Orally fixated on balloons. But really, who isn’t. AMIRIGHT.

I hate that everything Chooch has is so much cooler than my own stuff.

I was using a Rugrats comforter when I met Henry. In fact, I had a Rugrats shower curtain too. Then he moved in and adultified everything, that no-fun-havin’ Zetterburg. At least Chooch gets to have a fun room.

“I can still sleep in your room though, right Mommy?”

Guest List

• Alisha
• Bill & Jessi FROM MICHIGAN
• Corey, my brother
• Janna & her mommy, her mom-mom-mommy
• Blake and his girlfriend Deanna
• Brenna
• Kara and her baking baby
• Dyanna
• Carol, my surrogate mommy
• Henry’s mom
• Henry’s sister and her caravan of five children, also her boyfriend
• Scott, Judi and Sam Robbins (Henry and I used to work with Scott)
• My aunt Charmaine & paternal grandma Lois 

Chooch’s birthday was April 25th, but I wanted to move his party up to May, figuring it would make for better weather. Too bad it was like 55 degrees and so windy that if Alisha had brought her broom, she’d have blown straight back to Oz.

Bill, Jessi, Alisha and Brenna came early to the pavilion on Sunday to help me decorate. I was still sick, perhaps even sicker than the day before, and Alisha had given me more debilitating poison from her purse. Because I was feeling under the weather, I couldn’t really be bothered with switching lenses and changing settings, so most of my photos came out looking like I used a ten cent disposable. 0wellz0rz.

I was thankful to have extra hands there to help me with all the HARD WORK, such as staple-gunning table cloths (I’m such a whore for staple guns now, the power surge is nearly orgasmic) and slinging streamers through rafters.

Jessi at one point stepped back and commented that it looked like homeless people had decorated. Then she wanted Henry to start a hobo fire in one of the metal trashcans. IT WASN’T THAT COLD! But I probably had a FEVER so never mind. Alisha had some body-warming potion in her purse but Jessi declined, which is good because that’s how Alisha date-rapes people.

Have I mentioned lately how overjoyed I am to be friends with Alisha again??

Lost Boys cake, obviously. Henry waited until we were standing above it before the party to say, “We should have Photoshopped Chooch’s face on it.” Yes, that would have been awesome. Thanks for thinking of that before I sent the order in. The cake was almost was a no-show, seeing as how Henry forgot to pick it up the day before and Bethel Bakery is closed on Sundays. Luckily, they made a concession for him and had someone meet him there the next morning so he could pick it up. That fucker, he got lucky. However, he conveniently forgot the veggie burgers at home, as usual. I’m screwed every time we have a cook out. EVERY TIME. I yelled at Henry that Jessi probably would have liked to have a veggie burger as well, and he was all, “Oh. Do they even have those in Michigan?” He made veggie kabobs though, but the one I had was terrible. Jessi said hers were good. Probably because Henry was all, “Here Jessi, have the one that wasn’t dropped on the ground. I’m saving that for Erin.”

Chooch and his eyeball pinata. He looks so sad, and I almost feel sorry for him, but then I remember how abusive he was to his older cousin Zac.

Blake was the only person who even attempted to kill the pinata. After Henry bought it, he realized we didn’t have a bat so he searched the house for an adequate substitution, and that is how I learned Henry has a night stick. Oh please, let’s use that for the pinata! Because our party isn’t trailer park-esque enough!  I asked him why the hell he has a night stick, anyway, and he got real shifty and said, “I don’t know, OK?? I’ve had it since high school.” Which translates into: My ex-wife had a thing for cop-domination, OK??

We ended up using some broken Vegas-themed pool cue instead. Classy.

What? Kara’s eating for two.

I swear these are real people that I know, and not homeless people! It wasn’t really a hobo party.

Oh the innocence!! This was taken right after she gifted me with a Now or Later bracelet which MELTED on my wrist and left me with a sticky candy poop smear.

Janna was so excited to be eating Kiefer Sutherland’s face that she practically tackled me as I walked by because she needed a souvenir photo. 

I’d also like to add that this was the first time in HISTORY that the important ordering of the birthday cake responsibility was laid upon my shoulders. I’m really surprised I was trusted enough. Now, my family has been patronizing Bethel Bakery for all their cake needs since before I can even remember. But they always get the same standard cake: half & half batter with the French buttercream frosting. And it’s delicious, it really is. But twenty-nine years I’ve been eating this same combination. Finally, the decision was in my hands and I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel like I was playing God at that moment, clicking the various cake components of MY CHOICE on the website.

