Well, you guys. Chooch is home from his first day of third grade and you’d think he’d just worked a 15 hour day on Wallstreet with how EXHAUSTED, IRRITABLE and STRESSED he is.

“I haven’t had a chance to relax ALL DAY!

” he wailed when we got out of the car after they picked me up from work. “I JUST WANT TO GO IN THE HOUSE.

”

Henry and I just kind of paused and watched him lurch himself dramatically up the driveway and into the house, where he proceeded to lie down in bed for approx. 5 minutes before one of the neighbor kids came to get him and now suddenly he’s Mister Sunshine.

Ugh. Kids.

(OMG WHY IS HE IN THIRD GRADE ALREADY????

)

It rained most of the morning and afternoon here in Pittsburgh, so I treated myself to a binge-session of the new (and final) season of The Killing. (This TV series has seriously affected me in some mysterious ways and I am so happy that Netflix revived it long enough for the series to get a proper wrap-up, but also devastated that it’s donezo.)

Then the rain broke, so I made Chooch go for a walk with me to try to balance things out. I hate being even a little sloth-like. This is why, even when I’m sick, I don’t rest. I brought my camera because I’m trying to get back into the habit of taking pictures of Chooch. I’ve been L-Z when it comes to using my camera lately, and then when I’m like, “Henry I want a new camera, buy me a new camera, Henry” he’s like “Why? You barely use the one you have.” True story. So if you’re ever thinking, “Why is she getting worse at this instead of better?”, well, that’s why.

But at least I’m getting a little better at remembering to bring the camera with me. Baby steps!

We walked to the abandoned Bradley School, which used to be a school for deaf kids. (Or blind? I’ve been there often enough, kicking around shards of broken glass, that you would think I would know this.)

This was Chooch’s idea. “Take a picture of me looking evil, and then photoshop a dead girl behind me.”

Chooch wants me to call this one “I’m Beautiful and Fabulous.” Done.

It occurred to me, halfway through our fauxtoshoot, that no one knew where we were. So I texted Henry and told him “you know, in case something happens to us.” And all he said was “ok.” No “good luck” or “please be careful” or “OMG I”m so afraid for you” or “PLEASE DON’T TALK TO STRANGERS.”

Not even a reminder to be mindful of the “CAUTION: ASBESTOS” signs posted all over the property.

Don’t worry: we kept out.

Spoiler alert: we made it home safe and sound and Henry was like “ok.” Then I watched the series finale of The Killing and bawled my little bitchy eyes out. I’ll miss you, Linden and Holder. :(

If you’ve been to our house at all this summer, chances are, Chooch was shirtless. He’s about to learn the hard way what those “no shirt, no service” signs mean, I guess.

Me: Pretend like you’re an angel.
Chooch (& me): PAHAHAHAHAHA.

For someone who acts like having his picture taken is the equivalent of needles in the eye and Iggy Azalea in the ears, he sure has a hard time NOT SMILING when I tell him DON’T SMILE. You should see all the twisted lips in the pictures I didn’t use.

And for someone who didn’t want “gold shit” on his lips, he still has it on an hour later. So…..

Remember when I was so excited to start my new daylight shift at work because it meant that I would get to spend more time with Chooch? WELL THAT HASN’T HAPPENED. I forgot that in summer, kids go AWOL. Every fucking evening, he’s running around with the neighbor kid and then when he finally comes in for the night, like a fucking outside cat who just wants somewhere dry to sleep, he is a total bitch-boy. I know it’s because that damn neighbor kid is rubbing off on him. AND I DON’T LIKE IT.

Anyway, when I was sitting by the river like a homeless person during my lunchbreak today, I got all wistful and nostalgic and started re-watching some of my Instavids starring Chooch, and then I made a compilation and cried over it because I’m a loser who was abandoned by her kid.

I’m sighing so hard right now. So please enjoy these video clips of my son who forgot that he has a mom. :(

Throwback to last Friday when my son wasn’t acting like a 2-year-old crack baby who had just been uncaged in front of a bunch of my co-workers and making me want to melt into a puddle of humility. Apologies to you, my work friends. Sigh.

We let him experiment with some colored hair gel to see if he wants to dye his hair for real. Henry was all, “I’m not going through the hassle of bleaching his hair just for him to change his mind.” I love that Henry just knows this would be his responsibility.

Contrary to popular belief, this is not actually our house in front of which Chooch is posing.

Ours is a little smaller.

****

Still collecting my thoughts on the two shows I went to this past week. Hopefully tomorrow I will slap together a muzik post. Maybe you’ll read it. Maybe you won’t. I probably won’t find out. (BUT MAYBE I WILL.)

Stumbled upon this weird ass flower last weekend in Frankenmuth, MI. I think I heard someone call it a Chooch.

This morning, we were on the way to Chooch’s piano lesson when he started cracking up from the backseat. I figured he was watching some lame YouTube video, which he is wont to do, but then, in the voice of a hick derelict, he blurted out, “These dead broads ain’t gon’ bury themselves!”

And that’s when I realized he was reading my blog.

OK, not technically my blog, but a photo book that I made a few years ago about one of our visits to the Westmoreland County Fair. A box full of some of the shit I brought home from work was in the backseat with Chooch, and he had pulled that book out of it and started reading it unbeknownst to me.

So this book is essentially my blog post from that fair, compiled with photos and additional commentary into a Shutterfly book. This was back when I was all gung-ho about turning all of my county fair posts into photo books (I made two and then gave up; I can’t sit still for that long). And now Chooch was reading it and honest to god laughing so hard, he was crying.

On one hand, I was like, “YES! THIS RULES! MY SON THINKS I’M FUNNY!” But on the other hand, I was like, “Oh fuck, did I put any fucked up things in that book?” OK, let me rephrase that: “WHAT KIND of fucked up things did I put in that book?” I mean, eventually, he is probably going to start reading my blog. It’s really weird and awkward to think about it, because I have quite literally accounted for his entire life thus far, right here on this blog and my old LiveJournal. I can only imagine how surreal that’s going to be for him, especially when he realizes that MOMMY HAD A LIFE BEFORE HIM.

