I’ve already bombarded Facebook with these photos, so now it’s your turn, Blog.

We stopped at Goodwill beforehand to snag a plain white buttondown and some dress slacks (which turned out to be a womens pair) for Blake. I found some paisley piece of shit thing that we attempted to use as an ascot. Too bad none of us knew how to tie an ascot.

Immediately after walking into Goodwill, Henry was accosted by some older man (older even than Henry, if you can fathom). Apparently, they knew each other. Their discourse was not interesting enough to massage my eavesdropping gene, so I very huffily scoured the racks on my own.

“Who is that man Daddy’s talking to?” I asked Chooch, who was bouncing back and forth between me and the conversating rejects.

“I don’t know, Outrageous, I think.”

Turns out it was Regis, whoever the fuck that is.

I decided we should take some “safe” pictures at the cemetery before introducing the blood and bones into the mix, just so I’d have something to show one of the boss-types at work, who has no idea what actually goes on around here.

We then went to my grandma’s for the action shots, because, well, it’s gloomy as shit back there now. I had major anxiety being there, though, since my Aunt Sharon is crazy-weird about people stopping by. We parked the car in the upper driveway and prayed for the best, trying to stay as far away from the actual house as possible.

“Try not to get any on my undershirt,” Blake said as we stood near a large tree stump, opening packets of Ketchup procured from McDonald’s. “It’s a vintage Penguins shirt.”

I expressed my approval at his hockey-geared fashion sense.

“It’s from 1991,” he stressed.

BITCH THAT’S NOT VINTAGE. Shit, I can’t remember the last time I felt so old. Perhaps when I was called MA’AM at a Chiodos show. That’ll do it.

“It’s vintage to him,” Henry argued. “It’s from the year before he was born.”

DOUBLY OLD FEELING.

Just another normal day at Grandma’s house.

Blake in any type of animal mask scares the shit out of me. I need to buy more animal masks.

Chooch was getting sincerely irritated by this point. He’s good for the first few minutes, but then the novelty of being bossed around and forcibly positioned in ridiculous and absurd stances kind of starts to piss him off a bit. These are probably the moments he wishes he had a normal mom who just take him to the fucking mall and pay $20 for a regular Easter portrait with a blood-free Easter bunny like all the kids in his class get to do.

I was on the phone today, and mistakenly let it slip  to Chooch that it was Sharon on the other end.

Raising his voice approximately eighty-seven octaves and acquiring an obnoxious lilt, he yelled, “TELL HER WHAT WE DID YESTERDAY AT HER HOUSE! TELL HER!” and I’m trying, one-handed, to use on him the things I learned last night at Zombie Defense Class, but his little-big mouth just kept flapping.

Fucking turncoat. Like he didn’t know what he was doing.

Over on the Instagram app, I participate in this fun little weekly photo assignment called “Homework.” The last assignment’s theme was “Home,” something that makes you feel at home, reminds you of home, etc.

I only had to think about it for .87 seconds before choosing two photos from Warped Tour.

That one day every summer is literally where I leave my heart.

Just thinking about July 22 (this year’s Pittsburgh date! I’ve had my ticket since December!) makes me feel giddy, light, warm in the aorta. I can’t explain it, but on no other day do I ever feel like I’m 100% me.

Warped Tour is home to me. (Fitting that my home, my heaven is Henry’s Hell.)

Audience participation: Where’s YOUR home?

It was a nice day yesterday so when Chooch came home from school, I ushered him right back outside so we could take some pictures.

I like to try and post up-to-date photos of him on here whenever I can, on the off-chance that my estranged mother might decide to swing by the blog to get a refresher on what her grandson looks like.

Like that would ever happen.

He woke up two Saturdays ago with the most awesome (Biblical sense) bedhair I’ve ever seen. If Christofer Drew (Never Shout Never) had seen it, he probably would have tried to interrogate Chooch on the exact slumbering position which gained him such a scene rat-nest. It served as an intense impetus to get me to escort him to the nearest salon.

I kind of hate what the lady did to him, but I guess it’s better than it was. His sideburns were practically fluttering wings before BoRics intervened.

These were the only photos I got out of him before he started doing the pee-jig and we had to race to the house, at which point it took me approximately 87 minutes to help him finagle his jeans off because he was wearing a belt, the mechanisms of which I just can’t for the life of me comprehend and Henry was at work. Life is so hard when Henry isn’t around to bail me out.