In the end, I settled on almond batter, stuck with the French buttercream because they’re famous for it and it really is the best cake icing I’ve ever had, but in lieu of that same buttercream as a filling, I went with red raspberry. I walked around the party as everyone ate their cake and made it known that I had built that cake and that I should be praised for it, just as Noah was for his ark. It seemed to be a hit, so I was able to sneer in Henry’s face.

“What? I never said a single thing about it!” he cried in defense. Oh sure, as if he wasn’t lying awake at night, hoping I didn’t wind up ordering a foot-flavored cake.

Present opening. Boring. However, he somehow managed to walk away with three new Cars puzzles that he doesn’t already have, which is a small miracle. My favorite part was when he got to Corey’s unwrapped presents, casually laying inside a Toys R Us bag, and cried out, “I already have this!”  as he withdrew a small Domo plushie. I hurriedly corrected, “No, you have the HALLOWEEN one, so this is different!” It doesn’t really matter anyway, because I would like to have my own Domo and I think I’ll just take that one. Thanks Corey! 

 It was a really nice day and I’m glad that some of my friends were able to come out and celebrate Little Trucker’s third birthday. He even was pretty good about not swearing.

[So, this was supposed to be a post of just photos, but of course I had to fuck it up with words.]

The three of us were laying in bed last night when I asked Chooch to tell us a story.

“Ok um….I’mma put Daddy in the microwave, cut him with knife, eat him with a fork,” Chooch story-told with no hesitation. Naturally, he and I erupted into delirious giggles, hiccups eventually plaguing Chooch.

Henry didn’t laugh. Instead, he exasperatedly wiped his hand over his exhausted face and sighed, “This.

This is why I’m not taking any part in finding him a school.

That’s all on you.”

And of course, that only made Chooch and me laugh harder, until Henry ultimately left the bedroom and went downstairs.

“What kind of cake did you get, Riley?” our neighbor Ruth asked last night, as we hung out in the front yard. “Chocolate or yellow?”

“Raspberry ambrosia,” I answered for him.

Ruth made the universal “Oh Jesus Christ” face, presumably since the cake was only for a three year old. But when it comes to baked goods, nothing’s too gourmet for my kid. 

Then I gave her a piece and that shut her right up.

My favorite (CAKE) bakery churns out these majestic masterpieces of raspberry orgasms and caps it off with a proper powdered sugar ejacualtion and every bite is a money shot, I fucking promise. I have been obsessed with this cake for years. In fact, one year, I threw a birthday party for Henry (I know, wrap your head around THAT one — me doing something selfless for that man), and when I went to pick up his cake at Bethel Bakery (let me also add that I declined their offer of an iced inscription; it  said nary a  Happy Birthday), I bought myself a raspberry ambrosia cake. Yes, it was Henry’s birthday, but I was still the Queen. I will never forget gathering around the dining room table and explaining, “The plain cake is Henry’s, but that magnificent bitch right there is mine” and of course, none of my friends were fazed by this, but Henry’s sister and the one friend of his I bothered to invite looked a little appalled.

That night is still referred to as “The party where Erin bought herself the ‘good cake’.

“

So yeah, never mind, I guess the whole birthday-party-for-Henry thing wasn’t as selfless of a manuever as I imagined it was back then.

I sent Henry off on his own to retrieve the cake, and after the Easter pie debacle, I’m awfully relieved he didn’t come home with another contestant of the What Were They Thinking OMG Hideous Pie competition.

We also got a half dozen cupcakes from my favorite CUPCAKE bakery, Vanilla Pastry Studio.

As soon as the candles on the cake were snuffed out by his dirty trucker breath, he bypassed the cake and tore into a lemon cucpake. I guess he knew that cake was really for mommy.

 Thank you for being born, Choochie, if only to give Mommy another acceptable day to stuff her face with 16,879 sugar-crystaled calories.

Three years ago, on this very day, I was gutted like a fish so that my master could be born. My life has been under seige ever since, but mostly (MOSTLY) that’s an OK thing.  I just view all the bruises as accessories, and the chest pains are getting easier to ignore.

Happy birthday, Chooch! Here’s to many more years of a perpetually dirt-bearded face!

(Except not.) I  hope you can like today.

Thank god the weather has been getting nicer. Taking Chooch outside really helps break up the monotony of being pathetic housebound charity cases. Plus, Chooch’s obscenity arsenal always enjoys a nice change of scenery. It’s basically like he’s taking his show on the road. Yes, random person ambling past our house, this really is how my child always acts. Awesome, right?

It was warm yesterday, mid-sixties at least, yet he insisted on keeping his hood up. I think he’s embarrassed of this one patch of hair on the back of his head. It’s still super short, stunted almost, from him sleeping on his back, and so frizzy that it appears cinged.  It drives Henry nuts and at least once a day he threatens to shave it off, as though this poor, Charlie Brown-like follicular thatch is phycially assaulting him. It doesn’t bother me at all, though I do catch myself making futile attempts to slick it down with my saliva.

