Ever since I met my sister Amy last January, I’ve really been having fun getting to know her better. She’s really easy-going and what I like the best about  her is that I can text her and say, “Hey, wanna get together this Saturday?” and she’s like, “Yeah, cool!” There’s no chasing! No run-arounds! No flaking! When I was at the lowest point of my depression after the dissolution of my friendship with Christina, I sent Amy a Facebook message, asking if we could get together and talk. And she was there for me. I remember thinking, “Holy shit, so THIS is what families are supposed to be like!”

She has two children: Tyler’s 15 and I very briefly met him after the Wheeling Nailers game we went to in April, and Brooke is 5. I thought it would be fun to get her and Chooch together, since Amy hadn’t met Chooch yet either. So we planned on spending the afternoon at Washington Park yesterday. Our respective boyfriends came along as well, and both of them made us late. Typical.

We met at Subway first to get some food to take to the park. Chooch immediately began to play keep-away from Brooke. “That girl keeps trying to sit with me!” he kept whining to me, playing into his role as a boy with shining perfection.

So it was my first time meeting this little girl and I could do was shyly say “Hello” and then run away to join Amy and Dick who were in line ordering their subs, leaving Brooke under Henry’s supervision.

I’m cripplingly awkward around children.

We got our food to go and found a little playground with a picnic table, where the kids never sat. They took off as soon as we got there, but never actually talked to each other. Chooch spent most of the time trying to devise creative ways to kill himself on the monkey bars.

After we ate (I’m always the last one to finish), we found an empty school parking lot for Chooch and Brooke to ride their bikes. They still didn’t interact much, and Henry kept trying to teach Brooke how to ride without training wheels. Henry always wanted a daughter. Too bad he got saddled with three boys.

Chooch picked a flower all on his own accord and presented it to Brooke. It was definitely an aw-worthy moment, but I still thought to myself, “I hope he remembers that he’s related to her.”

There was a playground over the hill and it served as a miraculous ice breaker for the two of them. Henry, Amy, Dick and I stood off to the side and did grown-uppy things, like complain about the heat and talk about rental property.

Chooch was like, “WHY DO I HAVE TO KEEP STANDING NEXT TO HER?!” like he felt compelled to constantly remind us that he’s a DUDE and standing next to a girl might get him stabbed the next time he’s knocking a few cold ones back at the biker bar.

I kept trying to chase them to take pictures. That turned out about as well as you’d imagine.

She is like, the cutest girl ever and makes me miss being a kid.

It was such a nice day.

Chooch kept finding ways to bring Brooke into the conversation, even hours later. Like when he was drinking fruit punch. “Does BROOKE like fruit punch?” he asked haughtily.

“I’m not sure,” I replied. “Maybe.”

“Probably,” Chooch said, with feigned disgust. And then he did the stereotypical “girls are so dumb” eye-roll.

Henry brings home a donut for Chooch every Sunday. He looks cute eating it for approximately .002 seconds before all the sugar activates his Asshole Switch.

[My apologies to those who have already seen this via Facebook, but I wanted to preserve it on here.]

One of the most daunting tasks I face daily is trying to coerce Chooch into playing quietly while I attempt to get some exercise in. Sometimes he’s a great sport about it; other times he winds up peeing down the basemnet steps with a Sharpie’d replica of Picasso on his thigh and stomach. (Don’t worry – he saves feline mutilation for when I’m washing dishes, apparently.)

Today, I tried a different tactic.

“Chooch,” I started with hesitation. “Let’s exercise together. We could do yoga or something.”

He seemed game and discarded the hatchet he was using to make flesh ribbons of his latest victim.

I found a beginner’s Yoga program on FitTV and turned it on in hopes that if anything, maybe it would mellow his shit out a bit.

“This is really stupid,” he said as we began with arm and shoulder stretching. Then it was time to salute the sun and this perplexed Chooch. “But I can’t see the sun today,” he said in that haughty tone, pointing over his shoulder at the window, where the overcast sky coasted past.

“Your body should start to feel warm now,” the instructor said as she went from cobra to downward dog.

To my right, I could hear Chooch muttering under his breath. I stole a quick glance and his ass was in the air, his limbs a pretzled mess beneath him. “I don’t think I’m doing this right,” he mumbled in defeat.

I couldn’t bear to see him quit because it was just too hilarious, so I insisted that he was doing fine. “Seriously, you’re doing this better than I am,” I encouraged, which wasn’t even really a lie considering how much I HATE Yoga. (Pilates girl all the way, yo.)

“What the hell is she doing now?” Chooch asked no one in particular. “God, I really hate this broad.”

By the time he moved to Warrior, I had to stop for fear of pissing myself.

(And yes, I’m aware that we’re probably the last household in America without a flat screen. Us and roadside motels.)

Guest list:

• Alisha
• Bill & Jessi
  
• Kara & Harland
• Charlie
• Henry’s mom
• My mommy
  
• Henry’s sister Kelly & some of her kids
• Blake
  
• Evonne, Sadie & Lydia
• Christy & Claire
• Janna
  

When Chooch told me months ago, like literally it might still have been 2009, that he wanted to have a zombie themed birthday party, I had every intention of going all out. I even started thinking of ideas for like, ten entire minutes.

