry was like, “Yeah, I’m good” and stood outside by himself while I was given a cup of HOT APPLE CIDER and a delicious vegan pumpkin pastry while learning all about the For One Peace Cooperative, a group of amazing creative-types who hang out and make art while also doing things to bring the community together, like organizing coat drives for the homeless, etc.  I was in the for about 30 minutes I guess, talking to Joe—he appeared to be the leader, and he showed me a watercolor technique using coffee filters, because he has multiple sclerosis and it’s difficult for him to hold paint brushes. I told him about the horrible experience I had down the street at Diesel, and he said, “Everyone stumbles in here for a reason.” I’ll say. It happened so fast that I can’t even remember now how I went from casually looking in the window to eating their food. And then, as I was signing up to be a part of their group, Joe excitedly told me that soon they’ll be cleaning up litter by the river. “Women are getting jumped by the river,” some guy mumbled around bites of vegan food. “Yeah, that’s fucked up,” Joe murmured, looking at the ground. “But, we’re not sending her to the river alone!” And then looking back at me, Joe reiterated, “We’re not sending you to the river alone. We”ll be in groups, and it will be during the day, of course!” And I just laughed because I already loved my new crew. When I met up with Henry and excitedly recounted all of this to him, he just frowned and muttered something about a cult. “You wouldn’t understand, Henry. You had to be there,” I said dismissively. “It’s about community.” Henry looked at me, all aghast, and cried, “You don’t even like community!” Yeah, that was the OLD Erin. But now I’ve been saved now I have a crew. I even let Joe hug me and I liked it. I’m basically a hippie now.

After I got my tattoo Wednesday night, I was walking down Carson Street waiting for Henry the Chauffeur to pick me up, and one of the guys I met from the co-op walked by. “Hello!” he said cheerfully, and I was like, “OMG HI YOU REMEMBER ME!” because I have this complex where I’m certain no one ever remembers me, even less than a week later. I was so excited to tell Henry when I got in the car!

“Who!?” Henry asked. And then, “Oh.” Whatever Henry. He’s just allergic to tie-dye, I guess

I’ve been avoiding bullet pointing on here because the format always gets wonky and words smoosh together after I hit publish, but bulleting just feels right tonight. My brain’s got nothing more to give than thought blurbs. So let’s do this together. I’ll type and then you read. That’s the only way this relationship is going to work.

• Adele’s “Send My Love” was on when I got in the car on Sunday. Henry admitted that he could never figure out what she says during the chorus. “Right……here!” Henry cried when the part in question came on. “You mean, ‘Send my love to your new lover? Treat her better?'” Chooch and I pretty much answered in sync. “Oh….I though it was “Send my love to your new left hand bag.” God, Henry.
• There was some gross blood drive happening, which spurned a conversation between Lauren and me about needles and how awful they are. “Tattoo needles don’t bother me at all, though,” I mused. “I guess because I know afterward, I’m leaving with something I want.” “Hepatitis?” Glenn piped up at his desk behind me. I HATE WHEN HE LISTENS TO MY CONVERSATIONS UGH.
• Look, I liked Bernie too but now that everything is over I feel like I have to be honest and tell you that I hated, and I mean HATED, his campaign slogan. “Feel the Bern” does not sound pleasant or motivating to me whatsoever. I makes me think that someone has a STD and their dick has burning sensations.

• Holiday cards are in full effect! Which means Henry’s been working his ass off. Being co-owner of a greeting card company is hard work, you guys.
• Henry texted me while I was at work yesterday. His text said, “Can we talk?” and I quickly responded with, “No, Tevin. No, I can’t.” He was like, “WHO IS TEVIN*” so I let him stew on that for a bit before sighing and explaining that Tevin Campbell is an American R&B singer who had a big hit in the mid-90s with his song, a BET classic, “Can We Talk?” File this under: Shanice Likes Your Smile.
  • *Actually, Henry was using “talk to text” so what he really asked, and I’m quoting directly from my phone: “What is Kevin Log Cabin Tavern tea heaven.”
• During one of my neverending social rants to Henry, I told him that it’s not even that I’m like some crunchy hippie who wants to give the world a great big hug; in fact, I dislike pretty much all people the same. Like, just don’t talk to me when I’m standing in line for the trolley or washing my hands in a public restroom, I don’t care who you are. Unless you’re in a band. However, this doesn’t mean that I want anyone to have their rights taken from them and I have cried so much lately over HUMANS that I’m worried I’m starting to become one myself.
  • Um also, I won’t ever judge a person based on their skin color, sexuality, religion, etc, but I will judge you on your actions. So if you’re like the asshole on the trolley with me yesterday who turned his snot into a disgusting, bubbling instrument, then you can fuck right off.

• I’ll judge cole slaw with a quickness though. We went to Bob’s Diner in Castle Shannon last Saturday night and had wet cole slaw. #girlbye
• So we’re in the process of buying a new fridge but I felt that the one Henry is settling on isn’t interesting enough, so he was like “LET ME SHOW THE PRICES OF INTERESTING FRIDGES.” Ugh, get fucked Henry. GET FUCKED WITH A PLAIN DILDO.
• Chooch ran for secretary of chorus and lost to a girl who JUST JOINED CHORUS THIS YEAR when this is Chooch’s THIRD YEAR! And curiously, president and publicist went to two other girls who are like BFFs so you tell me if you think this election was RIGGED.
  • FUCK!!!!

• BRB looking at pictures of Obama and crying.
• I just now watched a live Facebook announcement from my friends Elaine and Tery – they’re eloping and I’m so happy for them! Henry saw that I commented “I’m crying!” and he said, “No you’re not—-oh. Yes, you are.” Ugh, I might be ambivalent toward people in general but man do I love it when my friends are happy. <3
• We were in the car last night and Chooch was asking annoying math questions and I was like DO YOU THINK ANYONE HAS EVER SNAPCHATTED A MURDER and Henry was just like, slowly dying at the wheel. Now you know what it is like to be in a car with us.

• We’ve been seeing so much of Blake and Haley lately and I love it, but no one loves it more than Chooch. My lord. They came over last Saturday, so Chooch got back-to-back evenings of playing games with adults.

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• I am always cold at work (they don’t call me Heartless for nothing, yo) but it was especially frigid there one day last week. SO COLD that when I got my print job off the printer, it felt so deliciously warm in my hands that I held it up to my cheek and throatily murmured, “This paper feels so nice and warm.” Glenn and Todd were like, completely disgusted by this.
• Since tonight is Light Up Night in Pittsburgh, Amber1 hung up a string of Xmas lights on her desk so I was like GOD OK FINE I’LL DECORATE TOO STOP NAGGING UGH. I used to have a little tree which I decorated with Jonny Craig ornaments but fuck Jonny Craig and fuck Xmas trees! So instead, I just laid out some voodoo Santas and my old garland of Glenns. And obviously my Jesus pen that I bought at Christ in Smokies:

• My aunt loved Bon Jovi. The fact that they released an album called This House Is Not For Sale the same year my aunt died and we lost my grandparents house because of her is not lost on me. Weird fucking coincidence.
• Speaking of family, this year has been so disgusting that I’m trying to convince Henry to just take us away for Christmas. I don’t want to see anyone. I just want to eat high quality ice cream and chill with Henry and Chooch. They are all I need.

• My mood for the last couple weeks. ^^^^ FUCK WITH ME.
• Woke up nauseous: pregnant, or Christmas music on the radio?
  • Speaking of, last week Octavia innocently asked me what my favorite Christmas song and I was like NONE!!! FUCK XMAS!!! but really that was just misguided anger because, you know, 2016. I really am not a big Christmas fan and holiday music generally does irritate me, but then this morning I heard some version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Xmas” and so I texted her and told her that one, that’s my favorite. Because every version I’ve ever heard has made me feel sad, and y’all know this emo queen stays youthful by drinking her own tears. I have two vivid memories of this song though, and both are from elementary school:
    • one is playing this song on my old Casio keyboard in the basement over and over because I was a self-taught keyboardist which means I played with one hand and only knew like 6 songs.
    • the second is from the 1985 Days of Our Lives holiday episode when Liz sings it OH MY GOD I’M CRYING.
      • Everything always goes back to Days of Our Lives, somehow. It was a prominent aspect of my childhood.

• I’m obsessed with the Joe Biden memes just like everyone else, but when someone merged it with a common Dance Gavin Dance meme, I literally rolled off the couch, onto my knees, and raised my hands to Kevin Log Cabin Tavern tea heaven.
• Henry asked me where some restaurant is downtown and somehow didn’t know exactly where I meant when I said, “I think it’s right near where the guy with the bomb detonator sometimes stands.” 16 years in, and he still expects to get coherent answers to directional inquiries. What a dreamer.
  • Related: I asked Henry what kinds of girls he likes and he said obviously annoying ones.
  • Also related: on the way to Cleveland last week, Henry randomly tried to tell me about some bitch he had a crush on when he was in 6th grade and I was like, “THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT I’M THE ONLY ONE YOU’VE EVER HAD A CRUSH ON, BOY.”
    • BRB, casually rifling through Henry’s lefthand bag for incriminating receipts, condoms, pregnancy tests, marriage certificates.
• I see you, Craig Owens. AND I LIKE IT:

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND. USE BIG WORDS TO CONFUSE YOUR ENEMIES BUT DON’T USE ARTIFICIAL SWEETNER, PER DR. OZ. UNLESS YOUR PUTTING THE SWEETNER IN YOUR ENEMIES’ EYES.

1. Ending sentences with prepositions.
2. Hating the inbred yinzers currently working on the other side of our duplex. They must be mole people because they only come over at night and stomp around like cinder block-footed sumo wrestlers, scream-talking in their degenerate nicotine-throated pittsburghese, and fucking slamming the front door repeatedly. I just now started screaming at them through the wall and henry is all OK OK OK SHHHH because he hates conflict but I HAVE HAD IT BUDDY. AND NOW OH SHERRIE IS ON THE RADIO SO IM RIDING STEVE PERRY’S VOICE TO A HAPPY PLACE SOMEWHERE IN 1984. (side note: the only time I had beef with Gilmore Girls was when they referenced this song and said it was JOURNEY #wrongzo #nope)
3. Planning a small holiday party & searching for awesome punches to serve on the beverage buffet. The plan is to get henry so drunk that he starts telling us SERVICE stories.  In times of crisis, I go into hostess mode. 
4. Obviously still Balance & Composure, and I’m seeing them tonight in Cleveland!!!
5. Investigating realistic ways to make music my career because I think it’s safe to say that this isn’t a phase but legit passion and every minute that doesn’t involve me listening to music, reading about music, talking about music, trying to get you guys to listen to bands I love, and going to all of the shows, a piece of my heart petrifies. I can’t sit in an office for the rest of my life, I just can’t. I feel like a caged animal. :(

Let’s end with a picture of Drew being a dick. 

****

HI ME AGAIN. I just flipped the fuck out because those dbags next door slammed the front door so hard it shook the house so I went off and henry was all PLZ DONT DO THIS and then the DJ on the radio said something about it being November 10 and Henry mumbled “it’s not November 10” and I yelled “YES IT IS YOU KNOW WHY BECAUSE ITS AFTER MIDNIGHT AND DO YOU KNOW WHY WE’RE AWAKE—BC OF THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS NEXT DOOR UGHHH”

And Henry just murmured, “No, that’s why you’re awake. I’m awake because you were screaming.”

It’s me against the world AS USUAL. 

It’s been a while since I unwound with a bullet-point post so why not start the week off right—super casual & relaxed.

That’s how I look in my wrinkled clothes. Oh Monday. What’s an iron.

• The Olympics might still be happening, but they’re over for me. My heart is empty now that swimming is done. (Ask Henry – I cried real tears about it yesterday and he was like “Are you for real right now, of course you are.”
• I’m on the trolley and I just yawned. REAL LIFE. Then the girl behind me sneezed and I slipped and said bless you. Ugh.
• Last night, I was reading about the Bieber/Selena Instagram feud, sparked by pictures of his new girlfriend, Lionel Richie’s daughter, when a LIONEL RICHIE SONG CAME ON THE RADIO. What does it mean, other than I listen to soft rock!?

• Tonight I’m going to see Sianvar, which is a supergroup consisting of members of Dance Gavin Dance, Stolas, Hail the Sun, and A Lot Like Birds. This is the first time in a while where I actually sprung out of bed on a Monday, so that’s how I know I’m excited. Also, Henry is going with me so I’m even more excited because now it will look like I have a friend.
• Maandag means Monday in Dutch. The more you know.
• Ugh I hate it when I get a crush on Henry it’s so dumb ew.