The rest of his hair has finally grown to a significant length. This is good because Henry and I have already decided that he’s going to Warped Tour with us this July so we’ll be able to style it accordingly. Unless he tries to wear a hood in spite of the ninety degree weather, for fashion’s sake.

I can’t express my gratitude to the person who invented puzzles, because they have been keeping Chooch’s wandering attention rapt for weeks now. He’s built up quite a collection, and thank god we upgraded to larger piece-counts, because it gives me some time to return a phone call in peace, read a few pages in a book, take a fucking piss.

Thank you Mr(s). Puzzle Inventor.

Chooch loves feta cheese, but he already knows he can’t like Swiss. His words, not mine. He’s put Lost Boys on the backburner for the time being in order to adequately obsess over Twilight. Henry apparently saw somewhere that they’re holding auditions for extra vampires and we want to take Chooch, since he already has the natural fangs. Seriously, I will be so sad if they fall out and aren’t replaced by an adult set. His fangs are fucking badass.

Chooch somehow always knows when I’m on the phone with Christina, without me telling him. I know this because he’ll take the phone and say, “I’m going to eat Jesus’s face!” He only says this to her, because he knows how much she loves that Jesus fellow and he gets great satisfaction from making her upset. She probably feels inspired to say the Rosary every time she talks to him.

He’s not saying “asshole” as much as he was, having graduated to the scathingly monosyllabic “bitch.” However, he was acting a fool the other day, and when I started to say, “Chooch, you’re such a—-” he finished it by saying “Asshole!” Not what I was going to say, but it effectively conveyed my point. So yeah — bitch. He loves it and says it with such detached ambivalence and blase that I can’t help but wonder if he’s been palling around with Paris Hilton. In fact, just the other day we went to visit my grandmother, whom he hasn’t seen since Halloween. (That in itself is a story for another day.) So, he walks right into her den, leans against the couch and goes, “Hi, bitch.” To my grandmother, who is offended by pretty much anything that I even had a remote part in.

But she laughed, the same lady who nearly had a heart attack when I announced my pregnancy and screeched “You weren’t meant to have children!” ad nauseum. This same lady laughed so hard I had to hiss, “Grandma, don’t encourage him!”

“But he sounded so casual!” she cried.

Indeed.

Christina and I had been going through a rough patch. I was ready to never talk to her again but then Henry morphed into Meddling Mother Hen mode and reasoned with me. Christina is lucky; I had big vengeful plans in store for her.

So she came to visit last weekend. It was the first time we hung out since November and what better way to torture her than by strapping clown shoes on her feet and forcing her to hike all over a cemetery.

At one point, I had her laying supine in front of a verdigris’d crypt, surrounded by piles of dead leaves, when an elderly woman idled by in her Oldladymobile and the look she shot at us was priceless. Her wrinkled lips were all a-twist in horror and disapproval. And then I almost careened head-first over the top of the crypt so we called it a day. I have more pictures, but my master doesn’t give me enough time to actually go through them.

Even though I hate Christina, it was one of the best weekends ever. Especially because Henry actually hung out with us. Usually he deems us “too gay” and juvenile and heads to bed with Chooch, but this time he came back down, got drunk, dropped his “I’m too mature for this” facade, and proceeded to put on what I can only describe as a public access sketch show. He was hilarious and animated, telling us stories from his drinking heyday and other inappropriate yarns.

In other news, Chooch has been playing one of those Jumpstart games on the computer so I’m allotted even less time on this thing. Stay-At-Home-Hell hasn’t killed me yet, but it hasn’t got much easier. There are some nights where Chooch is just a fucking asshole, like Tuesday night when Dyanna was here and all I wanted to do was hang out and watch the hockey game, but Chooch had other ideas in mind. Like repeatedly punching me in the head and doing a somersault off the couch and landing head first against the coffee table. I deducted some points for the sloppy landing.

But last night, he was like a dream. He even sat in my lap, threw his arms around my neck and said, with sincerity I swear to god, “I wub you, Mommy.” AND THEN HE STAYED LIKE THAT. For like, two minutes, he stayed in my lap, hugging me.

I almost felt bad for Googling adoption agencies the night before.

EDIT: Hours later, I glanced at this entry and noticed at least three words where it quite literally looked like I gave up on typing them out in their entirety. I’m fucking tired.

To break up the monotony of being essentially housebound all week, Janna and I took Chooch to McDonald’s last Friday night. I love Playland because, unlike Chuck E Cheese, I can actually sit and relax and have adult conversations while Chooch acts a fool up in the tubes.

