I was a little leery of getting Chooch all made-up for Zom-B-Rama since last year he wanted to leave after 20 minutes. But a year makes a big difference and proves that 5-year-olds can be less dick-ish in some ways than 4-year-olds.

(Don’t get me wrong, there are still at least 68 occasions a day when I cry to the gods, “WHY CAN’T HE GO BACK TO BEING 4!” before flipping off my ovaries. Especially now that there’s all these kid politics in Kindergarten.)

I gave his recent zombie dweeb costume a reprisal because I’m lazy and didn’t feel like thinking of anything new. I have a bad case of mental exhaustion. Anyway, it seemed to be a hit with his zombie brethren at the Monroeville Mall arcade.

We arrived just in time for a short performance by a zombified Rocky Horror Picture Show troupe.

“I hate this song,” Chooch mumbled as the zombie Eddie lip-synched to Meatloaf. But apparently, “Hot Patootie / Bless My Soul” be damned, Eddie’s performance really won over Chooch, who spent the rest of the afternoon coveting his leather jacket and emphatically remarking that he was the best zombie there that day.

My friend/zombie self-defense class partner Kristy was there with her little zombie lover-in-training, Sarah, so it was nice to be able to hang out with them in the downtime after the RHPS performance. Aside from several zombie-themed carnival games and the museum in the back (which we’ve walked through a thousand times, and yes it’s awesome! But not very time-consuming) there was little else to do but stand around awkwardly. Kristy and Sarah split after about an hour and wound up missing the scintillating 2:00 performance of Time Warp.

But by then, Wendy and her step-daughter had arrived so they got to be wow’d by the flesh-eating RHPS cast.

They really drew a crowd each time they took the “stage,” including random non-zombie mall-walkers, but then people would leave as soon as it was over. Hey Zom-B-Rama: NEEDS MORE ENTERTAINMENT! There was not enough to keep everyone stimulated. Give me a call, I have some (like, a million) ideas for next year.

(Not really, but if asked to think of some, I would.)

“Is that your kid?” some guy asked Henry and me. “Because he is seriously creeping me out.” All he was doing was roaming around, bored because we were talking to Wendy and not showering him with money to burn. But I took that as a big compliment considering I AM THE ONE WHO DID HIS MAKEUP while Henry just stood there doing nothing. I win yet again.

Chooch actually played games this year. Some of the zombies were letting him win, which I thought was super-sweet. He accumulated enough tickets to get some sort of cowboy gun that he apparently has always wanted. Since when? I clearly don’t know my kid.

Chooch was less interested in the zombies, more interested in spending our paychecks on the claw machines.Wendy’s friend won a ball and Chooch was dead set on winning his own after that. Finally, Henry threw his hands up in defeat and cried, “I will just BUY you a ball, Chooch! For Christ’s sake!”

After Henry’s epic defeat, Chooch conned Wendy into trying to win him something.

Alas, he’d have to be happy with the fucking cowboy gun.

Hiding from the only thing that scared him all day…

…Zombie Spongebob. Seriously? He was so afraid of it. Wouldn’t even get close enough for me to take their picture together, even when Spongebob’s acquaintance persisted.

It’s weird the things that actually scare him when the obvious ones don’t.

Around 2:00, our new friends Rick and Tammy showed up with their daughter Jamie, who took on Chooch in a game of air hockey so rousing, some random man stood and watched the entire game play out.

That’s when I realized how much alike Chooch and I really are. He is a little smarmy cheater! However, he still lost, whereas I would have won. So, not entirely alike are we.

Then Henry and Rick meandered around the zombie museum, sharing memories of what it was like when the mall was still lit by gas lamps.

He quickly picked up his panhandling again, going so far as to beg Rick for $40 to buy a collector’s pack of Cereal Killers mini cereal boxes. Later on, Rick told him that if he could remember his and Tammy’s names, he would give him the .

Chooch came so close, but hesitated too long on Tammy’s name.

I silently exhaled, knowing that Chooch would have demolished those cereal boxes within .005 seconds of being placed in his grubby mitts.

PLEASE GIVE ME QUARTERS!

This was Rick and Tammy’s first time meeting Chooch, and Henry was quick to point out that contrary to how it appears, we don’t actually mainline caffeine and rock sugar into him. This is just Chooch, au naturale.

“He’s either going to make you a lot of money,” Rick remarked. “…or need to be locked up.”

That was definitely the quote of the day.

After 2 and a half hours of standing around in everyone’s way and letting strangers take pictures of our son (seriously, Rick is right; where’s my fucking check?!), Chooch had reached his “enclosed space” limit and we parted ways.

It’s cool having events like this to go to. If there’s one next year, we will likely go and hopefully they will have amassed more entertainment for us ornery folk.