With the exception of designing the invitations with Chooch (which actually was not last minute and were mailed out in timely fashion), there wasn’t much more that I accomplished, aside from a last minute trip to Goodwill on the morning of his party, to shop for clothes to mutilate and bloody for the photos I wanted to take of each individual party guest, as a souvenir. Kind of like a prom picture, except with blood, a fake cemetery in the background, and a pine tree with Christmas lights haphazardly slung across its lower boughs, which really bothers me now when I look back at all the pictures. I think Bill should have painted the wires green. It could have been a zombie / Alice in Wonderland crossover, guests arriving while an undead Bill slops green paint on a tree and nervously yells about the scary queen (THAT’S ME) who’s running around with hedge clippers and shouting, “Off with your balls.”

The plan was to have the party outside; but like last year, it was around FIFTY DEGREES with the threat of rain. In May. So everything was set up in my mom’s garage to protect the guests from the impending deluge of rain. The kids had enough rain-free time to run amok outside for most of the party, at least. Because I can’t imagine Chooch being contained in a three-car garage for three hours.

Chooch the Zombie Enthusiast flipped his shit when he saw Bill for the first time, post-zombie makeover. We thought Chooch was just playing into it when he used the car as a barrier, but then Bill noticed he was legitimately crying and we all had an “oh shit” moment. Bill retreated to the garage to allow Jessi and I to try and coax Chooch from the car.

“You can open one of your presents now!” I pleaded. That worked. Good thing I used that first, instead of “You can cut Bill with this knife I got here,” because maybe Jessi might not have liked that. (And Bill wouldn’t have had much say.)

And Chooch was fine after that. So fine, in fact, that he wanted Jessi to make him up as a zombie too. I think it was just initial shock combined with Bill’s overzealousness (which Chooch ended up loving later).

Jessi somehow encouraged Alisha and Janna to get made-up, too. They kept trying to get me to do it as well, but having that much make-up on my face is yet another item in my treasure trove of neuroses and just the fact that I had to keep saying no nearly made me break out in hives. It’s probably not good that I took myself out of therapy all those years ago.

BFFs again, no biggie.

And the food! Don’t get me started on that. I had this great vision of mini meatloaves baked in over-sized cupcake tins and then Ketchup’d, like chunks of bloodied flesh. Well, Henry took that vision and fucked it up the ass. He basically made a plate of meatballs. When I voiced my aghast-ness, he then tried to get all Alton Brown: meatloaf edition on me, but I think he was lying. It could have been done.

I don’t even know what else there was to eat, to be honest, aside from what I initially thought were turtles (chicken breasts, apparently). But I will tell you there was no gelatin brain.  I mean, why would there be something so disgustingly anatomical at a zombie party??

It’s a good thing a four-year-old doesn’t give a shit about the catering at birthday parties.

That morning at Goodwill, I found (fine – Alisha found) these two lovely nightgowns and I instantly had visions of my friends Kara and Christy swathed in bloody versions of night attire, and holding their babies in front of the cemetery I set up. The cemetery was the only thing I was concerned about all day. It was a very big deal for me. I texted Kara before she arrived and said, “I have a nightgown; will you wear it?” She said yes and thought nothing of it, because I’ve asked her to do dumber things before.

This ended up being my favorite picture of the day.

I barraged Christy before she was even out of her car. She just rolled her eyes at my request because we’ve known each other since we were four and short of auto-amputation, nothing I do really shocks and awes her. At first, she tried to say that she couldn’t get the nightgown on over her hoodie and I was like, “Bitch, you best be tryin’ a little harder. Don’t make me pretend I’m in a girl gang again.”

Also, this was my first time finally meeting Christy’s baby Claire and she is so sweet! The combination of Claire and Harland was like an upper-cut/right hook combo to my ovaries, though. At one point, Henry even grabbed my silk-gloved hand and said, “Darling, shall we try for another?” And then I rammed my parasol up his tweed-trousered asshole.

The best part was that Kara and Christy both kept their respective nightgowns on for the rest of the party. I like to think it’s because they thought it was AWESOME, but warmth probably had a little more to do with it. They spent most of the party together, in a baby bubble, and I couldn’t  help but crack up every time I turned around and saw the two of them in their bloody nightgowns, cooing to each other’s baby.

“Just another night at the shelter,” Charlie said at one point, and I could NOT STOP LAUGHING. Don’t worry, I said the Rosary that night.

Charlie opted to play the role of “Victim #1.”

I realized afterward that I have zero pictures of Blake or any of the cousins, except Zac. None of the teens wanted to dress up, which I thought was strange since that’s like, something kids want to do. I mean, other than betting on cock fights in Biloxi and foxtrotting with trannies. (Is that still what teens do nowadays?) And Blake didn’t talk to me the whole time. I guess that’s a new thing or something. It wasn’t awkward at all and it certainly didn’t make me cry to Alisha behind the garage.

My mom ordered the cake undecorated, aside from the Happy Birthday part, and then made the graveyard scene with those new Oreos and zombie finger puppets. She apparently forgot to make sure it flowed with the writing on the side, but that’s just my bastard nit-picking coming out. I thought she did a great job! Unlike the photo I took, which is out of focus because I had like, 20 people staring at me and I just wanted to be done. Yet another reason why I’d never consider photography as anything other than a hobby!

He got a ton of great loot, like: a Jason Voorhees action figure, vampire movie collection, Night of the Living Dead DVD, and a Spiderman book (being held in above photo) from Bill and Jessi; a Spike Jr. and a dragon from Evonne, Sadie, and Lydia; a remote control zombie from Alisha; a Leatherface figurine, with interchangeable heads and arms, from Charlie; two plush zombies and a Tony Hawk bike from my mom; this really cool zombie figurine from my brother Ryan; a complete artist’s orgasm from Kara; gift cards from Christy and Kelly; and a Spiderman skateboard from Janna.