Chooch has a routine at McDonald’s: he’ll crawl the course of the tubes, come down the slide, push a bitch or two, then run back to where I’m sitting in order to plug a nugget in his loud mouth like a rag in a Molotov cocktail. Janna sat there and talked while I eye-flirted with the single dad sitting across from me, which made Janna roll her eyes.

A few minutes into Chooch’s reign of terror, a young boy stamped over to me and shouted, “Your kid keeps calling me a baby and I am FIVE YEARS OLD.” Chooch stood there and grinned proudly and I was like, “Oh. OK.” Then to Chooch, I mumbled with little to no conviction, “Quit calling him a baby.” Dealing with kids is not my forte. Later, that kid stole Chooch’s Spiderman, and after his grandma forced him to return it and apologize, Chooch laughed and slapped the thief’s arm which aroused chuckles in the other parents sitting nearby. The kid tried to tattle, but his grandma laughed at him, so one point scored for Team Chooch.

My pretend boyfriend and I, after making friendly eye contact and laughing at Chooch’s antics together, graduated into innocent small talk. I made sure I tweeted about it so Henry would know that I had an opportunity to upgrade.

A few minutes passed and I said to Janna, “I haven’t seen Chooch in awhile, have you?” and she realized that she hadn’t either. I knew I definitely hadn’t seen him come down the slide, so I assumed he was still up there in the tubes, but it made me nervous to see that all the other kids seemed to be running in a pack that didn’t include him. I didn’t even hear his obnoxious taunts and devilish laughs.

So I approached my pretend boyfriend’s son and I ask him if he’s seen my kid. He climbed up into the bowels of Playland, returned almost immediately and says, in a horror-stricken tone, “He’s up there and he doesn’t have no clothes on!”

My first thought was, “FUCK, Henry’s not here so now I have to actually be a fucking parent, are you goddamn kidding me.” As I began climbing up (and fuck you, McDonald’s! I kept my fucking shoes on), the little boy loudly added, “I saw your baby’s penis!” As my heart banged away in my ears, I vaguely recall hearing a small uproar of parental murmurings as they overheard this, and at that point, it might as well have been me who was naked.

I got to the top of the tower and turned around to see my son, completely fucking nude, lounging in a yellow tunnel. A group of children surrounded him on two sides, taking in impromptu Anatomy 101 with wide eyes and mouths agape. Chooch, he was just grinning away.

I’d have preferred a smaller audience for the night my son chose to announce his new lifestyle.

“Get your ass over here,” I hissed in a low whisper, and when he scrambled close enough I grabbed his arm–not so hard as to appear abusive!– and yanked him the rest of the way. Scanning the area, my heart sank as I discovered his clothes weren’t anywhere near him. A girl who appeared to be around seven or eight fetched them for me. Then she goes, “Oh, and here’s his diaper. Ew.” However, I was relieved to see there was no poop in it.

Or smeared across the tubes in Satanic shapes.

I gathered all his clothes and perched him on a ledge, angrily stuffing his head through his sweater. It was hot as hell in there and stank of dirty feet, prepubescent B.O. and stale fries, but I refused to drag him back down in his present full-frontal state. Some of the kids expressed their annoyance at my presence, and dramatically asked me to please move. I snapped on one kid and growled, “You have plenty of room to get past me, are you kidding?” Fucking children.

My favorite part, I think, was when I could hear one of the McDonald’s employees talking about the super exciting action with some of the adults. “And the mother’s up there now?” she asked. “Oh, that is just so cute! How funny!” YES, HOW FUCKING CUTE. AND FUNNY, INDEED.

As I stuffed clothing back on his nude body, I asked Chooch why he took his clothes off, anyway.

“I wanted my socks off,” he replied nonchalantly, like it was as sensible as a salad with low-fat dressing for dinner.

Once he was decent, I made him go back down with me. Janna and my pretend boyfriend were standing there smiling, and I just lost it, totally fucking cracked up. Janna and I talked about it for a few minutes when I realized again that Chooch’s absence was lingering a little bit too long for my liking. Pretend boyfriend sent his son back in, and he came back to report, “Well, he took his shirt off. But then he put it back on.”

To his father, I laughed, “This is a new thing, apparently.” And then I defeatedly mumbled a sardonic, “Awesome.”

Right then, Chooch came shooting out of the slide with his sweater completely inside out, and you better believe I grabbed his little exhibitionist ass. I plopped him down at our table and began stuffing his little asshole feet into his shoes while he took a swig of his drink.

“I can’t like lemonade,” he announced with disgust, setting the cup back on the table.

“Oh, so now that you’re a nudist, you don’t like lemonade?” Then I tried to explain to him the virtues of  the “no shirt, no service” rule.

On our way out, some kid sitting with his parents pointed to Chooch and shouted, “That’s the kid right there! The one who took his clothes off!”

