Chooch finally exchanged his Christmas gift duplicates. Henry and I kept trying to give him helpful suggestions, but always he’d gravitate right back to the goddamn Mighty Beanz aisle. He has wanted Mighty Beanz for months, but I’m usually able to distract him with something shinier and more useful, but not on this day. It was Mighty Beanz or nothing.

“Just let him get them,” I sighed to Henry. “I don’t even care anymore. It’s whatever.”

What are Mighty Beanz, you ask? Fuck if I know. But I can tell you that I’m very stressed out trying to make sure they don’t become estranged from each other. “PUT THEM SOMEWHERE SO THEY DON’T GET LOST!” I keep shouting to Chooch as my brow becomes dotted with beads of OCD.

In other news, Chooch piped up from the backseat the other day with a firm and decisive, “This is my JAM!” I can’t even remember what song it was now, but he is totally my kid.

“What about ghosts?” Chooch asked after Henry urged him to stop putting his weener on things.

“If you can find one, fine,” Henry said tiredly, followed by a sigh and exhausted eye rub. Henry knows when to avoid an argument; living with me for all these years has made him a seasoned pro at it. He knows that had he said “Not even on a ghost!” Chooch would have just continued on down the line.

“A hot air balloon?”

“No.”

“Jason Voorhees?”

“Not if you want to keep it.”

“Sarah Palin’s eyeballs?”

“Ew no!”

It’s a futile war we’re fighting. Chooch is a boy, for Christ’s sake. Ain’t no way, no how, he’s going to stop using everything at his fingertips as a weener rest. I know I wouldn’t. I’d have mine cloaked in a fur pelt and stuffed inside the hose of a vacuum cleaner RIGHT NOW.

Jessy just put this picture on Facebook and I couldn’t stop laughing. It was one of the myriad of times one of us four adults had managed to piss Chooch right the fuck off.

Actually, I think Jessy is the only
one who stayed on his good side. She needs to share her secret. Apparently, I did something really terrible. I probably ate a chip that Chooch was looking at for himself, took one too many breaths
in a minute, adjusted my bra strap. Who the hell knows what sets that kid off anymore. But I am waiting for the day he starts incinerating shit with his mind.

I also love how all the boys are wearing navy blue, like they planned it, and how Henry is standing back there laughing and silently willing Chooch to plant a hatchet between my eyes.

It’s scary being yelled at by Chooch.

I try and act like it’s no biggie, like my heart is swoll with courage, but really I’m just trying not to poop my pants.

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

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

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

Chooch loves going to the cemetery on Christmas.

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

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

A much better depiction of my child

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

I woke up Christmas morning to some Prince video marathon on VH1 Soul. It was Purple Rain-era, so I left it on, because nothing says Christmas morning quite like velvet blazers, jheri curls and lewd guitar stances. Finally, I couldn’t take the anticipation any longer and decided to coax Chooch out of slumber.

“Santa was here!” I yelled, pushing him back and forth on the bed with one impatient arm.

He mumbled some string of slurred profanities at me, shrugged me off and rolled away from me, falling back asleep.

What non-orphaned child doesn’t want to wake up on Christmas morning!? I went back downstairs and watched more Prince videos.  We had moved from “When Doves Cry” to CREAM-era by the time Chooch and Henry finally decided to join me. I was a little annoyed, but determined not to let it ruin the day.

He tore open gift after gift like a forgotten Looney Tunes character, arms blurred and paper shooting out behind him in a discarded pile. He needed no reminding of Christmas morning protocol.

I thought it was really sweet that my far-away friends thought of Chooch and sent him gifts. He got a Thing doll and some Ben 10 comic books from Bill and Jessi, causing him to rejoice in that high-pitched way children are wont to do.

I kept waiting for Henry to emerge from the kitchen with a silver tray stacked with hot cinnamon buns and some mimosas. But I guess he would have had to lift his old man bones up off the couch in order for anything short of cereal-pouring to happen.

Andrea got him a Jason wall grabber, which I can’t wait to use to cover the Sharpie art on his bedroom wall.

And then my Floridian friend Octavia saw this pull-apart zombie doll and thought of Chooch immediately. It arrived a week before Christmas, so we all had to sit around and stare at this odd-shaped package; she wouldn’t even tell me what it was. Torture!

