Chooch went to his cousin’s house today to dye Easter eggs, leaving Henry and I with a wide-open beautiful afternoon. And because it was so beautiful today, we decided to skip rollerskating in favor for a hot dog picnic in the cemetery.

I’ve been a fan of Pittsburgh chef Kevin Sousa ever since I had the great fortune of experiencing his memorable vegetarian feast at the Bigelow Grille. It remains, to this day, my all-time favorite dining experience. I’d even go as far as to say it was transcendent.

And when have you ever known me to say something like that? IT WAS TRANSCENDENT.

This is just a pretentious-worded way to say that we went Chef Sousa’s hot dog joint, Station Street Hot Dogs, to fulfill the food portion of our cemetery picnic.

“This is my favorite part of the day,” the super-friendly girl who took out order said as she popped off the caps of our Mexican Cokes.

That was so weirdly endearing to me and it kind of made me love her. Even if the food sucked, the people working there were so nice it would have negated any sour reviews. And you know how I love to write a sour review.

I remember when hot dogs cost fifty cents and Kristy McNichol wasn’t gay.

After we got our hot dogs and fries, we took it to the nearby Homewood Cemetery & masticated the shit of it while sitting on a rock near a pond.

Henry and I both got a chili dog, but mine was of the veggie persuasion. I almost got the Devil Dog instead, because hello–egg salad and potato chips on a hot dog sounds so disgusting it must be right.

But the chili dog had a bonnet of CHEESE CURD and that was enough to sway me. I’m coming back for you, Devil Dog.

Henry’s standard mastication pose.

I don’t know what came over me, but I started pining for the taste of a real hot dog and kept passive-aggressively begging for a bite of Henry’s while wringing my hands. Mine was so good, but the baseball stadium beef stench was wafting from Henry’s bun RIGHT INTO MY FACE.

“God, just take a bite. I’m not going to call the veggie police,” he mumbled.

AND SO I DID. OH GOD I DID. I took a bite and almost cried, it was so good, this Vesuvial eruption of smutty pleasure and smoked guilt on my palate. My first bite of non-soy meat since 1996. (But god only knows how many times my family minced some meat up into their so-called vegetarian holiday side dishes.)  MY WHOLE WORLD IS FALLING APART RIGHT BEFORE MY EYES.

Oh my god, I can’t believe I did that. I don’t even know who I am anymore. Thanks a lot, Ohio.

After I cried and vowed to repent later to my Saint Rita statue, Henry and I went for a walk around the cemetery; I was wearing Henry’s least favorite sweater boots, which make me shuffle my feet like a teenaged girl, so he kept calling me Captain Floppy Feet, but I secretly changed it to Fräulein Floppy Feet because I’m OCD for alliteration.

[ETA: Henry totally waved at a robin while we were walking around the cemetery, and then tried to deny it.]

We didn’t end up doing anything we had planned on Saturday, ditching our itinerary for cupcakes at Vanilla Pastry Studio (still the best, get fucked Dozen) and a leisurely stroll through the Allegheny Cemetery. Well, leisurely for Henry, who ambles about with his hands clasped behind his back, trying to replicate the call of the robins and checking the ground for moss. Elsewhere, Chooch and I are trying to break into crypts and proving once again why we deserve a blue ribbon for being a loudmouth powerhouse.

Chooch’s inappropriate act du jour was making lewd pelvic thrusts at every angel statue we passed.

“That’s how the dead people come out at night,” I explained to Chooch, after trying to get him to slide down into the basement of the crypt. Parenting rules sometimes.

Interior of Chooch’s new home.

Look, I take pictures of flowers with my iPhone. I’m original.

Notice how far ahead of us Henry is. This is typical. He stays about as far away from us as the wildlife.

“Ugh, what is this!?” Chooch cried, picking up what looked to me like a flat, rotten banana. I screamed at him to drop it before a Martian fetus clawed its way out.

“It’s a seed pod,” Henry stated calmly.

“A WHAT?!” Chooch and I screamed in perfect unison.

“A SEED POD!” Henry spat, irritation setting in. And then he tried to explain to us its purpose but we couldn’t hear him over the violent dry-heaving that set in after Chooch split one open.

