This morning’s Walking Challenge travels took me to the abandoned Bradley School near my house in Brookline. I think it used to be a school for the deaf or blind.

In any case, it is now defunct and creepy as shit. Looks like I found my next photo shoot location.

Get ready, Chooch.

I kept expecting a face to appear in this window…

…and for someone to push my face in this glass.

Here’s Henry’s new house.

On my way back home, some middle-aged creep in red pants stopped me, pointed to a house and asked, “Does Mike Vallatti live there?

”

I gave him my usual canned response of “I don’t know” and then turned around just in time to walk into a telephone pole. Then I came to work and ate cake and a moldy raspberry.

I wanted to get one last mini-shoot in before the Law Firm Walking Challenge started. (Today! But don’t worry – I already racked up 12,000 steps before noon). I’ve had this loose little vision in my head for awhile now to use some of my old Alternative Press magazines in a photo shoot with Chooch, but didn’t really know where I wanted to do it, so we drove around and drove around for a good hour until I saw a closed-up ice cream shop and made Henry pull over.

The Boylan’s is going to spill in 3…2….

Two kids rode past us on bikes just in time to witness me blow up like a bi-polar director.  Henry and I broke up. I orphaned Chooch.

It was a bad scene.

Henry thought he was in the clear after I lost my temper for the 87th time outside of this ice cream in Monongahela and screamed, “THAT’S IT, I’M DONE!” But then my other personality piped up and bellowed, “NO, WE ARE NOT GOING HOME! I’M NOT DONE!” So I made Henry drive back to the first location we were going to use until I got too scared of squatters. At this point, if there WERE any squatters there, they’d have been afraid of ME. Oh, I was horrible yesterday. Yet Chooch is so unfazed by it.

This is the Boylan’s after it’s third upending. Chooch was actually trying to read the magazine and kept getting pissed off at me when I would tell him to stop turning the pages.

Boylan’s puddle to the left.

Then I threw another fit and made Henry put everything back in the car, only to realize that we hadn’t taken any pictures in his second outfit. So doors were kicked up, trunks were slammed, various euphemisms for “vagina” and “person who engages in fellatio” were flung (possibly just by me), but the good news is that Chooch must have liked this outfit better, because he was suddenly very eager to cooperate.

So we kept taking pictures while Henry leaned against the car and pouted.

I swear to god, he’s not actually this forlorn. Almost all of these poses were his own idea, and he was running around happily in between shots. I SWEAR.

This wasn’t mid-motion, he was actually posed like this like a weirdo.

He said this was his “don’t even think about following me into my house” pose.

Rough life.

The “I just found gold” pose.

And then we were all bros again after that!

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2007

2008

2009

2011

2012 :(

I have to go back and try to get some souvenir wood.

As of September 2012, our Chooch is a 6-year-old 1st grader on the fast track to becoming Corey Feldman’s Mouth character in “Goonies.” His rapier wit is practically parallel to most adults I know, which is oft amusing, but mostly mildly worrisome and endlessly irritating.

“I totally don’t remember being this ridiculous when I was your age,” I yelled in defeat Saturday night.

“You probably weren’t,” Chooch answered from the backseat of the car in his patented infuriatingly smug tone.

I now have to bribe him with real American dollars just to take his damn picture. I miss the days of him being 100% at my mercy.

But let’s face it, those days didn’t last very long.

But he sure is good at pulling off an angelic face, that’s for sure. Little jerk.

Surprisingly, this rock was chucked into the river and not at my face. We’re making progress. (Baby steps.)

(And then Henry reminds me that he learned everything from watching me, anyway.)

As much as Henry hates these pants, he was even more relieved that the red ones didn’t come in Chooch’s size. (I only checked one store though, Henry!)

