Stop. Bullet-time.

• One of my lithops (Barbara, to be exact) is hatching! I’m so happy that I have kept these alive long enough to witness this glorious and erotic act of nature. I have some other lithops that are definitely not thriving like these living stones, I’ll tell you that much. I’m sorry, but succulents actually aren’t that easy to maintain, so a big FUCK YOU to whoever started that myth. It’s been a constant struggle for me ever since getting into the whole seedy underbelly of sleazy-sounding plants, but the payoff is rewarding. I fuss over them constantly, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I have my favorites. Like PANNE, who fucking DREW has set her sights on and I feel like all I do is scream at both cats to lay the FUCK OFF my succulents.
• Chooch thought he had lead poisoning the other day, and we were like YOU DO NOT HAVE LEAD POISONING but then he started reading off the symptoms and I was like “OMG I THINK I HAVE LEAD POISONING?!”

• A few weeks ago, we attempted to make the first installment of Chooch Chats, which is when I was quickly reminded of the fact that Chooch and I DO NOT WORK WELL TOGETHER and that there is a reason my outlet of choice has always been the written word and not film. So fucking frustrating! Some of my friends are still holding out hope that we will try again, and we almost did this past Sunday, but SURPRISE I was in a horrible mood so that didn’t happen.
  • Also, I asked on Facebook for my friends to submit questions and only one person did so it’s hard to have Chooch answer questions when there aren’t any, lol. (Octavia, he had an answer for yours though!)
  • Notice Drew in the background, sniffing around for succulents. Fuck off, Drew.
    • J/K I LOVE YOU, DREW.
      • But seriously, you’ll be living in he basement if you don’t lay the fuck off my plant-babes.
• GAYLE gets migraines and has determined that the light around and above her desk exacerbates said migraines, so now she has her sights on MY DESK. She even bought this lumen measuring thing to see how much more depressing it is at my desk than hers. First, she placed it on Amber2’s desk, and it was like 800 lumens, whatever that means. Then she put it on my desk and the count was more than halved. Everyone’s desk measured the same, around 800, but mine! Todd and I even stole the meter from her desk on Friday and re-measured, and sure enough, you’d expect that I work inside a cave in relation to everyone else. “It’s because of your dark aura,” Gayle said. UGH SHUT UP GAYLE.
  • Sike. I know a compliment when I hear it.
    • If I lose my desk, Glenn is going to party.

• Remember when Henry asked me to marry him and we had the greatest wedding of the entire 80s decade?
• The only thing getting me through this goddamn winter is all the rad shows peppering my concert calendar. At work today, we had to pass around a calendar to pick our late shifts and I got excited all over again when I saw all the nights I have blocked off because of shows.  Thank god for music, year-round.
  • THE CITIZEN SHOW IS NEXT WEEK AND I’M SO ANTSY WITH ANTICIPATION. I don’t even care that I’m going by myself.
    • I mean, I do care. It sucks to be a loner. BUT IT’S CITIZEN AND TURNOVER FOR CHRIST’S SAKE.

• A few weeks ago, we had dinner at Drew’s (no relation to our cat, probably) and by a happy coincidence, it was Greek Night. We only eat at Drew’s once every 8 years, so we did not know that this is apparently a HUGE event for the Forest Hills peeps. That place was rockin’ with old people getting their spanakopita on. Sadly, there were no vegetarian options on the special Greek menu except for a salad and FLAMING CHEESE which I fucking love, so we all ordered regular old American food like racists, and then also ordered the cheese. “Ah, getting a little bit of the Greek in there, I can dig it,” our waiter laughed after we basically snubbed the rest of the Greek menu. I LOVE HIM. For a myriad of reasons. The main being that he wasn’t Henry. We sat there listening to some old man (presumably Drew) travel to every table that ordered the flaming cheese, and then making a HUGE production of setting it aflame and bellowing OPA! So when he finally came to our table, we were ready for a show. Except that there was no entertaining lead-in. Just *fire* and a lackadaisical “Opa” and then a “Don’t touch this part of the plate, it’s hot.” Wow. Who’s the racist now. And then I was super looking forward to the baklava sundae BUT THEY RAN OUT OF BAKLAVA!? Ugh. So Chooch ordered red velvet cake, which all three of us shared because it was gigantic, and this was after we told Chooch he wasn’t allowed dessert because he ate like zero bites of his burger, and then he pouted and decided to punish himself, which is my favorite thing ever, Chooch the Martyr. So Henry wrote Crybaby on his place mat with an arrow pointing to Chooch, and as the evening went on, he added “spoiled” and “big, big” in front of it.

• Henry saw an ad for a housekeeping position at a private gay club as a second job and I was like OMG PLEASE APPLY. What a great second job that could be for Henry! You know, since LYFT only lasted ONE WEEKEND. Henry’s all talk, you guys. He couldn’t hang.
• Things I was told last week at work: I’m a wasted talent; I have a dangerous mind; I’m basically a bully.
• We were listening to a New Jack Swing playlist the other night and I accidentally told Henry that I have the Soul 4 Real CD, twice, in the span of 10 seconds. My memory is a candy-coated raindrop.

• Oh would you look? It’s Drew and Penelopiss hulking around SUZY BANYON before I moved her someplace higher. I’m sorry, but you don’t fuck with SUZY BANYON.
  • Henry calls Penelope “Penopoly.” LIKE MONOPOLY. So dumb.

• A few weeks ago, I caught most of the Eagles documentary on CNN. The next day, I mentioned it to Henry, and he was all, “There’s one on Netflix too” and for whatever reason I YELLED, “Oooh, let’s watch it!” Because suddenly I’m a huge Eagles fan? I mean, I like them well enough but certainly not enough to watch two back-to-back documentaries. Anyway, it took me about 35 minutes to realize it was the same one I had watched the night before on CNN, but I still continued to watch along with Henry, because I was waiting for the part when they poached the dude from Poco. I grew up listening to all that shit, so Poco is another band that brings back fond memories of my childhood, even though I think I only know two of their songs. So we’re watching this, and I admitted to Henry that I always thought that the Eagles were always a band, you know? That they all hadn’t previously had music careers with other people, that it was always just The Eagles.
  • After it ended, I told Henry that I DGAF about all those “you might be a douche if you like Hotel California” lists and memes that circulate in Facebook from time to time, because I think that is one of the best songs ever written, and I honestly can’t NOT listen to it in its entirety when I hear it on the radio. “That and ‘Africa’ and ‘In the Air Tonight,'” I added, and Henry just grunted.
    • A few days later, Henry told me he heard that the dude from Poco who joined the Eagles also recorded Africa with Toto! MIND=BLOWN.
      • This reminded me of the time that I heard a song on the radio that reminded me of my Pappap’s kitchen and I was freaking out trying to remember who sang it (this was pre-Shazam, you guys; probably in 2002 when searching the Internet required elbow grease. So I was all stressed out, trying to remember the name of this band, and meanwhile, Henry and I had bought the most delicious cake in the world from Bethel Bakery, a raspberry ambrosia, and I had become obsessed with that cake AND song at the same time, only to find out that the band who sang the song was Ambrosia. I LOVE WHEN THESE THINGS HAPPEN.

• In the span of one school day, Chooch got detention and accepted into the gifted program. That sounds about right.
  • Apparently, he landed himself in lunch detention for “yelling out” and “being silly” in art. I think he’s at the point where he is collecting detentions as a hobby.
• Speaking of hobbies! I have been fucked by the inspiration gods these last few weeks and have all kinds of pointless paintings I’m working on!
  • Fun fact: when Kara, Corey and I visited La Hutte Royal a few weeks ago, the docen asked us (and another couple who were also there for the tour) if any of us were artists/involved with art in any way and I casually declined to answer because I do not consider myself an artist. Here is where you would find me shrugging if you peeked through my front window right now. Shrug shrug shrug. But that doesn’t stop me from slapping down paint!

• Everybody has been flipping out because some Steeler named HEATH MILLER retired and I was like, “Who? Oh.” Then I saw his picture on Facebook and I was like, “Who? Oh.” That’s definitely not who I thought it was. I thought I knew what he looked like, when in fact, I’m fairly certain I have never seen this man in my life. He wasn’t even the same race as the man I was picturing. So.

• Last week, Jeannie and I had dinner after work with BARB, who was kind enough to grace us with her presence. Barb arrived right in time to start singing along to Blackstreet’s “No Diggity” and I was like, “Man, I miss making fun of her everyday.” Can’t she see how selfish her decision to resign from The Law Firm was?! DID SHE NOT EVEN CONSIDER HOW IT WOULD AFFECT ME!? I can’t believe it’s been nearly a year since what I sadly referred to as Mournday. Basically, Jeannie and I just sat there and ate while Barb talked so quickly about everything from her favorite song (“Oh Girl” by the Chi-Lites) to all of the TV shows she watches. Seriously though — it was a really great dinner at Villa Reale and it was awesome as always to see Barb. I think she needs to get out of the house more often, say, from 8am-9am Monday through Friday when she starts driving me to work after the trolley construction begins.
  • After dinner, Barb came back to my house to meet Drew and Penelopiss, and that’s when I learned that she killed the fucking succulent I gave her for her dumb birthday!! Succulents are so fucking easy to maintain, BARB!
    • NEVER MIND MY FIRST BULLET POINT UP THERE.

OK, I think I’m sufficiently purged. CARRY ON.

1.Valentinin’

The serial killer cards have been flying off the shelves this season and I am so happy about that! If I could do this for a living, I would be ecstatic. Designing these things bring me great joy! A few orders came in this morning and I faux-bragged about it to Glenn, ending it with “No big deal.”

“You’re right,” Glenn grumbled. “It isn’t a big deal.”

“Hashtag so what,” Todd chimed in and I lost it. I GUESS YOU HAD TO BE THERE.

Then a few hours later, I received some really great customer feedback.

“Hey Amber,” I called over to her desk. “Someone else thinks I’m wonderful, too.” Because Amber always tells me I’m wonderful just to ruffle Glenn’s plain, boring feathers.

“Hashtag who cares,” Todd chimed in again. “Just trying to keep you grounded so you don’t start coming in here wearing sunglasses.” And then somehow it escalated to the point where Amber2 printed out a sheet of my employee photo and gave it to Glenn! HOW QUICKLY THE TABLES HAVE TURNED! Actually, not very quickly, considering it has taken three years for someone to hand-deliver this idea into Glenn’s lap.

And this concludes the story of how Amber2 re-earned the Mean Amber moniker!

(Seriously though, go get a card or 7!)

In related news, I had all of these Valentines designed in my head, featuring the guys in our department, and they were going to be super hilarious but the rational, job-security-desperate side of me kept whispering, “You could get in trouble for this one, Erin.” I confided in Wendy and at first she was like, “No, I think these are fine. Also, I can’t believe I’m helping you with this.” But later in the day she came over and was like, “OK I’M SORRY BUT I’M PARANOID AND I DON’T WANT YOU TO LOSE YOUR JOB.” And I agree with her that there are certain scenarios where this could become an HR nightmare. So, no Valentines, work pals.

2. GUYS DID YOU KNOW I HAVE CATS AGAIN LOL
  

They’re finally succumbing to their instinctual sisterly napping behaviors and I’m so thrilled! Sometimes, Marcy used to let Speck cuddle with her even though they weren’t real sisters and Marcy hated everyone but Henry and Satan. So this is bringing back some warm fuzzies or whatever you sappy people call that shit.

Chooch has changed Penelope’s name to Penelopiss.

“Get it? Because instead of PeneloPEE, it’s PeneloPISS?”

Yes, son. I get it. I got it. Thanks for ruining my cat’s name.

Such tired.

3. HOCKEY FUCK YEAH!

Barb, my favorite person in the whole entire world, gave me her tickets to the Pens game on Tuesday. It was super last minute, and I still wasn’t feeling entirely well, but fuck it: hockey over everything. Luckily, Chooch is super down with going to to Pens games now because he understands that this is the way of life.

Plus he gets to spend my money on overpriced ice cream bars.

We loved the people in front of us! (No sarcasm.) No one ever wants to high-five me at hockey games, but this guy did! And we scored six times too so that was SIX HIGH FIVES. I used real, old-fashioned math for that one. Not Common Core. I’d still be typing out my answer, otherwise.

OK, not to be all sentimental and MommyBloggy, but when Sidney Crosby got a hat trick, Chooch went ape shit because he totally understood the greatness of it all, and I got all teary-eyed because this was a MEMORY that Chooch and I were making together, and it involved the Penguins! A team he used to hate! Ugh, my heart.

Also, here’s some pictures of Barb’s chili pepper-pants’d boy toy:

I kept texting them to her throughout the game and I can only imagined how annoyed she was.

Anyway, other shit happened but I’m going to save that for Chooch to tell. We’re hopefully going to start a new monthly thing called Chooch Chats where people ask him shit and then he gets to talk his face off. Henry and I are going to try to film the first episode this weekend provided we don’t kill each other and that I don’t lose interest, because I’m pretty whatever about YouTube. I’m sure this will fizzle out just like all of my other sad attempts at series do. (RIP: Frown of the Day; Henry Bombs; Goofus & Gallant, OhHonestlyErin-Style; Freaky Features…..sigh. I have no niche.)

4. CARLY RAE JEPSEN

Literally the only reason I watched that live Grease thing last weekend. Did you know that I have never seen the actual Grease movie? And that I have no plans on ever remedying that? I just have never given a shit about it and I remember DEFINITELY running out of shits to give back in high school when our dumb drama club people performed it one year and if I heard someone say the name “Kenickie”* one more time as I walked down the hallway, I probably would have dropped out then instead of waiting until a month before graduation.

*I had to google how to spell that dumbass’s name.

ALL OF A SUDDEN I’M REALLY ANGRY NOW!?

Anyway, CRJ was beautiful as always. I guess the rest of it was OK? I couldn’t tell if I was supposed to like it or not.

5. The People Vs. OJ Simpson

Obviously I have been chomping at the bit for this series to start. Obsessed since ’94! I’ve referenced my OJ pog story on here at least 87 times so I’ll spare you. Last year, I was inspired to make an OJ painting, and this was before I even knew that a series was being made! Literally, I was like, “What should I paint? OJ shit.” Like the cast of the OJ trial are the new happy trees.

If I still used LiveJournal, I’d be using my Kato Kaelin and OJ icons exclusively right now.

Well friends, that’s all I feel like finger-pounding out right now. Maybe another day, I’ll sing you the song of THE MAN IN THE ATTIC. But right now, my cup of cream of wheat is calling my name. Peace out, Girl Scout!

Today was way less full of mental-lava, but these are things that I hate no matter what mood I’m in.