But let’s face it: I’m kind of an asshole on here. I swear a lot. I use sex metaphors whenever possible. I write disparaging (THOUGH LOVING!

) sentiments about Henry. Maybe these are things that a kid shouldn’t read until adulthood?

Just putting my parenting cap on here for a sec.

However, it’s not like he currently has some glorified image of his mother. He knows mama ain’t no Donna Reed. We have real time banter with each other that’s not unlike the things I might write on here, it’s very uncensored and laid back here in our peasant shack,  so I don’t think he would be too shocked by very much. Obviously, this isn’t to say I’m going to coo, “Here, 8-year-old, let’s read aloud from Mommy’s disgusting blog before bedtime.” He’s got a few more years left before that becomes a reality.

But until that day, it’s nice to know he’s not only a fan, but he knows what “cacophony” means! Henry probably doesn’t.

The greatest thing happened on Mother’s Day. No, Henry didn’t propose. But we were on our way to the cemetery and Chooch piped up from the backseat, “Put on ‘Strawberry Swisher Part 3’.”

THAT IS A DANCE GAVIN DANCE SONG IN CASE YOU DIDN’T KNOW. And my kid was requesting it of his own volition. My heart swelled past the size of his mysterious bee sting. So of course I tweeted about it and said it was the best mother’s day present ever, and Dance Gavin Dance retweeted me! Like any other 16-year-old, I freaked out because OMG A BAND ACKNOWLEDGED ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA. Seriously, that’s the best thing ever about twitter and Instagram. I have a collection of screenshots for every time this happens because it excites me, OK? I’m just some dumb mom from Pittsburgh but then Craig Owens likes a picture I posted of him on Instagram and I feel special for 5 seconds. Let me have my moment.

Tiniest bit of donut icing on his lip. I have eight year’s worth of photos of Chooch’s dirty face. No sense in starting to wash it now.

But even better than that was that other people were retweeting it because DGD did and I wound up having a nice exchange with this teenaged girl who told me that I need to know I win the Mom of the Year award for the rest of eternity and that she wishes her mom was cool like me and she hopes she will be that kind of mom to her own kids someday and I was like, “BABE, DON’T LOSE YOUR LOVE OF MUSIC AND YOU’LL BE FINE.” Because really, I can’t imagine how stale my life would be without that.

I don’t really consider myself a “cool” mom because this is just me being myself.

I’m just an awkward girl determined to find balance between being a mom and staying true to who I am, and that meant not putting music in the background, but keeping it a prominent fixture in my life where Chooch can experience and love it too. He asked me to put Spotify on his phone and now he finds himself falling into those magical wormholes and it makes me so excited for him because we all have those songs that we vividly remember discovering for the first time. Anytime I hear songs that I loved when I was his age, it’s like I’m suddenly sitting in my mom’s old Pontiac Grand Am with the McDonald’s sweet and sour sauce stain on the backseat. I wonder if it will be like that for Chooch, too.

God knows our car has enough stains in it.

Music is even more fun when you get to share it with someone. And it’s even better when that someone is your kid. But you can swap that out with so many different things: sports, movies, art. I think it’s so important to have that one thing to bond over where your kid is seeing you not as a parent, but as a PERSON WITH INTERESTS.

We don’t always have to be in parent-mode. See? Being a parent is not always lame, you guys! Except for when it’s VIP day at school. Which it was today. I have a feeling there will be several bullet points devoted to that later on.

OK, you’re dismissed. Now go listen to music with someone you love today!

It’s pretty rare that I get to pick Chooch up from school because of my work schedule, but since I was off on Friday, I got to stand awkwardly in front of the school with all the parents who like to stare at me because I must have some blinding aura emanating from my body, alerting them to my motherfucker ways. I mostly just ignore it and pretend like something really interesting is happening on my phone. Make them think I’m important!

Chooch was really excited for two reasons: he didn’t have to go to the after school program (which he actually likes but who wants to hang around school any longer than they have to?) and he knew that Bill, Jessi and Tammy were en route from Detroit(-ish area).

He gave me a hug (for show, trust me), and then immediately started with the inquiries and whininess.

“ARE THEY HERE YET? WHEN? ARE THEY BRINGING ME PRESENTS!?”

“Don’t be rude!” I snapped, because while Chooch is surprisingly pretty good at not being a total spoiled brat, he does sometimes focus too much on “presents” and “things” and “money” which I know is probably normal for an 8-year-old but motherfuck, that shit is grating.

We were still on school property when this conversation began to escalate, and just as we rounded the corner by the crossing guard, he stopped dead in his tracks, puckered up his face, and burst into tears.

“Oh my fucking god,” I hissed. “Don’t you even start!” thinking that he was being a crybaby because I wouldn’t tell him if he was getting presents or not. I mean, his birthday party was the next day, and the last time I checked, presents are given at those things, so STFU.

But then I noticed that these weren’t crocodile tears. He was slightly slumped over, hugging himself like he had just been punched in the gut. What did I miss?! We were walking and everything was fine until it inexplicably was no longer fine. I had no idea what was happening, but I made sure to raise my hands up in an “I didn’t do it!” motion because there were parents and teachers EVERYWHERE. I’m slightly afflicted by something that I like to call the Stonick Syndrome, which was ingrained into me after an entire childhood of hearing my grandma cry, “What will the neighbors think?!” over any tiny thing that might chip her porcelain perfection (babies out of wedlock, a fat granddaughter, weeds in the garden, a car more than three years old, etc.). No matter how hard I try to stay chill and maintain a “who gives a fuck” veneer, I can’t always fight the Stonick in me and my synapses are secretly firing “HEADS UP: PEOPLE ARE LOOKING AT YOU” warnings into every lobe of my dumb brain. To be honest, I don’t really think that very many people were rubber-necking. I mean, Chooch was doing a good job of not getting full-on Erin Rachelle Kelly with the histrionics, so aside from his tears and beet-red face, he wasn’t exactly drawing a crowd of gawking bystanders. Except that in front of us was this mom who reminds Chooch of Antoine Dodson, the Bedroom Intruder guy, so every time he sees her, he starts quietly singing, “He’s climbing in yo’ window, snatching your people up….”