Henry dropped me off at home and then went to the store with Chooch still scabbed and putrefied. Henry said some lady was all aghast and asked, “Was it a bike accident?”

Because that’s exactly where Henry would take our child immediately after the pavement fed off his face: the motherfucking dollar store.

Shit, this sure feels familiar: Little over a week away and we have no costume for Chooch because he won’t pick one.

The closest we’ve come to locking in an idea was at the pie party. I can’t believe I forgot to mention this in that particular post, as it was one of the highlights of the day for me.

The party hadn’t yet started and Chooch was coloring with my brother Corey and his girlfriend Danielle. Unprovoked, Chooch blurted out, “Corey, I’m going to be you for Halloween.”

This of course was followed by a Walton-esque moment pregnant with “Aw!”s and sappy smiles. I figured we could just give him a hair cut, toss on a flannel and give him a cane decorated with a gray-toned rainbow as a shout-out to Corey’s tragic color blindness. Costume complete!

“Yeah,” Chooch continued, intently coloring his page from the Star Wars coloring book. “I’m going to slice your face off and wear it.”

We all laughed nervously.

Of COURSE this wasn’t going to end as a sweet, adorable page for the family scrapbook. Not when it involves dialogue from my kid.

So when people at work ask what he’s going to be, I just shrug.

All you really need to know about me before jumping into this is that I hate doing shit with kids, so for the sake of my fingertips, let’s just pretend for a minute that there are already four paragraphs written in my usual long-windedly verbose style illustrating my hate for the pumpkin patch/kids/being around kids/riding school buses/moms/being a mom.

I somehow got suckered into being a chaperone for this year’s field trip. Last year it was mandatory that one parent accompany each preschooler, but they only needed 9 Kindergarten parent chaperones. I heard my disembodied voice saying, “Yes,” to the teacher’s aid and then vaguely recall her scrawling “Mrs. Robbins” onto the list of condemned parents.

(Never mind the fact that I am MISS KELLY not MRS. ROBBINS.)

A. The Sweetest Ginger

I arrived at the school in time to be cast out from the other chaperones.  I’m sure I wasn’t missing much there, as I picked up pieces of their extreme Yinzer-garble. Most of the parents just kept their backs turned on me. I was OK with that.

As the kids began filing out of the classroom and ran over to their respective parent, the teachers began handing off the rest of the kids so that some parents had an extra child to be responsible for. I assumed (stupidly) that the teachers are hyper-aware of my utter irresponsibility, but apparently my facade translates to strangers as Put-Together Woman Bursting with Empathy because they paired me up with Nate.

Normally, I don’t know shit about the kids Chooch goes to school with, and I like to keep it that way. But Nate is notorious because his parents died in the beginning of the school year, one right after the other. Totally traumatic and devastating; I actually cried when I read the letter that the school sent home about the mom and hoped it was a mistake when there was another letter a day later about the dad. I never learned the details, but a Google search brought up their obituaries and they died a day apart from each other in the hospital so I imagine car accident is the safest assumption.

Good job giving this poor kid to the most socially awkward mom there, you guys. Good fucking job.

Nate put his pudgy little hand in mine as we walked out to the bus together. Some little girl said, “Nate, sit with us!” but he opted to sit with me and was a friendly little chatterbox for the whole 30 minute ride.

“I think I know where we are!” as we passed a grocery store. “My mom used to shop there!”

I smiled awkwardly, the diarrhea-face kind, hoping that topic would go DOA.

While we compared animal crackers with other (the owls were our favorites), Nate looked at me innocently and, in a way that was remarkably upbeat, asked, “Do you know where my mom and dad are?”

OMFG YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. SERIOUSLY? TO ME, HE’S ASKING THIS, OF ALL FUCKING PEOPLE? I desperately yearned for a can of that liquid rubber shit to plug up my tear ducts.

I didn’t know how to respond to that. If I were my friend Lisa, who went to school to learn how to talk to people about death, I’m sure I would have reacted in such a way that made lilacs spring up from a meadow. But me being me, I just whispered “No…” in a frightened tone and then bit my thumb.

“They’re in heaven,” Nate answered nonchalantly.

I do not hate this particular kid so I acted like that was the most wonderful thing, to have parents in heaven. I was three when my own dad died from a car accident, but I don’t really have much memory from which to draw any life lessons. I don’t even remember when I first really understood that my dad was dead. What did my family tell me back then? Knowing my mom, she acted like nothing happened.

I sat there in silence, trying to process all of this while Nate quietly sipped from his Capri Sun beside me.

We talked about Halloween costumes for awhile (he’s going to be some train-friend of Thomas’s that I don’t care about) and then he dropped this bomb on me:

“Do you think there will be big pumpkins at the pumpkin patch?”

