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.)

It was the morning of Halloween and we still didn’t have a costume for Chooch. We tried everything: reminding him that no costume = no candy; telling him that Blake was wearing a costume and therefore was the better son; and, when all else failed, threatening to disown. Thankfully, a last minute trip to the Halloween store found Chooch agreeing to go with the good old Halloween costume stand-by: Jason Voorhees. (Although in lieu of a machete, he wanted to carry Play-Doh. yeah, I have no idea, either.) To be fair, he had actually said a few times that’s what he wanted to be, but Henry and I were unsure how well he’d do with his face obscured by plastic, because he’s a little anal about these things. (OK, he’s my son, so – a lot.) And we also knew that face-painting was totally out.

The next thing we knew, it was nearly 6pm and Chooch began putting up a fight. I had already decided hours ago that if this happened, I was just flat out not going at all. This was the first time in years that I was completely not feeling it anyway and would have preferred staying in with a glass of wine rather than sidestep around throngs of screaming children burped straight out of Hell’s mouth. But then the deadbeat mother internal guilt trip set in, so I sucked it up and struggled to get dressed.

And while Henry was struggling to get Chooch dressed (which only required him wearing regular clothes anyway), we were blessed when a crew of early trick-or-treaters knocked on the door. Chooch stood behind me and watched as I filled the bags of a lion, lady bug and some stupid action hero with mini M&Ms (we waited until an hour before and aside from Dum-Dums, that’s all that was left at the CVS down the street; still, that’s better than handing out Slim Fast bars like I was once pressed to do). Suddenly, Chooch seemed to get it and was all, “OK I’m ready hurry let’s go come on.”

At least I had the foresight to splash some red paint on the mask.

Some Things I’d Like Chooch to Learn For Next Year:

1. The order is: trick or treat; thank you; Happy Halloween. And you say these things while you’re still at the person’s house, not back on the sidewalk, blurting them all out in one breath as you flee the scene. Unless you’re doing something at these houses that I’m unaware of. Fuck, are you swearing at these people?
2. Participating houses are not just the ones with dogs on the porch. Next time, I won’t chase you down and pull you back to the houses you missed, so just imagine all the candy you’ll lose out on. Dummy.
3. Yes, Halloween decorations are so cool, Chooch; I agree. But the longer you’re bent over admiring some spooky electrical lantern, the longer Mommy has to stand in awkward silence with the homeowner, so knock that shit off. Get the fucking candy and LEAVE. You can thumb through a Halloween decor catalogue later, Christopher Lowell.
4. STOP CHOOSING STUPID SHIT LIKE SUCKERS AND TOOTSIE ROLLS. Dots and candy necklaces? WRONG.  By the end of the night, only a third of the bounty was chocolate-certified, delicious-approved. And what was up with that mini bottle of bubbles? YOU CAN’T EAT BUBBLES. Halloween is about collecting an entire pillowcase worth of all that’s wrong with Americans and their metobolism, and you failed. (Although, good job on scoring three Baby Ruths. What diamonds in the rough.

If I ignore the fact that I was stuck by Henry’s side for an hour and a half, I’m able to glean a few highlights from the night.

• Chooch and Michael Myers staring each other down on the porch of one house.
• A group of older girls doing a shrill, “OMG it’s Jason!” every time they passed Chooch. Each time, he looked up at me and laughed and I could tell he was proud. He really loves that Jason Voorhees. (I think he does it on purpose, knowing I’m a Michael Myers girl.)
• We passed another, slightly older Jason who was wearing his store bought hockey mask as-is. I scoffed and said to Chooch, “At least your mask has blood on it.” Another lesson in snobbery complete.
• Walking down the street with a group of teenagers, Chooch yells, “Aw SHIT Daddy. You forgot to bring my knife!” It got real quiet after that.
• Convincing him to growl “Trick or treat” and “Happy Halloween.” That went over well with all the old ladies.
• Some asshole made the mistake of saying, “Oooh, look at this scary Freddy Kreuger!” As Chooch stomped away, he snarled, “I’m NOT Freddy Kreuger!”
• Learning that Scary German Guy lives in Brookline.
• Now I know where Robin’s Loud-Mouthed Friend lives.

