It’s been almost three weeks now since Chooch’s foot-maiming and there is nary a faint red scratch marring his flesh to indicate any hint of what was once a gnarly gash.

But he’s still favoring it, swaddling it with a sock. He comes home from a long day at Target, the playground, the Hells Angels meeting in the alley behind the Army Navy store; strips off his shoes and pants like all men do, but always keeps the sock on his left foot. Henry and I have been calling him Choochie One Sock.

“Chooch,” I’ll start. “You can honestly take that sock off now.”

“No, I need it.”

He was even keeping it on during baths at first. Actually, he wouldn’t even put his foot in the water. He’d prop himself up in a way that allowed for him to extend his left leg, keeping his battle wound from meeting the dastardly bath water.

Finally, I held his foot into the water like a sack of kittens, in spite of his thrashing and yowling.

“THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOUR FOOT ANYMORE!” I shouted the other day, over top of his skin-prickling shrieks. Then I hurriedly allowed him to fling his foot back to the surface before the neighbors called the police under suspicion that the crazy girl next door had activated the torture chamber again.

Today, I swore we were making progress. He mindlessly peeled the sock off as he prepared for his bath. He then subconsciously submerged his foot into the water. I waited, braced myself, held my breath in anticipation for a vocal reenactment of Misery’s foot scene.

Nothing. Not even slight whining. Not even a whispered “ow” or a sharp intake of breath.

“Why, my son is done near HEALED,” I thought, referring more to his mental complex than the injury itself.

After his bath, I left him alone to dress in his room. About twenty minutes later, he drove past me on his tricycle and I noticed that he had completed his post-bath ensemble with one goddamn sock.

It sort of reminds me of myself, and the psychotic way I obsessed over my C-section incision for MONTHS.

It’s been 4 years and I swear there are still times when I feel phantom twinges, stings, and tenderness.

In fact, it would have been nice to have had the luxury of guarding my wound with a sock. I’d probably still be wearing it.

I still have a job! And it’s going well. Jim and his collection of Cosby sweaters only lasted two nights. So now it’s just me; the supervisor, Ev; Monica with the cool hair; and four older broads. Mostly, it’s just very quiet there, aside from Ev’s frequent monologues she has with herself.

Ev might be my new favorite supervisor. I’m not sure she realizes I’m as old as I am, because she seems to baby me, calls me missy and says things like, “You know, those things that all you kids listen to.” An iPod, Ev? Because I have mommy issues, I have succumbed to my new role with little to no arm-bending.

The cleaning crew at this place are seemingly normal people who don’t wear Krueger-like acrylics and drive kidnapper wagons. The girl who cleans my area is young with long red hair and I think she might be flirting with me sometimes but I’m dumb when it comes to girls.

The other night, I was listening to the Penguin game while trying not to cheer out loud or punch my desk when the Rangers scored. It was a trying time for me because I have a big mouth. But I was pretty successful, though I hurt my wrist during one of my fist pumps. The game went into OT, and as I did a celebratory lurch in my seat when Malkin scored and won the game, Monica with the cool hair shouted YES! Everyone turned and looked at her, and she sheepishly said, “Sorry, I was listening to the Pens/Rangers game.”

“Oh my god, me too!” I gushed, hoping she would invite me to a sleepover and do my hair up in corn rows. She just smiled and went back to work, probably whispering, “Oh-em-gee, yay, stupid white girl.”

We are SO going to be besties.

And the job itself continues to be low-stress and mindless, which is mostly a good thing until I start getting lost in my head and thinking about shit that’s better left alone, and then I’m practically rolling me and my ball of angst into the house every night, at which point I become Henry’s responsibility.

*****

In Chooch news, he was downloading zombie games on my iPhone and one of them plays sound bytes from Night of the Living Dead. He’s been walking around saying, “I’m coming to get you Barbara” in his strangled zombie voice and then in a high-pitched tone he goes, “Stop it, you’re ignorant!” We’re in the middle of Target and he’s reciting this. He’s been watching clips from the movie on my phone, and then the 1990 remake was on over the weekend, so I DVRd it and he watches it 1683 times a day, though he gets irritated that the new Barbara says “You’re being mean” instead of “ignorant.”

*****

I hate Pizza Hut. I guess hate is a strong word, but I’m notoriously picky about my pizza. However, they’re offering Penguins collector cups so of course that’s where I wanted to eat after the Pens/Bruins game on Sunday. Alisha came with us which meant I got to sit in a cramped booth with her and her purse, which is so prominent it might as well be capitalized.

I think our waiter was an escapee from a halfway house and I’m sure he drives a Pinto. We asked him questions about the cups and his answer to everything was, “I don’t know” and “I’m not sure.” Kind of like when people ask me questions about the city I live, which I know next to nothing about because I don’t care and I’m also a partial shut-in. We ended up spending ALL THIS MONEY in order to get all four cups, only to be told later that they only had two of the players, so what combination of that would we like.