• Getting calls from the vice-principal. I don’t even answer anymore. I wait until there’s a voicemail, listen to that, and then I text Henry in all capital letters and made him call the school back because NO don’t bother me at work. I know my kid is a fucking menace. Please put me on the do not call list, thanks.
  • This time it was actually Chooch’s buddy that did the bad thing but they both suffered the consequences and had to serve lunch detention, lol. MAYBE NEXT TIME THEY WILL WALK TO SCHOOL LIKE NORMAL HUMANS AND NOT FUCK AROUND NEAR RUSH HOUR TRAFFIC.
• Being a parent to a preteen boy. Can’t wait for it to get worse.
• That one cemetery we drive past every time we go to the craft store. It’s just plain and boring and I hate it. It makes me feel sterile every time we drive past. Fuck off, plain cemetery. Get an obelisk or GTFO.
• Eye doctor. I had to go back yesterday for a contact follow-up. I had a different doctor this time and I liked him a lot better. I told him I was really struggling with my right eye and he looked at my chart and said, “Yeah, I don’t know why a toric lens was only ordered for your left eye. You need one for the right, too.” I KNOW RIGHT!? I have no idea why the other doctor decided that I’m only a one-eyed astigmatism.
• Grilled cheese made with the wrong cheese. Henry ruined my Saturday by putting provolone on my grilled cheese and I refused to eat it all. (I mean, I ate SOME because I was hungry.)
• Wendy’s gross nail. She did something dumb to it and now the nail is all black and coming up and she kept trying to thrust it at me because she knows I hate gross body things like whoa. She even popped out from behind a cabinet door when I was trying to file away Redwells on Friday and I was so angry. Then she went back to her office and texted me a picture of it!? I found out later that GLENN gave her that idea for free.  I’d post the picture but then I’d have to see it again. As if that wasn’t enough, she sent me a video, too. :(
• Lunch lady (Debbie the Bitch) at Chooch’s school who apparently yelled at him for “getting [name withheld] in trouble” when it was actually the other way around?! (Seriously, the vice-principal told us this so I believe it; if it was coming from Chooch, I’d have doubts.) Maybe get a new hairnet, Debbie, because it sounds like yours is too tight.
• Eyelids. They are literally lids for eyes & then I can’t fall asleep because I can’t stop imagining if eyelids were removable like other lids. #lids
• When Henry gets cocky and deviates from recipes and then I’m the only one who suffers. Just follow the recipe…?
• Geocaching. Full post on that later in the week.
• Winter.
• Henry’s inability to paint walls as fast as I need him to.
• The fact that it’s January and Bled Fest and Warped Tour won’t start making announcements until March.
• Not being rich enough to buy every record I want right at this very moment.
• This blog.

Just so I’m not a total killjoy, I’ll end this dumb post with a synthpop masterpiece; every time I hear it, it boosts my mood and makes me desperately want to go roller skating, so maybe next weekend? It’s been like, a year. So add that to the Things I Hate list.

• Not rollerskating enough.

Taking a break from KpopX and Run For Cover YouTube videos to jot down some thoughts using nothing but a keyboard and my fingertips. Shit is so advanced in 2016.

• HUGE NEWS: I finally repotted that stupid spider plant that was dumped on me two years ago at work. I still don’t really like it because SUCCULENTS ONLY, but…I’m trying to be nice to it. So I bought it a stupid hanging planter thing at Ikea and then made Henry hang it for me in my “painter’s nook” and I guess it’s OK. Maybe someday it’ll get a name. Like Burden or Waste of Space.
  • But the upside to this is that now I can buy a succulent to put in Spider Plant’s old pot, which was actually a really pretty coffee cup that Gina and Elissa got me a few years ago for my birthday, but then it chipped so I’ve been using it as a pot ever since.
    • Speaking of the pink wall (wait, we weren’t?) I think I have Henry on board to paint the rest of the bedroom a deep hunter green. He doesn’t seem thrilled but when is he ever. It’s going to be dope.

• My Top 9 Instagram posts, apparently.
• Check out this great clown book my friends Kevin and Lizzy sent me! The inscription is from 1948! I just love it. I love clown stuff so much!

• Last summer when I was visiting Octavia, I had coffee at her house and commented on how much I loved her coffee cups and then for Christmas, she sent me one along with one of her succulents! I seriously cried because it meant so much and I miss her.  I asked her to name him and she chose Baron Stash. <3 #insidejokes4l
• Thinking about making a zine about my department at work. Like old school zine, yo. Glenn’s life is about to get even worse.
  • Yeah, speaking of Glenn, Todd told me last week that before he really knew me, all he knew was that I did all these fucked up things to Glenn and he actually thought I was a bully. He told me this after I giddily told him about how Corey and I constantly try to spread rumors that Janna has a Robitussin problem and he told me that I’m a bully.
    • I think I might be a bully.

• Chris and Monica brought me back the bottom mask from their honeymoon and he has become fast friends with Clown Mask.
• So today I arrived at work at 9 and quickly learned that I was supposed to work late shift today because Amber2 asked to switch with me, but I thought she meant next Monday. “Maybe you need to get a planner,” Wendy sneered, to which I snapped, “I PUT IT IN MY PHONE PLANNER, BUT THAT DOESN’T REALLY MATTER WHEN I HAVE THE DATE WRONG, WENDY.” Ugh! So everyone was like, “Hahaha, good job” and it wouldn’t benefit me to turn around and go home, because I took the stupid trolley today so by the time I got home, I would have to turn around and come right back, ugh. Instead, I sat here for a few minutes and annoyed everyone, and then I decided to try my luck out in the wilderness, i.e. snowy downtown. Chooch took my idiot gloves to school with him this morning because he “couldn’t find his” which means this was the first time this winter he needed to wear gloves and couldn’t be bothered to look for them, so I had to borrow Wendy’s gloves when I went outside. She tried to get me to borrow her scarf  too but I stubbornly said I was fine.
  • First, I went to Nicholas Coffee and bought a pound of coffee because what else am I going to do? Then I walked to the Exchange to look for records but they only have ultra deluxe hipster bullshit and like, Led Zeppelin; nothing that I was looking for, needed, or would have gladly bought on a whim. So I was like steaming mad and started to storm out because that’s what I do, and that’s also what I did on Sunday when I was at the Culture Shop and some bitch was visiting her friend who was working there, and she was blocking THE ONE CASE that I wanted to look at. “Why wouldn’t you just ask her to move?” Henry had the nerve to question after I huffed and puffed my way down Carson Street. I shot him A Look and screamed, “BECAUSE I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO! SHE SHOULD WAIT UNTIL AFTER HER FRIEND IS DONE WORKING AND THEN THEY CAN GO AND GET A FUCKING FRAPPUCINO TOGETHER UGH.” Anyway, that’s a thing that happened. But back today: as I was stomping out of the store with a scowl on my face, one of the girls said, “Have a nice day, miss” and the other girl said, “I really love your purse!” So then I calmed down. Being called “miss” was good enough, but the extra compliment about my fabulous taste in accessories really dulled my ire.

• I stripped Trudy down over the weekend and I have to say, I’m not sad about it. LOOK AT THAT BODY. Henry put the new(-to-us) wig on her and looked so proud about it. I love that he was so annoyed about buying her at Macy’s but now he has totally warmed up to her. She’s an Appledale, Michael. My own Trudy, a goddamned, shit-sucking Appledale. OH YOU WAIT TIL MOM FINDS OUT BUDDY.
  • Sorry. I was having a Lost Boys moment.

• Here is a photo of a disgusting man who performs snot gymnastics every morning while waiting for the trolley, instead of just blowing his fucking nose, and I’m like “Bro, use a KLEENEX, it probably requires less effort than whatever phlegm lassoing you’re doing right now.” Sometimes, he is also known to burp with wanton abandon. I hate him so much and literally glare at him.
• I’m eating Müller greek yogurt and I can’t get over how much it tastes like paste, which alarms me because I’ve never eaten paste. And trust me, I would admit it if I did. I’ve admitted to far worse on the Internet!
  • I’m totally gagging on this but still, I keep spooning it in. Mmm, Elmers-y.

• My Cure tickets and Carly Rae Jepsen tickets came on the same day and I ran around like a child after drinking a whole case of red Squeezits! So many good shows are happening in 2016: Hail the Sun is this month, Never Shout Never is next month, Basement is coming up, Silverstein and EMAROSA in Lancaster…I’m excited to start filling up the 2016 calendar that I snagged thanks to Gayle’s mom donating to charities and getting a shit ton of calendars that no one wants so Gayle brought them all into work. I got an Easter Seals one that features crappy pictures made by children. My other option was Peaceful Solitude, which is chock full of like, pictures of churches and birds. I don’t like children, but I also don’t like churches and birds, so I grabbed the one that had more colors on it that I enjoyed. Which was the kid one. And that concludes this year’s Calendar Klatch. Stop by next year and we’ll talk again.
  • Don’t worry, I’ve repainted my nails since this picture was taken.
    • Except now they need redone again. I’m just not as into my nails anymore, guys!

• Henry finally scrubbed the tattoo off Chooch’s neck and you would have thought he was being murdered by tickles.
• Fun fact about me: ever since I was a kid, I heard the Full House theme song as “Whatever happened to addict to be a teen, the milkman, the paperboy, the evening Tv?” I mean, no, it never made sense to me– “addict to be a teen”– but I still sang it because it was either that or “a dick to Billy Tee” and that made even less sense to me…? Anyway, I finally decided to look up the words recently and wow. Just wow. “Predictability.” Who knew!? (Other than everyone.)
• In case anyone was keeping score, Henry has leveled up to “Bae Lord” and I have leveled down to “Bae.” We were having a hard time keeping track of who was who and finally Henry screamed, “JUST CALL US MOM AND DAD FOR FUCK’S SAKE!!!”
  • Maybe I screamed that.
• Yeah so I hate to be That Guy, but winter, you guys. Man, fuck a winter. And it has literally only just begun.
• I went back outside when I was on my actual lunch break and not my “fuck, I’m two hours early for work” break and this time I took Wendy’s scarf, too. It was fucking brutal out there, man.
  • Actually, it wasn’t even THAT cold but we were so spoiled with a mild December and there was no gradual descent into winter digits. Just an overnight plunge.

• Henry does not approve of my mustache.
• Man, I had a really crappy weekend for no tangible reason other than I allowed a thing to get the best of me and it set the ball in motion to rack up millions of points in the psychopathic pinball game inside my brain. Emotions are the worst. I started approximately 87 fights with Henry on Saturday and Sunday and then tried to kick him out which backfired on me (it always does) and then finally he was like, “Hey, what’s the real issue here?” and then I was like “WAHHHHHHHH!!!!” and cried and he took me to Tillie’s for dinner on Sunday because I said, “I WANT TO GO TO TILLIE’S” so that’s what we did and then I was fine.

Mmm, bloody.

• One of my oldest dreams was to start my own record label. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately because I feel like each day spent at a job that has zero to do with music is killing me, but I don’t know where to start. All I know is that I want Chooch to be the face of it because everyone loves Chooch and I have the personality of a frozen corpse.
• Put all this effort into quietly crawling up the steps on Friday night so that I could burst into Chooch’s room and scare him, but wound up scaring myself because I didn’t consider the effect of screaming while wearing a pig mask. My ears are still ringing. Henry didn’t even bother to ask me if I was OK!?
• And now I will leave you with a song by Mindsideout. Did you know that the beginning of my relationship with Henry revolved around synthpop? He used to burn me synthpop mix CDs because I was All Synthpop All the Time back then and even considered changing my name to my synthpop super princess alias, Saffron. Anyway, I had a synthpop compilation with this Mindsideout song on it but not even Eide’s, my official Industrial and Synthpop dealer, had the entire Mindsideout record for sale. Henry ended up finding some overpriced import CD somewhere and I just thought he was the greatest guy ever. Well, for about 30 minutes. Come on now.

Going back to my emo hole with my sadboy music and Bledfest dreams. Someone put this blog out of its misery.

Life (and an annoyingly half-broken blog) really got the best of me for a second there. Today, I’m relaxing with a chilled glass of bulletpoints.

• In 10th grade, there was one night where I managed to simultaneous piss off all of my friends in one fell swoop. They wanted me to go ice skating with them but I declined – there was a UNCF telethon on BET that night, hosted by the one and only Lou Rawls. I watched every single second of that telethon, even through performances by washed up songstresses like Patty Austin. My attention was fixated despite my step dad’s heckling and my mom’s pleas to turn it. “Why do you have to watch the whole thing?” they asked. I even shed some tears here and there. Finally, they left me alone and I was able to call in my pledge of $20 in private. I’ll never forget the day my mom received her billing statement. Ironically, that’s twenty dollars more than she contributed to my college fund.
• There is an attorney at The Law Firm whose last name is similar to one of my favorite soft rockers, Gino Vannelli. His name came up a few weeks ago and then that night, one of his songs came on some yacht rock Spotify playlist I was forcing Henry to listen to at bedtime, which is my favorite  thing to do: force Henry to listen to things and give him lengthy explanations about what each song means to me and every single childhood memory is attached to it. It’s been a while since I heard a G.Vann song and I have to tell you, I wasn’t expecting to burst into tears. But I did. Anything that reminds me of sitting at the counter in my Pappap’s kitchen is going to launch searing daggers of ouchy nostagia into my heart without warning.
  • The next evening after work, Chooch and I got in fight so I fled to my bedroom where I ate dinner alone and put Gino on Spotify to help booster my pity party to the next level. Then I tweeted something along the lines of “Those Gino Vannelli vibes, tho” and some broad retweeted it. I went to her twitter and found that her entire timeline is full of Gino Vannelli tweets, so I guess she makes it her business to troll Twitter and RT every mention of him. There’s always someone.
  • “Living Inside Myself” was one of the main reasons I begged my Pappap to order me the Time Life Body Talk CD compilations when I was a teenager. It was one of those subscriptions where they would send you a new double CD each month and it was glorious. Then my Pappap died and my grandma canceled it so I never got to complete the collection. I’M NOT GRINDING MY TEETH RIGHT NOW OR ANYTHING.