What better photoshoot conditions than a cold and rainy day. Henry wasn’t thrilled about it, but too fucking bad. I need him around to hold my lenses.

“That was kind of scary,” Chooch informed me just now as he walked past, looking for a cat to torture.

This was Chooch’s idea. I went along with it because I liked the angel/demon juxtaposition.

How apropos.

I asked, in a kind of huffy tone, “Why do you always have to pose like a goddamn zombie?

”

“Because we’re in the cemetery?” Chooch answered, hands raised. Then he shook his head and gave me the “You’re so stupid, Mommy” laugh.

I was going to take some pictures of Chooch outside yesterday, but the sun was one deceiving motherfucker. It was so windy and cold, so we took the ‘shoot to the bathroom, which I’m sure chagrined some people who absolutely HATE it when people take photos in their bathroom. (Seriously, this was a discussion on Facebook the other day.

I mean, excuse me if that’s the best-lit room in my house. Sorry that my STUDIO hasn’t yet been erected. Jesus Christ. And yes, we DO put on our makeup and fix our hair just to take pictures for Facebook, because photography = art.

Owellz0rz.)

Total Creeper.

Me and my passive aggressive attitude are going roller skating now.

Peace out, girl scout.

Chooch walked in while I was having my lips frosted and said, “You’re the biggest idiot, Mommy.”

“Did you already post those pictures?” Henry asked after saying my post-frosted face looks like a chemical burn. When I said I had, he looked all let down. Turns out he wanted me to take a picture of my stained face and tell Andrea that her My Pretty Zombie makeup tried to kill me. He’s just mad because she sent Chooch a whistle.

It’s weird, just last Saturday Jessy was over here and I was showing her some of my older photographs.

“This is my all-time favorite,” I said, pulling up this photo I took of Kara in 2008 in one of the bathrooms at Zenith.

Then a couple days later, Kara was like, “Hey let’s go to lunch at Zenith this week.” Almost as if she could sense her picture being shown!

So I met her and her baby Harland there on Thursday for BBQ seitan sandwiches. The best waiter in the world, Keith, was our server! I love that guy; he has this natural charm to him, like he could just pull up a chair and join you and it wouldn’t be weird or awkward at all.  The Gypsy Cafe needs a Keith. They should find a way to clone him so they can get rid of the guy who spills champagne on people’s heads.

Halfway through the meal, Harland reached his arms out to me. Kara laughed and said, “I think he wants you to hold him, Erin!”

Me and babies? Not really so tight. Don’t get me wrong – Harland is a sweetheart and I like to look him, but keeping some distance between us is imperative.

However, I wanted to be a good friend and give Kara some free hands with which to eat, so I took Harland from her and we walked around, looking at the art and antiques strewn around the restaurant.

Kara said Harland doesn’t let anyone keep him from her for more than like a minute or something, but for some reason he was like, “Nah, lady, this is cool. I’m not gon’ cry. Now take me over there so I can fondle some pumpkins.” Kara thought this was funny, me being all uncomfortable with a baby in my arms.

I think Harland can sense that and does this to me on purpose. After all these years, someone has finally come along to give me a taste of my own medicine. That baby is mega manipulative.

Together, we scoped out a painting of a topless broad. He was cool with that.

I finally gave him back to Kara and sat back down. But Harland toddled back over to me, sat on my lap, and stole my roll! What the fuck, Harland?! This is payback for writing that haiku about your mom’s butt crack, isn’t it?!

All joking aside, he’s good for a one-year-old. I never took Chooch out to eat without Henry when he was that age, because he made me a nervous wreck. But Harland is quiet and well-behaved.

Kara and I must have read opposing parenting books.

Before we left, we checked out the bathroom for old time’s sake. It’s green now! But still the best bathroom in Pittsburgh, as far as I’m concerned. I snapped this with my phone, because I felt we needed an updated version now that Harland is around.

I came home from lunch and promptly iced my arm from all the baby-carrying (I’m way out of practice). Henry asked accusingly, “Wait – she took Harland? Then why didn’t you take Chooch?!”

Chooch, eating lunch in an antique shop? Has Henry not met our son?