• Came into work and two of the main new printers have some FATAL ERROR message on then and now everything is all jacked up. HAPPY MAANDAG, MOTHERFUCKERS.
• Wendy just told me I’m wearing fall shoes and I’m like IDGAF WAHHHH!

• I was having a bad Friday and then Catherine gave me a delicious sugar cookie and that was awesome but now Monday is terrible too and I want another one of those cookies immediately. This Maandag can suck a frikandel.

• I got to watch some daytime TV with Judy on Thursday because it’s my late shift day and when Live with Kelly came on, Judy started up with her Jerry O’Connell ranting again and you know what? Judy’s right. Fuck Jerry O’Connell. That dummy.
• Honestly, what is my deal?! I’m sitting here like, “I can’t wait to leave work and see Henry” — I disgust myself.
  • I mean, he spelled Foreigner wrong when he texted me last week to say that “Foriegner is on, NBD.” THIS IS WHO I HAVE A CRUSH ON!?
    • Speaking of Foreigner, how have I never noticed the similarities between “That Was Yesterday” and Depeche Mode’s “Policy of Truth”?? I made Henry listen to both songs back to back last night and he said he has no idea what I’m talking about.

• That faux-pepperoni life. Chooch is still going strong with his meatless lifestyle. I’m shocked. He still doesn’t like vegetables though.

• Olympic lounging, you guys. The competition is strong at my house.

• Warped Tour is over and now it feels like summer is officially over too because I follow along via Twitter and Instagram for the entire tour, and I actually started to cry about this yesterday, along with Olympic swimming being over and Phelps supposedly retiring for real this time, and it’s too bad my tears aren’t the cure for cancer because they’re ever-flowing.
  • Speaking of sensitive, Chooch lost his mind last week because he found out that his favorite dog, a Corgi named Maverick who walks by our house all the time with his owner, died recently. Now the guy has a Corgi puppy named Spencer but Chooch DGAF because he’s no Maverick. Anyway, Chooch spent a large portion of the night crying about this at his desk while looking at a random picture of a cat. Henry’s mom felt that “THAT MAN SHOULD COME OVER HERE AND APOLOGIZE!” And Henry cried, “For his DOG DYING!?”
• I made a new Etsy shop for all of the sweet 1980s clothes from my Pappap’s house that I’m trying to get rid of, but there are a lot more that I still need to get pictures of, so if anyone wants to be a model for a day, hit me up. The clothes are super small and nothing is getting past my big fat hips, or I’d just do it myself. (I’d definitely wear an animal mask though because my face is the worst.)

• Henry and I binged our way through Game of Thrones during June and July and it took me a while to notice CHARLES DANCE in the opening credits, at which point I nearly fell off the couch in excitement. “CHARLES DANCE IS IN THIS AND I DIDN’T EVEN REALIZE!?” I cried in Henry’s face. “…..I guess?” he answered with hesitation, probably afraid of what answer is right or wrong. And so I had to explain to him that when I was in middle school, probably 6th grade, there was a made-for-TV version of The Phantom of the Opera, and he was the Phantom! “I was so obsessed with this version, that I cut out all of the advertisements for it from the TV Guide and taped them to my wall,” I told Henry, my heart threatening to burst with joyous memories. “Of course you did,” he sighed. So then any time he was in a scene on GoT, I would get really close to Henry and yell, “CHARLES DANCE.”
• When I ran into my old friend Casandra last week (and whose name I consistently spelled wrong in my last post because I’m terrible), we briefly reminisced about the last time we hung out, which was at one of my house parties in 2004 (probably?) back when everyone would get drunk and try to hit me with a frisbee as I skated up and down the road in front of my house. We called it “Hit Erin With a Frisbee.” So inventive.  Anyway, it made me feel like I should have a party soon, only maybe during the fall, when it’s not 187 degrees in my house.

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• Henry finally hung up several pictures that have been laying in a pile in a corner, crying. Those bitches over at A Beautiful Mess would probably have a coronary if they saw the randomness of my gallery wall. I DIDN’T PRE-PLAN IT WITH BLUEPRINTS, OMG.
  • I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do with the small piece of wall above the fireplace mantel. Henry is still firmly against glitter, but I feel like something needs to happen in that spot before he hangs the Mouse Attack light up there.
    • Don’t worry — I have time. It’s going to take him forever to get that light to work.

• I was cleaning under the sink in Sharon’s bathroom when this travel bottle of Sambuca from our trip to Greece literally rolled off a shelf into my hand. And then right after that I found a piece of paper that had my name written on it in her handwriting and it was just a bit much for my heart to take. She was in my dream last night, but it was the awesome 1980s Aunt Sharon that I have the best memories of, and it was a lot better than the nightmares I had been having about her sporadically over the last 5 years. Those After-Death signs and signals are so creepy-awesome and it’s been comforting, even just hearing a Bon Jovi jam on the radio in my bedroom, given how shitty and traumatic the last couple of months have been. I  hope things get better soon. :(
  • Maybe RIOT FEST will help!!
• Still trying to get Henry to agree to a Labor Day weekend trip to Louisville so we can see Artifex Pereo. Ugh, he’s being such a DAD about it.
• Three more hours until Sianvar….
• I gave up my seat on the trolley last week to some little kid who was standing with his dad. I hope that one day, when they’re having Christmas dinner, the boy says, “Hey dad, remember that time when the nice lady with the bloody teeth necklace let me have her seat on the trolley?” I could be a legend in their family. YOU DON’T KNOW.
• Gayle gave me 75 cents so now I’m eating a dinner of Cheezits. Thanks, Gayle!

OK, one more hour until I get to repeatedly beat my head off the wall at Smiling Moose. Don’t trip over a dead body when you’re Pokemon Go’ing, friends. Merry Maandag.

I’m It’s Friday and I got a good seat on the trolley and I’m wearing jeans at work so let’s celebrate with five things I like right now, because that takes less energy than writing about all the things I hate.

1. Old As Fuck Rosary

Octavia gifted me with this beautiful heartwood rosary that she bought from an ex-Dominican monk in Venice and I am so smitten with it! I love religious objects so much and this one in particular is going to get much love. Also, I think it might be haunted because I keep seeing it flash before my eyes when I’m at work. Is that normal.

2. Proper Soft-Serve

I guess I’m just over the SUGAR & SPICE episode where that dumb bitch refused to serve me sprinkles because when the kind young girl at Punk’s batted nary a lash when I asked for not sprinkles but the heavier CRUNCHIES on my pistachio soft serve last Sunday, I felt like I won a small victory for soft serve embellishments all over the world. No one should be denied their God-given right to dress a fucking ice cream cone with sprinkles.

There was a lady in line behind us who leaned forward and asked, “Excuse me, but what are those crunchies exactly?” Henry and I were just like, “You know…crunchy things” and the ice cream server said it was like crushed peanut brittle (negative). I enthusiastically encouraged the broad to try some for herself and she made it sound like she was going to, but I watched her as she walked back to her car with her CRUNCHIE-LESS ICE CREAM. My heart was busted.

3. Thursdays with Judy

Chooch is done with camp which means we’re back to having Henry’s mom here as basically a live-in nanny. She was in rare form last night though because the church across the street is currently in the throes of the lamest carnival of all time, but it’s appealing to old people and kids who don’t know any better. Chooch likes it because it’s a chance for him to spend our money and pretend like he’s independent (it’s literally right across the street so I just half-heartedly wave to him, make sure he doesn’t get hit by a car when he crosses the street, and then go back to watching my MTV shows), plus he’s been seeing a lot of his friends over there too because I guess this is the current HOT SPOT in Brookline. Opening night was also DOO WOP night with DJ Daddy G and it was pretty much poppin’ off. I mean, you can’t play Under the Boardwalk without all the octogenarians groovin’ behind their rockers.

(Chooch is actually there again right now and I’m like WHAT IS SO GREAT ABOUT THIS CARNIVAL? There aren’t even any rides there?!)

ANYWAY. Judy was excited to go over with Chooch last night. Henry gave them money and we were like “Don’t spend it all in one place — OR ON JADEN.” Jaden is this dickhead kid that comes calling all the time and he looks away every time I’m around because Chooch told him I hate him and now he’s afraid of me, which is how it should be. I finally got to watch The Challenge finale (Johnny Bananas can eat a dick) so I was in a great mood by the time they came back around 9, and Judy was in an even BETTER mood. She had so much to tell us that I was like “Did they go to St.Pius or Reno?”

“Jaden said his mom was EXPLODING CHOOCH’S PHONE, what the hell does that mean?!” Judy cried. “And the PRIEST was looking for blackjack players! Then I thought I lost Markie and when I saw his grandfather walking toward me I thought OH NO HERE WE GO. [Hot Naybor] Chris and Ruthie came over too, so I talked to them for a little bit. RUTHIE leaves for MEXICO next week. Markie’s grandma has an ULCER on her FOOT and is in the nursing home now. She’s doing OK, but yeah she’s in a nursing home.”

All this, at the St. Pius Carnival.

She was pissed though because she wanted to play Bingo but I guess that was when she lost Markie, who isn’t even her responsibility, just some neighborhood kid whose grandfather ditched him and Judy got saddled with him, so she felt like she had to look for him instead? I would have been like, “I have no idea what kid you’re talking about.”

Chooch won a poop emoji thing.

So then Judy sat down in my wheelchair and somehow we got on the topic of ho my life sucks and I just poured out my heart, just kept talking and talking, and I had no idea how badly I needed to do that. To just TALK without having my feelings minimized. And Judy kept it REAL, man. She dished out heaping spoonfuls of advice and suggested that I go and talk to that priest who did Sharon’s memorial because fuck a therapist, right? Maybe I’ll do that. Probably not, but it makes me feel good to know that it’s an option, and that Judy gives a shit. Sometimes it feels like I don’t have the right to be hurting, so I try to keep it all internalized. But Judy just sat there and listened and cared about what I had to say and fuck, I needed that.

And then she started ranting about how much she hates Jerry O’Connell, remakes of classic movies, and asked Henry if he was there when they were all watching Roots or was that when he was IN THE SERVICE and I was like, “Motherfuck, this is the best casual work night ever.”

4. POP GOES THE WEASEL

This morning, Amber2 walked past me, singing “Pop Goes the Weasel” because that’s what happens when you have baby. But it reminded me of this “rap” song that was mildly popular around 1992 and Amber and Todd were like, “No, sorry we don’t remember the rap song that you just made up in your head” but then I found the video on YouTube and now Amber wants to buy a sweatsuit and probably already made it her new ring tone.

5. The Olympics, duh!

I’m so excited to start hating random countries for really obscure reasons and hopefully getting some BELA KAROLYI SIGHTINGS!!! I love him so much that in addition to making a t-shirt with his face on it, I even painted a picture of him which is hanging on my wall and literally no one who comes to my house every asks about it because they know it’s probably a can of worms waiting to be opened.

OK, my brain is tired and I would like to enjoy the opening ceremonies since I was working LATE SHIFT during the last Olympic opening ceremonies and missed out on all the MAGIC.

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Another long week is coming to an end and I’m ready to slam the motherfucking door on it. BUHBYE, STRANGE WEEK FULL OF MURDER AND MAYHEM. Can we call this a…circle point post? Dot point? I don’t want to use the b-word anymore. Fuck the b-word and the g-words too.

• We had a low-key surprise birthday cake for Corey last Saturday at The House. The garbage truck is an inside joke relevant to what our lives have become since March 30th. In light of recent events, it was a relatively somber cake-eating session, but I was pretty high off the fact that I saved the whole entire day when my mom announced she forgot to get candles and a lighter. I’ve been rummaging through enough drawers in that house lately to immediately summon up visions of a box of birthday candles from the 1970s in a drawer behind the game room bar, and an entire canister of matchbooks in my aunt Susie’s room (I chose a book from Tambellini’s in Bridgeville and it got shit done).

• Chooch was in a foul mood during the cake-eating session.
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  I think he partially hangry but mostly just being spoiled because he wanted to go to the craft store and get that loom shit that he’s all into now and we were like WE WILL GO AFTER THIS JUST SHUT YOUR DAMN MOUTH but he’s Chooch and also my spawn, and people like me are unable to keep their mouths shut, so he just kept needling away at our sanity and then started to CRY because who needs drama classes? Not this son of a bitch. His scowl immediately made me think of this picture that Henry took of me years and years ago at Buttermilk Falls. He learns from the best. Scowls all day.