• Chooch’s piano teacher Cheryl has moved to Asheville, WhateverCarolina to take massage therapy classes, so Chooch’s piano is temporarily on hold until June. We were both super sad and I basically acted like she was dying when I picked him up from the lesson and she was like, “NO DON’T START!” because she was trying to keep a celebratory tone but here comes Emo Erin, ready to rain her salty drops of sadness all over the party. She gave Chooch some things to work on in her absence though and surprisingly, he seems to be practicing way more than he ever has. And he’s getting scarily good and figuring out how to play things by ear. Like after he heard “Tip Toe Through the Tulips” on the mid-season finale of The Walking Dead, he had taught himself how to play it that same night and what a treat that was, him flipping back and forth between that song and the Halloween/Michael Myers theme. It was like a soundtrack to a nervous breakdown.
• Two weeks ago (I’m so behind on bullet-points!), Amber2 pointed out that someone in the Firm was giving away a shower seat and gray wig on our Classifieds. “I find this bizarre,” she said, while my fingers were fumbling to reply to the seller before anyone else had a chance to take the gray wig from me. Amber just laughed and said she should have known better than to say that to me. By the next day, I still didn’t have a response from the seller. Nate said, “Maybe she doesn’t want to separate them?” like when people are giving away kittens by the pair or none at all. Finally I was like, “I AM GOING TO EMAIL THIS LADY” and it’s a good thing I did because she never got notification that I responded to her ad via the Classifieds page! So then she called me and asked me if I wanted to know what the wig looked like, and I didn’t really care because a wig is a wig to me, but I was like, “Sure?” so she described it and then said she was going to include the wig shampoo and conditioner and asked me, “How do you normally wash your wigs?” and I was like “…..” but then thankfully she was like, “Blahblahblah?” and I was like, “Yes, just like that. That is exactly how I have been known to wash my wigs.” And then the next day, the wig was waiting for me!
  • Trudy has to age sometime, you know?

• Spotify told me that these were my top genres of 2015 and I’m like, duh:  
• I went to dinner last week with my Original Work Mom, Carol and it was wonderful! I haven’t seen her in a pretty long time, which is sad because we shared an office at the meat place for 4 years. She and I walked out of that place together and while it was such a shitty, traumatic day for us both, I feel like it’s something that will always keep us bonded together. Of course, we did a lot of reminiscing—some good, mostly bad—about that horrible company and it left me feeling some type of way, for sure.
  • Instead of being doom and gloom about it and crediting it for the stutter it left me with and the near-crippling fear of getting another job, which sent Henry and me into a financial pit that we have only recently begun to claw our way out from, I like to think about the good things that came from it:
    • Getting to work with Carol for four years was wonderful. She is my friend/Chooch’s godfather Brian’s mom, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that from 200-2004, she was more of a mom and support system to me than my actual mom. She was also one of the first people who I confided in about Henry, and she was definitely on board with me dating him.
    • Which leads me to: meeting Henry, obviously. Whoever would have thought that 14 years later…you know. Life is fucking weird and awesome.
      • Even though I’m mad at Henry right now because he has been ignoring my texts all day because apparently I’m not important like Faygo.
• Prettttty sure I’m food-phobic. All this holiday bullshit has me panicking about overeating, or you know, just eating in general. I skipped the Law Firm’s holiday party because I was petrified of being around all the cookies. And luckily, I wasn’t around for our department’s holiday party because I was in Cleveland, so that alleviated some forever-fat anxiety. I probably should talk to someone* about this instead of having secret heart palpitations.
  • *Like a therapist on Twitter or Instagram, maybe.
• Today, Todd was trying to guess what kind of music I liked in high school and his first guess was NO DOUBT which was actually so offensive to me that it made my stomach hurt. Then I made him listen to Chiodos and he said he was super nervous at first because he was bracing himself for a lot of screaming, but that it ended up not being too bad.
• I made Henry leave on some Carpenters special that WQED was airing during one of their telethon things, mostly as a joke because I never gave a shit about the Carpenters one way or another, but then I was suddenly really into this stupid special because they make me feel uncomfortable. Uncomfortable in the sense that I’m having an out-of-body, time-traveling experience* where I’m standing in my grandparents’ backyard in the 60s, wearing a purple sundress, and it’s springtime and I can’t see my face. So then I started torturing myself by listening to them all last week and I had no idea that they sang “When I Fall In Love” because I always thought it was originally by Celine Dion (thanks to the “Sleepless In Seattle” cassette in my Pappap’s Cadillac) so then on Sunday night, when Henry was trying to go to sleep, I played basically every version that Spotify has, even the Doris Day one, and when I got bored with that, I asked him what he wanted to listen to and he mumbled into his pillow, “Anything but Doris Day.” That story seemed a lot more exciting before I started typing.
  • See also: Marty Balin’s “Hearts.”
• I hope that little things like this never stop making me squeal like a teenager:
• In relation to the above bullet, I have been extremely regressing lately, and this entails fluctuating precariously between extreme giddiness and a morose listlessness that finds me doing nothing more but laying around, with my arm splayed across my forehead, listening to emocore.
• Seeing Craig Owens on Wednesday totally reignited my love for Chiodos. I haven’t been able to stop smiling!
  • Except for when I’m being emocore. Which happens at the drop of a hat.
• I bought this Skinny Dip phone case last summer, months before I finally upgraded my phone. Priorities. Even Glenn said it’s “cute.” I’m not sure if he meant it or not.
• It occurred to me recently that I’m the same age that Henry was when we started dating: he was 36 and I was 22. He seemed SO OLD to me back then, but I don’t feel like I’m old now that I’m the same age.

Ew, on that gross note, I’m going to go and, I dunno, listen to more emocore probably. Sorry, co-workers.

Internet, let’s get bullet-y! (Also, anytime I use bullet points on here, it makes word sandwiches and I don’t know why. APOLOGIES to your eyes.

• Yesterday was the last day of one of our managers who started out here in Pittsburgh and then moved to Australia to help build up our Melbourne office. I read his reply to my goodbye email out loud when I got in to work today and everyone within earshot let forth a heartygroan; here is an excerpt:
  • Erin:  your smile and just general warmth was always an amazing piece of the Pittsburgh office.  I’m so happy you’ve stayed with the firm and have taken on more within the group because you truly deserve the rewards*.
    • *My reward for lasting 5 years came yesterday in the form of a certificate, a ribbon-thing, a plate of cookies, and a mini bottle of Verdi.
  • I’m going to print it out and tape it to my monitor, next to the one Brad sent me in 2013 which reads:
    • You’re a peach, Erin Kelly. I take back all of the horrible things I say about you behind your back.
• One day last week, I came back from my break to find that I was SUSPICIOUSLY locked out of my computer. So I had to call the dreaded help desk, which is only not dreaded when my boyfriend Tim answers. But this time it was Noah. He wanted me to answer one of my security questions, and I had my mom’s maiden name on the tip of my tongue, ready to roll, when he asked instead, “What did you wantto be when you grow up?” He stunned me into silence and my brain just completely fizzled out. I literally couldn’t think and just sat there stuttering. “OK, how about this one: What was your favorite game as a child?” I was sweating at this point. Was I dreaming when I answered these questions? “……Monopoly?” I whispered with zero confidence. “No,” he sighed. “Ok…how about…what’s your zip code?” “Oh! That one I know!” and I happily answered. But then, after he granted me passage back into my computer, I asked, “Just out of curiosity, what did I put down for that first question?” Because if I know myself, it could only have been three things, depending on which Vintage Erin Era I was in when I was answering those questions in the first place. He started laughing. “Parapsychologist….so I guess you wanted to, what? Be aghostbuster?” “Yep, that soundsaccurate,” I said, and Noah continued to laugh. “That’s definitely the best answer to that question I’ve seen yet,” he said, and I was thankful that I hadn’t put “manurepackager” because that’s what I used to jokingly tell people I wantedto be when I was in high school, ugh.
  • And if we were going Early Years, it would have been “maid” because all I really knew about maids was that they wore cute dresses and worked in nice apartment buildings and hotels, and if you knew the environment in which I was raised, you can imagine how horrified my grandma was of this early career choice. And if you could see the state my house is usually in, you would wonder how I ever could have cleaned up other peoples shit when I can’t even clean up my own.
  • I wanted to be a parapsychologist after I conned my Pappap into buying me the Time Life Mysteries of the Unknown book series when I was in 5th or 6th grade and became convinced that this was the life for me.
    • By the time I got off the phone, everyone sitting around me were like, “The FUCK was that about?! Who picks those as their security questions?!” SORE-Y GUYS. At the time, I must have thought it was a good idea!
      • I don’t know why I said Monopoly. I can guarantee it was Mousetrap. Motherfuck.
• That time we let Henry treat himself:

• I’ve been putting on Gilmore Girls every night after work because the snappy banter of Lorelai and Rory in the background is inexplicably soothing to me. Chooch got sucked into it one night and asked, “Are they sisters? REALLY? Well they don’t act like they’re mom and daughter.” And then I waited for it to sink in and finally the lightbulb turned on and he exclaimed, “Oh my god, they kind of remind me of us, Mommy!” And there it is.
  • And Henry is Luke.
    • The reruns air on the UP channel so “goddamn” is edited out, lol’ing to Heaven.
• VIC LIKED MY PAINTING OF HIM ON INSTAGRAM!!!!!!!!! VIC FUCKING FUENTES! At first I thought for sure it was one of those thirsty girls who make their user name similar to a singer’s and just change, like, one letter and then they use the same user pic, like there for certain is a girl on Instagram right now whose name is Piercethavic, like what even is the point. BUT NO, it’s the real Vic and I honestly couldn’t breathe because I have loved that band for so fucking long and even Henry was like, “Nice.”

• I ran out of room in my haunted house journal before I was able to finish writing about this season, and I haven’t had a chance to buy a new one yet because I takes TIME and THOUGHT—I can’t just buy any old journal. It has to fit the haunted house journal criteria, for instance, two of my old haunted house journals were Goosebumps blank journals. DO YOU SEE?! I was ranting about this at work and Todd said, “Wow, you lead a stressful life. Can’t you make like, an annex for it?”
• The Affair is back for a second season of RUINING MY LIFE. I pretty much have an APB out on Henry at all times.
• Speaking of Henry and affairs! I took Veteran’s Day off because Chooch didn’t have school and I’m getting gently bullied into using more of my PTO time at work. Janna came over and we walked to Dormont to have lunch at Parker’s; on the way there, we walked by a truck from the meat place where Henry and I used to work and at first Iwas disgusted because fuck that place, seriously, but then I got close enough to see that the driver was Paul and Paul is awesome! I can’t believe that poor guy is still working there, though. Anyway, we chased (literally) the truck and as luck would have it, he parked RIGHT IN FRONT OF PARKER’S because there is a Chinese restaurant next to it that he was delivering to. I was all PAUL PAUL! OMG PAUL! and he had no idea who I was because a) I’m forgettable and b) I haven’t seen him since I quit on 4/21/04. But once I got closer and screamed IT’S ME!ERIN! he was all BRING IT IN GIRL! and gave me a hug full of nicotine and gross meat smells. I got to introduce him to Chooch, who was obsessed with Paul at this point because he’s my son and we get obsessed about things. I told him I’m still with Henry and he was genuinely stunned, which made me laugh, because really, who isn’t genuinely shocked that knew us back then.
  • Gross fact: I’m currently the same age that Henry was when he cradle-robbed me. I don’t feel old at all, but FUCK, I thought he was practically a geriatric when he was my age and I was 22.
• Sometimes when I’m out carousing the town on my lunch break, I see this man wearing a tutu and leggings, standing placidly on a corner, quietly holding up both middle fingers. No sign, no donation box, no quippy chant. Usually he is standing directly across from Dunkin’ Donuts so for a while I thought he was mad maybe about their ever-increasing line of designer coffee drinks. But then I saw him outside of Burlington so I have no idea what his agenda is. One time I saw him stretching out his fingers, though! I imagine they must get very tired from doing all of the communicating on his behalf. Here is a blurry picture of him because he scares me so I took it on the run:

• Cure tickets went on sale today at 10! I was still at home since I’m late shift today (although an adjusted late shift because I’m leaving earlier than usual so I can go see Copeland andEisley, woo!) so I sat there forever staring atTicketFly, hitting refresh, until it was 10. At one point, I screamed for no reason other than all this anxiety was building up and I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to call Henry over for moral support but instead he calmly said from the couch, “Justbuy the damn tickets so I can take you to work.”
  • I came in to work and joyfully announced that I got my tickets and everyone was like, “Oh thank god, we spent all morning wondering.” I told Glenn that I almost puked when I was waiting to buy them and he said, “That’s funny because I almost puked when you read us George’s email.”
• Hey remember when I was having a conniption over Chooch and that effing school project that he was putzing around with? Well, he finished it on time and guess what he got out of it? STUDENT OF THE MOTHERFUCKING MONTH.  October’s criteria was creativity and BAM, BITCH the kids voted for Chooch because they thought that the fact he turned his animal essay into a comic strip was original and no one else had done that because the example the teacher gave was diorama so that’s what most of the kids did. Anyway, Chooch got a medal and he spent the next several hours shoving it in our faces.

(I can’t tell if my phone is broken or my eyes, but almost every picture I have taken lately has been out of focus.)

Ei

• Whenever Henry starts a sentence with HERE’S AN IDEA, I know it’s going to have something to do with me doing a thing on my own. And I don’t like it.
• Out of the blue the other day, Chooch said (MINOR WALKING DEAD SPOILER AHEAD), “Maggie is like, the new Laurie. I don’t mean because she’s a bitch now, but because she turned pregnant.”
  • Turned pregnant.
• I don’t know why I torture myself with American Horror Story (each season gets more and more lame, unless you are just completely unfamiliar with horror films); the best part of this season is definitely getting to see previews for the upcoming People vs. OJ Simpson. Holy shit, I can’t wait for that.
  • Also, a highlight was when “Siamese Dream” was playing during one scene in the third episode. #respect
• Chooch is still going strong with his extreme overuse of the word “bae” and even has me using without even realizing it—-it just rolls off the tongue so effortlessly. I’m at the point where I barely even notice him saying it anymore, but the other night, he started calling Henry and me “Bae-Lords” and after about 20 minutes, I was prepared to move out of the house. Henry flat out snapped last night and screamed, “I CAN’T WAIT FOR YOU TO FIND A NEW WORD.”
• I know everyone has been like totally on edge, wondering whatever happened with the broken candy urn. Gayle fixed it for me! I mean, an entire piece is missing, but it’s basically as good as new.
  • (Also, I left a note for Lawrence Grant, the perp, and he took it! Well, someone did. I hope it was Lawrence though because I put candy inside of it.)