Everyone’s always going on and on about how much Chooch looks just like Henry. OK, whatever. I get it. However, he is otherwise so much like me, it’s almost like a horror movie. Yesterday morning, in the Murder House, he and Henry were arguing about something ridiculous and it just kept getting more and more heated (on Chooch’s end only; Henry continued to calmly make breakfast through all of the huffing and puffing and door-slamming). Finally, at the threat of not getting the Regular Show DVD he had been eying up over the weekend, he decided it would behoove himself to apologize; so he did, but it came out in a “Please call Father Karras and have me the fuck exorcized” snarl, at which point he became even more agitated because he didn’t like the way Henry said, “OK.”

So this started a new sub-fight.

Chooch wailed, “You didn’t say that right!

No wonder why Mommy always fights with you!”

An innocent by-stander up until this point, I piped up and said, “Well, he’s not wrong, Henry.”

“Thanks, Erin,” Henry sighed, sliding a plate of eggs in front of me. I love how he multi-tasks.

FUN FACT: This is actually Chooch’s bed.

There was definitely something different about the New Vrindaban community when Seri and I left the Temple, and then it hit me: the grounds were empty. There weren’t any kids on the playground or climbing all over the giant plaster elephant. No one was milling about in the courtyard or strolling along the lake.

It was just us.

And the 18 pounds of food playing Tetris in my stomach.

We sat underneath a lakeside gazebo for a few minutes, admiring the view and hypothesizing if we could ever get Henry and Pete to come back with us and rent one of the cabins on the edge of the woods.

Because that’s not a horror script that’s been written 87 times.

The lake was so serene. There was a swan at the other end and I tried to focus on that and not the 30-foot dancing acolyte statues in the distance, which were sincerely making me nervous.

Jonny Craig was there, too!

I was afraid that if we sat there any longer, we’d end up seeing something we wouldn’t be able to unsee, like a murder, so I suggested we keep walking. We kept hearing loud plops along the edge of the lake, and I was so sure it was a large frog so we both edged our closer to the water JUST IN TIME TO ALMOST STEP ON A LARGE SNAKE AS IT SLITHERED BACK INTO THE WATER. And then Erin and Seri, as animated by Hannah-Barbara, screamed and did their best unintentional cartoon run back up to the path.

That might have been my most religious moment there.

Shaking off that disgusting brush with nature, we continued walking down the path—albeit with our hands on our hearts— toward the large gazebo-like structure on the lake.

“Can we go in there?” Seri asked, but I was already trampling down the gravel-path to the door. I figured, as honorary Hare Krishnas, we were allowed to open any door we pleased. [Cue Pandora’s Box parable.]

I actually screamed a little when my eyes adjusted to the darkness and I saw a big ass swan boat staring back at me.

There was a throne-type structure built above the seat of the boat, which made me think this was reserved for special occasions, like Anglo-sacrifices. Boxes of fireworks lined the boat house walls, and I considered snagging some but with my luck, the swan would spring to life. Meanwhile, Seri was trying to get inside the boat and I very honestly said to her, “Look, if you fall in, I can’t promise that I’ll come in after you.”

Not now that I knew there were snakes in that water.

Leaving the boathouse, I finally realized what this place reminded me of. “The Wicker Man.” And not that shitty Nicolas Cage remake, either. Yes, everything was beautiful, but it came with an artificial, uncomfortable quality.

Plus, it was in the hills of West Virginia.

And teeming with Hare Krishnas.

Just then, we noticed that the peach-robed conch-blowing priest was standing further down on the path, watching us.

“We didn’t do anything wrong!” I said to Seri. “Just act normal.” Which means we continued walking with suspicious mannerisms illuminated by a beacon of guilt.

The peacock enclosure was next, so we were distracted by that for awhile, until I turned around and saw that he was following us at this point. So we continued on, across a small bridge, right smack into the feet of the dancing acolytes.

Are you kidding me?! Tell me these things don’t come alive at night.

