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

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

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

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

“I don’t know, Outrageous, I think.”

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s from 1991,” he stressed.

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

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

DOUBLY OLD FEELING.

Just another normal day at Grandma’s house.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like that would ever happen.

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

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

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

One thing that drives me nuts about my kid is that he has this wanton need to monopolize everything in the house.

Spongebob is on TV, yet he wants to play games on my phone.

So I turn the channel, which flips his internal asshole switch and makes him scream, “I WAS WATCHING THAT!

“

“You can’t do both!” I’ll yell, snatching my phone from him.

A few minutes ago, he attempted to pickpocket my phone. When I started to protest, he pointed from the hockey game on the TV back to my phone and said, “You can’t do both.

One or the other!”

Well played, kid.

I want to be writing in my blog even though I’m sick. Henry is like, “GO LAY DOWN AND REST!” but I’m too stubborn. Resting is fucking boring, I’m sorry.

I’m so sick that I left work on Friday after an hour, bringing an end to my perfect attendance streak. (Seriously, I’m such a freak that I have not once called off sick since I started working there last April. With the exception of when I took off to go to Warped Tour in July, but I still neurotically gave like, two months notice.) Barb says that my streak was protected by the fact that I came to work in the first place on Friday and didn’t technically call off, but I feel as though I’d be living a lie if I accepted this loophole, and then we’d have to change the name of my blog to Oh 99.9% Honestly, Erin.

And now Chooch, who we thought was on the mend, is sick again, this time with an ear ache. Chooch has never had an ear ache before, not even when he was a baby (miraculously), so he has been sobbing intermittently about it. I’m sure it’s probably very scary, but he’s totally eclipsing my whining and I can’t help but feel that Henry is more concerned with taking care of him than me (even though he’s made four trips to the store in the last 12 hours for me).

We discovered Chooch’s new symptoms yesterday when we stupidly kept our plans in spite of my sickness to meet my sister Amy, her boyfriend Dick and her daughter Brooke at the Pancake Skate n Whirl yesterday afternoon. It’s a rink we’ve never been to, but it’s halfway between us in Pittsburgh and them in Wheeling, so we figured it was worth checking out.

I had grand visions of this rink being adjacent to some outstanding pancake shack, where patrons would be fork-fed fluffy bites of syrup-bloated pancakes by pony-tailed rink girls while some flour-dusted granny cooked up unlimited batches in the kitchen, some with blueberries, some with angel-dusted chocolate chips. (And I do mean the drug, not celestial dandruff.)

Then I learned that the town itself was called Pancake. There were suspiciously zero pancakes to be found.

The snack bar and arcade games were way superior to that of the Neville Roller Drome, so I was feeling optimistic.

But then I saw the rink. The floor was uneven, painted a pale blue, and had a surprise dip in the center that gave me rollercoaster-stomach when I unknowingly skated across it. I think it may have been the first roller rink in all of the world. I’m pretty sure one of the nicks in the floor that I stumbled across was a souvenir from polio leg braces and in one of the darkened corners, I felt the presence of small pox’ed ghosts.

I can feel things like this now since I am a member of a ghost-hunting team. I also suddenly excel at science.

The size of the rink was about half that of the Roller Drome and the wheels on everyone’s skates were so tight that you could basically just walk clunkily around the rink. Chooch didn’t even need his hand held.

Amy’s back wheel completely locked up at one point and some old broad had to come to the rescue with her skate tools. There were even people walking on the rink IN THEIR SHOES. Roller DJ would have been on his big boy mic in a hot second if he had seen that.

On my first lap around, I had the impeccable timing to be right behind Dick as he lost his balance and began windmilling his arms. His left fist hit me square in the face. My surroundings faded away and all I could see was a 4th of July display at Disney World. I was vaguely aware of Dick apologizing profusely and asking me if I was alright. That’s when I realized that my sinuses were clear (temporarily, anyway) so instead of pressing charges, I found myself thanking him. Then I congratulated him for being the first man to ever punch me in the face (surprisingly). Henry was not pleased that those honors went to someone other than him. That’s OK baby, you punch my dead-end future in the crotch on the daily.