Fucking foiled as usual. Now we’ll have to go back there AGAIN to get the other two and I just don’t think I can answer any more confusing questions like, “What kind of crust do you want?” and the be expected to ingest it, too.  Fuck you, Pizza Hut.

While Henry was inside paying, Alisha, Chooch and I decided to go out to the car. I was dealt the arduous task of securing Chooch into his car seat (I CANNOT WAIT TO BE DONE WITH THIS CAR SAFETY RIGMAROLE). There I am, in a dark parking lot, ass jutting out of the backseat when I feel a sharp jab between my ribs and the voice of a convicted child molester snarling, “Give me all your money.”

I blew back Chooch’s face with the loudest shriek I could muster, only to find it was Henry being an asshole.

“I can’t believe Chooch didn’t cry when I screamed in his face,” I marveled.

“That’s because you were using your horror movie scream and not your hockey scream,” Alisha rationalized. And that’s probably true.

My grandma was finally released from the nursing home yesterday. There’re both pros and cons to that, I guess, as nursing homes can be negligent and have proved that several times during her stay. However, being back home with my aunt Sharon isn’t really such a hot idea either, as she will likely fall right back into a routine of little movement and no outside interaction.

In any case, Sharon sought Henry’s shoveling skills so that the paramedics would be able to get my grandma safely into the house. Chooch and I went with him, because I had wanted to get some new pictures of Chooch anyway. It was sort of a bad idea. And I don’t even mean the fact that Chooch was being completely uncooperative and dickish with me. It was just sad being at that house. I grew up there, and to be outside of it, with the sunlight highlighting all the mossy overgrowth, broken lanterns, rusted railings and caved in gates? It was a bit much for me.  Especially when I followed Chooch into the backyard and saw how decrepit and forlorn the back patio looks, the pool nothing more than a gaping leaf-filled hole in the ground and the accompanying  shanny overtaken by weeds and God only knows what kind of wildlife.  That used to be the summer hot spot, right there, but since my Pappap died it has quite literally been consumed by nature. It breaks my heart to know that my kid will never get to have pool parties there like I did.

Maybe they should rent out their backyard to be used as a horror movie set. Because I honestly had the shivers being back there. And the back of the property is hugged by an expanse of woods, so God only knows how many bodies are buried there.  I used to walk out there daily when I was in high school and there were times when the hair on my arms would stand erect in ninety degree weather and my heels would instinctively fling me into a pirouette and send me running back home.

Chooch ate chicken nuggets while Henry teetered on the edge of Heart Attack Mountain in an attempt to break through blocks of ice on the front porch. Apparently, after the big fucking snowstorm that left Pittsburgh looking like Antarctica gave birth in its background, my aunt was trying to solve the problem by throwing salt on three feet of snow, which only resulted in layers of it melting and then freezing into sheets of ice. Which in turn became Henry’s problem. He should be used to cleaning up after me and my family by now, though. Like the time I tried to vacuum liquid from the bottom of the fridge and didn’t realize that it was pouring out of the hose and onto the kitchen floor behind me. Immediately became Henry’s problem.

While Henry was shoveling, Sharon called me from inside the house to inform me that Henry is an angel and that I better never let him go. This schmooze fest went on for a few minutes while I’m struggling to not blurt out, “He better never let ME go! I’m the awesome one in this arrangement!” but secretly I knew she was right. Goddammit. At one point she said he was god sent and I was like, “OK, I have to go.”

There’s a large shed that’s also in the back of the house. Chooch was like, “What the hell is this, a farm?” and I almost blurted out, “No, this is where I hid my boyfriend Mike when he ran away from home.” It was unlocked, but I was hesitant to open the door.

It just feels like everything is going to break if I touch it and I guess I would just rather remember it the way it used to be. And not some rotting cavity filled with broken down mowers, lawnchairs  and ATVs. And probably dead animals. Actually, after my Pappap died, a “family friend” broke into that shed and stole most of his stuff, anyway (and later fell from a ladder, broke his neck, and died). So it’s likely filled with nothing but stale air and shitty fucking karma.

He later bitched the whole way home because for some reason HIS PANTS WERE ALL WET, WAH.

I used to roller skate up and down this lane. There were speed bumps on it back then though, which my Pappap was responsible for. The story was that there was a family who lived at the end of the lane and their teenaged son used to get a little overzealous behind the wheel. Apparently he almost ran over my aunt Susie when she was a kid, so in went the speed bumps. Every one hated them, especially once my friends started driving, because no one ever thought to SLOW DOWN for the SPEED BUMPS and perhaps save the undercarriage of their cars, and I don’t know, a LIFE?