This is basically what everything there looked like up close: cracked, broken, decrepit. What was once meant to be a flourishing testament to their gods and Swami was now grossly depreciating. Even the boathouse was full of cobwebs, and the swan boat was chipped and looked more scary than regal. It wasn’t hard to imagine this being the setting for tragedy and murder in the 1980s, when Swami P-dawg’s successor had fanatic cult members commit murders for him. Twenty years later, and it must still be hard for the community to shake that stigma, considering that’s the reason why Henry wanted no part of this little day trip. Of course none of this stuff is mentioned during the tour, though.

Chugging the blood of sacrificial white girl lambs, it’s what keeps them pacified.

And then Seri called Pete to tell him that we were being chased by who she thought was the Dalai Lama, who at that point was meditating in the grass by the boat house. I was actually offended that he wasn’t really trying to chase us down to convert us. Who wouldn’t want two nervous white girls? Seri could arts-n-crafts that bitch up! And I could….eat their food? Start a New Vrindiban blog? Teach them about Jonny Craig?

At that point, we had been there close to 4 hours, so we mutually agreed it was time to leave. Rather than backtrack and have to walk past the meditating priest, we opted instead to climb a hill back to the main road. It was a great ascent with my food luggage in tow. I didn’t want to die at all.

Somehow, we still managed to spend another hour back at the Palace grounds, admiring the rose garden and sitting by the lotus pond. On the way back to the car (to grab my unicorn mask; Seri promised she would pose in it!), we passed the cashier from the gift shop who exclaimed, “You girls are still here!?” Which made me realize that it had been about two hours since Henry had last heard from me and it didn’t occur to him to check in to make sure I hadn’t been slain. Thanks for loving me, Henry.

On the way back to Pittsburgh, we both agreed that this was totally worth it and that we would definitely return. Probably with more animal masks.

***

The next morning, I received a voicemail from someone named Jay Sree of New Vrindaban, claiming to have found my wallet, which I didn’t even know I had lost. She described it as “black, with a heart that has a picture of a young girl in it.” Definitely sounded like my iCarly pocketbook. I called Henry to tell him and he immediately got all disgusted and spat, “You were probably pick-pocketed!”

Luckily, I had my debit card at the bottom of my purse, because I’m so lazy when it comes to putting it back in my wallet. Ugh, all that zipping and tucking? So exhausting. So the only thing in my wallet that I really needed was my drivers license. When I returned the call, I spoke with a man at the Palace who sighed and said, “Yes, it is here in Lost and Found.” He sounded disappointed in me, like an Indian Henry.

It arrived in the mail several days later, and I was crestfallen to see that they didn’t slip in any religious pamphlets or sign-up vouchers. WHY DON’T THEY WANT ME!?

This sums it all up. Goddamn am I going to miss summer.

Until October. Then it’s all “Summer who? Fuck that ho.”

Here is a reprieve from words.

Award-winning rose garden, apparently. It was really beautiful but there was something creepy about it, something stopping it from being serene. Maybe it was the fact that it was in the hills of West Virginia and I had the distinct sensation of being watched, The Hills Have Eyes-style.

Inside the lobby.

Peacocks are everywhere in the architecture, and the statues of the deities are fanned with peacock feathers. There are fifty live peacocks roaming around the New Vrindiban premises! WHO DOESN’T LOVE A PEACOCK?! (Except for the person whose grandma was murdered by burgling peacocks.)

Inside view of the peacock stained glass. There were 4 of these throughout the Palace.

Lotus pond, unobstructed by the Indian dick.

Maybe it would have been less creepy if there had been other people out there. But instead, it was just Seri and me, looking completely lost, touristy, and naive. WE COULD HAVE BEEN TAKEN AT ANY POINT. (God, can you imagine the cheers from the men back home? I mean: Krishna, can you imagine the cheers from the men back home?)

Anyway, the creep-factor of the Palace grounds had nothing on the dancing acolytes and lake we were about to stumble upon down the street.

Henry was gone all day on Saturday, helping out at Castle Blood. I thought, “Oh, this will be OK. Chooch and I can go off and have a cute little photo shoot, celebrate our independence, etc. etc.” But before Henry left, I called him back in the house to have him fetch the wheelchair and put it in the car for me. Independence could wait a few minutes.