I didn’t manage to skate much. I was overheated after the first three laps, had a sick sweat dotting my upper lip that screamed FEVER ALERT, even though the skates prevented me from maneuvering with my patented velocity. We all spent more time sitting on the benches, I think, until after about an hour and a half, Chooch started whining. This isn’t really like Chooch to whine in public. We thought it was because he had been playing air hockey and got his fingers smashed, but then his whining turned into sobbing and after staring at him for a few minutes, like he was a ticking bomb in a plexi-glass box, our parental bulbs lit up and we deduced that, “Hey, maybe Chooch is really sick.”

Chooch tries to tell us he’s dying while Henry unsuccessfully attempts to bring the page-boy back in vogue.

Which, obviously, he is. Because he is a four-year-old, not actually a pet, and is able to communicate his ailments to us. Sometimes it just takes us a good hour to process what he’s telling us before accepting it as truth.

We cut the afternoon short, which sucks because the last time we tried to hang out with them, we were at the Washington County Fair and it began storming. I hope they don’t think we have an aversion to them. Chooch sobbed the whole way home in the car while I openly wept about my sinuses and Henry considered driving the car into a ditch.

Chooch and I spent the rest of the day being miserable while Henry begged us to just take a nap. So I did, and he let me sleep until 9:30 last night, what the fuck, Henry?? So then I was up most of the night, watching Fuse’s Sexiest Video countdown. #1 was a huge disappointment. So was #2. I woke up this morning feeling as though I was smashed in the face with a frying pan, which would explain that “dream” I had of Henry cooking breakfast in the bedroom.

When Chooch woke me up yesterday morning at 4:00am, wanting to talk about his desire to be an octopus standing in a crowd, I wondered if maybe if he was getting sick. When he expressed concern that his entire body felt like it was covered in tattoos, I was like, “OK, he’s sick.

” I mean, saying weird shit isn’t at all unusual for him, but the sad, droopy eyes accompanying his random statements weren’t generally a part of his delivery.

“Do you want some medicine?” I asked him, fumbling for my big green glasses.

“Yeah, if it tastes good,” he said with attitude.

Later in the afternoon, he established an “Are You OK?” protest. I guess constantly asking him if he was OK every time he even half-coughed had gotten under his achy skin.

“What do you think?” he snarled after I felt his forehead for the 87th time (Sidney Crosby, holla). “No, I’m not OK! I’m sick.”

He’s still pretty delirious (and bitchy) today. We were sitting together on the couch when he said, in a very disgusted tone, “I haven’t watched Diary of a Wimpy Kid in years because daddy will never get off his ass and find it.” And then when I continued to just sit there–god forbid–he yelled, “Well?

Go find it!”

Oh, I found it. It’s at that orphanage outside of the city. Here, allow me to DROP YOU OFF THERE.

Fucker.

After watching his stupid movie, down to the very last second of credits,  Chooch turned his drowsy attention to “Suite Life,” which he has seen a million times. He asked in a sick drawl, “What, are they supposed to be twins or something?

“

“Uh, they’re not supposed to be twins. They are twins,” I answered, slightly alarmed that whatever illness he has had begun eating his brain.

“Oh. And do they know this?”

Oh my god, my kid is turning stupid.

Here are some pictures of Chooch from this weekend. (I took the time to write that sentence for all the people who suffer from Title Illiteracy.)

God help us.

Harmoniously sharing. (This like, never happens, because we are secretly siblings.)

He can never leave the fucking cat alone. The cat can never stay away.

I made Chooch a sandwich after school (shredded cheese on white, melted in the microwave; a.k.a. Grilled Cheese a la Mommy) and then we sat down and watched CNN together. He was full of questions about today’s tragedy in Japan and while I struggled to answer some of them, it occurred to me that this was the first time he seemed genuinely aware that something very wrong was happening in the world. I made sure to point out to him how lucky he was to be sitting there, eating some piss-poor excuse of a sandwich, while so many people were having their world turned upside down and dropped in a barrel of rotten pandemonium.