Chooch got a fedora yesterday. He put it on and we took pictures. The end. (Wouldn’t it be nice if all my posts were this succinct?)

I was like, “Where the hell did you learn this pose?”

“Freddy,” he answered. And then when my face looked blank, he added, “From ‘iCarly’!

”

God, I am so out of touch. (Not really, because as soon as he said that, I immediately knew what episode he was talking about. I’m such a hussy for TeenNick.)

This one was from Friday, after the Harland picture-takin’ extravaganza. The downside is that since I asked him to sit on one stoop, he deemed it necessary to try out EVERY SINGLE STOOP we passed on our way back to Kara’s.

He had to get his school picture taken a few weeks ago.

He probably wondered why the photographer did it in one shot. “He didn’t even ask me to wear a pig mask!”

Aw, fuck. Here I go ruining a perfectly good blog post with WORDS again.

Screwing around with some old photos at work while I have a little bit of an unusual lull. 

Chooch zombified himself with my iPhone:

Some other things:

Hockey season has begun! The Pens game starts in 30 minutes, which means I will be acting all indignant and put-off every time an analyst brings work for me. Can’t they see I’m TRYING to listen to the goddamn game?

!

Of course everything would be doubled-over-in-hysteria funny tonight at work since I have chest pains. Ow.

I posted a review of the new Chiodos album last night. It was met with a very “Bueller?”-esque reception. Some random girl on Twitter read it and said it was well-done. That was good enough for me. Really fucking love Chiodos, in case you haven’t figured that out, considering I have an entire blog category devoted to them.

Kettelbell workouts are my jam.

Pretty much sums up how I feel about 90% of the world’s population lately.

If I didn’t work for a law firm, I might even be persuaded to get this tattooed to my lips permanently. Then I’d walk around, doling out insulting kisses.

But even in spite of all the stupid people, I had a rad weekend with fantastic friends and hope you all did too!

(My lips are totally stained now.

)

Sometimes I feel like I don’t belong on the Dark Side of Etsy, like I’m not dark enough or goth enough (but they’ve never made me feel unwanted!).  Because of this, I’ve been a little self-conscious when assigned a member to gift for the birthday swap. What if they think whatever I send them is too “fun” or “whimsical”? Short of splashing my paintings with pigs blood, I pretty much just wing it.

But this month, the person I was given to gift expressed an interest in lomography, so I sent her the photo below and its accompanying story. She in turn told me that the photo and story were disturbing, and that her daughter asked, “What is wrong with her?” For a member of the Dark Side to think something of mine is creepy and disturbing? Best compliment ever.  

I don’t usually re-post my “super gay stories,” but I wanted to give this one another spin, since it was so well-received the other day. Just let me bask for a minute, alright? Christ.

And hey! If you want your own copy (which is printed on really cool metallic paper, by the way!), you can get it here.

Sally should not have been surprised when she was turned away at the door.

“But I was invited!” she insisted, coffee-stained invitation curved around the womb of her hands. She held it up to the man’s face, pulling it taut so he could see that her name, in adolescent lower-case, was penciled in at the top. Her name, it was there! Her name was right there next to the day-old coffee splash that looked like Hitler; right there, preceeding the typed words IS INVITED.

Laughter flitted from the bowels of the banquet hall. He flicked the invitation, knocking it loose from Sally’s grip and slamming the door in her snout. “No pigs invited!” she heard several revelers shout in unison, followed by more hideous laughter. “Pig’ll eat all the food!” The cruel heckling made the bile effervesce within Sally. For a brief moment, she could taste its sour flavor as it burned against her uvula. She swallowed it.

She tried to swallow the hideous laughter, too.

Fifty-three minutes later, Sally sat in her parked car at a truck stop just a few miles outside of town. She numbly nibbled on the sandwich that was handed to her through a window by an androgynous teen with a snarled upper lip, Sally’s own pout puckering involuntarily as her tongue moved over a spot of bread, moist from pickle sweat. Choking back a sloppy slurp of lemonade, Sally cried out bitterly, “I belong no where!

” She groped in the darkness of her car, until her fingers eventually came up with a pen.

You might not know it yet but you will be sorry. Sorry for slamming doors in my face, for flushing my poems down the commode. You will be sorry for not letting me carole with you that one Christmas in 1987.