“You two are fucking idiots,” Henry mumbled, stuffing his hands in his pockets and storming off while Chooch and I continued to gag and spit into the grass.

“OH MY GOD, THEY’RE EVERYWHERE!” I screamed in terror, realizing they WERE ALL OVER THE GROUND.

“Yeah, because they’re dropping from the trees!” Henry turned around and yelled, trying once again to bring order to his nature lesson. This was almost as good as last year’s lecture on rocks versus stones in the same cemetery.

Loving seed pods.

When Chooch isn’t playing Draw Something with my old iPhone, he’s using it to take pictures. A couple was approaching us from up ahead and Chooch walked confidently toward them, blatantly holding up the phone and taking pictures of them.

“Chooch, don’t take pictures of strangers!” I hissed, and yes, I totally am aware of the irony in that statement. But then it turned out that they were just Jehovah’s Witnesses stopping to stuff some literature into Henry’s calloused, heathen hand, so who cares. (He only ended up getting pictures of the road, my legs, and Henry’s crotch anyway.

)

“Here, you need to read this,” Henry grumbled, thrusting a copy of their religious propaganda into my chest. “BOTH of you,” he added, on second thought, glaring at Chooch.

I love that we make so many beautiful family memories in boneyards.

Relevant song for this post:

Sunday was so beautiful. After the hockey game (PENS WON, FUCK YEAH), I suggested that we spend quality family time outdoors, so we went to the cemetery like anyone else would do. I chose the Homewood Cemetery on this particular day because it has a pond and it’s been awhile since we were there last. So many great memories were made in this place. And it’s where Chooch was conceived!

(Kidding. No really, it seems like it would have to be true, but it’s a joke.)

“Look at that tree!” Chooch yelled, pointing to some weird, ugly, low-to-the-ground clump of vegetation. (Not the tree in the above picture.) He covered his mouth and giggled obnoxiously. Not even plants can escape his scathing mockery.

“That’s not a tree,” my Pointdexter Eagle Scout boyfriend corrected. “It’s a rhododendron bush.” And he even pushed up his glasses as he said it.

“Oh boy, I always forget that you’re a nature know-it-all,” I mumbled, picking up my pace. He gets on my nerves with this shit. If it’s not moss education or bird identifying, it’s smug bush naming.

Get a fucking life, Henry.

Ever since that one dickhead made a comment about how I post too many Instagram’d photos, that’s pretty much all I want to do. AND I THINK I WILL. I am full of self-righteousness these days. (I know, what else is new.)

OMG DEER!!

This is like the most anti-Chooch bench of all time. Love to all? Yeah right. He divvies his love in tiny increments between our dead cat Speck, Star Wars, wii and whichever girl he’s fake-hating at school this week. (Names will forever be omitted for the sake of all those Catholic school families who do not want to be associated with any of the Satanic smut on this website.)

This is part of the maintenance building, but it reminded me so much of the Bayernhof Music Museum, that I had to take a picture and send it to Andrea. I should have waited until much later that night, though, so she would have had horrific nightmares of vagina dentata, where the dentata was actually the thrashing lid of a music box. She told me I’m evil — only to my favorites!

It’s a wonder he didn’t fall into the pond. I almost fell into the pond when I was yelling at him about falling into the pond. One of these days, I really am going to fall into a pond and I’ll be part of that small percentage of people who wind up with some nasty parasitic worm swimming up their nostril (I’d say kooka, but I’ve already mentioned vagina once and I’m trying to keep this a Catholic family blog), but if it’s the kind that will make me lose weight, I’ll be fine with it.

“CARRY ME, MY LEGS HURT! I’M SO BORED!” He says bored when really he means LAZY. This kid has so much energy and I have seen him run laps around most other kids on a playground, but if we’re anywhere else where he has to walk like a normal human being, he gets all bent out of shape. Not like I walk like a normal human being, but I can at least walk uphill without having a major fit about it.

(Mostly.)

OMG SO FUCKING TIRED!!!!!!

Oh OK, Nature Dick.

Chooch and I spent most of our walk bickering with each other. I told him lies about cemeteries and Henry would sigh and say, “No, Chooch, that’s not true.” Then he would threaten to hit me with sticks and I would retaliate with threats to leave him there alone over night.

During one of our typical banter sessions, I was frustrated to the point where I said he was my least best friend.