It really made me wish I was still a kid!

Before I knew it, three hours had passed and everyone started to leave. There was a Penguins game on that night and I’m sure most of the guests were happy to know that I’d be the first one to abandon my kid’s party for it.

Bill and Jessi had to check in to their hotel first, zombie makeup and all, but came back to my house later to hang out and, more importantly,  so Bill could get called a “douche cup” by Chooch when he had the audacity to deviate from the Lego instructions.

When they came back over the next morning for breakfast, Bill held out his hand and said, “Here, somehow Leatherface’s head made it into my pants last night.” So, now we know what Bill does after drinking a little Manischewitz.  I think that was the highlight of my entire weekend.

Thanks again to everyone who came and showed your love for my little zombie-child. It was so great to see everyone, especially you guys who came from hours and hours away. It really meant a lot to us! (Maybe not Henry, because he’s rude.)

And ever since his party ended, Chooch has been going on and on about his next party. “It’s going to be a CARROT party,” he says so full of certainty. “With CARROT ICING.” And no, he’s not just insinuating he wants a carrot CAKE. This is a full-scale carrot PARTY, you guys. And he wants everyone to dress as carrots. Have fun with that!

“Do you want Cap’n Crunch?” I asked Chooch in an attempt to be a mom.

“Yeah, I already said that I want it later,” he replied in his patented drawl of sass, mockery and exasperation – your typical teenage side dish.  I always have to pull back from flicking him.

“OK. So you want it later,” I reiterated, making sure I got it right because god only knows with him.

“It is later now,” he yelled. “Go get it!” SEE??

And as I came over here to preserve this lovely conversation in my blog, he appeared next to me and said, “Make sure you tweet about it, too.”

Yes, Your Majesty.

I have blog apathy lately, so have a video of Chooch. It’s not very exciting, which is why I don’t normally post videos.

Just a typical evening, trying to sit next to him on the couch.

I can’t tell you how many times a day I say to Chooch, “You’re lucky you’re cute.” Not that it would be any easier to ship him off to the nuns if he, I don’t know, had a cleft palate; that would be rude. But you know what I mean. It’s make it hard to stay mad at him for too long. Although after he modified Speck’s ear last week, my extreme anger and disappointment were able to withstand his cuteness for nearly an entire day.

This was at Buttermilk Falls on Mother’s Day, lovely fucking Mother’s Day. It was the day after Chooch’s party, where he apparently suffered some mysterious injury to his leg/knee/ankle/foot which rendered him partially handicapped. Anytime we’d ask him which leg hurt, he’d wailed, “All of them!” I have a feeling he twisted his ankle or something, because he was fine after the weekend.

This is my current favorite picture of Chooch.Henry said he thought this door used to belong to a porn shop. “Or a gay bar,” he said.

We spent the day downtown yesterday. The entire day. Doing nothing but walking except for the thirty minutes we sat down for lunch at the Oyster House, where the waitress did that thing where Chooch is the only patron at the table and all her inquiries are directed at him. She was trying to guess his name, and the first name she came up with was Henry, which I thought was amazing and couldn’t stop talking about it afterward, even took up ten pages in my diary just for that. This is not true. I told Alisha when she met us downtown afterward, and that was it. Oh, and the Internet. So I guess I told three people.

This was immediately after Chooch chased a huge pack of pigeons into a table of diners.

After wrangling Alisha, we got tart pomegranate frozen yogurt from some new place near my work called Sweet Lix. It was good, but Henry was quietly fuming at the cost. But come on, he had to have known as soon as we walked into the shop’s glowing white interior, with space-aged tables (the kinds you’re expected to STAND at) and new age music floating pretentiously from the ceiling (from which hung large white lanterns that can probably be purchased at IKEA) that he was about to pay over $7 for two small cups of frozen yogurt.

Alisha got granola on hers and talked about it for upward of an hour.

Apparently Alisha REALLY likes granola. I’m going to buy her some Birkenstocks. I’m pretty sure that was what she was hinting around to.

On our way toward the Point, we witnessed two elderly black men fighting in the middle of the street. A middle-aged man was trying to convince the taller one of the guys to just walk away, which he did, but not without a ton of attitude and vitriol. The other man, a short toad-looking asshole, waited until he was clear across the street to start running his mouth again. I was like, “OH NO HE DI’NT” and apparently the taller one was thinking the same thing because he came barreling around the corner right in front of us, speed-walked through traffic (nearly getting hit by a bus, except not so nearly but it sounds more exciting when you think he nearly did), caught up to the toad guy and THREW HIS DRINK ON HIM.

I stood there watching, in the middle of the sidewalk, while Henry tried to get me to stop gawking. “I’m Team THAT GUY,” I enthused to Alisha. It made me want to get into a fight.

Not that I do shit like that. I’m a lady, after all.

Then, for the third time that day, I found myself walking across a bridge. This particular bridge was having construction done on it and ROCKS were flying down from above and HITTING ME. I wasn’t pleased about this and am now going to one of those town hall meeting things so I can yell about it. I’m going to bring a gun and wave it around a lot. That’ll get it done.

Once across the bridge, we walked along the disgusting river.