She was definitely looking.

I had no idea what was going on. I kept asking Chooch but he just stared back at me with this awful look of anguish twisted upon his face. Then I saw him pull his shirt away from his chest and swat at something which whizzed away in response.

A bee. OK, he was stung by a bee and not assaulted by something that the Winchester’s are hunting. But then I remembered that he had never been stung by a bee before.

So instead of taking my child into my arms and soothing him with my maternal embrace, I froze. He’s standing there in so much pain that he can barely talk, and I’m like, “Fuck, I wasn’t prepared for this.” And then flashes of My Girl go through my mind and I’m like, “Fuck², please don’t be allergic!”

(Which is kind of funny because Anna Chlumsky had a small role in “Hannibal”, which I was catching up on last week and thought to myself, “I totally forgot that My Girl broad existed.” Touché, UNIVERSE.)

I tried not to panic in front of him and kept robotically saying things like “It.is.OK.child.” and “You.are.not.going.to.die.” and “Beep.beep.Mom.Powers.Activate.” while frantically dialing and redialing Henry’s stupid number because I CAN’T HANDLE THIS OMG IS MY KID GOING TO DIE!? Honestly, I was freaked out. If I was smart, I would have just pushed him right back inside the school and made the damn nurse deal with it, but instead, I forced my Jello-legs to walk and gave him flat pep talks for the three blocks back to our house. Meanwhile, Henry finally answered and calmly asked me questions that I couldn’t answer because my brain was swelling inside my head and pouring out of my ears because if any one is allergic to anything, it’s me and parental responsibility. Oh, the horror of having to actually put on my mom jeans and save my kid with whatever that shit was in the bathroom closet that Henry told me to spray on the bee sting. So now, in the eyes of the pitch-forked parents that are always holographed in my imagination, it appears like I’m walking down the sidewalk while my son is very visibly suffering from some sort of trauma that I definitely inflicted with my own hand and don’t mind me, I’m just over here ignoring him while casually talking to my girlfriend on the phone about our stories. “OMG and then Hope found out Bo is actually her brother who is actually a little person living inside of an animatronic body cavity….”

Because that’s totally how it looked. NOTHING TO SEE HERE, CARS DOING 10 MPH PAST US IN THE SCHOOL ZONE.

Somehow we made it home without falling into the jaws of a shark or being twerked on by Miley Cyrus, but not before walking past our neighbor and getting the hairy eyeball from her because yes, I pushed my kid into a bee hive. I can’t help it! It’s what I do.

See? Stonick Syndrome. It’s always waiting to surface. WHAT WILL THE NEIGHBORS THINK.

“Did you get the stinger out?” Henry asked in a follow-up phone conversation because I had hung up on him after I got the initial info I needed. There is no need for exit salutations. It’s “end call” for me and that’s it. You want a “goodbye I love you”? Go get it from your mama, Henry.

“The what now?” I asked dimly. And he explained to me that it was important to get the stinger out but I didn’t see anything jutting out of Chooch’s flesh so one less thing for my fake-Mom persona to do, I guess.

Please don’t think Chooch had quieted down during his visit with Half-Assed Nurse Erin. No, he was wailing “WHYYYYYY?!” over and over as I spritzed him with whatever that shit* was that Henry made me dig around the bathroom closet for. OK, Nancy Kerrigan! A little louder in case the neighbors didn’t hear.

*(It started with a b….bleach? No, that’s not it.)

By the time Bill, Jessi and Tammy got there that evening, the bee sting had swelled to the size of Jonny Craig’s left hand tattoo. Oh my god, you guys are so stupid, JUST FORGET IT. It had swelled to the size of A SAUCER, ok? Is that better?! Should I sketch it out for you? I would post a picture but I’m not trying to get child services sicced on me again, and also, I didn’t take a picture.

In addition to being the size of Jonny Cra—-a saucer, the wound was deep maroon with raised edges. It looked totally deadly and I was like, “Are we sure he’s not allergic?” while waiting for a legion of baby spiders to burst out of the center. Henry, who had apparently asked Google, assured me that we would have found out immediately if he was allergic.

We talked about stingers some more and Tammy told us that you can use a potato slice to draw the stinger out and for some reason, this home remedy tip irritated Bill, who apparently only believes in the miracle of modern medicine and not Granny’s pantry, so now I hope he gets stung by a bee and the only one there to save him is Tammy and a good ol’ Idaho tater.

It was even bigger the next day (I don’t know, salad plate-sized) and Chooch said it was actually painful to be too active, so I was worried about his birthday party. But he still ran around like a feral dog and took great pleasure in showing his battle wound to all of his friends. And then he spent the rest of the weekend obsessing about bees and bee stings and Googling other insects that sting and watching YouTube videos of people getting stung by things and basically becoming hyper-aware of every single thing around him. We went to the cemetery on Mother’s Day and he straight up whimpered when he saw something flap past his face. It was a fly.

He’s even reached a point where he’s psycho-analyzing the situation, wondering why the bee chose to sting him. Why didn’t the bee like him? What did he ever do to the bee? I told him that I used to save bees from drowning in my Pappap’s pool when I was a kid so they never sting me and he was like “Oh, aren’t you a peach. Shut up.”

It seems like it’s always Chooch and me versus something, isn’t it? Anyway, I would be remiss not to chronicle this totally dramatic tale here, because it’s a first and isn’t that what parents do? Keep a log of their kids’ firsts? First bee sting: Friday, May 9, 2014. Boom. Done.