This is what I’ve been contending with every single night. Capn’ Cusspants of the Shit-Eating Grin Clan.

I’m not going to lie– he scares me sometimes.

As Week Two draws to a close, I have in my head a list of things I am thankful for.

1. Wine
2. Puzzles that occupy Chooch
3. Ability to shut Chooch out when he starts whining in frustration over said puzzle
4. iCarly, for being one of the few shows that can keep Chooch quiet for the entire episode
5. Janna, who has babysat me numerous times while I in turn babysit Chooch
6. CVS, for being in walking distance
7. Wine
8. That I don’t own a gun (thankfulness on this tip is debatable and changes by the hour)
9. the convenient way tablespoons are marked on butter wrapper so idiots like me don’t have to panic
10. Wine
11. MTV reality shows
12. “Annie”,

a. because I forgot how much I love to emulate the theatrical warbling of raggedy orphans

1 . and this in turn gives Chooch a taste of his own obnoxious-coated medicine

b. it keeps alive my dream that the sun really will come out tomorrow, and by that, I mean a rich man will adopt me and it will be all “Henry who?” and you will see me tapdancing into the sunset, my friends.

Did something amazing yesterday, I did. I made cornbread on my own, and I only had to text Henry once for help. I even added real life corn into the mix (which tastes real good, by the way, salmonella be damned) and then, oh you will never believe this, while it was baking in the oven (yes, I made sure all the extraneous cookware was cleared out first. I learned the hard way when I still lived at home and attempted to bake cookies while a bag of missed crackers still sat in the corner of the oven-turned-pantry) I even took it upon myself to mix my own HONEY BUTTER. When it was done, I swiped a finger through it and exclaimed, “I did that!

” which is the same thing Chooch says when he shits on the potty/Sharpies the wall/blows up the neighborhood with a homemade grenade.

And then of course, after all my slaving in the kitchen, Chooch was like, “Are you fucking kidding me, fool?

I ain’t eating that shit.” Even when I tried to say it was cake, he backed away in horror and said, “I can’t like that.” Even when I lied and said, “Daddy made it!” he was like, “Uh, no, YOU made it. I watched you, retard.”

When Henry came home last night, I begged him to try some. He kept giving me excuses like:

• I’m not hungry
• I’m allergic
• I don’t like cornbread
• Look, you’re missing the Real World, omg!

But finally he conceded.

“It’s good right?” I asked expectedly. “I even put real corn in it. It’s like an actual Mexican made it, Henry.”

He said it was decent.

“Although….”

“What?” he asked, cornbread mastication ceased in apprehension.

“Well, the expiration date was from a year ago. But that’s probably OK, right? I mean, it tasted fine to me.”

He quit eating it after that, but swears it was just because he was full.

Whatever. I used fresh milk and eggs, at least. Besides, it said it was a SUGGESTED date. My personal suggestion was to use it yesterday.

“Joke’s on you, mommy-asshole.”

Last night was relatively calm for the most part.

I was able to get Chooch interested in “Annie,” but I don’t think he was listening to my story about how I tried to orchestrate a reproduction of it in eighth grade and Jason Jones was going to play Punjab, but then my ex-friend Keri couldn’t take it anymore and kept deep six-ing my cast list. I think that may have had something to do with the fact that every time she would sleep over, I’d put the soundtrack on repeat.

My love for Annie runs deep, like a stream of piss in Hell’s urinal.

I had him in bed by 10:30 (early for him, believe me) but then Henry had to come in the house like a fucking bumbling burglar and Chooch was all, “Huh? Daddy’s home?” and then it was stomp-stomp-stomp down the stairs, at which point his mild mood completely mutated into whirling dervish mode and he started throwing toys and spilling apple juice. And I took no part in it. I stared emotionlessly at the TV and mumbled, “He was fine all night.

You  make him turn into an asshole. He’s all yours, have a ball, Daddy.”

I had scheduled a phone call with my new friend Jessi. When you’re raising a hellion, phone calls can no longer be fielded at whimsy. And it’s always fantastic when you have to tell people, “Don’t call me until after 11pm” because you know it’s going to sound like Oakland rioting in the house up until then. Fortunately, when Jessi called, Chooch and Henry had at least taken their screaming show upstairs, but the ruckus was still jarring enough that I had to strain  to concentrate on parts of the conversation. I could hear Henry shouting, “Get back in bed!” and Chooch answering from across the hall, “No way!” and then devilishy laughing and chucking what sounded like boulders out of his crib. Finally, it quieted down (apparently Chooch ended up falling asleep in our bed while I was still on the phone and Henry had no idea. We make a great parenting team) and I was able to enjoy a grown-up conversation with a really cool girl.