“They shoulda just run,” he said, shoulders all scrunched up after he learned that there was a death toll. “Why didn’t they just run?”

I was left with the unenviable task of explaining that some natural disasters just can’t be outrun.

We must have watched the news coverage for at least an hour, and then after learning that Andrea and Paul were safe in California, Chooch said, “Thank god,” in a decidedly un-four-year-old tone.

Then he started asking me unlimited questions about CNN, ending with him taking a virtual tour on their website.

***

Henry had been home from a work for a few minutes when the day’s events came up.

“Yeah, did you know what happened?” Chooch asked Henry, eager to fill him in.

“I heard,” Henry said. “Earthquake.”

“No, about Japan!” Chooch argued.

“Yeah, I know. There was an earthquake.”

“NO. IT WAS A WAVE!” Chooch cried in frustration. He was really focused on the tsunami part of the package and desperately needed to inform his father.

“I heard about that too,” Henry promised. This was the WRONG answer. Chooch is apparently just as competitive with news-spreading as he is with Wii and winning impromptu races up the driveway, because he lost his shit.

“GODDAMN YOU!” he yelled, and then more calmly, he added, “I wanted to tell you.” But there were demon-eyes and crossed-arms that went along with it, so it was still pretty frightening.

Yikes.

I was trying to put Chooch’s coat on him this morning before school, when he quite earnestly asked, “What makes me have dreams?”

Great. Anything more than, “What is your name?” and  “Name the cast of the Jersey Shore” is too hard of a question to dump on me pre-8:00am. “I don’t know. Your brain, I guess,” I mumbled, struggling with the zipper.

Chooch made a very agitated noise, and then spat, “Well, I hate my brain.” He paused, (waiting for me to ask why, I’m sure, which never happened because I was too busy being gagged by a yawn) before explaining, “Because it made me dream about Dora.”

Poor child. I would hate that brain, too.

***

Today’s Show n Tell is for the letter S. I gave him my Sid & Marty Kroft Sigmund the Sea Monster plushie to take. I originally was going to let him take his play sword, but Henry was like, “Um, no. They’re not allowed to take swords.”

“What? Why? Where does it say that?” I asked, wondering if there was some bulletin I missed (which would pretty much be all of the bulletins).

“Um, they’re not allowed to take anything that resembles a weapon. It pretty much says that everywhere, in every school.” He said this using his “I’m talking to my 8-year-old daughter” voice, then he gave me that patronizing once-over with his eyes while shaking his head sadly.

Well, sorry that I clearly did not know that. When I was in kindergarten, I wore a charm belt to school and one of the charms was A REVOLVER. Twenty-five years later, and I haven’t shot anyone. Yet.

I found a stash of self-portraits on my phone that Chooch had snapped, featuring nothing more than his bare legs, a collection large enough to fill an entire coffee table book for lovers of nude limbs.

Too good to pass up.

I was going to write something along the lines of “content” today but then I spent all morning making a mix CD instead, which wins every time.

Oh well.

While reading this, I hope you could hear my total monotone in your head.

I have a bit of the malaise glaze.

ETA: This just happened:

I asked Chooch (whose legs are still unclothed) if he wants me to put anything in particular on the mix CD I’m making for Kaitlin, and he said, “Yes. A heart.” Which would have made for a really sweet story to tell everyone if only he hadn’t tacked on, “Or daddy’s furry weener.” (He is determined to alert the masses of the existence of his dad’s furry weener, by the way. Henry is thrilled by this.)

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

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

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

How apropos.

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

”

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

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

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

Owellz0rz.)

Total Creeper.

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

Peace out, girl scout.

I try not to get too hung up on that whole Valentine’s Day bullshit, but when Chooch came home from school on Monday with a Valentine for his DAD, I kind of lost my shit a little.

Chooch gave a blase shrug and a mumbled, “I don’t know” when I asked him why he made one for his dad and not me.