•  I think Chooch and I are going to try and co-write a post about the Emarosa show we went to on Monday, but we’re currently still in the heart-eyes -palpitations forever stage of things. But I will tell you this: Bradley prefaced our hugs by warning us that he was sick with the flu and was hoping to not get us sick but I was like BRING IT IN anyway because even though I hate hugs, it’s Bradley and he helped bring one of my favorite bands back to life, so…
  • Came to work the next day and practically screamed to Glenn, “BRADLEY HAS THE FLU AND HE HUGGED ME, THANK GOD I DIDN’T GET THE FLU SHOT!” Yesterday, I sincerely thought I was getting a fever, but then today I felt fine. :(
    • I am the fan that bands are wary of. J/K. I’m really not, I swear. I usually just stand behind Henry and cry, so you know, I’m harmless.
• Thank god Chooch knows when it’s appropriate to steal Henry’s phone and text me:

• Chooch brought home a permission slip for someidiotPittwomens basketball game but there are key words highlighted by his teacher, including “in school suspension” and “not invited.” Chooch was like, “I didn’t want to go anyway” and I suggested that we write “LOL basketball is dumb” on the permission slip and send it back but Henry intercepted and took that plan off the plate. I just kept going on andonaboutall of the things we could do with the $5 that we don’t have to spend on this now (like BUY SOME WEED*, BITCHES) until Chooch was crying from laughing so hard and Henry was like STOP ENCOURAGING HIM.
  • *This is funny because I haven’t smoked pot since like 2001 and have no idea what $5 would even get me, aside from laughed at.
    • I’m a terrible parent.

I will end this with a random picture of Chooch and two of his pals wearing my animal masks, because why not.

October’s got me like whoa. It’s my favorite month in the whole entire history of the calendar, but goddamn is it tiring. Here are some things that happened over the past week or so that I don’t want to forget, bullet-style. I’m feeling relatively uninspired, so consider these Nerf bullets. (Soft) Bang (soft) bang.

• Henry was telling me about some Snopes-style show he was watching where TOMS was featured and it talked about how the whole “one for one” thing isn’t really helping anyone in Africa, etc. The way he was telling me this, it was almost as if he expected me to fling my TOMS into a vat of acid, but instead I just shrugged and said, “So? That wasn’t ever why I started wearing TOMS.” Henry stood there with this look on his face like he knew what I was about to say was going to be full of vanity and shallowness. “I started wearing them because Craig Owens was wearing them.” And then Henry got the “there it is!” look of mild disappointment on his dumb face.
  • Although sometimes I kind of care about people! Like last week, I was wandering around on my break when I saw some older man in a wheelchair struggling to get through the door of a McDonald’s. Do you know how many people I witnessed walk right past him like he was invisible? Something like A LOT. And you know, just because this guy is in a wheelchair doesn’t necessarily mean he’s not a shitty person like the rest of us, but I couldn’t just walk by like this scene wasn’t playing out to my right. So I stopped and opened the door for him, and then when I realized that there was another set of doors inside, I followed him into the vestibule and opened those ones too. And the saddest part was that he was shocked that I did this. Especially when he realized that I had walked in there just to open the door for him. I’m not saying I love people and want to run outside and start hugging people (I work downtown; there are lots of gross people out there) but it would be nice if people would stop walking around with their noses in their phones and maybe pay attention when someone could use a hand. And that has been today’s Soapbox Story.
• Random photo of Chooch in his zombie obsession days, Lancaster PA circa 2010:

• You guys, LOLForever, Henry finally went out on his first Lyft shift on Saturday! As he was smoothing out his grizzled locks before leaving the house, I told him that he should put on Emarosa and then every time a new passenger gets in the car, he could say, “Oh that’s just Emarosa you’re hearing right now, no big deal” and then he could tell them about Bradley and Jonny. Henry snapped, “Why don’t YOU just be a Lyft driver then?” But you know what he did like? My suggestion of having a plastic trick or treat pumpkin filled with candy for his passengers! I could tell that it pained him to admit that it was a good idea.
  • He has been complaining about his one customer who he took to the airport and even HANDLED HER LUGGAGE (is that legal!? Henry shouldn’t be trusted with that), and then she didn’t even tip him.
  • On Sunday, he went out during morning prime time and wound up taking a bunch of people to the dumb stadium for the dumb FOOTBALL game, and naturally some of them were already drunk at 9am. When he came home that day, he said, “It went OK. I had a lot of cancellations, though. They were all girls, so I guess—-” and I cut in to finish “—they saw your creepy picture and got freaked?” Henry sighed and said, “Pretty much.”
    • Some of his passengers have been chatty with him so I asked him what he tells them of himself. “Nothing much, really,” he mumbled, in true Henry fashion. “Do you tell them that you have a cool girlfriend who does lots of thing and likes Emarosa?” I cried. He gave me that smirk that I hate so much, so I guess that’s a no. What a shocker. He never tells people about me! Because he’s embarrassed, that’s why.
• If you read Chooch’s guest post, you know that on Saturday we went to a haunted house about an hour away in Ohio. It was called Dark View and this was the first time we went because Henry, Mr. Haunted Houses R Dumb, brought home a flyer for it one day when he had deliver FAYGO for work. I approved of this haunt for a myriad of reasons, but my favorite part was that THE ACTORS ARE ALLOWED TO TOUCH YOU. If you know me at all, you know that I am a WHORE for creepy haunted house actors and I welcome every last spooky touch of my hair and gentle ankle grabs. The best part was when a bloody butcher singled me out (granted his only options were me and a miserable looking broad) and called me a pretty little things and then shouted mildly offensive innuendos at me as I ran away. “I love it when they me I’m pretty,” I whispered to Henry once he caught up to me. “Yeah, I know you do,” he sighed. Daddy issues all day long.
  • It was after 10 by the time we got out of there and we were all hungry but with Chooch and me, our hunger is something that needs addressed ASAP. Of course, we were unfamiliar with the area, Yelp is a piece of shit that only succeeds in causing the shackles on my temper to break, and most of the restaurants we passed were already closed. Henry and I started to fight (OK, I started to fight) and Chooch was just like, “Great, here we go again” because this is basically the only time we fight: when we’re in the car and I’m hungry. So Henry barked LET’S JUST GO TO TACO BELL AND BE DONE WITH IT. That was fine by us, even though I wanted a GRILLED CHEESE, but whatever. Taco Bell is good for me (I mean, not health-wise, of course) because it’s basically the only fast food place with a menu that’s easily modified to be vegetarian. However, I didn’t feel like having Henry try to give explicit instructions to whatever kid was working the drive thru, so I just went for the 7-layer burrito, which is naturally vegetarian. Before we left, we noticed that there was stuff missing from our order, so Henry reluctantly parked and went inside to reason with the Taco Bell idiots. While he was inside, I took a bite of my burrito and immediately recoiled. Something was wrong, but I couldn’t place it. I took another bite, tentatively this time, and my heart sank: THEY GAVE ME A BEEF BURRITO. It was too late to spit it out and I never made a good bulimic, so I sat there for a second and accepted the fact that I’m a FAILURE TO PETA, MORRISSEY, AND ANIMALS WORLDWIDE. Once I calmed down (yeah right, I’m still not calm), I removed the key from the ignition, told Chooch to wait there (TERRIBLE PARENT ALERT but at least I told him to unlock the door for anyone) and stormed into Taco Bell. (I used the door, there are no Erin-shaped holes in any of the walls of this particular establishments.) Henry looked up in surprise, which then morphed to fear once he saw my face. I pushed past him to get to the counter. “I ORDERED A 7-LAYER BURRITO AND THIS IS NOT A 7-LATER BURRITO” I chirped to the girl on the other side, shaking the tainted burrito in the air. “Oh no….that’s definitely not….” the girl murmured. I let the burrito forcefully drop onto the counter. “AND I’M A VEGETARIAN!!” my chirpiness was pretty high-pitched by then. The girl started to back into the “kitchen” to hopefully FLOG WHATEVER PRICK DID THIS TO ME, and I turned to Henry and squealed hysterically, “AND I TOOK A BITE OF IT!” Henry gave me the “Calm down” look which only ever makes me less calm, and then I stormed back out to the car where I found my child in the backseat where I left him, eating his tacos and looking decidedly un-kidnapped. Henry came back and gave me my real 7-layer burrito, which I was going to hurl against the Taco Bell window and then use my finger to write DIE, VEGETARIAN HATERS into the coagulating mass of beans and rice, but fuck it. I was hungry.
  • Speaking of the haunted house, when we were in line, Chooch randomly acted out how he thinks Henry would react to being scared and maybe I was just punchy from the dumb car ride there—through INDUSTRIAL AREAS AND NEXT TO A RIVER AND OVER BRIDGES, god why not throw up some billboards for Alaska while you’re at it, Ohio—but it was making  me crack the fuck up, imagining Henry doing this idiot kawaii thing. I made Chooch reenact it tonight so I could Instavid it, but like most reenactments, a lot of the initial moxie got lost:

• The below pictures are poor quality, but I don’t care because today is school picture day for Chooch and I have been holding onto this Choonimals shirt since I bought it at Riot Fest, because this kid is known to beat the shit out of his clothes and I didn’t want him to ruin it before picture day. Because I knew the moment I bought it that this would be his picture day shirt because I feel like it’s a pretty good reflection of him. We also touched up his hair last night too because he said he wanted to. I figured he would have been over the color by now!
• 
• Man, I had a dream/nightmare last week where I was at my mom’s house and she had these two old broads weeding in her front yard and then Gayle was there and the ladies for no reason started telling Gayle all of this shit about my mom, like really nasty and mean-spirited things, and I came flying out of the laundry room door screaming at them  to shut their ugly faces and I swear I woke up feeling like I could murder a bitch. I might not have a relationship with my mom anymore, or any contact with her whatsoever, but do not talk shit on her because things will get ugly.
  • DEEP BREATH
• Purposely fell asleep with AMC’s Halloween marathon playing in the background last night and woke up feeling right as (arterial) rain.
  • Anyone who doesn’t think Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers is Paul Rudd’s best role ever can go fuck themselves because it is.
• Future Gilmore Girls, AMIRITE?!?! I could do without Melissa McCarthy though. (Don’t hate.)
• We bought a black wig for Chooch’s Halloween costume and he gushed, “It’s like a big glob of Ju-On hair!” He is forever obsessed with that movie. I bet all of his Asian horror references are so wasted at school.
• I’m off on Thursday for no reason at all and I plan on trying to paint all day, but let’s be real, I’m probably just going to watch music videos on YouTube and call Henry to bitch about the messy house all day.

OK, let’s wrap this bitch up. I’m tired and getting rambly.

LOL @ “getting.”

Here is a handy compartmentalized list of things and thoughts that have happened lately that perhaps I would like to remember. YOU NEVER KNOW.

PARENTING – I’m doing a mediocre job!

• Henry had to go back down to work to have an affair one night last week, leaving me in charge of feeding Chooch. Thankfully, there was Hungry Man in the freezer and that’s what Chooch decided he wanted to eat, so I was like, “Phew! Thank god! Here, you can just go ahead and make it yourself, then.” But then Chooch was like, “‘Remove plastic from sauce.’ Wait—-is this the sauce?” And I was like, “Of course that’s the sauce, you idiot—wait. IS that the sauce?” And from there, it took the two of us, The Dream Team, to squint at the instructions, stab some of the sealed compartments with a knife, peel back the seal of other compartments, straight up REMOVE portions of the tray…it was all so much. So exhausting. We are FUCKED if Henry ever leaves us for his mistress oris murdered when I find out that he has a mistress.
  • Henry came home later, saw the empty box in the garbage, and sadly said, “Hey. That was my Hungry Man.” WELL MAYBE IF HE WOULD STOP IMPREGNATING PET SHOP BROADS, HE WOULDN’T BE SO HUNGRY.
• Saturday night, Chooch and I decided to go see this Austrian horror movie that was playing at the indie theater down the street (“Goodnight Mommy” — it was wonderful and here, you can read Chooch’s thorough review if you would like). I had a slight concern because itwas rated R; my concern wasn’t that it would be inappropriate for Chooch to watch, but more that he wouldn’t be allowed in. “I mean, I guess technically I am his guardian though, right?” I said to Henry, trying to work this out in my mind. “Um, you’re his mother, so….”
  • The movie is in German so it had subtitles. This didn’t faze Chooch a bit — he’s been watching Asian horror for years so subtitles are like whatever for him. I feel like that’s a parenting win, right? Don’t be that person who bitches about having to read a movie.
• Some shady business opened up in our ‘hood where people can go and play video games. I know what you’re thinking, Oh an arcade? WRONG. It’s just an empty storefront full of TVs and gaming consoles. Anyway, some of Chooch’s friends go there after school so Chooch asked if he could go too. This stumped me. “I don’t know…..can you?” I mused, hoping the Universe would send me a sign. Meanwhile, Henry was all, “No! Do your homework!” So it appears the correct answer to that Parenting, Expert Level question was: No.
• We went to lunch on Saturday at the North Hills Grill. Chooch was real surly because he had fallen (or “falled” as I had originally typed) asleep in the car and then we had the audacity to wake his sorry ass up. He was so fucking miserable and said he didn’t want anything so Henry and I said that was fine because we don’t play his games anymore (I mean, I usually get suckered into them if I’m alone, because I’m weakand also I thrive on fighting with my kid, or anyone for that matter). But then he snapped, “FINE I GUESS I’LL HAVE A BURGER” and I was like “IDGAF because this joint had quinoa salad as a side plus mypanini comes with pesto and literally that’s all that matters to meright now. Eat or don’t eat, whatever forever.”
  • And I mentioned that we were going to get him new clothes afterward and he did this thing that I just love, where he throws his arms up and squeals, “SERIOUSLY?!FML” before falling into a slow simmer. (I should mention that this was after he decided to join us; he was originally sitting alone at his own table. Thank god we were the only people there.) It must seriously suck to have parents who feed and clothe you! I would hate my life, too!
    • Parents of children younger than 9 — I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t get better. There will be days when you think it is, but then you’re jerk-kid will do something catastrophic or utterly douchey to remind you that, nope; parenting still fucking sucks. Bring on ze booze.

This is when he decided that FINE, he would come over to the dark side and sit at the same table as his crappy parents.

WORK

• One day last week, Last Mail was making her rounds and Gayle, at the last minute, shouted, “Lisa, wait! I have something I need mailed.” Big deal, right? Except that I was bored as fuck and decided to chastise Gayle via email for speaking too rudely to Last Mail. “She startles easily!” I typed, and Gayle was all, “I WILL NEVER DO IT AGAIN, MASTER, I SWEAR TO YOU, MASTER.” We had a good laugh (eh, not really) and then went about our day. The next afternoon, Amber¹ walked by and said that Gayle was in the kitchen talking to Lisa and—-“Oh shit,” I interrupted, pretty sure I knew where this was going. Amber went on to say that Gayle was APOLOGIZING TO LISA for being “rude” and I was like, “But she wasn’t even rude!” Amber said, “Yeah, I didn’t think she was either, so I’m not sure why she was apologizing…” So I explained to Amber that I jokingly sent Gayle that email the day before but I was totally just kidding. “Oh, well she apologized and I was the witness!” Amber said, and I started cracking up. “I MADE THAT HAPPEN!” I cried. “I totally orchestrated that!” OMG I’M LIKE A LAW FIRM PUPPET MASTER. Hands down the most exciting thing to happen to me at work last week.
• Until Terry came over to invite Glenn to some secret after-hours cook out! Todd kept sending me antagonizing emails, knowing that I was about to upchuck my giggle-lunch all over my lap.
  • Unrelated to this particular episode, I mentioned to Glenn that I thought Terry might hate me ever since The Lunch Invitation was delivered. “Yeah, and I should, too!” Glenn snapped, and then Todd and I died of laughter but then the aliens from MAC and Me came down from 1988 and brought us back to life.
• Some people are really stoked for the pie party, and others are practically sprinting away from me as a try to invite them. FINE! I’LL STOP TRYING TO BE FRIENDLY AT WORK! #boohiss
• It was pretty quiet during  my Friday night late shift so I made some egocentric signage with salt water taffy on the counter behind Todd. I figured for sure I would come to work on Monday to find that Glenn had defaced it, but lo—it was just as I left it! Later in the afternoon, I went back there and dismantled it myself because that way, I wouldn’t have to expend energy hating someone for doing it first. Glenn and Todd were just like, “Wow, such logic.” It’s true though, you know how badly I pout when the tables are turned.