Chooch accidentally opened Marcy’s gift, so I tried to dupe her by sliding Speck’s under her nose. She looked at me like, “You think I was born yesterday? Nice try,” so I had to unwrap it for her. And remember how Henry only bought two packs of cat treats because “Only two of the four cats eat the fucking things!”?

Yeah, good job, Henry. Because we all know how awesome cats are at sharing.

I’m so glad I bought the little fucker a Wii, when a fucking $10 Zombieland DVD elicited the biggest response from him. Seriously, it was like giving a blind bastard back his eyesight, he was so amped.

I had to beg him to put pj bottoms on so he wouldn’t be half-nude in all  the pictures. It nearly started a war, until I desperately yelled, “IT’S SANTA’S RULE, NOT MINE!”

The entire Series #5 of Homies! Next year’s gingercrack house will be even more balls out. We’ll probably have enough left over to make a manger scene, too!

Zombie loot.

Henry knowing his role on Christmas morning. Prince videos in the background.

The most adorable renditions of horror movie stars.

Halloween wristlet from Bill & Jessi; more awesome makeup from Andrea!

After all of our (Henry’s) hardwork was ripped to shreds and left in a wilting, used heap on the floor, Chooch was busying himself with his new Imaginext playsets, the Prince marathon had graduated to The Artist Formerly Known As Prince-era, and Henry and I were relaxing on the couch.

“Isn’t this the cutest thing ever?” I said, holding up Chooch’s new “10 Little Zombies” book.

“No, you are,” Henry said, and it seemed sincere! It totally made up for his failure to buy me a Christmas present.

Almost.

Tonight is Game Night which means Henry is grumpily cleaning the house and threatening to kill me and Chooch. Scary times. In order to build the dam against impending bloodshed, Chooch and I went to the craft store so I could get more wood blocks for my bathroom plaques and candles to mask the perpetual cat stench in our house. What really happened was that I offered to go to the grocery store to pick up stuff Henry needs for his spinach dip; when I suggested this, Henry’s face went slack and practically served as a projector screen of the montage of me fucking up that was spooling through his memory. So we mutually decided on me sticking to a store I couldn’t get lost in or accidentally purchase sardine juice.

In the car, I was playing the new Circa Survive Appendages EP.

“Who is this?” Chooch asked from the backseat, carefully forming the words around the protruding candy cane which he acquired from the cashier at the liquor store after successfully managing to not touch any daunting pyramid displays of wine bottles.

(Mostly this was due to the fact that every one of his fingers was stuffed into finger puppets, preoccupying him while I calculated the ratio of how much I like my friends : how much money I wanted to spend on wine.)

“Circa Survive,” I answered. But god forbid I should stop there! “The singer is Anthony Green. You know who he is. He’s in that picture with Craig [Owens] that I have hanging on the wall behind the chair.”

“Oh,” Chooch mumbled. “Yeah, I know Anthony.”

“Daddy hates Circa Survive,” I instigated, hoping this could be something that Chooch and I could join forces on in order to make Henry’s life even more miserable.

“Yeah well, I’m going to take Daddy to see Circa Survive and then tell Anthony to punch him in the face,” he spat aggressively.

I don’t know where Chooch gets his aggression,  but I honestly thought he was going to cut me the other day when his person lost on Hell’s Kitchen and my person won.

Excited that Chooch was expressing interest in this, I blurted out, “Do you want to watch Circa Survive videos when we get home?”

“No,” he said haughtily, as if he couldn’t believe my audacity to suggest something so lame to him.

I’m placing an ad on Craigslist today for a friend who will sit around and watch music videos with me.

The other day, Chooch’s class got to do the Santa Shop thing. I took him to school with a check in the envelope the school sent home with him, which had room to list who we wanted the kid to shop for, and how much to spend on each person.

Henry figured $3 was enough for everyone, but I wanted very badly to scrawl “Sky’s the limit” next to “Mom” and “.05” next to “Dad.” We also included Blake, Henry’s sister and mom, and Tommy and Jessy got to go under the “special friends” category. Special friends? Isn’t that what the dirty drunk down the street says to all the little girls to get them to lift their dresses?

I have no idea what was going through Chooch’s mind when it was his turn to peruse the tables of merch. He brought back a bag of crap, obviously – I wouldn’t expect anything more from Santa Shop – but the problem was that I wasn’t sure how the crap was supposed to be distributed. Whatever he got for me (and it was the most expensive thing he bough according to the tally on the returned envelope!), he immediately snatched and disappeared into his room with it.