After my Pappap died, some of the neighbors got together and had the speed bumps taken out. Even though I had already moved off that street and into my own apartment by then, it really upset me. Like a piece of him had literally been ground into dust. Ew, I couldn’t stand it. I hate the fuckers who live on that street.

I shudder to think what will become of my grandparent’s house once my grandma is gone. Being there yesterday was kind of terrible.

9 comments

Underroo shopping is serious business. Chooch ultimately went with the glow in the dark Iron Man variety. He officially has graduated from the toddler section and is now perusing racks of Shawn White flannels and hoodies in the BOY SECTION. Oh my god, it seems like just last month he was still wearing onesies under his shirts and puking breast milk in my face.

His fourth birthday is April 25th and I imagine his party will be sometime around then.

Chooch and I already sat down and started working on a Toys R Us wish list, which was frustrating, I mean – fun. So very fun. I keep trying to tell him he wants all this awesome Penguins memorabilia but he just looks at me and mumbles, “I hate you.”

Chooch has been very set in his decision of a zombie theme so I guess I better start begging my Etsy Dark Side friends for ideas and help. Lots of help. I already sense another homemade birthday invitation odyssey. Speaking of zombies, he’s watching “Zombieland” right now and just cheered, “Yeah, fuck that clown!

”

In other non-swearing child news, Immigration Insiders is following me on Twitter. What do they know??

“…and I’ll be 65 and retired,” Henry was saying.

I laughed. “You? Retired? You’ll never get to retire. We’ll be living in a goddamned porta potty by then.”

“Oh please. Like you’ll even still be with me then. You’ll be 40 and flirting with younger guys. Whore.”

It’s funny because it’s true.

And then Chooch was talking about the ice cream shop he supposedly opened “down by Giant Eagle,” and Henry goes, “What do you say to your customers? ‘I hate you, what do you want?'”

Chooch paused in consideration and then said, “Yeah. Douchebag.”

Alisha and I had plans to meet down the street at Eat n Park for lunch.  I don’t mind walking there because it’s only a few blocks away, but I hate that I have to cross over a main road; it’s a phobia.  Fortunately, there was a young guy ahead of me who was about to cross, so I ran and yelled, “Wait! Wait for me!” He turned mid-step to eye me up suspiciously. Catching up to him, I panted, “I don’t like crossing the street by myself.” It wasn’t awkward at all. But then I made the mistake of telling Alisha and she was like, “Why are you so stupid.”  Later, she ordered a turtle sundae but that is a story for another time.

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OK, it’s time. Alisha decided we should get dessert and since she was buying, I heartily agreed. “I’ll have the dutch apple pie,” I said to our waitress, Barb. This was after I recovered from the shiver session I had when, in passing, Barb imprisoned me in an intense eye-lock. I really don’t know what that was all about, but afterward I was literally trying to bear hug my way through to my soul, you can ask Alisha.

Barb nodded and duly jotted it down.

“And I want the turtle sundae,” Alisha mumbled with the general disdain she reserves for strangers.

“Ooooh, the turtle sundae!” Barb exclaimed in an intonation preschool teachers must master before getting their own classroom. And then she let loose with some celebratory sound before shuffling away.

Shocked, I asked Alisha, “Did she say ‘God damn’?!”

“No,” Alisha shook her head, looking alarmed. “It was just some excited noise. And why was she talking to me like I’m 8 years old?”

When Barb came back, she made some monotoned comment about, “Here’s your dutch” before raising her voice several octaves and cooing, “And here’s your….turtle sundae! Ooooh! Look at that!” Alisha gave her a fake smile and was all, “OK bye bye now.”

“What the hell, it’s just a sundae,” I said. And not even a signature one at that. But then I remembered I had the pie of the Dutch beneath my face and focused on that for awhile.

Barb reappeared a few minutes later to make sure we were competently devouring our desserts. “How’s your TURTLE SUNDAE?!” she shouted, fawning all over Alisha like she was a visiting diplomat, because don’t all visiting diplomats stop at Eat n Park for a turtle fucking sundae while visiting Pittsburgh?

Alisha, refusing to make eye contact, assured her it was fine. Satisfied with that review, Barb began to retreat. She made it a few feet before turning, as an after thought, and asking over her shoulder, “Oh, and how’s the pie?”

Oh, why it’s no turtle sundae, Barb.

Suddenly, it occurred to me that this situation seemed redundant. Like, I was having some major deja vu. And then I realized I had been in that same situation before, three years ago, only that time I was in the Queen Seat. I went home and checked LiveJournal, and sure enough, this was not my first run-in with Barb, the Dessert Snob:

July 2007

Lisa temporarily resides in Colorado so I was excited to get to see her Wednesday afternoon during her Pittsburgh visit. We walked down the street to Eat n Park for coffee and dessert, the perfect pre-work sugar fix.