MUSIC

• GUYS. Remember all of those Riot Fest posts I wrote that you probably didn’t read because I’m so fucking annoying? Well, in one of them, I went on at length about how seeing Alexisonfire for the first time ever was the best moment of all three Riotous days for me and subsequently sparked yet another unhealthy music obsession as I realized that something about their set had resonated with me, and even though I was a casual fan back in the day, now I was IN LOVE WITH THEM and about to call the tattoo shop to make an appointment to have their logo tattooed on my head. I got it bad for them, like, weak-in-the-knees, Glasgow-smiling-at-my-desk-for-no-reason bad. Anyway, a week later, at the Toronto Riot Fest, they announced during their set (they were the headliners—they’re Canadian and way bigger there than America) that ALEXISONFIRE IS BACK AND THEY’RE NOT GOING TO LEAVE US AGAIN. I cried so hard. SO HARD! OH, THE JOY! I tried to excitedly talk about it at work and everyone was like, “Why can’t you just watch soap operas instead like other ladies your age?” And then the other day, I was reading my usual music news sites on the trolley and one of the headlines was ALEXISONFIRE CONFIRMS THAT THEY ARE NOT OFFICIALLY BACK TOGETHER. My heart sank! I came into work near-tears (OK, some of the tears were a lot closer than “near”) and Glenn snapped, “You need to stop being so emotionally invested in bands! They don’t give a shit about you!” Wow, harsh. A few minutes went by and I swiveled around in my chair and said, “But seriously, why would they say they were back together if they didn’t mean that they were back together?” Glenn made a noise that sounded like a laugh, but it may have just been his patience whimpering away.
  •  I helped A-ron with a project and his email response to me was Erinisonfire and it was like, the greatest thanks I’ve ever received in my whole life. (I mean….maybe not.)
• You know that hedge fund doucher who jacked up the price of that AIDS drug and then the Internet found out and everyone hates him now? (I excel at layman’s terms.) It was also discovered that he was an investor (like big-time backer) in Geoff Rickly’s record label Collect Records. Geoff, you might know, was the singer of Thursday and they were a massively influential and revered band. I miss them so much and have tried to support Geoff’s other projects whenever I can over the year because I feel like he brings so much to the scene and is just an overall stand-up guy. (Plus, remember when he spit in my face and it was amazing?!) But then this happened and I was like fuuccckkkkkk Geoff how can I keep supporting you now?! Luckily he did the right thing and announced the next day that Collect Records had severed ties with Martin because OBVIOUSLY. The downside to this is that now Geoff’s label is in danger of capsizing and taking down a bunch of really incredible bands with it. If you are reading this and love small businesses who were born of the desire to help nurture and promote the dreams of artists, might you consider going to the label and purchasing a thing? I personally bought the new release from Geoff’s current band No Devotion which you will LOVE if you’re a fan of the Cure, Thursday (duh!), 80s synth, or just good music in general. It is seriously the shit but….Geoff can do no wrong in my eyes.
  • Also? He notoriously has super bad luck. A few days after this happened, he was POISONED and robbed in Hamburg. I mean he’s still alive. But POISONED.

PLANTLIFE

• Guys don’t worry. I’m still obsessively stroking my succulents like some shaky-cam herbiporn. Below, please meet the babe Bambi Sickafoose. I used to see her name in the credits for Twin Peaks and became instantly obsessed. I would shout BAMBISICKAFOOSE and Henry had no idea why. I recently found her on Facebook and got unrealistically excited.

• I just bought this gal over the weekend! Her name is Alexis and Henry said he hopes she catches on fire. :(

• I actually took this picture for Artifex Pereo because the name of their last album is Time and Place and the cover art is a pattern of leaves, so they were wishing everyone  a happy Time and Place day on the first day of fall and it just so happened that we had autumnal cupcakes at work that day with plastic leaf rings topping them! I did t want to eat a cupcake so I told Glenn to go and get me a ring. According to Todd, Glenn was having a hard time trying to guess which one I’d like because there different colors and designs I guess. He came back and threw one at me and started bitching about there being different designs and I was like, “But I thought there were just leaves?” “yea he, but there were MAPLE and OAK and….” Omg so boring.  Then Carrie and Amber² (in a moment of uncharacteristic kindness) gave me theirstoo yay!
  • So I took this picture with my plant-babes in the background, posted it on Instagram, and Artifex Pereo commented with heart eyes. Love those guys!

MISC.

• Man, how about that Pope, huh? I made Henry watch my favorite religious channel,EWTN, so that we could watch PROPER coverage of the Pope’s arrival. And oh, the entertainment! Those newscasters are um, pretty colorful. I was really stoked because there was ample attention given to CardinalWuerl and I’m obsessed with that guy. IN CASE YOU DIDN’T KNOW, he usedto be the Bishop here in Pittsburgh. Back at that time, my friend Brian/Chooch’s godfather, was in the Seminary so he had gotten to know the Bishop pretty well. For a short time, Brian used to live right next door to me, in the housecurrently inhabited by HotNaybor Chris. There was some special mass thing happening at the church across the street, and so the Bishop and Brian were both there. Afterward, Brian invited the Bishop over for tea or whatever you offer the Bishop, and he told me afterward that he was so afraid I was going to stop over because that’s when I was super slutty and smoked a lot of cigarettes. OH HOW EMBARRASSING.
  • No seriously, it probably would have been pretty embarrassing. I was like oneNickelback CD away from being white trash verified back then.
    • (IT WAS JUST A PHASE. There is a fine line between the hard rock scene and white trash. I learned that the hard way.)
    • Now you know how I bagged Henry. LOL.
• After our recent experience withLyft in Chicago, Henry decided it sounded like it could be a good part-time gig, so he applied and then was immediately hired, because #ProfessionalDriverStatus. Anyway, his mentor is some younger guy who apparently has had four accidents in the last year, so this is already off to a great start. I was watching Henry setting up hisLyft driver profile on the app and was trying desperately to help him, but he was basically just leaving the default responses for everything. There was a music question and I wanted him to put post-hardcore, but he left it on “Whatever suits my mood” or somethingequally as boring. Henry could havehad the opportunity to be the most colorfulLyft driver in the Tri-State area, but he blew it. Have fun being boring like everyone else, idiot.
  • Seriously, can you imagine if you were waiting for your Lyft and Henry rolled up? I hope he smiles a little. Otherwise, he just looks like an angry mountain man. But…at least he knows his way around. But there might be an axe in the trunk.
• The Steelers: LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL.
• Seriously Donut Friend? Joyce Lavender? KILLING ME.

• I posted this on Instagram and BARB yelled at me. GO AWAY BARB! No I’m just kidding! BARB DONT GO!

• • Seriously though, he acts shocked every time.
• HAUNTED HOUSES.

OK. I could go on and on but I’m stopping while I’m ahead.

More like Lazy Day Weekend. I don’t know what is wrong with me, other than the hectic pace of summer has finally caught up with me, but I was very sloth-like all weekend. I left the house several times on Saturday and Sunday, but by Monday, I actually felt woozy & light-headed, so I basically slugged around all day and yelled at Henry and Chooch because when I feel this way I get ANGRY. I hate sitting around the house. 

• Saturday, we drove out to South Park to claim a pavilion for the pie party. The one I likebestwas booked already (probably for something dumb too, like some idiot’s 75th birthday party or a PAINT N’ SIP) so we got our trusty stand-by and I’m ok with it because it has a fire pit so maybe we could add mountain pies to the menu?
  • Meanwhile, some creep came in with a giant bag of prescription pills—some bottled, some free-floating around the bag—that he was trying todonate. Chooch and I were like, “The fuck…?” The county clerklady was coming close to arguing with the man, who kept insisting that he heard on the radio that they were accepting donations that day, and she was like, “Well I don’t know what radio station you’re listening to, but…” and then he slipped in a pertinent piece of info about the police department and she was like, “Well, then you need to take these to the police station next door. This is not the police station…?” It was a shit show. When we got back in the car, Chooch and I had a zillion questions about this and Henry had to explain to us that you apparently aren’t supposed to throw out prescription pills?! DID YOU KNOW THAT?! He was droning on and about various scenarios that could arise if you put out your no longer neededVicodin with the weekly trash but I was back to playing my Solitaire game on my phone and Chooch was like, “Mommy, turn up the radio. I can’t hear it over whatever dumb stuff daddy is talking about.””That man’s wife probably died and those were all her pills,” Henry continued even though we were pretty clear that NO1CURR.

• Made Henry buy me a protein bar at some rural-ghetto gas station because I felt like I was going to pass out for no reason.
• Stopped to visit our friend Ricky at Castle Blood. “Mommy wants her present,” Chooch said to Ricky immediately after the hellos were out of the way. I was so mad! I told him not to say that. But it was true, all week I was like, “I WONDER WHAT MY PRESENT IS. IT’S PROBABLY NOT A WHEELCHAIR BECAUSE HE DIDN’T MENTION COMING OUT WITH A TRUCK.” Ricky bought an abandoned funeral parlor in Monessen to turn into the new, forever home for Castle Blood. So he was exploring the attic a few weeks ago and unearthed this beautiful piece of funerary decor, which he and Chris lovingly named Cadillac Jesus, and both agreed that it had my name written all over it:
  
  • Boy, were they ever right! The red lights still work! Ricky said that he thinksitwas used as a decorationforwhenever wakes were held in a person’s house. The carrying case it came in is old as fuck. When Ricky opened ittoreveal Cadillac Jesus, I cried, “Oh my god,it’s beautiful! I hope it’s haunted!”  He also gave me this large crucifix that was also in the attic, because theycan’tutilize religious items in the haunt lest someone gets offended. The crucifix also comes in a carrying case, and it’s lined with a newspaper from…1937 I believe? I’ll havetodouble check when I’m at home. That was just as cool as the crucifix and Cadillac Jesus!
    • I bet Henry was thrilled to have more things to bring into our house that he has little to no interest in! Thanks, Ricky!
• Henry dropped me off to visit Wendy on the waytoChooch’s piano lesson. It was so great to see her and the baby! Motherhood looks good on her :) Also, I managed to mostly not get in the way, and even brought a box of pastries that I made Henry buy earlier that morning.
  • Meanwhile, back at piano lessons, Chooch got a 100% on all 6 songs he’s been working on. I love it when his teacher Cheryl writes “DEFEATED!” next to them, because that’s what Chooch says when he “beats” a song. I guess she realized that speaking to him in video game terms would hold his attention!

• After our first Spirit Halloween stop of the season (we’re late, I know!), we went to Al’s Cone Zone in my old turf (where I was living when I bought The Jacket!) only because I saw on Yelp that in addition to the standard sprinkles and rainbow crunch, they had Mexican fried ice cream topping! Usually I have to stare at and analyze ice cream shop menus in excruciating indecision, but this time I marched my ass right up to the window and ordered a vanilla cone with that Mexican dust on it. It was amaze. I can’t believe all ice cream shops don’t offer this!

• Double-fisting.

• Bought more succulents before going home and then spent the rest of Sunday re-potting some of my plants and being super affectionate with them which always wigs Henry out. The obsession has not waned, you guys. I was going to buy some moreonEtsy, but Henry was like, “Good lord, can you please wait until next week so that we have enough money to eat at Riot Fest this weekend?” Good call, Henry.
  • Below, please meet Johnny Maplebitch, and also gaze admiringly at Suzy Banyon’s new abode. LOVE HER.

• Monday morning, I almost passed out while exercising, so I did fuck all the rest of the day, aside from writing on my blog, petting my plants, yelling at Henry, and watching three movies, ugh. What a wasted day. Did not step outside once. It’s hard being naturally antsy but then having zero energy to get into anything!

A List of All the Idiot Movies I Watched From Friday-Monday Because of Being Ill:

1. Vampire Academy — Henry was so into this one that he irritably shushed Chooch for having the nerve to come into the living room and try to speak.
2. Summer of Blood — part of it, anyway. This movie was too terrible to finish and I hated the main character.
3. Zero Dark Thirty — kept putting this one off but finally sucked it up and watched. So fucking scary and sad.
4. Happy House — I loved this but Henry was like “Ok…”
5. Hausu — Asian horror + a 1970s porn-esque soundtrack = happy Erin.
6. Here Comes the Devil – creepy as fuck Spanish horror. I started watching this alone in broad daylight and was still scared. (No, I wasn’t lounging on my Devil rug, but now I wish I had been.)
7. Dark Skies — kept putting this one off too because I’m not a fan of alien movies, but for Keri Russell, I’ll watch almost anything. It was better than I anticipated, but my expectations were pretty low to begin with.
8. Night Breed — because why not end a listless weekend with a ridiculous Clive Barker movie. Boone is #lifegoals for Henry. Chooch kept looking over his shoulder from the computer and asking, “WHAT ARE YOU WATCHING!?”

Yeah, I’m either anemic or really fucking depressed. I am never able to sit still long enough to watch more than one movie a week! Really though, I think it was good that I slowed down and gave myself a dumb break. Even maniacs need to lay down from time to time, I guess.

Something has been feeling weird to me, different and off, and finally last night I realized that it’s been months (well, maybe just one month) since I’ve regaled this bleak corner of the internet with bullet points. All those thoughts swirling around in my head (even though Glenn likes to remind me daily that it’s empty) need some place to go. So…to the shooting range it is!