“Do you think we can do this successfully?” I asked Chooch when we were on our way to the (damned) location.

He answered quite matter-of-factly, “By ourselves? No.” That kid knows what’s up.

Everything was great. We sang “Call Me Maybe” loudly and repeatedly en route. I even stopped at a gas station and bought him a drink! Look at me! Taking care of my kid’s needs! But then we rolled up on the designated site (Coulterville, an area where many of my photo shoots are located), and that was when I realized I had to lug a wheelchair; a unicorn mask; the camera bag; and a plastic bag filled with clowns, doll heads, an empty bottle of Old Crow and a jack in the box all on my own because my goddamn son is a fucking divo.

This is where Henry’s blue-collar arms would have come in handy.

Originally, I wanted to cross the train tracks and walk toward the river, because there are some really cool spots back there. But then I realized, “Holy shit, I can’t lift this wheelchair up to the tracks” so I started swearing and crying. We were going to take the pictures at the nearby cemetery and abandoned church after that, but Chooch was being totally uncooperative and we screamed, “I HATE YOU!” at each other with enough fury to raise the dead, and then not one but TWO trains passed us and we were both shook to the core because OMG WE ALMOST TRIED TO CROSS THOSE TRACKS AND WE COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED.

That made me flip out even harder, and then Chooch started crying because he lost his (broken) sunglasses and I wouldn’t help him look for them because the trains were freaking me out so bad and all I wanted to do was push the fucking wheelchair back to the car (IT WAS ALL UPHILL, THANKS).

There are people who live around there. I sure hope they heard our histrionics. Especially when I threatened to orphan him and he snarled, “NOT IF I GO TO THE ORPHANGE FIRST.”

I was NOT going home. Not after driving all the way out there. So we stopped at McDonald’s (after I flipped out for the 79879876th time because the gas light was on and I couldn’t find a gas station and then when I did, I had to make an illegal turn to reach it) and I said out loud, “Fuck this. I’m getting a frappe. I goddamn earned it.” But first we had to wait for the oldest woman alive to send back all of her food and then proceed to sit there in her dumb minivan even after she got the right stuff, and I started yelling at her which made Chooch laugh to the point of tears, but then seriously say, “Mommy, she’s just an old lady.”

AND THEN THEY GAVE ME MY FRAPPE WITHOUT A MOTHERFUCKING STRAW. I didn’t want to park and go inside to get one, because I couldn’t leave Chooch alone in the car (I checked the manual real quick for that one) and he didn’t have his shoes on plus I was all sweaty and tear-soaked and had dirt all over me from god only knows what. So I drank that bitch without a straw and had chocolate syrup all over my face; I can assure you I didn’t really care at that point. I had accepted my new role as the poster woman for Defeat.

Did I leave out the part where I called Henry 87 times while he was trying to cut doors in walls at Castle Blood, screaming at him because I didn’t know how to fold the wheelchair and it was THE WORST DAY EVER and I might as well just KILL MYSELF? Oh, well that totally didn’t happen.

We ended up going to the place where the Easter pictures happened. (Click that link if you haven’t seen those photos; Henry has on makeup in them!) At first glance, I thought the abandoned structures had been demolished, but really it was just because the area was so overgrown with frondescence that it was no longer visible from the road. Where was my machete when I really needed it?

I think I lost 10 pounds that day from crying, sweating, raging & hiking thru weeds and mud with a wheelchair. And we both have cuts and scrapes all over us from trampling through walls of jagger bushes, with Chooch wailing, “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’RE MAKING ME DO THISSSSSS” and me screaming, “IT’S FOR ART, STFU!!”

By the time Henry came home, Chooch and I were both languid on the couch, eyes glazed over, looking extremely pathetic. “Can we go out to eat?” Henry asked. “I worked so hard today and I’m starving.” With my eyes, I mentally castrated him.