Chooch’s LOLCat Party Attendees:

• Bill, Jessi and Tammy (all the way from Michigan for the meowtivities!)
• Corey
• Chris and Monica
• John, Jenn, Abby and Gavin
• Kara, Harland and Theo
• Christy, Claire, Anthony and Julia
• Kristy and Sarah
• Danielle, Cory and Ean
• Lisa and Gigi
• My dad
• My sister Amy, Dick and Brooke
• Kari and Katelyn
• Patty, Tim, Tim’s mom Sue and sister Kaylie
• Angie and Rachel
• Wendy
• Judy
• Red Sticky Hand
• Missy, Jim, Jemma and James
• Janna
• Owen
• Liam
• Lucy
• Sharyn
• Sophia and Olivia

I’m going to try and keep this short and sweet since there are so many pictures, but Chooch’s 8th birthday party went off without a hitch! Well, mostly. It rained the entire time. And I don’t just mean a light drizzle. It poured, and there was the occasional clap of thunder too, which was fantastic. So, OK, I guess that counts as a hitch, whatever a hitch even is. But the kids gave no shits about the spring downpour and ran around like maniacs, getting all disgusting and muddy. Their moms didn’t seem to care, so I decided that I shouldn’t care either. Which is hard for me, relinquishing care.

Decorating was super easy this year because I have finally surrendered to streamers. We just don’t get along, and it’s OK. No one cares about streamers anyway. I would like to add though that Henry had absolutely no hand in decorating because he so conveniently took an entire hour to pick up the cake and grab “odds and ends” at the dollar store. I interpreted this to mean that he parked his Faygo van in an alley somewhere and listened to the Frozen soundtrack.

Thank the lord I had Jessi, Tammy and Bill here to help. They are heaven sent! (Or “Michigan sent.” Whichever.) I can’t believe I just used such a cheesy description, but I am just THAT thankful for their extra helping hands, I guess. Get off my back.

Bill blew up balloons, which Tammy and Jessi hung with great care and precision. They don’t fuck around with balloon-placement.

Tammy and Jessi helped me decorate cat cookies the night before the party. It was actually a lot of fun (there was wine involved)! The cookies didn’t last long though—they were a big hit with the kids and approximately zero were left over! Pretty damn happy about that. Even though Pillsbury actually made them.

Originally, I wanted to make Grumpy Cat donuts using bakery donuts and then decorating them the rest of the way on my own, but it ended up being so humid on Friday night that it was a failed effort from the start. All the icing was dripping down the sides plus Henry bought the wrong kinds of donuts and if we hadn’t had company in the house, I probably would have used one as a boxing glove and sucker punched Henry in the mouth.

So, that’s what’s up with the Grumpy Cat sign up there.

These were my idea! PB&J cat heads in the house! Henry made them though because what do I know about Rice Krispie treats? Not a damn thing. It was so hard not to put them all in my mouth though when I was helping Henry press them into cat heads Saturday morning, because they smelled so goddamn good!!

I just wanted a reason to have a Marcy lookalike saying “Balls!” The kids ate the shit out of this jug like they’ve never seen a damn cheese ball before, and it was nuts. At first, they were using a serving spoon to fill cups with cheesy crack balls, but after awhile, it became a snack-fisting free-for-all. There was a little bit left in the jug by the end of the party, but I made the executive decision to pitch it, because—gross.

Every year, I get all nervous about the kids from Chooch’s school because I suck at talking to parents. But Bill reassured me that I was doing a great job after I talked to Owen’s mom in a (what felt like) effortless fashion because thankfully Chooch had gotten stung by a bee the day before on his way home from school, so I had something to talk about. “Thankfully.” You know what I mean!

Anyway, three cheers for being relatable for once.

And just as people started to arrive, Henry decided that it was time to start grilling, which he impressively dragged out into a three-hour task. HOW CONVENIENT.

I know, Gigi. That’s how I feel when I look at Henry, too

Here is where I was too tired to use the real camera anymore and relied entirely on my phone.

Thank god we had the foresight to buy these stupid cat things and provide crayons and markers because this kept the smaller kids happy and the bigger kids occupied when the rain started to fall too hard.

Meanwhile, Henry was grilling.

I think the children responded well to my sarcasm all afternoon.

My old office-neighbor, Angie. I MISS HER!! :( Also, she just ran the Pittsburgh Marathon, you guys. THE WHOLE THING.  She’s a beast.

Where was Henry? Oh, yeah: grilling.

FAMILY! I was so excited to have so much of it there. Here’s Henry’s mom and my cousin Cory. Not shown: Cory’s mom Danielle and brother Ean, my brother Corey, my dad (yay!), my sister Amy and her family. I was bummed that Henry’s sister and her kids couldn’t make it. It was really weird not having them there! But even still, this might have been the most family I’ve had under one roof in more than a decade, I’m not even joking right now. I know Chooch was too busy splashing around in the rain with his posse to care, but someday when he’s older he’ll get to look back on this and see that there are lots of people who love him. And for me, it showed that there is still hope for my side of the family. Maybe we all didn’t get to grow up together, but we’re together now and that’s pretty fucking cool. SORRY TO GET ALL SERIOUS AND HALLMARK CHANNEL. I’ll add more swears to my next blog post.

Chris and Monica sat at the kids table and loved it.

No sign of Henry! Must be grilling! I didn’t realize we even bought that much to grill so if your burger tasted weird, perhaps it was one of the guests who mysteriously didn’t show up.

Or just a squirrel.

Squirrel, why do you have to be so challenging to spell? I want to type “squireel” every single time.

OMG the cake. The goddamn cake. Those kids WOULD NOT STOP TOUCHING IT. And then someone  closed the lid because they were tired of the cake collecting fingerprints and no one told that person that the box wasn’t supposed to be closed because the cake would get smashed. OK THAT PERSON WAS ME, GOD! Sorry for ruining the cake! (Also, this is the first time I’m admitting it so now I’m starting the countdown to when Henry finds out.) SORRY SORRY SORRY!!

Anyway, when we decided on the cat theme, I knew right away that we had to get the cheeseburger cake from Bethel Bakery. It’s pretty legendary, but I never had a use for it before. Especially because I’m a vegetarian. (Although I guess we could pretend it was supposed to be a Boca Burger?) My plan was to order the burger cake and then print out the I Can Has Cheezburger cat to stick into the top of the cake, and it seemed to be a pretty big hit, so thank you Bethel Bakery and your novelty cake offerings.

“I always wanted the cheeseburger cake for my birthday!” my brother Corey sighed.

“Aw,” I deadpanned. “I guess your parents didn’t love you enough.”

And then we laughed because it’s true!