“Yeah, well you’re my frenemy,” he retorted with a smugness.

On the way back to the car, we passed a couple sitting on a secluded bench behind some overgrown bushes.

“WHAT ARE THEY DOING, LOOKING AT DEAD PEOPLE?” Chooch shouted in his normal high-octave voice.

Henry tried to shush him, but then I noticed what they were actually doing so then Henry turned his futile shushing onto me.

“Chooch, do you know what they’re doing?” I asked mischievously.

“WHAT? WHAT ARE THEY DOING?!” he asked, stopping in his tracks and craning his neck toward them again.

“They’re MAKING OUT!” I yelled, and Henry shook his head and walked away while Chooch and I cracked up like two five-year-0lds.

Who needs a playground when there are cemeteries?

We went back to Union Dale yesterday, this time with a fully charged camera battery (apparently our spare is dead forever) and I had a moderate level of success this time.

I was still a big pouty bitch and yelled at Henry a lot because obviously it’s his fault that I am an amateur photographer. (Blame Henry 2012 pins coming soon!

) I am mostly satisfied with the results and now willing to admit that perhaps I need the Xanax hookup.

Finally, a reason to use the real camera! Not that I need a “reason,” but I’ve got to say, taking pictures with my iPhone and then uploading them straight to WordPress has really turned me into a lazy ass fauxtographer.

Henry had one responsibility all day: charge the camera batteries. Well, he did. Except the one is apparently dead forever and the other one he LEFT AT HOME. I managed to take maybe 3 pictures before the camera died and it was back to fauxtography for me. (Insert lots of screaming, swearing, crying and THIS IS THE WORST XMAS EVERing in between all of that though.)

Creepy Doll came with us. I haven’t officially named him, though I HAVE been calling him Buddy a lot. I thought it would be cute to recreate these two pictures from 2007:

Maybe that can happen when I go back with my real camera.

Every Christmas I say, “Next year’s picnic will be better, we’ll plan ahead and make it good.” And then a year goes by and there we are, snatching bags of chips and stale processed baked “goods” off the shelves of CoGo’s, just like the year before. I guess it’s part of the tradition, eating convenience store crap in the cemetery. This year, they were out of egg nog though. Fuck!

As soon as we got out of the car, this wicked gust of wind kicked up out of nowhere and we were fighting to walk through it. It was actually pretty intimidating and I kept telling Henry that I felt it was pure evil and he was sort of giving me this look that read, “What? It doesn’t feel like you at all. It’s much warmer.” It’s weird how some days I can go to the cemetery and carry on my business (gutting hobos to sell to the bait shop) like nothing, but then other days I feel decidedly unwelcome. We wrapped up quickly and split.

I mean, I’m sure Creepy Buddy had nothing to do with it.

Take Two happens today.

I took Andrea to the Southside today to walk off our Pamela’s breakfast, over which I learned that she is morbidly terrified of old people and begged me to not invite some liver-spotted lone diner to join us at our table. I tried to get her to walk in vomit, because those are the types of things I do to my friends. And yet she still bought me the most amazing Sidney Crosby t-shirt of all time.

We had plans to meet Wendy at the Beehive for coffee at noon, and thank god we got there before she did because I almost had to move some guy’s crutches to sit down, but then I said, “I’ll just let Wendy sit here” and took the seat next to Andrea. When Wendy arrived, she tried to sit down and then realized the legs of her chair were entwined with crutches and had to reposition them against the wall, which caused the owner of the auxiliary legs to whip his head around and glare at her.

Meanwhile, Andrea was being aurally raped by the  man and woman behind us who were telling each other about their respective spouses and how unhappy they were. Between them, the Crutch Guy and yesterday’s Eat n Park breakfast buffet disappointment*, I think she was on the verge of writing off Pittsburgh for good.

(*Andrea said she only got the buffet because Henry got the buffet, so she figured it must be OK. “Yeah, but I can eat crappy food,” Henry retorted. He hates taking the blame for anything, which must make life stressful for him when you figure everything is his fault.

Anyway, if that were the case, I suppose we can expect Andrea to start wearing non-descript t-shirts and stuffing her pockets with individually-wrapped prunes as well.)

I kept trying to see what Crutch Guy was doing on the computer. Probably some sort of workman’s comp fraud.