Later that night, Chooch was telling Henry something unrelated to the photo shoot, and added, “I think that was when Mommy was in the car, crying.”

;

;

;

;

I am in a complete state of comedown today. Yesterday was such a blur: I wait all year for it and then it’s over in a whiplash-inducing flash. I’ve already cried in mourning. But the euphoria definitely outweighs the depression!

Before the gates opened.

Finding out Pierce the Veil’s set time was our (my) main priority.

Henry, dryly before Chelsea Grin even took the stage: I can already tell I’m going to love THEM.

I try to let him sit every couple hours.

Emily’s Army. I had a crush on the boy scout.

Ugh, Funeral Party was so sick. Of course there were only 10 people watching them with me because there were no gimmicks or ridiculous wardrobes or KISS-copying.

Waiting for Pierce the Veil.

;

Took this for Chooch. Missed him so much. :(

On the phone with his sister, fondling a broken pair of sunglasses he found on the ground.

AUSTIN CARLILE MAKES ME HAPPY. He screams the demons right the fuck out of my body.

Seriously, the best Mexicans ever. I love Pierce the Veil so hard and will probably start crying about it in 3….2….

The ever-omnipresent Jeffree Starr.

Our annual “I’m Stoked, Henry’s Not” picture. Henry actually did smile a few times though.

LIKE WHEN KELLIN QUINN SANG WITH PIERCE THE VEIL, ADMIT IT HENRY.

Backne popping during Sleeping with Sirens. Please join me in my repulsion.

Finally succumbed to exhaustion around the 7PM mark and crashed on the lawn during Breathe Carolina.

I still have to take the pictures off the regular camera, and I’ll be back with those and an actual account of Henry’s agony.

Fuck, that was the best day of the summer and I can’t wait to do it all over again 100 more times.

You with me, Henry?

Chooch was so pissed that he wasn’t invited to be a part of this photo shoot, so he kept devising ways to photobomb Andrea. At one point, he even threw a tantrum and cried, “You took a million pictures of Andrea and only TWO OF ME!

” Jesus Christ, someone’s in the spotlight way too much for his own good.

Sweet ride to the prom.

This is how she watches TV at home, too.

I would like to point out that it was nearly 100 degrees that day, and Andrea did not bitch once.

I did enough bitching and sweating for the both of us though.

Frondescent fairy. Finally, the weeds in my backyard have a purpose.

Some stuff on my mantle. That awesome killer klown head protruding from the popcorn box was made my friend Chuck, who had me write some descriptions for his new products, like this one here!

Marcy, thoroughly agitated by my frantic walking challenge nightly house-pacing.

There was a furry and a parking meter with handcuffs behind me.

Self Portrait.

Henry’s on the prowl for kittens again.

All this (and more*) happened on a balcony at the Mattress Factory.

(*No really, that was it.)

More later: Henry’s watching Miami Vice, trying to find new hairstyles. Probably he’ll start a new Pinterest board for that shit. Meanwhile, I’m totally inspired to dig out my Miami Vice soundtrack which Henry is apparently not surprised I have.

Good talk.

It is super hot in Pittsburgh. We’ve spent most of the day trying not to melt. So here is my day in pictures because I’m too uncomfortable to sit at the computer and tell you about how a kitten totally made Henry flip his shit.

Spent some time sweating in my favorite cemetery, then the cops came because they apparently like like loitering there too.

Marcy got her hairs brushed out at the pet salon, totally hates her life today.

Chooch found his old pacifier and I suddenly got all wistful, missing the days when I could plug his mouth and enjoy the silence. If today had to be summarized by a hashtag, it would totally be: #STFUkid

Ate sandwiches in another cemetery; Jonny was my date. <3

SPOILER ALERT. Gee, thanks Breaking News.

On our way back to the Sweatbox.