I pretended to consider this. (I think that is what you have to do when dealing with children: pretend. A lot.) “I imagine there will be pumpkins of all sizes,” I said.

“Well, I want to find the biggest one and throw it up to my parents in Heaven.”

WHY. WHY WHY WHY WHY.  The fissure forming on my heart reminded me that, OMG—I have a heart, and I suddenly felt inspired to give up my hateful blogging, love Jesus and adopt 18 orphans.

You guys, this kid kind of made me feel a little bit human.

B. The Worst Best Friend

My own kid sat with the boy who, one week ago, said to me, “I wish there were no Rileys in the world,” in a mean tone, in front of my kid, prompting me to have a little talkie with the principal because I’ll be damned if I’m paying to send my kid to a school where hate is something that kids can get away with. If he’s saying shit like that when he’s FIVE, what’s he going to be doing when he’s FIFTEEN? You can tell me I overreacted, but I’d rather nip that shit in the bud than blow it off and have something worse happen down the line.

(You should know that I’m not one of those moms who get all up-in-arms every single time someone blows a hair on my kid’s head.)

This kid, Anthony, is such a motherfucker that the principal already knew who I was talking about before I even said so. His mom was made aware of the situation (as well as the mom of another kid who appears to be Anthony’s sidekick in hate) and profuse apologies were made all around.

Now Chooch is calling him his “best friend” and wanted nothing more than to sit with him on the bus.

“Sit with Nate and me,” I pleaded.

“Anth is my best friend,” Chooch shot back, sliding into the seat across from me.

Anth? You have got to be fucking kidding me.  This Anthony kid is such an ADHDick. Several times, I was forced to lean over Nate and hiss at Chooch to knock it the fuck off because Anthony’s mere presence was making him act like he was running on Pixi Stix and Starbucks. I really need to get him away from this Anthony kid before he starts verbally denigrading other children worse than I do to Henry.

Anthony’s mom is much older and has a weary face that screams, “I AM SO TIRED OF YELLING AT THIS FUCKING DICK ALL THE LIVELONG DAY.”

I kind of feel for her.

As soon as the bus pulled into the farm’s lot, Anthony was out of his seat and pushing kids out of his way, provoking one of the teachers to open her mouth and blow him back into an empty seat with nothing more than her militant tone.

It was fucking awesome. Everyone paraded past as Anthony (and his sidekick, who actually wasn’t doing anything wrong other than associating himself with this delinquent) sulked in his seat.

Somehow Chooch avoided punishment even though I’m pretty sure I witnessed him being a pushy asshole. It’s obviously because he’s a cracker.

C. Father of the Year

Henry met us out there this year and I was so thankful. Since I had Nate obediently clutching my hand, Henry kept an eye on Chooch, who was following Anthony like a puppy. Several times, Henry tugged Chooch back to us by his hood and gave him low-pitched yet stern talks about how he needed to not worry so much about Anthony.

Kindergarten and this shit is happening already. KINDERGARTEN.

Meanwhile, Henry completely skirted the $10 admission and not once did a farmhand approach him and ask around a straw of hay, “Sir, you ain’t wearing a sticker on your breast. Why?”

D. The Stupid Pumpkin Diorama Tour

I hate this part of Triple B! It is row after row of fictional characters with pumpkin heads. WHO THE FUCK CARES. And then they throw Moses floating downstream in a basket just on the off chance some douchey Catholic school kids happen to stroll on through and all the parents clap and laugh happily and it is so obnoxious.

“OMG Bible shit, you guys!”

This may have happened when I was there.

Nate loves Thomas the Tank Engine, so I took this photo for him. I figured I’d have it printed for his grandparents who bring him to school everyday, adding some shine to my halo. (Or, if I were Barb, I guess you could say my halo might then be all TRICKED OUT.)

It kind of made me sad how few of the dioramas he was able to figure out.

Which brings me to….

E. Aging Hipster Dick

One of the girls in Chooch’s class was behind Nate and me with her dad.  I hadn’t been paying much attention to him until we approached the one diorama that stumps me repeatedly.

“Oh look,” he said to his daughter, “Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub!”

I laughed to myself because it was so obvious. Over my shoulder, I said laughingly to him, “I totally could NOT figure this one out last year!”

“Oh,” he said in this tone that was steeped with a bold combination of ambivalence and superiority. “I guess you just learned something then.”

No, this tone just did not sit well with me.

“Yeah….I guess,” I mumbled, and from that point on, motherfucker was on my radar.

From then on, nothing I did could drown out his ridiculously uber-serious reciting of every fucking nursery rhyme diorama we shuffled past.