HE WALKED TO THE COUNTER WITHOUT HIS CRUTCHES. WHAT A FUCKING FAKE. He left before we did, but not without giving each one of us a scrutinizing once-over. And then he barely put any weight on the crutches as he walked out. I was so appalled by this and kept saying so, but Andrea and Wendy continued to talk over me because he was old news by then.

Then we followed Wendy out to her part of town because she wanted to take us to a haunted cemetery called Hankey Church in Plum. We ditched my car along the way and rode with her (which was like a dream come true for Andrea because it meant a reprieve from the constant loop of Dance Gavin Dance in my car), but before we got there, I totally started to have a whiny, low blood-sugar meltdown and said, “I either need an apple or a cookie, like now.”

“Well, you can’t eat an unsliced apple, so I guess we need to get you a cookie,” Andrea deduced, because she has been reading up on the Keeping Erin Alive and Tempered handbook. Wendy pulled over at the first grocery store we came upon and Andrea bought me a Snickerdoodle and a Reese’s Pieces cookie. Then she bought two lame thumbprints for herself and Wendy.

At the checkout, the middle-aged cashier asked, “Oh, did you just get out of school?”

Andrea was completely perplexed by this, and as we walked to the car Wendy kept trying to assure her it was because she looks so young and she should be happy, but by this point I was going into apoplectic shock and they mostly sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher; all I could think about was eating the fuck out of one or all cookies.

“I guess because adults don’t come in and just buy four cookies,” Andrea laughed. “I should have bought a pregnancy test, too.” And then there was even more convivial chitchat between those two and why the fuck was no one handing me a goddamn cookie?

I finally got my cookies. I ate both of them so fast that I can’t even remember if I liked them. But I felt instantly better.

Hankey Church is a tiny cemetery semi-enclosed by a white picket fence, but not the kind that makes you dream of planting petunias and playing catch with your freckled kid, mostly because there are old, slanted tombstones beyond it, but also because who dreams of having a freckled kid?

Various supernatural websites  claim there has been reported activity there. “Weightlessness and loss of balance” was listed on one site as being common experiences in the vicinity, and Andrea did actually fall immediately after getting out of Wendy’s car. Oh my god, it was fucking outstanding; the slowest descent I have ever seen in real life.

In fact, it was so stupid how she went down that I actually for a second thought it was a staged pratfall, that she felt bad for hating so terribly on Jonny Craig and all of his ginger brethren, that she was all, “Hey, look at me, ginger gods! Lucille Ball shoutout!”

But then I realized that she had stepped into a slight divet in the ground and I started laughing. Just stood there laughing while she was in this sad, pathetically infantile crawl position on the damp grass.

She was fine, you guys. Don’t worry. Totally not as bad as when she bit it on roller skates the last time she was here.

Her head’s chipped like mine.

I didn’t really feel any weird sensations while we were there, but the creaking noises the trees were making was seriously disturbing me. It sounded like all of these invisible doors were opening down the hill from the cemetery and I whimpered a little.

One source says this headstone is the center for all of the paranormal activity, but my totally accurate EVP iphone app was not picking anything up.

Another source says it’s the vacant lot across from the cemetery, which was once the site of the Hankey Church, which burnt to the ground after the pastor was hanged from a tree out front.

Yet another source says, “There was never a church there, you dumbshits, and that cemetery is a peaceful place with the occasional BJ and date rape.”

However, when Wendy and I were still poking around the cemetery (we found two CD-Rs labeled as some strange Baptist sermons, tucked in a tree),  Andrea was sitting on a large rock across the street. Her back was toward the vacant field and she said she felt legitimately creeped out sitting there, like something was behind her but she was afraid to turn around.

She probably took a lot of amazing spirits back to her hotel room. And they’re probably still laughing about when she fell in a half-inch hole in the ground.

In either case, my Toms were fucked after trudging around that sodden field.

Driving away from the cemetery, I said, “Hey Andrea, remember when you fell and I didn’t help you up?”

“You’re a dick,” she mumbled from the backseat, quietly masterminding a plan to make me a special batch of acid-based eyeshadow.