Today, I woke up and remembered, “Fuck, I promised I’d make French toast for breakfast.” I can’t remember why exactly I promised, what horrendous activity I was trying to bribe the child to quit, but I do know that he reacted well to the bribe and was, for the most part, a decent human being last night. And when I promise him things, I make sure to follow through because the last thing I want is to be like my own mother. (That song “Promises, Promises” by Naked Eyes? ALWAYS makes me think of her.)

So I google “easy french toast” and only 68798097 results turn up, oh lucky day. Quickly, I become confused. Every recipe is different. One says one egg and two slices of bread, another says 2 eggs and 6 slices of bread. I’m not even in the  kitchen yet and I’m in tears.

But I did it. Sort of. I mixed all the shit together and became mildly frustrated at the way the cinnamon melded into a curdled skin with the milk. I didn’t know exactly what “grease the pan” meant, because that was so vague.

So I wiped it with canola oil. That didn’t seem greasy enough, so I sprayed it with Pam. Finally, I caved and plopped some fucking butter up in that shit and marveled at the sizzle.

The first piece, thank God I tried it before serving it to Chooch, because it was wack. Totally raw. The pieces that followed were not much better, but I felt confident that the eggs were no longer raw. One piece actually had a little scrambled egg hanging off it like a breakfast dingleberry. It was cute, but tasted absolutely disgusting.

I let Chooch and myself ingest several bites. But I noticed that there was something terribly off with them, so I said, “Er, maybe we should not eat anymore, Chooch.”

And then Henry came home. Scraps of evidence remained on both of our plates, and Henry asked, “Did you cook it enough?” as he held up a piece tentatively between two fingertips, like he was trying to spy the contents of his cheating wife’s mail.

“I’ll tell you right now what you did, you used too much milk.” He said it in that superior “I watch Alton Brown” tone that makes me want to castrate him sometimes, with an Alton Brown-approved cutlery set. But then, sniffing the kitchen, he added, “You caught it on fire, didn’t you?” And then, upon further inspection of my damning trail, he yelled, “Tell me you did NOT use this metal spatula on my non-stick pan!!!!??”

Later, after he was sure that Chooch and I weren’t going to need our stomachs pumped of swirling raw eggs, Henry tried to reason with me. After eight years, he still tries this sometime. It’s kind of adorable.

“You know, cooking’s not that hard. Your problem is that you rush. You want it done NOW.”

“Well, duh. Why else would there be the high setting on the stove, if not to help me cook things as fast as possible?” And Henry did this thing where he holds up to his hands in a silent prayer, like he’s telepathically asking some entity to please provide patience.

Finally, I snapped, “Look, cooking is not fun for me. I DO NOT LIKE IT. I do not get joy from rooting around the refrigerator for ingredients, I do not like the way my head feels when struggling to read a sentence that contains words AND numbers, and I absolutely do NOT enjoy standing in front of a stove wondering when this shit is going to be done.”

I don’t care if I suck at this. I do not like to cook, not here not now not then not there. And if it takes me writing it out Dr. Seuss-style to get it through his head, then I will gladly work on that shit this weekend. That is, after I bathe in a tub of vodka and have a harem cater to me. “That’s right, you drop that tab in mama’s mouth, just like that.”

Chooch, looking forlorn at McDonald’s, moments before he befriended an autistic boy whom he dubbed “Hey Kid.”

When I was growing up, we weren’t a McDonald’s family (and the audience yells, “Then how’d ya get so fat, Erin?”). We’d go occasionally, but never actually eat inside. However, now that I’m a parent, I still don’t endorse the place but we do take Chooch there occasionally in the winter just so he can play with other kids. (Otherwise, his only play mate is his sixteen year old brother and that always starts out well but then Blake gets carried away and teases him mercilessly. Like an older brother should, in fact.)

It’s exciting for me to watch my kid interact with others, since he isn’t really around children his own age very much. (Alarmingly, I am usually the only parent who seems aware of what’s going on. One time, there was an againg wigger-dad who texted the whole time, only stopping to shout things like, “Get your ass over here and eat this!”)

The intricacies of child-interaction are pretty amazing to me, like being in the monkey house at the zoo. Interestingly, the older kids always seem to take him in under their wings, and they’ll even wait for him to catch up. When we were there last week, Chooch honestly had his own crew. He fucking ran that place and it was amazing to watch. He’s eithe rgoing to grow up to be a politician or a Blood kingpin.

I wasn’t like that as a kid. I always stuck around the adults, too shy to join a group of kids who had already established a clique. But not Chooch; shit, he dives right on it. And god only knows what goes on in those mysterious Playland tubes and tunnels, because at one point some small girl with a babydoll approached Chooch and yelled, “And don’t you hit me again, baby!” to which Chooch responded by laughing riotously in her face. You beat those bitches, son.