So then we all sang Happy Birthday and I had to fight my way to the front like I was at a Jonny Craig show, wtf he’s my kid, MOVE OUT THE WAY! MOM WITH A CAMERA COMING THROUGH! Kids get so clingy and possessive at birthday parties!

Henry was there long enough to light the candles and then disappeared. So everyone was standing there, about to riot because they wanted cake and they wanted it now, but no one was there to cut it! I started to panic and made eye contact with Sharyn’s grandma, who started cracking up.

“Where did he go?!” I cried, and she pointed over to the grill. (AGAIN WITH THE GRILL!) He does this shit to me every year, I fucking swear to god. So I had to do the bottom lip-jut and ask my cousin Danielle to take the cake by the reins, and she did just that! Thank god for Danielle! My mom was such an astute cake cutter, but she never thought to pass those skills on to her dumb daughter, I guess. One time, I had a birthday party for Lisa and was so frustrated when it came to cutting the cake, that I threw down the knife and started plating fistfuls.

Meanwhile, Corey somehow fell into the role of a babysitter while Christy went to pull her car down closer to the pavilion and he was panicking about it because he’s about as fluent in childcare as I am. Then when she came back, one of her kids was sitting at an entirely different table and had a piece of cake. I think Corey should start a nanny service as a real estate side gig!

Kristy’s wrap-job was one of my favorite parts of the day! AND SHE BROUGHT ME A PACK OF PEE WEE’S PLAYHOUSE CARDS. Later the weekend, Henry saw them sitting on the table and asked, “Who got Chooch the Pee Wee—–”

“THOSE ARE MINE!” I snapped before he could finish.

Here’s Bill making sure no sticky red hands try to take off with Chooch’s presents. He had a lot of fun interactions with the under-10 set that day and I think he should dust off the ol’ LiveJournal to tell us all about it.  Meanwhile,  the gift opening segment of the day was basically the only time Henry stepped in so I could actually talk to my friends for a hot minute. Apparently, Lucy and one of the twins had Chooch flanked and were assisting him, because deciding which present to open next is apparently rocket science.

I wasn’t there when this happened, but Henry supposedly made some comment about how nice it must be to have TWO girlfriends to help when he can’t even get ONE girlfriend to help and then Monica said something that he didn’t hear and I’m willing to bet it was hilarious so Monica, if you’re reading this and you remember this part of Rain Fest 2014, please tell me!

Corey was so excited to tell me that Lisa’s baby threw up on Janna.

“See that wet spot on Janna’s leg? THAT’S WHERE THE PUKE WAS!” and then we just started laughing uncontrollably. I was so excited about it that I high-fived him. This was the highlight of the day for me and I didn’t even get to see it!

One of the girls started crying near the end of the party (not because of me! She was scared because her grandma left) and I honestly was so awkward and uncomfortable about it. Only I’m allowed to cry at parties, you guys, come on now. Unfortunately, “go go, maternal instincts!” is not something that actually works for icy broads like me.

I should have just told her to go sit with Corey.

We only had one game planned, because there’s a playground next to the pavilion and anytime we’ve had parties in the park, the kids seem fine with free-form play. Plus, I don’t know how to do the whole “structure” thing. Can you imagine me being all, “Children! Children, come now! Time for ring around the rosy!” No, you can’t. But then we decided that in lieu of a litter box cake, which is overdone and just disgusting anyway, that we should have a game involving a litter box. So we filled this pan thingie up with sand (Henry bought the wrong kind and it was damp and sooooo gross to touch, which I guess is a good thing in this case) and then numbered a bunch of Tootsie Roll poop.

I spent ALL WEEK painstakingly wrapping dollar prizes with corresponding numbers written inside of cat heads. Just like the rubber duck game that pretty much all carnivals do. PRIZE EVERY TIME. Just not good prizes. But one of the prizes was more annoying than the other prizes.

I almost forgot about the game, so some of the kids had already left by this point (again: structure what now?), but I hurried up and made the rest of them sift around for poop, and then of course they all fought over the prizes they won and some of them kept begging to go again and asking if they could trade. Finally, I was like, “DO WHAT YOU WANT I DON’T CARE OMG” because kids, amirite? I can actually still hear them hounding me. AND WHERE WAS HENRY? Where indeed.

I don’t think Wendy kept her stupid prize. How insulting!

Everyone started heading out around 5. Lisa asked me to throw away a napkin that she had wrapped in plastic. “Be careful, Gigi’s puke is on that,” she warned. As I was walking toward the garbage can, I saw Janna sitting at a picnic table with Henry’s mom and I COULD NOT RESIST, HAD TO DO IT, NEEDED TO OR I MIGHT HAVE DIED.

“Hey Janna,” I said sweetly. “WANT SOME MORE OF THIS!?” and then I pretended to shove the pukey wad of napkin in her face, but it FELL OUT OF THE THING LISA HAD WRAPPED IT IN AND LANDED ON JANNA’S CHEST!

Holy shit, new highlight of the day!

This is what Chooch looked like by the end of the party. So damn disgusting. Aside from Bill throwing one of the guests out, it was a pretty drama-free party! Can I retire now?

When we settled on a LOLcat theme for Chooch’s party this year, there was only one thing that I knew we had to do. At the risk of being one of your typical Pinterest Moms, I wanted to have a photo booth-type set up where everyone could choose their own feline accoutrements. I was going to buy cat ear headbands on Etsy, but apparently those sons of bitches are infused with Jesus’s bone marrow and I wasn’t trying to bleed out any more money on this damn party. So Henry and I bought some plastic headbands for 49 cents and a few sheets of felt. Voila, cheap ass cat ear headbands. Go fuck yourself, Etsy.

But then I was like, “OMG WHAT WILL THE BACKGROUND LOOK LIKE?!!?” And of course at the last minute, it occurred to me to just use the image I designed for the back of the party invitations. Duh. And then Henry waited until the day of the party to print them all out and glue them to cardboard, because Last Minute is the only way we know.

I love this thing and hate it all at once.