I’ve had this vision for Easter portraits in my head for quite awhile now, but getting Henry to go along with it was not that easy, even for me. Well, that’s not true – it was pretty easy. But he still waited until an hour before we left the house to pull some 13th hour divo stunt and tried to text his son Blake to be a fill-in. I completely lost my shit, started crying, screamed JUST FORGET IT! and stormed off to my bedroom, slamming the door behind me.

As if I wasn’t already stressed enough about the Penguins playoff implosion.

Approximately five minutes later, Henry came upstairs. I forget what exactly he said to me, but it wasn’t a distinct “I am not going to do this” so that gave me hope and I went back downstairs to harp on him some more. I even promised to take the trolley to work all week!

“Look,” Christina whispered to me while Henry was in the kitchen mouthing off about how he hates when I tell him what he’s going to do. “You know he’s going to do it. He just has to put on this little show to keep some of his masculinity.” But then Chooch started crying too because all he knew was that at some point that day, he was going to get to put makeup on, and now suddenly HENRY was going to take that away from him.

“You want me to drive to some abandoned private property, put on makeup and have my picture taken,” Henry barked. “That’s like a trifecta of things I hate.”

“He just learned that word,” I said snidely to Christina.

“You owe me,” he said before he left, and Christina told me later that the part I didn’t hear was him saying, “And I’m not talking about sex, either.” OMG THEN WHAT?!

Did I mention that Henry was also sick all weekend? He had a fever the day before, even.

But because he is the BEST BOYFRIEND EVER, he tucked his tail between his legs and drove us out to Elizabeth, PA (even stopping on his own accord to get an extra pair of bunny ears) where he then stood obediently in front of me while I smeared costume makeup all over his face.

“I’m not laughing,” he snarled as I was doing my signature “laughing til I pee”-squat. But I’m certain I saw the corners of his mouth fighting to curl up.

On Saturday, Christina and I went to Goodwill to grab a dress shirt for Henry. I knew I wanted it to be a certain color, and wasn’t sure yet if I was going to incorporate fake blood, so I didn’t want to run the risk of ruining one of Henry’s TWO WHOLE DRESS SHIRTS.

For once, Goodwill didn’t fail me and I was really pleased with the shirt we found (Henry was of a different opinion), and then on a whim I said, “Let’s see if anything looks good in the boys section.” And holy shit, not only did we find a blazer, but we also found these plaid skinny jeans that happened to be in Chooch’s size. The unfortunate part is that not only are they for girls (who really cares about that though), they’re from that asshole Gwen Stefani’s kids clothing line, and I REALLY CAN’T STAND HER. But at least they were only like, $3.

(They also came with a detachable skirt, which we quickly unbuttoned before Chooch had a chance to notice. Good thing too, because he ended up loving these pants and wanted to wear them all weekend.)

(His tie was also a last minute find, and also for girls; the bottom is encrusted with rhinestones, another thing he didn’t seem to notice.)

I love that he looks like he’s going to a Sex Pistols show.

Fetus came along for the ride. I love him so.

I was angry that there was so much foliage around, so I put Christina to work (she is my slave, after all); she wound up taking all kinds of cuts and scratches back to Ohio with her. She even tried (and failed) to construct a bridge for us to cross over the muddy path that separated us from the small building I wanted to use.

Henry isn’t posing, he’s actually watching for cops because he was so paranoid we were going to get in trouble for trespassing, oh noes.

I can only imagine what goes on his head when I make him do the un-fun parts of the photo shoots. Having Christina there allowed me to get an extra 5 shots out of him, though. Usually he peaces out much sooner.

Did I mention it was over 80 degrees on Sunday? It was.

Afterward, we went to lunch at Blue Flame. I posted one of the bunny pictures of Henry that I had taken with my phone to Instagram and when I showed Henry, he quietly said, “Send that to me.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it’s a picture of me and I have a right to have it!” he said all defensively, because god forbid he should EVER admit that MAYBE he thinks something I did was KIND OF COOL.

Anyway, Henry kind of rules for doing this. And so far, I have not taken the trolley to work this week.