Then there was a hot pink rubber popper, the likes of which I haven’t seen since 1989-era gumball machines.

“That’s for Tommy!” he yelled. Of course it is! He’s a hunter, I’m sure he can find a use for it. (And once he does, I’m calling PETA.)

A tiny alien attached to a parachute, just what Blake always wanted.

Some small stuffed toy, which was originally for Aunt Kelly, but then it was for Grandma Judy. In the end, Chooch seemed to have claimed it for himself. So I don’t know.

Jessy got probably the nicest thing out of the lot – a set of very kawaii erasers, which I’m sure is something she waits for every night on QVC. “Oh please let Smiling Ice Cream Cone Eraser hour be on tonight!” I imagine she says every night when she dons her Hello Kitty robe and curls up with her manga collection.

And of course – cat toys. He went .50 cents over budget for motherfucking cat toys! Ew, I was so pissed.

“It’s not about the gifts or the money,” Henry reasoned with me over the phone. “It’s about the learning experience and independence of shopping alone.” Oh well look at Mr. Parenting Handbook. Easy for him to say when he’s not the one who wrote the fucking check to fund this educational experience!

The cats fucking loved their little plush mice, though.

Thirty seconds later, Chooch ripped the tail off one (a toy, not a cat) and then also broke his stuffed toy. (It’s some garishly colored insect – a dragonfly maybe?)

When I was a kid, I bought much better gifts. What? I did! And I’m sure none of it ever turned anyone’s skin green.

“Hey,” I said, holding up the bag. “You didn’t get anything for daddy?”

“Yeah I did,” Chooch replied snottily, sitting on the couch eating a candy cane.

“Well what is it?” I asked, looking in the bag again to see if I missed something. Like an invisible fence for daddies.

“This candy cane!” Chooch said irritably, plucking it from his mouth to show me.

***

When Henry came home from work that day, Chooch wanted to show him what he got me so he brought it back downstairs all secretly. Then, standing three feet away from me, he hoarsely whispered to Henry, “It’s for mommy.”

“I know,” Henry whispered back.

“It’s a snowman!” Chooch continued in a loud whisper.

“I know,” Henry answered, not bothering to whisper now.

“Don’t tell her what it is! It’s for Christmas.”

At least he brought home change.

Some old ass cemetery in Lancaster, PA

Chooch is already asking if we’re going to have our traditional Christmas picnic in the cemetery and I think that’s so awesome that it’s already become a “thing” for him. We didn’t get to do it last year because it rained pretty steadily on Christmas, but we had a little post-Christmas cupcake snack on a drier day.  The cemetery picnics were something that started in ’05 when I was pregnant and we had no where else to go on Christmas because my family was being a basket of dicks. It kind of just stuck after that, even after my family took me back. We grab some snacks, some plastic bottles of eggnog from the convenience store, a blanket if we remember, and eat while shivering amongst graves. I don’t think Henry enjoys it, but Chooch and I do and isn’t it really all about pleasing the children?

All my life, I’ve had encounters with people who think it’s “weird” or “unhealthy” to have a fascination of cemeteries. I’m sure Chooch will eventually run into these same types of people who will crinkle their noses and attempt to make him feel like there is something wrong with him for pointing out the car window and yelling, “Cemetery! Let’s go!” just like he did in Lancaster. But hopefully he will be able to brush that shit off like I do. It’s not like we’re digging up dead bodies, for Christ’s sake.

Christmas 2008

Someday I will make a photobook filled entirely with all of Chooch’s cemetery photos and then all his friends will be like, “Dude, you have the best baby pictures ever!” and I will sneer in the faces of their parents.

What kind of holiday traditions do you have?

The other day, one of my co-workers asked if we were taking Chooch to see Santa.

“Well,” I began hesitantly. “Since we’re so…’alternative,'” and if I had my quotation tattoos on my fingers like I want so badly, I wouldn’t have had to go through all the effort of BENDING them into air quotes, “we’re taking him to see Zombie Santa.”

She looked at me strangely for a split second, then threw her head back in laughter. Behind me, Barb wasn’t even fazed. She’s sat near me long enough now that nothing I say or do really shocks her. To Barb, this was just another family outing for the Kelly-Robbins clan.