Every time I was near him after that (which was pretty much always; god, go stand with your WIFE), I had to fight the urge to heckle-cough “Douchebag” in his general direction. Fuck off with your lame short-sleeved flannel. Go sit in your hybrid and listen to some Iron and Wine and leave the pumpkin-picking to the fuckers who care. (I am not one of those fuckers but I assure you I’d rather pick a fucking pumpkin than listen to anything on his iPod.)

On the hayride, he all but SAT ON MY LAP and proceeded to shout over the dirge of the tractor’s engine to his wife who was sitting FIVE PEOPLE away from him about how much he spent on apples at another farm.

“$8 for 8 apples! That’s practically $1 an apple!” he shouted in his deep dick-swallowing voice.

That’s not “like” a dollar an apple; it IS a dollar an apple.

Sometimes his wife would snap, “I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” Because, you know, not everyone is trained to hear bored, husky tones over top of a chugging tractor pulling 35 screaming children.

He was so close to me that I feared I would disembark the wagon with the sudden druthers to wear a belted (vintage) tunic and swap out my photos of Jonny Craig for Colin Meloy. (Whom I do enjoy on occasion, but still.)

(Hopefully I don’t offend my hipster friends who are neither aging nor dicks.)

Meanwhile, I found myself having an enjoyable conversation with Momesis, and considering we also ran into each other at the playground in August and wound up chatting for 90 minutes while our kids played, I suppose I should just call her Amy. Besides, I now have a Dademy to replace her.

“I decided to tell him about how I didn’t know that was Three Men in a Tub last year. I was just trying to keep it light-hearted, you know how I do.”

“No,” Henry said. “I don’t.”

And this is why I don’t often initiate small talk.

F. The 5-Minute Hayride

Just like last year’s 5-minute hayride, now with an Aging Hipster Dick sprouting out of my torso.

Yes, Nate; that is exactly the look of fucking disdain I too would have if Anthony were hugging me into him.

 “Mommy, can I have a hoodie that says Sinister all over it like Anthony?”

G.The Pumpkin Picking

After sitting through the SAME EXACT program about DIRT put on by Mrs. B. in the School Barn, we finally got to head out to the small, forlorn patch of puny pumpkin rejects that’s there specifically for school field trips. I guess $10 a person only promises the adoption of a pie pumpkin.

This is my favorite part because it means it’s almost time to leave.

Nate was off getting his picture taken by the teacher, and Henry was too busy checking out the other moms bending at the waist of their mom jeans to be of any assistance, so I had to tiptoe through the mud while Chooch kicked disinterestedly at a pumpkin that maybe he might have wanted, who knows, what did he care. He was still sulking because I wouldn’t let him sit next to Anthony during the dirt assembly.

Nate came back from the school photo-op and Henry decided to actually pull his eyeballs off the MILFs’ applebottoms long enough to drag Chooch to the entrance while I assisted Nate in choosing a pumpkin. Of course, he picked one whose stem that was still attached to a 10 inch-thick vine and I unfortunately shorted the remote that turns my right arm into a hacksaw. Sorry, buddy.

He picked a comparable gourd and proceeded to immediately break the handles of the plastic bag he was given. I kept offering to carry it for him, but he stubbornly cradled his bag-swathed pumpkin in his arms, dropping it every three feet. It was fine. I wasn’t getting agitated.

No really, it was fine.

Just fucking dandy.

H. THE FINISH LINE

Henry got to drive home in the nice, quiet, CHILDFREE car while I was shackled to my chaperone status for one more bus ride into the horizon. I got to sit alone at least, while Nate, Anthony and Chooch all crammed into one seat.

Nate quietly looked out the window the entire way home while Chooch leaned forward with his forehead pressed against the back of the seat in front of him. They were clearly tired. As were all the other children, except for Anthony, who was practically sitting upside down in his seat, singing “Georgie Porgie*” the entire way while his mom bitched about not having time to shop.

(*Seriously? My kid must be the only one in that class who doesn’t give a shit about nursery rhymes.)

When we got back to the house, Chooch threw up and I was really pissed off because that’s what I wanted to do.

I. Henry’s Day at the Farm

I decided to try and act like I genuinely cared about Henry’s pumpkin patch experience, but he replied to my initial text inquiring of his favorite field trip moment with a misspelled and curiously punctuated: “Your [sic] not interviewing me again?”

“No, just wondering,” I texted back. “Also, what kid did you hate the most and what mom was the most MILFish?”

Henry: “LOL, most MILFish.”

Me: “Seriously, answer me. Which mom-bitch did you want to poke with your pumpkin stem?”

He kept ignoring that particular question, which makes me believe it was Aging Hipster Dick he had eyes for. And he told me later that he “doesn’t hate any kids.” What the fuck is wrong with him?

Me: “When you pick pumpkins, what are things you look for?”

Henry: “Size and color.”