  • He did end up getting his loom shit, but only because he used his own money. I wasn’t rewarding his behavior with free gifts! Bitch, please. He didn’t care. He even asked a Pat Catan’s worker to help him find what he needed because he is way more independent than me. (I guess maybe he gets that from Henry.)

• I purposely switched my late shifts with Amber2 so that I wouldn’t be a zombie at work on Monday since I knew I would be getting home really late from Cleveland. I was looking forward to sleeping in a little, but then I heard Chooch yell something about a succulent, and then I heard the spine-tingling sound of GLASS BEING SWEPT UP. Those little fuckers. Apparently the fireplace mantel is no longer safe, either. THERE IS NOWHERE FOR ME TO PUT MY PLANTS NOW. (Until Henry finally makes me some macrame hanging plant holders. Kara sent me some DIYs to help him get started!) Of course, Chooch only half-cleaned up after his dumb cat (I KNOW IT WAS DREW) so instead of sleeping in, my plant-induced anxiety had me out of bed at normal time and downstairs cleaning up the carnage. Then I tried to relax with a nice glass of cold brew and fucking Penelope was trying to get all up in it. CAN’T A BITCH DRINK HER ICED COFFEE IN PEACE AFTER CLEANING UP DIRT!? Fuck.
  • Speaking of cold brew: guys, get yo’selves a person who learns how to make bad-ass motherfuckin’ cold brew even when they hate coffee. Because that’s what my person does. And he is the goddamn best.
    • YES I’M TALKING ABOUT HENRY. JESUS.
      • I mean, just Henry. Not Jesus.
    • That first time he made me cold brew, though….

• And then there’s the leader of Plantpocalypse: fucking Drew.
• Did I tell you about the time a few weeks ago when I almost got HIT BY A CAR? Well, I almost got HIT BY A CAR, you guys. I was walking to the trolley shuttle (Henry’s fault already, as you can see) and I was crossing the street IN A CROSSWALK when this woman came careening around the bend. I saw her coming and thought, “Oh surely this dumb cooze is going to slow her roll.” FALSE. She just kept coming and then she saw me at the last second, when I WAS LEAPING TO SAFETY. I have never come that close to getting hit by a car, but she was literal centimeters away from clipping me. We made eye contact and I screamed, “HEY!!!!” at the same time she mouthed the words, “OH MY GOD I’M SO SORRY” and then drove off, leaving guilty fumes in her wake. I hope she stewed over that all day, because I know I sure did. I wanted to press charges at one point, but Henry was all, “Yeah but….did she even hit you?” OK, WHITE KNIGHT.
  • The perils of taking the trolley! Henry is trying to have me killed!

• Remember when banana clips were the shit? Chooch doesn’t. He was like, “But why would someone want to wear this in their hair?” Indeed, son.
  • I never wore banana clips because they didn’t look right on me. I did wear those big floppy bows that came attached to french barrettes. Oh man, I had so many of them. I think I’ll wear one to work on Monday and make Ethan jealous.
    • Because he doesn’t have hair.
      • Although, Amber1 did offer to let him borrow hers.
    • He does have a beard, though.

• My excitement for the week, aside from the PENGUINS VICTORY PARADE, which I will post about separately, was watching the first episode of the new season of MTV’s Are You the One and recognizing that one of the guys is from SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE.
  • My life is so full.
• Speaking of a full life, I watched this on YouTube last night because my aunt has me all stoked for Gino Vannelli:

• Today is Thank God It’s Emarosa Friday, so I shared the new Emarosa video with my WORK HOSTAGES and now both Ambers have agreed, upon their own volition, that they will go with me to see Emarosa next time they’re in town.
  • Which is next month at Warped Tour, but I don’t foresee that happening, so we’ll just wait for the next tour, I guess.
  • And then I heard Amber2 admit that she “sometimes has a soft spot for emo music” so now I’m probably going to start making her playlists.
    • EMAROSA ISN’T EMO but that will be a lesson for another Friday. Emo is a tricky subject.
      • WHAT IF I WAS A MUSIC TEACHER IN REAL LIFE?!?!

• Chooch found a Rick Astley tape at my Pappap’s house and went nuts over it. OH THE THINGS WE FIND.
• Speaking of Chooch (but not Rick Astley), he took a page out of my manual and recorded his nemesis LARRY bitching about being under-appreciated. Sometimes I really love my kid.
  • I mean, always! I always love my kid.

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• I accidentally stood up my friend Stacey for dinner last Tuesday. I can’t even believe it and I feel like such a royal asshole. And it wasn’t even like I had blown her off for better plans! It was just another evening at The House, taking out garbage and having Why So Formal pizza.
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  But everything going on has turned my brain into mush and most of the time, I don’t even know what day it is. So basically, what Henry said was going to happen to me is finally starting to happen. “You need to pull back,” he said. “You’re getting too invested,” he said.

  • But, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
  • Anyway, my point is that I’m now officially That Person who is too self-involved to remember a goddamn dinner date. Ugh, I hate myself.
    • SEE?! SELF-INVOLVED.
• Anyway, back to me and my life. Today on my lunch break I went to Nicholas Coffee to buy a new bag of coffee for work because I used the last of my Cafe Orange blend and I can’t be expected to work an entire day on only one cup of coffee. I had every hope and intention of buying Maple Cinnamon but they didn’t have it. Right as the voices in my head had agreed with each other that Vanilla Buttercream was the way to go, a young girl breezed up to me at the counter and asked in the most bored and apathetic tone ever if she could help me. I DON’T KNOW, CAN YOU?! I nervously ordered my bag of coffee and then stuttered when she asked, “Whole bean?
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  ” because she had me so flustered with her brash 70-year truck stop diner waitress attitude. I managed to tell her I wanted it ground and then also slid one of those random Ice Cube chocolates onto the counter next to my credit card. When she came back with my total, I asked her if she also rang up the chocolate, and she waved it off with an eye roll. I started to thank her for hooking it up and she angrily spat, “IT’S JUST 50 CENTS.” I ate that Ice Cube on my way through Market Square and though it was delicious, it was marred by the bitter notes of confusion and humility.

  • But my coffee tastes fucking amazing, so I’ll keep going there and enduring the emotionally jarring customer service I consistently receive. It’s all part of the experience, really.

And that’s all for now.

Forgive me Father, it has been x-number of days since my last bullet point post. I was going to just make up a number because I don’t feel like counting, but that would be LYING, and I can’t LIE while I’m blog confession.

Everyone knows that.

• Lady on the trolley behind me this morning made some annoyed exclamation when a lady came on and said something too loudly, but now this same lady is on the PHONE right behind my head and she is so fucking abrasive and I’m like “Hey remember when you thought that other lady was being loud? Well….” DONT TALK ON THE PHONE ON PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION. No one wants to hear about your relaxing vacation and how you think you have a bug now.
  • From what I gathered though, some baby had been born and then there were no pictures of Laura and Ricky holding the baby and Trolley Lady kept muttering, “NO, THAT’S WEIRD. THAT SOUNDS WEIRD TO ME. THERE’S SOMETHING STRANGE ABOUT THAT.”
• So last week, Henry’s Work Bromance told him that if the Pens/Sharks series went past 4 games, then he’s take Henry to Game 5 with him, since his wife gets tickets from work or something. I fucking threw a fit so hard that I almost had another baby, that’s how hard my body was contracting. The sheer incredulity of this proposal had literal foam seeping past my lips. Why should HENRY get to go to game 5 when he can’t even stay awake for an entire game? When he doesn’t care about watching the regular season games with me? WHEN HE CALLS IT OFFSIDES WHEN ANY REAL HOCKEY FAC KNOWS IT’S OFFSIDE?!  Ugh!! “And so I told him that if he goes, I will never talk to him again!” I huffed at work. “Sounds like a win/win to me,” Glenn said in his typical lifeless cadence.

• Penelope is super needy in the morning. The rest of the day, forget about it—she wants nothing to do with the humans. But man, in the mornings when I’m trying to get ready for work, she is all over me, like, “Hey lady, you don’t have enough cat fur on your wardrobe. I can help you with that.” I almost missed the stupid trolley shuttle the other morning because I had to run back into the house to fashion an impromptu fur-removal apparatus out of packing tape when I realized, after walking out into the bright light of day, how much fur was on my dumb pants.

• Hockey. I can’t stand it. Ugh, that’s a lie. I love it. But my fucking heart, man. The Penguins had a chance to clinch last night, to win the fucking Stanley Cup here at home, but things did not go as planned, because you can’t make plans when there are HOCKEY GODS watching diligently from above with steepled fingers. So you know what’s going to happen? I’ll tell you what is going to happen: the Penguins are win it in game 6 in San Jose. And do you know where I will be? At the House of Blues in Cleveland, trying to divide my attention between Pens alerts on my phone and Pierce the Veil performing their new album in its entirety right in front of me. Yep. The girl who watches every fucking regular season game (except for when she’s at a show, but even then she’s constantly checking her phone) is going to miss game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals.
  • DON’T GET IT TWISTED: I’m not saying I want them to lose so that I can be home to watch a game 7! No way. Get it done in San Jose, please. OMG.
  • Guess who didn’t go to game 5, by the way? HAHAHAHA. Not Henry, and not his work bromance either! Apparently work bromance’s wife was angry at him for not getting his hair cut so she ended up using the tickets anyway and guess who went to bed before the second period was over? HINT: Not me, not Chooch, not the dumb cats.

• NERD ALERT: On the way to Michigan a few weeks ago, Chooch practiced his Latin roots. Henry was all, “Have your mom help you, she took Latin.” Taking Latin and actually knowing Latin are not the same! I’m actually trying to find someone to translate “One Sixteen” for me because I don’t know if “One” should be Unum or Unus. And I mean, that’s pretty basic Latin 101 bullshit right there.
• The other night, Chooch pulled a Ziplock bag out of his backpack and I cried, “IS THAT WEED!?” “Yeah, it’s weed. Shaped like bread,” he said with an eye-roll. SORRY. MY EYES ARE BAD, REMEMBER.

• That time Chooch had a fan at some family restaurant in Howell, MI. The dad kept trying to get the baby to turn around and apologized to us. I was like, “Pfft, it’s fine; this one used to do that too.” And Henry mumbled, “He still does.”
  • I was only being nice and personable because this was The Breakfast before Bled Fest.
    • Ugh, I miss you Bled Fest. </3

•  I “published” issue #3 of the department ‘zine a few weeks ago and it turned into a Big Thing. Glenn recently got chickens and I thought that would be a fun activity for the ‘zine — find how many chickens are hidden in there. I had all sorts of chickens: ones that I drew, real chickens photoshopped in places where dogs and wedding bouquets should have been, a bucket of KFC, etc. So Lou came over and proudly announced that he had the correct answer and that I should add his name to the drawing I was having. Except that he was way off, because he was only counting the actual pictures and not the words (there were numerous chicken shout-outs!), so Lou threw a fit and said that the instructions were unclear and Glenn piped up that my contest was flawed and I was like, “MAYBE WE SHOULDN’T HAVE ANY MORE CONTESTS AT ALL THEN.” Ugh, this is what I get for telling lawyers to count chickens.
  • The moral of the story is: make shit as easy as possible or be prepared for the ensuing uproar.
    • Because of Lou, I had to start including ALL ANSWERS in the drawing, whether they were correct or not. I call it the Lou Clause.
      • Is that what clause means? I’m not a lawyer, lul.
• Speaking of lawyers, Todd said that he’s going to represent Glenn when Glenn sues me and for some reason this made me laugh to the point of tears.
• The other day, I went for a lunchtime stroll with my old work friend Debbie! She only just works right across the bridge from our building but I don’t see her nearly enough. We went to Market Square and there were all these giant games set up, so we decided to play giant Kerplunk. Look, I’m not trying to brag or anything, but I was so much better than the two little girls I was playing against.

• Henry said he doesn’t want to add anything to this bulletpoint extravaganza.