Before the party started, I practiced on Jessi (who thankfully loves having her picture taken!). Ideally, I wanted to have the backdrop facing out of the pavilion so that everyone could stand/sit in the natural light, but it poured all afternoon without letting up once. We had to keep the backdrop inside the pavilion and if you’re like me and struggle with lighting and camera settings because you’re a fauxtographer, this is bad news bears. I really liked how this picture turned out with my real camera, but I knew that children at a birthday party were not going to be as patient as Jessi, so I just used my dumb iPhone for the rest of the pictures. And once I took my invisible OCD pills, it was fine. Really!

These are the things I stress out about. Honestly. Some days I can’t wait to be old and in a nursing home where all the things are planned FOR me.

OMG I GLUED THOSE WHISKERS ONTO THOSE STICKS ALL BY MYSELF!! Also: Chooch and I wore matching Warped Tour shirts and it made me really happy even though he was like, “I don’t really care, can I open presents now?” There were actually quite a few guests wearing cat shirts and it was so much fun!

I’m being smart and not posting pictures of Chooch’s school friends. It took 10 years of blogging to finally drill that through my thick skull.

Jesus, my friends and family are good sports! I wasn’t able to wrangle everyone, but I tried! My friend Elaine pointed out on Facebook that there isn’t one of Henry and FUNNY YOU SHOULD MENTION IT because that motherfucker somehow made grilling hamburgers and hot dogs into a 3-hour-long affair and was conveniently not involved in basically anything. Thanks for feeding me to the wolves, er, children.

Anyway, I know it’s not that big of a deal, but I really want Chooch to have good memories of his childhood, and memories are even better when they come with photographical evidence. These things are important to me.

More later! This broad is goddamn exhausted and having a terrible Monday.

Since Chooch’s birthday party is two weeks after his actual birthday, I thought it would be nice to take him out for a (small) family birthday dinner over the weekend. I kept trying to think of fun places we could do this, but he picked Olive Garden for some unknown reason. He’s never been there, but he’s seen commercials and doesn’t quite understand that just because he’s obsessed with Italy, that doesn’t mean he’s going to suddenly like Italian food. Because he doesn’t. One of my favorite Italian restaurants is a family-owned joint in McKeesport called Tillie’s, but every time we take Chooch there he bitches about the “stench.”

That “stench” is homemade tomato sauce. God!

Anyway, while I’m not much of a fan of Olive Garden (or any chain restaurant, really), it was his choice, so that is where we went. Henry’s mom hasn’t been feeling well, and Blake and Robbie couldn’t make it (that is, assuming that Henry even ASKED them, which was his only goddamn job), so it was just us three, plus Janna and Corey. The perfect number, really.

Saint Henry

Originally, we were going to meet at 4, because we wanted to beat the dinner rush, but also because I wanted to be home in time for the hockey game and the world revolves around me, Chooch’s birthday or not. (In fact, I bought myself a limited release Jonny Craig record on Chooch’s birthday, because I deserve presents too.)

Around 3pm on Saturday, Henry started getting antsy and decided that he wanted to go sooner rather than later, and he was acting akin to some Southern elder afraid of missing the blue plate special. I couldn’t take his weird pacing any longer so I texted Janna and Corey to tell them we were bumping up the time. Corey wound up getting there right after us, but Janna, even though she said she was leaving, didn’t get there until after 4.

I know that the odds of dining with a roomful of octogenarians is par for the course when you go to a restaurant in between lunch and dinner, but it was like hospice in there. I’m not even trying to be a dickhead about it, either. One elderly woman was wheeled in on a hospital bed to a table right behind Corey and he was so uncomfortable knowing that she was behind his chair. Another frail, elderly woman at a table next to us looked like was dying. And then just other deathly quiet Olds were scattered around our section making for a totally morose and funereal ambiance. It was like a nursing home field trip.

Corey kept saying, “OMG I just want Janna to get here!” so she would sit next to him and shield him from the decay & inevitable pleurisy-powered coughs happening all around us.

Meanwhile, Chooch told the (totally adorable) waiter that he would be having “1% low-fat chocolate milk” to drink.

Then Janna arrived and Chooch told her she’s a disappointment.

I think the last time I was at an Olive Garden was the summer of 2004 when Henry and I were staying outside of Cleveland, Ohio for the Cure’s Curiosa Festival, and I was throwing one of my patented “If you don’t feed me ASAP, I will make Lorena Bobbitt look like an angel of mercy” tantrums. Of course I couldn’t decide what I wanted to eat and we didn’t know what else was around (no Smartphones, yo), so Henry practically dragged me by my hair to the Olive Garden next to our (probably shitty) hotel. I had a vague recollection of really enjoying the portobello ravioli and was happy to see they were still on the menu.

Friends, try to remember back to when you were a kid, how fucking sensational Chuck E. Cheese pizza tasted to you. How you never minded having to stop playing in the ball pit when your food was ready because that pizza was the motherfucking BOMB. And then try to remember the first time you had that pizza as an adult. How it was like Sad Trombone playing between mouthfuls of mediocrity.

And that is what it was like for me at Olive Garden on Saturday. I mean, I’m no gourmand, but this nothing like what my 21-year-old jejune palate once deemed as “better than sex.” But, it got the job done.

We also ordered some sort of lasagna appetizer thing, and also chicken strips and fried mozarella per the birthday boy’s request. Chooch had a nice time concocting his own menu items by shoving fried mozarella into hollowed-out breadsticks.

Chooch was adamant on ordering alfredo (which he kept pronouncing phonetically as “fred-o”) sauce with his pasta, so Henry sighed and told the totally adorable waiter (who we found out later graduated a year after Corey from the same high school we all attended) to please bring it on the side. Chooch was like, “Wait, I’m not done” and also ordered a meatball and Italian sausage, and chose mashed potatoes as his side.

I have never seen that child eat mashed potatoes. Ever. Not even on fucking THANKSGIVING.

Our food came and Chooch proceeded to eat everything with his hands, even though ten minutes beforehand, he had been preaching about how Olive Garden is a “fancy” restaurant. I kept telling Chooch to stop eating like a vagrant when I noticed that among the pile of noodle refuse under the table and around Chooch’s feet was one that had landed perfectly in a pretzel shape. I should have taken a dumb picture.

