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.

 Henry had Chooch listening to A Skylit Drive at Hot Topic on Saturday, and lately he’s taken a liking to singing the Chiodos lyrics which are tattooed on my arm, complete with screaming into an imaginary microphone he fashions with his fist.  (And then at the end he dramatically says, “Oh, Chiodos.”)  He comes over to the computer and requests Bayside, Pierce the Veil, Isles and Glaciers, and The Used (which he refers to solely as Bert, because he’s on a first name basis with the singers of all of his favorite bands) and usually only needs to hear a few seconds of a song’s opening to determine who he’s listening to.

When he hears something new, he considers it for a minute and then says, “I’m gonna see them at Warped Tour.” I think this might be the most excited I’ve been since becoming a mother! Aside from Chooch (obviously), music is the most important thing in my life and to be able to share that with him is a fucking dream.

He had me repaint his nails yesterday (much to Henry’s delight), and when I was done, he fanned his fingers out and admired them, then blew on them slightly and murmured, “Just like Bert.”

I’m certain that Chooch will be fronting a post-hardcore band by the time he’s nine. Or at the very least, a metalcore outfit.

His current favorite video:

I love my kid.

Fuck. I love this kid.

I’m not really too much of a neat freak. Anyone who’s been to my house can testify that there is clutter on top of clutter on the coffee table, painting shit & packing supplies all over the dining room table, and toys emerging from every furniture orifice. But the one thing that really gets under my skin is a messy-mess. Play-Doh, the way it leaves trails of little colored turds all over the house. Pudding, the way it never makes it into my son’s mouth and falls into wet puddles on his clothes and the floor. I know that I can clean him off when he’s done, but it’s excruciating for me to have to watch the mess unfold right before my obsessive-complusive eyes.

Yet for some stupid ass reason, I decided (OF MY ACCORD) to squirt some of my paint on a pallette, slide some canvas under Chooch’s nose, and let him go to town. It was funny, because he gingerly dunked his fingers in the yellow and then he kind of just stood there, watching me suspiciously, as if he was waiting for me to freak out that he had sullied himself with the Devil’s art supplies.

But I breathed in real good (Blue’s Clues taught us to stop, breathe and think. It works well for Chooch, but mostly I still want to slaughter a hamlet, collect the eyelids of the citizens for pinata stuffers, and steal their crops for one last kick in the nuts) and reassured him that it was not a trick, that I really wanted him to paint.

And paint he did, for a good hour. And while I feverishly ripped off great lengths of paper towels and stopped him every ten minutes to wipe him down, I was pretty proud of myself for letting him go at it without getting too tightly wound. (And I’m pretty tightly wound to begin with.) And I wasn’t even too stage-mom about it!

Doesn’t he look exhausted here? Like he’s my little Etsy sweatshop worker. MORE PURPLE, YOU LITTLE SHIT! MAMA WANTS AT LEAST $100 FOR THIS SO YOU BETTER MAKE THIS LOOK BETTER THAN A POLLACK!

As he would smear the paint into patterns, he’d walk me through his process.

“This is a road. And this is Kara, and she’s standing with Janna’s parents.” I would like to make a note that my friend Kara hasn’t lived in Pittsburgh for about a year and a half, and though Chooch barely sees her he still includes her in his stories and art. Even after she broke his heart by getting married last summer!  I’m not sure if she should be touched or terrified, to be honest. He’s also obsessed with peeing in Kara’s potty, so now I’m worried that he’s going to grow up to be a serial killer with a penchant for leaving his mark in the toilets of his victims.

“I can’t believe she’s not bitching at me for making a mess.”

He seemed to really consider where he wanted to place each color, which impressed me. He’s much more methodical about it than I am. I’m just kind of spastic. He’s going to be so much better than me at everything. (I hope, anyway. Mama wants a beach house.)

I’ve been really stressed out lately so my Aunt Charmaine sent me some free zoo passes, assuming that taking my wild child out to a public place would solve all my problems. I never would have taken him by myself, because I’m not too proud to admit that I know how much I can handle, and that is not one of those things. Luckily, there were four passes and Alisha had off work on Friday. Blake expressed interest so by Friday morning, we had put together a quaint little zoo expedition.

The only thing missing was Henry the Chooch-Wrangler, but I figured with three sets of capable hands, we’d be fine.

Yeah, right.

It was a rainy day. I hoped deep down that would deter most people from coming out.

Yeah, right x2.

It was more crowded than I have ever seen the zoo. So crowded, in fact, that we were banished to some gravel lot riddled with tall weeds, empty Newport boxes, and probably if we looked hard enough, a syringe or two.  I hoped Blake and Alisha would be all, “Fuck it, let’s go to a strip club instead” but no, they were under the impression that braving solid human walls was worth it since our passes were free.

Chooch refused to pose for this picture because we wouldn’t let him scramble to the top like he wanted. So he posed for this pouting shot instead.