• Succulent serial killer. ^^^^

• Chooch took a stupid poll on Facebook to see which cat everyone thought was the cutest and of course almost everyone voted for DREW either because they know Chooch well enough to know that Drew is HIS cat and Penelope is MY cat, and also he used the worst, most blurry photo of Penelope. We had a legit fight over this and he was so smug and I cried.
  • But if this is a real contest, then come on, Marcy all day, err’day.
    • RIP, Marcy :(

• The above excerpt is from a blog post 2 years ago when I was just as bad at parenting as I am today. THIS IS LIKE A BLOG WITHIN A BLOG, WHOA.
• I was telling Lauren here at work that even before the hockey game started last night, I sat down on the couch and began weeping. Like, straight sobbing, you guys. Nerves, stress. Unwavering and unabashed love for the Penguins. It all just got to me and the emotions bubbled over. “You know what’s funny?” Todd piped up from two desks back. “The same thing happened to me.” SUCH A JERK.

• This was Drew’s reaction to the SHOPVAC Henry had to bring up from the basement in order to clean up all of the DIRT AND PLANT CARNAGE she created in the living room. I texted this picture to Wendy and she was like, “the fuck is a shot vac?” because auto-correct changed it, and she thought I was literally torturing my cat by shooting things at her. Then I realized it was spelled like that on Instagram too, so…great.
• I just got home from dinner with Barb, Jeannie, and Wendy. We were originally supposed to go to DeBlasio’s but then Wendy changed everything up at the last minute because a tunnel was going to be closed or something so we ended up going to Olive Garden instead and Jeannie was a big crybaby about chain restaurants but then was thoroughly impressed that the tables there are equipped with electronic thingies that you can order/pay/call your server/play games on, and Wendy was all, “Oh yeah, Red Robin has those too.” And Jeannie was all, “Oh wow, another chain restaurant.” And then I accidentally called our server and we all panicked but when she got there (like 10 minutes later, we clearly weren’t a priority), I blamed it on Barb. Barb just looks like the type of person who would accidentally push a call button. And then Wendy went to the rest room and we all stole Summer’s snacks because I was raving about how I used to eat them all the time when Chooch was a baby so then everyone had to try them. Puffs are the bomb, man. Summer was not thrilled with us.

• A few days ago, I had arrived to work just in time to see a large truck too long to make the turn next to my building. Henry would have had an erection if he had been there to help him.
• Henry and I wanted a Genesis documentary last Sunday night and it really put me in a lingering zone. I’ve seen Phil Collins solo, but never Genesis, and maybe that’s a good thing because I might actually drown on my tears and die. It could happen. You probably have never seen me cry over music.
• I went to lunch today with one of the groups in our department and the Muhammed Ali funeral procession was on all of the TVs the entire time and that was pretty morbid but we still couldn’t stop looking.
• Chooch just went outside to “think about life.” That lasted literally 2 seconds before he came bounding back in and screamed, “DADDY LET’S PLAY A GAME.” Monday is his last day of school. 4th grade was fucking terrible (not academically, at least) and I’m so ready for it to be over.

And now I leave you with #SexyCarWash:

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I feel like I need to bullet-blog through the hockey game tonight because I can’t stand these games and I need something to keep me busy or else I will straight have a coronary right here in my stupid living room. So let’s pretend like we care about all the daily minutia that occurs in the life of this basic bitch.

• Terry ordered puppies last Thursday at work! It was a super exciting ordeal because who doesn’t want to abandon work for a few minutes to be kissed by some fucking adorable puppies? Goodamn serial killers and Donald Trump, that’s who. Uber was doing some charity thing with the Humane Society where you could literally call up an Uber and they’d bring you puppies to play with, and then the money you pay for the Uber went straight to the Humane Society. What a fucking genius idea! We all enjoyed it immensely, but no one more than Michele, who ended up being so smitten and puppy-drunk that she went out and adopted one a few days later! God, I love a happy ending. (All versions.)
  • I get really emotional around animals, so even though I was happy to pet some puppies, I still cried because crying is just what I do. It’s fine. I own it. I really miss having dogs, though!
  • guess who didn’t go outside to see the puppies? Glenn. But we already know he’s a serial killer.

• Here I am with my very first dog, WALLY.
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  WALLY WAS SO WONDERFUL! RIP IN WALLY! :(

• Emarosa’s new single “Helpless” has been getting some actual radio play on some Detroit radio station! Tonight, they were up against Brand New for some battle of the band thingie and Bradley was all, “Hey Twitter, call and vote” and when a band I like tells me to do something, I’m probably going to do it, even if that means using my phone as an actual phone which is like my least favorite thing to use my phone for. Ugh, what the hell, Emarosa. The first time I called, I HUNG UP WITH THE DJ ANSWERED BECAUSE OMG PANIC, ANXIETY, WILL I START STUTTERING, WHO CAN EVEN GUESS?! So then I called back and of course the dude couldn’t just take my vote and hang up, he had to start asking me questions like “what is your name” and “where are you from?” and I got a super fan-girl lilt to my voice and PLEASE I HOPE THEY DIDN’T PUT ME ON AIR UGH.
  • It’s hard to believe that I used to do this shit for sport! I can’t tell you how many mix tapes I’ve collected where each song is preceded by “This is SUSIE, from CLAIRTON.” That was my go-to name and location.
• Chooch has been really into Music.ally for a while now and I guess this is basically admitting that I’m out of touch, but I think it’s dumb as fuckkkkkk. Especially when he wants me to help him film shit. But then when we were at my grandparents house over the weekend, he roped Corey into assisting him and I have to admit, it was pretty funny.

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And here is another one that I like:

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• 10 more minutes until this stupid hockey game starts. I just can’t with Stanley Cup playoffs. Henry never stays awake for the end so I’m always alone, freaking out, and having no one to console me. Thanks, fuck boy.
• Speaking of Henry, he broke his phone so he’s been using some spare phone from work and it’s a FLIP PHONE with NO INTERNET ACCESS lol forever. I downloaded a new emoji keyboard just so I could send him a “cuz” emoji  because I always try to get him to say “Sup cuz” to his “friends” and he gets so mad because “I DON’T TALK LIKE THAT!” Anyway, he was so angry because he had to actually download the emoji to see it and it took him so long and then he was like, “REALLY, ERIN? ALL THAT FOR THIS?!”
  • Looks like Erin wins again!

• I had breakfast at Pamela’s with Jeannie, Wendy and Summer on Saturday. Wendy made us go to a different Pamela’s, one that was more convenient for her, god forbid, and I was so mad because there was construction and I had to go some weird way IN THE RAIN and I got all stressed out! And then on top of that, Wendy made fun of me because I apparently made a really excited face as I was showing Jeannie the picture of me with Carly Rae Jepsen! UGH! But I had a good banana walnut pancake and Summer is always nice to look at (but not hold, because I haven’t completely lost my mind).
  • I was going to pay for Wendy’s breakfast as a belated birthday thing but then she got the wrong order and the waitress took it off the bill so happy birthday, Wendy! I did that for you!  You’re welcome.

MEOWSEUM.

• GAME HAS STARTED. I FEEL SICK.CHOOCH WON’T STOP TALKING AND I’M LIKE “SON I MOSTLY LOVE YOU BUT GOOD GODDAMN SHUT YOUR FACE FOR A MINUTE.”
• Has anyone nicknamed Tampa’s goalie “Vagisilevski” yet?  This series has made me feel very disoriented. Nothing feels familiar. And Henry has already gone to bed?!?! It’s not even 8:30!
• WE ARE LOSING. I HONESTLY RIPPED OUT A CHUNK OF HAIR.
• We had cake at work and I didn’t eat any because diet but right about now I’d like to fucking suffocate myself in it.
• NO FUCKING GOAL!!!!!!!!!! OFFSIDE!!!!!!! WOOOOOOO!!!!!!

• Bought a bunch of new plants over the weekend and apparently the cats smoked crack yesterday and went on a fucking spree. Let’s just say it’s a good thing Henry came home before me and cleaned up the carnage because from what I could tell, there was a lot of plant guts and broken glass. For Henry to say, “It was bad, real bad” then you know it was spectacularly horrendous because homie don’t exaggerate.  So by the time I came home, I was ready to unadopt those little assholes. And you know what they did the rest of the night? SLEPT ON THE COUCH BECAUSE THEY WERE SOOOO EXHAUSTED.
  • I blame Henry for this because he hasn’t built me a myriad of shelves like I keep asking for and he also has ignored every hanging planter DIY I’ve sent him.
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• I’m going to have to give myself a pixie cut to even out my hair after hockey is done for the year.
• Also, I feel like I need to eat something. A stick of butter maybe.

• I found a stack of old photos in my Pappap’s desk, including several featuring y birth dad. This was a pretty big deal for me because I have very few photos of him and the ones I d have, his face is barely visible, almost like it was on purpose. LIKE MAYBE HE WAS A VAMPIRE. I can’t believe I have never considered this theory before. Anyway, I found this great photo of him and me at the circus and this image of me surrounded by so many clowns envelopes me in fuzzy wings made of joy and a slight echo of maniacal laughter. Man, I have just always loved those fucking painted-faced derelicts.
• Oh great, Geno got a fucking penalty. Time to hold my nose and dunk my head in water for 2 minutes.
• We’re leaving for Michigan after work on Friday and I am so fucking ready. (I mean, I still have to pack.) I’m beyond stoked for Bled Fest but also just as stoked for the next day when we get to hang out with our pals Bill and Jessi! We haven’t seen them since our poorly-planned road trip two summers ago so we are way past due for some quality friend-o time.
• 5-on-3 for a 1:19 — come on Pens! OMG my stomach. My bowels are going to start leaking. I can’t stand this stress.
• KESSEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• OK. 1-0 Pens. End of 1st period. This is good. I’m OK. I’m breathing.

• The original bae, Robert Smith. I GET TO SEE HIM AGAIN NEXT MONTH, LORD HELP ME. It’s hilarious to me that I drained my savings to go to Australia to see them play on what Robert claimed was their “last tour” ever. And yet I’ve seen them four, soon to be five, times since then. Still, I’m glad that happened! Easily the greatest moment of my life. I mean, um, after having Chooch. I guess.
  • Can I just say that it’s a tie?

• ^^^What I’m going to look like if the Penguins lose this goddamn game.
• Well, Chooch and I wanted to share an apple but we couldn’t find the apple corer and neither of us are allowed to use big knives so we tried to bully Henry into waking up and coming downstairs to cut the apple but then thank god I found the apple corer because it was starting to look grim for us, and I didn’t want to resort to Plan X, which was take the apple upstairs to Henry with a knife and then stab him with the knife.
  • Basically what I’m saying is that this night could have taken a much different, dark, dastardly turn instead of us sitting here eating an apple harmoniously.
    • Goddamn, this apple is a stunner. I just made Chooch go find out what brand it is and he has reported back that it’s a Gala. I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN.
• There were some outlander broads on our floor last Friday. I guess Glenn knew one of them from another job he had so she stopped to chat with him (I know, I was surprised too); meanwhile the other broad was like, “Wow…” in kind of a disgusted tone, and I noticed she was looking at my adorable Fiji mermaid. “Yeah, welcome to the freak show,” Glenn mumbled but I think he was secretly smug, like, “yeah, that’s right, I get to sit behind the most interesting work space in this joint.” A few seconds after they left, I stood up, turned around, and cried, “WHO WAS THAT?” because randos don’t come on our floor very often and I was intrigued that Glenn knew these ones. Todd made some comment about how he didn’t realize I was at my desk for that, since I hadn’t chimed in with any retaliations to Glenn’s snide remarks. “I had jellybeans in my mouth,” I said with a shrug. #missedopportunity
  • Amber² said that the one broad was making googly eyes at Glenn while talking to him, AH HA HA HA!!!
• OH YOU GUYS, PENS SCORED!!! 2-0!!! Not getting my hopes up. I feel dizzy AF.
• I asked Henry if he will live blog during Bled Fest and he got all incredulous and indignant so that surely means yes.
  • Real talk, though, I hope I don’t get hurt at Bled Fest.
• Things with my mom are going well, thanks for asking!!
• Today I decided that if I do less work, I’ll probably make less mistakes, right? I sucked all-around today.
• Pens are on the power play now! I need my boo Malkin to score.
• HEY HAVE YOU SEEN “THE WITCH”? We watched it over the weekend and damn was I disappointed. Really boring and not even all that visually stimulating, plus I could barely understand most of the dialogue, stupid fucking Puritans. Super glad I ended up not wasting money on it at the theater! (#tightwad) Henry and I both mumbled, “That was dumb” at the same time and he and I rarely have the same movie reviews because he generally doesn’t like anything anyway unless it was made by the Wayans brothers or has “Bourne” in the title. OR IS PORNOGRAPHY. But that’s a given. Duh. Doi.
  • Speaking of pornography, in my dream last night, we were having a threesome with Frankenstein. I told Henry about it today and he made a disgusted face at me but I think he’d be into it.
• This period is almost over and then I am going to exercise. Don’t worry. I’ll be back.
• SID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 3-0!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • LOL at the person who yelled “CROSBY SUCKS” as he walked down the runway. I bet that really shook him to the core.
• K I’M BACK. I woke Henry up and berated him briefly because he apparently can’t take me to work tomorrow and you know what that means – trolley time. :(
• FUCK Tampon scored. :( 3-1. IT’S OK KESSEL. NOBODY’S PERFECT. OMG stop with the Closeup of Shame, NBC.
  • Man, the momentum has shifted for sure and I do not like it. Pens need to get another goal and fast.
  • MAYBE I SHOULD TURN OFF THE TV.
• Hate me if you need to, but am I the only one who found that Chewbacca Mask bitch annoying as fuck? I didn’t even realize it was such a big deal at first and literally thought it was just one of my friend sharing a video of someone they actually knew, so I watched it before I realized there was hype around it and I was just like, “_______” Henry walked in and said, “What are you watching?” because I apparently looked irritated, and I just said, “I don’t know. Some really stupid video.” I mean, props to her for getting her 15 minutes and I swear I’m not a hater, but….man. Standards just get lower and lower.
• MY GENO BEST NOT BE HURT.