Me: “Like when you’re looking for dicks on the Internet? When you were in the SERVICE, did you ever cut glory holes into pumpkins?”

Henry: “Interview over.”

Me: “Did you leave some of the pumpkin guts inside to give it a nice, squishy vaginal effect?”

No answer. Obviously that means yes.

My goal for 2012 is to kidnap/marry Jonny Craig. And also buy a better camera and learn how to use it.

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!]

I’m really not cut out to be the mother of an elementary school-aged child (just as I wasn’t cut out to be the mother of an infant, toddler or preschooler). Chooch has been bringing home such staggering amounts of fundraising bullshit, financial forms (I cover my face with my hair every time I walk past the office) and parent questionnaires (and HOMEWORK OUT THE ASS) that I’m feeling so overwhelmed. I cringe each time I open his backpack now.

On top of the fundraising shit (anyone in the market for a curling iron cozy or Jesus dish towels?

), there are unlimited papers begging for volunteers. Market Day volunteers, holiday party volunteers (never again), other volunteering options that I can’t remember because I never finished reading the forms. But my favorite was a sign -up sheet for parents who are willing to come to class and speak about their occupations or talents.

Even if I weren’t petrified of interacting with waist-high children, what the fuck would I have to offer? Seriously. Talking about my occupation would take approximately 30 seconds.

“Hi, small children. I scan papers at a law firm. Sometimes I scowl at a spreadsheet. Then I blog on company time. I’d probably have really awesome things to tell you right now but instead I CHOSE TO HAVE A KID.”

Seriously, the end.

And talents? What talents do I have?

“Hi, small children. I write Christmas poems about serial killers and photoshop weeners all over pictures of my boyfriend.

YES THAT’S RIGHT, YOUR FRIEND RILEY [see also: Chooch] IS A BASTARD. I also excel at character defamation.

”

Maybe Henry can just go and talk about driving a fork lift.

Hey, did you know we went on vacation? Oh. Of course you did. Am I being that annoying about it?  SORE-Y.

Anyway, here are the companion photos to this post, from our first full day in Tennessee. Look at them or don’t look at them; they’ll never know the difference.

I miss this stupid porch.

This was moments before The Accident. It’s all fun and games until somebody gets punched in the face by an overhang.

Minutes later: friends again. Are you serious? I’d have made Bill beg for it. Chooch is way too forgiving and he so does not get that from me.

He at least got an ice cream cone out of it. I’d have asked for more. Like maybe money. Lots of it. OR MAYBE HIS WIFE.

On a weener prowl.

Every other store was Jesus n’ guns. Henry was getting some pretty big ideas.

Trying to DROWN my kid now.

The courtyard inside one of the little shopping areas in Gatlinburg.

It made me wish I was wearing a Snow White dress.  Or at the very least, a tutu.

There was even a shoe store that sold TOMS. I had to hold back from buying a houndstooth pair.

So, this was an interesting week for Chooch and telephones.

We’re one of the many families that have eschewed a landline for cell phones, so Chooch has never known anything but a cell phone. However, he quickly caught on that if he knew Bill and Jessi’s room number, he could call them from the phone in our room. Trust me, he memorized that shit quicker than the Situation memorized the number the STD clinic.

But then this happened one day:

Chooch, holding the receiver out: Oh shit. I dialed the wrong number.

Me: Then hang it up!

Chooch, slams it down and then picks it back up: Ew, what’s that noise?

Me: Well son, that there is what the pioneers call a DIAL TONE.

It’s just so weird to me that  landlines are becoming so archaic that my 5-year-old is as confused as you or I would be if we had to send a telegram. Also, when I was five, I was playing on a motherfucking Speak and Spell, not a computer.

Now imagine his double-excitement when he got to stand inside a payphone.

Chooch wants to be photographed everywhere now, and he can be a little bitchy divo about it. “Not on THOSE rocks, THESE rocks!”

I’ve created a monster.

Chooch and Bill inside a genie’s bottle at some Optical Illusion attraction that was good for a few laughs.

Stupid me, I almost didn’t take a picture of him hugging the fiftieth wooden bear sculpture, but he made sure to school me in front of a bunch of strangers. Everyone laughed and thought it was so adorable. I was tempted to lift my shirt and show them the welts from where he beats me with a scalding poker.

Pretending to like each other.

I can’t believe Chooch is in Kindergarten. But then he retorts with things like “touché” and I think, “How is he only in Kindergarten?”

Now that he’s in school for a full day as opposed to half, I have no idea what to do with all this free time, all this glorious, scandalous, COMPLETELY DANGEROUS IN MY HANDS free time. Today, while sad (I promise I was sad! I even called Lisa and made her talk to me because it was ominously quiet in the house), I sat around with steepled fingers and a mischievous grin, wondering what to get myself into first.