“It’s nice to see that Corey can cut his own food now,” Henry said, in a rare moment of audience participation. He’s usually mute when Corey and Janna are around, and I think it’s because he knows he can’t match the wits of us young’uns. Maybe one day, us whippersnappers will be interested in talking about gas prices, nondescript t-shirts and hemorrhoids, and then we can enjoy a real, multi-lateral round table discussion, but hopefully somewhere cooler than Olive Garden.

Back to Henry’s comment: Ten years ago, me, Henry, Janna, Corey and Chooch’s godfather Brian went to the Harmony Inn for a murder mystery dinner that my friends were performing in, and Henry had to cut Corey’s pork chops. I think that was the moment Henry finally accepted his fate as Everyone’s Caregiver.

My favorite Henry/Corey memory though is also from 2004. It was one of the weekends Henry’s kids were staying with us, and Corey—who is the same age as Robbie—decided to sleep over. For some reason, Corey REALLY WANTED SPRINKLES. No, we weren’t eating ice cream or anything. He just wanted a fucking bottle of sprinkles to drink. It was already kind of late, and we made Henry drive around looking for an open store that might sell sprinkles.

Yes, Corey eventually got his sprinkles, and then made himself sick on them. GOD, HENRY! WAY TO ENABLE MY BROTHER!

Henry was peeing when I took this picture, so just imagine him off to the side, pushing his glasses up and frowning at the check.

We managed to wrap things up (literally: Chooch put nary a dent in his plate and we had a ton to take home for Henry to devour later) before any of the old people expired atop their bottomless salad bowls, although there was some issue with the lady in the hospital bed that required someone to pull out a roll of duct tape.

Chooch said he had a good time, and that’s all that matters. He kept us (and the super adorable waiter) entertained, that’s for sure.

EDIT: I have just been informed by Corey & Henry that in addition to the hospice party, a little person was also there OMG.

It is mandatory for bloggers to commemorate birthdays of their offspring every year and pretend that the entire world has halted. You didn’t know? It’s written somewhere, I don’t know. I’m not a real blogger, so you’ll have to ask one of these ones.

But back to Chooch! Eight years ago today, I was having this 10lb 2oz sack of chunk extracted from a SCARY INCISION THAT STILL HURTS SOMETIMES, OK? It seems like an eternity ago, but I can still remember how excited/anxious/horrified I was like it was yesterday, and the nurse asking me if I had a Living Will, OMG just what I want to think about right before I go in for a stomach filleting. And I think here is where I’m supposed to insert some flowery prose about how hard parenting is, but so worth it. It’s true though. Once I quit wondering when things would get easier and accepted the fact that this parenting job will NEVER get easier, I think I became kind of better at it. (I still fuck up A LOT, though, don’t get it twisted.) Chooch himself has made me so much better in so many ways!

I was the first one out of all of my friends to get pregnant, and I heard a lot of predictions like, “You’re not going to be fun anymore.” And that makes me laugh because I have more fun now than I ever did back then, so thanks Chooch! (I am also not friends anymore with the people who said shit like that to me, because fuck them.)

Here’s Henry sleeping in the hospital room that day, which is probably one of the last times Chooch and I have let him take a nap.

LOLworthy:

1. Bandanna

2. Faygo sweatshirt

3. Mr. Mom jeans and shoes

4. Awkward holding of his own hand

And here’s the birthday boy himself, on our walk to school this morning! You guys, he was in the best mood and a total fucking joy to be around for once. I LOVE BIRTHDAY CHOOCH, OMG.

Anyway, I guess we’re going to dinner tomorrow at Olive Garden of all places, because this is what he has requested we do. He’s never been to Olive Garden before and he hates pasta, so…..

This Easter was nice. I mean that: it was really nice! Like having dinner with a pretty-faced man who loves cats and has good manners: you’re probably not going to bang him later, but you will definitely be sure to tell your friends he was nice even though you’re sure he was definitely wearing stockings under his pants. And that’s how Easter was. It didn’t culminate into a rager or other assorted cross-dressing debauchery, but it was nice.

We had zero plans and obligations and that was, wait for it, NICE. However, I had to direct Chooch to his hidden Easter basket before he lost his mind because of a combination of Henry hiding it too well and Chooch being born with his mother’s half-assed searching skills. (Seriously, if what I am looking for isn’t in the first drawer I open, then I call it quits and make Henry look.)

Sometimes as parents, we have to make sacrifices. This Easter that sacrifice was paying actual money for a Maroon5 CD because Chooch inexplicably likes them suddenly. I guess it could be worse. (Katy Perry.) But, like I mentioned last week, who am I to deny someone of their love of a band? God knows I get ridiculed enough for the music I like. However, at least he can go from listening to dumb Adam Levine to Bring Me the Horizon like it’s no big deal, just like I can swap out Phil Collins for Dillinger Escape Plan. Settle down, Erin Rachelle Kelly.

Also got him Taco Cat headphones. He actually really needed a new pair of headphones though, and Henry and I really needed to not have to hear the stupid Minecraft videos he watches, so this was no superfluous purchase. We are trying to not go overboard with Easter like every other American family we know, and believe me, we have been super guilty of that in the past. But Chooch’s birthday is less than a week away from Easter, so enjoy that candy, son.

How did Easter become Christmas Lite, anyway? When I was a kid (I know, “here we go”), I was actually quite spoiled, yet for Easter, my parents never did anything more than a basket full of jellybeans, chocolate and one small item (for me, it was usually a My Little Pony). And I’m sure my dad thought even that was too much. Times are so different now! And Henry and I have been totally guilty of stuffing ridiculous amounts of non-candy things into Chooch’s basket every year, to the point where some things had to just rest on the floor next to the basket. Sickening. I’m such a fat commercial American conformist pig. THERE I SAID IT.

And the funny thing is, I don’t even think Chooch realized that he got way less this Easter. And if he did, he didn’t care. At least I know my kid isn’t as spoiled as I was? (Haha, I love that I used past tense.)

It was really a very nice day, all blue-skies and sunny, so I demanded that we go to the fitness trail in South Park, even after I declared I was going to rest on Easter since that would probably be what Jesus Glenn would tell me to do. Fuck the Law Firm Fitness Challenge! Eat some chocolate! But…no. I couldn’t rest on my Easter bonnetted laurels (wtf?) which means Henry and Chooch couldn’t either.