I know blogging shouldn’t be a chore, but goddamn—-I woke up today and just the thought of all the stuff that happened over the weekend made me feel so exhausted. I guess that’s a sign that it was pretty successful! So while I have the pie party and an awesome night at Castle Blood with Henry and my new friends Rick and Tammy to frenetically type out, I wanted to first share some photos I took of my friends Lauren and Lindsay’s kids yesterday. I was really honored that they wanted me to do this, because I’m no professional, and even more excited when they suggested a cemetery locale. You know how I love me some boneyards.

We did some regular autumn-ish shots and then they got to change into their Halloween costumes. Some of those ones were shot on my mom and aunt’s street (where Lindsay’s parents also live so we all just parked in their driveway, lest my aunt come flying out of her house with a broom and a shotgun). Oh look, here are some of the photos now.

Dean & Olivia: Any kid with pink streaks in her hair is cool in my book, but now I miss my own pink streaks. I think she was scared of me at first (most kids are) but by the end she was posing and then demanding to see the shot on my camera’s screen. Total diva!

Anthony & Tiffany: Tiffany is Chooch’s female counterpart. She loves horror movies and was all excited for a second when she thought the pond at the cemetery was full of piranhas. She was mad toward the end of the second cemetery shoot because it was supposed to be scary but it wasn’t. I mean, Henry was lurking in the background—wasn’t that creepy enough?

These kids did great. Two hours, three locations, and one wardrobe change and they barely bitched. It was at least 80 degrees and I was sweating my ass off, so I can only imagine how hot they were in their costumes. The only one whining was me, though. (I have a low threshold for discomfort, plus Henry was there and his presence always exacerbates the bitch-baby in me.)

Then I spent the day panicking that I fucked it all up, because that is how someone with low self-worth rolls. (Or stumbles, as it were.)

Now, I have to get back to putting things in jars for my murder desk. Ciao for now.

[Originally written in August 2005]

I was delivered a crushing blow this morning in the cemetery as I panted my way back to the car after an hour-long walk/jog amalgamation. (My jogging is something  like 2 parts Corky, 1 part wounded unicorn, garnished with a candied twist of poor eye sight.) It was a hot August day and my hair was dreadlocked with sweat, bugs and dirt, possibly blood, like you’d expect from someone who had just engaged in a spirited flee from Leatherface; this is how I exercise.

Vanity made me freeze as I rounded the edge of the mausoleum next to which I had parked, because not only did I spy my car (homestretch!) but also a suspicious rotund form hovering behind it.

Great, there’s my car, please don’t let this man talk to me. Please don’t let him talk, maybe he won’t see me, please, keep facing straight ahead, no eye contact, so close, so close, so—

All hope was lost as he turned toward me and furtively motioned me over. Trying not to scuff my feet, I grudgingly sidled up next to him.

“Look, two fawn and their mother,” he whispered to me as he pointed down the hill to the valley below.

Terrific, because I don’t see enough deer here in Western Pennsylvania. Still, I feigned interest and together we stood in silence for a few seconds longer. Would he be offended if I walked away? Do I say goodbye first? Small talk protocol is not my strong point.

And then he began talking about deer: what they eat, where they sleep, where they buy their Uggs. I didn’t want to talk about deer. I wanted to go home. Sweat was stinging my eyes at this point and my ankle hurt from when I ran into a slight ditch in the path (things like this wouldn’t happen if I wasn’t so preoccupied with whipping my head around every three seconds, looking out for ghosts and rapists, or the ghosts of rapists) and I could see the silver dome of my car over yonder, pointing and laughing at me.

I hope they don’t get hit by a car was my delightful addition to the conversation before I started to subtly back away. I told him to enjoy his morning to which he countered with, “Have a good walk.”

“Thanks,” I said as I walked the five feet to my car. Thanks? Why did I say thanks?! I was finished with my walk. Now I’m That Asshole who accepts underserved well-wishes.

Because I’m neurotic and as if that man actually cared what I did, I ignored my itchy trigger finger which was waiting impatiently to press down on the button to unlock my car door and I continued walking past it. I’d look like an idiot (to no one but myself) if I get in my car and leave after I just said thanks.