• It’s been a few weeks since I bought any new succulents. The pickings have been slim as the summer winds down and some of the last ones I bought have DIED because like I said: LOWE’S ABUSES THEIR SUCCULENTS. I’m going to start buying them online, because this is just bullshit. However, a bunch of my cuttings have sprouted roots and several have the most adorable baby buds, which I am ecstatic about because who knew that I was capable of not only keeping plants alive but also PROPAGATING NEW ONES? I have my babes spread out all over the house, but here’s my main set-up:

• And while we’re on the topic of succulents, you’ll be pleased to know that Ted NUDEgent continues to thrive. It’s hard to believe he was once on his death bed! God, I just love my succulents so much. Ask Henry. He was horrified the other night when I jumped up from the couch, sucked in my breath audibly, and then whipped back the curtain. “WTF?” Henry said, waiting  to see if he should panic too. I grabbed a plant off the windowsill and clutched it to my chest. “Panne! I can’t believe I forgot about him!” I cried, shoving Panne into Henry’s face so he could see that Panne was OK. Henry just scowled. Seriously though, Panne is one of my favorites and I can’t believe I had set him down somewhere I couldn’t easily see him! Anyway, believe is a picture of Ted NUDEgent, looking all green and sexy.

• Wendy (who is currently IN LABOR!) and I were having a serious discussion in her office last week, which resulted in me saying, in all seriousness, “I mean, I’ll do whatever I can to spare someone’s feelings—-” to which Wendy cut me off by laughing laugh, and without mirth. “Seriously? Are you kidding? YOU DO NOT!” And then we both started laughing, because who the hell am I kidding.
• Speaking of Wendy, I can’t believe I forgot to mention this. About a month ago, when I was at dinner with her and Barb, she was giving Barb directions to her upcoming baby shower. “Oh, it’s by that hotel?” Barb asked, and Wendy was like, “Maybe? Sure. Whatever.” Barb went on to say, “You know, the pay-by-the-hour one” and then something about how she spent some time there back in the day, much to Wendy’s horror. “Oh, I used to go to those a lot too,” I said in Barb’s defense. “Like the Moonlite on 51.” Barb said, “That’s the one that sit back off the road a little, right? I’ve been to that one, too.” And while we practically high-fiving each other about this, Wendy blurted, “You two are both whores!” It was awesome. But seriously though, you couldn’t beat the Moonlite. They sold cans of Cherikee Red in the office!

• I refilled my candy urn with some Asian candy treats a few weeks ago and it was surprisingly a big hit. Especially those Choc-Nuts, which start out tasting like a mistake but then suddenly turn delicious. I looked online for Romanian candy to order but I couldn’t really find anything but probably I just got distracted.
• I think Wendy is still in labor.

• Henry and I have watched some good horror movies recently, but the best one in my opinion was the Iranian vampire film A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night. I’m no movie reviewer, but this one made me so excited that I almost dedicated a whole post to it, until I realized that beyond saying, “OMG I LOVED IT!” I wouldn’t really know what else to say. Which is funny considering I can spill out 2,000 words about a new fruit I’ve tried. Anyway, vampire movies are my favorite horror sub-genre (people always think I’m a zombie fan, but only marginally!), but it takes a lot for me to get REALLY excited about one, like “Let The Right One In” (the original). This one had a similar feel — small town, lots of quiet suspense. The music was great, the cinematography, the cast. It was a phenomenal movie.
  • Also, Housebound is hilarious and original. We finally watched It Follows, too, after missing it when it was playing at the Hollywood last spring, and while I liked it, it didn’t really excite me as much as I anticipated. I’m excited for the cooler months because I want to start having people over for horror movie marathons like the old days. WHEN THINGS WERE SO SIMPLE AND WE HAD TO WALK INTO A VIDEO RENTAL STORE TO FIND MOVIES TO WATCH. I really miss those days so much. There was a video shop within walking distance of my house called Incredibly Strange Videos and it was the absolute shit. Bruce, the proprietor, carried everything and he is the one who really got me into foreign horror. I used to walk in and say, “Tell me what to rent” and he would never fail me. Also, he had an interesting collection of student-filmed horror movies, some of which turned out to be incredible and scarier than any of the bullshit Hollywood keeps subjecting us to. STOP REMAKING THINGS. Please.
• Jeannie just came over and said that Wendy is literally the worst for not having the baby yet.

• Remember when we started to clean Chooch’s room, a/k/a Hoarder’s Hostel, last winter? Well, we (Henry) kind of dropped the ball halfway through, but I made him pick it back up a few weeks ago and it looks so much better now. Plus, I found this awesome Polaroid of baby Chooch with one of his many novelty pacifiers, and we managed to hang up most of the art that he’s been collecting, like this cat picture that I bought him two Christmases ago and #COOKIEPIZZA! We still randomly shout about #cookiepizza. Chooch has quite a collection of art for a nine-year-old.

• WENDY HAD THE BABY!!!! What a great day!
• I told Jeannie that the baby is here and she said, “Eh” and shrugged. I’d be worried if her reaction was any more chipper than that! ;)
• And then Todd said that he didn’t realize she was that pregnant. MEN. LOL.
• Hey, speaking of vampires, I went to get ice cream with Chris and Monica last week andwas disappointed that I didn’t wear my best cape to orderBruster’s flavor of the day, and even more disappointed when I realized that Blood Drive Friday was not, in fact, a flavor. I wish I hadmy own ice cream shop. Only a very specific type of person will patronize it, and that’s ok.
  • Meanwhile, Chris and Monica had a huge bag full of extra vegetables from their CSA, which they gifted to me and Henry turned them into a magical soup. Plus! There was a container of HUCKLEBERRIES, which apparently taste like shit on their own. So Henry baked them into a huckleberrybrickle, whatever the fuck abrickle is, and it made me feel all folky, eating a huckleberry thing. Thank you, Chris and Monica!
    • I don’t know what a brickle is because it’s apparently a buckle. Henry made a huckleberry buckle.
      • I don’t know what a buckle is, either. I mean, buckles in the baked goods world.
• I got a Gold Star for Excellence in the field of Excellence a few weeks ago! Sandy and Nate are the best co-workers. I taped it up next to my Citation for Jaywalking. My desk is a rollercoaster of emotions.
• Kara just texted me because Facebook told her that five years ago today, we were all at the spray park when Chooch face-planted into the cement ground and gushed blood EVERYWHERE. I have never seen a place clear out so fast before in my life. I haven’t been back there since.
• This morning on my way to the idiot trolley, I was struck by an overwhelming sense of FALL even though it’s 90 today in Pittsburgh. But more specifically, I felt excited to revive the PIE PARTY! It was on hiatus last year because I was burnt out and didn’t feel like being social. But now I want to get back at it, much to Henry’s chagrin. I’m hoping I can sway him. Pie Party is legend!

Well, I guess Glenn is right after all: my damn head is pretty fucking empty.

With his peeps.

Modeling a t-shirt from Kendahl. It really makes his eyes pop. :)

Reppin’ PVRIS.

• School starts on the 31st. I’m simultaneously thrilled and depressed.
• Henry and I let him start a private FB account so that he can play games (ugh) and also have a way to contact us during the day. I let him add some of his family and some our close friends, and made sure that his settings prevented random strangers from contacting him. Everything was fine but then he figured out that he could add people to a group chat that Henry started for the three of us, so he started adding some of my friends, who in turn were like, “WHY IS MY PHONE BLOWING UP WITH FACEBOOK STICKERS? WHY DON’T YOU TRY PARENTING YOUR KID FOR A CHANGE!?” and I was frantically trying to remove people as he was adding them, WHILE I WAS AT WORK. By the time I got home, I marched over to him and yelled, “I’M DELETING YOUR ACCOUNT, YOU SUCK!” And Henry was all, “Now, now, kids. Let’s try to talk about this” but it was too late because Chooch and I had each other by the neck at this point. So I stormed off because fuck you for meddling, Henry. A little while later, Chooch came into my bedroom and sneered, “You don’t have to worry about me anymore BECAUSE I UNFRIENDED YOU.” Mother. Fucker.
  • His profile picture is Marcy. :(
• Chooch had an altercation with one of our neighbors. I’ve been trying to get him to write about it because it’s awesome. We’ll see.
• All of his neighborhood friends are annoying. I hope that they all stop playing together once school starts. OK MAYBE IT’S JUST THAT I HATE KIDS.

And that’s all I got right now. I need another vacation. Sucks to be me. Too bad, so sad.

It’s Friday and the last week has been an incredible whirlwind. I’m about to chill out with some bullet-points and I sure hope you’ll join me, read-along style. Go ‘head, you go first.

• I don’t know I’m just exceptionally slap-happy these days, but work has been a fucking Laugh In for me lately.
  • First, Gayle emailed me a group picture she found of some of the people in our department before I was working here. Surprisingly, I knew all but two people, so I was pointing at  my computer screen and naming faces while Gayle and Todd stood by and watched. Then Amber^{2ButBackToEatingFor1} walked by and was like, “Oh for Christ’s sake” because she thought I was naming members of the bands I was going to see at Warped Tour. This was hilarious to me. Naming almost everyone, I said, “I just don’t know who that old woman is back there,” and Gayle was like, “Well, that’s Seth, so….” and it made me think of the Jake from State Farm commercial and I’m still laughing about it. LAUGH ALONG WITH ME, WON’T YOU.
  • Second, I noticed that Terry had walked by Glenn’s desk three times the other day and no salutations were exchanged. “Are you and Terry fighting!?” I asked, whirling around in my chair to face Glenn. “What? No. Why?” he asked dryly, yet with a slight tinge of trepidation. I told him that Terry walked by three times and didn’t say hello to him, and Glenn claims that he didn’t notice. I decided to make this a thing, to perpetuate a real life feud between the two of them. Every time Terry would walk by after that, I would get the giggles SO BAD and I even heard Glenn kind of laugh one time. Wednesday was REALLY BAD for my giggle threshold. I was walking down the hall to the kitchen when I came across Terry and his group, preparing to go outside for something or other. On my way back to my desk, I thought to myself, “What if Terry is going to file a PFA against Glenn and wanted his group to go with him for support?” Then I snorted. Then that thing happened where I’m trying so hard not to laugh, that my face is getting warm and my cheeks, taut. I came back to my desk and blurted out to Glenn, “I JUST SAW TERRY HE AND HIS GROUP ARE GOING SOMEWHERE!” And then I started crying because holding back the laughter was that painful. “Where?” Glenn asked, and when I didn’t answer him, he asked again, “Where?” By this time, I was in so much agony from trying to stop laughing, that I had to put my blanket over my head. I was actually squealing. “He went to file a PFA against you,” I whispered after essentially having the wind knocked out of me because WHY AM I SO FUNNY TO MYSELF. “You need serious help,” Glenn mumbled but I don’t know you guys, it seemed like he was SCARED OF THE PFA. Later that day, I ran into one of the ladies from Terry’s group, and she’s kind of like the Erin Kelly on that side, so I quickly filled her in and she was like, “OOOH I LIKE IT. Do you want me to tell the rest of the group?” Of course I was like YES PLZ but so far nothing has happened. Monday is the start of a new week, so I’ll bring in some new pots to stir, don’t worry.
    • Speaking of my blanket, yesterday Ethan was walking past me as I was pulling my blanket up under my chin because it’s so cold in here, always. He stopped to ask if I was cold or just emotionally wrecked, and I proceeded to tell him about how, actually, the day before I was laughing so hard that I had to put the blanket over my head, so I guess a little of both. “Yeah, I heard that and wondered what was going on out there. I couldn’t tell if I was hearing laughing, or Glenn crying.” And Glenn monotoned, “Well, I do weep openly at  my desk everyday.” YEAH BECAUSE HE’S SO GRATEFUL TO HAVE THE BEST SEAT IN THE HOUSE!
• “So whose version do you want first, mine or your son’s?” — how Henry’s mom greeted us after work one day. Trouble in paradise with the neighborhood kids, as usual.
• Grammerly says it’s good to write in bullet points because it makes people feel like they’re reading less, but I feel like that doesn’t apply to my bullet points.
• I finally got a frame the Faces painting I made last year so I happily posted a photo of it on Instagram because I have no life, AND BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT LIKED IT! This matters because he is ONE OF THE FACES! I was all excited about it until people started saying, “I thought he was dead?”

• It’s not that I’m shy so much as just uncomfortable and unwilling to participate in nearly every situation I’m put in. #AKAbitch
• The best part about Chooch fitting into an adult Small now is that we get to share band merch.
• Henry’s mom slept over last night since she was watching Chooch and we didn’t get home from Cleveland until around 1:30am, and then I was on late shift today which meant that I got to spend the morning making her watch Emarosa videos, wooooo Judy loves Emarosa now and hates Jonny Craig!
• Chooch was watching one of those BryanStars videos, you know, the ones he never watches, and Bryan was asking how would you break up with a girl. Chooch shrugged casually and said, “I’d say ‘I’ve had enough of your bullshit.'” and then looked at me with this face that said, “I mean, that’s obvi, right?” I’m raising a real gentleman, ladies!

• I try to check AbsolutePunk at least once a day, and yesterday I was rewarded with THIS, which is crazy because my old friend Alisha and I reconnected two weeks ago and she said that she had been listen to AFS and it made her think of me, so she messaged me on Facebook and BOOM, the power of music.
  • Gah, I missed her so much! She lives in Arkansas now. Boo.
• Anyone feel like going to Cleveland with me on August 12th to see Artifex Pereo? ANYONE? I think I have definitely pushed Henry to his concert-going limit these last few weeks, haha.
• Chooch went on his first date last Sunday. WITH TWINS! Sound scandalous, right?! These girls go to all of his birthday parties and the one like LOVES him and the other wants to KILL him, but their mom saved my number after this last party in May and she randomly texted me to tell me that Olivia said she misses Chooch, so we hooked that shit up. They picked him and he acted like he was in so much pain and being tortured, but the smile on his face didn’t lie.
  • He came home wearing a crown on his head, which he sometimes wears around the house because, ooooh, Olivia gave it to him!