And that is just what we did Saturday night at Monroeville Mall. My friend Kim was there with her boyfriend Chris, so that was cool because I don’t really see her very often. Kim got me into my first bar when I was 17, so she will always be special to me! I can remember sitting at the Blue Rock in Port Vue, being very obviously underage and getting trashed off of Seabreezes. Lisa (she’s the one who introduced me to Kim) kept taking the drinks away from me and every time she would look away, Kim would push another toward me.

Kim also tried to talk me out of getting my hair cut at some shitty Fantastic Sams or Bo-Rics when I was 18 but I wouldn’t listen to her and wound up walking out in tears and wearing a scarf around my head for weeks. In August.

I think we also ate donut holes that day at my house with Lisa?

It was nice to have them to talk to while Chooch ran around Time and Space Toys, yelling CAN I HAVE THIS I WANT THIS. I hope Kim knows I wasn’t joking when I said she can borrow him anytime she wants. ANYTIME.

Zombie Santa was finally ready so we all walked into the back where the zombie museum is set up and Chooch nervously sat down. He couldn’t even look at the scantily clad elves, let alone allow any of them to get in the picture with him. Apparently, zombie girls make Chooch very shy.

Hey Erin, try to remember to check the settings on the camera once in awhile. Christ.

There was a table of COOKIES set up that we got to enjoy while waiting for the Santa picture to be printed out for us. There was one particular powdered sugar cookie that I was really feeling. It wasn’t a Russian teacake, but nearly as wonderful. While we ate cookies and repeatedly said, “No,” to all of Chooch’s begging, Kim and Chris mentioned that they had been thinking about going roller skating and I nearly choked on my tongue that’s how fast I said I was up for it. Like I would ever say no to rollerskating. So Kim, if you’re reading this – set that shit up!

It’s always the same people playing zombies at these events so I’m beginning to recognize them now. Chooch’s girlfriend from the Zombie Car Wash was there as a (SUPER HOT) bloody elf, so we forced him to get his picture taken with her. He didn’t want to wait his turn so the security guard who was having his picture taken at the time eventually just called Chooch over to join him.

On the days he has school, it always works out that Chooch gets a seriously pernicious bug up his ass which conveniently coincides with Henry’s arrival home from work.

I don’t know what set him off this afternoon – he wanted a piece of tape and somehow Henry managed to succeed in fucking this up, and suddenly we had a riot on our hands.

Standing on the stairs, tears parachuting from his eyes and a demonic glower emanating from within, Chooch shouted in a voice that sounded nothing like his own, “You fucker! I’m going to tell Santa to stab you with a knife, Daddy, you fucker!” 

(At least Henry can take comfort in the fact that his son doesn’t want to have to kill him himself, right?)

I’m sure it’s in really bad form for the mother to laugh during an outburst like this, but my god. He was so seriously pissed, and have you ever seen a four-year-old seriously pissed? It’s fucking funny. So I laughed. Openly laughed.

“What are you laughing at?” Chooch snarled at me, his voice quaking with histrionics, and I prepared to clean up the split pea soup.

However, Chooch has never threatened to put out a hit on me, so that clearly means I’m the favorites parent here.

Even though I’m mad at him, here are some pictures of (an uncooperative) Chooch from last weekend.

Ugh, that dirty mouth. Always with the dirty mouth. In all aspects.

I had given Henry explicit instructions on what to get for the cupcakes while I was at work Thursday night. The plan was that he was going to bake them and then I would attempt to not look like an honorary member of The Dream Team while recreating what I saw in the last issue of Better Homes & Gardens (which somehow is delivered with my name on it, but Henry is always quick to whisk it from the mail slot before I throw it away).

When I came home from work, it was after 9pm and I quickly saw that Henry had not yet made the cupcakes.

“I’ll get to it,” he kept muttering.

I distracted myself by stuffing the treat bags with lame little Halloween party favors and candy. Then I panicked because I wasn’t sure if the game we had in mind was good enough, so I printed out Halloween mazes and stuffed those in the treat bags too. Goddamn children.

This took about fifteen minutes, start to finish. One could imagine how exhausted I was, having single-handedly carried this entire party on my back while Henry pranced around in his underwear.

Somewhere around 10:30pm, I found out that Henry had purchased red decorating gel instead of black. RED! I cornered him in the kitchen as he mixed the cupcake batter and laid into him for being so worthless, so stupid, so irresponsible, so UNRELIABLE.