Chooch demanded to be carried like a baby for the last block or two, and aside from deleriously sprawling out in people’s front yards toward the end (and also laying in the middle of the road which is always a terrific thrill for a mother), he did really well and covered a good bit of streets for a three year old. And the biggest plus: his attention span lasted way longer than mine.

Castle Blood has been one of my favorite haunted houses to go to since I was in high school. It was one of the first, if not THE first, in the area to let you interact with the costumed characters by giving each group a mission to fulfill. Granted, they make it fairly impossible to fail and the prize is the same every year (vampire teeth), but damn if the decor and costumes aren’t fun to look at.

Twice a season, they offer no-scare daylight trick-or-treat tours for kids. We took Chooch last year and he seemed rather complacent about it. I thought maybe this year he’d be more into it, but all he cared about was seeing Dracula. Seriously, the kid was reenacting Pee Wee’s Alamo performance with all of his “When do we get to see Dracula?” inquiries.

Before embarking on our mission, we had to meet with Gravely in the library, who informed us what three talismans we’d have to be on the lookout for in order to pass the test at the end. This year’s theme was Night of the Vampire or something, so he asked, “What can you tell me about vampires?” When it was my turn, I said off the top of my head, “They have to be invited in.

” Gravely said, “That’s a good one, and not one that I hear often. Good job.” I didn’t have time to gloat though, because Henry snidely patronized, “You only know that because you just watched True Blood the other day.” Yes, that’s right, you dumb motherfucker. I just learned that fact in 2009 from an over-hyped, commercialized vampire series on cable TV.  FUCK YOU HENRY. And people wondered why I broke up with him on Facebook.

Chooch did not give one tiny shit about the live actors offering him candy and trying to intimidate him with their make-up enhanced sunken cheekbones and bloody lip-corners. He was entirely too busy poking around all the props and admiring the animatronic bodies clandestinely plugged into walls. I’m starting to think he’s showing an interest in set design.

Alisha had a crush on every corseted denizen. It was embarrassing.

In each room, a new dead person would recite their well-practiced script, but it fell on deaf ears.

Chooch was bored out of his mind, toeing the ground, dropping the talismans he was stupidly entrusted with, and hissing from the side of his mouth, “You said Dracula was gonna be here.” Not like he would have understood half of what was being told to us anyway, since the spiel wasn’t toned down at all for the sake of the underage set. I even caught Henry furrowing his caterpillar brow at words that weren’t exactly SAT-caliber, but still too smart for him. Maybe Chooch would have been more captivated if they had spoken on his level; you know, peppering sentences with the Tarantino All-Spice of “asshole” and “motherfucker.”

I was more excited than Chooch over the candy he was collecting. It was hard for me to keep my hands out of each candy bowl we passed. Especially the one full of Reeses Cups. Shit.

I had to give Chooch a reassuring shove to get him to accept the vial of vampire blood from a vampirate who sounded super sick and I swear to god if we get H1N1 I’ll be so excited to say I caught the swine flu from a motherfucking VAMPIRATE, ya’ll.

Chooch was completely over it by this point. He was sitting on the ground, with his back toward the mad scientist. Only the highest form of insult for a performer, and let me tell you, these people DO NOT EVER DROP CHARACTER. I could have dropped a baby out of my uterus right in the middle of their cobwebbed crypt only for a cloaked witch with a hunch back to come swooping in to say, “Ooh, a freshly baked mortal infant for my witch’s brew!”

Sadly, all good things must end and once proving that we collected all three talismans, we were all given a pair of werewolf teeth that were really just vampire teeth and then we all had to do our best wolf howl. Of course, mine was phenonemal, Alisha’s was weak, and Henry’s sounded as though he was being fucked by a pine cone. This was also the only time Chooch seemed happy to participate, because he’s good at being loud.

And now tomorrow is Halloween and we still have no costume for Chooch. I almost had him convinced to be an old lady. We even went to the thrift shop last night to find him a dress, but he started acting all stupid about it and I got all stressed out and left him and Henry in there. When I ask him what he wants to be, he says, “I just want to be CHOOCH.” So I asked, “And what will you say if someone asks what you’re supposed to be?” He said, “A motherfucker.” NO, NO YOU WILL NOT SAY THAT.