Turns out, Tuesdays are not very adventurous days for me, so all I did was watch the RW/RR Challenge reunion show on MTV.com, exercise and then make a salad. Insert also lots of staring at the walls in between those titillating activities.

I’m thinking though that with all this extra time, I just might start painting again. I would have done that today, but I spent countless minutes last night applying those stupid Sally peel-on nail art things and by the time I was done, I had heart palpitations. So until I score myself some latex gloves from the serial killer depot, I guess I will just stick to tormenting the cats and watching Dance Gavin Dance videos on YouTube. (Which I actually haven’t done in awhile. Vacation broke me!)

(Speaking of vacation, I have so much more to tell you! And by “you,” I mean the Ukranian girl with the back brace who I like to imagine reads this in between milking goats and pulling her father off all the malnourished neighborhood girls.)

Chooch: “What does ‘selfish’ mean?”
Me: “When you only think about yourself.”
Henry, at the same time as me: “Erin Kelly.”
**********
Apparently, we’ve only been doing what I want to do, but hello—if I left our itinerary up to Henry, I’d probably be in a tent right now, unable to update my blog.

Gross.

We did agree on one thing though—Clingman’s Dome. It’s an observation tower about a 45 minute drive up into the higher elevations of the Smokies. We decided to wake up early to do this in case Bill and Jessi had any plans for us in the afternoon.

This entailed waking Chooch up. When it comes to slumber, Chooch is a little divo. You let him wake up on his own, else you’ll have a snapping piranha on your hands.

Which we did yesterday morning. However, at least we made it to Thursday before our child to returned to his old ways of being a noncompliant asshole. What a great run we had.

The whole way up the mountain, he made his presence known in the backseat as he bucked and kicked at the back of my seat and allowed Satan himself to use Chooch’s mouth as a death threat portal. There were several times I had legitimate chills.

If you’ve ever seen Back to the Beach, think of Bobby in the backseat, only younger and way more sinister than sarcastic. Henry even turned around a few times a la Frankie Avalon and threatened to bust him in the mouth. IT WAS AN AWESOME JOYRIDE UP THE SIDE OF A FUCKING SCARY MOUNTAIN YOU GUYS. My nerves were not shot at all.

We saw another bear though!

“Oh shit, that’s a cub. Bye!” Henry yelled, flooring it.

It only got worse when we reached our destination and freed him from his cage. Thank god there was barely anyone there when we arrived because he was being so loud, so disrespectful, so spoiled-5-year-old that I came very close to making him a permanent fixture of the Smokies.

And this was before we realized it was a half-mile hike uphill from the parking lot to the tower. Oh, how he wept and shrieked, “MY LEGS HURT OMG IM DYING!” after taking two steps.

The elevation was 6600 feet and we quite literally had our heads in the clouds. It was so hard to breathe to begin with, and then you add in the accelerated heart rate that Chooch had given us and we both were sure we were going to go into cardiac arrest.

He finally stopped screaming near the top, only because two hikers emerged from the woods and Chooch is extremely vain just like me. But he refused to go all the way up to the tower because there were about 8 people there, opting instead to hang back on the curved ramp with his arms crossed and the surliest visage I think I have ever seen on him.

And of course we couldn’t see shit through the clouds, but despite that and the fact we have an asshole kid, it was still cool to be there, inhaling clouds.

Chooch was fine after that because we were leaving which is what he wanted.

Captain Surly-Sack.

This will probably be the only thing about this vacation that Chooch remembers when he grows up, creating a vitriolic aversion to Tennessee. I’ll be sure to blame it on Henry.

Sweating at the fair.

Chooch is going through a shirtless phase (again) so all week, I’ve been getting dropped off at work by Henry and my hillbilly son. This is how I noticed today that Chooch had some red spots on his stomach.

“Are those bug bites or chicken pox?” I asked him, because all five-year-olds can properly diagnose themselves.

“Oh my god!” he exclaimed. “I’ve never been bitten by a CHICKEN before!” Finally, my kid said something age appropriate and swear-wordless—-something that normal kids would say!

***

No stranger to the joys of making Henry’s life as annoying as possible, Chooch approached me last night and said, “I have a really great idea. Find a picture of Jonny Craig on your phone and then I’ll say, ‘Daddy, come look at this picture of a cupcake!’ but really, it’ll be Jonny Craig. Daddy will be so pissed.” Of course, I responded with a resounding, “Son, that is the BEST IDEA EVER” and together we sat on the couch emitting low-octave, throaty giggles approved by 9 out of 10 deviants.

When Henry came over after being summoned and saw that it was a picture of Jonny Craig, he was indeed pissed.

God, how we laughed.