We broke up for the second time that night, but he still put his big boy pants on and went back to the store in search of black decorating gel.

By the time he came back, I noticed that he also forgot the pretzel sticks/Frankenstein neck bolts.

“I just came back! I am not going to the store again!” Henry shouted.

I raised a knife.

We broke up again.

I know, I know: Erin, why didn’t you just go to the store yourself? And let that motherfucker win?! Never. Let me remind you that the fact I haven’t eaten meat since 1996 was born from my impenetrable stubbornness. My head, it is that of a bull. (And not just because I’m that ugly.)

“Just forget it!” I screamed. “Fuck the cupcakes! I just won’t take them!”

“Fine,” Henry mumbled, pushing past me and going to sit down on the couch.

“NO I’M JUST KIDDING WE NEED THE CUPCAKES OMG GET BACK IN THERE!” I yelled, heart rate up, left arm tingling. Ew I fucking hate parties. As Henry walked by to go back in the kitchen, I muttered, “But the cupcakes are going to look pathetic since you forgot the pretzels, good job.” I saw him tense up for a second, like he maybe was contemplating pushing me into the hot stove, but then he adjusted his Susie Homemaker ruffled apron and went back to ladling batter into the cupcake tray thing.

“Did you start cooking the spaghetti yet?” I asked. We needed a lot of spaghetti noodles for the stupid game that the other moms so thoughtfully left for me to come up with.

“Can I get through the cupcakes first?” he snipped, and we broke up again.

Around 11:30, the cupcakes were cooled off and it was time to start icing them. Henry mixed up a bowl of purple frosting while I struggled with the orange. I didn’t mix it well enough, so all the cupcakes I frosted had dark orange striations throughout them, and that’s on top of the sides I smashed in from gripping too hard.

“Look,” Henry instructed. “Turn the cupcake with your other hand so the frosting goes on easier.” But as usual, I ignored his tip and continued glooping on mounds of frosting before moving on to the frustrating task of smoothing that shit out.

I started to cry. Then I screamed, slammed down the cupcake I was working on, and marched out of the kitchen.

But not before breaking up again, followed by a death threat.

“You’re a fucking retard,” I heard Henry say as he examined the three cupcakes I managed to frost before having a full-blown temper seizure. I really believe that it takes a special kind of person to be able to work with sprinkles and frosting without winding with brain matter Pollacked across the kitchen wall.

I started to watch the Jersey Shore reunion show, mouth still molded into a scowl, until I realized that I couldn’t let Henry take all the credit for the cupcakes. And he would, too. I knew it. So I went back in the kitchen and pushed Henry out of the way. He had a plateful of large marshmallows which he had previously rolled through green glittery sprinkles. I picked one up and decided to start working on the Frankenstein heads, that maybe if I concentrated real hard on that, I could block out the fact that Henry was two feet away from me, making me hate life.

By then, it was midnight.

I did that high-pitched shriek that happens when something isn’t going my way.

“What?” Henry yelled.

“THIS BLACK GEL IS TOO THICK! THIS FRANKENSTEIN IS RUINED!” I hurled it into the garbage.

“Great,” Henry said sardonically. “Now we’re going to be short one marshmallow.” Turns out there was just enough green sprinkles for fourteen marshmallows, the exact number of kids in Chooch’s class. “If you weren’t being such a BITCH, I probably could have fixed that one,” Henry sneered and I wanted to skin him alive.

“Oh you think you’re so fucking perfect!” I spat. And we broke up so badly that I created a profile on Match.com.

Whoever lives in this house after us is going to be haunted by all the ire left clinging to the walls from our mutual belligerence. And that’s assuming we both make it out alive. Otherwise, someone might want to consider taking a wrecking ball to 3021 My Street.

Being short a marshmallow, I made the executive decision to only use half and do spiderwebs on the other cupcakes. Oh great idea, Erin Rachelle. Next time, maybe try to remember that you have an unsteady hand and SUCK at decorating.

How do you bitches make this look so easy?

I was standing over the oven, dragging a toothpick over these bastards, and GRUNTING. It was excruciating! You need precision for this shit. And precision and me? We’re not friends. We’re not even frenemies. In fact, if precision turned into a zombie, I’d push everyone out of the way so I could be the one to shoot it in the motherfucking head. Precision makes me cry, you guys. And I think I have arthritis now. I fucking hate you, too, spider webs.