A small docked boat contained a lounging couple, sipping champagne and looking generally snobby and extremely uninteresting to me.

“Who does that?” I scoffed to Alisha.

“Well, some people do actually enjoy that,” Alisha explained, and I rolled my eyes.

Yuppies.

There is a horrifying monument to Mister Rogers down there. I had nightmares.

On the way back to the bridge, a crowd had gathered around two old black guys who were fishing.

“Looks like they caught a fish,” Henry stated obviously.

I began gagging. But then I was just annoyed. “Really? People actually stopped to watch this?” I asked loudly. I was appalled. And then Alisha pointed out that they were listening to Whitney Houston on their transistor radio and I wanted to kick it into the river.

Then Chooch interrupted a couple trying to smoke a joint and we went home. I’m really tired today.

“I’ll post about Chooch’s birthday party,” I thought to myself while I was washing all the dishes Henry left in the sink for me from last night. Suspicions are seriously being raised. I’m certain he’s hosting dinner parties while I’m slaving away at my SUPER HARD job every night. And if I find out he’s making maple-baked pears, I will seriously hedge-clip his nutz0rz.

A muffled commotion broke through the sound of my SENSITIVE SKIN pruning from all the dirty dish water lapping against it. I turned off the water and marched into the dining room, where I was sure I’d find my serial-killer-in-training bugging my cat Speck (nee Nicotina) as usual. She was perched a top one of the computer monitors and Chooch quickly fled into the living room, shouting, “I didn’t do anything!”

All the toys he has, and it’s the poor cat he wants to bend in unnatural directions. A cursory glance at her told me she was OK, and I went back into the kitchen to get a bowl of cereal.

When I sat down at the computer desk with my Special K, my arm stopped its spooning motion halfway to my mouth. There were bright red droplets of something on the desk. I looked closer and, while I hoped it was Faygo Red Pop, I was pretty sure it was blood. I looked up at Speck. Her paws were dyed a diffused red, and there was blood-splattering on the wall behind her.

I freaked. She had both eye balls. She still had a tail. She wouldn’t stand still long enough for me to inspect the pads of her paws.

“What did you do to her?” I yelled at Chooch, who at this point was the personification of guilt and evil fucking on a bed of carnage.

“Nuffin’!” he shouted, hysteria tinging his voice and completely giving himself up. “Smidge did it!” (Smidge, nee Marcy.)

Meanwhile, Marcy was perched, stock still, on the steps, watching this play out with huge owl-eyes.

I noticed a pair of orange kids’ scissors on the dining room table. Chooch clearly skipped over the “Hiding the Evidence” chapter of his serial killer handbook.

“Did you cut her with scissors?” I asked, trying to stay calm but there was BLOOD TRAILS ON THE FLOOR AND WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO MY CAT?

He wouldn’t answer me, so I sent him up to his room and called Henry, at which point my panic burst out of me like one of those pressure washers Henry was trying to teach me about yesterday.

“YOU BETTER COME HOME RIGHT NOW!” I screeched into the phone. “OUR SON IS A GODDAMN SERIAL KILLER, OH MY GOD, THIS ALL YOUR FAULT, HE GETS THIS FROM YOU!”

By the time Henry sped home from work, I was able to deduce that Speck’s ear had been snipped by scissors. The snip was about half an inch long, maybe a little shorter, and my friend Rhonda reminded me via Twitter that head wounds bleed a lot and that Speck had probably forgotten all about it by then.  When Henry arrived, Speck was curled up in my lap, purring contently and looking around with her signature question-marked expression.  The blood had begun to congeal on her ear by then, and I was able to clean up the rest of her with a wet paper towel, so the scene was less “Leatherface was here” than it was when the mutilation initially happened.

Henry deemed that it wasn’t bad enough to take her to the vet. He cleaned off the wound and dabbed it good with Neosporin, then sat down with Chooch and tried to reason with him (HA!) before confiscating the new Ben 10 toys he just bought with his Toys R Us giftcards.

One by one, the other cats have realized that Speck’s ear is oozing blood, and there is an intense blood-lust situation going down right now. They keep trying to inspect her, and Speck is getting all alley-cat on them, hissing and screaming, and there’s fur flying, and I’ll be honest here: I feel like I’m in some horrible made-for-TV Stephen King adaptation and I DO NOT LIKE IT.

So, instead of writing about the fond memories I have from my asshole son’s birthday party, I’m trying to find a good, safe home for my poor cat who doesn’t deserve this shitty life.  This is only because my initial suggestion to get rid of Chooch was vetoed.

I really, really don’t want to give Speck up. I’ve had her since 1998, when I lived in my first apartment!

I have a ton of shit I need to write about the zombie party, but for now I couldn’t resist posting these two pictures of Chooch because I like them so much.

The makeup was courtesy of Jessi. Thanks again, Jessi!

He was seriously in his glory.

Chooch got some sweet loot at his zombie party yesterday, including a remote control zombie and a Leatherface figurine, which he’s been playing with all day. He even took them with us to King’s for breakfast, where he and Bill (who, along with Jessi, was visiting from Michigan) raucously fought with them in our booth. Jessi and I were hungover from blackberry Manischevitz, but I wondered how much of our headaches were brought on from all the smiling we did after the Red Wings were eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs last night.

While at King’s, we also saw a woman in a camo jacket (“I literally can’t see her from the waist up,” Jessi marveled.