Our waitress Barb was an older woman with the easy-to-talk-to charm of a seasoned server. Lisa immediately overshadowed me with her big smile and confident voice.

“I’ll have the chocolate cake!” Lisa cheerfully ordered.

Barb smiled and jotted it down.

“And I’ll have the blackberry pie with ice cream,” I ordered not as cheerfully, but I sort of smiled. Which is big for me.

Barb’s body shook with pleasure. “Yes! Good choice!” she sang as she scratched my order on her pad with a flourish.

“That’s my favorite!”

I smirked at Lisa after Barb retreated. “She likes me better than you,” I chided.

“What makes your pie so much better than my chocolate cake? I mean, it’s chocolate cake!” Lisa’s visage melted into a befuddled glaze.

“Chocolate cake is a menu mainstay, Lisa. My pie is a seasonal delight.” This seemed to distract Lisa long enough for me to continue droning on about my life’s conundrums. It’s nice to have counseling ears across from me sometimes.

Barb returned with our desserts and the reminder than I am, and always will be, better than Lisa. She set down Lisa’s plate with an unremarkable motion, but then turned to me with the fanfare of a queen’s arrival as she gently placed my pie beneath my fat face and took a step back.

“Look at that pie, would you?

Oh, I hope you will enjoy it. It really is the best!”

I hesitated before crushing into the crisp sugary crust, unsure if Barb was going to stand there and gawk. She smiled once more and carried on with her rounds of coffee refills.

Lisa was absently slapping her cake with the back of her fork, scowling at me. “Enjoy your freaking pie,” she mimicked.

During our meal, Barb came back later with our separate checks. She was delighted to tell me that my check was special. “Lookie here! There’s a number at the bottom to call and complete a real short survey. Then you write down the code they give you and bring this back next time for a two dollar discount!

” She clapped her hands together and held them under her chin, waiting for me to call my mommy and thank her for birthing me so that I could one day experience the jubilation of getting an Eat n Park survey check.

I feigned happiness for the sake of Lisa’s plummeting self-worth. “It’s because I was smart enough to order the delicious pie and not the boring cake,” using my words to further wheedle away at her ordering inadequacies.

We continued to pick away at our desserts and imbibe (too much) coffee, when Lisa spilled her water all over the table. Barb came running over with her rag and we all tried to make light of Lisa’s fumbling fingers.

“At least it didn’t get on her pie,” Barb sighed.

The worst part of today’s episode in dessert racism is that suddenly Alisha likes cherries now and no longer gifts me with her unwanted maraschino sundae toppers. FUCK.

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Just a few moments ago, Chooch started shouting some nonsense about how there’s a Valentine card for me in the car.

“No there’s not,” Henry said tersely, all but making throat-cutting motions to get Chooch to shut up.

“Yes there is!” Chooch battled.

“No there’s not!” Henry said through gritted teeth, like the subject was hidden paternity and not some flimsy supposedly secretive greeting card for a holiday that I know is tomorrow, sorry, but I have a calendar and people on twitter reminding me every .005 seconds that tomorrow is Valentine’s Day.

“Yes there is!” Chooch shouted, getting visibly upset at this point. “We bought it in the Valentine card section!”

The jig is up, Henry!

The votes are in and the Crosby/Talbot spot was voted #1 NHL commercial, which I’m sure has caused an uproar in the Crosby HaterNation and that makes it even more satisfying. I love reading the hate that spews from anti-Crosby fans on the NHL Facebook page because it’s so unwarranted and nonsensical.

Anyway, I love this commercial; it’s sweet and cute, even if you don’t like hockey. It makes me wonder if someday Chooch will be famous for…something, and the computer monitor he slashed with a pumpkin carver will be in a commercial.

This is an extended version of the commercial that’s on TV:

Seriously, Chooch slashed our monitor with a pumpkin carver. That was two nights ago. I’m only moderately sick over it now.

Eyelids heavy, Chooch slurs, “I hate squid.”

At a loss for anything profound to say (the ungodly hour of 4:43am will do that to a person), I say, “Oh. Well, I’ll be sure not to get you one for your birthday.”

On the brink of falling back asleep, he goes, “Ok.”

After a few seconds to consider this, he adds, “Well, will you get me a whale instead, since I hate squid?”

He never heard my answer over his snores. And now I’m wide awake.

For as much of an ice queen I am, I really can’t stand winter. I enjoy admiring a fresh snowfall for about two seconds before I’m yearning for spring time. I enjoy the way the snow-salt cocktail starches the shit out of my jean bottoms for the two minutes I spend trying to make them stand on their own before I’m yearning for dry sidewalks and green grass.

I enjoy watching people sled ride on TV before I realize that I don’t enjoy watching people sled ride on TV.