***

I got a letter today from the Catholic Diocese regarding the financial aid for Chooch’s school (yes, we decided to keep him in Catholic school, and yes, I’m aware of this irony). I was reading the letter out loud in a devil voice, and when I got to the part that said “God bless your family,” Chooch asked, “What? Did we sneeze?” But the way he said it, it could have been Joe Pesci sitting beside me, not a fucking five-year-old.

If Chooch wasn’t so entertaining, Henry would probably be a single father by now.

***

In  other news (and apologies if we’re Facebook friends and you have already read this shit multiple times), we leave Saturday morning for a week in Tennessee and I love sending post cards; there is just such a satisfying feeling of scrawling out a ridiculous account of the time you’re having  away from home and bugging your dad (Henry) for postage money. Makes me feel like a kid at Disneyworld. If you want one (a postcard, not a kid at Disneyworld), please email me your addess (butgavincantdance@gmail.com); someone might even be lucky enough to get one from Henry’s eyebrow (it’s been known to happen)!

My week can be summarized in two parts:

• OMG MY BACK HURTS OW OW GRAB MY CANE
• OMG I LOVE JONNY CRAIG EVEN THOUGH HE IS A RODENT-LOOKING DOUCHEBAG

Let’s start with my back. I guess it’s a pinched nerve, I don’t know. I’m not actually a doctor (don’t tell those Mexican girls waiting in my basement for an abortion). Every time it starts to feel OK, I exercise (because I’m weight-obsessed, if you hadn’t noticed; please send tape worms to My House, Pittsburgh PA 15226) and then it gets all jacked up again and I have to listen to Henry say the words, “I told you so” which always makes me hate his face even more than usual.

If I’m lucky, I can get my lazy, uncaring son to walk on my back which floods me with relief, but I can only have him do this when Henry is home supervising, otherwise I might be typing this right now from a straw in my mouth. The other day, Chooch said to Henry, “I can’t wait for Mommy’s head to hurt so I can walk on her face.”

And then at the playground on Wednesday, he ran past me with a bunch of kids. With frantic jazz-hands he said, “My mom can’t play with us” and then in a shitty tone laden with sarcasm and packed with more condescension than any 5-year-old should be able to muster, he added, “because her BACK hurts her!” What a fucker. I yelled after him, “I wouldn’t play with you anyway!”

Five-year-olds are assholes.

Meanwhile, there were grandparents at the playground more able-bodied than me, running across tire-bridges and playing tag with their grandkids while I was curled up arthritically on a bench, looking all sad and pouty-lipped.

And in Jonny Craig news, it’s been getting really out of control in my house. I should explain myself lest anyone thinks I seriously AM 15-years-old: My mania is in large part attributed to the fact that it annoys the shit out of Henry. And what is my sole purpose in life? Annoying the shit out of Henry.

Jonny Craig is a HUGE douche bag. In fact, two years ago on this blog I wrote about him being a piece of shit, and it is to-this-day the single most viewed post I’ve ever written. The search terms for my blog every day are variations of “Jonny Craig is an asshole.” Random kids STILL comment on that post, sharing their tales of Jonny-woe. He is notorious in the post-hardcore scene. The only thing that keeps me coming back for more Jonny Craig is that I am absolutely head-over-heels in love with his voice. Literally, it will make me quake and get all stupid-swoony and light-headed and this concerns Henry because he cannot provide me with such ecstacy.

Therefore, Henry hates Jonny Craig.

So what better way to get under Henry’s skin than to project my love for Emarosa and Dance Gavin Dance onto their fire-crotched arrogant vocalist (ex-vocalist, in Emarosa’s case)? Jonny is already our desktop background and my iPhone wallpaper. On Tuesday, I made a special trip to Target to buy an 8×10 frame for the picture of him at Bamboozle that I tore out of Alternative Press months ago. It’s now hanging on our wall and Henry is very unhappy about this.

“Why don’t you just tape up some posters too?” he spat miserbly so I went on eBay that night at work to look for some.

Yesterday, I painted my nails and then etched Jonny’s name on my left hand.

It was supposed to be a surprise, I wanted to see how long it would take Henry to notice when he came home, but fucking Chooch the Snitch called him immediately and said, “Ugh, Mommy put Jonny Craig’s name on her NAILS.” Still, when Henry came home, I made sure to lovingly stroke his beard with my Jonny-hand. (And I do mean the beard on his face.) He kept shrugging me away from him. I CAN’T IMAGINE WHY.

Then at work last night, Barb, Sandy and I posted pictures of Jonny Craig on Henry’s Facebook wall, which gave me great joy.

“I need to find a real douchey one,” Barb said, Googling his name.

“Yeah, that’s not going to be hard,” I said.

Henry never said a word about it when I came home last night.