“It really works.”), a senile old man seemingly drunk from communion wine (Chooch told him he doesn’t have a mom), two dickhead fathers, and an old woman with Beethoven hair who wished us all a happy mother’s day (Bill was the only one who said thanks).

And our waitress, Jodie, admitted to me that she only just recently watched Dirty Dancing. This was after she served Jessi her “eggs Benny,” and said it in a way that made me believe it was an inside joke between them and it made me jealous! I’m very possessive of Jessi.

And my waitresses.

Bill and Jessi have since departed for home, and Henry and I are en route to Buttermilk Falls with a sleeping zombie in the backseat.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Do you know how often I hear, “Oh my god, Chooch looks JUST LIKE HENRY?” Too often. Too fucking often. In my Chooch Nostalgia research, I found this old comparison exhibit I made, because apparently when he was a year old, everyone thought he looked JUST LIKE HENRY, too. Maybe he looks like Henry when he’s blankly staring at shitty television programming or cupping his jock like all little boys (and men) do, but everything else is all Erin, OK? EVERY THING ELSE, right down to the attitude.

I like that at my new job, they have no one to compare Chooch to but ME because fuck if I have any photos of Henry on my desk. Henry has a photo of his nieces and nephews at his desk. His nieces and nephews. But not one picture of me. So I let people continuously ask, “Which one is your boyfriend?” when they see the picture of Chooch with Chiodos.

“All the way to the right, guys,” I answer every time.

(Ed.Note: He still makes these same faces when we’re together. I miss the days when he had no choice but to sit with me.]

[Originally posted September 2006]

Two and a half years. That’s how long it had been since I was last sick. Two and a half years. So it came as no surprise when I developed a cold the night before the baptism. Pair that with the fact that Brian waited until the eleventh hour to suggest that we just do the luncheon at his place (because he was too scared of my wrath to just come out and say that he failed at securing a room in the church), and you have yourself a Very Erin Baptism.

Figuring that most of the guests wouldn’t be willing to drive from the church to downtown, where Brian lives, I decided to just have the luncheon here, in my cluttered house. Which meant that Henry spent Saturday night and Sunday morning cleaning. He tried to use that as an excuse to bail on me, claiming that it would be more conducive if he stayed behind and cleaned some more. After inspecting the house, I realized that there was nothing left to be done, short of polishing the silverware and waxing the doorknobs, so I snapped my fingers and he reluctantly donned his I’m Playing Dress Up attire. After securing Riley into his slippery baptismal garments, we were ready to go.

Everyone arrived at the church on time, even Christy, who has tardiness ingrained in her nature. I was glad to see that she was already there, because she’s the godmother. And it’s important for the godparents to be at the church.

Once inside the church, the first thing that happened was Brian rushing up to me and giving me a huge, hearty hug as if this was common practice within our friendship. For the record, it is not. Wow, Church Brian is different than Street Brian, I mused to myself.

I was too busy willing my nose not to drip to pay much attention to the guests preceding the ceremony, which I feel bad about now. Except that I don’t feel bad for ignoring Janna, who flitted around me like a fucking fairy, telling me all about the trials and tribulations she endured when baking cookies for the luncheon. I think she might have expected a pat on the back, but I was like, “Bitch, I told you to just make chocolate chip cookies, not scour the Food Network website for the most ambitious recipe you could find.”

She repeatedly worried out loud that no one would like her cookies. “Do you think my cookies will be good enough?” she’d ask. I don’t know Janna, can my kid get dunked in water first? I delegated video camera duties to her, so that arrested her mind for awhile and gave me some peace and quiet.

In a happy turn of events, two members of my family showed up: my aunt Charmaine and Grandma Lois, on my birth dad’s side. That made me less embarrassed about the fact that my other family blew it off like it was simply a communal trip to the grocery store. Even my brother Corey let me down, but that’s OK — now I won’t have to go to his high school graduation. (Oh that’s right, I play those games.) I was happy to see that Christy’s parents were there, along with Janna, Brenna, Kara, Lisa, Carol, and Christy’s boyfriend Andrew. And of course Brian, the godfather and resident churchy person.

The cold medicine which I had coursing through my system made me oblivious to the fact that I was standing near an altar. Trying to dab my nose with discretion also helped keep me from erupting into giggles every time the priest spoke. Most importantly, I didn’t do anything stupid or childish.

I was chagrined, however, to learn that I would have to speak out loud from a baptism guide book. It was your basic “I do”s and “Amen”s, but still. That made my skin crawl a little, and it was hard to keep a straight face as I realized that Henry was intentionally not participating in his speaking role. He busied himself with the squirming Riley, so I don’t think anyone noticed that his lips were not, in fact, moving.

I spent a large portion of the ceremony flipping ahead in the booklet to see how much more speaking I’d have to partake in. I’m sure I appeared to be very grateful and pious.

At one point, Riley arched his back so extremely that I felt like if someone would have slid a set of stairs underneath him, he could have recreated the deleted scene in The Exorcist. That would have been a good time.

The priest, who was quite the card, anointed Riley’s head with some scented oil crap. He then closed his eyes and said, rather dramatically, “Oh yes, that does smell wonderful” and he encouraged Henry to take a whiff of Riley’s head, but Henry was still being a spoiled sport and ignored the suggestion. I, on the other hand, had a dire need to know what it smelled like, so I announced to the church, “Well, I want to smell!” and made a show of sniffing my kid’s head like I was a dog. I don’t know why I made such a scene of it; I could barely smell anything through all the sick in my nose.