If he doesn’t decide on something easy and cheap by tonight, I’m stuffing a green box around him and he can go as a fucking dumpster baby. Mama’s not playing games anymore.

Chooch is so obsessed with the fucking Halloween stores that he now falls asleep watching YouTube videos on Henry’s phone of people walking through them.

That stuff on his hand is nailpolish. Mommy forgot to put it away. Mommy is fucking stressed to the max.

This was previously posted on Facebook, so sorry if you’re seeing it twice.

Sorry to inundate this blog with photos, but I haven’t felt like writing lately OKAY SUE ME. My habits are very cyclical. I go through writing spurts (which are stressful and sometimes I need to take a break from that bullshit when it ceases to bring me joy <–haha, wtf is wrong with me), art phases (I’ve been elbow-deep in custom paintings, so nothing new has been happening with that), and finally, when I get spare time and want to do something that brings me peace, I take pictures. I’m lucky to have a kid who not only doesn’t mind and is even starting to strike poses (bizarre ones at that), but even SUGGESTS WE GO TO THE CEMETERY. Oh heart, swell away.

So as soon as Henry came home from work yesterday, we ushered him right back out the door and straight to Allegheny Cemetery, where I got snap happy with Chooch in between him giving a gaggle of geese the taste of cardiac arrest and then peeing next to a crypt. Of course, I took a picture of that too (FROM THE BACK, CHILL OUT PEDOPHILE POLICE) and on the way home, I joked that I couldn’t wait for him to get a girlfriend (or hey, boyfriend, whatever makes him happy and less likely to spear me with a harpoon while I sleep). Chooch’s response, in a mockingly sing-song tone, was, “When I get a girlfriend I’m gonna PEE ON HER.” Have fun with that, ladies.

I wish Chooch wore a different flannel every day. I love boys in flannel! Henry doesn’t wear flannel. But if he did, it would probably be stupid and baggy, not fitted and scene.

Henry sucks.

Chooch is obsessed with Halloween stores. After they all closed last year, I thought we were going to have to hook him up with methadone. In his upper case voice, he’d wail, “I want to go to the ‘WEEN STORE!” and try explaining to a then-two-year old boy that ‘Ween stores are like traveling carnivals – they stink like sweat, have employees with bad attitudes (hello, I used to work at one), have at least one bearded lady,  and are gone faster than you can go back to tell that one stock boy you’re having his baby. Nothing left but some fake blood on the linoleum, tumbleweed of glittered costume lashes, and the memory of overpriced graveyard sets.

But hooray, now they’re back open and we’ve delivered Chooch to at least three different chains and five different locations. Spirit seems to remain his favorite, although there’s one that has a giant jack o’lantern on its sign and that one really impressed him. I think it’s Halloween Connection. I don’t fucking know. They’re all the same to me after you go eighteen times a week.

We just let him run wild in there. He knows not to touch any of the life-sized mechanical displays and it’s really the only store we don’t have to worry about him breaking anything, since he’s mostly enamored with the table of rubber cats, rodents and reptiles. Have you ever tried to break a fake rat?

Somewhere along the way, he has learned of Jason Voorhees. Yes, I let my son watch scary movies. But we usually stick to the overly fake zombie flicks and supernatural ones. I’m saving slasher films for when he’s a LITTLE BIT older, like four. I don’t know. Maybe I’m kidding.

Now, some of the Spirit stores have a life-sized Jason in the back, machete at the ready, dead eyes that roll back and forth. It’s actually pretty frightening and I know it’s lame, but I don’t like getting too close because it feels like a set-up to a super bad movie. But Chooch LOVES THIS THING. He makes the employees laugh because he acts all brave, getting so close, but then he runs back and pulls me by the hand, telling me to come with him and that, “It’s OK, Jason’s not going to ‘killed’  us.”

So we’re at another Spirit store last night, which is actually the one I worked at three years ago and in the same shopping center as that disturbing LA Fitness shooting last month. Chooch dons a hockey mask and, I’m not joking, goes, “Ch-ch-ch, ha-ha-ha.” It sent a chill up my spine, but a good chill, like a “I’m so proud of my son” chill. Fuck the alphabet and state capitals, my boy knows his horror flicks, ya’ll. So I go to Henry, “Uh, how does he know to do that?” because I couldn’t remember if his life-sized Jason friend does that or not, and Henry goes, “All serial killers know each other.” What a douchey statement! Though, I laughed. I think it might also be time to explain the significance of Michael Myers and how Chooch might never have come to be if not for him.