This one from Sandy was my favorite, so I made it my profile picture:

That moustache alone should get its own entry in the Douchebag Dictionary.

But back to my broken back: we’re supposed to be going to the Westmoreland County Fair tomorrow, so that should add a new dimension to the usual pain of the carnival rides. The last time we went to this one, I had a broken toe and the carnies had to help me on all of the rides, which was hotter than anything I experience at home with Henry. Perhaps he’ll let me interview him again! (Provided he doesn’t dump me for someone more age-appropriate before then.)

I never realize how much of a jerk parent I am until I say things out loud to co-workers and their fingers involuntarily look up the number for Child Protective Services.

The other day, Sandy and Barb were complaining about a co-worker who was coughing and sneezing all day.

“There goes Typhoid Mary again,” Sandy said, all annoyed.

“Oh, I know what you mean. Yesterday, Chooch sneezed like eighteen times in succession and I was like, ‘God, get a life!'” I said, feeling a real sense of camardarie.

“You told him to get a life?” Barb reiterated.

“Well yeah, because he was annoying me. I mean, who needs to sneeze that much?”

They both laughed, but I guess I kind of saw how maybe I could have chosen my words better. Or, you know, offered him a tissue instead.

***

I hurt my back today. I started to notice it while I was exercising, but I’m on an intense “I’m Fat and Should Die” kick so I sucked it up and continued through the pain. By the time I was done, I was laying on the floor, whimpering and unable to stand up.

Chooch took no pity on me.

“Stop being a crybaby,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt that bad, let’s go outside.”

So we went outside, where I writhed on the front porch and reminded him every 3 seconds of the excruciating pain I was in.

Then he scraped himself and got all Wounded Animal on me, but I scoffed. “You didn’t care about my back, so I don’t care about your scrape!”

Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say. I only found that out when I came to work and told Barb and Kaitlin about how much of a bastard my own son was being to me while I clearly have a broken back.

“Erin!” Barb exclaimed. “Who’s the adult here?”

“But he hurt my feelings!” I argued.

“Yeah, but—he’s five!”

I mean, at least I’m not hitting him in the face with hot frying pans, right? Is that not good enough?

Well then, I guess tonight if you need me, I’ll be sitting in my room working on the parent rosary.

Chooch has lived in a houseful of animal masks since he was a baby, so stuffing a pig mask on his head in the middle of summer ain’t no thang. But when he saw that Kara’s not-quite-2-year-old son Harland was less than tickled with his new porky visage, it became a calculated game in torture and torment.

It’s probably for the best that I’m not giving him a younger sibling; the way he antagonizes other children makes me see so much of myself in him.

Henry is right: we are so similar it’s more alarming than cute.

This just happened while I’m stuck here at work. I MISS EVERYTHING!

Can’t wait to hear his Cindy Brady lisp.

Also, I would like to apologize for the lack of substance this past week (not that you expect quality from me anyway).

It’s very hot out theses days (it is summer, after all) which means sitting at the computer inside my un-air conditioned house feels approximately like being coddled by the Sun after slow-roasting in El Diablo’s oven for an hour in a baste of Snooki’s pap smear.

It is hot, moist and disgusting.

My sincerest apologies.

I made Chooch watch the British Open with me on Sunday. Parts of it, anyway. (I actually don’t know anything about golf;  I just really wanted to share with him my inexplicable love for Phil Mickelson.) Approximately 2 seconds in, Chooch had completely peaced out. I believe his exact words were, “Oh my god, STFU!” Let’s just say that me watching golf is akin to me riding the Caterpillar. Lots of from-the-gut yelling and high energy cheering. The only thing Chooch took away from the experience was the word “brouhaha,” which he heard one of the commentators say. Except he doesn’t believe that it’s a real word, but evil laughter.

Later that day, we went to see Thor and in the middle of the movie, Chooch leaned over and hoarsely laughed “brouhaha” into my ear, which resulted in me cracking up after I had spent the majority of the movie shushing him.  (It also made me crack up when one of the scenes was a bunch of  galaxy shots, and when a particularly brown cluster of gross outerspace scenery was shown, Chooch said, “That looks dirty. Like daddy’s poop.” I totally lost it.)

***

While I was at work last night, Henry took his mom grocery shopping. It was raining pretty hard and I guess Henry’s mom jokingly told Chooch she was going to make him get out of the car and walk. (I’m sure he provoked this threat.) Then she said she was just kidding, that she would never actually try to get rid of him, to which Chooch responded, “Mommy would. She tries to get rid of me all the time.”

The boy speaks the truth.

And now if you’ll excuse me, Henry’s on vacation this week and if he thinks he’s going to sleep past 9:00 every morning, well, he’s about to find out how very misinformed he is.