“IT’S BECAUSE YOU LIKE DADDY BETTER! YOU HATE ME!” I wailed, because this is how really extraordinary,  properly emotional and not-at-all competitive moms choose their words.

Quickly realizing his entire childhood was on the verge of going up in flames, he very desperately pleaded, “No! I LOVE YOU!” and then threw his arms around me in a hug fraught with fear and regret.

I made sure I reminded him every chance I got how this MISTAKE of a Valentine had decimated my already fragile feelings.

“You’re overreacting,” Henry laughed after receiving my hysteric phone call in which I tossed out promises to hedgeclip his ballsack when he came home from work. “He was probably sitting with the girls and they probably wanted to make one for their dads, so he just followed along.”

WHATEVER.

That child must have reminded me 100x yesterday that he loves me.  And when I came home from work last night, he was so excited to give me my Valentine’s Day present, which he had picked out all on his own. I guess he felt this was his penance, I don’t know.

An iCarly messenger bag! I was elated. I can’t wait to use it at Warped Tour this summer. He did such a good job that I decided to let him off the hook. But I was still hating on Henry, because everything is his fault.

EVERYONE LIKES HENRY BETTER. God, I can’t stand it. I am super competitive when it comes to Henry, and I will elaborate on soon, in another post.

Chooch drew a heart on the envelope to my card and I was really kind of smitten with the fact that he emulates his heart after my own.

(Except I usually have a little tail on mine, but that’s probably too sophisticated for him to handle.)

This new strange, loving behavior carried over to today when he gave me a spontaneous kiss in the middle of purposely letting me die in a very irritating game of Super Mario Bros. on Wii. I probably scared the shit out of that kid. He’s never going to want to do anything nice for Henry ever again, for fear of me shipping him off to an orphanage. On Father’s Day, he’s going to frisbee Henry a card and scream, “HERE’S YOUR CARD BUT I STILL LOVE MOMMY BETTER!” while flinching in fear of my reaction.

Fuck, I’m such a fantastic mom.

My Pappap was friends with the guy who owns Blue Flame, so we spent a lot of time there when I was growing up. It’s the sort of establishment where the food is consistent and if you go there enough times, you will eventually hear a Chuck Mangione tune. There used to be this  section of two large round goldenrod booths that were sort of separated from the rest of the restaurant by low wooden walls; that’s where we would sit if my Pappap’s friends were there, and I always felt like I was sitting with the Mob, like I was a real 4-year-old big shot.

All the waitresses knew my Pappap, so he would be real obnoxious with them, thwapping a fork off the side of his water glass to get their attention. They’d roll their eyes and exasperatedly ask, “What do you want, John?” but they’d always lose their faux-attitude long enough to dote on me, the shy little blond who was always there with her Pappap and treasured stuffed dog, Purple.

I never even had to say what I was ordering. They just knew: grilled cheese. Every goddamn time.

And even when dining in a family restaurant, my Pappap would always order his glass of Lambrusco. We would go there often after church on Saturday nights, usually accompanied by my best friend Christy. She and I would always order the same thing, prompting the waitresses to call us the Bobsy Twins and causing my Pappap to rub his eyes tiredly and say, “Why don’t you girls try ordering something different. There’s an entire menu.” Then, Christy would almost always fail to finish her food, resulting in a good-natured chiding from my Pappap. God, I miss those days. (And not just because it was my pre-vegetarian times and that meal Christy and I always ordered in unison was a cheeseburger and fries. It was only a phase though, and I would soon go back to my true love – grilled cheese.)

Eschewing the five-star restaurants we could have easily chosen, Blue Flame is where everyone went after my Pappap’s funeral in ’96. We had the entire back room reserved and the waitresses (Monica was always my favorite) were absolutely beside themselves. A bunch of my friends were there with me and I remember feeling OK. It felt like the right place to be, full of comfort and familiarity; after the nightmarish days following my Pappap’s death, it was the one thing that had a calming effect on me.