Meanwhile, there’s this man walking around the store. He’s in his thirties, athletic-build, with two scary-blue super villain eyeballs, blond buzz cut. He’s wearing this tight navy blue t-shirt and walking too fast. I mean, if you’re in a store, unless you know exactly what you want and where it’s at, typically you move at a slower pace and you know, LOOK at things. There was something off about this man, like I felt he wasn’t really there for the Halloween apparel. It was like he was on a mission and not doing a very good job concealing that.

After the third time he walked past us (we hadn’t moved from the spot we were in), I noticed another man too, and they looked like they could have been brothers. He was doing the same thing, zig-zagging from one side of the store to the other, half-assedly handling masks and carelessly dropping them back down. Pretending to shop, is how it looked to me.

I”m not sure if you know this about me, but I am a super paranoid person. There are times when I won’t even leave the house because I feel weird. Just last month, Janna and I went to a late movie and as we sat in the balcony before the movie started, all I could think of was some black-masked killer bursting through the doors and spraying us with bullets. Like, I honestly could not stop thinking about that. It ruined most of the movie for me because I just wanted the lights to come on, like the fluorescents were going to cocoon me in some protective wattage that no bullet could penetrate. It just feels safer in the light, somehow.

So this is how I felt last night, next door to a scene where a bunch of women were slain by some psychopath. I started to not be able to breathe properly and my fingers were quaking. I whispered hoarsely to Henry, “I’d like to leave now.” I think he knew what was freaking me because he didn’t argue or question. Chooch of course was all, “OMG why are we leaaaavvvving” but when we told him we going to Pat Catan’s, he got happy again because what three-year-old doesn’t like a craft store? No seriously, please tell me, because when I was a child I hated being dragged to the craft store and even now as a person who has plenty of reasons to shop there, I still hate it. I hate dodging past all the scrapbookers and the crocheters and the old women who work there are so incredibly unpleasant and always look at me like I don’t belong because I’m not wearing homemade sweaters with decorative dangling balls of yarn.

Walking through the parking lot, I still felt tense. It wasn’t until we safely pulled out of the parking lot and onto the road that I started to feel better. Henry admitted that he noticed the weird behavior too and thought it was odd.

“It was probably plain-clothed security hired by the company, they just weren’t doing a very good job,” he postulated in his “I was in the Service, so I know these things” tone.

“Oh. That was completely not what I was thinking at all, and in fact, I was waiting for one of them to work up enough psychosis to pull out a gun and start spraying,” I shared.

But then I realized that if I were to walk into a store and reenact some bloodbath of a Tarantino scene, I’d wait until after the G20 Summit leaves Pittsburgh because I’ll be damned my work is going to be eclipsed by a pack of angry rioters, oh I mean “protesters.”

I understand that everyone has a right to protest and that this could have been so much worse, but can you please get the fuck out of my city now?

And Henry pretends that he might actually have the will to kick a ball.

I asked Chooch to stop throwing dirt around, because he kept getting it in his eye, but mostly because I didn’t want it getting all over me.

Of course he’s going to say no. So when I ask him why, he very matter-of-factly mumbled, “I have to.

” I guess it’s kind of like when Henry asks me to stop punching him in the nads and I just can’t stop because there’s just something instilled in me saying that I have to do it.

Maybe I might die if I stop, who knows, but I do know that it feels good when my fist connects with that doughy sack of balls.

Taking your kid to the park is less about letting him embrace the great outdoors and more about letting him burn off energy so that maybe he might go to bed early and let mommy and daddy remember what it was like back before their home was infiltrated by Noggin and loud screams. Well, the Noggin part, anyway.

Smiling for the camera has taken on new meanings.

Little boy hands are so fucking cute! I want to eat them between slices of whole wheat! Ok, they’re practically an incubator for swine flu and e.coli, so maybe I’ll just admire from afar.