Thankfully, he stayed clear of the children who belonged to the table of washed-up strippers. One of the daughters was around 8 and totally not wearing any underwear, I fucking swear to shit. She’d bend over and her entire crack was smiling for all the see. Henry’s sister thought I was exaggerating, but later she goes, “Oh. Oh god. I know exactly what kid you were talking about.” She seemed scarred, as she should be.

On Wednesday, Chooch announced that he was awake from his afternoon nap by emitting a blood-curling wail. Running up the stairs, the only rational explanation I could come up with was that Marcy’s inner succubus had emerged and she was finally carrying out her plot to eradicate the bane of her existence. When I reached his room, I found him standing in his crib, tears and snot squirting out all over the place. He pointed next to him and sobbed, “LOOOOOK!!!” Oh my god, she tried to kill him and he killed her first, was  my first hypothesis.

“Mommy I PUUUUUUKKKKKKED!!” he wailed, and that was when I saw what he was pointing to was not the grisly corpse of a murdered cat, but an orange pool of vomit glistening and stinking on his mattress. Oh, yummy. I picked him up, tried to mask my disgust and horror so I could properly comfort him, when his body started racking and quaking and I had .0009 seconds to suspend him over the bathroom sink before he began projectiling.

This was his first kid-puke, as opposed to the not-too-rank baby stomach-spooge that consists of nothing more than liquid and perhaps some strained greenbeans. This puke, this delicious toddler puke, was not nearly as friendly and served as a billboard for everything he ate that day. It was seriously all I could do to keep myself from succumbing to the Vomit Chain. This went on for the next four or five hours;  Chooch burping up vomit in a bowl held by my shaky, clammy hands, to the melodious tune of strangulating “blarrrrrrrrr”s.

The first two or three times, as I tenderly rubbed his back  and tried  not to cry, I engaged in an inner monologue that went something like this:

Oh, poor kid. If I could puke for him, I would. Huh. What a completely selfless and maternal thought to think. I won’t even give that kid the cherry off my sundae, and now I’m wishing I could be his puking proxy?

Oh my god, I’m becoming a mother. I mean, obviously I’m a mother, but now I’m acting like one? I think that means I’m growing old. Time to add the best of American Idol, Celine Dion and Barbra Streisand to my playlist. Ok, I admit that Barbra’s already on there.

That album she recorded with the Bee Gees was so masterful. Do I have to cut my hair real short now, I wonder? Oh ew, he’s puking on my hand. Jesus Christ. No, not on the cat! Oh fuck it’s my turn to puke. I want Henry to get ice cream. No, pie. No…ice cream.

That kid is so fucking weird. Every time he’d finish expelling his stomach contents, he’d push the bowl at me and forcefully demand, “Put it on the table! I’m done. Wash my hand off! I playin’ cars.” And then he’d slide off the couch and play with his toys with the aggression of a kid who had NOT just been puking his guts up. Henry and I kept trying to coax him to sit on  the couch and relax, but he’d have no part of that. He wanted to go-go-go. So he’d play for a half an hour, and then proceed to fill up the bowl with more sick-juice like it was an everyday thang. After the second time, he managed to puke without even crying, which is something I certainly have yet to master. I mean, I puke and then proceed to curl up in a pathetic ball on the bathroom floor and pray for the demons to take my soul. Not my kid. He pukes with all the verve and determination of Rambo. I half-expected grenades,  nails and Clint Eastwood’s brass balls to be landing in his puke bowl.

That kid, he’s kind of my hero.

I always try to snap some shots of Chooch while he’s playing, because a kid enjoying a moment with his toys is like, pure embodiment of innocence.

Well, as long as you ignore the fact that he mutters insults at uncooperative trains, like “bitch” and “bastard” (which, when originating from Chooch’s lips, sounds more like “passerd”).

While Choocch ravaged the pile of gifts (I didn’t get one single thing and still, my bottom lip did not protrude), all the cats hid safely in the basement. Except for Nicotina (see also: Speck, Breakfast Nook) who was right up in it, playing with wrapping paper scraps and twist ties.

Because we’re stupid parents, nearly everything we bought required assembly. I attemped to master the instructions that came with an airport playset, but quickly found that drool was pooling in the corner of my mouth and my hands were beginning to curl inward. Henry took over and had it erected in a matter of minutes, but he left the sheet of stickers intact for my enjoyment.