And that’s why, out of principle, I walked an extra fifteen minutes (not like I couldn’t use it, but still) uphill. All because I said “thanks.” As I looped up and around the path, I wondered maniacally about which direction the man had gone. I couldn’t stop thinking about it and the intensity was making me have to pee. What if I ran into him again? Should I turn around? If he was still standing by my car watching the deer by the time I get back…he’d probably think nothing of it. But try rationalizing that to me after I already the devastating finale penned in my head.

And so I kept walking until I reached a path which would have brought me back in the same direction I was headed pre-meeting with the deer watcher, when I noticed him one path below me, taking in the view of the pond. Perhaps he had shifted his awe onto the fish. Had this man maybe not ever seen real life animals before? And then I did this thing that I do where I start to imagine worst case scenarios and I started to feel horribly compassionate for him to the point where I was on the verge of tears. What if his wife was fucking his boss at the zoo and now he has nothing going for him but a stack of National Geographic magazines and memories of skinning buck in Uncle Herb’s storage unit?

Surely he can see me, I thought. If he sees me, he could very well start walking in my direction and we’d end up meeting up at the bottom before I’d have time to hit the next path. He’d maybe want to talk more about the deer, maybe he’d want to tell me how many deer he’s seen in his lifetime. Maybe he even keeps track in a little pocket notebook, and he’d whisk it out of his back pocket to show me the yellowed pages with tiny slashes for each deer sighting. What if he kills people and feeds them to the deer? Do deer eat meat? Maybe he eats the people for himself. Maybe he kills the deer too and then stuffs them with the murdered people and displays them all over his house.

I bet he has a lot of grandfather clocks.

Time stood still for what seemed like eternity. My perspiration had nothing to do with the heat and the laps at this point. This was pure, stinking liquid-fear seeping from my pores and sluicing down my temples.

So I kept walking further away from my car. My right contact lens, clinging onto my eye with its last few ounces of suction, hated me. But I had sacrifices to make in the name of small talk avoidance. (See also: murder; abduction; rape.)

I eventually made it back in the opposite direction and, right before the bend in the path which would show me my car, I quietly slipped behind the mausoleum wall and peeked around the corner. Clear.

For all I know, this man could have very well left the cemetery and gone to feed (deer to) the homeless before swinging by the hospital to read children books (about deer). Yet here I was, playing cloak-and-dagger with some stranger and he didn’t even know.

Maybe I should just get a tread mill.

[The final shots can be seen here]

In between Chooch’s extreme divo antics, we actually had a pretty good time at the Evans City Cemetery last Sunday, even though every ten minutes found me asking, “OMG are we going to get yelled at?” every time a random person would approach.

It always turned out to be a fellow zombie enthusiast though, some having traveled as far as New York and Tennessee. Wendy was about 4 seconds away from developing a Facebook friendship with one of the creepier of the graveyard tourists.

Zombie Guy Smiley

This is pretty much all Henry did the whole time: stood around with a stupid smirk on his face, playing Words with Friends and being of little assistance.

We dined on Burger King, post-boneyard romping. Andrea was intrigued by the “zesty sauce” I got with my onion rings, because the Burger Kings in California have apparently not caught on to this condiment craze.

She tried it and immediately deemed it “too zesty.” Maybe her palate is just “too pedestrian.”

Then we were treated to a long, obnoxious ride home because Chooch lost the magnet to his Drawing Thing pen back in the cemetery and had nothing to keep him busy but the sound of his whiny bitch-factory voice. Besides Andrea going back to California, that was probably the lowest point of the whole weekend for me.

I’m working backwards here, but I couldn’t wait any longer to post these. This definitely turned out to be my favorite cemetery photo shoot ever.

Chooch could have stood to be more cooperative (children! ugh), but it was overall a really fun day. Wendy even came out to spectate and then wound up a victim. Meanwhile, Henry leaned against the car for most of the time, playing Words With Friends and being annoyed.

It was awesome!

[Majority of the makeup effects were achieved using My Pretty Zombie cosmetics. Look for the limited edition Zombify set coming soon!]

Hey zombie fans! Halloween may be a few months away, but if you’re a true lover of the undead, it’s never too early for cemetery-flocking and brain-craving. And just for you guys, I have re-added some zombie-related shit to my Somnambulant shop.

If you’re a real George Romero fanatic, you might be aware that Night of the Living Dead was filmed an hour or so outside of Pittsburgh in the Evans City Cemetery. I’ve turned some of my photos from that very cemetery into pendants, and by that I mean I literally make 4 every six months because this crafting business is exhausting, you guys.