God, I must have been so attractive, standing up there with red, sore nostrils, clutching a wilted Kleenex. When I looked in the mirror before we left for the church, I swear I looked semi-decent. Then it all unraveled in the car on the way to the church and I look like Throw Mama From the Train in every picture that was so rudely snapped of me, like the only thing that’s keeping me from looking like a true Cyclops is that I have an extra eye. I somehow managed to appear pregnant all over again. Sick or not, I’m just not photogenic and you would think that after twenty-seven years of scratching out my face with a Sharpie, I’d have come to terms with this.

But no, no I haven’t. It still makes me want to rip my face off.

After about twenty minutes, Riley was officially baptized and I hastily ran away from the altar so I could blow my nose. I don’t even think I thanked the priest. Now I kind of feel shitty about that. But no, not really. Not at all.

Back at my house, everyone lavished my kid with exorbitant attention (except for Brenna, who doesn’t like kids, and Janna, who was too busy staking out the perfect spot for her cookies) and he was in his glory. He cruised around the house in his Tot Rider, showing off for all who would cast a glance his way, until Christy’s dad decided that the only way he’d stay for the luncheon and enjoy himself without faking was if I turned on the football game.

So my son was soon forgotten and the baptismal luncheon quickly morphed into a football party, but I didn’t care. I was just happy that everyone was there and staying. Every time someone would approach me at the food table, I’d desperately cry out, “You’re not leaving, are you!?” Turns out they were coming to the food table to, you know, get food. I don’t get much company.

Lest anyone get too godly, Marcy came out of hiding and skulked around under a cloud of Satanism, seducing hands to pet her so she could suckle the blood that her claws were sure to draw. I could hear Christy in the other room, begging her dad not to touch Marcy.

“Daddy please don’t touch her! I tried to tell Ma once and she didn’t listen and that cat attacked her!” She usually punctuates her pleas by holding her hand against her chest, like a mom does when her child is about to fall off the monkey bars. Christy is the head of the Put Marcy Down Coalition. They have history, those two.

I dare say that Marcy was able to eclipse the football game, if only for a few minutes.

My Grandma Lois was happy to get an opportunity to give Riley a bottle. He started coughing at one point, and with a mouthful of cake, I feigned concern. “Oh. No. My son is choking. I hope he is OK.” I even craned my neck slightly in an effort to look like I cared. Then Henry called me out. “You don’t care about him; you just want to know if you have to stop eating or not.”

Come on, I was eating cake! I don’t know many people who are inclined to forsake a piece of cake in order to save a choking victim.

Did I mention that Janna made cookies?

I started to regret asking Janna to make the cookies in the first place.

Every time I’d see her talking to someone at the luncheon, I imagined she was filling their head with her stories of being a broken woman forced to bake cookies.

“Do you like those lemon cookies? Yeah? Did you know that it took me five billion hours to make those? Well it did. I even went to Egypt and excavated the jaw of a Pharaoh which I then used to grate the lemon rind to perfection. And the cinnamon on those Snickerdoodles you’re enjoying? It’s actually directly from a cinnamon fern in Asia, and it is very helpful with diarrhea.”

It would figure that Janna would be the last to leave, and she was still expelling sour air over her fucking baked goods. She wound up with a few leftovers to take home. I feel bad for her parents.

Riley was in a sound sleep in his crib by the time I realized that I had forgotten to take a picture of him with his newly appointed godparents, so a cute bottle of Mountain Dew served as a stand-in.

All in all, it was a good day. We laughed a lot and my kid was loved on a lot and he made me proud by being such a good sport about the whole manhandling by a priest situation. And that church was really pretty, too. I’m glad I let my aesthetic disposition prevent me from using the church across the street. Because that one is very plain. And you know, looks matter.

Ever since I got pregnant, I knew I would have the baby baptized, for the obvious reasons:

1. Babies dressed in uncomfortable garb while squirming under a deluge of water should be a spectator sport
2. The party afterward = food
3. Finally, a legitimate excuse to have Riley dunked (provided the church I choose goes that route)!

And also maybe I have some personal reasons as well, but getting into that would be bo-oooo-ring.

Henry, on the other hand, is quite opposed to this and has voiced several times that he doesn’t care what I decide to do, but not to expect him to support me. As a non-practicing Catholic, he said he’d feel like a hypocrite. Why? I don’t.

Surprisingly, this hasn’t sparked many blow-outs with us. If it were political, I’d have undoubtedly broken his glasses (again) with my right hook.

After discussing the situation with the priest across the street, he signed me up for the baptism class and recommended that I bring one of the godparents, since the class was going to be full of couples and I’d likely feel uncomfortable.

Wait, what? I had to go to a class? You mean I couldn’t just march the kid into a church and have a priest plop him into a fountain?

I couldn’t find anyone to go with me. I didn’t even want to go! Because really, church and me? Seriously? I would rather be pooped on by Henry’s gross ex-wife. But getting the baby baptized is surprisingly important to me, and I knew that by attending this class, I was proving that I was serious.

After spending two weeks moping around the house with a heavy bottom lip, I scored myself a side-kick for the class in the form of our very own Hoover. He was quick to reiterate that he was still not on board with the baptism, though.

At noon on Sunday, we slid into the second pew from the front of the baptism classroom and watched as the teacher–Cindy–began rustling through papers, making her last minute preparations. I immediately felt an urgent desire to laugh.