And here is where Christmas quickly spiraled into a clusterfuck on par with being fucked by barbed wired dildos: I think I might have a mild form of OCD, I don’t know, but I found that the tiniest slight in sticker application was bringing my blood to a rolling boil. Henry kept saying completely insensitive things like, “What are you retarded? You can’t put a fucking sticker on properly?” and, as I was twisting my arm around Chooch’s fat head, trying to slap a sticker on the airport tower, “Here’s a thought: Why not wait until Chooch is done playing before putting the stickers on?” I couldn’t stop. In fact, I was about to get out a fucking level to ensure precision.

Then, to Chooch, he says, “Ignore her Chooch. She doesn’t understand that you just want to play. She’s a GIRL.”

And then this exchange happened: “Shut the fuck up! I’m more of a boy than you’ll ever be! Get back in the fucking kitchen you bitch!” And he did. Henry went right the fuck back in that kitchen and continued coddling the eggs he was was hardboiling for our picnic. He’s such a bitch I’m surprised he didn’t try to breast feed them, too.

And here is where I regressed to the emotionally undeveloped age of five: I noticed that while I was undergoing the diligent, steady-handed task of toy embellishing, Chooch was in the process of peeling off every sticker I had painstakingly smoothed on. And I lost it. Absolutely flipped my shit and shrieked, “OH MY GOD WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT JUST FORGET IT TODAY IS FUCKING RUUUUUIIIIINNNNEDDD!!!!” No exaggeration. I said that. In high-pitched, calling-all-dogs mode. And then I stormed off to my bedroom, where I slammed the door behind me and layed in bed, staring at the ceiling for fifteen minutes until the electrical currents stopped zapping my nerves.

And then the rest of the day was great! Really fucking good. No fighting, no tears.

I got Chooch an Edgar Allen Poe doll. Judging by his confusing expression in this photo, you can tell he just loves it.

“Great, Mommy’s projecting her interests on me again. I wish I could just get a shittin’ Elmo like normal kids my age.”

Then it was off to the Uniondale Cemetery (going to the cem on Christmas is kind of our accidental tradition, I guess), where we had a very fast and frigid picnic consisting of egg salad sandwiches, pretzels, cheese cubes, and frozen strawberries (per Chooch’s request). Yes, it was a feast for kings, to be sure. For the record, the shopping list I gave Henry the day before demanded things like “a delicious array of rich cheeses” and “hearty artisan bread for which to sandwich the delicious array of rich cheeses,” among other fine products you might find in a palace’s pantry. All Henry got was eggs to hardboil, bland wheat rolls that were so dry they sucked the mayo from the egg salad, and two packages of Helluva Good.But I didn’t complain. I guess I’m complaining now, but the point is that I didn’t complain THEN. As in, on CHRISTMAS. I kept my maw packed with picnic fixin’s and distracted myself with the camera.

The coldness kept us from enjoying a lingering tour of the cemetery, and Henry and I were desperate to leave after twenty minutes. Chooch had other plans and took off, slaloming through tombstones and whacking trees with sticks while chomping on a pretzel; probably I’m sure this is some nefarious sequence used to raise Samhain. Chasing him down, I panted, “Come on, we have to go home! The zombies are coming!” and he replied, “Aw, cute. Zombies!” None of my lies work on this kid.

Later, we stopped over my dad’s, where Henry presented him with a case of Faygo rootbeer in bottles. Apparently, this was a good gift because my dad got that nostalgic glaze over his eyes and began regaling us of the good old days when soda was a luxury and if your parents gave you a glass bottle of Cola, you damn well drank it to the last drop. Henry I’m sure remembers those days too.

Now, my dad and Henry haven’t spent much time together, and my brother told me that when Henry and I first got together my dad didn’t approve because of the age difference. But that case of old fashioned root beer just may have brought them together, as evidenced by the jolly way my dad was patting Henry on the back, offering him kielbasi and referring to him as “buddy.”

My other, less-mentioned brother Ryan was there too, but only emerged from the basement long enough to hit up the bathroom. “Did Ryan say hello to you?” my dad asked. And I said, “If a head-nod counts as a hello, then yes. Yes, he said hello to me.”

My dad’s house is always so warm and cozy. I should spend more time there. But instead, I only opt for the requisite holiday face-showing. I’m a horrible daughter. (Somewhere, my mom is cackling and rejoicing, “She admits it!”)

Back at home, we spent the rest of the night eating nut rolls and chocolate, and watching Chooch play with his Thomas train tracks. And I got drunk.

So maybe my family (Mom’s side) is a bunch of pathological nut jobs and so maybe we didn’t have a Christmas tree  and so maybe we didn’t even set out cookies for the fat man on Christmas Eve, but by golly I wasn’t going to let my Christmas go down the shitter. All that really mattered anyway was the Chooch was happy, and I’d be willing to bet that, based on the deliriously goofy smile that was plastered on his grubby face all day, he was pretty fucking delighted.

And oh, look who likes Poe after all!