I hate anything to do with baking! I hate frosting! I hate food coloring! I hate the kitchen! I hate Henry!

I do like licking the batter off that mixing contraption though.

The worst part is that I kept catching Henry trying not to laugh when my sanity was very clearly slipping through my fingers like sand through an hourglass, so are the days of our lives.

Of course, they looked nothing like Frankenstein and I had a failure-induced panic attack. Then I realized that maybe it wasn’t the best idea to have a variety.

“What if the kids start fighting because they all want one with a marshmallow head?” I freaked out.

“It’ll be a good lesson for them. You don’t always get what you want in life,” Henry said matter-of-factly. That’s great, but I didn’t want to be there when parts of Mr. Potato Head began flying as the kids fought each other with tinker toys and glue sticks and teachers staggered away with pencils jutting out from their femoral artery. You might be wondering what sort of impression I have in my mind of preschool classes. Obviously a very Mad Max, post-apocalyptic one.

It was nearly 1:00am by the time we finished decorating the fuckcakes. Henry and I slept in separate rooms.

FUCKERS!!!!

[Ed.Note: Henry can attest this is not an accurate account. It has been toned down. A lot.]

If every October is going to bring with it The Great Costume Conundrum of [Insert Year], then I’m about to peace out from this Halloween bullshit. I thought having children was supposed to exacerbate that childlike wonder of trick-or-treating, carving pumpkins and pushing friends into chainsaw guys? Because so far, all it has done for me is stack a metric ton of stress upon my chest. All over a goddamn costume! This shit started last year, when all of a sudden my little voiceless pet developed a mind of his own and just couldn’t decide on a costume and batted away all of my suggestions like so many filthy flies.

Immediately after his Halloween party on Friday (I will get to that tomorrow), he goes to us, “Yeah, so…I don’t want to be Ben 10 for trick or treating. I want a new costume.” OH WHAT A SURPRISE. And poor naive Chooch, he had hopeful dreams of us taking him to 12 different Spirit Halloweens while he vetoed every costume on the racks. I sat him down and explained to him that I already wasted on a piece of shit pelt of cheap fabric and he’d make due with what we already had in the house.

Which turned out to be a clown wig and bow tie.

“You can be a zombie clown,” I suggested, which was more of an order actually.

“No! I want to go get a new costume!” he stamped.

October brings out his rich kid silver spoon syndrome, I fucking swear to god. I have NO IDEA where there this comes from.

(I was more of a silver platter kind of kid.)

Halloween afternoon, it was getting down to the wire. He was still huffing about not wanting to be a zombie clown when a commercial came on for Creepy Crawlers. I wasn’t even aware that Creepy Crawlers still existed, and evidently they are a million times more disgusting than when my brother Ryan used to terrorize me with them.

“I want that,” Chooch said.

I seized the moment. “If you let me do your makeup for trick-or-treating, I will buy you that tomorrow, I freaking swear to god.” I am not ashamed of resorting to bribery. A little promise now and then can get you pretty far in life.  How do you think I get Henry to do everything I want? (I rarely pay up, though.)

We even pinkie-swore on it.

And that is how I was able to get my finicky child to sit in a chair while Henry and I tag-teamed him with costume makeup.

It’s a good thing Henry and I are makeup dunces, because we honestly were striving for a half-assed, disheveled, under-the-dock-all-night-with-a-bottle-of-Jack look. Chooch was absolutely  miserable through it all, but I kept whispering Creepy Crawlers in his ear.

Once we were done and he saw his face in the mirror (and also got Andrea‘s seal of approval), the day took a decidedly happier turn. He flew outside and readily posed for photos, while waiting anxiously for people to walk past and see him.

Some day, Chooch will realize that his mother is ALWAYS ON POINT and maybe we can eliminate all this wishy-washy, back-pedaling, mind-changing bullshit that is seriously the most miserable fucking game ever.

He hates the feel of fake blood on his face (as opposed to the real thing, which he’s been coated with way too frequently). So we tried to go easy on him.

Chooch’s cousins Zac and Steph came with us this year, which made it more fun. Trick-or-treating is meant to be done in groups! I felt bad for Chooch last year, being stuck with me and Henry. He looked so envious every time he saw flocks of children together.