I’m one of those Inappropriate Laughers. I’ll erupt at a moment’s notice in the most solemn of places: churches, funeral homes, abortion clinics. I know I’m not alone in this, either. Henry gave me a toothpick to jab into my thigh to quell the giggles, although he first offered to do it himself.

The silence was stifling. I didn’t know where to lay my eyes. I kept staring at the pattern on Cindy’s dress, but she caught me a few times and I have a feeling she thought I was a lesbian and Henry was my skirt. Better than thinking, “Ew, that doofus sired her son? Poor baby.”

I wondered what the class would be like. I imagined there would be some Holy water flicking and maybe one of the couples would be a dear and come bearing homemade cookies. Simulated baby dunking, if we were lucky. But I would quickly find out that baptism class was really just a facade for Cindy to spend an hour beating into our heads just how fantastically in tune with Christianity her daughter is and how her son has a remarkably high IQ.

I picked at my cuticles for the next five minutes, and still no one else had arrived. Cindy decided to start without the others and passed over a sign-in sheet, which Henry refused to sign.

Cindy then asked her 10-year-old daughter Sophie to stand at the podium and start off the class by reading the Parent’s Prayer. Relieved that we weren’t going to be strong-armed into reading out loud with her, I got comfortable in the hard wooden pew as Sophie started reading. And stuttering. And fumbling over words. And completely rearranging the order of words. I wanted to slap her in the back of the head and yell, “SPIT IT OUT, KID!” Henry, sensing my annoyance and growing anger, hissed, “She’s only 10!” I didn’t care! I could read better than that when I was ten!

When she finally finished butchering the eight paragraphs (is that what you would call the individual clusters of Christlike adulation?), Cindy beamed and praised her for a job well done. I choked back the bile.

“I want to talk specifically for a minute about the one line of this prayer,” Cindy announced, still wearing her church-appointed fake smile. It was a line talking about teaching our children not to lie and cheat. Cindy pulled out the big guns in the form of an anecdote. Ooh, I was shivering with anticipation. “Just recently, we came back from Disney World. Now, while we were there, we could have lied and said that Sophie was only nine so she could get in at a cheaper admittance price, but we didn’t want to set an example of lying to get something we want. Right Sophie?” Sophie cocked her head and smiled tightly at us.

Oh my god, I really hated her.

Cindy went on to gush about Sophie’s work in the church.

“She’s filling in for an altar boy on vacation, so she’s really been able to see how mass works from behind the scenes, right Sophie?” Big deal. Sophie remained in the front of the classroom with her hands on her hips as her mom continued to stroke her ego.

What a smug bitch.

I wondered how much longer we’d have to sit here and watch their Happy Valley dog and pony show when a haggard-looking woman padded into the room. Henry gave me a squinted side-long glance as he noticed that she was alone.

Next, Cindy asked us why we wanted to have our children baptized. “We’ll start over here,” she decided as she looked at me.

What?! No one told me there was going to be a Q&A session.

“Uh…because I was baptized. And it’s like, the right thing to do?” I suddenly became aware that my answer would only have sounded worse if recited by Butthead himself.

I white-knuckled the edge of my seat, waiting for Cindy to shake her head sadly and say, “No, I’m sorry. Wrong answer; you fail. Now get the hell out of my class. Oh–and may the Lord be with you.” Instead, Cindy looked at me with the pity generally reserved for three-legged dogs.

“Yes, OK. So, because of tradition, right? That’s certainly not a wrong answer.” Then why was she making me feel like it was wrong? She turned her attention to Henry, who irritably mumbled, “I’m with her!” His reply was barely audible over all the hostility radiating from it. She skipped over him for all the other questions.

I rolled my eyes when she asked the single woman at the end of our row what her reason was and we had to sit through a veritable dissertation. I felt so out of place.

Soon, another single woman rolled on in. And another. And another. Henry’s scowl was deep-set and animosity was rolling in waves off his skin. Once again, I couldn’t stop laughing.

After getting the newcomers up to speed, Cindy decided to hurl another pop quiz our way. Something about what could we do as parents to instill faith into our children. She looked at me expectantly. I mumbled that I would take the kid to church.

Cindy gave me that look again and reiterated my answer in case those in the back didn’t quite hear just how lame it really was. Then she steepled her fingers and said that yes, going to church was certainly an obvious route to take. She was clearly digging for some profound spiritual example and I was unsure that she was going to find it within the motley crew gathered together that day.

I was wrong.

There was a woman sitting in the pew behind us, and when it was her turn to answer Cindy’s stupid question, she closed her eyes and said, “You know, I learn more about faith from my children than I could ever teach them myself. Every time my daughter hears a bell, she says a prayer.”

Don’t Erin. Oh god, don’t laugh.

Cindy stopped dead in her tracks and clutched the back of a pew. “That gave me goosebumps,” she announced, as though the woman had sung a hymn in the dulcet tones of an angel, rather than simply answering a question. Cindy rubbed her arms for effect.

This class was a piece of shit. I started to get restless and began to rifle through our handouts. There was a dated booklet about the religious aspects of being a parent and it featured pictures of real life families. There was a shot of one child with a bowl cut and thick-framed glasses who particularly tickled my funny bone. My body convulsed in amusement as I realized that the kid bore a striking resemblance to a young Hoover. Then I noticed the headline of that page said Raising Special Children.

Jesus, I’m a bad mom. No one wants to hear that their child resembles Henry.