Lately, Chooch has been expressing interest in sledding.  I had been hoping to keep him ignorant of such a concept but apparently people have been whispering. Was it you, Janna? WAS IT? Where else could he have learned of such awful winter torture devices?

So, being the hands-off mother that I am, I said, “Oh that’s all your father. He’ll take you sledding. Go ask him.”

But when Henry came home with a dinky red plastic sled one day, I couldn’t help but think, “Aw, now I want to go too.”

Now, I haven’t been sledding since I was a kid. Like, a single-digit kid. My brother Ryan and I would across the street from our house, where there was a steep and narrow stretch of property, surrounded on both sides by scraggly jaggerbushes and trees. We’d have to be careful because there was a rusty gas line which jutted out at the bottom, just dying to put a kid into a coma. I vaguely remember feeling like a fat bright purple mummy in my snowsuit, shivering from the snow that somehow always manages to sneak its way under ten layers of flame-retardant winter-wear, yet sweating from the exertion of lugging a sled back up a 65 degree hill. (I made that up. I had to stay after school only ALL THE TIME for geometry help. Angles can get fucked.)

At first I thought there must have been snow on the lens but then I realized that’s actually how worn Henry’s crotch is from all the lapdances he blows the rent money on.

On Wednesday, we went out to Sunny Slopes in South Park. It’s kind of like the official sledding hill in that area, and while I grew up close enough, I’ve never sled there. Standing at the precipice with my flimsy sled and staring straight into the bowl of the hill was daunting. To say my brow didn’t sprout sweat-beads at that precise moment would be a blatant lie. So there I am, chanting, “OMG I’m so scared, OMG I can’t do this” while my very impressionable son is gripping my hand, osmosing my every fear and looking up at me with wide, fearful eyes. And there’s Henry going, “Don’t you dare scare him!” I’m really good at that, though I don’t mean to be. I can’t wait to take him to his first haunted house.

Finally, I just sucked it up and gave us a big push. For 3/4 of the way down, I had gone from whispering my death chant to SCREAMING my death chant and Chooch, poor Chooch, had his eyes covered and was steady yelling, “Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!” But once I realized we probably weren’t going to pull a Nascar suicide flip, I calmed down and said, “Oh, hey look. We’re not going to die after all.” And Chooch was like, “Oh thank God.”

It’s a good thing that I’m in good shape for a fat girl, because the walk back up the hill was less debilitating as I imagined. Chooch, however, my nimble, spry child with boundless energy reserves, was a BITCH the whole way back up. “Ugh, my muscles hurt. My leg hurts. I can’t walk anymore. Carry me. Ugh ugh ugh this sucks.”

Chooch carried the same snowball with him the entire time. And even on a sled, Henry can’t stop sexting with his boss.

I was kind enough to let the old man have a turn or two. While I was standing at the top of the hill watching them, a mom-type kept inching closer to me. She looked like the mom from Goonies and the familiarity put me at ease. But I kept waiting for her Mexican maid to pop up behind her.

So we’re standing there, at an awkwardly close proximity, snapping pictures of our respective sled-bound families down the hill, and I couldn’t stand the awkward silence any longer so I turned and spoke to her. “It’s scarier than I remembered,” I admitted, pointing down the hill. “I haven’t been sledding since I was a kid.”

“Is it really?” she asked, with scared eyes. “My kids keep wanting me to go down with them, but I said no way, they can keep going with their father!”

“Well, once I got halfway down, it wasn’t so bad anymore and then it actually kind of felt….fun,” I continued. “You should try it!”

She laughed. “Maybe I will!” And then our families were making their way back up to us so we parted ways.

Later, I was going back down with Chooch and about halfway down, I looked to my right and saw that she was coming down from a different direction with one of her kids. I yelled, “Yeah!” and she gave me a thumbs up and laughed. I was like, “I did that, Chooch! I got her to go down!” And it brought back memories of high school, when I would encourage other girls to go down, only then it was their boyfriends laughing and giving me the thumbs up.

I actually could have stayed there all afternoon, but Henry was bitching about only having one glove (seriously, it’s a wonder more people don’t mistake him for a hobo) and Chooch was all, “I’M DONE.” I’m thinking of getting into sledding professionally. Holla if you want to come with.

It started with me saying something to Chooch along the lines of, “Go ask daddy.”

“Don’t call him that,” urged Chooch, holding up a hand in warning. “Call him Henry.”

(Chooch pronounces this “Hanwy”.)

“Ok,” I played along. “And what will you call him?”

“Douchebag,” he replied nonchalantly, not once looking up from his toys to get a reaction.