I love the fitness trail! It’s right across from the tree my biological dad crashed into back in 1983, resulting in his coma and eventual death! True story!

I also love the fitness trail because it is fucking hilarious watching Chooch trying to do fitness.

We begged Henry to demonstrate some basic training moves he learned in THE SERVICE but he was like, “No because you’re going to record it; I wasn’t born yesterday.” Sorry guys. I tried.

A nice tree on nice Easter!

What is this pose, OMG.

Then we walked to the playground which always brings back fond memories of my own childhood except that basically nothing is the same about it. God forbid a playground should have monkey bars or a staggeringly steep metal slide. GOD FORBID.

(Actually, as a mom who gets Jello-legs every time her son is so much as a foot off the ground—-thank god they took those death traps out.)

Made Henry pose for some nice Easter selfies! Happy Nice Easter from us!

There were two teenage boys there and Henry hated them but they seemed fine to me except neither was wearing a band t-shirt so I couldn’t judge them based on their music preference and that made me sad for a minute. So sad being sad on such a nice day, even for a minute.

Then we made Henry buy us snow cones from a sketchy snow cone vendor in the playground parking lot. Chooch ordered chocolate which sounds absolutely disgusting to me. One of the guys was like, “This smells like root beer” when he pulled out the syrup but the other guy was like, “No, it’s chocolate. It says so.” So the first guy shrugged and made the snow cone, which Chooch immediately described as “not chocolate” as soon as he spooned some into his hole of vulgarity. So then the guys were like, “This is probably definitely not chocolate then” and let Chooch order a different flavor.

Meanwhile, I had ordered passion fruit even though I had forgotten what passion fruit tasted like but the guys were staring at me, waiting for me to decide and I felt so pressured. As soon as I tasted it, I regretted not ordering Georgia peach, fuck this Easter. Worst Easter ever.

Here is a picture of Henry two minutes later when I decided I didn’t want to eat anymore of my passion fruit snowcone and Chooch decided that he didn’t want to carry his scooter anymore. This is why we don’t ever leave the house without Henry, you guys. Well, that and also because he knows the way to everywhere. And he doesn’t consistently leave his wallet at home like I do. And he cuts our food for us. And we love to make fun of him!

Walked past these assholes playing cricket and it was so stupid. The orange team won, which was a given because the green team looked like a fucking sack of grandpa shit out there. Then Henry saw a large plastic container discarded over a hill and we were sure that there’s a dead body in it.

After I referred to a little girl in her frilly Easter dress as a “little bitch” and Henry sped up his pace, we left and went to eat at Golden Wok, because it was the closest Chinese restaurant that was opened and who the fuck is Henry going to cook an Easter ham for? We’re loners, Dottie.

Some old bitch came in to pick up her food and said to the Chinese waitress, “Hey you know that plane that crashed? The Malaysian one?” Honestly, this was the first thing she thought to say right after “I’m here to pick up my food,” like you just know she was dying to talk about it the whole drive to the restaurant. The waitress just giggled nervously and said she hadn’t heard, which I interpreted as, “Yes, but I don’t want to engage you” so the old bitch went on to say, “One of the passengers lived on my street!” which got no response. I was waiting for her to ask the waitress if she knew her, because that just seemed to be which racist freeway this out of control 18-wheeler was barreling down, but luckily the waitress walked away.

Anyway, I know tofu looks disgusting, like some kind of muscus-y, alien afterbirth, but holy shit this was some of the best tofu I have ever eaten. I couldn’t wait to tell the waitress, the same way that old bitch couldn’t wait to tell her about the Chinese crash victim, and in the same way the waitress didn’t care about that, she didn’t care about my tofu praise.

“Oh OK,” she said with a rushed, disinterested laugh. “Thank you.” Because who ever raves about tofu.

Then we went home and watched The Ten Commandments like I mentioned last week, but we didn’t have to watch it on a box TV from 1998 because our TV was done being repaired and we picked it up last Saturday, yay we’re kept up with the Joneses again! (That makes no sense!)

It had been a long while since I had seen this movie, and goddamn I forgot how long it is. I mean, get the fuck on with it already. The Ten Commandments are basically just a cameo so why not just name it Things Moses Did? And I mean, yeah, he was hot AS FUCK, but I’ll be damned if I’m fighting other broads to wash his feet, I mean let’s get real. Ugh and he probably stunk so bad. I can’t even. But it was still fun to overzealously gasp and shake Henry in mock disbelief.

Easter 2014 was just about ready to go down in the books in the “No Tears” column, until Chooch overheard me tell my cat Marcy that she’s the only good one in the whole entire house and he actually started to fucking cry*, are you kidding? So then I laughed, which only made it worse. But I can only control myself for so long on a holiday.

*(In full disclosure, he was in the middle of writing a book report that I forced him to do,plus it was pretty late, and he can be a real oversensitive jerk after hours. JUST SAYIN’, CHOOCH.)

I was terribly excited last Thursday when Chooch brought home this prize-winning illustrated essay, but he completely brushed it off.

“It was supposed to be a joke,” he explained, rolling his eyes. I mean, clearly my child is not of the Ring Around the Rosey ilk, and he didn’t even really watch Max & Ruby when he was a BABY, let alone now. He said he even kept spelling Aidan’s name wrong on purpose. So basically my kid wins for being an asshole, which actually makes me pretty proud because GEE I WONDER WHERE HE GETS IT.

Henry and I were talking about this on the way to Philly last Friday, and I kept going on about how it makes me sad that he won’t draw very often because he thinks he sucks at it, but then he brings shit like that home and I’m like, “HE IS SO GOOD!! WHY DOES HE THINK HE SUCKS?”

“Yeah, I wonder where gets THAT from, too,” Henry mumbled. Shut up, Henry.

I think my favorite part is that he gave himself rotten teeth, presumably because I’m always harping on him to brush his teeth. Man, I love that kid, always having to get his jabs in where he can. GEE I WONDER WHERE HE GETS IT.