Actual photos, which I am hoping to have available for purchase sometime in the near future over at Appledale Snaps:

And here they are in pendant-form:

They’re $15! Go get one!

Here is what people are saying about them:

Jane from Ass Stew, Arkansas purrs, “I spent my last $10 on this pendant instead of cat food. Now my cat’s dead, but at least I have a cool pendant. And something to eat.”

Timothy from Toenail, Utah writes, “Gave this to my mother for her birthday. She keeps saying it feels like zombies are trying to burst through her chest like it’s a brick of solid grave dirt.

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This makes me happy because I hate my mother.”

Ulysses from PeePoo, Canada signs, “Ever since I bought one of these, pianos keep coming dangerously close to falling on me as I walk through seedy neighborhoods collecting money for the deaf. Clearly this is a good luck charm.”

If you’re in the market for paper goods, maybe looking for some sort of LOVE card to give to the mailman you’re stalking, I have some zombie-flavored note cards over in my other shop, non compos cards:

It’s proven that this card will brainwash even the chastest of priests into falling in love with you. Besides, the zombie was drawn by Chooch!

This concludes my quarterly plea for sales.

Carry on.

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.

Yesterday was a pretty nice day, so I cajoled Henry into going for a walk in the cemetery with me and Chooch. He was pretty equivocal about it at first, because even something as normal-sounding as a “walk” or “stroll” can lead to certain headaches, arguments and popo run-ins when I’m involved.

Nothing like a nice Jamaican Lager in the boneyard.

A view through Henry’s new glasses. At first they made him look like BTK, but they’ve grown on me. He’s at least halfway to aging scene king now.

I forgot about how INTO NATURE Henry can be. Within two minutes, he had pointed out deer, turkey and squirrels before turning his attention skyward in search of birds.

“LOOK, THERE IS A WOODPECKER, OMG!” he cried desperately at one point, and I had about ten year’s worth of cemetery-walk flash backs, most notably the unlimited minutes he spent schooling me about moss in ’04. Get a fucking life with your nature shit.

Inspecting a dumping ground for what I embarrassingly mistook for rocks but were really STONES (rookie mistake, really), Henry shook his head in disbelief and said to no one in particular, “I can’t believe they’d just dump those stones there. Those are EXPENSIVE stones. THEY ARE CUT STONE AND MARBLE!”

That is the sort of guy I’m dating, the one who knows the difference between a mere skipping pebble and EXPENSIVE STONES, yet it gets us nowhere.

Imagine your town molester, taking a break from copping feels to amble slowly through the park, hands clasped behind his back and smiling sweetly to himself while his unmarked white van idles sinisterly in front of the middle school down the street.

There, now you know what Outdoors Henry look like!

Henry must have been getting under Chooch’s skin as well, because I overheard him quietly cantillating at one point, “Zombies/Come kill my dad/He’s annoying me.”

My favorite place in the whole wide world.

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.

“It’s nice to know you made a sandwich for you and Chooch, but not me,” Henry said, peeking inside the Iron Man snack pack Chooch uses for school.  Hey, I never promised him a ribbon-topped box of consideration for Christmas. Chooch and I waited impatiently for him to make a sandwich and then we finally set off for our (my) favorite cemetery on the Northside of Pittsburgh.

Henry was worried that our car would get stuck on the unplowed cemetery lanes, which is his way of saying, “I think this is the dumbest tradition ever and sandwiches don’t taste good when eaten while my dick is getting frost-bitten.” I knew that the dead people wouldn’t let ourcar get stuck.

NOT ON CHRISTMAS! Who the fuck else is going to visit these old, forgotten bones?

Chooch loves going to the cemetery on Christmas.

I  mean, I used to always just  assume he did when he was too young to really have a say, but now this brat is so strong-willed that I know he would be all, “Oh hell no!” if he really didn’t want to do something. Because that’s what he says.

“I don’t look pissed off enough,” Chooch said. “Take another.”

A much better depiction of my child

For the forty-five minutes we spent amongst the dead, I was completely at peace and stress-free. But there were family-obligations looming ahead, so I should have known that wouldn’t last long.