• “Call It Lust” by Dora Maar was my jammmmm back in 2005, but I lost the mp3 I had of it years ago. Then a few months ago, someone put it up on YouTube and I honestly fell to my knees and rejoiced. You can ask Henry (412-605-2143). He had to sit here and watch me freak out and scream, “ONE MORE TIME!!!!” every time it ended. I have a very obsessive personality.
  • AND I HATE YOUR BREATHING.
  • I was friends with these guys on LiveJournal but lost touch. I would give anything to hear them play this song live. Like, in my Pappap’s gameroom.
• Oh for Christ’s sake, this game is wrecking my stomach.
  • I hate all of the Lightning players’ names.
  • “Back-up goalie Marc-Andre Fleury” — still sounds so weird.
  • OH GREAT, 3-2. SHOULD I JUST GO TO BED.
  • Don’t worry, my hair is now in a bun so I can’t shred it any further. I might call Chooch downstairs so I can start pulling his hair out though. That’s what kids are for.
• Henry eats pretzels with every meal. And sometimes pretzels are his meal.
• YESSSSSS FUCKING RUST!!!!!!!!! 4-2!!!!!!!!! 2 MINUTES LEFT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MY FUCKING GOD. HEAVY FUCKING BREATHING. ALMOST LIKE FRANKENSTEIN IS HERE.
• BONINO!!! EMPTY NET!!! 5-2!!! THANK THE MOTHERFUCKING LORD CHRIST OUR HEAVENLY HOCKEY GOD!!!!!
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• Wow, how can I sleep after this. #THATSWHATFRANKENSTEINSAID
• Yay! Game over. Now I can start stressing about Game 7.

Gotta go. Frankenstein’s on the other line.

Another work week is nearly in the bag and I’m doing some serious roof-raising because I’ve had to take the TROLLEY EVERY SINGLE DAY THIS WEEK, WOE IS ME. Henry has an entire tome of FML texts from me on his phone, just from the last five days. He doesn’t react to my devastation anymore like he used to. On that note, I would like to procrastinate further from finishing my vacation recap by posting a round-up of mindless, mind-numbing, mind-boggling mind-bullets. It’s all I got right now.

• Today is Friday the 13th and Amber1 derives great pleasure from calling my SCARY, GORY Jason Voorhees hair fascinator “cute.” She texted me last night to remind me to wear it today and I forgot. You know why I forgot? BECAUSE SOME ASSHOLE IS SUPPOSEDLY TOO BUSY TO DROP EVERYTHING AND DRIVE ME TO WORK SO I SPENT ALL MORNING WORRYING ABOUT MY COMMUTE, WALKING TO MY COMMUTE, BEING INSIDE MY COMMUTE. Therefore, I did not remember to grab my Jason Voorhees hair fascinator.  I was whining about how I can’t believe I forgot the other one, and Todd was like, “Dude, just look around your desk and pick something else.” And dumb Glenn was all, “Yeah, you have enough creepy shit on your desk, I’m sure you can find something.” Thank god I keep a Jason Voorhees hair BOW on my desk as back up, so I have that clipped to my sweater in effort to appease the Friday the 13th gods.
  • Then I remembered I also have an enamel Jason pin at home that I could have worn today. One Friday the 13th in 2016 and I fucking shit the bed.
• Gayle said she loves the new Emarosa song I posted on here the other day so now she’s my current favorite co-worker. Step it up, the rest of you.
  • Also, I worked late shift last night and she came over to hound me about vlogging (THE INTERNET DOES NOT NEED TO HEAR MY VOICE OR SEE MY FUG FACE) and in doing so, she recited a laundry list of compliments, which Sandy could hear from her office, so now Sandy wants to give Gayle a framed picture of me for next year’s Secret Santa. Ho Ho Ho!
    • Glenn would have puked in his cupped hands if he had witnessed this. It was almost like listening to the greatest eulogy! AGAIN, GAYLE. AGAIN.

• I started Weight Watchers again on Monday and I am fucking MISERABLE GET AWAY FROM ME. I forgot how much “measuring” and “counting” this plan entails. I’m really bad at “measuring” and “counting.”
• The Penguins made it to the Conference Finals! They beat the Capitals on Tuesday and it was so fucking stressful and I awoke inside me the most manliest screams and the cats were like “WHO ARE YOU, DEMON!?” I ran upstairs to wake up Henry and he mumbled, “Yeah I know. I heard your big mouth.” At least we currently don’t have neighbors on the other side of our duplex. I mean, not that it’d stop me.

• Something on that shelf does not belong.
• Remember when FRANCIS asked me for my number and I was equally repulsed and delighted? The other day, I was on my break and some guy stopped me while I was waiting to cross the street. Of course, he was asking for money, specifically a quarter. I said I didn’t have one and he started to walk away in disappointment but then he stopped and said, “You’re really beautiful, is it OK that I said that?” and I was like, “HELLO, I FEEL FAT AND UGLY LIKE EVERY DAY SO YES, THIS IS NICE. CONTINUE.” Sorry, feminists. I know as A Woman I’m supposed to be all offended and scrambling to set my torch a’flame, but sometimes shit like this is nice to hear. I mean, as long as it’s not sleazy and aggressive, and this guy was neither. Then he asked if I have a man and I was like, “I mean, I guess that’s what he is” so he was like, “Do you want a broke friend?” and we both started laughing and then he told me to have a nice day and went on with his hunt for a quarter. WHAT A NICE FELLOW. Usually, when people make eye contact with me, I feel like my utter Sloth-iness makes them blanch and recoil. But wow, two nice things less than a week a part. SO BLESSED.

• That time my cats saw a bug.
• Glenn just called me Shallow Hal, hahaha.

• After losing four cats in such quick succession, I am absolutely panicked about the two we have now. I’m still glad we decided to get cats again, but I am so paranoid and bracing myself for the worst every single day. Last night, Drew was sitting on my shelf, kind of hidden in a nook, and I freaked out. “SHE HAS BEEN ACTING WEIRD AND SHE FEELS WEIRD WARM.” Henry and Chooch were like, “….she’s fine, calm the hell down.” And then today, she did seem fine. Ugh. I hate this!
• Henry asked me to marry him Sunday night.
  • I was like, “That’s great but next time try it with a ring.”
• On Sunday, we were driving to my Pappap’s house and out of nowhere I asked Henry, “If I’m ever in the hospital, like, in a coma, will you make sure I have makeup on so I don’t look ugly?” He looked at me in mild disbelief and said that was the dumbest question I’ve ever asked.
  • CAN YOU SENSE A THEME HERE? I’m clearly feeling some type of way.

• Mother’s Day turned out pretty nice. Henry and I had some time earlier in the day to go cruisin’ for succulents. The first two places we went let me down BIG TIME and I did that thing I do when I’m disgusted and want the store to know it, where I loudly profess my disdain to Henry while we’re within earshot of store employees. He gets so embarrassed but I DON’T CARE. I was like, “THIS PLACE IS FUCKING PATHETIC!” and felt like kicking shit over on the way out of Dupree’s, which is a nursery I thought I had never been  to before but then had vivid flashbacks of spending hours there against my will while my mom bought slats of flowers she would never get around to planting. So yeah, I guess I’ve been there before but the memories got lost in rage black outs.
  • Then I wanted to visit the cats’ graves at the pet cemetery and on the way there, we came across a roadside greenhouse and I hit the succulent jackpot. Now the planters Octavia gave me have hair!

• I bought my mom flowers for Mother’s Day and gave them to her when we went to my Pappap’s house that afternoon for another installment of #MakeGillcrestGreatAgain. They seemed well-received! Baby steps.
  • Then she gave me some cheesy lima bean she made and I was like, “Man this is fucking delici—-wait, is there meat in this?!” Yup. There was meat it. She said she thought she picked it all out, BUT DID SHE REALLY? #vegetarianvictim
• Gayle asked me to email her a list of my top 20 favoritest songs and she started cracking up because Foreigner made the list and she called out from her Dark Corridor, “I like Foreigner too!” So Glenn mumbled to me, “Which song did you put on the list” and I was like, “‘Waiting For a Girl Like You’, duh” because DUH. Lauren started laughing and said that didn’t sound right and I guess if anyone had missed the first part of the conversation, it would have sounded even more wrong, like how low could I ever sink to be waiting for a girl like Glenn.
  • It came on the radio the other night when we were in the car and I turned that shit up so loud. “Now we’re totally the coolest car at this red light,” I said smugly. Henry just frowned and Chooch yelled from the backseat, “God, how long is this song!?”
  • You know who else I super fucking love so much? England Dan and John Ford Coley. “Love is the Answer” came on as Henry was pulling into Sheetz to put air in the tires and I said, “I FEEL SO DEPRESSED” and then started to cry. He was like, “Oh boy.” Then the other day at work, I was walking past some restaurant on my break and “I’d Really Love to See You Tonight” was playing!! I WAS SO HAPPY AND SAD ALL AT ONCE. I put them on Spotify the other day and it turns out, I actually only like 4 of their songs. The rest are in the NOPE column.
    • FUN FACT: Both Foreigner and England Dan & John Ford Coley are featured in my favorite aerobics workout of all time, some Jacki Sorenson 1970s shit-show that my mom had on VHS and I became completely infatuated with when I was a kid.
    • FUN FACT 2: ED&JFC once reviewed my blog!

• Remember my blog cards? LOL forever.
• Speaking of blogging things! My blog-friend Kate posted a really nice thing about me on her blog the other day and you should go read it and then keep reading because she lives in Saskatchewan and posts cool nature-y pictures! It was nice to know that this old blog makes her laugh. <3
  • It makes me laugh too, in the crazy “I’m going to fucking slit this blog’s throat” sense. THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING NOT WORKING WITH IT! Currently, I’m having issues with it not communicating with the WordPress app and it’s stressing me out because I blog primarily from my phone because that’s how great of a Writer I am.

• We took Henry’s mom to dinner on Mother’s Day. She has a pretty restricted diet so we just stuck to Eat n Park. WE HAD A NICE TIME. I’ve had some pretty miserable Mother’s Days over the last 10 years, but the last several have been good. I think Henry has finally learned his lesson.

• The new Pierce the Veil album came out today! I gleefully announced this to everyone and Glenn said he knew so I screamed, “REALLY?” and he said, “No not really! Why would I know that?!” I DON’T KNOW. Maybe he saw it in passing while he trolls the comment section of news websites at work!?

ALWAYS TIME FOR BULLET POINTS, BUSTER.