Being the classy parents we are, Henry and I nearly forgot to get Chooch’s picture with Santa. And standing in line with all the other asshole, last-minute parents, I seriously contemplated just photoshopping one and calling it a year. Instead, I snatched the keys off Henry and me and my chest pains sat in the car. My weak, grinchy heart just can’t take holiday crowds. Oh, I have boatloads of holiday cheer, my friends. When I’m alone in my living room with a glass of spiced wine, admiring my gaudy Christmas tree.

 Much like being paged by Olive Garden, Henry alerted me when they were nearly next in line and I went back in to pretend like I’m a good mommy, and my ass immediately re-clenched when I had to shrug past a horde of line-standers.

I tried to coax Chooch into telling Santa he wanted a haircut, but instead (after he lied about being a good boy), when Santa asked what he wanted he mumbled, “Jack in the box.” He’s been on this bizarre, slightly worrisome jack in the box kick because it’s the J identifier in his ABC book. I imagine Santa was like, “Son, that was on my wishlist back in 1942.” Every time he tells me he wants one, I want to take him by the shoulders and give him a good shake, and then shout, “You’re supposed to want gratuitously violent toys that double as weapons when your father pisses me off. I mean, you. When daddy pisses you off.”

Do you know Target sells jack in the boxes for nearly twenty dollars? TWENTY DOLLARS for a piece of shit tin box with a deformed plastic clown whose only purpose of existence is to pop out and scare the fuck out of impressionable youths? Why do you think I’m thirty years old and jumping at the drop of a feather? BECAUSE I HAD A JACK IN THE BOX AS A CHILD.

And another reason I can’t get him a jack in the box is because I may have read somewhere once that there is a pornographic slice of cinema with a scene featuring a very well-endowed jack in the box.

Not sure if you heard anything about it, but we got some snow.

There are a bunch of things I want to write about, like Thanksgiving blah-blah, the magnets you guys have sent, and one of those lame flash fiction thingalings, but all I want to do is lay on the couch and read.

It always works that way. I can have nothing on my plate and no desire to relax with a book.

A hundred things I need to do, though, and you can be sure all I want to do is blow off responsibility and do word searches, give my brain a rest before it starts blueprinting the apocalypse.

So for now have a picture of Chooch. He posed like this on his own and I was like “WTF are you doing, freak. This isn’t a Gymboree catalogue.

“

Also I’m posting this from my phone so god only knows how the photo will format.

Now I need to go back to reading, taking breaks only to add shit to my Christmas wish list. (Chooch and I really want a Dippin’ Dot ice cream maker and not just so I can mastermind hideous flavor combos for Henry and Janna.)

(So I can stuff Alisha’s pillowcase with cherry-flavored dots.)

Chooch is sick, won’t let me sit with him on the couch. For a long time this morning, I was told to “go in the kitchen and stand by the oven. Leave me ALONE!” But then he softened and crumpled into a sick heap on the couch and whined, “I wanna watch sumpin’ scary!” So we watched Friday the 13th together. The one with Corey Feldman. At one time, I knew every movie in order. But now I’m an old broad and actually forgot that Corey Feldman was even in any of these until I put it on this morning. And Chooch, god bless him, every time someone gets kilt, he goes, “Who did it?” Um, Jason, maybe? Stupid.

But now it’s over and I’ve been banished from the couch again. So, with nothing else to do and no motivation to paint right now (that’s after hours, now you know), I’ve been reading through all old LiveJournal entries, trying to find something in particular. Instead, I found a series of posts written from my second-to-last job at the data processing monkey house. While I was reading these, all I could think was, “It’s a fucking wonder I was never fired from there” and “Wait – did I ever do any work?” I’m sure Collin can answer that last one.

Then I found two entries about the bathroom there and it simultaneously made me miss that place and swallow throw-up. I’m reposting it because I have nothing else to say while I await the next Freaky Feature subject to bare her soul for me. (It should be a good one, too!)

Oh, and P.S.! Thanks to Andrea, Tiff, and Dorothy for sending me magnets! More on that later this week, too. (I’m still looking for more magnets, btw!)

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Bathroom Discourse

August 2007

One of my favorite things about working here is playing a little game called “What In the World Will Make Erin Dry Heave Tonight?” Could it be the dumpster in the outside hallway, long overdue for an emptying, contents ripe and roiling in the August humidity, the putrid stench of which permeates through the tiniest nook and cranny and wafts its way in sinister coils into our work areas and kitchen where it gyrates near the fridge and dares us to retain our appetite?

Maybe Jonnie May the Security Guard will want to shoot the shit with me and I’ll be forced to fixate on her dirty snaggle tooth while being held against my will in the bubble of rot we around here call “the kitchen.”

Mostly, it’s as simple as taking a stroll through the restroom.

If it’s a particularly good day, I’ll arrive right on the heels of some nasty ass broad pinching a loaf after devouring a petting farm, and then forgoing the courtesy flush and Glade spritz. Because nothing complements a fresh cascade of diarrhea than the crisp notes of apple cinnamon.