As a child, Sally was invited to parties only because her father was the principal; parents used her spot on birthday guest lists to keep their own slovenly spawn from flunking out of third grade. And Sally, so full of jubilance, would put on her best Laura Ashley, and she would step into her best Mary Janes, and she would wrap the present in the best foiled paper. And last, she would pull on her rubber pig mask.

In front of her father, all the kids would chant “Oh Sally’s here! Oh, Sally, Sally, Sally!” But then the door would shut behind her and her father and his little green Pinto would be a dot on the horizon.

You might not know it yet, but you will see that my headgear did not define me, that my stutter was not a reason to make me a cafeteria pariah.

You might not know it yet, but my halitosis was bearable under the supervision of Altoids.

And then it was, “Oops, Sally, I didn’t mean to tear your dress” [as Mary Misslegap swiped at the silken floral with a boxcutter] and “Uh oh, Sally’s having her period!” [courtesy of Agatha Angelfuck pollacking her with Heinz] and “Sorry, Sally, there’s no cake left for you” [as Tommy Wettail smeared it on her face like paste, snapping her bra for the cherry on top]. And there would be that hideous laughter again. Sally would swallow that hideous laughter and go home.

You might not know it yet, but you will realize that I had things to say, ideas to share, if you could have only seen past my muffin top, past my cleft palate. You will realize that the brown stain on my white trousers in Spanish class senior year was mud, not shit from my own self.

And even after all of that, Sally was willing to give her old peers a second chance when the invitation arrived that day. YARDLY GREEN HIGH SCHOOL’S TENTH REUNION it said in an elegant script. Sally, who had too much hope for humanity, was anxious to show off her poker straight teeth and Kathy Lee knock-off. But Sally, whose better judgement raped her thoughts with reality, couldn’t help but falter in her step when she arrived at the hotel that night.

You might not know it yet, but I don’t care about your Better Homes and Garden wedding. And I don’t care your child was born with Downs Syndrome. And I don’t care about how you feel about me. Not anymore.

Sally should have known she was only invited as entertainment, one more lashing for the social reject. It was just like grade school, only now the cruelty was liquor-enhanced. Sally should have known there would be no punch-drinking and name tag-wearing for her that night. But now, parked next to a rocking eighteen-wheeler with frosted windows, Sally knew; and soon they would too.

You might not know it yet, but I am unable to swallow that hideous laughter.You might not know it yet, but I was really fucking good at Chemistry.

Sally had just added the final flourish to her signature when her pen bled its last drop of ink. Sally folded the coarse brown napkin she had been writing on and peeled off the pig mask;  with a forceful stab to her carotid, she used the sanguine ink to scrawl ATTENTION: ALL OF MY WORST CRITICS on the top of the note.

And that is exactly what a mulletted trucker in a camo vest was reading, coagulated in blood and pickle juice from a half-eaten Hoagie Hocker sub, when the bomb went off at that hotel with the hideous laughter.

Before I left for work yesterday, it began to downpour. Because I never think very far ahead, I kicked off my shoes, grabbed the camera and ran outside with Chooch.

“I had a dream that you were taking me to my new classroom and you looked ugly,” Chooch said when we were on our way to buy him new clothes for school.

“Hey!” I yelled.

“What?! It was just a dream. God.” And then came a series of annoyed and exasperated grunts that he must have learned from Henry because I am never annoyed or exasperated.

Nearly every shirt he picked out has skulls on it.  And he’s clearly not afraid to make bold statements by wearing purple.  I wonder what scene-kid fashion will be like by the time he’s in high school. I wonder if there will be cool scene-ish four-year-olds in his pre-school class.

Henry came home from work during our photo shoot and proceeded to sit across the street in the parking lot like a creeper, probably finishing up his daily phone sex with his girlfriend. I didn’t even realize he was there until I came back inside and saw that he texted “you guys are idiots.” He’s just jealous that he’s too old to play in the rain; it’ll enrage his arthritis.

And then I had to leave for work, where I sat in air conditioning for the next five hours while squirming under wet hair and damp clothes. And when I get sick, of course I’ll act surprised.

An hour ago, I was ranting about being considered a Mommy Blogger.

I’m not a mommy blogger! Here, have a photo of my kid!