Finally, the end was drawing near and Cindy’s husband Sam–who appeared to be running on the fumes of last night’s alcohol binge–ushered us into a classroom down the hall, where two rows of miniature chairs were set up in semi-circles. I was happy that I was able to successfully plant my ass on the chair without my cheeks dripping over the sides. Sam pressed ‘play’ on the VCR and we all sat back to watch Bishop Wuerl, circa 1988, walk us through a real life baptism. It was fifteen excruciating minutes of him narrating over top of scenes from a baptism, interspersed with shots of him in his Bishop-y costume, clasping his hands in front of a bookshelf which was no doubt filled with books about praying and swindling money from parishioners.

Quickly, I lost interest in that nonsense. Instead, I busied myself by taking inventory of the best educational toys from the ’70s, housed in ragged boxes held together by masking tape and stacked haphazardly on a shelf next to my seat. Maybe when I start attending church, my monetary offering will go toward upgrading the flashcards.

When I start attending church. I love saying that over and over in my head.

“…and then the priest anoints the godparents….”

The Bishop was on his ninth “and then.” I was waiting for the “…and then the end.” Would it ever come? That Christ-hugger Cindy said that it was a “short” video. To me, short is two minutes. Anything longer than that and I’m lost in a land of spittle and undulating hot dogs.

“…and then…”

Ooh, birdie outside the window!

“…and then…”

Jesus Christ, I couldn’t stop staring at Hoover’s head, which looked like the prize-winning gourd at the county fair.

“…and then comes the part of the ceremony where the priest performs an exorcism…”

Wait…what? Way to lasso my attention, Bishop Wuerl.

And so the video segued into the section about Original Sin and cleansing the soul. I was captivated as, over and over again, Bishop Wuerl said things like, “..expel the darknesssss.” This creepiness was certainly unexpected in a video about a fucking baptism.

“Darknesssss….”

The video ended and Sam presented us with a certificate praising us for completing baptism class. That almost made up for not attending high school graduation.

I ran for the door and as soon as my feet hit the pavement of the parking lot, my tongue tripped over itself as all the comments I had held back for the past hour came racing out past my teeth. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to distract Henry, who immediately began to berate me for dragging him to a class full of single women when he could have stayed at home and jacked off over his hair cut.

“Darknessssss.” Ooh, it still makes me shiver!

Later on that afternoon, while licking a soft-serve ice cream cone laden with crunchies, Henry said thoughtfully, “That lady—Cindy—was hiding something.” Like what? The fact that she didn’t really recite the Parent’s Prayer every night? Sophie’s on the pill because she can’t keep her legs closed?

Ever since the class, I’ve been dangling water bottles above Riley’s head so we can practice for the big day, but then Henry gets all, “OMG no!” on my ass and rips the bottle from my hand.

The baptism will be the first time I’ve entered a church since I was seventeen.

[Originally posted July 2006]

Hey look at me and my mommy blog!

I’ve been having conflicting feelings lately. Feelings that have made me want to seriously pack a bag and just go away, possibly never come back.

I suspect that maybe this is normal, that other moms probably feel this way at times, but it’s hard when you can’t find anyone to admit that, when you feel that just saying the words out loud will have you ostracized from humanity. Makes you feel kind of alone in it all. Lately, it’s seemed like Chooch and I fight with each other more than anything else and I hate that. I hate going into work with blood-shot eyes, trying to suppress that sniveling reaction your body goes through when you’ve been crying all afternoon. I miss being able to just enjoy my kid instead of constantly yelling at him and having him defy me over and over. Usually this starts as soon as he rolls out of bed.

I don’t hate my kid. But I’m starting to hate being a mom. I don’t want to hate being a mom. Last week at work, I overheard one of the analysts in her office, talking on the phone to her nineteen-month-old. And she sounded so happy talking to her son, praising him,  repeating over and over that she loved him and would be home soon. I remember those days, too. And they seem like they happened forever ago. When my co-worker hung up, she said to herself, “I love being a mother.”

Fuck you.

Most days I’m too stressed and disgusted to “enjoy” being a mother. The five hours a night I spend at my job, in a clean and quiet office, is what I enjoy.

And that makes me feel like shit.

So I’ve been looking at baby pictures. Reading old LiveJournal posts from when he was in his first year. It’s been helping. And he’s been good this weekend, like the old Chooch that I thought must have been devoured by zombies because it’s been so long since I’ve seen him.

***

Yesterday was really good though. He was actually sweet, cooperative, suggested going to the cemetery to take pictures. THAT’S the Chooch I used to know. I convinced Henry to give him a faux hawk because I haven’t been able to stand the way his hair has grown in from that horrible shearing Henry gave him last December. In my mind, his bad seed behavior can be traced back to that horrible buzzing his scalp endured.

“Ugh. I look like Jimmy Neutron,” Chooch said when he looked in the mirror. But I was like, “Well, I like it and that’s all that matters.”

I don’t know where Henry got those shorts for him. I don’t approve.

“And then JESUS….woked up from the DEAD….and saw a ZOMBIE! and then died again.”

Literally an hour later, he realized that his hair had been sculpted into a cement slab. [More photos here.]

***

I do love Chooch. That’s never changed. I just need to find a way to get back to loving my role in his life. Maybe I’m an asshole for having the audacity to admit all of this.

But hopefully, there are moms reading who maybe feel the same and now they know they’re not alone. Because god knows I know how much it sucks to feel alone.