0.5 seconds after this photo was taken, he kicked mud all over my shoes and ankles, which was very refreshing. My pink Converse looked so plain without wet sod splatters all over them, anyway.

Blake was super worried about his hair getting wet and washing away scene points, so he hid under Alisha’s umbrella the whole time. Alisha hid under her hood, while I braved the rain, allowing it to jeri curl my bangs. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because rain or not I’d have still been drenched with sweat from chasing Chooch around. Jesus Christ, that kid does.not.stop EVER. He’d approach an exhibit, glance at whatever was behind the fence, and say, “Aw how cute, OK let’s go” and then all we’d see was a flash of his shirt as he jettisoned deeper into the crowd.

And speaking of the crowd — sure, there were small pockets of people huddled together at each animal exhibit we came upon, but nothing as bad as I was anticipating, which made me wonder where the fuck everyone was because judging by the parking lot, half the city was out ogling wildlife. Of course, there were the obligatory fanny-packed wide asses that shove their way past and stand in just the right position to block your view with their frizzy heads.

Aside from all the people-ogling, I’d have liked to have stopped to gawk at the elephants a little but that wasn’t on Chooch’s agenda.

Running through the monkey house was, though.

That’s what Chooch looked like the whole time: a blur. Even with three of us, it seemed like all we did was bolt after him. It’s time to invest in a leash, a taser, and a straight jacket.

Blake spent $2 on a zoo key so he could jam it in the box, make some annoying animal song play in the key of 80s power ballad, and then walk away after twenty seconds of it. In this particular photo, he was lamenting that no matter what side of the key he plunged in, the box would only spurt out animal facts AND NO SONG. I bet if he was on Twitter, his followers would have felt tremors.

Later, when we arrived at the aquarium, it was clear that THAT’S where the contents of every parked car was. It took all the braun and crowded room-germ alert endurance I had within in me just to snap a quick photo of the penguins, and it was only dire to me because of the Penguins banner.

Chooch would have nothing to do with anything in the aquarium, yet later on when we asked, “Hey Chooch, what did you see at the zoo?” he’d spit out, “Nuffin’! FISH.” And then roll his eyes in disgust that we had the audacity to bother him with such asinine questions.

On the way out, Chooch walked ahead of us and I hoped that maybe that could be his new family. Like if I could just sneak him inside that woman’s bag.

As we were leaving down the steepest escalator in the world, Blake wistfully said, “I wish there was a CD with all those awesome zoo key songs on it” and no more then fifteen seconds later, a recording came on through the speakers in the escalator, informing us that a CD of the zoo key songs could be purchased in the gift shop. At that moment, I was so relieved that I wasn’t Blake’s parent and therefore under no obligation to take him back to the gift shop and fork over some exorbitant sum for a CD with songs about what zebras eat for dinner.

Why I continue to go to the zoo is beyond me. I mean, you think I would learn my lesson by now. [Ex.1. Ex.2. Ex.3.] I love animals, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t like people, and I don’t like humidity, and I especially don’t like these things while I’m chasing after my child, making sure he doesn’t become a snack for the lions or the Silverback’s new bouncy ball.

So at the end of the day, was I any less stressed out? No. But I guess it was still kind of fun. A little bit. Hey, at least I saw a Penguins banner?

Chooch fell down the steps earlier this evening. Thank god he was nearly all the way to the bottom before it happened, but he still fell from a distance great enough to result in a full flip through the air and a sloppy landing into the corner of a bookshelf.

I was at the bottom of the steps when it happened. First, I saw his toy airplane hit the floor, and when I heard a second thump, I turned toward the steps expecting to see more of his toys being hurled, as he sometimes does to be a dick. But the second thump turned out to be Chooch himself, hitting the fourth-to-the-last step and then bouncing back into the air long enough to gain the speed necessary to acquire a gooey gash on the side of his dome.

It was a flash of his blue shirt, a sickening thud, and my heart was lodged in my throat.

There was blood.

Since it was a head wound, there was a LOT of blood.

I remember there was that moment when time just flat out stopped, and we stared at each other, him in a supine position on the carpeted landing, and me in a paralyzed lunge. And then I think we started wailing hysterically in tandem. I saw the blood and my legs went noodley and I began gagging which caused HIM to gag and he was crying so hard and I was just flat out in a state of motherfucking PANIC.

Every time my brain would start to churn out rational thoughts, my synapses would get clogged with the sight of blood. It would be like, “Call the doct—-BLOODOMGBLOOD.” “Get some ice from the freez—-OH HOLY FUCK THAT’S A LOT OF BLOOD.” “Chooch, sit down—-OMG HOW ARE YOU STILL ALIVE THAT’S LIKE AN ENTIRE PERSON WORTH OF BLOOD.”