Maybe a tampon, bloated with toilet water and menstruation, will be fanned out like pretty cotton origami bouncing off the sides of the toilet bowl.

Last week was a memorable delight that I took great pleasure penning in my diary with flourishing strokes of calligraphy: Along the side of one of the sinks was a bright, thick streak of  Red.

Oh look, it’s 1976 and a blind extra just walked in here from the set of Carrie and mistook the sink for a towel. I tried to shrug it off as an average day at MSA.

Or maybe someone performed an auto-kidney extraction next to the commode because they don’t have the Internet at home and needed to list it on eBay immediately. I hope they made it back to their desk to do that.

Maybe someone was eating a heavily ketchup’d burger next to the sink because they have some weird disorder where they need to watch the reflection of their teeth gnashing. This is a true condition. Janna has it.

Maybe some bathroom birthing enthusiast shot one out and left the remains of the placenta on the porcelain in lieu of a victory flag.

No matter the scenario, I wasn’t going anywhere near that sink and subsequently failed to eradicate the memory of it from my mind for two days. Look, I’m a girl and I too put on my menstrual party hat every month, but I don’t swipe a veritable advertisement of it on the sink as an invitation. Though really, I’m hoping the blood flowed from an orifice not betwixt legs. (Sometimes it feels like I’m in the bathroom of CBGBs and I half-expect to step over someone in the throes of over-dosing.)

Then on Friday, the industrial-sized roll of toilet paper in one of the stalls had fallen out and was strewn dejectedly near the base of the toilet, where countless strands of bacteria were inevitably colonizing. I continued on to the handicap stall. While I was basket weaving (what, you don’t think I perform regular bodily waste removal like the rest of you, do you?), I noticed a rather large box, with a built-in handle, off the right of the stall, half-concealed in aged Christmas wrapping paper. A post-it note adhered to the top informed me that it belonged to our new employee, Babi, and to “Pls not remove, Thank U.”

Of course, my gossip-greedy fingers spun it around to the non-gift-wrapped side. It was a toilet seat raiser. I’m excited to have a new mystery to involve myself in: Why does the new lady need raised upon the toilet, and why doesn’t she stow it away discretely in the utility closet so assholes like me don’t make fun of her on the Internet?

Oh wait, she is concealing it. With wrapping paper.

Operation: Photograph Toilet Seat Raiser

I was on a mission when I got to work last night: to acquire evidence of the Christmas-papered toilet seat raiser. Every twenty minutes or so, I’d stuff my cell phone into my pants and duck into the restroom, hoping that Babi had finally stowed it away in the handicapped stall. Three hours into the shift, I began to have doubts and started to wonder if Babi had quit. I think I voiced my concern a little too emphatically to Eleanore, whose answer of, “I don’t know, babe,” seemed coated with suspicion, because who the fuck cares about New Employee’s status? Well, I do. My hands were actually trembling, I’m embarrassed to admit. I finally found out that she had merely called off, and I was relieved. I mean, she can quit, but not until I get my picture.

It took Babi several hours to hit up the bathroom tonight, but she eventually did. I mean, she’s old. How long can the elders really hold their bladder?

Raised eyebrows were probably flashed every time I walked in and walked back out. What? I’m checking for my period. It’s usually over there, in that corner, with a purple Post-It note on it. Your period doesn’t have a name tag on it, too?

I forgot to turn the sound off of my phone during the bathroom recon, so the enchanting melodies of a boing-ing spring ricocheted off the tiled walls, like I opened up a can of clown sex. It nearly gave me a stroke.

Henry and I used to letterbox back in 2004. The definition of  “used to letterbox” can be loosely translated to mean: we did it 2 or 3 times in the span of a month before it made us hate each other even more.

Letterboxing is like the primordial version of geocaching, where you follow clues and natural landmarks to reach a treasure consisting of a tupperware box with a booklet and rubber stamp inside. Letterbox purists make their own rubber stamp to use as their signature inside each letterbox they find. You then scribble the date next to your marking and take the rubberstamp supplied inside the letterbox to stamp your own booklet. It’s kind of like getting a Passport stamped and using it to remember where you’ve been.

Maybe I’m making this up.

But the way Henry and I do it is this: pick a letterbox within Western Pennsylvania, print out the directions, argue the entire time about who’s right and who’s wrong and who should just get pushed into a ravine, find the letterbox and then remember how pointless it is when we:

• a. don’t have our own stamp because I justcan’t find enough time to carve that intricate design of Satan with a vagina
• b. always forget to bring a pen to write inside the booklet
• c. remember that it’s not actual treasure we’re scavenging for

And then it’s always awesome when we’re looking for a box that was planted in 2004 and almost none of the natural landmarks are still there. “Look for the gray bunny standing next to the bubbling brook.” Yeah, sorry, that bunny’s long been filleted and skinned by a serial killer in-training.