Steph didn’t actually trick-or-treat, but came along as a bloodied escort. She volunteered all season at Hundred Acres Manor (where my friend Gina peed her pants) so her make-up is always disgustingly good.

Chooch and Zac got equal amounts of love from passers-by. Everyone loves a good Jason Voorhees! I noticed that most people were like, “Aw! Cute clown!” But then Chooch would get closer and they would notice the blood and his naturally sinister visage (sometimes he gets too into character and it scares me because I think it’s real), and their voices would kind of trail off.

Less than a block away from our house, some girl bit the pavement and began wailing. Henry, Steph and I just stood there, and I said, “Well, this is awkward.” And then I laughed and rolled my eyes because she barely fell that hard and it was a little excessive, this high extent of pain she was attempting to convey.

Fifteen minutes later, Chooch totally fell head first down someone’s front steps. He managed to NOT bust his front teeth through his bottom lip this time, and mostly just hurt his chest a little. It was a slow descent, and there were no wounds to show for it. But when he stood up, he looked at his hand and began sobbing. “I’m bleeding!” he cried.

It was just some of his makeup.

“I guess this is what I get for laughing when that little girl fell,” I joked inappropriately.

He cried for about thirty seconds while the residents of the houses near the scene of the accident offered encouraging and soothing words to him. Then Henry asked, “Do you want to go home?” and he sort of wiped his eyes and gave Henry this ‘hell no!’ look, then stomped off to the next house. Thank god. The tears did little to mar his painted face, which I was admittedly too preoccupied with.

After that, I practically life-flighted him down every set of steps.

And he still wiped out another three times. And the number of “close calls” was in the double digits.

“He needs a Hover-Round,” I mumbled.

“Or a Segway,” Steph added.

Chooch did much better this year than last. He actually remembered to say “trick-or-treat” at every house and didn’t get as distracted by all the Halloween yard decorations as he did last year, when we were forced to spend at least five minutes at every house while he inspected all the inflatables in the yard and dummies on the porch.

While waiting on the sidewalk in front of one of the houses, I saw their large black cat inflatable begin its slow tilt into the earth, but there were people in front of me so I couldn’t see the culprit. Once I saw it was Chooch whose ankle was caught in it, I murmured, “Of course it would be my son.”

And who knew Henry was the official coach of trick-or-treating? My god, was he bossy. “START OVER HERE AND CRISS-CROSS! NO ONE’S HOME, YOU’RE WASTING TIME! TURN DOWN THIS STREET NOW!” Jesus Christ, Henry, get a life.

Oh look, Chooch – Mommy was a clown one year too. YOU ARE SO MUCH LIKE ME.

***

This morning before school, Chooch was watching Spongebob. A commercial for Creepy Crawlers came on. “I’m getting that today, YOU SAID!” Chooch reminded me.

Fuck. I liked him better when my promises wafted away into the ether of his psychotically-whirring mind the moment they were uttered.

On his own accord, Chooch is eating apples (while taking in an early Sunday viewing of Halloween II) as a prelude to the pillow-sack he’s about to fill with snazzily-wrapped partially hydrogenated thunder-thigh oil, high fructose double-chin syrup, and all the sweet seductive promises of childhood obesity.

I’m hoping he doesn’t get any Whoppers; talk about the party foul of trick-or-treating. Well, that and getting hit by a car.

I think I’ve effectively convinced him to eschew his HORRIBLE Ben 10 costume (can’t take all the credit – I’m pretty sure the fact that 3/4 quarters of his school turned into undulating question marks when they saw his lame costume might have had something to do with it). We are going to attempt to turn him into a zombie clown, since we already have the wig, nose and bow-tie from one of my pathetic photo shoots with ex-Christina. I am trying very hard not to be an over-bearing Halloween pageant mom like my mom was to me. At least I haven’t tried to put him in a box yet.

Henry and I have about 4 hours to learn how not to suck at applying costume makeup. Wish us luck.

P.S. I will be posting pictures from his school Halloween party (which turned out fantastically once I successfully trumped the Gosselin mom – good call on that one, guys!), probably tomorrow. I haven’t been feeling well . Ask Henry – he was in the basement trying to fix the furnace when he overheard the dulcet notes of my vomiting as it traveled two floors through the vents. I’ve sort of been phoning it in the last few days.

P.P.S. Oh yeah, Happy Halloween!