• OK! I’m going to have to ask you not to get too excited about that, but I have been propagating some of my succulents (that means watching instructional YouTube videos and then scattering their leaves around and then staring at them every day until they start to GROW A NEW PLANT) and I didn’t think that I was capable of experiencing success in this industry of plant spawning, but hot damn, a bunch of my damn leaves have sprouting!! The one in the picture is Bae’s offspring and Corey has already claimed it, so…
• I just looked at my Instagram feed and it’s all succulents and bands. So I googled “succulent band” and there actually is a band called The Succulents. They’re from Texas and not my thing at all, but good to know.
• Corey and I are going to Zenith tomorrow and I’m hoping to find a wheelchair that looks like it was stolen from the House of Savoy but costs less than $40. YOU NEVER KNOW.
• We celebrated July birthdays at work the other day, which was how Bridget found out that dumb Glenn and I both have a July birthday. She commented on that as she walked past our desks, something about us being born in the month, and Glenn almost swallowed his tongue in his mad race to blurt out, “She wasn’t born. She was hatched.” NICE ONE, GLENN. “You’re not a LEO, ARE YOU?” I asked him in an accusatory tone, and at first he said he didn’t know because he doesn’t bother with that, which is what he likes to do when he wants the rest of us to feel like basic bitches, but then he finally admitted that no, he’s a Cancer, and I just laughed because of course he’s not awesome enough to share my sign, why did I even feel the need to ask.
• Slaves was apparently kicked off Warped Tour already (after like 2? 3 days?) and I don’t know what happened exactly, but I am definitely gloating.
• Allison’s last day at the law firm is July 31 and I won’t be there that whole week because of vacation and I’m so sad. :( I get way too attached to people, and she is a good people!
• I still have no good guesses on who A is. WHO IS A!? (That’s a Pretty Little Liars reference for all you people too old to watch television programming meant for preteens that endorses statutory relationships.
• Shout out to all of my work friends who have tolerated my hysteria for the last two weeks, beginning with Warped Tour, ending with Emarosa, with a Kurt Travis filling. I can hear myself talking to them, and I know I sound ridiculous and super annoying, BUT I CAN’T STOP BECAUSE LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL. (Barb, I bet you don’t miss me shouting in your face about bands and you asking, “Is that the guy from Chiodos?” after every name I mention, and then I’d say, “NO BARB, THAT’S CRAIG OWENS. GOD!” But I sure miss those days. SIGH.)

I’m all out of bullets. EMPTY BARREL. I’ll end with my favorite clip of Battle of the Network Stars. Forever obsessed with Robert Conrad.

I’m not a very patriotic person, so July 4th is just another day to me. Instead of fighting the crowds to ogle fireworks, I’m going to sit on my front porch and watch Brookline pop off. But first! Here’s a collection of bulleted nonsense that my brain has been collecting over the last week.

• Every 4th of July, when I’m flipping thru the channels and inevitably run across “Independence Day”, my crush on Bill Pullman is temporarily revived. I went to see “Casper” twice in the theater because of him for Christ’s sake. While my friend Keri and every other young girl back then was going heart-eyed over Devon Sawa, I was like TAKE ME, BILL PULLMAN. Good lord.
  • I just asked Henry if he thinks anything like that could ever happen one day and he lazily shrugged and murmured, “Who knows. Anything is possible.” YOU HEARD IT HEAR FIRST, FOLKS. WHO KNOWS ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.
  • But for real guys: Bill Pullman, John Cusack, Paul Coffey. Those were my older man crushes of the nineties. (Oh, and also this guy from vacation.)
• I keep trying to watch the first episode of this season’s Hannibal and I CANNOT GET INTO IT. Is this why it was canceled? Does it keep getting worse? I used to love this show!
• You know what show I am  totally into, though? CNN’s “The Seventies.” Absolutely riveting! I have always felt like I was born too late in life. I would have rocked the seventies! The first episode was all about television from the decade, and there was a brief mention of Battle of the Network Stars which made Henry mumble, “Oh no….” because I went through a HEAVY OBSESSION with those specials about 12 years ago when some channel was running a marathon. I even pulled out a blank VHS tape and RECORDED some! I became infatuated with Robert Conrad and saying “What’s all the hullabaloo?” and “It’s the limit!” and had all of these t-shirts that I wanted to make but Henry was like, “This is dumb and I don’t want to help you.”
  • But then a few years later, he helped me make my Asshole Parade shirt, which had his face on it*, so that makes a lot of sense.
    • *Fun fact: my mom actually commented on that blog post and said, “Your [sic] sick.” LOL.
    • I gotta dig that shirt out of the closet….
      • OH SNAP:

• I was lamenting to Henry about how I still only have two wheelchairs in my collection, like that was going to make him run out and rob a haunted asylum. Oh well. Here’s my wheelchair nook (my other wheelchair is in the garage for the time being):

• Last week, we were watching a Glastonbury 2014 broadcast on Palladium; Johnny Marr was one of the performers, which made me ask Henry, “What was that one band I liked pre-Chooch and Johnny Matt produced their one album?” What a shocker, Henry didn’t know. But don’t worry because I worked it out on my own and then I kept playing songs for him on Spotify until he eventually said “YEAH OK I REMEMBER” but I think he just wanted to make me stop thrusting my phone into his ear.
  • The band was Haven, in case you were wondering, and they were pretty good! I think I liked them for at least 6 straight months.

• Today, Chooch conned us into seeing Jurassic World and I realized that we haven’t all seen a movie in the theater together since Thor. THOR! Chooch and I have gone together a few times, I’ve gone with friends or by myself, Chooch has gone with Janna, but today as only the second time in Chooch’s nine years of life that we’ve gone as a family. We are SO UNAMERICAN.
  • I cried through 4 of the 6 previews and then basically the entire movie because my emotions slip right through my grasp like dicks through Astroglided fists.
    • Jurassic World was really good, though! Even though it made me ruin yet another pair of contacts. (Tears + contacts = thumbs down.) I only wanted to see it because of Chris Pratt, though. Obviously.
      • Chris Pratt fan since the “Everwood” days, thanks very much.

• ^^^^In case you were wondering, Henry still sucks at texting.
  • I’m going to name one of my new plants Ljubljan.
    • (Yes, I have new plants!!!!! NINE OF THEM!!!!)
• On our way home from the movie, we were a few blocks away from our house when we drove past what appeared to be the aftermath of some teenager hitting an old lady with his bicycle. My plan was to run back up there after dumb Henry parked the car in our driveway, but then I got distracted by the asshole who was driving ridiculously slow in front of us and when I’m consumed by fury, everything else pretty much goes out the window.
• The other day at work, Gayle was bitching about her hatred for video games. “Do you know the only game that was available when I was a teen?” she asked. “TIDDLYWINKS!” I screamed, but she was already answering her own question. (It was Pong, but I was still too busy cracking up at my answer to hear where she was going with this.)
• YOU GUYS AMBER THE SECOND IS BACK! She returned from maternity leave on Wednesday and I almost cried when I saw her face! Then I made her leave her desk because I had a container of lemon ricotta welcome back cookies for her (I made Henry bake them the night before even though he wanted to go to bed early), and I wanted them to be a surprise.
  • She seemed to go through a gamut of emotions when she returned to her desk. Excitement at seeing cookies, hesitation when she realized they were from me, relief when I told her Henry made them.
  • Then she made Glenn blow up the yoga ball she brought in to use in lieu of a chair and it was the highlight of my whole week! 

•  After overhearing Back-To-Work Amber talk about having a quarter life crisis, I said to Glenn, “Pfft, quarter life. I’m having a WHOLE life crisis.” Glenn made a cabbage-face and mumbled, “Yeah, and it’s spilling over into other people’s lives, too.”
• Speaking of Dumb Glenn, I was eating a Chobani watermelon yogurt on Thursday. Amber¹ stopped by and we were discussing it, because these are the sorts of stimulating conversations we have at The Law Firm, who’s eating what yogurt today, and I told her that it was actually Henry’s yogurt and I took it anyway, and that it was only OK, but the fact that I swiped it from Henry made it taste a little better, I guess. And then Glenn piped up from his desk that he also had eaten that same flavor of yogurt that day and I cried, “SHUT UP, GLENN, NO YOU DIDN’T” but then he pulled the empty container out of his garbage can and UGH you guys, it was true. Glenn and I ate the same yogurt on Thursday and this made me very mad.
  • The only good thing about Thursday was that Glenn made a mistake numbering something and I got to smugly correct it and then belittle him for being stupid.
• My blogging goal for July is to write about/mention cabbage in every post. Because that won’t get old fast.
  • Cabbage is my spirit animal.

• I might not be a beer aficionado, but I am kind of a cider snob. This stuff was OK and I would drink it again, but it didn’t make me want to break out the Thesaurus and write a 10,000 review like MY YELP ENEMY WOULD.

• #spoonselfie
• Man, I gotta make those Robert Conrad shirts for real now.

OK, it’s almost time to spectate the drunks who shamble past my house every weekend. Way better than fireworks!

UPDATE: power’s out in Brookline! Henry thinks someone blew up a transformer whatever that means. So now all the neighbors are outside bitching in the pitch black while fireworks explode all around us and it sounds like a goddamn warzone. Chooch just said, “thank God I finished in the bathroom before the power went out!” Yes, thank god. 

Another EDIT: going on an hour of no power, still sitting outside. Henry just said to Chooch, “fuck, you’re annoying in the light, and even worse in the dark.”

Then I pointed to the sky and yelled, “Ooh is that one of those lanterns?!” Henry, in that cocky tone he adopts when he’s about to school me, started to say, “No!” But then slowly realized it actually was a lantern and muttered, “Yes.”

Hi I’m back! EDIT: Power’s still out, Chooch just told me the names of fingers (“And this is the pointer…”), and Henry smells like toilet water. THIS IS BROOKLINE LIVING, PEOPLE. 

As I’m writing this week’s bullet (AHHHHHHHHH) rodeo, I realized that almost everything is work-related and then that made me sad because when did I stop having a life outside of work, wahhhh. (Considering that last night alone I was invited to two happy hours, both of which I politely declined, I guess you could say that this is no one’s fault but my own, or whatever it is you would say in these situations. What would your grandma say?)

• Gayle was heating up bacon in the office kitchen the other day and I nearly drowned on my own saliva. I’m sure I’ve said this 87 times on here, but bacon is my fucking weakness. It’s like putting a bowl of blood in front of a dieting vampire. BE STRONG, ERIN RACHELLE. Think of PETA!
• I found a picture I took of my grilled cheese, probably at either Frank & Shirley’s or Georgie’s Diner, back in ’96/’97. I guess I have always enjoyed photographing food, you guys, so let’s stop blaming Instagram. And considering that there is a .38 Special cassette on the table, I was probably with Lisa:

• When I got to work today, it sounded like someone behind me was trying to discreetly eat glass. I later learned that it was Todd eating non-shelled peanuts. That made me feel better and less worried about stumbling upon someone’s bleeding mouth.
• Me, just now: “I miss Barb.” Glenn: “You talk to her everyday.” Me: “Yeah, but I miss her BEING HERE.” It’s not really getting any better here, you guys. The newlady doesn’t even mess up the daily Roll Call emails. I MISS THE MESSED-UP ROLL CALL EMAILS!
  • I cut my hair and no one even noticed because Barb isn’t here to tell everyone. I AM PRACTICALLY INVISIBLE NOW!
• When I was on my lunch break the other day, I was sitting on a bench thing in some courtyard place when some man in a dirty white t-shirt and CAMOUFLAGE PLANTS approached me WITH HIS HAND IN HIS POCKET and he asked me WHERE THE POST OFFICE IS. I went into survival mode and by that I mean I clenched my thighs together to keep the fear-induced pee drops from leaking out. I did not know the answer to his question and feared that this would anger him, but luckily the woman sitting next to me pointed him in the right direction, which happened to be in the building directly across from us, so as he walked away, I took that as my cue to leave because I was so sure he was about to go postal, literally. As I walked away, I noticed him, standing just inside the revolving doors, shooting up the place swiveling his head around in search of where to go next to shoot up the place.
  • I was practically pushing people out of my way on my run back to work. I didn’t hear anything about a post office tragedy later, so maybe he forgot to bring his bullets. (AHHHHHH.)
  • CAMOUFLAGE PANTS THO!
• Hey speaking of shooting up the place, last Friday, since I was working late shift and had some time to kill in the morning, I decided to walk to the CVS up the street from my house so that I could finally get new candy for my empty candy urn and get A-ron off my back about it. Chooch wanted to go too and Henry’s mom Judy imparted some ominous warning upon us about the road being blocked. We were like, “OK Judy whatever you say Judy sure Judy” and started walking. Right away, I noticed that a tree-cutting truck was blocking part of the sidewalk a block away. “Oh no, how will we ever get to CVS” I said sarcastically to Chooch, as we crossed the street for an unobstructed path. A police car sped past and I did the fist-shake at him because THERE ARE KIDS AROUND, ASSHOLE! But then as we approached the slight crest in the road, I noticed that beyond the tree cutting truck were more police cars, some of them parked horizontally, blocking traffic. “YOU CAN’T COME OVER HERE!” an angry city cop barked from the other side of the street. He was standing there, talking to some broad, as others milled about and stared at one of the houses. I immediately became huffy because I hate being told what to do — ESPECIALLY BY AUTHORITY. So, in my best Spoiled White Girl tone, I yelled back, “JESUS CHRIST. WELL, CAN WE CROSS OVER AND GO THAT WAY THEN!?” and I pointed across the street to where he was standing. He nodded and made a rushed “come on” motion with his hand. So Chooch and I crossed the street and as soon as we turned left on the sidewalk, Angry Cop bellowed, “MA’AM I SAID YOU CAN’T COME THIS WAY!” I lost my fucking shit and screamed, “NO, ACTUALLY YOU DIDN’T!” and I then spun around dramatically and started marching away. “OMG mommy,” Chooch mumbled, scared that I was going to be the next senseless victim of an overzealous cop. Another (calmer) cop strode past us, having just arrived at the scene. “We just don’t want you to get hurt,” Good Cop said in an attempt to massage my Rage Muscles. “I’M JUST TRYING TO GO TO CVS TO BUY MOTHERFUCKING CANDY!” I cried in the hysterical tone I tend to adopt when my plans deviate even a little. I was actually shaking at this point, but Chooch and I continued on our way to CVS, having to take a huge detours through side streets.
  • When we came home, I angrily shouted a play-by-play of the events to Judy. When I finished, she waited a beat and then asked, “Why can’t your co-workers buy their own candy?”
    • I have to do SOMETHINGto be less invisible, OK Judy!? Even if it means using candy to make people visit my desk.
      • Did A-ron honestly just stroll over here and start talking shit on my caramel apple Werthers? YES, YES HE DID.
  • Turns out it was the SWAT team, responding to a call about a suicide attempt. “Way to walk into a SWAT situation,” Amber Returning-To-Work-Next-Wednesday texted me later that day.
    • It’s just like me to make someone else’s suicide attempt ALL ABOUT MYSELF.
    • I guess Bad Cop really was just trying to make sure we didn’t get hurt—by an errant bullet. (AHHHHHH!!)
  • In hindsight, I’m kind of embarrassed. Marginally.
• Ted NUDE-gent is dying and I don’t know what to do! (Except for whining to Henry about it every day and making him add more pebbles to the bottom of Ted’snudey mugand also drilling more drainage holes into it because if I re-pot him all together thenhewon’t be TED NUDE-GENT ANYMORE WILL HE!?
  • On Monday, Gayle asked me if I bought any more plants over the weekend and I cried, “NO BECAUSE TED NUDE-GENT IS DYING” and she was like, “Oh, alright.”
  • I just learned that the human Ted Nugent has his own line of bullets. (AHHHHHHH!)
• One of our co-workers is visiting from Australia and brought a bunch of Cadbury Vegemite bars. I had Vegemite once when I was in Canberra 15 years ago, and I can still vividly recall the sewage flavor; my tongue recoils just at the memory alone. Sandy, knowing it was going to taste like shit, was the first to try a piece. “It tastes like chocolate-covered garbage,” was her official review. Just walking by where the opened package was sitting, Vegemite and caramel oozing together in a pool of sticky smut, the odor alone fisted my gag reflex. Nopenope nope. As an experiment, I took two small pieces home for Henry and Chooch, not telling them anything other than, “Here. Chocolate.”
  • Henry: “What? This tastes like regular chocolate. WHY? WHAT DID YOU DO TO IT!?” #garbagepalate
  • Chooch: *Spit it out into the sink after .005 seconds* That’s my boy!
• WARPED TOUR!! ELEVEN DAYS!! “I just thought about Warped Tour and I got roller coaster stomach,” I said all dreamily to Glenn the other day and he responded with his knee-jerk mumble of “ohmygod.” Chooch is really stoked for it this year too, more so than he has been in the past, and he even made a list of bands he wants to see which made my heart melt:

• On Wednesday, I was chomping at the bit for Amber¹ to get here, but she was working late shift that day. “I want to talk to her about Pretty Little Liars! I don’t have anyone to talk to about it!” I cried to Glenn. “There’s a reason for that,” he muttered.
• Glenn and I started to have a normal conversation the other day about old TV shows. Turns out, we both used to enjoy the Robert Urich-fronted television masterpiece known as Vega$. But then I told him about the time in high school when FX was having a marathon and I decided to have an open-to-the-public viewing party (unbeknownst to my parents, neither of whom were home that day), for which I hung balloons and signs advertising said party at the end of my street. “No one came, though!” I told Glenn sadly. “Wow. So basically, you’ve always been strange,” he muttered. Way to ruin a nice conversation!
• Pretty sure I know which merch booth Chooch is going to rush to at Warped Tour:

• Speaking of Amber¹, I was in the kitchen yesterday just in time to overhear a conversation she was having with my nemesis in the travel department about the cars that they drive. “Do you have a ‘Twins’ decal on the back of your car?” Travel Lady asked Amber, who said yes, and it turns out that Amber apparently flipped her off on the road the other day and Travel Lady was calling her out on it, IN FRONT OF THE DIRECTOR OF OUR DEPARTMENT who just happened to also be in the kitchen. OMG it was hilarious (for everyone but Amber)! Amber’s face was so red and she kept apologizing, but Travel Lady was just laughing about it. I don’t thin she really cared about it at all, but Amber was humiliated and felt terrible. After Travel Lady walked away, Amber said to me, “Well, she pulled out in front of me and then drove really slow! And she was on her phone!” Hey, that seems like a valid reason to me to give the middle finger some exercise. Amber continued to stress over this for the rest of the afternoon and then Todd and I tried to get her to send Travel Lady an Edible Arrangement. The general consensus was that she should have just said it must have been her twin.
• So, Alex Lyman from Slaves (a/k/a Jonny Craig’s Band of Douchebags) was allegedly stabbed for “wearing skinny jeans”. Am I just as much of a douchebag as the rest of them for reading this “news” and immediately wondering what exactly he did to provoke this, if he even was stabbed at all? That guy is just such scum. And I’m tired of Alternative Press being the equivalent of TMZ anymore. Like OMG did Ronnie Radke rape someone? How about stop even giving that piece of shit publicity. God, there is so much good music out there but you’d never know it if you relied solely on Alt Press, and it breaks my heart to even write those words because that magazine used to be a monthly Bible for me. Not no mo’.
• Here is one of my favorite places downtown to walk:

• Please stop calling blueberries “bluebs.” They’re offended. And you sound like an asshole.
  • Just kidding. I don’t give a fuuuuuuck what you call those blueturds.
• One of my favorite things that happened at work this week was that we had a project to work on and I was the only one who did it all perfectly! Everyone hated me that day. Some even more than usual.
  • I was rewarded by having to fix all the wrongly-done ones.
  • But I got to spend all day reminding Glenn that I’m perfect, so….it all balances out.
• Last Saturday, I discovered that I have a pretty powerful right hook, which I discovered when I jokingly went to punch Henry, but over-swung and jabbed myself in the jaw with my phone. It still hurts. :(
• Chooch heard Mazzy Star for the first time last weekend and became inexplicably repulsed.
• Allison just came over to see if any of us had been outside recently because she wants to know what the weather is like, so I made Glenn look on his weather thing, and this lead to him advising us that one of the escaped convicts in New York was apprehended and shot dead — WITH BULLETS. (AHHHHHH!)
  • I did not know that there were any escaped convicts until just now because I deleted my CNN app after determining that it was making my life more depressing. So now I pretty much don’t know anything that’s going on unless I accidentally see it smashed in between cat memes and Magic Bullet (AHHHHHHHH) recipes on Facebook.

I don’t think I have anything else to say. Maybe, instead of politely declining, I’ll finally attend one of the tea parties my imaginary friends are always inviting me to and then I can pretend this is Yelp and write a review of whatever steampunk tea factory we wind up at. If you promise to come back, I’ll save you an absinthe scone. You might have to pick out the watch gears and antique bullets (AHHHHHH) though.

It’s Thursday motherhummers! I don’t know what that means other than I’m stuffing my e-BB gun with random words and firing it off into the world wide web. Or, you know, here are some bullet points:

•  I mentioned the other day that I had a story about the whitetrashtastic lady in line at the Sleeping With Sirens show on Saturday, but I didn’t want to sully that particular post with the sordid details. Here’s why: Somehow, the topic of Walmart arose, I think the teenagers in front of her were talking about People of Walmart or something, and she took that as her cue to be a buttinsky*. “You know what my son does?” her gravelly words busted the kids’ faces with the essence of nicotine and IC Light. “He takes a bunch of dollar bills, right? And goes into the bathroom at Walmart, takes a shit and then wipes his ass with the bills. Then he goes back out into the store and throws all of the dollar bills up in the air and watches as people scramble for them. Then they has’ta peel the bills apart on account of ’em being stuck together with shit!” And then, while her small audience stood there with varying expressions of shock and disgust, her hysterical cackle faded into a coughing fit. “What did she say?” Chooch hissed to me. I just kept shaking my head and saying, “Nothing. Nope. Not a thing.” Like, if I found out my kid was doing literal shit like that, I would NOT be broadcasting it with a bunch of strangers, like he’s some fucking war hero.
  • *Motherhummers and buttinsky in the same post, I think I woke up in a G-rated movie.
  • I never want to touch another dollar bill ever again. DEBIT CARD FOREVER.
• In case you were wondering, the answer is YES I’m still obsessed with succulents. In fact, I have a bunch more that I need to introduce to everyone but every time I sit down to do it, I feel inspired to scour the internet for more succulents! Yesterday, when it was time for my lunch break, I stood up and announced to Glenn and Todd, “I’m going to make some coffee and then when I come back, I’m going to write in my blog about my plants.” There were responses were a mod podge of “how exciting”s and “wow, I can’t wait”s.
  • Janna came over Monday night because we were going to see a movie but first I had to take her on a tour of all of my downstairs windowsills in order to introduce her to all of my babes. She did a good job pretending to be interested! Probably swigged some ‘tussin before she came over.
• Speaking of movies and Janna, I went to see the Kurt Cobain docu-drama Soaked In Bleach at the Hollywood Theater, which is an independent movie theater a few blocks away from my house IN CASE YOU HAVEN’T GOOGLE STREET VIEWED MY ADDRESS in a while. Originally, there was only going to be one viewing of this film and it was last Thursday but I was working late shift. I was sad. But then Courtney Love’s attorney started sending cease and desist to the handful of theaters around the country who had the balls to show it and I guess some of the theaters actually backed down. But not my Hollywood Theater! They answered by offering three more viewings!
  • Janna was excited because the concession stand had cans of Surge. She ordered one and then had the nerve to ask for a cup of ice to go with it. It’s no Robitussin, but it’ll do, she said.
• 
• Oh right, so the movie! It was interesting. A lot of the information I already knew from the Kurt & Courtney documentary that came out in the late 90s, but this was one was still interesting because the whole film was from the POV of the private investigator that Courtney hired to “find Kurt” several days before his death. He had grown immediately suspicious of Courtney and began recording all of his conversations with her, and many of those were played throughout the film. I will say this: If you walked into that theater adamantly believing that Kurt Cobain shot himself, you would probably find yourself leaving with A LOT to think about. I was already part of the Murder Camp before seeing this and it just solidified a lot of my doubts about the case, and also made me really sad. I was 14 when all of this happened, and it was definitely one of those “Where Were You When…” situations for me. I’ll never forget hearing the news on MTV. I wasn’t a rabid Nirvana fan, but I liked them and Kurt was already such an icon back then, that it was surreal, so hard to believe that he was gone, just like that. And it makes you wonder what could have been….where would Nirvana be now if 4/8/1994 hadn’t happened? Would they still be active, making relevant music, or would they be washed-up? It drives me mad when I get sucked into these what-if whirlpools.
  • Chooch and I have been doing this thing where I pick an old(er) band and teach him about them, because I think it’s important to have a good musical foundation. He doesn’t have to like it, but he should still know about bands like FOR INSTANCE OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD: the Beatles and Joy Division, et al. A few weeks ago, I was teaching him about Tool and A Perfect Circle, and he said, “Ooooh, I know this song! It was on when Daddy was taking me to get a Skylander last week” and Henry just groaned, “He is so much like you.” Because I associate music with every little seemingly insignificant event in my life! So my point to this ramble is that seeing Soaked in Bleach inspired me to talk to Chooch about the whole Thing. I told him that the first CD I ever bought was Nevermind, after I got a stereo with a real life CD player on it in middle school. Chooch was like, “Seriously, you remember what your first CD was?” and kind of rolled his eyes like he doubted me, to which I cried, “Of course I do! Why wouldn’t I?! Music is LIFE!” He already knows of Nirvana, but not the Kurt and Courtney stuff, so we stayed up late last night and watched Nirvana videos on YouTube while I explained the whole story and then he was like, “Put on one of her videos” so we watched the video for “Doll Parts” together and Chooch decided two things:
    • “She sounds like Nickelback.”
    • “It sounds to me like she was mad. She wasn’t getting enough attention and was mad because Kurt was better than her.”  A+++
• My Marcy tattoo has healed so beautifully and I could just cry!
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• I had a work dream the other night (who am I kidding: most of my dreams are about work; that might be a problem) where A-ron decided that he was going to start wearing suits to work. But he wanted crazy suits, so who did he come to? Me. “I want to be like the Don Cherry of [name of our dept],” he explained, and I was like, “K…but I’ve never made a suit before.” He was all, “It’ll be fine, be creative!” and when he walked away, Amber (Please Hurry Back From Maternity Leave)² turned around and said, “Don’t do it. This will ruin your work friendship!” But I liked the challenge of making him crazy suits so I ignored Amber’s advice and got down to drawing and gluing things on two blank suits. One was a Pizza in Space theme and the other was this completely in-your-face shimmery, Liberace-Goes-to-a-Cookout suit in patriotic hues with hot dogs floating all over. I guess I was in a food-mood before I went to bed, who knows. Anyway, I was pretty proud of them but A-ron was irritated that I wasn’t working faster and that I had only completed two suits by this point, when I knew that he had a music video to film (????). I yelled, “I’VE NEVER MADE AN EFFING SUIT BEFORE, A-RON! MAYBE ASK GAYLE* NEXT TIME!” because she knows sew-y things, and he was just a jerk to me about it! And then he filmed his stupid music video, which was literally just him walking around in a circle while a generic beat played and a bunch of people from our department stood around cheering him on and I was like “FOR WHAT?!” Meanwhile, Todd was pissed because all he wanted to do was get into the refrigerator but all of A-ron’s suit-groupies were blocking the way. And I was supposed to get credit for making those dumb suits, A-ron promised me a shout out in the credits of his music video, but THERE WAS NOTHING. So the first time I saw him at work the next day, I had a terrible flashback and blurted out, “OMG I’m so mad at you!”
  • A-ron told me today that he heard Pizza Hut is coming out with hotdog-stuffed crust pizza. GET OUT OF MY DREAMS, PIZZA HUT.
  • I’m sorry, but those suits were fucking spectacular.
  • *Gayle knows how to do sew-y activities.
  • Speaking of Amber (Please Hurry Back From Maternity Leave)² she came in to visit last week with her baby and I didn’t even hide from her like I normally do when people bring babies into work! It was nice seeing her and her little baby boy AND I WANTED HER TO STAY FOR THE REST OF THE DAY AND WORK.
• I’M GOING TO A LAVENDER FESTIVAL ON SATURDAY! (You know, if it’s not storming all day.) Thanks to my friend Kara for the heads up — she’s always looking out for my interests! I can’t wait to choke on lavender-flavored foods.
• But seriously, since we were chatting briefly up there about A Perfect Circle, how great was this song? I used to obsess over the extra “ooh” at 2:54 and Henry would cry exasperatedly, “Yes, I heard it! God!” I love when songs have that split second moment that throttle my heart.

• We were at Lowe’s on Saturday buying succulents (duh) when I grabbed a bottle of flavored sparkling water by the register. “You don’t like that,” Henry said. This made me angry. Don’t tell me what I don’t like! I insisted that I did in fact like sparkling water, and then Chooch wanted a bottle too and Henry was like, “OK but you assholes aren’t going to like it.” Chooch took one swig in the parking lot and acted like he had imbibed straight battery acid. “THIS IS AWFUL!” he cried,  thrusting the bottle at me. I took a sip from my own bottle and Henry was waiting for me to gag and pantomime my own death, but I gave him no reaction. Then I proceeded to spend the next two days slowly finishing my bottle AND Chooch’s bottle because I am just that stubborn.
  • I eventually admitted that I didn’t like it though and Henry was like, “No shit.”
• Me: “do you think your job will ever give you a heart attack?” Henry: “No, that’d be you.” Walked right into that one.
• I changed my relationship status to “In an Open Relationship” on Facebook and HENRY’S ROOMMATE FROM THE SERVICE commented on it and said “Henry just buy the girl a ring already. You can have a long engagement.” Henry was like OMG PLZ DO NOT SAY ANYTHING TO HIM DON’T TALK TO MY FRIENDS!!!! The fear in his eyes was real. That was the closest any of his Friends From Another Life have come to interacting with me!

Ugh, I know I had so much more to tell you, Blog. Oh well. Bad day.