And he wouldn’t let me touch it. He just kept sobbing “Don’t touch me! Leave me alone!” and he squatted under the dining room table and all I could think was that what if he hit his head so hard that his memory got all fucked up and his mind put together some horrible fable wherein I pushed him down the stairs?

It took something like 28 phone calls to Henry consisting of me screaming all helter skelter at him before Henry finally deduced that he should definitely not be at work and thank god for that man because he walked through the front door all calm-like just as I had gotten Chooch to settle down by putting on Silent Library, best show ever. Henry scoped out the gash as best as Chooch would let him, never once accused me of being a shitty mother, and very sedately announced, “OK let’s go to the hospital.” Just like that. He didn’t cry. His voice didn’t tremble. His knees didn’t quake. He kept it together and let me be the shaky, nervous, panicked, OMG-death-is-imminent parent.

It was slow night for emergencies so we were seen within ten minutes of arriving at the new Childrens Hospital. After a nurse took his vitals (I wish she would have checked my blood pressure, too) we were deposited into an exam room, where an older woman in a black cardigan came in wielding a clip board. “OMG it’s a social worker, I’m being questioned, they’re going to take my son away from me” was what went through my mind. It turned out to just be someone from Reception, who wanted to verify our address and insurance information. I resumed regular breathing.

Every time I would close my eyes, I saw the accident happening all over again, and it turned into a video game where I try to control myself to get there faster and catch him. Henry kept drilling it into my head that it wasn’t my fault, but I was the one home with him. I had just been with him too — he was in his room, where he goes to poop, and I checked in on him. He said he wasn’t done, I said take your time. I came back downstairs and it happened a minute later. And in the midst of all the commotion, all the crying, and all the blood, all he wanted was for me to change his poopy Pull-Up.

We were blessed to have a young and pretty doctor, and Chooch set him sights on her immediately. He actually let her, without a fight, push his ringlets to the side so she could assess the damage. She ran through some standard tests, making him follow simple instructions like touching his nose, sticking out his tongue, and touching her fingertip, and gave us the reassuring news that she saw no need for scans and that he didn’t seem to have suffered any neurological damage. She left, and we were left to entertain him for twenty minutes while the numbing agent sat on his wound.

Of course, he was back to being a crazy ass, doing and saying all the odd things he’s wont to do and say, and I asked rhetorically, “But was he EVER neurologically sound?” It was also fun to tell him that the zombies were skulking about the hospital floors, searching for him, because they could smell his brain stench emanating from his glutinous scalp cleft. Henry scolded me, so of course I did it some more. What, Chooch LOVES zombies!

While the doctor was gone, Chooch started acting real goofy, walking in clumsy circles and talking with a protruding tongue. At first I was like, “Maybe he hit his head harder than we thought…” but then it hit me. “He’s acting like a kid with a crush,” I pointed out to Henry, who heartily agreed.

“This is how he was acting around the girls working in Kiddieland on Sunday,” Henry said, and we laughed as Chooch pressed his face against the sliding door of the exam room, eye-flirting with a nurse out in the hall. Then I had a fleeting vision of hm growing up to be the next Richard Speck and suddenly it wasn’t so cute anymore.

Chooch wound up getting three staples. The doctor came back with a nurse and somehow they managed to keep him prone on the exam table with him displaying nary a buck or struggle. He whimpered a little when his wound was being washed, and he definitely cried audibly during the stapling, but all in all I’d say he was much braver than I ever would have been in his position. I’d have been, “It’s OK, just let me bleed out, k, c-ya bye” if someone came near my head with a fucking medical stapler, bitch you better step off.

Chooch didn’t want to remove his patient smock, so the doctor let him keep it, along with the large syringe she used to squirt his wound with water.

We were in and out within an hour and a half. The new hospital is amazing and it was a much better experience than the last time we had to take him to the old Childrens Hospital. n of course, why should my night end quietly, all the neighbors were out when we came home so I got to tell them all about how I’m a shitty mother who couldn’t function when her kid needed her most. I just keep getting more and more awesome.

Of course, once we were home, Chooch had at least ten more near-accidents, four of which were on the steps.

The second week of potty training proved quite fruitful once we implemented a sticker reward chart. The first week I stupidly offered all kinds of extravagant rewards, such as ice cream for breakfast and a trip to the titty bar, to lure Chooch’s urine into the potty. Who knew stickers was all it would take.

The last few days, he’s been aware enough of his bodily functions to slip out of his Pull-Ups in time to drain his juice out on the pot, and today he’s officially graduated to underroos. He loves them, but did not love the sensation of dropping a deuce inside of them. Perhaps now he’ll understand the rewards of POOPING on the potty, too. He wasn’t too ashamed to run into the backyard and tell our neighbor Toya that “I pooped in my underroos and dropped it on the floor!” to which she hesitantly replied, “Okay, wow!”

Thank god Henry was here to clean that shit up.