But letterboxing is a good poor man’s hobby, and since we are a house of poor (wo)men I thought that maybe it would be something fun to do with Chooch, who only vaguely cared that we were searching for “treasure” and then stopped caring altogether when we passed a playground on the way to the pathetic bounty-hiding park.

I wanted to hug this tree and say, “Don’t worry, tree. I’m po’, too. So much that I had to ask to postpone my art show because I have no money to make anything to, you know, SHOW.”

The first letterbox we found (where “we” is a pronoun for HENRY who monopolized the directions as usual) was on the side of a hill. I’m sure in the summer it’s a cake walk, but autumn’s moist leaves could make an ant hill treacherous. It’s a good thing I have an itchy (camera) trigger finger, because I totally knew Chooch would fall.

I can’t remember the name of the “park” this was at, other than it was in Shaler, PA and it was less of a park, more of a great place to get yourself raped, stabbed, and then thrown over a waterfall. It had a very ch-ch-ch-ha-ha-ha ambiance that I loved/hated. The path was swampy from the rain we got the night before and mama didn’t like that one bit. I’m such an indoorswoman that the tiniest burr on my shoe has me shrieking “GET IT OFF!” And Chooch did just that, calmly wrenching the burr from my laces, but not without giving me an annoyed scowl full of incredulity.

There was a lot of aimless trekking, in search of a path that had two fallen trees strewn across it. We never found the fallen trees. BECAUSE A SERIAL KILLER HAD ALREADY CHOPPED THEM UP TO USE AS FIREWOOD TO FUEL HIS BODY INCINERATOR.

This is my favorite picture because it details Henry abandoning his family. Apparently Chooch and I are “annoying.” I’m sorry, but when you’re deposited within an enclave of trees, you scream as loud as you can. Everyone knows that. The Girl Scouts teach you that. So SORRY if that’s ANNOYING to you.

This was the second box we found. I had to stick my hand under a crappy wooden bridge and yank it out. It was horrifying and I kept waiting for a troll to bite my hand and give me HIV. This was about the time Chooch realized that, what the fuck, letterboxing is a fucking crock.

Henry is a rubber stamp enthusiast and likes to thumb through the booklets to admire all the handiwork. It’s something he got into when he was in THE SERVICE and all his SERVICE BUDDIES were out getting laid. However, I have no idea what that is in the picture. It’s definitely not a rubber stamp, and looks like some crude sex drawing scribbled by a passing-by serial killer.

OVER IT.

This time, I at least had the foresight to bring some of my art cards with me, so I stuffed those in the Ziplock bags. Henry didn’t think it was a good idea, but whatever. He also didn’t like the way I jammed everything back into the baggie, left it unsealed, and then attempted to punch it all back into the letterbox.

So then he would have to yank it off me, take everything out and start from scratch. I wish he were that precise and anal about HOUSECLEANING and peeing INTO the toilet.

There were a lot of little bridges there. I think maybe that’s why this particular Letterbox locale was called Little Bridge something or other. Maybe? Yeah? Chooch almost fell off this bridge while I was snapping away. Don’t worry, he probably wouldn’t have died.

On the way back to the car, I was trailing back slightly and kept tapping Chooch on the head. He’s like Henry and has a strong threshhold for ignoring me, but eventually he cracked, spun around and yelled, “Would you stop doing that??”

“It’s not me, it was the man who was walking next to me,” I shrugged, like it was natural for a strange man to fall into cadence next to me without me screaming my face off.

“Oh, Chooch, we know that’s a lie, because if there was some man walking next to mommy—”

“I’d have run off with him by now,” I finished for Henry.

There was a moment of silence as Henry considered this. “Yeah. I guess it could go that way, too.”

I’m determined to plant my own letterbox someday, probably just in my backyard so I can sit on the porch and wait for idiots to come digging. The directions will be so simple:

• Start at Robin’s Meth Lab
• Walk approx. 100 feet
• When you hear what sounds unmistakably like a murder between brick walls, turn right down the driveway
• Pass the carelessly strewn hypodermic needle
• If you stumble upon a pretentious kerchiefed hipster wearing peddle-pushers and planting carrots in her trendy Devendra Banhart-soundtracked garden, you’ve clearly gone too far. (I really hate the girl two houses up from me, FYI. She is single handedly spearheading a movement to bring back the Donna Reed mentality in women and I’m just not down with that bullshit at all. I hope she rides her fucking vintage wicker-basketed bicycle into a goddamn cyclone that’s en route to 1959 where she can cook a meatloaf for someone who cares and let me stew in my anti-domestic bliss. FUCK GODDAMN SHIT.)