• I mentioned once before half of my brain caved in that Chooch had been invited to participate in this city school chorus collaboration hoedown. He is like, REALLY into it, too, which is awesome but also something that I just understand because I was always so afraid to sing in front of people. (Except for karaoke nights at McCoys—-I owned Old MacDonald’s Farm, you guys.) Henry wanted to just drop Chooch off at his chorus rehearsal last Saturday because he’s a shitty parent who doesn’t care to observe his spawn flourishing in his element. But I said “Nah bitch, we stayin'” and thank god we did because I got to have an intense stare down with Chooch’s current nemesis (some Mean Girl from his school). “I just stared at her so hard,” I proudly bragged to Henry, clasping my hands behind my back. “Wow. You showed her,” Henry mumbled. Sometimes I wonder how words are even able to crawl past his dumb mustache. And then the main chorus instructor guy played them the original recording of We Are the World, which they’ll be singing with the middle school and high school choruses on the big night. Dude was all, “You’ve probably never heard this song before, but I guarantee there are parents and grandparents crying back there right now” and every last ding-dongin’ head turned out and there I was, VULNERABLE AND EXPOSED, with real life tears streaming down my cheeks. I have zero control of my emotions anymore. A WOMAN ON EDGE. I had to stuff my hair into my face because I was embarrassed, OK? Sue me.
  • I haaaaaated music class in middle school. I have PTSD from all the singing of Sound of Silence and From a Distance, and then it reminds me of Desert Storm and those were just weird times and I hated sixth grade so bad. I had a perm, braces, and I WAS FAT. So you can guess how well I was able to integrate.
    • Speaking of PTSD, I think I might have it once this current sitch I’m embroiled in is over.

• Halfway through Chooch’s rehearsal, I wanted to walk around and explore the school and Henry was all, “WE CAN’T DO THAT. WE’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO JUST WALK AROUND!??!” and I was like, “Live a little, pops” but then he wouldn’t follow me so I did most of the exploring on my own and it gave me a huge rush because I love poking around in places where I don’t belong. Whenever I would go on vacation with my grandparents and we’d end up in a hotel with an involved floor plan (you know, more than just a square) I would fucking FREAK OUT and start exploring. This particular school is like that! All sorts of random stairwells and nooks.  100% cooler than Chooch’s school. Henry just stood there with his arms crossed, repeatedly reminding me that I’m “so dumb.”
• One week until we go on vacation and I could just die of anticipation. I need this vacation more than ever.
• Finally sold this bad boy and I was really happy about that but then I started crying because I loved it, especially when it fell on peoples’ heads:

• One day last week, Chooch got in the car and said, “Put on Saosin or, I don’t know, Phil Collins” and my heart nearly burst with joy. Keep having an open mind when it comes to music, boy-eeeeeee.
• Stanley Cup Playoff time!!! The Pens won their first game against the Rangers, and our kittens got a strong taste of my Stanley Cup Playoff scream. I think it’s safe to say they’re not fans.
• Postcard game is still strong AF, y’all. Look, I even made it on the Welcome Pittsburgh Instagram, which I had to sign a makeshift consent form and really didn’t want to have my picture taken, but luckily, my Jay Leno chin is in remission or something (lol, j/k: strategically-placed post cards)
  • Don’t forget to give me your address if you want one!:

• Something that usually generates a gasp from people is when I say I don’t like Guns and Roses. When I worked at the meat place, my office mate and I always listened to the classic rock radio station, but any time GnR of AC/DC came on, I’d have to get up and walk out. Maybe I have some repression? But most likely it’s just that the scholars inside my ears disagree that it’s good music.
• I get to see Octavia in a few weeks and I’m basically doing a pee dance about it!
• “…and then the weed farm caught on fire,” Chooch finished recapping some cartoon he’s been watching. File under: Things I Didn’t Hear and Eh, He’ll Probably Be OK.
• Henry was getting BULLIED AT WORK! Hoo boy, you better bet I was rearin’ to go when he told me this. I looked him up on Facebook and found that we have a mutual friend so then I was going to PLANT A CONFRONTATIONAL SEED but Henry was all, “OMG please don’t. Just stay out of it.” I couldn’t stand how guido-ish this guy looked and knew that I could win a fight with him. DON’T FUCK WITH HENRY. Everyone knows that the only people allowed to bully him would be me and Chooch. Fucking duh.

• Corey and me AF right now ^^^^^^.
• I had my “wellness” screening today at work. Basically, if you sign up to have your dignity snatched by someone in a lab coat, you get better….insurance? I never read the emails all the way through. This is my fourth time signing up even though I hate the finger-pricking part. Glenn tried to tell me that this year, they changed it and now they take it from your neck, like I’m THAT GULLIBLE. OK Glenn, nice try. At least now I don’t have to have someone go with me. Second year doing it on my own, woo! Anyway, as soon as got to the ROOM, one of the lab people called me over and grabbed my hand. “Wow, your hand is COLD,” she exclaimed, and I gulped. “Are we doing the finger part first?” I asked, as she fucking wound up and swung that damn thing right into the tip of my finger and I gave out a strangulated yelp. “Yep,” she laughed, already  molesting my finger for blood drops. SO FUCKING FUNNY. And then my favorite part happened, which is when she cried, “Really? You’re afraid of THAT LITTLE PRICK when you have TATTOOS ON YOUR FINGERS?! Oh honestly, Erin.” I came back down to my desk afterward and excitedly relayed this encounter with Glenn, who said, “You know she probably doesn’t read your blog, right?” Killjoy.
  • I showed Henry my bandaid (which I swapped out with one of the cute Ikea ones that Gayle gave me last month for my unbirthday gift) after work and he asked, “What did you do?” WHAT DID I DO!? I HAD MY FUCKING FINGER PRICKED TODAY. Try to keep up with my life, asshole.

• We had lunch at the Modern Café on t he Northside last Saturday and Chooch was like floored that not only did the jukebox have The Summer Set, but it also had EMAROSA. He didn’t know that until after he spent a whole whopping $1 to request “Chelsea,” which we could barely hear once it started playing. Chooch was pissed because all of the other songs came on at normal volume. About 10 minutes later, the waitress (who was completely fooled by his faux-charm, btw) came back to give us refills and Chooch brashly blurted, “How come when I played a song on the jukebox, I could barely hear it?” And she was all, “Oh no, that sucks. Let’s go check it out” so he took her over and showed her which song it was and she went to the cash register to get another dollar for him. And then right as the song started playing, she went behind the bar, grabbed a remote and cranked that shit. She gave him a thumbs up from across the room and he was like FUCK YES I’VE GOT IT MADE BITCHES. He honestly makes me sick sometimes. He’s like a little fucking Charles Manson!!

 

• Got some new succulent boos last Sunday as a desperate attempt to try and reintroduce some normalcy into my disoriented, slightly deranged life. Thinking about naming this babe Stonick. NOW STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM HIM, CATS. UGH.
• I’ve been having a field day going through all the photos I’ve been finding at my Pappap’s house. That was really one of the only things I was insistent on wanting to have, because I’m a phreak for phamily photos. This one made me laugh so hard, because someone was clearly super stoked to beat video game Uninvited.
  • There were actually several more that I found after I took this picture. Like, nearly an entire roll wasted on this:

• PAGING MR. HERMAN.
• Chooch and I were fighting and Henry had to go and butt in as usual. Chooch cried, “So what, are you on HER side?” and Henry was all, “No, I’m on MY side.” Whatever Henry. Must be lonely over there on that side.
• So…the terrible trolley change happened.  Construction started the day after Easter, so I took that day off a few weeks in advance, so that I could do a Trial Run. People made fun of me, but look: I needed to know what I was in for without the added stress of “WILL I MAKE IT TO WORK ON TIME.” And wouldn’t you know, I woke up that morning sick as fuck. OK, not that sick. But it was definitely the courting stages of a cold. My throat hurt and I just felt exhausted and shitty. Also, IT WAS RAINING AND ABOUT 40 DEGREES. However, I knew that if I didn’t get up and follow-through with this trial run, I would never hear the end of it. So I got up, waited for Chooch to go to school, and then I dealt with that shit.

The shuttle part was a breeze! I had plans to meet Kara once I got downtown, so I was sending back-patting text messages about how brave I was being.

And it was kind of fun being on the shuttle! It’s not a very long ride, just long enough to bypass all of the trolley track construction and deposit us at the next working platform in Beechview. The trolley came and it was kind of a dream because it was EMPTY so I didn’t have that heart-clutching fear of NOT GETTING A SEAT (honestly this has only happened to me three times, ever and once was because it was OPENING DAY for the Pirates so I was smashed up against Yinzer baseball fans and it was just no good).

Anyway, the trolley driver had to switch ends, since now the trolley would be going back into town, and I was like, “Why does he keep slamming things? Oh, because the trolley isn’t starting.” So then we just sat there for around 30 minutes without him having the consideration to give us a single update, and while everyone was tugging at their collars and calling into work to advise of their impending tardiness (lol, tardiness),  I smugly thought to myself, “THIS IS WHY I TOOK THE DAY OFF FOR THIS SHIT.”

Got into town and expertly crossed over the bridge to the Northside where Kara and Theo met me (after we missed each other twice because nothing can ever go smoothly!) and we walked to some tea place that I can’t remember the name of now and I had a PB&J for breakfast and a chai latte because that’s how I do.

Meanwhile, Henry was like, “I can’t believe you’re dragging Kara down into this with you.” KARA DIDN’T CARE, HENRY. Because she is a GOOD FRIEND. God.

Then Kara and Theo walked me down to another trolley station that I’ve never used before and Kara was all, “OK, here it is, good luck!” and I pretended to be OK but as soon as she left, I was like, “WHERE AM IIIIIIIIIII!?!?!!?!” Don’t worry. I made it home. I actually walked home from the Beechview trolley station instead of fucking with the shuttle again though.

All that walking did wonders for my cold-ravaged body. I got home sometime after noon, slipped off my TOMS and crawled back into bed, thinking I would try to do what normal adults do when they’re coming down with a cold, and like, rest or whatever. Honest to god, I wasn’t laying there for more than 3 minutes before my phone rang and it was the MOTHERFUCKING SCHOOL NURSE so then I had to slip back into my TOMS and walk to Chooch’s fucking school to retrieve him because HOW CONVENIENT.

Fucking trolley construction :(

I’ve had to deal with the shuttle situation several more times since then and honestly, I’ve learned that it’s so much easier to put up with when you’re dead inside.

• Oh hello again, bullet points. Sorry, I got lost somewhere up there.
• Last week, not one, not two, BUT THREE of Chooch’s teachers called Henry because of his “behavior” but don’t you worry because by the end of the day, a fourth teacher called too. (The GYM TEACHER. But not the hot one.) This has been a really great year. Fourth grade rules. I’m not losing any sleep (or hair) over life right now AT ALL.
  • Surprisingly, when I had my blood pressure checked at my wellness thing this morning, it was “perfectly normal.” I just laughed and said “No really” and my finger pricker was all, “No I’m serious. Your blood pressure and all your other numbers are great.” So now I’m like DID I SNATCH SOMEBODY’S BODY IN THE NIGHT because I feel like I’m on the precipice of a heart attack every day and can’t believe that all of my readings were “great.” BUT HEY, I’LL TAKE IT. My body apparently is like “IDGAF about this stress.”

• I haven’t been painting, indefinite hiatus. But here is the last custom I made for my friend Mallory. It’s some dude from Firefly.
  • The TV show, not the band.
    • THAT MADE ME LOOK REALLY OLD.
      • YOU ARE THE WOMAN THAT I’VE ALWAYS DREAMED OF, I KNEW IT FROM THE START. *FLUTE NOISE*

• Um, here’s a picture of me in case you forgot what my turtle face looked like. This might have been back when I wasn’t ugly crying every day though. Last Friday my boss said to me, “Honey, I don’t know how to say this, but you look very tired” and then said something about me wearing my heart on my sleeve and I was like THAT’S BECAUSE I’M AN ORIGINAL EMO, SUE.

Chooch gave me back my blog for a second so here’s a quick post before he takes over again with his STORY THAT HAS NO END IN SIGHT. Just kidding, Chooch. Keep writing, bro. I mean, son.