I continued to go there in high school with my friends, but never with my family. It had always been this giant brick receptacle of good memories for me, all involving my Pappap, that I couldn’t bear to stop going there. I just couldn’t let go of it.

I think the last time I was ever in that big back room was the summer after my Pappap’s death, when Lisa and I paraded through with about fifteen of our friends and, much to the chagrin of every waitress on staff that night, pushed about five tables together and held (a very obnoxious) court right there in that same room where everyone had gathered post-grieving a few months prior. I was a little on edge, because the Blue Flame people knew me, and I didn’t want them to think I was an asshole, that my friends were assholes. Even though we were, of course. Since this was the height of my obsessive camcorder-carrying days, I have video of Lisa standing by the door as our friends filed into the room, repeating, “Erin said to be good. Erin said to be good.”

No one was good. We were complete fuckers and I have no idea how we weren’t kicked out that night.

Blue Flame has kind of gone downhill over the years. Not so much the food, but more of its popularity. The sons took over and there are times when I drive past and it looks like it’s closed for good; my stomach falls every time. Henry and I take Chooch there several times a year and, in a land of chain restaurants and fast food joints, never fail to be close to the only patrons who chose this hashery on Rt. 51 as the place to be fed. It makes me sad because I can vividly remember it being loud and bustling, so busy that all of the sections are open. Now, the back room almost always has the doors shut, with a sign propped in front that says “Section Closed” and the private little boothed-area has long since been gutted in favor of a salad bar. One of the worst things that place has ever done, if you ask me.

I miss that little section with every last 1980’s-surviving piece of my heart.

***

Earlier in the week, we became aware that Chooch has two loose teeth. His dentist told us this over the summer, that they were slightly loose, but it didn’t seem noticeable to him so we sort of forgot about it. But last week, Henry and I both noticed that the two in the front had become VERY loose. Like, hopefully-he-doesn’t-swallow-them-in-his-sleep loose. He’s been messing with them all week, aggravating them with his finger, prodding them with his tongue.

We ate at Blue Flame for lunch on Saturday, after our first two choices were too crowded. We were in the area, and I shouted, “Oh, duh! Blue Flame!” We pulled into the lot and I was surprised to see it almost filled to the brim. Turns out it was just because there was a baby shower in the back room. (That’s almost where I had my baby shower, by the way, until someone snagged me a private room in a fire hall, where I could be more free to carry out my weird Halloween-themed activities. In March.)

Sometimes I still the old waitresses, like Monica and Mae, but typically they’re only there during the weekdays. Weekends are made up primarily of young high school waitresses, which is kind of a bummer. But on Saturday, we had this cute and extremely attentive quasi-scene girl waitress who didn’t fuck anything up and was always there when we needed her. She even made really non-irritating small talk and caused Chooch to blush and bury his face in my side.

And then, while eating his cheeseburger and fries, Chooch pulled out one of his teeth. Just gave it a good hard yank, and there it was, in between his two fingers, held up high for us to see.

I gagged a bit and Henry gave me that stern “DON’T SCARE HIM!!!” look that he’s had no choice but to master over the years. But Chooch wasn’t freaked out. In fact, he was pretty stoked and asked, “Am I a grown-up now?” Then the waitress came over, noticed the commotion, and exclaimed, “Did you lose a tooth?!” Chooch looked so proud. And also extremely embarrassed, as he always does when pretty older girls pay attention to him.

Seriously, what a perfect place for him to lose his first tooth – in a restaurant that already is bursting with memories and affable childhood ghosts. I kept tearing up all day when I would think about the poetic happenstance of it all. (Sort of crying a little right now, too.)

Luckily, I almost have at least one empty plastic gumball toy container in my purse, which ended up being the perfect tooth vessel. (Especially later that night when his second tooth fell out in the car. He officially has a Cindy Brady-lisp now.)

We were walking to the car after I paid the bill when Henry said, “You left her a big tip, didn’t you?” When I just silently shrugged, he said, “You did,” and then laughed. What? She was an awesome, young waitress who was there to see my kid lose his first tooth. It’s what my Pappap would have done.