• HENRY’S SALAD DRESSING: Don’t be gross, this isn’t a euphemism for Henry’s sperm bank donation. Literally, he makes the best dressing for my basic white girl kale that I have ever had. It’s probably best that I don’t know all of the details, but he definitely uses balsamic vinegar, stone ground mustard (the BEST kind of ground, in my opinion), and I think a tiny bit of PURE MAPLE SYRUP which gives it the most subtle sweetness and oh my god, why am I at work right now when I could be at home licking that salad semen off my fingertips, ugh.
• PEOPLE GIVING ME CHEEZITS: I helped Todd with a support-type question today and he gave me the rest of his box of Cheezits as a thank you and my response was a very Shirley Temple-ish, “REALLY? For ME?” I can’t believe I used to hate Cheezits when I was a kid. Maybe they weren’t made with “100% Real Cheese” back then.
  • And then Glenn dropped a pack of fruit snacks on my desk as he was leaving – I FEEL SO RICH.
• PEOPLE BEING NICE TO ME: I went to The Exchange on my lunch break yesterday and all the neo-hipster kids working there were very nice to me, so for a few minutes, I was able to coexist peacefully with those whom I do not understand.
  • Probably only nice to me because aw, look at this old broad coming in here to probably look for Carpenters 8-tracks.
    • Actually, I was there to finally buy the latest CHVRCHES record.
      • On vinyl, not 8-track.
  • Then I went to the Pittsburgh Welcome Center to get postcards and the lady there was nice to me too, and the lucky recipient of my very first GREETINGS FROM ERIN’S LUNCH BREAK post card will get to read all about that.
• A BAND FINALLY ISSUING AN ACCEPTABLE AND APPLAUDABLE STATEMENT REGARDING SEXUAL ASSAULT: Ricky from Foxing came forward and cleared the air regarding an incident that occurred several years ago when he was 17 and nowhere in his statement did he make excuses for himself or victim blame, and the band is donating part of their tour earnings to RAINN and expressed an interest in opening up a healthy and respectful discussion about these issues. This came right on the heels of the singer of Better Off doing the complete opposite and completely letting down the scene and likely ruining his career on top of that.
  • Bled Fest has removed Better Off from the lineup. They were one of the bands I was most looking forward to see but certainly not anymore.
• REALIZING MY PURPOSE IN LIFE: So for years I thought this was either manure packaging or starting my own record label but it is now clear to me that I need to start a DIY venue for the small, real small, small-small bands that book their shows basically in the basements of college rape sheds. So I suggested to Henry that we find a small building to soundproof, just has to be in a not-too-horrible area, and then we can be all, “Hey little sad boy emo bands, fuck that basement noise, come play at our venue, it’ll be ready once we evict the squatters” and then Kaitlin can set up a table of her immaculate desserts and all the kids will be like “OMG AND A BAKE SALE TOO?? THIS IS SO DIY!” Henry actually considered this and said, “We just need money to buy a building” which is basically his way of saying “This will never work because we never have money” BUT he didn’t exactly dismiss my passionate idea either. Then Chooch came downstairs and was all “this sounds dumb.” I tried to get him excited by including him. “You can pass out flyers at school and be all come to this show at my mom’s venue, yo” and Chooch said, “No. It’s my venue.”
• NEW SAOSIN SONG!: For the first time in seven years, Saosin has recorded a new song, and not only that, but Anthony Green is back as their singer! Christina and I loved this band back in the day, and they were my gateway into many years of loving and obsessing over Circa Survive. (Anthony was the original singer of Saosin and left to start Circa Survive in…2004 I think; too lazy to fact check.) This is great because when they reunited in 2014, Anthony mentioned at Riot Fest that they were going to work on new songs, but then it seemed to kind of fizzle out. BUT WHAT DO I KNOW ABOUT WRITING SONGS.

And here’s a quick Law Firm news recap:

–GAYLE moved into a dark hallway so then MEAN AMBER took GAYLE’S old desk which means she’s like really far away from me now so I’ve been pouting about that all week. Now she sits behind Amber¹ so this is super confusing. TWO AMBERS IN A ROW. Currently, they’re back there chatting about BLAKE SHELTON and I’m just like, “Whatever, AMBER² THE BETRAYER. One day you’ll miss our chats about DANCE GAVIN DANCE and JONNY CRAIG.”

–Amber¹ made me tell the infamous Henry at the Ted Nugent Show story on Tuesday, and Todd was like, “Who the hell is Ted Nugent?” so then he started to listen to Cat Scratch Fever and we all had a good laugh. I came home and told Henry and he was just like, “Oh, you told that fake story again? That’s great, Erin.”

–The second issue of the ‘zine was dead in the water for a few weeks (more like OVER A MONTH) but I finally rounded up most of the key pieces I was waiting on so hopefully that will be printed and distributed sometime before the end of the month. This is hard work! And I’ve had some real pressure put on me about it too. Jeez. And then Gayle was giving me all of these suggestions and it was like, you know what Gayle? START YOUR OWN ‘ZINE!

–I sent Todd a video of Citizen playing at Bled Fest and then he started watching other videos and accidentally became obsessed with some hardcore band. Every day, he’s like, “What was the name of that band again?” and I’m like, “I don’t know…” and he’ll say, “Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to watch that video again so I can see their name.” Like, what a flimsy excuse!

–Just now, Glenn got all embarrassed and/or furious that I told Michele he likes Meghan Trainor. “Oh yeah, I just love her” he said sarcastically, and I was like, “Then why did you always listen to ‘All About That Bass’?!” and he was like, “ALWAYS. Oh, OK! I ALWAYS listened to it” and I was like, “OMG yes you did, like every day at the same time, Amber2 and I could always hear it! It was like your Getting Ready to Go Home anthem” and he was muttered something about me being crazy and then left for lunch. It’s 100% true though. And now I can’t stop laughing and I just started choking on a Cheezit.

–Lauren sits in front of me now, in Amber the Abandoner’s old desk, and I wonder how annoyed she is having to hear all of my dumb stories being recited sporadically throughout the day.

Oh boy and here’s a bonus photo of me wearing a Bailey’s hat one time way too long ago, in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, even though I don’t CELEBRATE ST. PATRICK’S DAY.

UPDATE!!! Glenn just came back from lunch and I asked him how the weather is on a scale from 1 to Meghan Trainor. His answer was that I’m smoking crack. And then a few minutes later he called me a psycho.  God, today rules!

Seriously. Pull some Matrix moves and avoid this post.

• Cat update: they’re either sleeping or destroying my personal effects. So in other words, they’re doing GREAT!
• Monday night’s bedtime story involved me dramatically explaining to Henry the extent of my fatness. “The shape of my body is like if a barrel burst open and sludge started spilling out.” Henry, still taken aback at my comparisons after all these years, said, “…..no. You’re not a barrel of sludge…?” And you know what that “…..” signifies? HESITATION. Because in the span of those dot-dot-dots, Henry was visualizing my naked body side-by-side with a busted barrel of sludgey blubber and he had to THINK about whether or not the dancing twin girls emoji could be applied. “I don’t think that’s what I was doing,” he mumbled, knowing he was a dead man no matter what he said at that point. Unable to let it go, I went on. “I’m like one of those cans of Pillsbury biscuits, after it cracks open and dough floods out. Don’t touch my stomach. That’s where most of the spillage is,” I warned as I swatted his hand away. “Oh my god,” he Bob’s Burgered.

• February’s Unbirthday Gift from GAYLE made up for the fact that she’s trying to steal my desk. Obviously the crown stickers are on point but those band-aids, though! I am ALWAYS in need of band-aids. In fact, I was wearing one on my middle finger the day Gayle gave me this stuff because I injured myself in the kitchen before leaving the house that morning. And I used my last Candyland bandaid so basically it was to the point where if I cut myself at work, I’d just have to bleed out I guess. Not anymore! My only beef is that the Dr. Care bandaids have hockey players on the front of the box but THERE ARE NO HOCKEY BANDAIDS INSIDE. False advertisement! I’m going to give all the football ones to Todd because I rather WOULD just bleed out than wrap my wound in any sort of FOOTBALL print. Ugh. Ew. No.

• We had lunch with BARB on Saturday, and I didn’t really notice it until after but Chooch actually LET US TALK. I think it was probably because he was insanely hungry (he ordered breakfast and made sure the waitress knew that it was because HIS PARENTS HADN’T FED HIM BREAKFAST THAT DAY) and really focused on feeding his face, completing the kids activities on the place mat, and fashioning this giant straw with which to siphon my water after he ran out of his own beverage.
  • However, I can tell that Chooch really likes Barb because he’s such a little dick to her. Barb kept asking the waitress to bring her check separately, and then Henry would say, “Nope, just bring one” and this went on and on until Barb finally quit caring and thanked Henry for lunch. “I don’t know what you’re thanking him for,” Chooch deadpanned. “You’re paying for everyone.”
    • And then she gave him tickets to the Pens game because his sarcastic behavior is endearing to some.

• This Facebook post & comment from Chooch cracks me up. Now I want Henry to make a Service Playlist on Spotify. I know for sure CHEAP TRICK will be on it because he saw them in a BAR in TEXAS while IN THE SERVICE. #JudistPriest
  • Speaking of Henry and music, I asked him to name five bands I like that he likes too and he actually started doing it, but then said it would be easier to name the bands I like that he hates, and without hesitation he said La Dispute. So sad. But on a happier note, this just means that he must actually LIKE most of the bands I like?!

• Above, you will see the only succulent stash that those asshole cats haven’t sniffed out yet. KNOCKONWOOD. This morning, I realized some of my succulents are MISSING from the windowsill. THEN I noticed FRAGMENTS of the POTS on the floor, hidden behind the beverage buffet. SOMEONE is covering for the CATS.
  • And it’s not Henry. I called him on my way to the trolley and screamed my face off at him and he was like, “what the fuck are you talking about??”
    • Those cats are so fucking cute but SO ARE MY SUCCULENTS.

• This morning at work we were talking about The Walking Dead. Amber2 was like, “They’re all going to die anyway. They should just give up” and Glenn snapped, “You have to have hope!” Who knew he felt so strongly about the zombie apocalypse? Anyway, I considered Amber’s statement and couldn’t help but agree with her. “Yeah, what would I really have to live for?” I asked myself out loud. “There wouldn’t be any concerts to go to.” Glenn piped up, “And no Henry to serve you.” Excitedly, I asked, “OMG do you guys think I would really outlive Henry in the zombie apocalypse?” That was met with a collective and resounding NO.
  • For the record, I don’t disagree.

• Thanks to everyone who has been reading Chooch’s story that he started writing as a punishment for duping us into purchasing designer jelly beans but is now so thoroughly immersed in the process of story crafting that he’s on the SIXTH “chapter”! He sits down all on his own and starts typing away, pausing occasionally to ask for spelling help or for synonym suggestions. (“I don’t want to use ‘said’ like every time!” he said, and I clutched my heart as it nearly exploded with pride. Sigh. Hopefully his love for writing doesn’t turn into a dead-end like mine did.)
  • Speaking of, I allowed myself to be That Person who commits to something and then quits. I had to bow out of the annual Pittsburgh blog swap thing because I’m just not feeling it and I don’t want to contribute some half-assed piece of uninspired garbage which is essentially what this dump of a blog has turned into and I’m really sorry for that. My attention span is not great these days/months/years.
• In happier news, my knuckles have been providing some SATISFYING cracks all day today. Those and deep sighs are the secrets to my success, whatever you consider my “success” to be.

• Out of the blue last night, I asked Henry if he remembered the moment he told his mom that I was pregnant (with Chooch; I’m not presently incubating anything other than a loaf of strong self-loathing), and then I took it upon myself to guess how he said it. “‘Great. My fat gf is having a baby, mom’,” I mimicked him in my best “choking on a dick” tone that I reserve for all of my Henry Impressions. And he said, “Yeah that’s exactly how I said it. ‘Mom, my Pillsbury Doughgirl is pregnant.” And then I cried myself to sleep.
• Henry “went to the store” to “buy screws” last week and was gone for over an hour. Totally cheating on me. Insert “long screw” jokes here.
  • I didn’t even ask to see said “screws” when he finally “came home.” I AM SO DEAD INSIDE.
    • But then I look at THIS and I’m alive again:

Ciao forever? Or ciao for now. *DEEP SIGH/KNUCKLECRACK*

It’s almost March, which means we have almost successfully made it through another depressing winter! And there are lots of things that are happening in March, such as both Bled Fest and Warped Tour announcing their full lineups (Bled Fest has been announcing bands here and there, and there are at least 8 bands that have me feeling like an excited 18-year-old pop punk boy), Citizen, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Emarosa shows, and Easter which I started to really like a few years ago after spending most of my life not giving a fuck about it at all.

So while I’m mostly in love with the idea of March in general (totally underrated month if you ask me), there are also some other things latching on to my heart AND HERE THEY ARE.

THINGS I LOVE:

• Chooch’s new hair. Chooch finally got a hair cut and I am so relieved. I have this thing where I associate certain hair length with shitty attitudes, and I SWEAR TO GOD, once Chooch’s hair reaches a certain shag, he turns into SUCH A DICK. The same goes for ponytails: anytime my aunt Sharon would tie her up into a p-tail on vacation, I knew I was in for it. Anyway, I convinced Henry to take Chooch to an actual barber for once, and not some rough broad with nicotine-stained fingers at Cost Cutters or wherever the fuck he goes. Chooch is also super pleased with the result, and I want to say that’s all that matters, but come on now. It’s all about pleasing me.  Now he wants to dye his hair opal (like a pale, muted pastel rainbow) but I’m not attempting that at home so we have to find a professional I guess.
• ARTIFEX PEREO BEING ANNOUNCED FOR BLED FEST. I was so excited when this happened last night that I couldn’t breathe and Henry was like, “WHAT. WHAT. Oh.”
• The grilled cheese I had for lunch at Poros. The bread alone was #litAF. I didn’t take a picture because it was a goodbye lunch for one of our peeps who is jumping ship and I already felt weird enough being there without throwing Instagram food selfies into the mix. So just believe me on this one.
• Usually though, I have Cream of Wheat for lunch everyday. I know, it’s kind of blah-sounding, but I really like hot cereal and I always add things to it, like various berries or bananas, chia seeds, walnuts…you know, basic crap. But I recently started adding SPRINKLES to it as well, and wow—total game changer. I do have a picture of this one:

• That #wonderful is used at work now when anyone refers to me. I DON’T CARE IF IT’S FACETIOUS. I love it.
• Having multiple personalities: Today, Catherine was telling people that I’m mean. “Look at her! She acts all sweet and whatever, but she’s really mean!” Which was Todd’s cue to chime in with, “Oh I know, she’s a bully.”And then they were closing in on me, dissecting all of the things on my desk. “I mean, look! She’s basically surrounded by death. If anything ever happens here, we can just be like, ‘Just look at her desk. The signs are all there.'” And I was so proud of this.
• Just Jillian, the Jillian Michaels reality show. I unabashedly LOVE Jillian Michaels and this show, as much as I try not get sucked into reality TV, makes me love her even more. If I ever met her, I would cry for sure. I made Henry watch two episodes last night and I kept catching him laughing; hahaha Henry, busted.

• When Pittsburgh looks all spring-like and sunny! It’s almost here. Spring is almost here. We can make it.
• Balance & Composure. I’ve liked them for a long time, but recently something shifted and now I’m just like, more please. I can’t wait to see them again. I am going to share with you today “Tiny Raindrop” because it makes me feel some things. (Barb, you can listen to this. There is no screaming. It’s not heavy at all. WOULD I LIE TO YOU!?)

• These fucking adorable cats!!!
• Having a dealer again. Let me explain! God! Back in the late 90s, I used to go to Eide’s nearly every weekend. Eide’s a record/comic book store and it used to be so great back then. This one guy who worked there got to know me because I would always go straight for the Cs to see what new Cure b-sides and rarities they had gotten in. Lots of bootlegged European shows. So he would start waving me over when he saw me, like Mario to Pee Wee in the magic shop, excited to show me the new shit he ordered. Now it’s not so great as far as new music goes (thanks for ruining the magic of record stores, Internet) but sometimes I find myself walking there on my lunch break when I’m feeling like lamenting over the loss of their beautiful industrial and synthpop section. (I bought allllll of my synthpop CDs there and from A Different Drum, which doesn’t exist anymore.) Anyway, every so often I’ll find a new must-have record, like the Touche Amore one I picked up last week. While the guy was ringing me up, he said, “We sell a lot of this one” to which I replied, “Oh I bet, they’re a great band.” And then, as an after thought, I asked, “You guys don’t ever get any La Dispute in, do you?” He said no, but that he could order it for me, and I was like “JUST LIKE THE OLD DAYS!?!??!” So today I got to walk over and collect it, and there is just something way more fun and satisfying about going into a record store to pick up a record rather than clicking on “buy now” on some website. So then I came back to work with it and Todd and Glenn decided to listen to La Dispute and let’s just say the band did not accrue new fans from The Law Firm today. Todd was perplexed and Glenn was just straight up unimpressed. Sorry La Dispute, I tried.
• Law Firm Memories: Today was Jennifer’s last day, so I made her Goodbye Glenn because I couldn’t let her leave without some type of memento. This inspired me, Amber2, and Todd to look at all of the Easter Glenns and reminisce which was fun until AMBER2 opened old wounds by bringing up when my low-key, grassroots Easter egg hunt was eclipsed by the Big Time Departmental “There Might Be Money In Your Egg!!!” Easter Egg Hunt and then no one gave a fuck about mine anymore so I threw a tantrum and shut myself away in my fake-office in my verboten hallway and cried about it. “I still have a picture of the Golden Bunny I got!” Amber2 mused dreamily, and I was like “UGH WHATEVER!!” But then Todd agreed that my version of the Easter egg hunt is the one that provided lasting memories, so that is why this bullet gets to reside in  the “love” section of this blog post.

And now on to the part that everyone cares about because schadenfreude:

THINGS I HATE:

• When nice people leave The Law Firm. (See above.) :(
• Meghan Trainor. Still. I honestly hate everything about her: her voice, her face, the way she moves when she “sings.” She is a pimple begging to be popped. After hearing about the Lionel Richie tribute at the Grammy’s, I YouTubed it and my ears are still sobbing. She didn’t belong up there on that stage with those other performers! Even that country guy was passable as a singer! BUT NOT HER. I was seething about this and it was until I started making physical threats to her that Henry butted in and told me I was being unreasonable and that he didn’t “understand” why I “think” she is so “terrible.” So then I started making physical threats to him while rage-texting Wendy because she is the only one who share my pain when it comes to that dumb bitch Meghan Trainor.
• Getting to pick winners for some fitness incentive thing (after TODD was solicited before me but I whined until Michele was like, “Ok…or Erin can help with the drawing…” and then Todd had a new opportunity to call me a bully) and I wound up picking MY NEMESIS Lou. UGH.

• Vanilla yogurt. I eat greek yogurt every day at work as a mid-morning snack. Every single day. It’s just another one of those INTERESTING things about me, OK? But a few days ago, the only option available in our fridge was vanilla. Two greek vanillas and one regular vanilla. Ew. But when choice did I have? So I grabbed a Chobani and then proceeded to gag and make puking sounds two hours later when I attempted to eat it at work. So awful! Like sour paste! I couldn’t even make it a quarter of the way through that fermented slop. I’m not the type of person who can quietly dislike something, so I threw a basic fit about it at work before hurling it into the trash. The general consensus around here was that Henry is a fucking prick for buying vanilla yogurt. I texted him and was like WHY and all he said was that supposedly our SON requested vanilla but then changed his mind (sure he did, once he realized that not even Little Orphan Annie would eat that shit), so now we had enough of that sickening vanilla glue for a whole preschool art class to smear on construction paper. The next morning, I reached into the fridge to pluck out my daily yogurt and STILL ALL VANILLA!? I was fuming mad by the time I rolled into work that my salutation to everyone was, “I’M ON YOGURT STRIKE.” Glenn was like, “If I was Henry, you know what I would say? Go to the damn store yourself!” And then Todd piped up and was like, “Yeah, you know!? I’d even show you how to GET THERE.” UGH!!! Anyway, my strike only had to last one day because Henry dutifully went to the store and bought quality flavors so today I was able to enjoy a nice tub of key lime. Henry taunted me last night by eating one of the remaining vanilla puke pots in front of me while I made dry-heaving motions.  “You don’t like mainstream music, you don’t like mainstream yogurt — where does it end with you?” Glenn mumbled today.
• One-sidedness. Isn’t it an awesome feeling when someone who you used to be BFFs with calls you out of the blue and they’re sobbing uncontrollably and you still have no idea why you even answered because they’re such a piece of shit, but you saw their number and felt worried and you’re a human being who doesn’t want someone to be hurting so you answered, but then a few weeks later when you needed someone to talk to because you were feeling super low and helpless, you call that same person, thinking that they will return the favor by lending an ear but instead they decline your call and haven’t said a word to you since and then you realize it’s just because they’re trying to repeat the cycle of abuse? FUCKING AWESOME. I’m sorry that happened to you and I hope that person fucking burns in hell.
• Wardrobe malfunctions. Today was Jeans Day at work. I only have one pair that is work-appropriate, i.e. without designer slits and rips. This pair though is pretty old and worn, so when I sat down at my desk immediately upon arriving at work this morning and heard a rippppp, I can’t say I was too surprised. The rip was small, horizontal, and in the middle of my inner left thigh. I discreetly shimmied to the bathroom to assess the sitch, and it wasn’t noticeable, because I don’t walk with my legs turned out. (If you do, that’s totally OK.) So I went about my day like it was no big thing, and planned to go jeans shopping this weekend. Then on my lunch break, I was right outside of Eide’s when I crouched down to tie my shoe, and this time it was more like RIPPPPPPPPP. Immediately, I felt the frosty tongue of February licking my BARE THIGH. Fuck fuck fuck fuck. I ran inside Eide’s. My shoe was still untied, so I tried to gracefully achieve bunny-eared status in the stairwell, only to heard a series of truncated, staccato rip rip rips.  Sweating at this point, I made sure my coat covered my partial nudity and continued up to the record section of Eide’s where the beauty and pleasure of holding my La Dispute record in my hands was marred and sullied by the fact that I was one quick squat away from returning to work in cut-offs. Outside of Eide’s, I texted Henry my latest trauma and he completely did not find this to be an emergency situation at all. So I knew I was going to have to solve this problem on my own. Because I was still in ear-ringing, brain-clogged, panic mode, it appeared that my only two options were to either bypass work and go straight home and never leave the house again, or jump into the river. I cried a little bit. I felt anger toward Henry because this was his fault somehow for not noticing that my jeans were in peril the last time he washed them. He could have added some type of reinforcement to them or built me a new pair altogether. But then the fogs of frustration and fluster slowly drifted away and I saw a light at the end of the tunnel, and that light belonged to BURLINGTON. I still enough time left on my break and one slight change in direction would put it on my path back to work! And then my FUCKING shoe untied again. I thought to myself, “Two more blocks. Fuck the shoelace. Just keep walking. Two more blocks.” Just then, a man TAPPED ME ON THE SHOULDER and said, “Miss, your shoe is untied. Be careful.” WHO EVEN DOES THAT IN 2016?!?!? People aren’t supposed to care about each other! JUST LEAVE ME AND MY FUCKING SHOELACES OUT OF YOUR LIFE, OK?! So I cried, “I KNOW THANKS OK!!!!!” and then I ran across the street. Like, RAN and never looked back. Waiting to cross another street, I tried to lift my foot up high enough to at least be able to tuck the laces in because I was afraid that if I didn’t acknowledge this man’s shoelace policing, I might trip over it and fall into an oncoming bus. THESE ARE THE THINGS YOU HEAR ABOUT ON THE NEWS!!! Finally, I made it to Burlington and grabbed the first pair of jeans I saw in my size, tried them on while sweating and hiccuping on anxiety, and then bought those motherfuckers for $16 because Burlington. When the cashier asked if I wanted to donate $1 to whatever charity, I said yes before she could even finish because saying no to charity after all of that was bound to have me struck down by lightning. Plus, I felt thankful that I was fortunate enough to be able to go to a store and buy new jeans without thinking twice—PERSPECTIVE. Went back to work and threw on the new jeans in the restroom. I texted Henry to let him know that further crisis was averted and I was sitting at my desk, legs swathed in a pair of snug jeans that I think might actually be jeggings. “There’s rhinestones on the back pockets,” I told him (found out later that they’re actually studs, this is how you know I was in such a hurry that I really didn’t even look at what I was buying). “They’re totally urban. I think the butt might actually be padded.” And he asked, “Are they Applebottoms?” Fuck you, Henry.
• Henry. Because after he picked me up from work, we sat for a few seconds in silence before he started cracking up. “Fuck you, I had a really traumatic day!” I cried. “No, traumatic would have been if your jeans and LEG ripped all the way off,” he laughed. And then he made me show him my other jeans, to which he knowingly said, “Yeah, that’s exactly how I thought they were going to look. That rip is NOT that big.” I started screaming about how it was so big, and he put on that chastising tone to say, “Erin. ERIN. Erin! You probably have people thinking your whole vagina was hanging out. That rip is not that big.” Fuck you, Henry! It’s like at least 7 inch-things long!!!